Bible, Theology & Philosophy

The series so far.

Chapter 3 of Carl Trueman’s Republocrat focuses on American conservative Christians’ view of the media—with Fox news as the focus.

Though the chapter (The Not So Fantastic Mr. Fox) seemed shorter, it’s length is actually the just-shy-of-twenty-pages standard for chapters in this book. Perhaps the illusion of shortness is due to my skimming several pages when it became clear they held nothing of interest (the part arguing against the virtuousness of Fox Broadcasting Company and Mr. Murdoch; since I never thought they were especially virtuous, and don’t know anyone who does, I didn’t care).

But Trueman does make some solid points in the chapter. We’ll consider those before I return to the problems.

Bias

Fox News is indeed biased, as the chapter asserts—depending on how you define bias. Trueman observes, “I like to argue in class that in the writing of history, no one can be neutral” (p. 42). From there, he distinguishes (though doesn’t really differentiate) between bias and objectivity. But he is undoubtedly right that there’s never been a human being who looks at events and ideas with some kind of tabula rasa.

Full disclosure: since our family doesn’t value cable or satellite programming enough to pay the monthly fee, my exposure to Fox News has usually been in small bits in auto-repair shop lobbies, video clips on the Internet and the odd occasion where the cable channel takes over local broadcast news for a period.

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Regular Baptist Books has released a new volume, Dispensational Understandings of the New Covenant, edited by Mike Stallard of Baptist Bible Seminary in Clarks Summit, Pennsylvania. Titles need to be manageable in length, and this one labels the book nicely. It would have been more precise, however, if it had specified that the book contains traditional dispensational understandings of the New Covenant, and actually only some of them.

The limitation is deliberate. The book results from collaboration between traditional dispensationalists in the Council on Dispensational Hermeneutics. This council, which meets annually for the exchange and examination of ideas related to dispensational theology, includes only traditional dispensationalists. From the time that it first met in 2008, one of the goals of the council was to foster the publication of current, traditionally-dispensational thinking. Dispensational Understandings of the New Covenant is its first major release.

The book is necessary because dispensationalists have never agreed about how the church is related to the New Covenant. Some think that the church has no legal relationship to the New Covenant. Others believe that the church is not a party to the covenant, but nevertheless stands in some relationship to it. Still others have believed in the existence of two New Covenants, one for Israel and another, different one for the church. Some have argued that the church is directly related to the New Covenant and has been brought in as a participant alongside Israel.