What is Progressive Revelation? Part 4

Paul Henebury

Read the series so far.

Revelation cannot be divorced from the character of the revealer.

Plain-speaking is usually thought to be a virtue. One should say what one means. On the other hand, it is not a virtue to use words which one knows beforehand may lead another person to conclude we mean one thing, when, in actuality, we mean something more obscure and inscrutable, or even utterly different.

To show how impactful this truth is, I’ll pick an example from another sphere. In his recent book against the false claims of Richard Dawkins, Jonathan Sarfati writes this:

It is…disingenuous for an ardent antitheist like Dawkins to profess concern about a creator’s alleged deception. However, biblical creationists respond that the real deception would be for a creator to use evolution then tell us in the Bible something diametrically opposed in every respect—the time frame, the method, the order of events, and the origin of death and suffering. (The Greatest Hoax On Earth?, 26)

The complaint against Dawkins stems from his blindness to his own presuppositions. However, the thrust of this statement is not against Dawkins, but against any “creator” who would employ language to beguile his creatures. Like a person who deceives a dog into running after a stick which she only pretends to throw, the kind of god who would “reveal” the creative work in the words of Genesis 1 and 2 when, as a matter of fact, he did it by evolution, would deserve to be labelled, as Sarfati says, “disingenuous.”

Discussion

Particular Baptists, Assurance, 5 point Calvinists, Missions, etc.

Jim

Here’s the thread to really get our blood pressure up …. Particular Baptists, Assurance, 5 point Calvinists, Missions, etc.

  • Who’s a 5 pointer and why?
  • Do you believe in evangelism? I mean practice it! You share the gospel (yes or no). And how often?
  • Are you a 5 pointer and believe in missions?

Finally: What is your assessment as to what schools have a Calvinistic bent, allow it, forbid it, teach it, disavow it, etc.

Starting this thread because I thwared the discussion of this on the DBTS and remote training filing

Discussion

What Happened to Keswick?

Robert Delnay

houghton_grg_pull.gifRepublished from The Faith Pulpit (March 2002). First posted at SI in 2009.

(Related audio: 2007 interview with Robert Delnay).

Years ago a few Fundamentalists had occasion to identify with the Keswick movement, also known as the “deeper life,” or “victorious life.” Others have slurred the movement in somewhat the same way that New Evangelicals have slurred the Scofield Reference Bible. The point is worth some notice.

While the movement traces back to the perfectionist movements that in the 1860’s produced Holiness, it went in a somewhat different direction. Credit seems to go to William Boardman, who in the 1860’s was preaching a higher life, and to Pearsall Smith and his wife Hannah Whitehall Smith. Smith held meetings in England in the early 1870’s, making considerable impact. Then in the summer of 1875, Smith badly smudged his reputation and left the ministry. Thereupon Canon T. D. Harfoed-Battersby, vicar of St. John’s church in Keswick, up in the Lake District, not far from the Scottish border, announced a week of meetings in Keswick near his church. The meetings were to be a time for spiritual refreshing and earnest seeking after God, and they began a series which has continued to the present.

Discussion