The Progressive Nature of Revelation

"The self-revelation of God is a work covering ages. In the abstract, it is quite conceivable that the entire context of revealed truth should have been communicated at once. That God has not done this may be in part explained from the finiteness of the human understanding. There exist, however, much deeper reasons for it in the nature of revelation itself. Revelation is not an isolated act of God. It constitutes a part of the formation of the new world of redemption, and this new world does not come into being suddenly and all at once, but is realized in a long historical process. This could not be otherwise, since at every point its formation proceeds on the basis of, and in contact with, the natural development of this world in the form of history. It is simply owing to our habit of unduly separating revelation from this comprehensive background of the total redeeming work of God that we fail to appreciate its historic, progressive nature." -- Geerhardus Vos, The Nature and Aims of Biblical Theology,

The Evolution of Eugenics: Saving Marriages

Dobson's Focus on the Fight
M.E. Sprengelmeyer, reporter for the Rocky Mountain News, points out the influence of a secular humanist on James Dobson's psychology and how that influence still puzzles the humanist's son: "Shortly after Dare to Discipline was published, it won a place of honor inside a glass case at the American Institute of Family Relations in Los Angeles, one of the earliest groups formed to study and support families. Dobson worked there as counselor and assistant director, joining about the time he finished his doctoral degree in 1967 at the University of Southern California. The institute's founder, the late Paul Popenoe, wrote the foreword to Dare to Discipline. With only an honorary doctorate, "Dr." Popenoe was one of the first pop-culture marriage counselors, the "Dr. Phil" of his day.

The pairing with Dobson still astounds Popenoe's son, David, since his father was a secular humanist who began his eclectic career advocating a philosophy that Dobson would denounce later: eugenics. In 1918, Popenoe and longtime associate Roswell Johnson wrote the textbook, Applied Eugenics, which stressed better breeding as a way to improve society's stock. Popenoe advocated sterilizing mentally ill and mentally retarded patients in California hospitals. Considered "progressive" in its day, eugenics fell sharply out of favor after World War II, when its "social hygiene" premise became associated with the atrocities of Nazi Germany. Popenoe never disavowed eugenics, his son said. Instead, his interests evolved: from better breeding, to better families, to saving marriages. Though not religious, Popenoe laced his later work with strict Victorian values. "As the secular world turned against marriage and family, in his last years he found himself more or less surrounded by nothing but religious people," David Popenoe said.

That's where Dobson came in. "We're a completely secular family and always have been," David Popenoe said. "How shocked I was that Dobson would become one of my father's legacies."" -- End of Rocky Mountain Story

It's interesting that Popenoe believed that "saving marriages" is philosophically connected to the creation of a better race. In an essay on his father, David Popenoe writes: Here is what he later said was the connection of this new enterprise with his earlier biological interests: "I had the idea that to improve the race, we should first start with the family. And since the family often suffers problems which threaten its stability, we must treat those problems. In other words, we should establish a marriage counseling center where maladjustments might be brought, studied, classified--and helped if possible." He is said to have coined the term "marriage counselor," although he admittedly borrowed it and the idea behind it from Germany, where marriage counseling had been first developed in the 1920s." -- David Popenoe, "REMEMBERING MY FATHER, PAUL POPENOE".

While no one would suggest that Dobson subscribes to eugenics, this connection merely points out what some of us have been suggesting for some time: a lot of what is passed off as Christian psychology is nothing more than baptized humanism. And the biblical legitimacy (or lack thereof) of "baptizing" humanism goes beyond what the humanist can come to understand in "common grace". Common grace cannot account for corrupt presuppositions (because those presuppositions are antithetical to the Christian's), and those corrupt presuppositions play themselves out in faulty counseling, no matter how many Bible verses we can attach to it.

Any notion of "saving marriages" *must* begin and end with what Van Til called the self-attesting Christ. The only common ground we have with the humanist is the common ground that the Bible stakes out for the both of us. Otherwise, Van Til notes, we're doomed to repeat the humanist's errors: "The Calvinist's point of contact (with the non-Christian) is rooted in the actual state of affairs. All things are what they are because of their relation to the work of the triune God as reported in Scripture…To look for a point of contact with the unbeliever in the unbeliever's notions of himself and his world is to encourage him in his wicked rebellion and to establish him in his self-frustration…the natural man is under the self-imposed delusion that he is "free," i.e., independent of the control and counsel of God, and that the "facts" about him are also "free" in this way. He may pretend to be "open- minded" and ready to consider whether God exists. But in being so "neutral" he commits the same sin as Adam and Eve. Why seek truth where only a lie is to be found? Can the non-Christian tell us and therefore the Christ himself what the facts are and how they are related to each other, in what way they cohere, while yet excluding creation and providence?" -- Cornelius Van Til, My Credo

Ancient Heresy Discovered in China

Researchers Find Manichaesim in Remote Village American and Australian researchers have apparently uncovered one of Christianity's formidable rivals of the early church that was thought to be extinct.

Manichaeism was considered a virulent form of Gnosticism and during most of the first millennium was one of the world's largest religions.

By the turn of the millennium, Manichaeism had died out in the West, and by the 14th century it was believed to have become extinct in the East.

St. Augustine of Hippo spent 8 or 9 years in Manichaeism before renouncing the cult and affirming historically orthodox Christianity by faith in Christ. Augustine went on to become Manichaeism's biggest opponent. One of the main texts for the Manichees was "The Gospel of Thomas", which has enjoyed renewed popularity thanks to the gnostic best-seller, "The Da Vinci Code". Among the more bizarre claims of its founder, Mani, was his claim to the "The Paraclete".