Visual Argument

Our culture has a foolish obsession with physical beauty.

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Research Paper

So I have picked to write about eschatology. I personally love theology and for my denomination (Orthodox Presbyterian Church) there is some debate about the end times. I have not studied the topic enough to make an educated decision myself, so hopefully by the time I am finished with the paper I will have come to some kind of conclusion. The paper will analyze both the post-millennialist and amillennialist views of the end times. My pastor let me borrow a massive stack of books on the subject, all of them at least 300 pages. Pastoral humor is great. :-) But I really look forward to studying this topic and sharing what I find with you all. If you have any source suggestions, please, share them. I will post my bibliography at the bottom of the page shortly so you can see what I have, because it has changed significantly since my last post.

The Next Step

The drama is over. After twenty-two months of campaigns, news reports, commercials, advertisements, the nation has finally elected it's new president. It was amusing to me, to some extent, to watch how people acted yesterday while the preliminary reports were coming in. The nervousness, the intensity, the obvious concern was evident in everyone's face and body language of both McCain and Obama supporters. The fact of the matter is this: we can pray and we can vote. Heck, we can go stand on the side of the street preaching how good McCain is and why everyone should vote for him. But in the end, God establishes who will be the next president. It was obviously His will to raise up a new kind of leader, and whether it be to punish us as a nation or for some other reason, God wanted Obama to be the next president of the United States. Romans 13: 1-4b (ESV):

"Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. (2) Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgement. (3) For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, (4) for he is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain."

For those of us, like myself, that would rebel against authority such as Obama, this passage is a strong reminder that this is sin. We may disagree with almost every political decision that Obama makes, but God put them there. And we know that everything is a part of God's plan to advance His kingdom. While it may seem like a tribulation now, it will result, in the end, in the growth of the Church. And to compare this situation to one that everyone can relate to, we had Bill Clinton as president for eight years. Eight. And yes, it was hard. But because of God's grace and ever-watchful eye on His church it was not as nearly as hard as it could have been, and our suffering individually was miniscule. Obama is not a Nero. He is just a confused, ambitious, and unregenerate man. And he needs our prayers. So don't fall back to bitterness and resentment and hate. Pray for our new leader, and continue to pray that God will preserve His church in this nation as we undergo these next four, possibly eight, years.

Classical Rhetoric

Here are some notes I took from the Rhetoric class I am taking this year. I think this is extremely relevant to the kind of work we are doing in this class and to life in general.

Aristotle On Rhetoric:


Dialectic – Logic through conversation; coming to a conclusion through the conversation of 2 or more people.

All men use logic and rhetoric.
Because of this, you can use logic and rhetoric randomly or you can practice it and learn to use it with effectiveness.

Art – methodical treatment of a subject.

Real art requires discipline. Romanticism has made almost the entire modern world think that art is only a form of intuition and emotion. But art starts with thought, and emotion compliments it. It takes both, but thought is the most important aspect of art.

Uses of Rhetoric:

1) Linguistic Windex: Rhetoric gets the junk out of the way so that truth and justice prevail. Truth and justice do the work, rhetoric just gets the junk out of the way by using logic, arguments, etc: things that already exist. Being a bad speaker, for example, gets in the way of advancing truth and justice. Rhetoric fixes that.
2) Rhetoric allows a speaker to communicate to the whole man, not just the brain or the emotions. It is the bridge between the speaker and the audience. Rhetoric takes all of the human factors into consideration in order to persuade them effectively.
3) Rhetoric allows a speaker to see both sides of the argument so that a speaker can fully understand an opponent in order to defeat them. When you know how the opponent thinks and argues, you can know how to defeat them.
4) Rhetoric allows you to defend yourself and, more importantly, the truth. It is a tool of self-defense; verbal martial arts. Rhetoric defends the truth.

(The above is true under the assumption that the speaker using rhetoric is ethical.)

The purpose of rhetoric is not necessarily to persuade, but to come as close as possible to doing that as the situation will allow.

Why does Aristotle say that rhetoric is NOT the art of persuasion? Because if you do not persuade, you will have thought that you have failed, and might be tempted to use unethical means to persuade next time. It is the same in the medical field. It does not necessarily mean that a doctor has failed if a patient has died. Some patients are beyond help, and he can make them comfortable and peaceful as they die, but might not be able to save them. This is not his fault. Rhetoric, it seems, is a lot like evangelism. Converting pagans is not the goal of evangelism. The Holy Spirit, in the end, renews the mind and soul of the non-believer. The evangelizer just plants the seed of truth, which might directly lead to a conversion, but not necessarily.

The Final Definition: Rhetoric may be defined as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion.

And here...we....go.

The start of my research paper. Wohoo! In this research paper I will explore both postmillennialism and amillennialism by reading well-known and acclaimed authors, and weighing those arguments offered up in those books with the Scripture, and hopefully I will come to some kind of conclusion. Here is the list of books (that will change, I know) that I will use as sources for my paper:

Postmillennialism:

Calvin, John. Institutes of the Christian Religion. Philedalphia, PA: The Westminster Press. (No date)

Bass, Ralph E., Jr. Back to the Future: A Study in the Book of Revelation Greenville, SC: Living Hope Press. 2004.

Gentry, Kenneth. Thine is the Kingdom: A Study of the Postmillennial Hope. Vallecito, CA: Chalcedon Foundation. 2003.

Bahnsen, Greg L. Victory in Jesus: The Bright Hope of Postmillennialism. Texarkana, AR: Covenant Media Press. 1999.

A-millennialism:

Riddlebarger, Kim. A Case for Amillennialism: Understanding the End Times. Baker Book House. 2003.

Warfield, B.B. "The Apocalypse" in Selected Shorter Writings. Presbyterian and Reformed: Phillipsburg, 1971.

Augustine. The City of God. Chicago: The University of Chicago, Encyclopedia of Britannica. 1952.

Travis, Stephen. Christ Will Come Again: Hope for the Second Coming of Jesus. Toronto: Clements Publishing. 2004.

Early Christianity: "Do not conform to the world..."

I am taking a Church History class from Schola Classical Tutorials (the teacher is Wes Callihan: the teacher who has taught me the most in my schooling years) and we are reading through Phillip Schaff's eight-volume History of the Christian Church. We recently finished the Apostolic Age, and are well into reading and discussing about the Christian church in the Roman Empire. This is an exhaustive subject (it took Schaff 866 pages to deal with the major issues), but I made an observation as I was reading that really struck me.

Christianity was the first major religion to have no tolerance for any other religion, and thus it was the first and only to be rejected and hated by the Romans.

This, in itself, may not seem significant. Of course Christianity is not tolerant. But until Pentacost and the official beginning of Christ's church on this world, it was every man for himself when it came to having a deity. The Romans, after conquering a nation, were perfectly fine with allowing the conquered to keep their gods and goddesses, as long as they acknowledged Caesar as ruler (and at some points in history, god as well.) Many times the Romans would mix the gods of the barbarians into their own culture. This, essentially, demonstrates a deep and true lack of sincerity. If the Romans truly believed that Jove should be worshipped above all gods, then they would have enforced that. But instead, they held the value of civilization above their gods, and would sacrifice anything for the sake of "civilization." It worked the other way, too. The conquered barbarians, though humbled by it, usually submitted to this rule and acknowledged Caesar as god along with their countless other deities. They never even considered suffering persecution for keeping their gods over the Roman ones. Heck, it was just a few more.

Ironically, some Roman historians and philosophers actually lament the fact that their people had turned away from the gods and neglected them for world dominon and political squabbles. But what it essentially comes down to is that if you do not worship and love the one true God, then your worship and love of another god is a sham, and cannot be sincere no matter how much you sacrifice or pray.

Then comes Christianity. And unlike the rest of the world, they refused to bow the knee to Caesar, Jove, Juno, the Republic, etc. They worshipped this dead "god," Jesus Christ, who claimed to be man and God at the same time. And the absolute refusal to partake of accepting other gods by the Christians infuriated the Romans. It was a simple request; no other nation or people had baulked at it before. But the Romans did not realize that this was the beginning of Christ's indestructible and eternal church, and that it would grow no matter what they did to it. And they tried to snuff it out. Everyone knows about the terrible things Christians suffered under the hands of Trajan, Hadrian, Marcus Arelius, and Nero. But from the blood of the faithful, spilt by wild beasts and torturers, grew a more and more influential and power Church. Christianity shattered the trend of conformity with their spiritual strength. It thus proved itself to be the one and only true religion, worshipping the one and only true God, with followers that would not just add other deities to their "list." Instead, they devotedly followed the one they loved, worshipped, prayed to, and owed their lives to. Christ was the one to follow, and His followers will be the only ones who populate the New Heaven and the New Earth.

Romans 12: 1-2 - Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

Liberal Arts Education: Useless Today?

"What are you going to do with that?"

That is the question that is constantly thrown at me when I tell people I want to major in either philosophy or history in college. A huge percentage of college students are majoring in business, pre-law, pre-med, pre-engineering; you know, the practical majors. The ones that will actually give you a life and a job after college that makes more than a pathetic five figures. But what people have seemed to forgotten is that college should not be primarily concerned with specializing you in a field in order to get a job. College should be, and was for centuries, a continuation of true education. College was there for those that wanted to take their mental growth to the next step. It was all about developing the mind and the soul, not skills for your future vocation.

But you ask, again, the practical question: "Okay, so your mind and soul are stretched, broadened, deepened, etc. But when you get into the real world, how does that help you?" The truth is that it will help you more than everyone realizes. Learning how to think and how to make decisions and evaluate situations is a direct result from a liberal arts education. So many people graduate with a business degree these days. They know all the ins and outs of the business world, they know the economy, they know what they need to do. But you do not learn how to problem solve in business school. So in the end you are left with a large group of men and women, minds packed full of information, who are helpless because they don't know what to do with it. But when studying history, philosophy, theology, or even a foreign language, you are taught how to think. When I say that, I do not mean that in the broadest sense. Everyone knows how to think. We do it every second of every day. Our mind is always working. But a liberal arts education forces one to think critcally and analytically. When studying Plato, you don't just simply accept everything that you read in his "Republic" as the truth; you have to analyze it, compare it to a standard, evaluate, and make a decision. The same goes when studying Thomas Aquinas for theology, the Venerable Bede in history class, or even when conjugating verbs in a foreign language. In business classes you are fed information, in liberal arts you are given understanding.

So now you have completed your college education. You have a B.A. in History. Your mind is developed and you are ready for either grad school or a career. For the sake of the point, we will pick the latter. In almost every single job situation, you are first interviewed, and if you get the job, you are taught your duties on site. So whether you become employed as a teacher, carpenter, corporate business manager, or a pilot, you know how to evaluate situationsand problem solve, two of the highest criterion for hiring in todays workworld. The basics are set. Everything else follows in order. And all with a liberal arts degree.

(And I haven't even mentioned how a study in liberal arts can grow you spiritually. :-) )

The First Post

Okay, I am really exciting about blogging. I had another blog a long time ago, but neglect drove it to death and it is currently rotting under another Google Account that I forget the password for. Anyway... I am pretty sure this one is actually going to be used. Heh.