This edition of DarkLinks promotes Chris Bolt’s series Revisting Revoice, a movement for which we have already issued warnings against some of its speakers such as Grant Hartley. Chris does multiple deep dives on the issues at play starting with the conference’s established need and the distinctions it conjures as it relates to homosexuality. From there we have promote a piece on Perry Noble, a disgraced megachurch pastor that is making a comeback in the industry. Then we close off with a story on Al Mohler, the frontrunner future President of the SBC condemning Mark Galli’s pitiful article on impeachment over at Christianity Today. The reads are a bit longer today, so there are only four articles featured.
Revisiting Revoice: The Need For This Discussion
By Chris Bolt @ Founders Ministry
In days to come, the theology of Revoice, and other similar theologies, will become more of a pressing issue, not less of one. Already the conservative Presbyterian Church of America is embroiled in controversy over how it will respond to Revoice, having engaged in lengthy and passionate debate on the floor of its 2019 General Assembly on whether or not it would vote to commend the Nashville Statement. The motion passed, but not by much, and the divide between those in favor and those opposed fell out along generational lines. This issue is not going away, and our SBC seminary leadership needs to be clear from the beginning and not at all ambiguous as to how they will proceed with regard to such topics. This is not the time to be mealy-mouthed about such an important topic. The time has come to be clear. Such is only fair to the professors, students, and church members of the SBC. What one says about the Revoice conference is not merely a pastoral or cultural issue (although it is both of those), but an issue of the sufficiency of Scripture and the gospel as they pertain to sanctification. The purpose of this post is to leave the aforementioned personal and political questions to whom they may concern and focus instead on the underlying theology of the Revoice Conference, particularly in relation to Article 7 of the Nashville Statement.
Revisiting Revoice: Same-Sex Attraction in Creation
By Chris Bolt @ Founders Ministry
Suppose then, for the sake of argument, that SSA need not be same-sex sexual attraction. Suppose SSA can be construed in terms of mere same-sex attraction. Call this SSA2. SSA2 is at its core a non-sexual aesthetic orientation such that SSA2 males more readily appreciate the beauty of other males and SSA2 females more readily appreciate the beauty of other females. The apparent advantage of this approach is that the discussion moves from the realm of sexualattraction into the realm of aesthetic attraction, and SSA2, thus Platonized, makes room for the inherent moral goodness of same-sex attraction. Could aesthetic orientation of this sort constitute an account of SSA2 for the sake of retaining a morally good ‘gay Christian’ identity?
No. The shift to SSA2 is effective only if one grants the necessary moral goodness of an aesthetic orientation. The assumption here is that mere aesthetic orientation is necessarily morally good. Thus if it is even possible that an aesthetic orientation (of any sort) can be sinful, then the SSA2 advocate has only pushed the problem with SSA back a step. The burden is on the SSA2 advocate to prove that SSA2, unlike SSA, is necessarily morally good. Providing such an argument seems difficult, to say the least. Moreover, it is possible that p: SSA2 is morally culpable sin. To establish p, we can work from actual instances of unnatural or disordered aesthetic attraction. If any one instance of unnatural or disordered aesthetic attraction exists, then p is sufficient to discredit an account of SSA2 as a necessarily non-sinful same-sex aesthetic attraction.
AN UPDATE ON THE RISE OF PERRY NOBLE. 2016-2020.
By Pulpit & Pen
All things considered, things are looking up for Perry Noble. His progress and trajectory in the last year is on the rise and in a few years he will likely have one of the biggest churches in the US, again. In the mega-church world, it is only a matter of time before hot talent cycles between “disqualified” and “better and more broken and real than before.” In Perry’s case, he fits that to a tee.
Al Mohler Slams Christianity Today Editor, Mark Galli, For His Anti-Trump Hit Piece
By Jeff Maples @ Reformation Charlotte
Mohler addressed Galli’s comments today stating that it was “irresponsible in an editorial like this to accuse the president of the United States of a violation of the constitution without making clear exactly what that violation is and why that violation, which is the only constitutional grounds for the removal of a president, rises to that level of significance.”
Mohler also criticized Galli’s categorization of polarized Evangelicals stating that, instead, there is a third and more prominent category of Evangelicals “who understand fully the moral issues at stake, but who also understand the political context and have made a decision to support President Trump, not out of mere political expediency and certainly not merely out of naivete, but out of their own analysis of what is at stake.”
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