My Time Travels

I have discovered the ability to time travel. 😉

First, I traveled to early earth and saw the dinosaurs. Quite magnificent beings! A little scary too, especially without modern firearms to protect yourself with. I was relieved not to be too close to a T-Rex.

Then I traveled to Rome and heard the Apostle Paul preaching in a little house church.

And then I saw the last moments of the city of Pompeii and died in the lava and ash…and woke back up in the 21st century.

Finally, I traveled to Mars around the year 2275 and found a little church even there. Apparently in the future, although many things have changed, including that I’ve somehow become more handsome and taller, the faith remains the same.

Thanks for reading! 😀

Man-made Rituals (Gavin Ortlund video)

This past week I enjoyed this video from Gavin Ortlund titled, “Are Catholic Rituals man-made?” Gavin is a popular Protestant (Baptist) apologist and author who regularly posts on YouTube. He is concerned about empty ritualism in the Catholic tradition, or worse yet, raising up man-made rituals to the level of divinely-ordained rituals.

He makes a number of points that I agree with: First, that rituals are unavoidable. Even in low-church settings (with little structured liturgy that one finds in Catholic or traditional Protestant settings like Lutheranism), we have rituals. If you have four contemporary worship songs and then a 30-minute sermon every Sunday, those are rituals. (Or in our case, 3 acappella hymns and then a 10-20 minute devotional). The question is not whether we have rituals, but whether our rituals are good or bad.

Second, empty ritualism is bad. This is when the rituals “stop serving their purpose of pointing beyond themselves to Jesus and the gospel and they become an end in themselves.” Of course no Christian tradition explicitly teaches that the rituals are an end in themselves rather than pointing to Jesus; but all Christian traditions can fall into this. (He points out the possibility in low-church traditions that “asking Jesus into your heart” becomes the thing that saves in and of itself, rather than being representative of receiving Jesus into your life to become your Lord and Master – He is the One who saves you; or conversely, that you become worried about your salvation because you did ask Jesus into your heart that way, but later you decided that’s not the “right” way to do it. That’s putting too much emphasis on the ritual).

And third, the question is not whether to have rituals, but which are the rituals that we are supposed to have – the ones that Jesus and the apostles actually set up? And when we look at it this way, we see that Roman Catholicism has added on man-made rituals to the Gospel. By this, we don’t mean anything that man has done – for example, church buildings are literally man-made. We all have those types of man-made rituals and traditions. By man-made rituals (or empty rituals), we mean human rituals “which claim to be divine – but are not, in fact, divine.” These are our traditions that we have elevated to the level of divine commands. This is what Jesus was warning the Pharisees about in Mark 7. By claiming that there were oral traditions which people had to follow in addition to the written law, they were elevating their traditions over the word of God. They claimed to hold them together in theory; but that is not possible. Whenever we elevate our own rituals and traditions to the same level as God’s Word, we actually nullify God’s commandments. C.S. Lewis wrote, “To us [as Protestants] the terrible thing about Rome is the recklessness with which she has added to the deposit of faith.” The historian Philip Schaff said it like this, “The whole tendency of the Roman Catholic Church has for its object to subordinate the Bible to tradition and then to make itself the infallible judge of both.” Gavin Ortlund lists five examples of man-made traditions that the Catholics have, including the number of sacraments (there was literally no one for the entire first thousand years of church history that said there were 7 sacraments), priestly celibacy, Marian devotion, praying to the saints, and penance. Catholics mandate all of these as if they have divine backing – but they don’t.

So, to my fellow Anabaptists, I ask, what is running the show in our churches? Is it that which is human or that which is divine? Do we think we can improve upon what the Bible commands? Isn’t that just what the Catholics did? If we come along and try to improve upon what Scripture commands, what is this other “than to place one’s mouth in heaven and to justify the wisdom of God, to want to instruct and help God with our counsels, to answer back to God, yes, to contradict one’s own creator?”

The Danger of Reactionary Theology

I listened to this podcast episode recently, part of the History of the Christian Church podcast series by Lance Ralston. He talked about Pietism, with some interesting comments about where Pietists went too far. It goes along with what I have been thinking lately about the danger of reactionary theology. This happens when Christians overemphasize certain points of doctrine or practice as a reaction to an error. They may be coming out of an institution, group, or theological system that taught the error, or they may think the error is threatening to encroach within their own group, or they may simply be quite appalled by the error for any number of reasons and wish to completely avoid it and track a different path. When this happens, ironically, an error often occurs in the opposite direction of the original error.

So the theological pendulum swung in Scholasticism way out toward a purely academic philosophizing. Then in the Reformation swung back toward Scripture as the basis of Faith and practice.

…

Here are some relevant quotes from the episode.

By the middle of the 17^th C, Protestant dogmaticians defined the fundamentals of saving faith in such elaborate detail no one but an advanced scholar could hope to know them.

…

What came eventually to be called Pietism began simply as several uncoordinated efforts on the part of pastors to get their people to live out what they claimed to believe.

Pietism never became an established church or denomination. Rather, it was a movement that infiltrated most of the Protestant groups of Europe and aboard. It was the Pietistic urge to walk humbly with God that launched may of the distinctives that have marked a vibrant Evangelical Faith. Things like Bible printing and distribution, foreign missions, orphanages & schools, hospitals & ministries for the disabled & elderly. Pietists did all they could to fulfill the commandments to love God & others, and to carry the Gospel to the lost.

But, and here’s where the swinging pendulum ran too far with the Pietistic reaction to Protestant Scholasticism—In the move to prove true faith changes lives, some Pietists embraced the slogan “Life, not doctrine.” Instead of a balanced Both/And, they advocated an Either/Or that pitted theology against behavior.

Orthodoxy & Orthopraxy were divorced.

This indifference to doctrine saw Pietism becoming an unwitting ally to the Enlighten-ment’s attack on the Central Truth claims of Orthodox Christianity. Then it helped fuel the sentimentalism of the Enlightenment’s own pendulum swing into Romanticism.

With Pietism’s emphasis on the individual experience of conversion and a personal walk with God, the sense of Christian Community took a massive hit as well. Jesus wasn’t just the Savior of the world, He was now a PERSONAL Savior; the Savior of ME, rather than US. So, one of The Gospel’s greatest attractions, the priority & reality of restored love for God and others that had been so appealing since the first days of the Church, was diluted. Under a maturing Pietism, Christianity went from being a Faith that called people into community through a mutually shared life, to more of an individualistic focus on one’s personal experience of conversion & a daily walk with God.

…

So, some might ask – Why are we talking about Pietism in a series on Heretics and Heresy?

Good question.

Pietism itself isn’t heretical, not even close. But its history reveals an important truth the wise will glean. In emphasizing one thing, there’s the tendency to de-emphasize another. When balance is lost to the swinging pendulum of trends in human society, a door is opened to errors that can do great harm.

Pietism’s emphasis on personal conversion and the individual’s walk with God became an unwitting ally to the Enlightenment’s assault on historic, orthodox Christianity. It helped pre-position hundreds of thousands for the sentimentality, emotionalism, and anti-intellectualism of Romanticism.

Pietism is one of many reminders that a good thing can become a bad thing when it’s not carefully made to be a balanced thing.

I think this is an excellent reminder/warning.

We can see in history the results of overreaction and overemphasis in other theological movements as well.

I note that Anabaptism itself has at times had a similar aversion to theology/doctrine and also tended to just focus on life or behavior. Anabaptism is different because it’s more focused on results and community than Pietism, which was more individual and experience-focused. But the point is the same: Orthodoxy & Orthopraxy, not one or the other.

Luther reacted to the errors of Catholicism – corruption, dead works, ritualism, and so on. In many ways, he did not go far enough – ecclesiology, relationship of the Christian to government, persecution of heretics, etc. But in his soteriology, he reacted strongly to Catholicism, and in the process, overreacted – going so far as to say, “Sin boldly.” Now, that may have been hyperbole, and Luther said many other things that were different. But his theological emphases tended toward overemphasis on justification and less on newness of life in the Holy Spirit. Whether he intended it or not, that’s what happened in Lutheran churches.

Calvin also overreacted, with similar results to Luther. Instead of Catholic works and penance doctrine, he emphasized total depravity, so that in his theology, people have no free will to choose to follow Christ; instead, everyone was unconditionally chosen or damned from the beginning of creation.

Menno Simons and the Anabaptists reacted to the magisterial Reformers because they did not separate the church from the state and did not try to set up a pure church filled only with true believers. But in their emphasis on purity and church discipline, they ended up arguing over tertiary matters and excommunicating each other, damaging their witness to the watching world. Menno even excommunicated the Swiss Brethren for not accepting his strict views on excommunication.

Pelagius overreacted to moral corruption in the 5th century church. Born in Britain, he took his faith seriously, lived an ascetic life like many others around him, and became a monk. Then he went to Rome for further study, and was shocked by the lack of morality in the church there. His concerns were more pastoral than theological; he was worried about people being apathetic about their own sins. So he said everyone has the natural ability to not sin, without needing any supernatural enabling by God. Just look to Christ’s example and choose not to sin. His theology made Christ into merely an Example and not truly a Savior.

Augustine had been a pagan, and not just any pagan but a rank sinner, prior to his conversion to Christ. His theology also came from his own experience. He didn’t reform by his own self-will or a vow to do better. In his view, he had been completely in the power of sin until God’s grace rescued him, and so he owed it all to God’s mercy. He referenced Romans 7, “Who will free him from this death-laden body, if not your grace, given through Jesus Christ our Lord?” So like Calvin, he found no place for free will and taught double-predestination.

Fundamentalism overreacted to liberalism and tended to lack grace and humility, made too many debatable questions into essentials of the faith (or devolved into constantly arguing about what the essentials and non-essentials are), and tended to set up too many man-made rules and boundaries, especially in the conservative Mennonite case.

Related to that, J.S. Coffman began in the late 1800’s to preach about his list of ordinances (which is where conservative Anabaptists today get our list of 7 ordinances). There was a desperate need for more Biblical teaching and awareness of why Anabaptists practiced what they did, and Coffman’s teaching helped. But it tended to lead to the elevation of certain commands over all others and a sort of mystical ritualism as a result. Coffman himself commented later, “The Virginia church and conference has done much legislating to keep our people down out of the world in dress and other things, but in spite of all the keeping down they have done, their young men are now more conformed to the world than ours at Elkhart where we do not legislate much, but do some teaching on this point, and instead put our young people to work and have them contend for these principles…. They have tried too much to do by force of law what grace alone can do. What is it worth to keep people down in any sense if they submit only by constraint? We are in the dispensation of grace, and I shall never again help to legislate on outward forms as I did once in the Virginia conference when I did not know better. But I shall work harder in another way for the same principle.”

How about me or you? Some of us may have tendencies to react against standards in the church from our youth; some react against things we see in the broad evangelical movement, and so on. Can we take care not to have a reactionary theology?

Donald Trump is an Antichrist

I’ve been saying, “What the heck, Republicans”, and more to the point, “What the heck, Christians”, since 2015 – ever since Donald Trump put on his red hat and descended the escalator to launch his presidential campaign. I’ve been saying it a bit less lately – not because I feel the sentiment any less, but partly because I’ve gotten tired of saying it, and I’m trying to not be judgmental of people who have different political ideas than me. Accept it and move on, right.

But I still have to repeat it, every so often, when I see the kind of things Trump does and says – the things he says about himself, the things he says about others, and most confusingly, the things his supporters who profess to be Christians say about him. That’s especially true during these Republican primaries, when GOP voters – including the “evangelical” base in Iowa – have other conservative Republican alternatives to vote for. This isn’t the general election, where (the argument goes) they have to vote for him because it’s a binary choice between him and the pro-choice Democrat. They actually have choices. And in Iowa, they chose Trump in overwhelming numbers.

What the ever-loving heck, Republicans?

On January 5th, Trump shared a video titled “God Made Trump” on his Truth Social platform. The 2-minute 45-second video wasn’t made by his campaign, but by some of his supporters. But by sharing it on his social media and playing it at his campaign events, he has endorsed its message and amplified it to his supporters. Other Trump supporters, such as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Rev. Paula White Cain, a televangelist who promotes the prosperity gospel, have shared it on their social media platforms.

Here is the video.

Congratulations to the Dilley Meme Team!

President Trump just shared this meme on his Truth Social account!

"So God made Trump"https://t.co/OJ27ElQr5V

— Brenden Dilley (@WarlordDilley) January 5, 2024

The AI narrator – whose voice is supposed to sound like the late Paul Harvey – begins by saying, “And on June 14, 1946, God looked down on his planned paradise, and said, ‘I need a caretaker.’ So God gave us Trump.”

He goes on to list all the things that God supposedly wanted, leading to his creation of Trump, repeatedly ending with, “So God made Trump.” He lists things that Trump supposedly did, such as “get up before dawn,” “ruffle the feathers,” “rustle the deep state,” “shape an ax but wield a sword,” “turn liquid to gold,” and so on.

Up to this point, the video has shamelessly used God’s name to promote Trump and his political agenda. That is a violation of the 3rd commandment (“thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain”), and a reason to warn professing believers who share or promote the video. But the problem of conflating a political agenda with the kingdom of God is a relatively old one in American evangelicalism, and so here it’s merely a bit more egregious than normal in that regard.

But at minute 1:42 in the video, the narrator anoints Trump as “a man who cares for the flock, a shepherd to mankind who won’t ever leave nor forsake them.”

As every Christian should know, there is only one Shepherd who will never leave nor forsake the flock, and that is Jesus Christ. This language is taken directly from Scripture. Trump is comparing himself to Jesus – to God Himself. This is blasphemy!

He has played this at his campaign events. He has called his opponents vipers and wolves; he says undocumented immigrants are poisoning the blood of the country.

And yet, his vicious rhetoric and blasphemous self-promotion has his supporters – many of them professing Christians – nodding along.

What. The. Heck.

Antichrist, the Boastful Deceiver

Mark 13:21-22 says this:

Then if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Christ!’ or ‘Look, there he is!’ do not believe him. ²² For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, the elect.

According to these verses, false messiahs – false christs – will arise and attempt to deceive the elect. 1 and 2 John speak of the Antichrist as a deceiver, and warn about many deceivers and antichrists who have already gone out into the world.

Paul in 2 Thessalonians speaks of the Antichrist (the “man of lawlessness”) thus:

He will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshiped, so that he sets himself up in God’s temple, proclaiming himself to be God.

The Antichrist is not just “anti”, as in opposed, to Christ; he will be a leader who sets himself up as a god – whether literally or in a more subtle, spiritual sense, ultimately the outcome in men’s hearts is the same. Usurping God’s place is essential to his mission in the world. He wants to take the place in men’s hearts that belongs to Christ alone, and in fact, he wants to deceive believers and lead them away from Christ. In fact, all antichrists want to do so, as Jesus and John warned. Christians are not immune to the deceptions of the antichrists.

Daniel 7 speaks of the “little horn” who will arise from the kingdom of the fourth beast. and speaks boastful things (this matches the beast in Revelation 13:5 who speaks proud words and blasphemies). This little horn arise before the courts sit in the judgement, his power is taken away and destroyed, and the Son of Man is given power and authority. All nations and rulers worship Him, and his kingdom lasts forever.

I don’t believe Donald Trump is the final Antichrist of the end times. There are certain things about the Antichrist that he doesn’t quite fit (for example, he deceives the whole world; most of the world doesn’t seem to like Trump, by contrast. He also seems to be someone connected to Italy or the Roman Empire by ancestry, and is probably a European leader). However, I did discover this Youtube video, which was made while Trump was President, with a Bible-based argument that Trump IS the Antichrist. I have to say, that’s a better argument than I anticipated it would be. I wonder what he would say now, since Trump is out of office. I suppose if Trump wins election to a second term, all bets are off and it might be time to reconsider the argument.

But think about it how Trump fits the general descriptions of the Antichrist – things that any of the antichrists during history would share. That video lists some of them. Even if Trump is not *the* Antichrist, I’m confident saying he is *an* antichrist.

He is well-known for speaking boastfully and proudly – he is quite over-the-top with it. He sets himself up as a leader who will supposedly make everything right, if you just vote for him. And he lies constantly. His lies are so numerous that it’s tedious to try and keep up with them all. But he lies about things that can be easily fact-checked – and trivial things, for no apparent reason. He lies about things that make him uncomfortable; he lies to get out of scandals. He lies to make a decent accomplishment seem bigger than it actually is. This article lists 15 lies, but there are many more.

Jesus said, “ I have come in my Father’s name, and you do not accept me; but if someone else comes in his own name, you will accept him.” Trump does not claim to come in God’s name. He comes in his own name; he has placed his name on many properties and products, such as Trump Tower, Trump International Hotel, and Trump Steaks.

Trump has said he has not asked God for forgiveness of his sins. His campaign is marked by rage and vindictiveness – in fact, that is the main feature of his campaign. He tells supporters, “I am your retribution.” At his events, he has pastors who pray and speak to his supporters; one compared his campaign to the second coming of Christ, and another said it was the best thing that had happened in the church – “other than you giving your life to the Lord.” Then Trump comes on, praises evil rulers of this world like Xi Jinping of China, insults his opponents, uses crude language and curses from the stage, and promises to bring retribution to those who have supposedly harmed him.

Jesus preached honesty, forgiveness, humility, kindness, unselfishness, and helping those in need. He taught that the greatest commandment was to love God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and to love others as ourselves. He gave his life for the world, “while we were yet sinners”, as Paul says. In all of these areas, Donald Trump stands for the exact opposite – and he is deceiving the elect. This marks him as an antichrist. Christians should beware, and not give him their loyalty, or their votes in November.

On Israel and the Hamas terrorist attacks

Here are my thoughts on the recent terrible attacks by Hamas against Israel.

Hamas’s goal – and Iran’s – is probably to torch the diplomacy between the Israelis and the Saudis, which has the potential to finally have Saudi Arabia recognize Israel as a nation and change the geopolitics of the Middle East – and they symbolically chose the anniversary of the Yom Kippur War to do it. Don’t buy any explanation that pivots blame from the terrorists to the victims: that’s simply falling for the extremists’ propaganda.

Hard to know what should happen in response. Hamas is nothing but a terrorist organization, and nations have a right to defend themselves against terrorists – there’s no moral equivalence. Hamas uses civilians as human shields and dares Israel to attack. But it’s hard to imagine a severe retaliation and then a return to the status quo will help – even if it’s a severely weakened Hamas or other enemies of Israel in charge of Gaza. Violence begets violence, and Palestinian kids who were hurt or lost loved ones in the reprisal will grow up to be prime Hamas recruits.

On the other hand, no military response is hardly an option either – Hamas doesn’t want to kill Israelis primarily because of anything Israel did, but because they hate Jews and want to destroy Israel. Arab culture has had a deep antisemitic sickness for a long time and Hamas is the result. Hamas will keep attacking no matter what Israel does.

But we know how to turn around enemy countries and poor areas, because it’s been done before: occupation and aid programs from wealthy countries, and economic transformation. Japan is a US ally today and a first world country because of US occupation, aid, and social/political reforms after WWII. The Philippines were occupied for about 50 years in the early 1900s, and have some of the most positive views of the US today (in favorable/ unfavorable polls), as do Japan and South Korea, which was also improved by American aid and industrialization. Hawaii is wealthy today because it was taken over and became an American state. Puerto Rico is the most wealthy area in Latin America because it is a US territory.

That’s why, in my mind, the only “solution” that might offer a chance for real change seems to be the complete destruction of Hamas, which must not be allowed to be in charge of Gaza any longer, and the occupation of Gaza either by Israel or by international peacekeeping forces. Then, massive influx of aid to improve the lives of Gaza residents. It would be long and costly, and certainly both Israelis and Gazans would die in the process of destroying Hamas and pacifying the area. But the status quo won’t improve anything; nor will lots of Western aid pouring in with Hamas still in charge. That would merely make Hamas wealthier, even more dangerous, and more entrenched. Gazans need to see that Hamas is the problem and only friendship with Israel and the West can improve their situation. (And that’s also why simply occupying Gaza to get rid of Hamas and then withdrawing, with no commitment to help Gaza residents, won’t be a solution either. Third world countries in Africa and South America were occupied for many years solely for the benefit of European nations, and left the people there in poverty. Cruel and greedy dictators in those countries have also hurt them of course, but if you want stable government institutions in other countries, you have to do a lot of work to set them up first and get the population to buy into them).

WTA 2020 Predictions

On the eve of the New Year, here is another tennis post. Here are my predictions for 2020. This could be, and probably will be, way wrong; but it will be fun to look back at the end of the year and see if I got anything right.

Australian Open

The 2019 winners: Naomi Osaka is one of the three top young stars that emerged in 2018/2019, the other two being Ashleigh Barty and Bianca Andreescu. However, she seemed to find it mentally difficult to defend her 2018 titles in Indian Wells and the US Open. For that reason, I won’t predict her to repeat here. Petra Kvitova came close to winning in 2019, but at this point I am not sure that she still is capable of producing the consistent top quality play needed to win a Slam title.

My prediction: This will be the time Karolina Pliskova finally gets that elusive Slam title. She has been a top player for many years and produced one of her best seasons in 2019, finishing at #2 in the world. Last year, she got to the semifinals, losing to Osaka. This will be the time she goes all the way.

French Open

The 2019 winners: Ashleigh Barty was a surprise winner on clay, but I don’t think it should be that surprising that she would do well on the surface. Still, she didn’t face a top-10 player on her way to the title. Marketa Vondrousova got demolished in the final, which caused some people to discount her future chances to win a Slam; but I think her first Finals appearance (as a teenager) can be excused. Not everyone can be as poised as Bianca Andreescu in their first final. For the previous three months, Vondrousova had beaten nearly everyone she should beat and then some (such as Simona Halep, at both Indian Wells and the Italian Open). So I think she could be a contender. But it remains to be seen how she’ll return from her wrist injury, so I won’t predict her to win it yet.

My prediction: This is a boring pick, but Simona Halep is still the best clay player. She’s my pick to win it in 2020.

Wimbledon

The 2019 winners: Simona Halep certainly proved she can win on more surfaces than just clay. Still, clay is her best surface, and grass probably her worst, so I don’t expect her to repeat. Grass is probably Serena Williams’s best surface, and either this or the US Open (due to the crowd support) probably will be her best chance at a GS title in 2020. But I wonder if she can get through two weeks of a Slam against the best competition anymore. She will be another year older. So I will not predict her to win it either.

My prediction: Grass could be Barty’s best surface. In 2018, she won the International-level tournament on the grass in Nottingham. This year, she won in Birmingham, a Premier title, in her first tournament after winning the French Open. I’ll predict that Barty will win here on the grass at Wimbledon, for her second slam title.

US Open

2019 winners: Perhaps it is wrong to predict no Slams for Bianca Andreescu in 2020. I don’t think she’ll have a bad season; I think she’ll be in the top 10 all year. But the tennis world will study her game and make adjustments, and it remains to be seen how that will affect her. She lost to Osaka and Halep toward the end of the year, proving that she is not, in fact, invincible. Probably some players whom she faced this year will figure out how to beat her in a re-match. Serena Williams will have the crowd’s support, but she hasn’t won at the US Open since 2014, and I am increasingly leaning toward the opinion that she won’t get that elusive 24th Slam.

My prediction: Naomi Osaka has won here in the past, and so far her best surface has been hard courts. In both of the last two seasons she has done well late in the year. In 2019, while she struggled in the middle of the schedule, she rebounded towards the end of the season – in fact, she hasn’t lost since the US Open, winning in both Japan and China, and withdrawing from the WTA Finals after beating Kvitova. She won’t be defending a title here, so perhaps her late-season run will begin at the US Open and she’ll get her third Slam title.

Top 10:

1. Osaka
2. Barty
3. Pliskova
4. Halep
5. Bencic
6. Kenin
7. Svitolina
8. Andreescu
9. Vondrousova
10. Anisimova

WTA First-Time Slam Winners (Predictions for the Next Five Years)

On September 12, 2015, Flavia Pennetta defeated Roberta Vinci to win the singles title at the US Open. It would be her first and only Grand Slam title, as she retired at the end of the year. That tournament ended Serena Williams’s remarkable run of four straight Slams beginning at the US Open in 2014. But probably no one realized or expected at the time that it would also begin a remarkable run: In the four years since Pennetta won the US Open, the WTA has seen nine other players win their first Slam titles. To put it another way, out of 16 total Grand Slams in the last four years, nine have had first-time winners. With Pennetta, that makes it ten new winners in the last five years. This is unusual; the previous high in any five-year period going back to 1990 had been seven.

Another streak also ended at the 2015 US Open: eight straight Slams had been won by a player who had already won a Slam previously. (This includes Williams’s four straight titles which I already mentioned, plus another of hers at Flushing Meadows in 2013). This is actually not that unusual, as it had occurred twice in the 2000’s, and it had also been exceeded by a streak of 14 straight repeat winners during the height of the Monica Seles/Steffi Graff rivalry in the early 1990s.

As we go into 2020, I am very interested in what will happen in the next five years. In my opinion, it is highly unlikely that the next half decade will have the same amount of delightfully unpredictable chaos that the last five have had. (You might disagree in your opinion of whether it was delightful or not, especially if you’re a fan of a single great player or if you prefer to watch a rivalry of just a few players at the top). This is for two reasons: first, history suggests the last five years were an exception and we should expect the amount of new winners to drop to a more “normal” rate; two, 2018 and 2019 saw the rise of young stars Ashleigh Barty, Naomi Osaka, and Bianca Andreescu to the top of the game, and we could see them dominate the list of Slam winners for years to come.

That’s certainly not to say there will be no first-time Grand Slam champions. In my opinion, it is pretty safe to predict there will be at least three. In 1991-1996, during that Seles-Graf rivalry, there were only two new winners for six years. Since then, only one five-year period has seen less than three, and that was from the French Open 2006 through the Australian Open 2011, when only Ana Ivanovic and Francesca Schiavone became new Slam winners. Many times there have been more than three – for example, from 2001 to 2005, there were six new winners, even though the Williams sisters had already won their first Slams prior to that and kept winning throughout that period.

I think the rise of Barty, Osaka, and Andreescu has significantly improved the top echelon of the game since 2017/early 2018. Still, I do think there is a lot of parity near the top, with many excellent players who will beat the “big three” sometimes, especially if the young stars eliminate each other before the final rounds.

So, without making an exact prediction, I think probably half a dozen or so will win their first slam in the next five years. But I would like to specifically predict three players.

First, I came up with a list of candidates to choose from, as follows.

Johanna Konta (age 28)

Kiki Bertens (28)

Karolina Pliskova (27)

Elina Svitolina (25)

Madison Keys (24)

Maria Sakkari (24)

Donna Vekic (23)

Karolina Muchova (23)

Belinda Bencic (22)

Aryna Sabalenka (21)

Sofia Kenin (21)

Marketa Vondrousouva (20)

Dayana Yastremska (19)

Iga Swiatek (18)

Amanda Anisimova (18)

Coco Gauff (15)

A couple comments:

I didn’t include a few teenagers ranked below 100, such as Caty McNally, Whitney Osuigwe, and Marta Kostyuk. While they all have potential, I don’t think they’ve shown enough yet to warrant being in the conversation.

I don’t think Konta will win one, but British fans probably would think of her.

Many might choose Gauff because of what she’s done at just 15 years of age. But while she’s impressive for her age, the caliber of the opponents she faced was not that high, and she got demolished when facing Osaka. She has a very bright future and could win multiple Slams, but I don’t think she’s done enough yet for an outright prediction, especially since this is just in the next five years; she will still be 20 and have plenty of time left to win Slams if she doesn’t win one in the next five. Besides, her young age itself is a reason for caution. We don’t know exactly how she will develop and what difficulties she will face in the next few years; many players (such as Taylor Townsend) have been greatly hyped as teens but did not meet the expectations that were unfairly set for them.

Kiki Bertens is excellent on clay. For a time in 2018 and early 2019, she looked like a great player on all surfaces, going to the quarterfinals at Wimbledon, and winning Cincinnati and St. Petersburg. In my opinion, her level dropped this year after the French Open, though she still did an admirable job of defending her points, partly by playing more than anyone else. I expect her to be a serious contender at the French Open but I’m not sure if she’ll win it.

I don’t think Madison Keys is consistent enough to win a Slam, though I could certainly be wrong. She did win a big title this year in Cincinnati, and another Premier tournament in Charleston, surprisingly enough on clay. People often think she would do well on the grass at Wimbledon, but that has been her worst Slam in the past several years; if she wins one, I think it’s more likely to be on a hard court.

Elina Svitolina might win one. She had never gotten to a Slam semifinal before this year, but has now been to the semifinals at both Wimbledon and the US Open. She is a superb defensive player. The question is whether that will be enough to defeat all the top players that she’ll face in the late rounds of the tournament.

Sofia Kenin was very impressive this year and could well win a Slam, or several, at some point. I’m not quite confident enough to outright predict it for her.

Aryna Sabalenka certainly has the power and the raw talent. Will she have the consistency and mental composure?

Here are my three predictions:

Karolina Pliskova is another excellent player, a perennial top 10. I think she is good enough to win one and will get it at some point in the next couple years.

Belinda Bencic is my second prediction. She is extremely good at taking the ball early and re-directing it. She’s been around a long time and is still only 22, but this past year she found her form. She is ranked no. 8 right now; I think she has the talent to be a perennial top-10 player and could win multiple Slams. I’ll predict at least one for her in the next five years.

Of all the teenagers not named Bianca Andreescu, Amanda Anisimova stands out the most. She rose to no. 24 in the rankings in 2019, turning 18 in August. She has easy power on her groundstrokes and talent to spare, and plays with good mental composure. I think she’ll win multiple Slams and probably be a future No. 1, and it could start very soon, though probably not in 2020.

So that’s it. Again, I’m not saying these three will be the only new Slam winners; I think there will be others, but these are the only ones I’ll predict.

Feel free to comment with your own thoughts and predictions.

MBTI Typing Bible Characters

In the last year or so I’ve become familiar with the Myers-Briggs personality types. I sometimes enjoy trying to type myself and other people. In this post I will try to guess Bible characters’ personalities.

For more info on types and cognitive functions – here is a page with some helpful info. Check out all the links. Also check out all the links on this page.

Typeinmind.com is a great site with lots of good info on the various types. 16personalities.com uses a bit of a different theory, without incorporating the cognitive functions, but the descriptions of the types are similar, so I feel comfortable using their descriptions.

So here are my guesses for various characters.

On God, Time, and Eternity

When I was younger I was taught that there will be no time in eternity. I was also taught that God is timeless – that he experiences everything as an “eternal now.” I no longer believe this. I think those ideas came from the Greek philosophical view of deity and time. The Greeks thought that time was somehow flawed or imperfect, and that God must therefore be totally outside time; related to this were also extreme ideas about God’s absolute unchangelessness, such that God cannot experience emotion, for example.

Christian philosophers accepted these ideas and developed the idea of “divine simplicity” (“the concept that God does not exist in parts but is wholly unified, with no distinct attributes, and whose existence is synonymous with His essence”, per GotQuestions). But all these things tend to make God into an impersonal Idea, unrelated and unrelatable to His creation.

But the Jewish and Christian scriptures present a different picture of God. He is a personal being; he entered time and space, at least in the Incarnation; he loves, he hates, he has a range of emotions and responses to our obedience or rejection of him. He even changed his mind. Christian philosophers who accepted the Greek ideas said that the Biblical descriptions of God’s anger, acceptance, rejoicing, singing (Zeph. 3:17) were just anthroporphisms; he didn’t really do those things, but that’s just a human way of describing him. But I don’t think that does justice to Scripture. God is infinite and eternal, no doubt. But I think God is everlasting – that he exists through all of time – not that he is timeless.

This does not mean that God cannot see the future. God knows the end from the beginning; he can see the future and he knows all things. We can remember events that occurred in the past; some people with “photographic” memory can remember things in great detail – although interestingly, true photographic memory is apparently a myth. But God can see both the past and the future perfectly – he has perfect memory and perfect foreknowledge. Exactly how this is true, I don’t know; but we don’t have to understand how God can know the future in order to believe that he can. How can God be all powerful? How can he be omnipresent? How is it possible that God took human form and lived on earth as the man Jesus Christ, fully God and fully human at the same time? I don’t know how all that is possible…but I know it’s true.

But even if you still believe God must be timeless, that doesn’t mean we humans will be timeless in eternity. Only God is infinite; only God can be everywhere and do everything at once; only God knows everything. Humans are finite, and we will always be finite creatures. Therefore there still must be time and space in eternity. The Bible speaks of a new heavens and a new earth, in which Heaven comes down to earth and we live forever on the new earth with God. It speaks of time in heaven (there was silence in heaven for the space of half an hour, Rev. 8:1); it speaks of the passage of time on the new earth in Rev. 22:1-5: “Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. . . . There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign for ever and ever.”

I do think time had a beginning – when God created the universe. Before there was a universe, there were no events; nothing could change from moment to moment, so there could be no time. There was only God. But when God created the universe, there was time. And God said that his creation was very good. Time, therefore, is not imperfect or something to be escaped.

Here is what William Lane Craig says on time:
https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writing … -eternity/

According to the relational theory the passage of time consists in the happening of events. So the question whether time is finite or infinite may be reduced to the question whether the series of events is finite or infinite. [19]

It might be asserted that even on the relational view of time there can be time prior to the first event because one may abstract from individual events to consider the whole universe as a sort of event which occurs at its creation. There would thus be a before and an after with regard to this event: no universe/ universe. And a relation of before and after is the primitive relation of which time consists. On the other hand, this level of abstraction may be illegitimate and may presuppose a time above time. For prior to the universe’s beginning, if there was nothing at all, not even space, then it would certainly seem to be true that there was no time either. For suppose the universe never came to exist – would there still be time? But if the universe does come to exist ex nihilo, how could we say this first event has an effect on reality (but of course there was no reality!) before it ever occurred, especially when its occurrence is a contingent matter? We might want to say that time does not exist until an event occurs, but when the event does occur, there is a sort of retroactive effect causing past time to spring into being. But this seems to confuse our mental ability to think back in time with the progressive, unidirectional nature of time itself. Though we can, after creation, think of nothingness one hour before the first event, in terms of reality, there was no such moment. For there was just nothing, and Creation was only a future contingent. When the first event occurred, the first moment of time began.
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If God is really related to the world, then it seems most reasonable to maintain that God is in time subsequent to creation. This also removes Kierkegaard’s Absolute Paradox concerning the incarnation, for God would be in time prior to his assuming a human nature. This understanding does not involve any change in God; rather he is simply related to changing things. As Swinburne explains,

…since God coexists with the world and in the world there is change, surely there is a case for saying that God continues to exist for an endless time, rather than that he is timeless. In general that which remains the same while other things change is not said to be outside time, but to continue through time.

Thus, on a relational view of time God would exist timelessly and independently ‘prior’ to creation; at creation, which he has willed from eternity to appear temporally, time begins, and God subjects himself to time by being related to changing things. On the other hand, the Newtonian would say God exists in absolute time changelessly and independently prior to creation and that creation simply marks the first event in time.

These, then, are the alternatives. A relational view of time seems superior to a Newtonian view because (1) it is difficult to see how time could exist apart from events and (2) the Newtonian objection that every instant of time implies a prior instant is adequately answered by the relational view. Thus, the proper understanding of God, time, and eternity would be that God exists changelessly and timelessly prior to creation and in time after creation.

(bold added by me)

Very deep! I think Craig’s view not only makes sense philosophically, but matches Scripture better with the way God presents himself, as a personal God who relates to His creatures and even took on human form himself.

I hope this can make for some profitable contemplation, and perhaps greater appreciation for God’s personal nature and his desire to have a relationship with man.

Properly understanding two-kingdom theology (from an Anabaptist perspective)

There are at least three possible versions of two-kingdom theology. Dwight Gingrich recently had a discussion thread on Facebook where he offered the following three views:

(1) Government is commanded by God to use the sword to punish evil, so that evil will be curbed in the world. By virtue of God’s command, government has both the right and the responsibility to use the sword, in much the same way that God’s servant the nation of Israel did before Christ came. God requires government officials to use the sword, and to use it with justice and mercy, and he will judge them accordingly. Government officials can be Christians while bearing the sword, provided they use it rightly and only in their role as civil servants. Therefore, Christians bear witness to government by (a) admonishing them to use the sword with justice and mercy and (b) calling individual members of government to choose to follow Jesus.

(2) Government is commanded by God to use the sword to punish evil, so that evil will be curbed in the world. By virtue of God’s command, government has both the right and the responsibility to use the sword, in much the same way that God’s servant the nation of Israel did before Christ came. God requires government officials to use the sword, and to use it with justice and mercy, and he will judge them accordingly, though as sinners. Jesus calls all who follow him to lay down the sword, so it is not fitting for a Christian to fill any government office requiring sword-bearing. Therefore, Christians bear witness to government by (a) admonishing them to use the sword with justice and mercy and (b) calling individual members of government to choose to follow Jesus, thus laying down the sword.

(3) God uses sword-bearing governments to punish evil, so that evil will be curbed in the world. All human governments since the Fall naturally use the sword, and God sovereignly sets up and deposes governments as his servants, just as he did with pagan nations before Christ came. In times past God overlooked the use of the sword, but now he calls all men everywhere to repent. Therefore, no government today can claim divine right to bear the sword, even though God establishes them for his purposes and we should not try to overthrow them. All government officials will be judged by God for using the sword, with a more severe punishment for those who have not used the sword with justice and mercy. Therefore, Christians bear witness to government by (a) admonishing them refrain from unjust and unmerciful use of the sword and (b) calling individual members of government to choose to follow Jesus, thus laying down the sword.

My position is closest to #2, with maybe a few tweaks, and with maybe a few tweaks to #1 to more clearly exclude it. I assume #1 is basically the Lutheran two-kingdom theology, which basically splits the man and says he can biblically operate by one ethic when in the government and by another ethic in the church or in his private life. #1 says, “Government officials can be Christians while bearing the sword” – Denying this could be taken as denying that any government officials (or soldiers) are Christians. I would tweak it by saying, “Government officials can biblically be Christians while bearing the sword”, or, “It is biblical for Christians to bear the sword while in government or in the military” – in which case I think it is clearer and easier to reject.

I think God has a lot of grace for human misunderstanding if the Christian is sincerely seeking and trying to follow Christ, so while a Christian who is in government and bearing the sword is doing something outside the perfect will of Christ for his life, I wouldn’t say he is living in sin by doing so. But it is inconsistent with the ethics of the New Testament that Christians are called to follow, and a Christian who comes to the correct nonresistant understanding of the Scriptures through the guidance of the Holy Spirit should not violate his conscience by bearing the sword – in that case it would be sin (whatsoever is not of faith is sin).

I believe government has both the right and the responsibility to use the sword. But I would hesitate to say “in much the same way that God’s servant the nation of Israel did before Christ came” until I know exactly what I am saying by that. I don’t believe the civil penalties of OT law are for government to use today, nor do I think government should persecute people who don’t worship God. In the NT era, where church and state ought to be separate, government should not bind people’s consciences to follow a specific religion, and should allow people to freely choose to follow Christ and worship Him. With those caveats in mind, government should operate according to God’s moral law, which is in general what Israel did. God instituted his moral law to provide order for society and to convict unbelievers of sin; while Christians are not under the law, the New Testament still indicates that the moral law is useful for unbelievers. And I would add that in the NT era, government should not only follow the OT moral law, but it should also respect the natural rights of its citizens, which are based on the fact that all men are created equal and have value in God’s sight. So rights like the right to life, freedom of religion, freedom of expression, etc., should all be upheld by a just and moral government in the NT era.

I don’t think unsaved members of government will be judged positively for using the sword with justice – they will be lost, and all of their “righteous” deeds will be like filthy rags, and will have no relevance. However, they may experience more severe punishment if they used the sword cruelly and unjustly.

I mostly agree with the following statement from #2: “Christians bear witness to government by (a) admonishing them to use the sword with justice and mercy and (b) calling individual members of government to choose to follow Jesus, thus laying down the sword.” In (a), they admonish the government as an institution; in (b), they witness to individuals, whether in or out of government. But I would add that (b) should be the focus; (a) should be secondary. And if a Christian institution, like a local church or a denomination, speaks out in admonition of government, they should generally do so by pointing out areas for government to exercise mercy, without speaking directly to other areas where the use of the sword comes into play. I think it’s okay for individual Christians to support/approve of the use of the sword in justice, but this should be done without excessive enthusiasm or a gung-ho cowboy attitude, if you know what I mean.

For example: I think Christians, including churches, can call for the government to help alleviate the refugee crisis, including by welcoming refugees to America. This should be done circumspectly, with respect for government’s legitimate role of protecting national security, and so carefully screening refugees is fine; but I don’t believe it is good for Christians to react with fear to refugees and hunker down in Fortress America either. Or for another example: I think it was probably good and right for the United States to exercise the sword justly in the strike on Osama bin Laden in 2011. It was legitimate and it was just. But I don’t think Christians should metaphorically celebrate in the streets about it, nor should churches put out a statement expressing approval of it.

The view taken in position #3, or perhaps even more radical positions where the government is illegitimate or inherently evil because of its use of force, and where it might be merely used by God but not ordained by God, runs into problems with Paul in Romans 13. His comments on government as appointed by God for good, not bearing the sword in vain, go well beyond the mere idea that God can use evil men for his purposes, in my opinion. And the underlying view that God himself is nonviolent and merely overlooked OT violence – and that the judgment represented by the sword of government goes against God’s character – runs into problems with the Old Testament evidence that God commanded war on Israel’s enemies and judgment on evildoers both in and outside of Israel, and various verses that speak of God’s wrath and his character as a “man of war” – not to mention the future return of Christ at the head of the heavenly armies to judge evil men and rule the world with a rod of iron.