Anger is right when we respond to the right things in the right way. It is the appropriate response to sin and injustice. What provokes Jesus’ outburst in Luke 11 is the hypocrisy of the religious leaders and the way they prevent other people coming to God. The climax of his tirade is: “Woe to you experts in the law, because you have taken away the key to knowledge. You yourselves have not entered, and you have hindered those who were entering” (Luke 11:52). We begin to enjoy the anger of Jesus by understanding it as the flipside of his love.

Here’s a surprise. In preparation to write about how we relate to Jesus day by day in the here and now, I re-read the Gospels. I was looking out for how he related to people when he was on earth as pointers to how he relates to his people now from heaven. Much of what I found was what I expected. He cares, protects, energizes, touches, and intercedes for his people—then and now. But one thing took me by surprise: Jesus on earth was often angry.
His emotional state may not often be specified, but his words can be surprisingly sharp and his attitude shockingly abrasive. Consider what happens when he goes to the home of a Pharisee in Luke 11:37–54.
Jesus is angry at hypocrisy and injustice (Luke 11:37–54). Imagine the scene with me. Jesus enters a home. Instead of washing his hands, as custom dictated, he goes straight to the table and sits down. This is not a failure of personal hygiene—the Pharisees had extended the ceremonial cleanliness required of temple priests into everyday life. But Jesus deliberately ignores this expectation. Make no mistake: this is a provocative act.
A shocked hush descends, into which Jesus speaks, “Now then, you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness.” These are the first words anyone speaks. This is not a discussion that turned into an argument that then got heated. Right from the start, Jesus is confrontational. “Woe to you . . .”, he says three times. It’s as if Jesus is firing off accusations from a verbal machine gun. An expert in the law intervenes. “Teacher, when you say these things, you insult us also.” Big mistake. For Jesus then turns his fire on the experts in the law. They too get three “woes”—just like the Pharisees.
Then Jesus leaves. There’s no record of any food having been eaten! The religious leaders follow him out “to besiege him” with questions. It’s the language of violent assault, as if Jesus is a city under attack. Luke says they “began to oppose him fiercely.” We might say that things have turned ugly, but that would imply a preceding moment of calm!
This is the story told in Luke 11:37–54. But we see this confrontational posture throughout Luke’s Gospel. Here’s just a snapshot.

“Woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort” (6:24–26).
“‘You hypocrites! . . .’ When he said this, all his opponents were humiliated.” (13:10–17).
“Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division” (12:51–53).
“When Jesus entered the temple courts, he began to drive out those who were selling.” (19:45–46).

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Roughly speaking, postmodern contextualism has at its heart the twin convictions (1) that claims to human knowledge always come within a linguistic, social, and cultural context, and (2) that this threefold context makes it impossible to know universal, transcendent truths. For the postmodern contextualist, truth is local to a particular culture or society; truth is culturally relative. More modest forms of contextualism might allow that sciences can arrive at universal truths, but a detailed look at the social contexts of sciences and the social flow of scientific claims to knowledge shows that sciences are the product of scientists, and scientists are social people.

This article is excerpted from Vern Poythress’s Making Sense of the World: How the Trinity Helps to Explain Reality.
A Christian view of metaphysics (the fundamental nature of reality) contrasts with competing views from the history of philosophy. A survey of these views could easily fill a large book.[1] The following analyses sample and simplify some of the principal views that have most influenced the Western world.[2]
Criteria for Evaluation
We will evaluate each view from three perspectives.

God. Does this view cohere with the existence of the Trinitarian God?
Knowledge. Does this view give an adequate account of how we can know that something is true?
Ethics. Does this view offer a solid basis for ethics?

Without an ethics that supports truth-telling and honesty, no view can sustain itself plausibly. Ethics is one point at which we can test a view according to Jesus’ principle “Thus you will recognize them by their fruits” (Matt. 7:20). Both actual behavior and proposals for ethical principles can be considered to be the “fruit.” Of course, the fruit has to be judged by biblical standards. If the fruit is bad, it shows that the root is bad, though it does not yet show specifically what went wrong with the root.
Philosophical Materialism
The most prominent metaphysical view today is philosophical materialism.[3] Philosophical materialism says that reality consists of matter and energy in motion. There are some variations among advocates of philosophical materialism. “Hard” materialism denies the existence of anything except matter and motion. “Soft” materialism says that while matter and motion are the foundation and the final explanation of all reality, complex combinations of matter can give rise to complex phenomena that we consider to be distinct—human beings, ideas, conscious experience, moral standards, and so on.
What is wrong with philosophical materialism?
God. God is not material. Either explicitly or implicitly, the various forms of materialism deny that God exists.
Knowledge. Materialism cannot give an account of itself, because the philosophical idea of philosophical materialism is not material. Alvin Plantinga makes a similar point in his extended interaction with materialistic Darwinism—a specific embodiment or type of materialism.[4] Of course, soft materialism can affirm a kind of existence of persons and ideas and abstract concepts. But how can we assure ourselves that our ideas of truth correspond to the world? Materialistic Darwinism promises only that we are constructed so as to enhance survival. But survival would appear to depend on the movements of molecules and nerve impulses and other material events. How do we know that these movements correspond to mental ideas in a way that makes these ideas true?
Ethics. If matter is ultimate, then in the final analysis human beings are nothing more than clumps of matter. Ethical values, commitments, and choices are nothing more than personal preferences. For example, you prefer vanilla ice cream and your friend prefers chocolate. Likewise, you may prefer to help the old lady across the street, but your friend prefers to mug her. There is no transcendental set of values to which to appeal to adjudicate right actions from wrong ones, because a value is not a material thing. Ethical choices are merely the result of the motions of atoms and molecules, and atoms and molecules do not care about ethics! The natural endpoint for the ethics of philosophical materialism is the motto “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die” (1 Cor. 15:32).
Pantheism
Next, consider pantheism. According to pantheism, all is “God.” Or, in panentheism, all is a part of God.
What is wrong with pantheism?
God. The Bible teaches a clear distinction between God, who is the Creator, and the world, which is created. Pantheism and panentheism have a kind of “god,” but it is not the God of the Bible.
Knowledge. Since each individual allegedly “is” God, it would seem that each individual unproblematically knows everything. If that is true, why are there differences in belief? Moreover, the collapse of distinctions among things in pantheism threatens to collapse the distinctiveness of statements about things in the world. If all is genuinely and thoroughly one, there is no room for distinctions. Each individual may indeed know everything that is to be known, but what is to be known is only one thing, which is a blank darkness.
Ethics. Pantheism cannot distinguish between good and evil because both are a part of the ultimate nature of reality.
Skepticism
Next, consider skepticism.[5] Skepticism denies that we can know the ultimate nature of the world. (This position is distinct from the more modest negative observation, “I do not currently know what is true.”) Since this denial is a kind of minimal theory about the nature of the world, we count skepticism as a metaphysical system.
What is wrong with skepticism?
God. Skepticism denies that God can make himself clearly known, as he has in fact done in nature (general revelation) and Scripture (special revelation).
Knowledge. Skepticism has trouble providing a foundation for itself. How can it be known that nothing ultimate can be known? That idea is self-defeating; it implies that we have investigated the world and drawn valid conclusions about it, the most basic of which is that we cannot know the world.
Ethics. Skepticism offers no basis for ethics.
Kantianism (with many variations)
Next, consider the philosophy of Immanuel Kant (1724–1804).[6] Kant argues that true metaphysics (knowing the fundamental nature of reality) is impossible. No one can know what Kant calls “the thing in itself ”—a thing as it really is apart from our perceptions—because all our knowledge of the world is filtered by our mental and perceptual categories of knowing. We know the content of our minds and our perceptions—not the reality of the world. Kant called “things in themselves” noumena and things as they appear to us phenomena. Thus, a rational metaphysical analysis of the thing in itself, as an ultimate constituent of reality, is impossible.
But Kant still offers us a system. Its starting point is epistemology, not the thing in itself. In his epistemology, Kant tries to establish what can and cannot be known, as well as the conditions for knowing anything. Thus, there is an ultimate structure within Kant’s epistemology. The ultimate structure is not the thing in itself, but Kant’s four categories of knowing —quantity, quality, relation, and modality and their respective twelve subcategories—which order our spatiotemporal perception of things.[7] The noumenal is distinguished from the phenomenal, and pure reason from practical reason. Whatever is phenomenal, what comes to us through our senses, comes to us already within a framework of the categories.
What is wrong with Kantianism?
God. Kant’s system is antagonistic to the Bible because in his system God belongs to the noumenal. God cannot directly reveal himself in the world through appearances. But this is precisely what he did at Mount Sinai, and what he did in the incarnation of Jesus Christ. Moreover, in Kant’s system, man virtually takes the place of the Christian God. He “creates” the world as we know it by the imposition of the categories that already exist in his mind.
Knowledge. Kant’s system cannot account for scientific knowledge based on the phenomenal, though it claims to offer an account. The laws of science are particular laws, not just a generic deduction from the principle of causality.[8] For example, Isaac Newton’s law of gravitation says that any two massive bodies exert attractive forces on each other. The magnitude of the force is proportional to the mass of each of the bodies and is inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.[9]
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Against the decision of the 220th General Assembly of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church to dissolve the Second Presbytery of the A.R.P.C. – and all associated Index #11 decisions tethered thereunto – without first upholding the giving of the ‘due process’ that is required to be given, per the A.R.P.C. Book of Discipline, to those presbyters and select groups of presbyters specifically named in Index #11 of the published reports that were submitted to Synod (2024).

A previous General Synod had appointed a Special Committee to Investigate Second Presbytery’s Handling of Certain Allegations Against A Minister. The Special Committee reported to the 2024 Synod. The report expressed multiple challenges including the massive nature of the case and the difficulties in dealing with members and officers of Second Presbytery. The Committee completed its investigation and presented twenty events that had happened, two of which were deviations from the Book of Discipline, while the others touched on lack of requested records and how matters were processed by the Presbytery. Following the report to Synod, the Committee’s recommendation was approved: “That Second Presbytery be dissolved as of September 1, 2024.” It was against this action of General Synod that two Complaints have been filed.

COMPLAINT #1
To: The Principal Clerk of the General Synod of the ARP Church
We the undersigned, being members in good standing of Second Presbytery under the jurisdiction of the ARP General Synod, file this Complaint, pursuant to Book of Discipline 5.13.
On June 12, 2024, the General Synod voted to dissolve Second Presbytery, effective September 1,2024. This action was beyond the constitutional authority of General Synod.
Form of Government[1] 12.22 states: “The General Synod shall advise Presbyteries in its processes, but not the outcome, of the actions of the Presbyteries, in order to: A. Organize, receive, divide, unite, transfer, dismiss, and dissolve Presbyteries in keeping with the advancement of the Church ….” (Emphasis added.)
It is clear that the General Synod does not have the authority to initiate and execute the dissolution of a Presbytery. Rather, the General Synod shall advise a Presbytery if a Presbytery pursues dissolution and requests the advice of General Synod (FoG 12.22.B.).
Moreover, Second Presbytery is a corporation under the South Carolina Nonprofit Corporation Act and with the South Carolina Secretary of State (See attachment)[2]. As such, the corporation must be dissolved pursuant to either South Carolina Code of Laws Title 33-31-1401 or 33-31-1402 (See attachment), and the action by the ARP General Synod on June 12,2024, did not comply with either section. Therefore, the action of the ARP General Synod is unlawful, illegal, and unjust.
The Executive Board of the General Synod should declare this Complaint an emergency, pursuant to Manual of Authorities and Duties p. 13, and vacate the decision of the General Synod dissolving Second Presbytery.
Respectfully submitted,
Anthony R. Locke [email protected]Peter Waid [email protected]Brion Holzberger [email protected]Jonathan Cook [email protected]Bill Smalley [email protected]John Cook [email protected]RJ Gore [email protected]

COMPLAINT #2
Per:  The A.R.P.C. Book of Discipline, 5.12-13.
RE: Against the decision of the 220th General Assembly of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church to dissolve the Second Presbytery of the A.R.P.C. – and all associated Index #11 decisions tethered thereunto – without first upholding the giving of the ‘due process’ that is required to be given, per the A.R.P.C. Book of Discipline, to those presbyters and select groups of presbyters specifically named in Index #11 of the published reports that were submitted to Synod (2024).
This June 2024 dissolution decision by the General Synod also effectually served as an “act” (per B.O.D. 5.12) of roadblock – whereby the potential allegations named in Index #11 do not just suffer ‘a neglect of prosecution’, but will forever be unprosecutable once the court to which the alleged offenders are primarily/directly amenable is dissolved. For a court of the church (viz., the General Synod) to neglect to encourage the upholding of an application of the Standards of the A.R.P.C. church (viz., the Book of Discipline) in the present and/or to inhibit any legitimate future application of said church standard unto the published instances of known/stated offence (in Index #11) – before it chooses to dissolve a presbytery – is a serious error that merits a reversal of Synod’s improper ‘dissolution decision’ of Second Presbytery.
Filed by: Rev. Jack Van Dyk, Northeast Presbytery – A.R.P.C. Date: July 8, 2024
GROUNDS (the “supporting reasons and evidence” – B.O.D., 5.13.A) for this COMPLAINT:
The matters of legitimate ecclesiastical discipline, contained in the Index #11 report that was supplied to all delegates of the 2024 General Synod, simply cannot be overlooked. Many of them involve Second Presbytery functioning as the court of ‘original jurisdiction’. Any dissolution of that court places all potential and alleged offences outside of the mandated ‘original jurisdiction’ prescriptions of the A.R.P.C. Book of Discipline. An ‘automatic transfer of allegations’ stipulation – to some other court of the church, upon dissolution of any ‘court of original jurisdiction’ – is simply not found in the A.R.P.C. Book of Discipline. Dissolving Second Presbytery leaves ‘unfinished business’ unfinishable.
The integrity of the court must be maintained so long as there are publicly named real and/or potential ‘outstanding offences’ yet to be prosecuted. The Report itself leaves no room for doubt that matters of serious offence and grave import are before the court. From start to finish, a total of twenty items are enumerated as being the foundational merits upon which the recommendation that Second Presbytery be dissolved rests. More than mere trifles, or singular ‘irregularities’, the Standards of the A.R.P.C. are cited as what was being violated time and time again.
“Serious errors were made at every turn . . . ” (emphases mine)
“The Lord has not been honored . . . ”
“The Standards of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church have been exploited . . ”
Some form of the phrase “deviation from our Standards” is found no less than seven times on page 2 of this Index (#11) alone.
Furthermore, Index #11 assures the reader that: “The following events all happened in time and space, and therefore, the court must contend with the reality that they present.” (Index 11, page 2, paragraph 2). Fair enough. But isn’t the court ALSO REQUIRED to ‘contend with the reality’ that both the Scriptures and the A.R.P.C. Book of Discipline present? Both of these documents specify quite clearly how the assured “reality” of Index #11 is to be dealt with. And neither of these documents state that it is to be by ‘the dissolving of a Presbytery’. That administrative act was an unjustifiable substitute for the requisite (biblical) ‘gold standard’ prescription of: confrontation, repentance (or ‘censure’), confession, forgiveness, restitution, and restoration. In like manner, the 2024 General Synod’s corpus of ‘Index #11 decisions’ created an inadvertent(?) bypassing of a following through to a judicial conclusion what is also clearly prescribed in its very own ecclesiastical standards – namely, the A.R.P.C. Book of Discipline.
When the 2024 General Synod received Index #11, a long list of what was purported to be thoroughly investigated matters (and what was, therefore, to be trusted as being confirmed ‘facts’), it ought to have immediately sought to enforce an application of the Book of Discipline to those matters – before any decision was made to dissolve Second Presbytery. It is odd that Second Presbytery is faulted, in item #1 of Index #11, for something that the 2024 General Synod itself backhandedly committed when it voted to dissolve Second Presbytery – namely, a failure to appropriately apply 4.2.A of the Book of Discipline in the face of known viable allegations.
However, the ultimate self-indictment that befell the 2024 General Synod – in its decision to receive Index #11, and to then subsequently vote to dissolve Second Presbytery – is found in the last six words of that Index (right before its Recommendations):
“ . . God’s Word has not been followed.”
IF this statement really is true, then why is the A.R.P.C. Book of Discipline not first being applied – to ALL matters of legitimately real and/or potential allegations in this Report – before the dissolving of Second Presbytery takes place? When were the ‘due process’ rights, of all of the members of the A.R.P.C. that are named in this Index #11, afforded to them – before this Index #11 ‘verdict’ of guilt was pronounced (and the ‘penalty’ of ‘dissolution of the Presbytery’ thus imposed)?
It was an error of the 2024 General Synod to have both ‘decided’ and ‘acted’ against Second Presbytery before a proper application of the Book of Discipline could be made to so many alleged violations of both Scripture and the A.R.P.C. Standards.
A REDRESS OF THE ERROR: That, upon further review, all decisions made regarding Second Presbytery – on the basis of the stated Index #11 ‘grounds’ for doing so – at the 2024 meeting of General Synod are now determined to have been made in a manner that was procedurally ‘out of order’ and/or constitutionally ‘in error’ with respect to the explicit prescriptions stated in Scripture and/or the A.R.P.C.’s Book of Discipline (as noted by the specific reasons stated throughout the ‘GROUNDS’ section above) and that all Index #11 decisions regarding Second Presbytery are thereby now rendered ‘null and void’.
AN APPENDED PLEA FOR EXPEDITED ACTION:
The Book of Discipline requires that this Complaint be taken up by General Synod (or its Executive Board) “at its next stated meeting” – OR: “at a called meeting prior to” (5.13.A).
Convenience and expediency may incline the Executive Board of General Synod to simply ‘wait’ (until the next Stated meeting to take up this matter). However, in light of the fast-approaching September 1, 2024 ‘dissolution of Second Presbytery’ date – at which time almost all of the alleged offenders and alleged offenses contained in Index 11 will automatically pass beyond the reach of biblical justice per the A.R.P.C.’s Book of Discipline Standard – it is essential that the Executive Board of General Synod hold a Called meeting within the next few weeks for the purpose of responding to this Complaint. The relationship of the dissolution date – to the date of the next stated meeting of General Synod (or even of a Stated meeting of its Executive Board) – catapults this matter (of evasion of ecclesiastical discipline and avoidance of ‘due process’) into the category of a denominational ‘emergency’. It should be declared as such by the Executive Board – inasmuch as it has occasionally made said declaration regarding a number of other matters over the course of these past 2-3 years – and then dealt with them accordingly.
In light of the above circumstance, please do honor this very reasonable request for immediate action.

[1] The Form of Government is a governing document of the Standards of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church.
[2] This certification can be found at https://businessfilings.sc.gov/BusinessFiling/Entity/Profile/6aafe746-2276-429a-9aa5-b83e09e9e256

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