The controversy now engulfing the MLB is part of that religious war, and every player in the league is involved in it whether they want to be or not. They, too, must choose a side. Choosing sides will mean different things for different people, but for those who choose the side of the Tao — of objective moral truth, of resistance to the fascism of the left — it’s going to mean some sacrifice.

The Los Angeles Dodgers’ appalling decision to honor an anti-Christian hate group called the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence during their “Pride Night” on June 16 has been met mostly with a deafening silence from the vast majority of Major League Baseball players. Even Catholics, whose faith is particularly singled out for mockery by this LGBT hate group, have been largely mute.
As of this writing, only four players in the entire league have said anything about it, and one of those four has already caved to the rainbow mob. The only Catholic player to come forward has been Trevor Williams, a starting pitcher for the Washington Nationals. Williams denounced the Dodgers and called on his fellow Catholics “to reconsider their support of an organization that allows this type of mockery of its fans to occur.”
The only Dodgers player to come forward so far has been relief pitcher Blake Treinen, who also released a clear statement Tuesday criticizing the Dodgers organization for honoring the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, rightly saying the group “promotes hate of Christians and people of faith.”
The statements from Williams and Treinen were infinitely better than the cowardly response of Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw, who contented himself with a nonresponse. Instead of addressing the issue head-on, he weakly announced the return of “Christian Faith and Family Day” at Dodger Stadium after a hiatus. “For us, we felt like the best thing to do in response was, instead of maybe making a statement condemning or anything like that, would be just to instead try to show what we do support, as opposed to maybe what we don’t,” Kershaw told the Los Angeles Times recently.
For Kershaw, it seems, the Dodgers should get a pass for awarding a group that openly mocks Christians as long as the Christians get an appreciation night of their own later in the season. What nonsense. It’s like having Christian appreciation night at the Temple of Artemis right before marching the Christians off to the Colosseum. Far from being “the best thing to do,” it would have been better had Kershaw said nothing.
His cowardice was overshadowed, though, by the Toronto Blue Jays’ Anthony Bass, who performed his very own Maoist struggle session over the weekend, giving a scripted apology for the crime of posting something mildly supportive of the Bud Light and Target boycotts.
“I recognize yesterday that I made a post that was hurtful to the Pride community, which includes friends of mine and close family members of mine, and I am truly sorry for that,” Bass said, promising to educate himself and make better decisions moving forward.
Not good enough, Blue Jays manager John Schneider told reporters. “We’re not going to pretend like this never happened,” said Schneider. “We’re not going to pretend like it’s the end and move on. There are definitely more steps that are going to follow.”
The double standard here isn’t hypocrisy; it’s meant to demonstrate hierarchy. The Dodgers can insult every Christian in the country, and only two guys will speak up.
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What evangelicals need most today is actual moral reasoning, one that recognizes complexity; clear distinctions; clarified principles; competing goods; the penultimate and ultimate ends of the civil, ecclesiastical, and domestic societies; a multiplicity of responsibilities and duties; and prudence. Reacting to the unprecedented degree of rancor and acrimony in American evangelicalism today, many evangelicals have called for civility and friendly dialogue. But it is possible, and I think quite likely, that civility in evangelicalism is not enough for a peaceful and principled discussion between differing groups. Though perhaps not immediately obvious, civility in discourse can conceal rhetorical advantages and disadvantages and even strengthen them. Settling only for civility then might be quite naive, for civility in discourse does not necessarily mean equality in discourse.
I’ve argued elsewhere that social justice evangelicals employ certain socio-rhetorical devices, taken largely from the broader public discourse, that advantage them over their opponents. It is not just that these devices conceal a lack of reason; they are substitutes for reason; and they work best in civil public discourse. Civility is therefore not a sufficient condition to preclude all rhetorical advantages in public discourse. In this essay, I uncover one critical advantage enjoyed by the social justice advocates in evangelicalism.
Moral Impressions and Christianizing Devices
The social justice talk in evangelicalism is remarkable for the absence of systematic thinking on the pertinent questions of justice. One rarely encounters precise and detailed theories of justice and careful applications. Rather what we find is very similar to what Thomas Bradstreet identified in his article here on evangelical political theology. Evangelical moral reasoning is very much like their political theology. Rarely does their moral reasoning begin with moral principles and systems and then logically proceed to conclusions. Rather their thinking begins with an impression or reaction of goodness or badness; and then, as part of their moral thinking, they supply a broad principle, which serves only to christianize the impression. That is, the principle (or line), which I will also call the “christianizing device,” elevates the impression into Christian public morality. The actual moral conclusion or determination precedes the moral principle. So their reasoning has a two-step sequence:
1) Have a negative, moral reaction to something, a reaction that one is socialized to perform (perhaps on social media) upon encountering some event.
2) Christianize the moral impression by confidently stating an extremely broad principle or statement from the Bible (“love your neighbor”) or some other Christian-like statement without any attempt to make distinctions or qualifications or systematize or consider competing goods.
This moral thinking does not begin with a nuanced principle and then proceed to a moral conclusion. Rather the conclusion is already decided due to one’s moral socialization and the principle is subsequently supplied. The principle serves however not as a reason for the impression (though it publicly appears as a reason) but to elevate the moral impression or reaction into Christian public morality. The moral conclusion (viz. this is good, bad, or morally indifferent) is already determined inwardly (via socialization) quite apart from reason, and the christianizing device is the outward expression of that inward determination. But again the device does not actually function as the basis for the moral determination; rather it is the means by which that determination is brought into Christian morality.
This means that the basis of the evangelical leaders’ (and also their followers) moral determinations is not a consistent principle or even principles at all, and hence what one considers good, evil, or morally indifferent is ultimately an incoherent set of latent impressions waiting to be triggered by events. And since the principle is logically subsequent to the moral impressions, it doesn’t matter that it could justify practical absurdities. In other words, it is irrelevant that a consistent application of the principle would lead to all sorts of absurd outcomes, policies, actions, etc. For example, if one were to react to a restrictive immigration policy by affirming, without any distinctions or nuance, “the universal dignity of all people” or by saying that Christians ought to “love your neighbor,” then how can any immigration restriction or even the illegality of border crossing stand up to the demands of Christian morality? But the logical consequences of the supplied principle are irrelevant, because it doesn’t function in their reasoning as the determinate of their moral conclusions.
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Scripture is truly a living and active Word and it takes a living and active God to interpret it rightly. Thankfully, the people of God made alive by the Spirit are given everything we need for life and godliness—both in the Scriptures and in the Spirit. 

Writing about Sola Scriptura in his book Biblical Authority After Babel: Retrieving the Solas in the Spirit of Mere Protestant Christianity, Kevin Vanhoozer notes that the reformation principle of Scripture Alone “implies the sufficiency of Scripture” (114). But then he asks and important question: “Sufficient for what?” What does the sufficiency of Scripture promise? And what does it mean?
To that question, he gives four answers—one negative and three positive. Here they are in abbreviated form.

Scripture is not sufficient for anything and everything that it may be called upon to do or describe.
“Scripture is sufficient for everything for which it was divinely inspired. ‘[My word] shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it’ (Isa. 55:11).”
“Scripture is materially sufficient (‘enough’) because God has communicated everything we need to know in order to learn Christ and live the Christian life: ‘all things that pertain to life and godliness’ (2 Pet. 1:3).”
Scripture is formally sufficient, which means when it comes to interpretation “Scripture interprets Scripture” so long as the interpretive community (i.e., the church) relies upon all the means of grace created by the Holy Spirit.

Understandably, these four answers need further elucidation, and in his chapter on “Scripture Alone,” Vanhoozer explains each point that I have abbreviated above. Here are a few quotes and explanations to help round a sufficient doctrine of Scripture’s sufficiency.
Four Aspects of Biblical Sufficiency
1. Sufficiency Caricatured
Introducing the topic, Vanhoozer asserts that Scripture is not sufficient for everything. He writes,
To say “Scripture is sufficient for everything—stock market investments, leaky faucets, clogged arteries—is to saddle it with unrealistic expectations, and eventually to succumb to naïve biblicism and the quagmire of pervasive interpretive pluralism.” (114)
Sadly, many have taken the Bible to address everything in creation. But this only creates more problems than it solves. Instead of overpromising what the Bible can do, we should read the Bible and learn what it says it can do.
2. Sufficiency Simpliciter 
If the Bible does not say that it is sufficient for everything, it does say what it is sufficient for—namely knowing God in Christ and how to live by faith in the promises of God.
Scripture is sufficient for everything for which it was divinely given: “[My word] shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it” (Isa. 55:11). Paul tells Timothy that Scripture is “profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and training in righteousness” (2 Tim. 3:16). These verses help us see what sufficiency means and does not mean. The Bible is sufficient for the use that God makes of it, not for every use to which we may want it put. In John Webster’s words: “Scripture is enough. This is because Scripture is what God desires to teach” [Domain of the Word, 18]. Scripture is “enough” to learn Christ and the Christian life. (114)
Indeed, this is the simple answer to the question of what Scripture is sufficient for. However, Vanhoozer presses deeper to explain what “enough” means.
3. Material (or Doctrinal) Sufficiency
Going beyond the basic statement that Scripture is enough, Vanhoozer states,
Scripture is materially sufficient (“enough”) because God has communicated everything we need to know in order to learn Christ and live the Christian life: “all things that pertain to life and godliness” (2 Pet. 1:3). Article VI of the Church of England’s Thirty Nine Articles makes exactly this point: “Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation.” The material sufficiency of Scripture excludes any possibility of Scripture needing an external supplement in order to achieve the purpose for which it was sent. The Westminster Confession forbids adding any new content to Scripture, “whether by new revelations of the Spirit, or traditions of men,” thereby echoing statements in Scripture itself, such as Revelation 22:18: “I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described this book.” What God has authored is adequate for his communicative purpose: “Scripture is materially sufficient for the bearing of propositional content (the presentation of Jesus Christ as the means of salvation) and for the conveying of illocutionary force (the call or invitation to have faith in him)” (Timothy Ward, Word and Supplement, 205). (114–15)
In short, the Bible reveals everything necessary for knowing God and living before him (Coram Deo). Still, there is something else and Vanhoozer shows us that a full doctrine of Scripture must consider another kind of sufficiency—namely, one that grapples with the interpretation of Scripture, and not just its doctrinal content.
4. Formal (or Interpretive) Sufficiency
Acknowledging the difficulty of interpretation and the criticisms leveled against Protestants, especially those who ignore their confessional heritage, Vanhoozer states that material sufficiency does not “authorize its own interpretation, or to adjudicate between rival interpretations” (115). That is, affirming that Scripture contains all that is necessary for life and godliness is not the same thing as stating that all who read Scripture are sufficient to interpret correctly. We are not, and this is why many will criticize the Protestant principle of Sola Scriptura.
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