Philosophy, Shroud of Turin, and Arizona

Having increasingly become detached from matters of primary importance due to matters of primary importance, so to speak, personally I’ve nothing new to report here.  However, for those who are looking for a quick primer or summary of philosophical matters that are pertinent to apologetics, read here: Triablogue: Parsing perspectivalism.

(Notice that in the section on externalism, knowledge is not defined as mere justified true belief: that classical account of knowledge has since been disproven by Gettier-types of counterexamples, but it serves as a basis for a JTB+ where knowledge is a justified true proposition believed via a reliable process.)

Then again, that the Shroud of Turin is increasingly looking like the real deal--Triablogue: More From Giulio Fanti On Dating The Shroud Of Turin--or that Kirsten Powers (the same one from Fox News?) is a Christian is news to me.  On a parenthetical note, I think that Christians should be very careful, both in word and in deed, regarding the Arizona bill that is currently in the news.  Bear in mind that many of us have jobs and spending habits which already and in effect support evil actions of others, whether it’s management of a chain of drug stores that sell cigarettes, or money sent to cable providers who air MTV and thus help to dumb-down an entire generation of people who already aren’t that bright to begin with, etc.

Apologetics Is Practically a Fifth Wheel, Right?

Consider the Great Commission, with its recursive or perpetual command to future generations of disciples:

Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. 17 And when they saw him they worshiped him, but some doubted. 18 And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matthew 23.16-20, ESV)

Without going as far as to insist that the word “if” (as used below) either expresses or implicates the proposition that something will occur only if such-and-such occurs (we’ve mentioned both Gricean nonconventional implicature and the lesson of John 21.20-24 in the past), think about how likely or unlikely it is that one can be a disciple of Christ without abiding in Christ’s word:

So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, 32 and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (John 8.31-32, ESV)

Also think about whether certain groups that are nominally Christian at the very least are some who abide in the teaching of Christ—as if JWs or polytheistic Mormons, for example, abide in the teaching of Christ:

Everyone who goes on ahead and does not abide in the teaching of Christ, does not have God. Whoever abides in the teaching has both the Father and the Son. (2 John 1.9, ESV)*

How does one fulfill the Great Commission apart from the education, tutoring or mentoring of new converts to Christianity? What are some possible means through which it is ensured that disciples of Christ remain in the teaching and word of Christ? Is it possible that Trinitarian apologetics has ever been used either of God or of man to keep someone from straying into Arianism or Oneness theology? Is it possible that counter-cultural or counter-cult apologetics have at some moment had the effect of some person’s remaining true to things such as monotheism, the deity of Christ, inconvenient truths about capital punishment or sexual ethics, the reality of hell, and the belief of and trust in what God has said through his prophets and through the apostles of Christ?

These are some things one should think about if he or she as a Christian is ready to put any or all forms of Christian apologetics on the back burner or out to the curb.  Think about it further and you may discover that the various and numerous types of Christian apologetics are comparable to the preaching of the Law and Gospel in the degree to which they are important and have a place in the life of each and every Christian, each person already having his or her own strengths, interests and social connections which in many instances may call for one’s specializing in one of those types of apologetics.

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* Note: practically everyone has “gone ahead” if one will use the phrase in the idiosyncratic manner in which some guy once used the following verse to declare to me that he knew all along, as it were, that I am not a Christian.  After all, and for example, everyone has a naive belief about what biblical personalities looked like: some think that Christ was Black, others thinking he looked like “people from the Middle East,” others having thought of Christ as being White, et cetera: only one group of people here can posses a veridical belief on the matter since it is impossible in any serious sense to speak of someone as being phenotypically both Black and White, for example.

Beyond the crude facts of homosexuality

This more or less dovetails a post that DB recently pasted; I’ve only now managed to organize my thoughts enough to post them, plus I have a new perspective on them.

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I don’t often divulge details of my personal life, but I’ll be painfully candid in this case for illustrative purposes.  For a host of reasons that I cannot get into, I do not like most people.  (Notice that I did not say that I dislike most people, but rather that I do not like most people, at least not as much as most people like other people.)  Now, there is a girl at work whom I do like, perhaps both platonically and otherwise; this person is also physically well-endowed, flaunts it, flirts...and already has a BF.  So, faced with the choice of either leading a tortured existence every day at work or making the problem go away, what’s a guy to do?  Whether figuratively or literally, the easiest thing to do is to just hurry up, get a hotel room and be done with it; or the easiest thing is to attempt to just push the other guy completely out of the picture in a way that brings about unnecessary strife or rifts between the boyfriend and this girl who still likes him anyhow.  However, what I know of Christ’s teachings on sexuality (cf. John 14.25-26, John 16.12-15, 2 Peter 3.15-16, 1 Corinthians 7.8-9, Mark 7.20-23) and what I know of the Golden Rule both have an impact on my decision-making processes: thus I choose the tortured existence.

Where there is fuel there is fire, which is why a day at work can be miserable in ways to which I already alluded.  But where there is not fuel there is also trouble.  In the absence of this person, or of a significant other in general, I am left to realize my solitary existence and what a solitary existence means.  I’m not a part of one of these happy couples that you see at the restaurant, theater, park, club, or whatever.  Instead, whenever I see these couples I am sadly made aware of that which I do not have but others do have.  (Sadness of this kind is only intensified in those cases where one realizes that his odds at finding someone with whom they have chemistry and a shot at becoming part of a lasting couple are one in a billion; because those who are not easy on the eyes or are unlikable are by definition unattrative.  With that said, there is also a word that denotes what is experienced when he or she deals with such a thing, and that word is “grief.”)

As if it were not enough to have sadness and grief piled upon pain of other sorts, let’s also throw loneliness into the mix.  If someone is used to a solitary existence then they can, in God’s grace, adapt or otherwise erstwhile have the fortitude to flourish to some degree in their solitary existence.  However, if one is forced to taste of what life is like for most people on this earth, but later has that respite from solitude taken away, one must now deal with a new problem and a new sorrow: loneliness.

So there it is: a continual, daily, or weekly grind of loneliness piled upon grief piled upon sadness piled upon the experience of being teased.  Sounds great, right?  But this is exactly the sort of thing that Christians who hold fast to biblical teachings expect of gays and lesbians who either profess or do not profess to be disciples of Christ, is it not?  Of course, I do not criticize Christians on this matter, because they rightly acknowledge the fact that the Creator himself expects all people to be on the winning side of the war between the will of God vs. the desires of fallen, post-Edenic human nature (cf. 1 Peter 2.11); nonetheless, I think that people would do well to consider some of the pastoral and existential implications of contemporary culture wars as they pertain to homosexuality.  Why do I think that people should consider such things?  This is because if we as Christians counsel sinners with the words “Go and sin no more” or “Take up your cross daily and follow,” then both parties should know what they are getting themselves into in the entire process.

Unregenerate man, in large part, hasn’t the will or the interest to follow the exhortation “Take up your cross daily and follow.”  In fact, unless the meaning of the phrase and the means by which the phrase can be obeyed are explained, the person who attempts to counsel others with these words runs the serious risk of appearing to have no grip on reality or on what kinds of issues people actually deal with in life.  So I claim that such a would-be counselor should carefully consider and analyze his actions in advance, because Christianity ought not be more offensive than it already is, as one can glean from Titus 2.9-10, 1 Timothy 6.1-2, and 1 Peter 2.12.

Likewise, the phrase “Go and sin no more” does not strike me, for one, as a comforting set of words or the sort of things that good pep talks are made of: simple words and advice probably won’t be very useful to those people who are called upon to leave their same-sex significant others along with their incorrect sexual desires.  Keep in mind that in daily struggles against the flesh sometimes even the best of us apparently just give up and decide to stop fighting, which not too long ago seemed to be the case with Amy Grant and Gary Chapman (http://assets.baptiststandard.com/archived/1999/12_8/pages/grant.html) vis-à-vis the Difficult Teachings of Matthew 5, 19 and 1 Corinthians 7.  So I claim that any would-be biblical counselor should carefully consider and analyze his actions in advance and act accordingly, because sheer head knowledge of moral rights and wrongs is no guarantee that any of us will do the right thing and continue to do the right thing.

So any believer who is ready to stand up and begin to push back against the contemporary social forces that are encouraging everyone and every institution to sanction homosexuality should consider the pastoral and existential implications of their own deeds in advance; they should consider them and act accordingly for moral reasons and reasons of practicality.  Meanwhile, of course, I state the above not merely as a matter of brute facts and logic but also as a matter of someone who to some degree can begin to relate to what others might be going through.  With that said, I would urge any would-be counselor on this issue to choose his words wisely according to the time, place, person and circumstance.  For example, I think that Christ proves himself worldly-wise with regard to his words about eunuchs and the Difficult Teaching in Matthew 19 and I also find concepts and biblical teaching about theodical character-building to be somewhat comforting: these are the sorts of things that I would like to hear, somewhat, if someone were exhorting me not to choose the easy/evil solution to my own problems.  Of course, other people may respond differently to such words on an emotional or rational level, so other appeals of ethos, logos, and pathos may be helpful with other people.

But just as one’s own heterosexual affects and emotions are not activated and deactivated as easily as the flick of switch, so it is with gays and lesbians who need to leave behind whatever sin they need to leave behind but, yes, may still have to lead their lives in the meantime amid the same temptations and same strong urges, desires and drives of the flesh which they had before, because struggles in life do not necessarily go away when someone repents.  Let everyone remember this.

Is The Bible Really So "Bigoted" and "Phobic"?

The Bible does not condemn those who merely are sexually attracted to their neighbor’s spouse.  However, what one does with that attraction is what will be the death of him if he makes the evil choice.  Yet the Scriptures are never condemned as being adulterophobic.

The Bible does not condemn those singles who merely are sexually attracted to single members of the opposite sex.  However, what one does with that attraction is what will be the death of him if he makes the wrong choice.  Yet the Scriptures are never condemned as being extramaritalsexphobic.

In fact, the Bible does not condemn those who merely are uninterested in meeting the physical needs or desires of their spouse.  However, if this lack of interest persists as a product of repeated decisions borne of laziness, selfishness or foolishness, then these decisions will be his undoing.  This is one thing that the apostle Paul teaches in 1 Corinthians, chapter seven; yet no one would ever think to condemn the Scriptures as being abstinencephobic.

So may the reader consider this refresher course in biblically-based sexual ethics and the way in which it is worded.  We all need to get back to basics sometimes, as does Desmond Tutu and any number of persons today who in all undue glibness throw certain labels at Christianity or the Scriptures regarding certain social issues.

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Meanwhile, do not think that what liberal Christianity, as it were, has to say about the issues of the day are unimportant.  Liberals in general tend to think alike, coalesce, move in the same direction of thinking though they be a diverse group.  The Christian theology, again as it were, that attempts to paint a rosy picture of homosexuality is well likened to a viral infection, fifth column or Trojan horse.  First it attacks the Law and the apostles of Christ, because it must.  In the meantime, there remains the problem that recorded in the Gospel accounts is Christ’s acceptance of the authority of the Law even during his own time; accordingly, this becomes the next target as attempts are made to defeat it by glossing over it, lying about it, or writing it off as a matter of interpolation.  And the defeat of the Law, the apostles of Christ, and of the words and teachings of Christ comes at a great price: the destruction of sound practices of exegesis and hermeneutics.

Once the basics and common sense behind normal exegesis and hermeneutics are destroyed, the groundwork is laid for a groundswell of theology or teaching which fits with liberal thought patterns and emotional patterns: Sola Scriptura is effectively lost to false intuition and wishful thinking, the teaching of the everlasting punishment of the damned is lost, hell is reimagined as a condition that exists on this earth, universalism becomes a given, and the idea of divine omnipotence probably isn’t far behind.  Read this post again in fifteen years to see if and how it mirrors events of the day.

Slick’s Apostasy: Various Angles of the Issue

I heard about this first via Alpha & Omega Ministries: Yesterday on the Dividing Line.  I have not yet heard what Dr. White had to say about it, but other people have chimed in in written format, which I can access more easily.

Analysis from the redoubtable Steve Hays: Triablogue: Born to fail.

 

Another from Glenn Peoples (HT: Jason Engwer): How to exploit a family falling out for the sake of ideology.

 

Personally, in my reflections on the whole matter I was thinking more about the specifics of the stated reason for abandoning Christianity.  Without daring to put myself in the company of those commentators I will post those thoughts below, FWIW and as a possible indication of what others might be thinking

 

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From http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/07/15/the-atheist-daughter-of-a-notable-christian-apologist-shares-her-story/:

This changed one day during a conversation with my friend Alex. I had a habit of bouncing theological questions off him, and one particular day, I asked him this: If God was absolutely moral, because morality was absolute, and if the nature of “right” and “wrong” surpassed space, time, and existence, and if it was as much a fundamental property of reality as math, then why were some things a sin in the Old Testament but not a sin in the New Testament?

Four thoughts:

1) She was trained by Matt Slick.  Slick is cool, his ministry has stood the test of time, and he is probably one reason that I am a Calvinist today.  However, frankly his work has always been half-baked and over-reaching in some instances, and I fear that when it came to meta-ethics he may have trained his daughter poorly on account of possibly his own not having a solid grasp of certain issues.

2) Do the words “consequentialism” and “context” mean anything to either of the Slicks?  (Of course, I know that at least one of those matters to one of them.)  Or when did the Scriptures ever indicate that virtue ethics, or deontology, or divine command theory were the only possible correct paradigms by which to make sense of God’s law and God’s nature as revealed in the Scriptures?

Yes, Christians are sophisticated enough to reject divine command theory for reasons which are reflected in Euthyphro’s Dilemma.  Yet the Scriptures apparently never rule out consequentialism in toto and never rule out what we might call (gasp) situational ethics of a sort, and the whole of biblical ethics is best understood in considering both virtue ethics and these other ethical paradigms.

When and where is it appropriate in this country to walk around buck naked?  In a classroom at school?  No.  In worship services at church?  No.  At home?  Sure.

When and where is it appropriate to drive on the right side of the road?  In the U.S.?  Yes, but even then not if the driver is drunk and doing 100 mph on a crowded freeway.  In the U.K.?  No, unless suddenly it is good to cause needless head-on collisions with other vehicles.

Are circmstances or possible consequences relevant in the examples listed immediately above?  Yes, and that is exactly why there are exceptions to rules such as those to which we just alluded.

And is the range of permissible moral options dependent on the situation?  Yes, it is.  That is precisely how sex within the bond of marriage is permissible while your spouse’s cheating on you is not, or why harsh punishments are appropriate only for offenders who are culpable of the worst crimes, to cite two examples.

3) At some point the elder Slick may have got tripped up on issues of postmodern ethics or moral TAGs and passed a muddled, incomprehensible message down to his daughter--either that or the younger Slick just failed to grasp what she was being taught.  Similar language or similar terms appear in discussions of each, and this probably was a source of conflation or confusion at some point.

In any case, God is just (even essentially or transcendently so); in translation this means that God’s actions are just, for this is what the word “just” ultimately points to in terms of meaning and function.  Meanwhile, the words “just” and “moral” are more or less synonymous (though I  prefer “just” over the younger Slick’s “moral”), and those words ultimately mean either in accord with some ethical principle or in accord with what is good; and despite that the word “good” has many meanings--all of them dependent on what the metric or standard of measurement is--and despite anyone’s and everyone’s being capable of finding evil things to be favorable--i.e. “good”--or of prescribing evil conduct as though it were something just, God’s actions are just.

God has issued a body of ethical prescriptions and proscriptions of human behavior; each of these commandments are in accordance with both themselves and objective goodness: by definition, they are just.

Moreover, these commandments are “absolute” in the sense--and this is what people mean when they speak of moral rules which are “absolute”--that they are just regardless of whether Smith over here says, “Adultery?  Meh, that’s okay with me; there’s nothing wrong with it” or whether a society over there on the other side of the planet says, “Why not bow down before Baal?  Who else gives us rain for our crops or puts food on our table?”  That is the sense in which they are absolute.

However, this is not to be confused with the issues of divine command theory vs. rival meta-ethical theories.  There aren’t too many Christians who claim that if God suddenly decided one day to proscribe the consumption of turkey dinners then it would be evil to be turkey dinners in virtue of the proscription itself.  No, the claim would more or less be that if a divine proscription of turkey dinners came down the pike tomorrow then: a) it would be because the proscription did not have a favorable timing before then; and b) the proscription is done for a reason which is objectively good; c) rebellion against the Creator is not in accordance with what is objectively good; and d) guess what: God’s nature happens to be one of objective goodness, all such that it was never possible that an intuitively bad thing such as idolatry or sadistic torture or babies would have been prescribed at some point.

“...Why were some things a sin in the Old Testament but not a sin in the New Testament?” she asks.  Answer: if you can find an instance of such things, then stop to reconsider the matter and to ask yourself whether such things promoted the well-being of someone or something at one point in the past but later outlived their ability to do so.  Why is it a sin to issue orders to a someone of the rank of Sergeant First Class in one year whereas ten years later it is not a sin to do so?  Hmm, could it be that someone there in the Army got promoted such that legal and moral privileges which formerly were not theirs later rightly became theirs?  This is one example off the top of my head; you should be capable of doing the same.

4) How old is Rachael Slick again?  Oh yeah, that makes sense.

Re: Jesus and Same Sex Marriage | Joe Dallas Online

For anyone who missed this clever post from Joe Dallas: Jesus and Same Sex Marriage | Joe Dallas Online.

Citation corrections are provided over at Triablogue: http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2013/06/jesuss-teachings-on-marriage-in-light.html.

A Look into the Possible Future of Christian Apologetics

Consider this quotation (http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2013/05/is-apologetics-failure.html#comment-form)--

I want to underscore one of the points Koukl made, since so many people make the first observation he mentions, but don't follow up on it the way Koukl did. We've had a resurgence of apologetics, but it hasn't kept pace with what's needed. People often say that there's been a resurgence, but don't go on to qualify it the way Koukl did. We ought to go on to ask whether the resurgence has been enough. It hasn't been. Given the changes in technology, increased access to information, changes in political systems, and other factors in place in the modern world, the church needs to be involved in apologetics far more than it has been to this point.

--along with this one (http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2011/08/11/study-more-educated-tend-to-be-more-religious-by-some-measures/):

«People tend to become less religious as they become more educated, right? Not necessarily, according to a new study.

After analyzing data from a large national survey, University of Nebraska-Lincoln sociologist Philip Schwadel found that people actually tend to become more religious - by some definitions, at least - as they further their education.

“It all falls down to what you consider to be religious,” said Schwadel, an assistant professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. “If it’s simply attending religious services, then no. Highly educated people are not less religious; in fact, they’re more religious.”

“But if it’s saying the Bible is the literal word of God and saying that only one religion is the true religion, then they are less religious,” he continued.

Schwadel used data from the highly regarded General Social Survey, a cumulative and nationally representative survey conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago biannually since 1972.

Social scientists rely heavily on the “gold standard” General Social Survey, which provides cumulative data collected regularly between 1972 and 2010.

His study will be published in an upcoming edition of the journal Review of Religious Research.

Schwadel found that with each additional year of education:

– The likelihood of attending religious services increased 15%.

– The likelihood of reading the Bible at least occasionally increased by 9%.

– The likelihood of switching to a mainline Protestant denomination - Episcopal, Lutheran, Presbyterian USA or United Methodist - increased by 13%.»

You want erudite and sharp people involved in the apologetics of Christian orthodoxy, because the issues of apologetics have become increasingly fluid and complex.  However, many of those people won’t be signing on to the job when their liberal or errant views of the authority, historicity, and inerrancy of the Scriptures are like those of unbelievers.

Finally, here is one more thing to think about (http://phys.org/news/2011-08-americans-religion.html):

While religious service attendance has decreased for all white Americans since the early 1970s, the rate of decline has been more than twice as high for those without college degrees compared to those who graduated from college, according to new research to be presented at the 106th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association.

I think we would be either naive or untruthful to deny that those without college degrees generally are simpler and more gullible than those who have the degrees.  Accordingly, there will likely remain a place in apologetics where Christian apologists need not have an equivalent of an AA in History, Philosophy or Biblical Studies to deal exhaustively with all counter-Christianity arguments that an unbeliever might raise in a dialogue about Christianity.

Wednesday Links

In any case anyone missed these entries at Triablogue, here they are:

Triablogue: Seeing is disbelieving

Triablogue: Explaining away miracles

They will probably come in handy some day, if not now.  Meanwhile, hopefully everyone has been following the news with reports of what has been happening with the IRS and the “Department of Justice.”  Not good news at all….

Ezekiel

Ezekiel, chapters 40 to 48 are to be taken literally, supposedly: Literally Reading Ezekiel 40-48 | hipandthigh (Cf. Triablogue: Literal events, figurative depictions)

Ezekiel, chapters 38 and 39 are to be taken literally, or are they? Triablogue: Gog and Magog 

If Ezekiel, chapters 38 and 39 are subject to some degree of figurative interpretation, then chapters 40-48 also take a place along the slippery slope. Where, for example, is the very high mountain near Jerusalem? (Riddleblog - The Latest Post - Eschatology Q & A -- What About Ezekiel's Vision of the Temple (Ezekiel 40-48)?

In the process, premillennialism and dispensationalism become questionable; however, by the same token some objections to the apologetical outreach of Messianic Jews also become questionable. For instance, some of the items of Mark S’ list--repeated and re-posed time and again on Yahoo! Answers--hinge on a strict literal interpretation of such passages: Where in the Tanakh do Jews reference when they deny Jesus was the Messiah? - Yahoo! Answers.

And yes, all of the information above is yet another reminder that the world is not a simple place.

Sean McDowell offers some good thoughts on some objections to apologetics as well as some advice to avoid falling into some of the difficulties McDowell brings up.

Why Apologetics Has a Bad Name

By: Sean McDowell

This article first appeared in Christian Research Journal, volume 35, number 03 (2012). For further information or to subscribe to the Christian Research Journal go to: http://www.equip.org

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I love apologetics! Anyone who has heard me speak, sat in my class, read any of my books, or spent more than twenty minutes with me knows that I believe deeply in the importance of defending the Christian faith. And as a reader of the CHRISTIAN RESEARCH JOURNAL, I assume you do, too. Pastor and author Timothy Keller says one of the big issues facing the church today is the need for a renewal of apologetics. Keller says apologetics is important for two reasons.¹

First, Christians in the West will soon be facing missionaries from around the world. While loving communities are important, he says that we also need to be prepared to converse thoughtfully with people of differing worldviews.

Second, there is a vacuum in Western secular thought. The enlightenment faith in science and progress has ended, and according to Keller, postmodernism is seen as a dead end, too. This is why Keller concludes, “There is a real opening, apologetically, in reaching out to thoughtful non-Christians, especially the younger, socially conscious ones.”

And yet Keller points out something that I have been thinking about for some time, namely that there is a lot of resistance right now among younger evangelical leaders toward apologetics. Why do so many people continue to resist and criticize it? I haven’t seen any solid biblical reasons for rejecting apologetics. After all, Jesus was an apologist (John 5:31–47), Paul clearly used apologetics (Acts 17), Peter encouraged people to be able to defend their views (1 Pet. 3:15), and early church fathers such as Justin Martyr and Ignatius regularly used apologetics. Concern must lie elsewhere. My experience tells me that the problem is not with apologetics per se, but with either apologists—the people who practice apologetics—or with a misunderstanding about the task of apologetics.

HOW APOLOGISTS GIVE
APOLOGETICS A BAD NAME

The following are some humble thoughts from my research and experience as to why apologetics has a bad name and how we can correct it. The reasons are separated into two categories: this first grouping deals with the behavior of apologists and the one that follows addresses people’s understanding of Christianity and culture. Some of these objections are legitimate while others are illegitimate, yet both need to be addressed to bring apologetics into the church today effectively.

Apologists Often Overstate Their Case

There is a huge temptation to overstate the evidence for the Bible, Intelligent Design, theresurrection of Jesus, or any other apologetic issue. I have succumbed to this myself. In our eagerness to convince nonbelievers, or our desire to strengthen fellow Christians, we can all fall prey to the temptation to state things more certainly than they may be. In 2009 my father and I wrote a book on the resurrection called Evidence for the Resurrection. One of the editors wanted to use the tagline “overwhelming evidence” in the subtitle. But I disagreed. Can the evidence for any event two thousand years ago really be overwhelming? In our information age, people have access to counterarguments and varying perspectives at the tip of their fingers. We also live in a skeptical age where people who say things with dogmatism are often considered suspect. This does not mean the evidence for Christianity is not compelling. It is. But there are smart, thoughtful people that disagree. And we must acknowledge this, or we’ll set up people—especially young people—for failure.

Apologists Often Do Not Speak with
Gentleness, Love, and Respect

Recently I had a public debate on the question of God and morality.² As part of my preparation, I watched many debates on the subject. Although I won’t mention any names, there were a handful of Christian debaters that honestly made me cringe at how they treated their opponents. One debater (the head of a well-known apologetics ministry that will remain anonymous) demeaned and personally attacked his opponent, a former Christian. I showed the video to my wife and she too was appalled at his antics and behavior. But it’s not just public figures that act this way. We probably all have an example of some overly eager apologist who was unnecessarily argumentative rather than loving. If this is you, please stop, because you are giving Christianity and apologetics an unnecessarily bad name. I often tell my students that if they can’t speak the truth in love, then don’t even bother to speak truth.

Apologists Often Are Not Emotionally Healthy

Youth Specialties president Mark Matlock wrote a compelling essay about apologetics and emotional develop ment.³ In it, he argued that apologetics often attracts people who have been emotionally hurt, and in turn, who use apologetics to hurt other people. He’s absolutely right. As the saying famously goes, “Hurt people hurt people.” There is power in knowledge. And many people seek power by gaining more information so they can control and even humiliate other people. If you are an apologist, I encourage you to ask yourself some deep questions: Why (honestly) are you an apologist? Is your heart genuinely broken for non-Christians? Do you pray for humility and guidance in your research and conversations with both Christians and non-Christians? I hope so.

Apologetics Often Is Done in a Cold, Mechanical,
and Rationalistic Manner

Many of us think of apologetics as the impersonal deliverance of facts meant to convince people rationally that Christianity is true—as if people are like the alien “Vulcans” of Star Trek fame that live solely by reason! Apologetics is often void of emotion, passion, and good, old-fashioned storytelling. Apologetics is often seen as a narrow discipline for lawyers and doctors. But this is not apologetics. It does (or should) engage the mind but through the heart, imagination, and emotions. C. S. Lewis beautifully modeled this approach with his use of fiction. Insofar as apologetics is viewed as simply rationalistic, it will fail to captivate people.

Apologists Often Are Intellectually Elitist

Let me ask you a question. In your recent apologetics or evangelistic encounters, how many times have you unnecessarily dropped words like, weltanschauung, ontological, or cosmological? I’m not saying these words aren’t important. Of course they are. Precision and clarity are hugely important, especially for apologists and philosophers. But why do you use such words? Is it to make yourself sound smart and sophisticated? Or is it truly to help others out? My father often told me to remember K-I-S-S, which stands for “Keep It Simple, Stupid.” Sometimes the “big” words we use in apologetics circles can turn others off and detract from our effectiveness. In fact, many people in the church don’t even know what “apologetics” means! While I am all for using precise words to communicate truths clearly, let’s try to focus on communicating effectively with those around us rather than impressing them with our knowledge.

HOW PEOPLE’S UNDERSTANDING OF CHRISTIANITY AND CULTURE GIVES APOLOGETICS A BAD NAME

These final two objections are not about apologists but related to how people in our culture tend to think about Christianity and culture. Nevertheless, these two misunderstandings are prevalent reasons why apologetics is often put down.

Apologetics Is about the Mind,
but Faith Is Considered about the Heart

One of the most common objections I get when teaching apologetics to Christians is that evidence for God minimizes the necessity of faith. In other words, the more reasons we have for Christianity, the less room there is for faith. Many Christians view faith as either believing something without evidence or believing something that goes against the evidence. The New Atheists have also taken this route, criticizing Christianity as blind, irrational, and stupid. If faith really is opposed to reason, as many Christians and non-Christians think, then apologetics is quite obviously unnecessary. Why would we reason about something that is solely a matter of the heart? The problem is that this is not the biblical view. Faith is best understood as trusting in God because He has shown Himself to be reliable and trustworthy.⁴ While many religions downplay the importance of reason, Christianity elevates it. Jesus never called His followers to exercise blind faith. He said to love God with your heart, soul, and mind.⁵ In my experience, teaching the biblical dynamic between faith and reason is a helpful way to minimize unwarranted dismissal of apologetics.

Apologetics Is Considered Irrelevant
in Our Postmodern Culture

In his book Postmodern Youth Ministry, Tony Jones begins by sharing an evangelistic encounter that changed his world. This encounter involved him sharing C. S. Lewis’s trilemma argument for the Lordship of Jesus with a nonbeliever. The girl responded, “Okay, for you he’s Lord of all creation for everyone.” In other words, Jesus may be his truth, but He is not the universal truth. Jones was left speechless. He concluded that Western culture had undergone an entire epistemological shift from modernism to postmodernism. According to Jones and many others, we have entered a postmodern period in which apologetics is no longer relevant. What we need to do is share our narrative and invite people into it.

Lee Strobel encountered this attitude when he first wrote The Case for Christ. One of the scholars he interviewed told him it was a great idea, but that no one would buy his book. Why not? According to the scholar, we are in a postmodern culture where people no longer care about the historical evidence for Jesus. Ironically, though, the largest group of people who have contacted Strobel and shared that his book led them to Christ has been sixteen– to twenty-four-year-olds, the age group that should be most postmodern.⁶

William Lane Craig says the idea that we live in a postmodern culture is misguided. In his cover story forChristianity Today, he said, “This sort of thinking is guilty of a disastrous misdiagnosis of contemporary culture. The idea that we live in a postmodern culture is a myth. In fact, a postmodern culture is an impossibility; it would be utterly unlivable. People are not relativistic when it comes to matters of science, engineering, and technology; rather, they are relativistic and pluralistic in matters of religion and ethics. But, of course, that’s not postmodernism; that’s modernism! That’s just old-line verificationism, which held that anything you can’t prove with your five senses is a matter of personal taste. We live in a culture that remains deeply modernist.”⁷ And yet the belief that we live in a postmodern culture is a significant reason why many hold that apologetics is offensive and ineffective.

WHAT NEEDS TO HAPPEN NEXT

These are a few of the reasons why apologetics has a bad name. I’m sure there are many more. Our best response to the objections that have to do with the nature of apologetics today is to educate the church. We should be teaching in our churches, youth groups, Christian schools, and families about the biblical understanding of faith and how to do apologetics in our so-called “postmodern” culture.

But our response to the objections that reflect on us personally is more difficult. We need to look honestly within and ask ourselves some tough questions: Do I overstate my case? Do I speak with gentleness and love? Am I emotionally healthy? Am I overly rational in my apologetics? Do I use sophisticated words when simple ones will do?

Apologetics is desperately needed today. For the sake of the next generation, and an unbelieving culture, let’s do apologetics with humility and love. Imagine the impact if the church really took apologetics to heart. I get goose bumps just thinking about it.

Sean McDowell graduated summa cum laude from Talbot Theological Seminary with a double master’s degree in philosophy and theology. He teaches Bible at Capistrano Valley Christian Schools, is a nationally recognized speaker, and has authored many articles and books, including the coauthored Is God Just a Human Invention? And Seventeen Other Questions Raised by the New Atheists (Kregel, 2010).

Follow-up on MLK and "The Optional Jesus"

Let’s go back to what Dr. King was saying, as quoted in 11/25/09 blog post. From Google Books and page 189 of The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr, Volumes 2-3:

    Concerning the work of Christ the two reformers stressed a substitutionary theory of atonement. They maintained that Christ actually took the place of sinners in the sight of God, and as a substitutee suffered the punishment that was due to men. But all of this is based on a false view of personality. Merit and guilt are not transferable from one person to another. They are inalienable from personality. Moreover, on moral grounds, a person cannot be punished in the place of another.

Actually, two things that are false are (a) the denial of the fact that guilt is transferable from one person to another; and (b) the denial of the fact that a person can on moral grounds be punished in the place of another.

Whose law or whose moral rules have you broken when you do something that is wrong? Answer: you have broken God’s law. Since it is God who is the offended party in this case, does he not have the right to forgive and to excuse the offenders as he will? Answer: of course he does. And suppose that I were to stand up for someone else--in practically any case of a rule’s having been broken--and say “Punish me instead of him. I’ll take the rap instead of him.” Regardless of whether the person who actually did the crime could or should be excused, am I not worthy of punishment if I willingly offer to be punished in someone’s stead? It seems to me that I am in fact worthy of punishment if that is what I insist on having.  (Notice, meanwhile, that this idea certainly is not far-gone if the scribes and Pharisees of Matthew 23.29-36 and Luke 11.45-51 are worthy of punishment in virtue of their claiming to be descendants of those who persecuted the prophets of old.) Therefore, if I offer to be punished instead then I am worthy of punishment.

Moreover, if I am worthy of punishment for a particular wrongdoing, then I also bear guilt of this particular act. Of course, the words “guilt” or “guilty” in this case would clearly carry a different meaning than it carries in the English colloquial phrase “guilty of sb,” which in turn means he did the crime, and in the phrase “feelings of guilt,” which simply speaks of feelings of culpability. So if I bring worthiness of punishment upon myself by my intercession for someone who actually did the crime, then I have brought guilt upon myself. For what else is guilt, according to the sense of the term that Dr. King uses above? Therefore, if guilt is not transferable from one person to another, we have seen at least that guilt of one person’s act of wrongdoing can become a property or quality held by another person.

Yet the guilt of one person’s act of wrongdoing can in fact virtually or exactly be transferred from one person to another. Whose law or whose moral rules have you broken when you do something that is wrong? Answer: you have broken God’s law. Since it is God who is the offended party in this case, does he not have the right to forgive and to excuse the offenders as he will? Answer: yes. Now suppose that I were to stand up for someone else, saying, “Punish me instead of him. I’ll take the rap instead of him.” If the divine punishment that I now bring upon myself were sufficient to demonstrate the degree to which God takes evil acts seriously or were sufficient to appease God’s wrath or anger, then what would be the point in punishing a second person? With that said, it is entirely conceivable that the punishment of one particular person could be effective such that punishment of a second party becomes unnecessary. And guess what: that is more or less what the Bible teaches us. For it informs us in no uncertain terms that the punishment of the transgressors was upon Christ (Isaiah 53) and that sinners who will believe in Christ are forgiven and excused such that their guilt becomes no more. Therefore, the guilt of one party ceases to exist while apparently one party freely brings guilt upon himself and is punished in order to spare the first party (Matthew 20.28; John 10.11-18).

Then again, perhaps Dr. King would object to all of this, saying, “Oh no, this won’t do at all. The person who actually sinned: he should be the one to be punished for the crime. All the people who have done me wrong in life: why should they be let off the hook while someone who did not commit their evil actions is punished for what they did?” The objection is that those who actually commit wrongdoings should be punished, not necessarily those who bear guilt of those actions. However, if one will stop to think about it then it becomes clear that not all those who have done wrong necessarily deserve to be punished. After all, even after God has forgiven any sinner for what that sinner has done the fact remains that this sinner has done wrong at some particular time in the past, an example being that Peter’s denial of Christ is a matter of public record. Peter and the other apostles of Christ did wrong, yet they do not deserve punishment, given that their sins were forgiven. Therefore, not all of those who have done wrong necessarily deserve to be punished. Therefore, we can say this of the individuals who personally sinned against Dr. King: what they sinned against was God’s property (Ps 24.1, Rom 9, Rom 11.36) and God will avenge himself as he will (Romans 12.19-20).

Reasons for Christian Apologetics

A reminder of what is at stake when it comes to Christian apologetics and the lack thereof:

What is Apologetics? An Outline | Why do Apologetics | Who does Apologetics | Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry

Eight reasons why we need apologetics | Purpose of apologetics | Why use apologetics | Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry

Not listed among Slick’s proof texts of the necessity of apologetics are these: 1 Timothy 6.1-2 and Titus 2.9-10.  Semi-Pelagian apologists should especially love these two passages since they apparently are consonant with idea that slick advertising can bring about repentance and faith.  In any case, the two texts apparently support the idea that Christians or Christian teaching should, at worst, be only minimally offensive to unbelievers.

As a side note, and interestingly enough, one may notice that according to those two texts it was particular rejection of slavery that would have been offensive to unbelievers of the time and place in which the apostle Paul lived--the opposite of what critics of Christianity now object to when they charge that Christianity supports chattel slavery.  Of course, if one will make more than a superficial comparison and contrast between Roman-era slavery and modern slavery, then he should discover that motivations and circumstances behind the two institutions are quite different.  That is what they should discover, yet we live in a world where people are lazy and have their own particular agendas, do we not?

Re: Huckabee on the Newtown massacre

Triablogue: Huckabee on the Newtown massacre

Additional thoughts:

1) Then again, isn’t God mentioned in the pledge of allegiance which students make at the beginning of the school day?

2) Sadly I cannot think of the Scripture which Dr. Ross mentioned long ago which seemed to suggest that early deaths are actions of mercy or relief: relatively beneficial things.  Nevertheless, bear in mind that even young people who have met a terrifying or violent to their lives are people who will not have to suffer illness and disease, or experience an increasing amount of decay and poor health associated with aging, or suffer any of the grief or pitfalls that people experience as they pass from one age to the next or from one stage of life to the next.

History and Supposed Defeat: A Fireside Chat

It is written:

The one who states his case first seems right,
until the other comes and examines him.  [Proverbs 18.17, ESV]

This proverb is, of course, correct and it is something which we can all observe in modern times and in our own observations of people around us.  Consider the way in which people are quick to adopt dumb conspiracy theories.  (And notice immediately that I qualify the phrase “conspiracy theories,” as not to suggest that all of such theories are inherently or necessarily dumb.)  Any person with the IQ of a high school graduate can poke a dozen logical holes in each one of these theories, yet foolish people invent these claims and even more foolish people adopt them; many of us are among them.  

Why do we accept these claims?  It’s because on this occasion you thought for yourself.  You figured something out for yourself.  You got one over on the people who tried to get over on you and pull the wool over your eyes.  Meanwhile, you didn’t accept the theory as a matter of implicit trust, as with lessons and indoctrination at school, at church or on TV; instead, you investigated the matter and reasoned through it personally.

In fact, if you are a person with a rebellious streak, you’ll latch right onto any new movement of philosophy, theology, analysis or political thought.  Likewise, if you are one of those people who is not happy unless you are “righteously” indignant at something, you’ll latch right onto any new movement of philosophy, theology, analysis or political thought.  For this is what people do and how people operate.

What this means is that it will always be necessary to re-teach, re-explain and re-instill basic truths of Christianity and advanced truths of biblical teachings and a biblical worldview.  Reformed theology once was prevalent in the Protestant world.  It later receded and was replaced by the re-analysis of the Remonstrants and by the post-Arminian theology that dominates today: a form of Arminianism which unwittingly borrows from Reformed thought.  Yet as a matter of mere conincidence or not, Reformed theology began to experience an upswing as Internet use became popular in America.  So history swings back and forth like a pendulum, which makes some of the effects of one’s labor to be temporary in nature.

Meanwhile, Calvinistic teachings were themselves reflected in the words and statements of righteous people, saints and apostles within the pages of the Old and New Testament.  Of course, the co-existence of heterodoxy was recorded in those same documents and existed alongside the apostles of the early church before these men were even dead; this helps to shed light on how Calvinistic teachings could go the way of dinosaurs and fail to re-emerge in earnest until the time of the Reformers.  Things change, effects are not permanent, and so the truth must constantly be re-taught, re-explained, and re-instilled.

Though this sounds like a recipe for unending and meaningless labor, it is in fact good news on a sentimental level.  Suppose you’re someone who is tired of how outwardly corrupt and evil our society has become over the past several decades.  Well, reprobates and sinners will always be among us, but this does not mean that common grace won’t possibly be given to them such that people stop being as evil as they currently are.  Remember what happened to Israel and Judah before and after they were sent into exile.  Just before they were kicked out of the Promised Land they were mostly an outwardly evil people with little regard for the law of Moses.  After the exile people in Promised Land overall at least pretended to hold the law of Moses in high regard, hence NT accounts of the power of the Pharisees, Sadducees, and what was really in people’s hearts at the time (e.g. Matthew 23.27-28; Mark 7.1-23).  One is inclined to believe that the sort of reasoning against idolatry that we see in the Prophetic writings of the OT (e.g. Isa 44.9-20; Jer 10.1-5) played a role in this.

What this means is that even the modern Western world, which has largely abandoned religious life and biblical moral principles, could always undergo the sort of transformation that Jewish society underwent during the Exilic and post-Exilic periods.  It may well be that the zeitgeist of the next generation of Westerners is a backlash against minimalist ethics, against the idea that life without “spirituality” is worth living, and against the idea that classic Judeo-Christian values were ever worthy of being rejected.  If people will call atheism into question, if people will question the philosophy of science and presuppositions of the same which are used to argue against biblical teachings, and if people will reason with people believe and do all the wrong things, perhaps God will match these efforts with the blessings of common or particular grace....

Stated in another way: let falsehood become the popular and dominant worldview of everyone.  After this happens, the teaching and pedagogical technique of such falsehood increasingly treats the falsehood as a mere axiom or intuitional truth that one dare not attempt to prove in great detail because it is just so obvious.  When the powers that be become slackers, that is when their beliefs come into question, as we consider Proverbs 18.17.  That’s why much of America now hates capitalism, to cite an example.

So in the end everyone wins.  To win well and with a minimal number of losses is always important though.

No Good in Theological Debates?

I was listening to a sermon recently and the pastor made a comment that caused a bit of concern (though I’m not sure this is the best word). I have heard similar comments made before, and often, from different churches and leaders. The pastor said something to the effect of, ‘I have seen no good come from a theological debate. We should instead just love Jesus and study the Word.’ He also mentioned that theological debate is divisive and can lead to self righteousness.

I am trying to give him the benefit of the doubt, so I am going to assume he doesn’t fully mean there is no value to debate since he also mentioned that it is important to offer arguments to others. Maybe he meant quarrelsome debate. However, I wanted to offer a few thoughts on his comments, since it is one I have dealt with in the past. The challenge in this, ironically, is to do it such a way as to avoid the label divisive or self righteous. I’ll do my best.

1) Just because you can see no value in something does not mean there is no value or that someone else does not see the value.

                I like math and I think it is useful beyond simply answering the question in front of you. It helps with critical thinking skills and more. Many folks do not see the value, though it is there. For years, I did not like history; it took a long time to see or appreciate the value in it.  While we may not always see the value in something, it does not mean the value is not there.

2) Just because someone does something poorly does not mean we ought not to engage in it.

                Marriage, driving, parenting, communication, relationships, loving God, loving others, preaching, apologetics, debate, etc…Many folks completely mess up these things, myself included, on a daily basis. This does not mean we ought to abandon them. Instead, we must work on doing them well. Many folks come from a family of dysfunctional relationships (who doesn’t? J)- I still wanted to get married and have children. But I knew it was going to take work to do it well. I knew there were certain things I did not want for my relationship. So, I learned from folks that did it well and tried not to make the same mistakes.

3) Unity does not mean we always agree. Debating theology does not always mean being divisive just to be divisive- put another way- Dividing truth from error is not always bad.

                Like it or not good theology does divide. But sometimes our error will have worse results than division. If I say I love Jesus, I need to be sure of a few things about Him (ie…theology). If I am wrong about some of the details of who He is, this could have eternal implications. Even if I just want to ‘love Jesus and study the Word’. Mormons, some New Age folks, and others could say the same thing and still not be a believer.

                Just as we must be careful not to treat ‘nonessentials’ as the most important thing, we must also be careful not to think that if an issue is not explicitly the Gospel that it is not important. Many issues have implications beyond the immediate, but have some level of importance. (ex…baptism, church governance, methods of evangelism, worship music, the sovereignty of God vs. man, Biblical interpretation, etc)

                On the formal side of debate folks like Ravi Zacharius, Greg Koukl, William Lane Craig, James White and many other godly men have participated in public debates that have been very helpful, even if not for those directly involved. Koukl calls the value in this- ricochet evangelism. What he means is that sometimes we may never persuade the person we are talking to; sometimes those who may be “listening in” may learn something valuable, even if it only to learn how to deal with those we may disagree with. (I have found this can be the case with many online interactions as well)

 Debate, discussion (even heated), or thinking deeply about controversial theological matters can be done well or poorly.

                As I said above, I want to give the pastor the benefit of the doubt. It may have just been a throw away comment that was not clearly qualified, which is understandable. However, the American Church has long neglected the intellectual life. And many Christians feel like they can never bring up a contrary view for fear they could be, or have been, unfairly labeled divisive. And just for questioning, discussing or debating important issues about the God of the Bible.

                God is bigger than our doubts; He is bigger than our questions; He is bigger than when we mess up. Thank the Lord. Even when we mess up our marriages, theological discussions, and any other human interactions. Thank the Lord. He still saves people in spite of us. Thank the Lord. The Gospel even covers us when we do things poorly. Dare I say, thank the Lord? But it doesn’t always mean we ought to give up those things. Strive, instead, to do them well.

Re: "Innocence of Muslims"

The irony of the video’s title is lost on no one but the people who are out there killing other people and trashing their property.  Still, a timeline of recent events and a reminder of the CARMs and AOMins of the Internet:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innocence_of_Muslims
http://carm.org/islam
http://www.aomin.org/aoblog/

Unanswered Prayer and Christian Apologetics

Yahoo! Answers as a whole is a joke yet is more tolerable than the propaganda...er...news wing of the Yahoo! network of websites. Anyway, enough commentary. An old question from there:

Why do some some Christians blame the individual for unanswered prayer?

So according to some - we are to blame for the unansered prayer ?
do some have nothng else but the repetitive "sometimes the answer is no"
ok I don't thnk I've heard - well sometimes the answer is yes lol
I wouid think answered prayer is a circumstance not a one word answer with 3 choices
is that limiting god lol ??

And the “Best Answer” is:

Because, according to Christians, you have to have faith in order for your prayers to be answered.

Personally, I find it VERY difficult to believe that out of the millions of amputees on this planet, not a single one of them had enough "faith" to be heard by their god. But, hey, if it gets them through their day....eh?

It may be wise to harbor such disbelief in this case. Regardless of what the average Christian says on this matter, the Scriptures themselves have something different to say. For example:

40 Thou hast also given me the necks of mine enemies; that I might destroy them that hate me. 41 They cried, but [there was] none to save [them: even] unto the LORD, but he answered them not. (Psalm 18.40-41)

The context of the two verses raises two questions. First, if it is the case that to grant the petition of one person logically or by its very nature runs contrary to the granting of a foregoing petition of someone else, why should anyone expect the second request to be granted of God? Secondly, why should anyone believe that God grants the petitions or requests of people who do not obey his commands? After all, it is not just Psalm 18.41 that calls for us to think twice about asking God for anything if we are evil. For it is written elsewhere:

He that turneth away his ear from hearing the law, even his prayer [shall be] abomination. (Proverb 28.9)

Likewise, ye husbands, dwell with [them] according to knowledge, giving honour unto the wife, as unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life; that your prayers be not hindered. (1 Peter 3.7)

For the eyes of the Lord [are] over the righteous, and his ears [are open] unto their prayers: but the face of the Lord [is] against them that do evil. (1 Peter 3.12)

Some people should blame themselves for unanswered prayers on account of things for which those same people can be blamed. Besides, obedience and faith are not the only parts of the equation: there is also something to be said of persistence, per Luke 18.1-8. So, how about a new list of possible divine answers to prayer: Yes, No, Not Yet, and Did Somebody Say Something?

Apologetics and Theology: A Christian Thinktank

I’m not sure that I have mentioned this website before now. In any case, here is a link to A Christian Thinktank. This site was around when I first got on the Internet ages ago. Even at that time the author of the site had published a ton of work there, which means that long ago the man had already mastered the arts of efficiency and multi-tasking.

Do I agree with everything Glenn Miller says there? No. Does Miller always manage to reach proofs and argumentative conclusions that would prove useful to Christian apologists? No, and instead much of his work plays more like one’s thinking aloud as opposed to proving much of anything specific. Nevertheless, Miller lays the necessary groundwork for many apologetical inquiries and enterprises; he also mentions and cites many outside literary resources that one will want to consider in doing the work of Christian apologetics.

Oh, the Profound Wisdom of Yahoo! Answers

This recent question posted in the Travel > US > NYC section of Y!A was interesting: How do I help stop same sex marriage in New York?!?

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If people lack the intelligence to recognize poor attempts at trolling or satire for what they are, should we be surprised when people are duped by anything else?

If someone wants to start calling someone else a “bible thumper” when no one has even quoted or cited chapter and verse, should anyone be surprised the next time someone starts falsely attributing things to you or anyone else?

And if moral views are not to be imposed upon others--whether legally or otherwise--then do some of the respondents in question believe that White business owners have the right to refuse service to Black people? Were civil rights laws of yesteryear wrong to put an end to having Black patrons of White-owned restaurants eat outside on the street?

Finally, do those who reflexively start hollering “Judge not...” know which part of the Bible they think they’re quoting, much less know the meaning and context of that passage?

All of this is indicative of the secular climate in which Western Christianity now finds itself. That climate is also one which shows that the modern, progressive mind has as much good sense as people four thousand years ago who still lived in mud huts and worshipped graven images.

**************

As for the “gay agenda” that was mentioned in one of the answers, I’m looking forward to the days when technology catches up with sci-fi and can finally produce an android like Data from Star Trek: TNG. When Data and Tasha Yar fall head over heels for each other and decide to marry, will people not finally figure out the meaning of words such as “simulation,” “emulation,” and “analogy”?

John 3.5 and the Obvious

Well, Mr. Finnell has lately exhibited enough signs of Functional Apologetical Madness to warrant my attention and to serve as a lesson for others. For now, let’s just focus on the November 28 blog post, which is only one example of how apologists sometimes try too hard to argue a certain point.

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How many times have we read somewhere, “Tomatoes are not vegetables; they’re fruit!” When we have encountered this claim, we have dealt with someone who perhaps fails to realize that the average person doesn’t give a rip about fine structural distinctions of the average fruit and average veggies and doesn’t give a rip about the range of recorded historical intensions of the words “fruit” and “vegatable.” Instead, if it’s a plant-like thing that tends to be served like veggies, it’s a veggie per vernacular language convention; if it’s a plant-like thing that is watery like watermelon and tends to be eaten whole while in hand, it’s a fruit per vernacular language convention. And that’s the point: average Joes speak like average Joes, not scientists.

How many times have we read somewhere, “Jackrabbits are not rabbits; they’re hares!” When we have encountered this claim, we have dealt with someone who perhaps fails to realize that the average person doesn’t give a rip about fine structural distinctions and behavioral distinctions of rabbits and hares or the range of recorded historical intensions of the words “rabbit” and “hare.” Instead, pretty much if it hops and has long ears, it’s a rabbit: period, or per vernacular intensions of the word “rabbit.” And that is the point: laypersons speak like laypersons, not scientists.

Meanwhile, guess what: the Bible was written by and for individuals who speak like average persons and not modern scientists. Don’t believe me? What then are we to make of passages such as Leviticus, chapter 11 where insects--which we all know to have six legs--suddenly have just four legs? That’s right: no one in the time of Moses made the taxinomical distinctions of modern science.

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In the same vein, who truly cares about esoteric distinctions of (distilled) water and amniotic fluid any more than we care enough about such things to insist that “watery eyes” are not watery but eyes filled with lipids, proteins, mucal secretions, and also some water? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tears;) )

No one but an anal retentive scientist, doctor, nerd or Campbellite apologist could possibly care about such things. Bear in mind, meanwhile, that the idea that the water mentioned in John 3.5 is amniotic fluid is not something that non-Campbellites just plucked out of the sky or invented out of nowhere. Notice in the John 3 text that Christ first speaks of being “born again" and does not switch to the language of being “born of water” until Nicodemus brings up the language of emerging from his “mother’s womb”! Furthermore, would it not be apt of Christ to utilize Nicodemus’ mention of natural birth in order to contrast man’s fallen nature and the nature of regenerate persons to speak of matters of salvation--especially considering the apostle Paul’s extensive lessons in his epistles on the importance of being regenerate vs. being a slave to the flesh?

Don’t play the game of linguistic anthropology, grammar, pragmatics and discourse analysis if you don’t remember the rules.