Ben Witherington comments on an attitude of skepticism on his blog in an entry titled Justification by Doubt. Dr. Witherington makes a number of good points, but I think the topic at a minimum needs more comment. I’d like to suggest you read his entire post before you read mine. I’m going to quote his conclusion, but you need to read his entire post for context.
Skepticism is no more scholarly than gullibility. But they both have one thing in common
Chris will be posting a series of entries here dealing with the Consider Christianity series. One of the purposes of my publishing company, Energion Publications is to publish materials that start conversations. As a small publisher, I think it’s useful for me to help start the conversations. Chris has been reading the books, and he disagrees with a number of things in them, so I have invited him to present some of these issues in a series of posts. I haven’t put a limit on it. I’m expecting this conversation to be frank and vigorous. I’ll let Chris introduce himself in more detail as he goes along.
Let me remind everyone of my comments policy. I remove spam and anything that appears likely to get me in legal trouble or will get my rated ‘X’. If you stay away from those limitations, you are free to express yourself with some vigor.
I have also set aside some copies of Elgin’s books, both volumes and both study guides, for bloggers who want to get involved in the discussion. I haven’t decided yet on what basis to hand them out, but if you want to comment to this post or e-mail me early with a good reason that you should be one of the folks to get free copies, I’ll certainly give it consideration. The rules that I know of will be that you have a blog on which you comment on religious issues, from any perspective, and that you promise that you will comment on the books on your blog. I know also that I will absolutely not limit the free books to those who are likely to review them favorably. I would like to see bloggers from several perspectives look at these issues. There’s a lot of material in the two volumes, over 400 pages all told, and a number of interesting questions in the study guides.
I’ll come up with detailed rules and then publicize this further at a later date.
Have fun!
I have to ask myself why we do apologetics. It seems to me that it just brings our religion into disrepute and at best makes us look at best a set of idiots and at worst a set of liars. It just isn’t possible to argue it as being rational without a set of unprovable assumptions. I grant that anyone who’s read Godel can criticise scientific rationalism on exactly the same basis. Sadly, most haven’t
Who are we seeking to convince? We aren’t going to convince any scientific rationalists. They have a different set of unprovable assumptions, which they aren’t going to abandon in a hurry.
The term “preaching to the choir” springs to mind. I’t’s easy, but it ain’t much use
This has been a critique of Elgin Hushbeck’s “Consider Christianity” series, which will continue (sorry Elgin!)
I’ve been discussing essentials of Christianity, as I see them, and emphasizing the doctrine of the incarnation. In the process I’ve mentioned implementing and expressing doctrines. What do I mean by those two terms?
First, I do not regard the expression and the implementation of the doctrine to be part of the essentials. I believe that our implementation and expression of any idea will be limited at best and may be quite flawed. We do not always know best how to express our love, for example. Recently my wife and I were teaching for a weekend at a church, and one of the members recalled an experience. She told us that a woman had visited her church, and that numerous people had gone up to her, greeted her, and done their best to make her feel welcome. At some point, the woman told one of the folks that she really wanted the opportunity to experience the worship service without being bothered so much. Now let’s assume that the visitor was being honest. In this case a number of church members expressed their love sincerely and to the best of their ability, but the message received by the visitor was something different. We aren’t omniscient; things like this will occur.
Let me look briefly at the incarnation, its expression and implementation.
I’ve been talking about the incarnation and the two laws, and placing the concept of love at the center of Christianity. There are those who think that preaching love is somehow a weak form of Christianity, and a soft form of ethics. “All you need is love” is not regarded as a particularly profound message. “There’s lots more to it than just love,” I’ve been told.
But I don’t think so. I think love requires some definition, because not everything we call love actually is. There are lots of details required to implement love. But love is the key, and love is anything but easy.
My pastor this morning referred to the “cliche of ‘What Would Jesus Do?’” And indeed WWJD has become a cliche, with just about anything you might want to justify being explained as, of course, precisely what Jesus would do. And in practice WWJD has become something of a cliche, and unfortunately, in general people claim that Jesus would do whatever it was they wanted to do anyhow.
But what would Jesus actually do? Well, we can get some idea from the gospel of John. (This message is scattered throughout scripture, but I’m using the passage in which it is most clearly stated.) Jesus gave up his life for his friends. And then he gave a command:
12This is my command, that you love one another just as I loved you. 13Nobody has greater love than this, that he lays down his life for his friends. 14You are my friends if you do that which I command you. — John 15:12-14 (TFBV, or see the CEV using BibleGateway.com)
What would Jesus do? Well, he did give his life for his friends. And he did provide that to his disciples as a definition of love, of the love that they were to carry out.
Now which is easier?
I think the easy road out is option ‘a’. We would really rather not be confronted with what Jesus actually would do in most circumstances.
But that, I believe, is the challenge of the gospel.
The Telegraph reports that some evangelicals in Kenya are trying to sideline exhibits on the evolution of human beings from Kenya’s national museum. In a story, Evangelicals urge museum to hide man’s ancestors, it is reported that the churches want those exhibits removed and intend a campaign to persuade the museum to do so.
Folks, this is a way that Christians can prove themselves to be stupid and dishonest at one and the same time. Can there be any good reason to hide the evidence or to try to prevent people from seeing it? This is not an action that will be advantageous to the kingdom of God. It is simply “putting a stumbling block” in front of those who might otherwise be inclined to accept the gospel message.
I sincerely hope that Kenya’s national museum will resist this campaign, and that the Christian leaders involved will think better of this activity.
I’ve just created a blog aggregator specifically for Christian blogs. This is the result of recent questions from people looking for more moderate Christian presence on the internet. While I am happy to work with conservative or liberal groups whenever that is possible, I’d like to have a single place to look for commentary and information from a moderate Christian perspective.
I still intend to participate in the Methodist blogosphere, and have actually been spending more time looking at the various Methodist/Wesleyan blogs, commenting, and sometimes linking to them. But this aggregator is for moderates of a variety of theological traditions.
Right now I only have blogs with which I am involved in the aggregator, but I hope this will change substantially over the next few days. To be included, go to the Moderate Christian Blog Aggregator, take a look around, then follow the link to Moderate Christian Blog Aggregator Standards, fill in the form and submit it. I’ll get to adding you to this list quickly.
34Now when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they approached him together, 35and one of them tested him by asking him, 36“Teacher, Which commandment is the greatest one in the Torah?” 37Jesus replied, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart, and with your whole being’ {Deuteronomy 6:5} and with your whole mind. 38This is the greatest and first commandment. 39And the second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ {Leviticus 19:18} 40On these two commands all the law and the prophets hang. — Matthew 22:34-40 (TFBV)
I hope I’m getting across the idea in this series (starting with Christian Essentials: Incarnation at the Center) that rather than a list of doctrines and of standards I prefer a hierarchy. Both logically and in terms of importance various teachings fall into a hierarchy. At the center of all of this I see the notion of incarnation. I’m going to discuss my understanding of many other doctrines later, including ones I regard as non-essentials, and I believe in each case we’ll find the incarnation shedding light on how that doctrine should be understood.
In a post titled A Very Inconvenient Truth, Ben Witherington throws his weight behind global warming and our need to do something about it. I’m glad he has chosen to do so, and not just because I consider his commentary on Revelation to be one of the best available.
And therein seems to lie the problem for some people. One commenter on his blog has called him to account for commenting on something in which he is not an expert. That is a charge that could also be frequently aimed at me, because I comment on many things. In fact, I see my call and mission as a popularizer, so I am almost always reporting things I have found in the works of the actual experts. I’m not terribly comfortable with being an expert. At one time I discovered that there were people at my church who were saying simply that if I could read Hebrew and Greek, and I believed the Bible, then they could too. Of course that bypasses the issue of what, precisely, I believe about the Bible, and of whether one person’s belief or lack of it is an adequate foundation for one’s faith.
But on global warming and a host of other issues the people ultimately making the decisions are going to be non-experts. In our republican system of government, we elect people who make the decisions, but we generally choose those people based on their view on particular issues, as well as our general impression of them as people.
But why should a person like Dr. Witherington, who is clearly expert in New Testament Studies, give his weight to one side of an issue on which he is not at all expert? I think there are several excellent reasons:
We should not decide what position to take based on opinions by people who are not experts. But such people often help deal with peripheral issues.
Dr. Witherington says:
The changing of the minds of many conservative Christians is perhaps a clear ensign that we are nearly to the point of recognizing we are dealing with an undeniable truth. Christians are sadly often the last to get religion about worldly things that have been obvious to others for many years. I say this to our shame.
Because some conservative Christians have been in opposition to most actions related to global warming, Dr. Witherington, a conservative Christian himself is well placed to challenge that view. Perhaps Christians are often the last to get the word, but Christian leaders need to be ready to stand out from the crowd and say, “We have been wrong, and we need to take action.” At a minimum, we need to realize that the global warming debate is about facts and the strategies to deal with them, and is one on which Christians can disagree.
But there are some principles at stake. Dr. Witherington asks a series of questions:
What if there will be no escape from the problems of this world for the foreseeable future because Jesus told us to first evangelize all the language groups before the second coming? What if God expects us to properly tend and care for his good and beautiful garden-like creation until his Son comes back? What if when he returns instead he finds us sticking our heads in the sand, and ignoring the many ways we have bruised and abused the earth he created for our eco-system? What if our otherworldly redemption theology involves a gross distortion of the Biblical creation theology?
I suggest you go to his article to see his answers. Those are all topics on which is is expert.
John at Locusts and Honey called my attention to Mike Lamson’s post Getting rid of “missionary”. Many of my liberal and non-Christian friends are very surprised to discover that I’m not willing to abandon terms like “mission,” “missionary,” and “evangelism.” I think there are two potential problems with simply changing our terminology. First, we can change the term and keep whatever bad behavior was associated with it, in which case we just revisit the issue in a few years to change terms again. Second, we can change the term because we don’t want to keep up with the good behavior that should be associated with the term.
It reminds me of the Bible translation term “dynamic equivalence,” a term that has been abandoned by most writers on Bible translation (I think so, at least; I haven’t done a survey). But to me the term conveys something that needs to be accomplished in the process of translation. I think that many who disparaged the term were actually hostile to what it meant. Finding a more congenial term didn’t make people do better things; it just changed the words, and in some cases I think it allowed people to claim that they were doing a better job of translation while they kept on doing the same old thing.
In the case of missionary and mission we have a set of terms that have acquired some baggage. We have missionaries calling on people to convert or die, we have missionaries following behind armies, or destroying cultures by their bad behavior. But the fact that there are bad missions and bad missionaries doesn’t mean that there are no missions that need to be accomplished, and that we don’t need people to accomplish them. And those people would be missionaries.
I am the son of missionaries. My father is an MD, and my mother an RN, and they served in medical missions both at home (Canada and the United States), and abroad (Mexico and South America). Caring for the sick was a mission for them, and they were missionaries.
As Christians we are kingdom people. As kingdom people we always have a mission, which is to be witnesses. The particular form that may take will be different from time to time. We are not called to convert people, because that is something that the Holy Spirit will do. But the Holy Spirit will do converting around one’s witnessing. Sometimes witnessing is simply a matter of living one’s life. Sometimes it’s a matter of talking. But in all cases it’s a matter of being a kingdom person.
Now obnoxious people have given the term missionary a dirty name, but the kingdom person will still be on a mission, a mission to be the salt of the earth, to be that little bit of leaven that will change lives and communities. I don’t think changing the term is necessary or useful. I think we do need to change our thinking. But as often as not the problem for mainline Christians especially is not that we are too pushy, i.e. we shine our light in people’s faces, but more that we hide such light as we have under a bushel. A sense of mission would be really helpful to many mainline churches.
In fact, I would suggest that this is the one piece of theology that is most decisive in making mainline churches shrink and more conservative or charismatic churches grow. In the mainline we’ve tended to lose any sense of mission, any sense of direction, any sense that we have anything worth sharing.
I’m talking about the incarnation in another series of posts. Isn’t living a life worthy of the incarnation a mission worth taking on? Isn’t helping someone else to find the power of the resurrection in their own spiritual and emotional life a worthwhile mission? It’s not about being pushy or obnoxious. It’s not about being critical or talking down to people. It’s not about threatening them with the fires of hell, which aren’t under your control in any case. It’s simply about having God’s love in your life, knowing that it’s important, and making it real for others who need it.
