Evangelical Resources

January 10, 2007

Without God, Gall Is Permitted

10:09 pm | Naturalism | Apologetics | Comments: 0

Sam Schulman has written a worthwhile commentary on the new atheists:

What is new about the new atheists? It’s not their arguments. Spend as much time as you like with a pile of the recent anti-religion books, but you won’t encounter a single point you didn’t hear in your freshman dormitory. It’s their tone that is novel. Belief, in their eyes, is not just misguided but contemptible, the product of provincial minds, the mark of people who need to be told how to think and how to vote–both of which, the new atheists assure us, they do in lockstep with the pope and Jerry Falwell.

…

For the new atheists, believing in God is a form of stupidity, which sets off their own intelligence. They write as if they were the first to discover that biblical miracles are improbable, that Parson Weems was a fabulist, that religion is full of superstition. They write as if great minds had never before wrestled with the big questions of creation, moral law and the contending versions of revealed truth. They argue as if these questions are easily answered by their own blunt materialism. Most of all, they assume that no intelligent, reflective person could ever defend religion rather than dismiss it. The reviewer of Dr. Dawkins’s volume in a recent New York Review of Books noted his unwillingness to take theology seriously, a starting point for any considered debate over religion.

The faith that the new atheists describe is a simple-minded parody. It is impossible to see within it what might have preoccupied great artists and thinkers like Homer, Milton, Michelangelo, Newton and Spinoza–let alone Aquinas, Dr. Johnson, Kierkegaard, Goya, Cardinal Newman, Reinhold Niebuhr or, for that matter, Albert Einstein. But to pass over this deeper faith–the kind that engaged the great minds of Western history–is to diminish the loss of faith too. The new atheists are separated from the old by their shallowness.

The Art/Science of Anime/Manga

9:58 pm | Anime | Comments: 0

Tonight marked the first night for LIT 3311: The Art/Science of Anime/Manga, a class being offered for the first time this spring at UT Dallas. As a result, I intend to be posting more regularly on issues related to Japanese anime and manga and its unusual relationship with western culture.

For people outside Japan, it is difficult to understand the cultural popularity of manga. Manga is basically a generic term for Japanese comic books, but manga differs significantly from its American counterpart in two important ways. First, manga is not child’s play: Manga comics are released for all ages and different social groups, and is not restricted to just young pre-teens as it is in the United States. Second, manga is not like a small magazine: manga is produced in large volumes in Japan, and it isn’t unusual to find manga in volumes roughly equivalent to a phone book being delivered on a monthly basis.

Although many people receive their first introduction to this Japanese pop-art by way of anime - the term by which Japanese animations are known in the West - anime productions are much small in number and revenues than manga. Indeed, most anime has its genesis in manga comics. Many studios are unwilling to spend the time developing a feature length anime with material that hasn’t first been proven in the manga marketplace.

In the United States, exposure to these Japanese art forms began shortly after the release of the VCR which made it possible for recordings of Japanese cartoons to begin arriving in the States. The Amiga computer further encouraged the popularity of anime by providing an inexpensive means of subtitling works. In the early 1990s, several companies began licensing Japanese titles for export into the United States, starting with children’s shows where licensing was inexpensive. This did not prove to be very lucrative, however, so in order to boost sales hentai (erotica) titles were also licensed for U.S. distribution.

This led to a confusing and disturbing problem for many U.S. households as children’s anime and hentai were not distinguished from each other. An extreme erotic anime would appear on a shelf next to an anime for children, with no indication of the difference between the two. Many of the early articles were therefore reactionary against anime as it was beginning its distribution in the United States. The genres of anime and manga are much more broad than children’s cartoons and hentai, so the dangers that are implicit in manga and anime are really no different than the dangers of DVDs (since there are violent and pornographic DVDs on the market) or of the Internet (since there are many less than wholesome websites on the Internet).

There has been much concern about the content of anime by many family and Christian organizations as a result. Much of this concern is legitimate. Anime and manga are not neutral media, any more than music, television, movies, or even paperback novels are necessarily good. However, at the same time these has been an unfavorable view toward anime in particular that while understandable is not entirely justified. Anime and manga represent a powerful media for communicating artistic themes, and can be used in ways that are either excellent or debauched. Having the wisdom to discern the difference is the key.

January 9, 2007

Urbana 2006 - Chad Thompson

2:37 pm | Homosexuality | Comments: 0

Audio recordings of Chad Thompson speaking to over 2,000 students at the Urbana 2006 conference have been posted on iTunes as well as on Chad’s website “Loving Homosexuals as Jesus Would.”

The talk is about 45 minutes long followed by an interesting Q&A session. The MP3 can be streamed or downloaded here and a postcast is available here.

If you haven’t heard Chad speak before, or you haven’t read his book or any of his articles, this is a great opportunity to understand how Christians can show grace and love to the homosexual community - a grace and love that is desperately needed but tragically is so often lacking.

January 7, 2007

Unprotected: A Campus Psychiatrist Reveals How Political Correctness in Her Profession Endangers Every Student

8:50 pm | Announcement | Comments: 1

The following article is a must read for students on University campuses and parents of current students. It briefly reviews a new book called “Unprotected” which focuses on the excesses of sexual liberation being promoted through student health centers at University campuses - feel free to pass the article along. Sadly, in my experience most people - particularly parents - who are distant from the Universities have no idea how morally corrupt most campus counseling services are and how aggressively they promote sexuality as liberation to students seeking help. The tragedy is that students looking for help and healing from emotional trauma, listening to the fallacious advise of student health service workers, will suffer tremendous emotional trauma and possibly much worse.

Unprotected
Review by Mona Charen, January 5, 2007

What does Dr. Grossman believe that is so dangerous to admit? Well, start with ordinary sex. She believes that casual, promiscuous sex is tough on many women. They are hard-wired to bond with those they have sex with (the hormone oxytocin is implicated), and she sees countless female students reporting stress, eating disorders and even depression for reasons they cannot understand. After all, the world sells them on the notion that sex is pure recreation, that the “hook-up” culture is natural and even empowering to women, and that love and sex are two completely different things.

…

American campuses are, for the most part, laboratories of liberalism. You want an abortion? No problem. But if you grieve afterward, your pain is ignored or delegitimized. Dr. Grossman does not contest that most women may be emotionally fine after undergoing an abortion, but notes that a significant minority, perhaps 20 percent, do suffer depression and other symptoms afterward. Yet the politically correct position is to deny this medical reality.

No effort is spared to teach young people about the dangers of smoking, saturated fat, “unsafe sex” and even osteoporosis. But no one tells young women that if they want to be mothers they would do well to plan their careers around the unavoidable biological fact of declining fertility after age 35. The establishment encourages the fiction that women can expect to remain fertile well into their 40s.

It’s sad that this book is so necessary, but all the more welcome for that. Buy it for yourself, for your sons, but especially for your daughters.

Open letter calls on Local Churches/Living Stream Ministry to Renounce Doctrines

8:43 pm | Announcement | Apologetics | Comments: 0

This is a major answer to prayer with regard to the ongoing situation with the Local Church. Please pass the URLs and information attached along.

An Open Letter: To the Leadership of Living Stream Ministry and the “Local Churches”
http://www.open-letter.org/

More than 60 evangelical Christian scholars and ministry leaders from seven nations have signed an unprecedented open letter asking the leadership of the “local churches” and Living Stream Ministry to withdraw unorthodox statements by their founder, Witness Lee. The letter also calls on the movement’s leaders to renounce their decades-long practice of using lawsuits and threatened litigation to respond to criticism and settle disputes with Christian organizations and individuals.

December 29, 2006

Urbana 2006 and Mission through the Lens of AIDS

9:43 pm | Uncategorized | Comments: 2

This week I am at the Urbana 2006 Mission Conference, being held this year in St. Louis Missouri. It has been an interesting time to meet students from around the world and talk with them about their missional intentions that will have a major impact upon the direction of their lives. Many different tracks with seminars being held all over the St. Louis area - most of which are downtown and within walking distance of each other. Earlier today I attended a lecture by Chad Thompson to a standing room only crowd on the subject of “Loving Homosexuals as Jesus Would” - which is great because as much as I have talked about his work, I’ve never actually heard him speak. A couple of years ago I had preordered a copy of his book “Loving Homosexuals as Jesus Would” as we were planning a major campus based outreach to the LGBT community at the University.

Even the dinners have been specially themed to emphasize certain things from the conference - tonight’s dinner was a simple bowl of food resembling oatmeal - a corn-soy blend - that represents all the food that someone living at the subsistence level in Africa and suffering from AIDS might be fortunate to have. A small card told the story of Ndondana in Zimbabwe, who cannot adequately work his land due to the advance of AIDS in his body, even with the help of the children in his family. This emphasizes one of the tracks of the conference - Mission Through the Lens of AIDS - and money saved through the meal is being contributed to the Urbana Offering Fund.

This is not a new development unique to Urbana. One of the recent journalistic treatments of growing interest in AIDS by Christians is Nina Shapiro’s article in the Seattle Weekly, “The AIDS Evangelists”, which focuses attention on the efforts of Rich Stearns, head of World Visions American division, in his efforts of “waking Christians to the fight against AIDS.” Other programs, such as drawing attention of Christian to World AIDS Day this past December 1st, and large scale awareness programs of the ONE Campaign are mentioned as well.

However, this newfound interest of Christians with the AIDS epidemic (with the vast majority of attention being given to AIDS on the African continent) is troubling to me for a number of reasons. It appears that this new effort against AIDS is part of a crusading mentality in the Christian church. Responding to a crisis, Christians are seeking to tackle AIDS by their own strength rather than relying upon the gospel - and doing great harm in the process.

The first matter to contend with is the use of James 1:27 as a proof-text for Christian AIDS support. Most Christians are familiar with this passage where James makes clear in no uncertain terms: “Pure and undefiled religion before God the Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their misfortune.” Often missed is that the passage continues: “and to keep oneself unstained by the world.” While it is true that AIDS has caused tremendous suffering to widows and orphans, are those touched by the AIDS epidemic more deserving of God’s grace than those that are widowed and orphaned by war, genocide, famine, and other diseases? AIDS is a politically charged disease, without a doubt, and its importance is magnified not so much by the damage it has inflicted, but by the political priorities of our day. By allowing ourselves to make priorities on who we should serve, we as Christians have become stained by the world in this matter, and should go back to ministering to the widow and orphan without making special exception for a politically charged disease. Christians should not allow politics to determine their mission. Despite protests to the contrary, this is exactly what has happened.

The fact is that AIDS should not be the first priority of the Christian missionary - obviously, the gospel should be. But beyond that, it seems that it does not deserve second priority, either, as AIDS is only one of the many problems being faced by the African continent, and its scope has been overstated:

How AIDS in Africa Was Overstated: Reliance on Data From Urban Prenatal Clinics Skewed Early Projections

Kigali, Rwanda - Researchers said nearly two decades ago that this tiny country was part of an AIDS Belt stretching across the midsection of Africa, a place so infected with a new, incurable disease that, in the hardest-hit places, one in three working-age adults were already doomed to die of it.

But AIDS deaths on the predicted scale never arrived here, government health officials say. A new national study illustrates why: The rate of HIV infection among Rwandans ages 15 to 49 is 3 percent, according to the study, enough to qualify as a major health problem but not nearly the national catastrophe once predicted.

The new data suggest the rate never reached the 30 percent estimated by some early researchers, nor the nearly 13 percent given by the United Nations in 1998.

[…]

Years of HIV overestimates, researchers say, flowed from the long-held assumption that the extent of infection among pregnant women who attended prenatal clinics provided a rough proxy for the rate among all working-age adults in a country. Working age was usually defined as 15 to 49. These rates also were among the only nationwide data available for many years, especially in Africa, where health tracking was generally rudimentary.

The new studies show, however, that these earlier estimates were skewed in favor of young, sexually active women in the urban areas that had prenatal clinics. Researchers now know that the HIV rate among these women tends to be higher than among the general population.

On matters of AIDS prevention, trench lines have already been dug between those favoring safe sex approaches (such as condoms) and those who will not tolerate mixed messages and want only abstinence taught. A middle ground position that has developed is the ABC approach, emphasizing Abstinence, Being Faithful, and Condoms, and attempts to appease those on different sides of the debate. However all three positions have a fatal flaw. Air dropping condoms into Africa will not cure AIDS. But neither will teaching them the ABCs or scaring Africans into abstinence with the fear of disease. The reason is simple: Neither approach adequately addresses the epidemiology of AIDS. HIV is not spread primarily by sexual contact.

For many people, to argue that HIV does not spread primarily through sexual intercourse represents a major paradigm shift. People recoil in shock and horror at the suggestion that the transmission of HIV could have other causes. Such a conclusion flies in the face of conventional wisdom, and begs that we soberly consider the case:

Michael Fumento Why is HIV so prevalent in Africa?
Fumento points out the following:

“The chief reason it’s so hard to spread HIV vaginally is that, as biopsies of vaginal and cervical tissue show, the virus is unable to penetrate or infect healthy vaginal or cervical tissue. Various sexually transmitted diseases allow vaginal HIV infection, but even those appear to increase the risk only by about 2-4 times.”

Fumento asks “[I]f vaginal intercourse can’t explain the awful African epidemic, what can?” After discussing several possible vectors for the spread of HIV, Fumento notes the following:

Yet almost certainly greater – and more controllable – contributors to the African epidemic are “contaminated punctures from such sources as medical injections, dental injections, surgical procedures, drawing as well as injecting blood, and rehydration through IV tubes,” says Brody.

You don’t even need to go to a clinic to be injected with HIV: Almost two-thirds of 360 homes visited in sub-Saharan Africa had medical injection equipment that was apparently shared by family members. This, says Brody, can explain why both a husband and wife will be infected.

For those who care to look, there are many indicators that punctures play a huge role in the spread of disease. For example, during the 1990s HIV increased in Zimbabwe at approximately 12 percent annually, even as condom use increased and sexually transmitted infections rapidly fell.

Or consider that in a review of nine African studies, HIV prevalence in inpatient children ranged from 8.2% to 63% – as many as three times the prevalence in women who’d given birth. If the kids didn’t get the virus from their mothers or from sex, whence its origin? Investigations of large clinical outbreaks in Russia, Romania, and Libya demonstrate HIV can be readily transmitted through pediatric health care.

Lacking adequate aseptic techniques, the most obvious means to prevent the transmission of HIV is to make readily available single use sterile needles to clinics throughout Africa in large enough numbers that their use will be widely adopted. Such needles - already inexpensive in the West - are designed to be used once only. After an injection the needle will not function and can be treated as medical waste. Otherwise, needles will continue to be “recycled” but improperly sterilized, and HIV spread will continue unabated. Lacking this and other proper aseptic techniques, HIV transmission and AIDS cases will continue no matter how much effort is put in educating people in the ABC’s.

None can doubt the sincerity and determination of the many Evangelicals who have championed the cause against AIDS, from Rich Stearns to Bono to Rick and Kay Warren. But sincerity and determination, while admirable traits in themselves, can never achieve the wisdom necessary to properly direct effort. To put it simply, Evangelicals have started caring about AIDS in Africa with all their hearts and all their strength, but have left their minds out of it - and this does nothing to glorify God.

World Vision will bear much responsibility in not taking the epidemiological issues in AIDS spread seriously enough, and thereby diverting essential resources into wasteful programs that will prove ineffective. It is a burden that has been further complicated by donations by the Gates and Buffets that will further perpetuate the situation for many years to come. For myself, the scandal of Evangelicalism’s treatment of AIDS will be in how that despite their great effort, they will fall far short of their goals, and possibly make the tragedy of AIDS in Africa far worse for their good intentions.

December 9, 2006

December 10th: International Human Rights Day

9:29 am | Announcement | Comments: 0

December 10 marks the celebration of International Human Rights Day, so chose as the date of the original United Nations adoption of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights. While human rights issues touch every individual life, Christians have long had a special interest in the defense of human dignity. This is particularly true in the case of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, which was architected and written by Christians - namely members of the Christian Democratic party and parties sympathetic to them.

Outlining the development of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, Dr. Allan Carlson notes here the following:

“[An] enduring legacy of postwar Christian Democracy was the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on December 10, 1948. The key architects of this document were: Charles Malik, an Arab Christian Democrat from Lebanon, who served in 1948 both as secretary of the Commission on Human Rights and as president of the U.N.’s Economic and Social Council; and Rene Cassin, a French specialist in international law who, while himself Jewish, was highly sympathetic toward postwar Christian Democracy. As one historian has phrased it, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is “largely identical” with the worldview expressed in Christian Democracy.”

In a speech delivered in 2000, Dr. Carlson expands on this:

This worldview had especial influence in the Economic and Social Council, which oversaw all U.N. work on issues of social policy and human rights, including the Commission on Human Rights, established in 1946. Named to head the Department of Social Affairs was Professor Henri Laugier of France, a figure sympathetic to the Christian Democratic cause. More important, though, was Charles Habib Malik of Lebanon, who became President of ECOSOC in the critical year, 1948, and who actively served on The Commission on Human Rights.

Malik was an Arab Christian with a French education and a philosopher wholly in tune with the new Christian Democratic currents. A rich Christian imagery ran through his speeches and writings, above all in his view that “there is a direct relationship between peacemaking and having the right relationship to God–the ground of being and existence.” Echoing the words of the French Christian Democratic martyr Gilbert Dru, Malik called for a fundamental Western Revolution, with “The Living God” at its core. Turning upside down the ideas of the German nihilist philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, he added: “Nietzscheans humbly grounding themselves in God is what this moment of history really needs.” According to insiders, Malik would be a key actor in crafting the language of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Another central player was Rene Cassin, a lawyer skilled in international law, also from France. As a member of the staff of The Commission on Human Rights, Cassin took the lead role in producing successive drafts of the Universal Declaration. While himself Jewish, Cassin was sympathetic to the French MRP, and to the goals of Christian Democracy. In his own speeches and essays, he emphasized the derivation of the human rights idea from Holy Scripture. The Jews, inspired by their idea of “one God, father of all men,” held “rather early a vivid repugnance to serfdom.” Jesus and Paul taught that “there is no more distinction between Jew and Gentile, between free men and slaves. All form one large family, one human family.” Cassin emphasized that the 18^th Century Human Rights Declarations (such as the French Declaration of the Rights of Man) exalted individualism, which had opened the way to abuses of liberty. Drawing directly from Christian Democratic doctrine, Cassin argued that rights and liberties of individuals must be understood “as embedded within social groups and bonds” such as “family, household, vocation, city, and nation.”

The French delegation to the Commission on Human Rights was active on the Drafting Committee for the Universal Declaration, and included several Christian Democrats, as did the delegations from Chile and Belgium. Prof. Giraud of France joined Cassin on the staff. Meanwhile, Robert Schuman, as French Foreign Minister, insured a strong Christian Democratic influence on the process from the domain of the Security Council.

[…]

Approved by the U.N. General Assembly on December 10, 1948, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was, in one historian’s judgment, “largely identical” with the value system expressed in the Christian Democratic worldview. From its use of “laicized” language of Divine origin (such as the “inherent dignity” and “inalienable rights” of man) to the use of the term “natural” to define the family to the guarantee of a “right to life” to the affirmation of a family wage, the Universal Declaration might be seen as a great triumph of the new Christian Democratic worldview.

[…]

Indeed, the only Christian Democratic theme lacking is an open affirmation of the Deity of Creation. Several members of the drafting committee, led by Charles Malik, sought inclusion of this idea. But in the end, they agreed to more universal language that implied, rather than named, God.

In sum, the Christian Democratic worldview dominated discussion of “social policy” and “human rights policy” during the founding years of the United Nations, 1946 to 1948, and it remained an intellectual force there for at least another decade. While emergence of the “Cold War” put the brake on further development of “human rights” documents, the promised international covenants on “Economic, Social and Cultural Rights” and “Civil and Political Rights,” finally issued in 1966, still affirmed that “The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society, and is entitled to protection by society and the state.”

Given the Christian background of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, and the legacy that the document continues to represent to the world, it seems appropriate that Christians should take the opportunity on December 10th to recognize the part that Christians have played worldwide in defense of human rights and human dignity.

In recognition of International Human Rights Day, I urge Christians to share with one another the background of the development of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, to read and understand the declaration as proclaimed on December 10th, 1948 and its implications, and to encourage Christians in all walks of life to give thanks and praise to God, who is the Author and Sustainer of humanity from Whom all blessings flow, Amen.

December 2, 2006

On the Alleged Paganism of Christmas

9:37 am | Uncategorized | Comments: 0

We’re coming up on the holidays again, a time where certain claims are made about Christmas being rooted in pagan holidays and festivals, or claims that Christians should refrain from celebrating Christmas due to its allegedly pagan roots. Most often these sorts of claims come up from certain fringe groups in Christianity who are working to convince Christians that Christianity is a pagan holiday and that celebrating it makes them partakers with the demonic. But there is reason to see the alleged borrowing of Christmas from ancient paganism as itself a modern myth:

William K. Tighe, “Calculating Christmas”
Touchstone magazine, December 2003

Many Christians think that Christians celebrate Christ’s birth on December 25th because the church fathers appropriated the date of a pagan festival. Almost no one minds, except for a few groups on the fringes of American Evangelicalism, who seem to think that this makes Christmas itself a pagan festival. But it is perhaps interesting to know that the choice of December 25th is the result of attempts among the earliest Christians to figure out the date of Jesus’ birth based on calendrical calculations that had nothing to do with pagan festivals.

Rather, the pagan festival of the ‘Birth of the Unconquered Son’ instituted by the Roman Emperor Aurelian on 25 December 274, was almost certainly an attempt to create a pagan alternative to a date that was already of some significance to Roman Christians. Thus the ‘pagan origins of Christmas’ is a myth without historical substance.

Similarly, Gene Veith addressed this concern last year in an article in World Magazine:

Gene Edward Veith, “Why December 25? The origin of Christmas had nothing to do with paganism”

But even if Christmas were the result of Christians borrowing from paganism, would that mean that Christians should refuse to be part of it? James Jordan writes satirically on this very subject, by forming a humorous argument against “pagan” Chinese food:

James B. Jordan, “The Menace of Chinese Food”

One of the unrecognized and most deadly evil of modern life’s facets is Chinese food. Most people are wholly unaware of the critical nature of the Chinese food question, and blithely continue to participate in this wicked and dangerous activity: eating Chinese food. … A moment’s reflection by any serious and committed Christian will show transparently why Chinese food must be rejected. Chinese food is an expression of Eastern monism. Not only does it come from the East, the heart of the world’s most sophisticated paganism (which in itself is reason to reject it as dangerous); it also in its very nature and composition reflects the monistic philosophy of the East.

After several paragraphs of satirically arguing against Chinese food, James Jordan comes back to make his point about the absurdity of abandoning Christmas celebrations on the basis of its alleged pagan origins:

The point of this parable can be seen if the reader will read it over again, substituting ‘Christmas’ or ‘Christmas tree’ for ‘Chinese food.’ The arguments against Chinese food appear ridiculous. The notion that Chinese food is idolatrous because people happen to like it is clearly nonsense, as is the silly argument from history.

Hidden in this kind of argumentation is the premise that the Bible is insufficient as a rule of faith and life. We have to add new rules to it. We ought to be guided not only by the Word, but also by what non-Christians are doing. If they like something, such as Christmas, we ought to dislike it. This sets up another rule for conscience beside the Scripture, and undermines the entire faith.

Robert Bowman has a chart on his website detailing and responding to fourteen objections that are brought up against the Christmas holiday:

Robert M. Bowman, Jr. “Christmas: Charting a Christian Perspective”

Worth noting, after this chart there is a discussion of a spectrum of practices of Christmas, ranking them from the practices that are dubious and condemned to the practices that are encouraged and commanded in scripture. I recommend considering this framework in helping to clarify how Christians should participate in cultural celebrations and events.

Likewise, Hampton Keathley has addressed a number of objections to celebrating Christmas on Bible.Org:

J. Hampton Keathley, III, Th.M. “Should Christians Celebrate Christmas?”

Additionally, here is a discussion about what Hampton calls God’s Christmas Tree - the cross of Christ:

J. Hampton Keathley, III, Th.M. “God’s Christmas Tree”

In any case, I hope that you will find this information valuable and will pass it on as appropriate to people who may need it.

August 15, 2006

Nick Pollard on the place of worldview in postmodern apologetics

4:35 am | Emergent Church | Apologetics | Comments: 2

Recently, Scot McKnight posted an entry on his blog on the subject of Emerging Evangelism, in which he stated that “[l]ogic isn’t as effective as it once was.” By implication, we would assume that our primary evangelistic approach should eliminate or at least seriously downplay the place and role of rational argument, subordinating it to subjectivist approaches such as story telling and so forth. However, I believe that the effect is a dehumanizing of the gospel. While subjectivist approaches should have a place in evangelism, dismissing rational and logical approaches to the gospel because “[l]ogic isn’t as effective as it once was” (a suspiciously pragmatic reason for setting them aside) downplays rational humanity in favor of popular, trendy, and often heavy-handed notions of how evangelism should be done. It also ignores the genuine intellectual struggles that people have about Christianity. Nick Pollard, in his book Evangelism Made Slightly Less Difficult: How to Interest People Who Aren’t Interested, makes this observation on why this is an erroneous anthropology. On p. 69-70, speaking about those who would argue against rational approaches to evangelism and apologetics, he says:

They argue that we must accept the conclusions of this increasingly postmodern culture and give up on any concept of worldview or, indeed, rationality. They say that worldview is dead and people no longer think. Therefore, they argue, it is pointless for us to try to help people think about their worldview, since they no longer have one; they just live life on the surface and we must find a way of relating to that.

I am certain that such a sellout to postmodernism is a great mistake. People do have worldviews, and they will continue to hold them. As we have already noted, when we were thinking about postmodernism, the worldviews that people hold are selected on a “mix-and-match” basis. They are muddled up and inconsistent. But they are still there. Similarly, people still think. We are rational beings. Some postmodern theoreticians may argue for the death of rationality (although, strangely, they do this in a rational way). If we are created in the image of God, however, all of us, Christian or non-Christian, modern or postmodern, will continue to think. So we cannot accept the speculative conclusions of postmodernism.

Yet we can (and must) work within the methodology of postmodernism if we really are going to reach people in this culture. Two major characteristics of postmodernism are of particular importance in evangelism: (1) the emphasis on questioning and (2) the displacement of propositional truth in favor of stories. If we are to be effective within this postmodern culture, then, our evangelism must involve the appropriate use of questions and stories. That is not actually anything new; it is the way in which Jesus taught. He made use of questions, often answering one question with another. And he told the greatest stories of all time.

August 12, 2006

Spencer Burke, A Heretic’s Guide to Eternity, and Early Fallout

11:09 pm | Emergent Church | Comments: 3

When Scot McKnight visited Spencer Burke back in July, Spencer gave Scot a copy of his new book, A Heretic’s Guide to Eternity in bound proofs to read and review. Spencer Burke, as most readers here know, is the leading voice behing TheOoze, a website that for years has been at the cutting edge of the emerging conversation. In an earlier post, I commented that I had hope that Spencer Burke would be serious about bridging the gap between the emerging church and the mainstream of Evangelicalism, since he seemed to be leaning more toward a “post-emerging church.” Sadly, my comments were little more than wishful thinking, as Scot McKnight’s review of the manuscript has shown.

Scot McKnight’s review of A Heretic’s Guide to Eternity in four parts is available here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4. It is worth noting that Scot does not give this book a ringing endorsement. If anything, there are a number of things that concern him.

Although the book has not yet been published, a sneak peek can be found on TheOoze, Who Wants to be a Heretic? There is an unfortunate reference to the apocryphal account of Galileo, but I found this comment by one of the readers much more troubling: “I feel like we’re moving from the shallow end of the pool to the deep end… it’s easy and safe to stay where you can stand, but we’re not actually swimming and going anywhere until we get into the deep end and risk drowning…” This is how emerging folks are responding to Burke, as if he were Friedrich Schleiermacher?

This prompted Phil Johnson to post Why “the Emerging Conversation” is Going Nowhere.

The main problem with the dominant Emerging approach to dialogue, debate, Christian fellowship, and truth itself is this: the ground rules for the conversation apparently rule out ever identifying any ideas as heresy (except in the way Spencer Burke employs the term: either in jest, or with a tone of smug arrogance.)

The problem is obvious in Scot McKnight’s review of Burke’s book. McKnight recognizes several serious errors underlying Burke’s universalism. But he can’t seem to bring himself to recognize that Burke’s views are not even legitimately Christian ideas.

In fact, McKnight’s review commences with this: “To begin with, I simply don’t like that he chooses the term heretic to describe himself.” McKnight then argues that in order to qualify as a heretic, a person would have to deny the ancient ecumenical creeds. “And it can almost be reduced to the doctrine of the Trinity (Father, Son, Spirit),” McKnight says.

But even on that count, McKnight is forced to give a less-than-ringing endorsement to Spencer Burke: “As I read this book, I’m not sure that he has denied the Trinity. . . “

Roger Overton posted his comments on a number of problems that he found with Phil’s post:

As much as I tend agree with Phil Johnson, I think there are a number of problems with this post. The foundational problem is that he uses emerging and emergent interchangeably. This mix up leads to another problem- he broad brushes those who claim both labels as heretics.

Phil posted a coda to his original post discussing Roger’s point further:

Apparently, some in the American evangelical mainstream would like to cede the expression “Emergent” to McLaren’s universalist/Socinian/liberal wing of the “missional” movement, and reserve the word “Emerging” for people who are more or less evangelical. (As if it were suddenly possible to make such a neat dichotomy in a movement that has always been deliberately amorphous.)

…

There’s more I could say about this, but here’s the point: It seems to me there’s a heavy dose of “spin” in Mark Driscoll’s taxonomy of Emerging Christianity, and it’s a serious mistake for critics of the movement to adopt Mark Driscoll’s or Ed Stetzer’s perspectives on this issue blithely or uncritically as if these guys have given us the definitive and canonical insiders’ explanation of how the movement breaks down.

It’s an even greater mistake to imagine that the movement as a whole might ever go in the direction Driscoll is leading.

Roger posted Another Response to Phil Johnson, with plenty of followup discussion in the comments there. Some concerns about Marc Driscoll’s views on the atonment prompted a post by Roger, What is Marc Driscoll’s View of Atonement? My friend David M. over at Thomist Tacos for the Soul posted his thoughts about this.

Michael Beasley speaks on behalf of postemergents like myself in his post This is an Emergency:

For myself, I look at it all as a spiritually dangerous emergency.

Sadly, at the center of the Emergent Church movement are some rather disturbing doctrines that are being swirled about. For many within the EC movement, the doctrines of justification by faith, the atonement of Christ, the virgin birth and eternal hell are now open for discussion, debate and even denial. The unofficial leaders of the movement are doing precious little to stem this tide of doctrinal error, and why should they? After all, Brian McLaren cannot deny universalism nor is he sure that homosexuality is a sin; and N.T. Wright offers a version of justification that comports more with the Roman Catholic doctrine of infused righteousness, rather than the Biblical teaching of imputed righteousness. The leaders of the EC movement are not neophites - many of them are well read and highly educated men who have a higher accountability in view of their training and ministry responsibilities.

But then there is, of course, this added factor of those who have become disenchanted with the EC movement’s doctrinal corruptions, and are therefore advocating a different strain of the EC movement - enter the Emerging Movement. Yes, there’s the Emergent Church movement, as well as the Emerging Church movement. Those who are within the Emerging Movement consider themselves as being a part of the larger “Emergent Conversation” (theological fellowship and dialogue of the Emergent Church movement), but who wish to redirect this “conversation” back to a Scriptural platform. I guess that you could say that the Emerging movement wishes to maintain a bridge of dialogue with the broader Emergent movement…

But as some say, the problem with a bridge is that it facilitates two-way traffic.

What is most unsettling to me is this presumption of influence, along with an apparent denial that there is a doctrinal emergency at hand (emergency, as in 911). A great deal of doctrinal heresy is readily brewing at the center of the Emergent Movement, and there are those who want to engage in …a conversation over this?

A conversation????

I have to say that this whole series of posts has been both the cause of much joy and much grief. On the one hand, I am very grateful for Phil Johnson standing up and posting on this issue. But on the other hand, that the emerging conversation has reached this point where flirting with universalism cannot be categorically denounced has left me in deep grieving that we as Christians have willing strayed so far so quickly and for so little.

The emerging church could be a powerful breeze of fresh air that could bring new life into Evangelicalism in the United States. But unfortunately instead of fresh air there is heavy theological pollution coming from the emerging manufacturing centers. The worst polluter by far is Brian McLaren - but to think that he is the only offender is to ignore the problem. Spencer Burke has demonstrated himself to be a very capable manufacturer of theological pollution as well. Indeed, we could make a virtual who’s who list of influential voices in the emerging conversation and how each have contributed to a theologically toxic atmosphere.

Only Marc Driscoll seems to be searching for fresh air. It is an inconvenient truth that theological speculation - not passionate Christ-centered Orthodoxy - is the source of division in the body of Christ. Orthodoxy is a source of unity in the midst of theological speculations that sow division in the body.

Sadly, many in the emerging conversation have accepted the notion that orthodoxy rather than heresy is the source of division in the body. This is the unfortunate effect of theological naivety on the part of so many young emergents. By making Christianity so open to theological speculation, we are merely modeling our churches after Unitarian Universalist fellowships. We may decide, with some reluctance, to hold onto the ancient creeds and affirm the doctrine of the Trinity as the only test for orthodoxy. By doing so, we are merely Trinitarian Universalists. Any doctrinal speculation is allowed so long as it is baptized in Trinitarian language and symbols. Although it may be generous, this type of emerging theology is not Christian Orthodoxy.