Category Archives: theology

philosophy, theology

why i still read the bible

Leave a comment

As with any good book, though I’ve read it before, the hermeneutic circle of life learning and interpretation assures that I will learn something new each time I read it. Literature, because of the human condition does not remain static. The letters on the page do, the books themselves, whether paper or pixels do, but the meaning unfolds in perpetuity with every rereading.

I am not simply saying with the reader response crowd that the meaning resides only in me the reader. Rather, the symbiotic relationship between the static book, myself and the world, assures the persistence of change and development, even improvement and growth. I am not also simply saying with the propositional crowd that the text forces a single meaning on the words, or that we can understand the intent of the writer purely by arranging the words in a logical matrix. Neither myself nor the world are static. There are subtleties that cannot be detected in the interpretative matrices of these extremes. They force damage on the real world, sending us farther away from that reality, mystifying their adherents, preventing contact with reality.

So, the same drama between Heraclitus and Parmenides plays out in the modern world of hermeneutics. Because most of the people I associate with are of the logical sort with respect to the Bible, I am forced to play to the reader response side of the equation to balance out the debate. But I have every reason to believe that both extremes are faulty.

I am having some fun in my classes with the logical crowd, because they seem so certain and trot out their arguments to once-and-for-all fix the problem. But I am also assured that though they trust their reason in such a fashion, they are wrong to do so. There are a few who get the debate without another word, but most are not up to speed. A few are knowledgeably on the Heraclitean side of things, but seem harried, and not up to the argument. It is a much harder argument to grasp, of course, but I am inclined to side with them against the facile certainty of the Parmenideans.

I have more books than I will finish reading in my lifetime. I have purchased them because I believed they might hold some helpful remarks. I have read the introductions to most of them, but the majority have not kept my attention. I have found most useful the fictions I read at nighttime. They are unpretentious narratives that are not weighed down with the necessity of teaching some lesson, or wrestling the reader into a certain form of belief. In that sense they have gained my trust. And, as it turns out, the best of them actually do have a moral lesson. Their best heroes, though they can be faulted for ordinary human frailties, are both capable of learning and taking hits from their enemies. They falter, they fail and often, but not always rise to a better temper. But as with the best of literature, they are affected by their experiences and affect those around them. In a word, they are believable.

The Bible is like that. Like a good narrative, nothing of the foibles of its characters is hidden. They act happily or unhappily as we do. None seem superhuman, even Jesus, but they are all capable of learning and either get up after a fall or not. Peter gets up, Judas Iscariot does not. David gets up, and while learning some things, never learns others. As an example, David is great for some things but poor for others. Nevertheless, reading the narrative, you get which part of the man is to be valued, and which to be avoided. But not all of us avoid the undesirable elements of the biblical characters, and in this lies a secret. We can be confident that though we are weak and misguided, even damaged, that God is both aware of all of it and capable of managing whatever in our lives is redeemable. That’s a pretty good deal. At least that’s the promise of the Scriptures, and one that is not hidden too deeply under the skin of the cultures it is wrapped in.

So I keep reading, hoping that the features of my own life that puzzle me so deeply will find redemptive value in the narrative. That doesn’t mean that I have squared away the narrative, as if I could grasp the entirety by means of a propositional logic, or that life is so chaotic that I couldn’t recognize myself in the confluence of these words and my life, but somewhere in contact with the real world and the real world of others, the layers of my culture and the mystifications of the contemporary narratives would not prevent the redemption of my best parts in contact with the ineffable reality that lies beyond the world.

theology

perfection is a process

Leave a comment

Christ was not yet perfect as a child. At least that’s what Hebrews 2:10 says, “For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering.” (ESV) (pathéma Strong’s: (a) suffering, affliction, (b) passion, emotion, (c) an undergoing, an enduring). The mystery that God would require that Jesus suffer as a means of training is not lost on us who suffer.

But, let’s be clear, suffering for doing wrong is not the same as suffering as training. It is similar in that suffering for doing wrong can teach us a lesson, but it brings us no closer to perfection, since, in some brutish fashion punishment brings us to ground zero in the scheme of things, purifies us to begin again. Tho wounds we sustain, however, debilitate us from achieving possible heights. On some account, pleasures have to be paid back. As John Stuart Mill suggests, the abuse of lower pleasures makes one unfit for higher ones.

The movement toward perfection comes from suffering that comes to humans as strong emotion in conflict, suffering for doing good. As trite as it sounds, we have a saying for that, “No good deed goes unpunished.” But to ennoble the phrase, it is an ordinary experience for humans to be misunderstood, and to be treated badly for good deeds.

Up until the point where Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead, he mostly tells people whom he performs miracles on not to spread the news. Why does he do that? It’s obvious he’s not successful, people tell stories and he becomes famous for doing these things. But there’s a moment of strong emotion before he raises Lazarus from the dead. He raises Lazarus in front of people who will initiate his crucifixion in response. One must wonder at his sense of timing, his knowledge of what must lie ahead. He is not stoic. He must recognize the price he must pay for the designed perfection. In the garden of Gethsemane we are told the emotion was crushing, enough so that he dripped with sweat. Is this the press that brought Christ to perfection? I think so, and I also think that something like this is the thing that brings us to perfection as well. But I think, most of us dodge the necessity of it, not filling our role as humans in the design of God. At least, we do not drink the full cup of it.

Hebrews 6:1 tells us to move on to maturity, to perfection (teleiotés) not going over the axioms of faith again, but moving to their logical conclusion in the action faith requires. The reason why people refuse to grow up is that it requires suffering. The Greek word is one that is part of a constellation of ideas surrounding the belief that there is a future destined for individuals, and in the Bible that is in God, especially in the Church, and only in exceptional cases, outside of it. In general it is to become like Christ in full Christian character. For a person in Christ, in the Church, a further destiny must discovered by each individual. That particular path must be taken in cooperation with God through, again, suffering of strong emotion and perhaps physical stress, harm, or death. However, for Christians in the USA, the suffering does not often lead to death.

The conclusion is that Christ suffered, we will too if we are following him. The puzzle is to sort out whether we deserve the suffering as a consequence of our misuse of the world’s goods, or as a consequence of being a person who is following Christ. And then there is suffering for others, the task that perfection must carry out. It is in this that there is reward for eternity, and not without it.

friends, theology

my friend spencer

2 Comments

My friend Spencer commented on my previous post in Facebook. I quote it here because it is important to address this sort of objection to my dismissal of Calvinism.

Spencer Griffin: Isaac Watts Hymn, “How Sweet and awefull is this place, with Christ within the doors” in its entirety, as an expression of the best of evangelical Calvinism… enjoying the mystery of prayer, which is, after all, where God’s sovereignty and our participation in His Work somehow mix. “People should be converted though our prayers”……and the victorious word of the Gospel!!!! I have been praying to understand how God’s sovereignty infused Edwards and Whitfield to compel men to come to Christ…..The use of people to reach people, what a weak plan Lord! I do not understand God’s ways, its like asking why he let men fall— “there is none that seeks for God” Romans 3:11, and yet the Son of Man came… “in the fullness of time” to seek and to save the lost….through you and me??? how does that work….Good griief!!!! even St. Paul says what appear to be contradictory things on the same page!!!! A world in which contingency surrounds God leaves no room for the wonder of the Gospel any more than does a missapplied Calvinisim that does not pray. But why pray if ultimate contingency surrounds even Jesus…….we need an omnipotent Savior! And scripture says we have one!

I applaud the actions of our brothers and sisters who, inconsistent with TULIP make an effort to seek and save the lost. I have no argument with those who at first (theologically) refusing to do the master’s bidding at last go to do it. I have an argument with those who insincerely preach the love of God to those who they believe are lost by the determination of an almighty God. God to the TULIP is impassable, incapable of any movement in response to our prayers. Yet we know he does respond to prayer, and the best of us prays like they mean it.

I never suggested nor will I that God in Christ is surrounded with contingency. That is a straw man used to argue against any possibility of free will. It is a set of false alternatives: TULIP or absolute contingency. We know more today about the things of our lives that are materially out of our control, yet we are responsible for our behavior implying legitimate freedom. But that freedom is only partial. Jesus suggested we cannot change the color of our hair by willing it. So, being unable to choose in this fashion was never in our hands. TULIP denies that any expression of freedom will change the mind of God.

As I state here and elsewhere, I am not arguing with Calvin or any of his followers’ devotion, or obedience, but the theory he and his followers espoused is just a form of philosophical determinism. Sovereignty does not imply determinism. What a pitiful unqualified god that would have to make people be as he wanted them, and punish others to prove his power. That’s not what we understand as being human, or understand as the loving God.

The point of this exercise is to recognize that God’s purpose in hardening Pharaoh’s heart had everything to do with proving his power to national Israel,(and yes to Pharaoh and the Egyptians) and nothing to do with Pharaoh’s eternal destiny, which, by the way, is never mentioned in scriptures anywhere, even Roman’s 9, though it is assumed he is on his way or already is in hell.

But it wouldn’t even matter if God were surrounded with contingency. Can you imagine him wringing his hands at the infinite possibilities that are out of his control? Nonsense. The God I choose who manages the entire creation, (which, by the way is unimaginably larger than any tiny cosmology our forbears imagined) is capable of managing a few puny humans whom he gave freedom to reject him with. He also gave them freedom to accept, worship, love, and fellowship with him, even though we can’t do the simple magic of changing the color of our hair by our will alone. (Some people really look good in shocking pink or green hair.)

I think the argument about Calvinism as opposed to Arminianism is so over and done with, that some of us hold on to it like some hold to a young earth cosmology. There is better theology, better science, better philosophy available than Calvin or any of his modern cronies have imagined. I would be happy to abandon the project of proving or disproving TULIP as a shibboleth of our allegiance to the living God. But some are so convinced that preserving the debate ensures conservatism, that they fail to challenge the ugly presuppositions that hold it together.

Spencer suggested that the mystery of God using men to bring the good news to a lost and dying world is equal to the mystery of God letting men fall. Look at the assumptions that back this remark. First, God could have prevented us from the “fall.” OK, then we would not be the humans we are today. We would be smart animals, guiltless, cunning, capable. But I answer that the mystery lies in why we are convinced that God had no idea what we would do when he set us on the earth this way. The answer to that is that TULIP wants a vengeful God, a God who made Adam sin so he could punish him. That would be consistent.

The only other answer is that God knew all along that his creation would stray, and that, as Hebrews tells us, provided the savior from the foundation of the world not as a contingency, but as the preparation for salvation that would be required. Why would it be required if God set us up so we would sin? We would be blameless on that account. However, the acts in the garden were freely chosen, (even as ours are) irrespective of the lack of foresight they reveal, so Adam and Eve become morally culpable, and responsible, cannot pay for their sin, and require a savior, which God provides.

Either, the God of the Calvinist could not stop men from falling, making him less than omnipotent. Or, God, as Augustine suggests, gives people freedom as a legitimate, active cause in the world, for which each is responsible.

One of the reasons I reject Calvinism, which I mentioned above, is that the theoretical underpinnings of Calvin’s theology are medieval, scholastic, universalizing, absolute, and mistaken. We have more to work with today, better theology, better philosophy, better science.

We can get more by obeying what Jesus commanded us, than what results from a theologically sophisticated Calvinism. In fact, I argue that we could get the participation of a devoted Edwards or Whitfield without the screwy theology which renders their actions futile attempts at saving people God had already determined were going to hell.

interpretation, rants, theology

why did god harden pharaoh’s heart?

5 Comments

Excuse the lowercase g in the title. It’s a stylistic affectation that I have always used in this blog. (I’m putting off my homework tonight to ruminate about this.) I thought that a bit of musing I made about this subject while I was young could be useful. I have read some of Calvin’s Institutes and found them logically problematic while devotionally stimulating. I have no bones to pick with Calvin himself, but his theories have participated in too many holy wars.

Now to the question: Why did God harden Pharaoh’s heart. To listen to a TULIP Calvinist, God was revealing in Romans 9 that some people are purposively sent to hell to prove a point, and as Jerry Wallis suggests, the sharp edge of a consistent TULIP Calvinist requires the destruction of some people to prove he is God. Immediately, I reject any characterization of God that smacks of pettiness. God doesn’t need any of us to do anything for his glory to be completely full. The God that would condemn some to hell and choose beforehand to bring some to heaven, is just philosophical determinism in sheep’s clothing. I reject it out of hand. I actually reject the god that Calvinism requires. He doesn’t qualify.

So it seems that Pharaoh, on the TULIP’s account is doomed to hell. But I offer an alternative. Reading the Bible through “in a year” this year, I just passed the account in Exodus where Moses recounts the plague events. Over and over Pharaoh rejects Moses’ plea and keeps the Israelis in Egypt. The Bible says that God is the one who hardens Pharaoh’s heart. Does God therefore have a personal vendetta against Pharaoh? Or, does he count Pharaoh among those who are predetermined to go to hell, and so uses him to resist the Israeli’s? After all, who cares about Pharaoh’s soul?

But I think if we examine the story, we see that the purpose of God in hardening Pharaoh’s heart has nothing to do with Pharaoh himself. He is not a sociopath when he mourns the loss of his firstborn. He is actually human. The arrogance of the TULIPs makes them think they know the eternal destination of Pharaoh. They are certain that God’s hardening was personal and that God was getting glory in the negativity of Pharaoh’s circumstance.

I will argue that God hardening Pharaoh’s heart had everything to do with demonstrating to National Israel that the God who they were only peripherally acquainted with, YHWH, was the real and demonstrably sovereign Lord of Creation, not Ra and his pantheon of subordinate gods. We know, since they tried to return to Egypt and built replica’s of Egypt’s gods, that they were henotheists. They were not loyal to YHWH and needed something of a boost in their faith to make the move. God provided that boost by the miracles he did in Egypt and the desert. The demonstration of the plagues was not Pharaoh centered. It was Israel centered.

So where does that leave Pharaoh? Well, just about the same place we are all in. We have sinned; we have hurt and offended the creation, people, and God himself. But, we are redeemable in Christ. These arrogant determinists write Pharaoh into oblivion because of his bad behavior (yes, motivated by God). But which one of us has not done what Pharaoh did on some small scale. In fact the hardening of the TULIP’s heart against those who are obviously damned, looks an awful lot like Pharaoh’s hardened heart against Israel.

I appeal finally to the thief on the cross beside Jesus. Did Pharaoh have a moment of repentance before he died? We’ll never know. Honestly, we won’t, despite all the howling of the TULIPs who condemn themselves by their haughty absolutes and deterministic god. What a sorry lot, even with the devotional appeal of Calvin, and the wonderful propositional logic of their declarations.

Are they going to be saved. I don’t know. Some of them will be, I’ll wager. But I don’t know who of them will be; God knows. Like Socrates, though, I am smart enough to know that I don’t know. I’m not smart enough to know whether I will persist until the end with Christ, even though I think I’m elect, elect in and because of the Son of God.

Finally, I take a page out of C. S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia. In The Last Battle when the Calormene servant of Tash came to the doorway, Aslan let him in because the servant’s faith was more worthy than Tash, his proclaimed god. With respect to mercy, I believe God is generous. With respect to vengeance, I believe God doesn’t wish things to come to that, though he will exact vengeance on those who positively refuse his proffered gift. And though he exacts vengeance on some, I don’t believe it is with joy, or pleasure. Regret is the emotion that I think most closely resembles the disposition of God in that case.

Don’t take me as mean-spirited, I think it is the TULIPs who are. I reserve further criticisms of Calvinism until later. I’ve exposed my soft underbelly quite enough for tonight.

philosophy, politics, theology

self examination

Leave a comment

I am finding that movies and books, even at times music is not enough entertainment to keep me from thinking about myself. I am in the process of recovery still from my dissertation, completed over a year ago. I am smarter, more capable, but as one friend Ray said, “Now that I am a Doctor, people expect more of me.” That’s OK. They do, and the investment of their lives in patience for the fruits of my labor should be worth it.

I think some of the fascination with myself as an object, and a subject, is complicated by the material of my dissertation, (get it here.) Complicated because it is a challenge of truth about the reality of my Christian experience, my married life, my children, and all the other relations that require my time. The critique implied in my work brings a rich dialectic about my life. So it is more entertaining thinking about how I will become a better person than it is thinking about my work. Sometimes, the engine of my critique bowls over all other intended activity.

I remember years ago, while I lived in Alabama, that I began to read SF and adventure novels at night before I went to sleep so that I wouldn’t have to process my day, obsessively mark each detail and make a judgment about it. I’m still reading novels before bed, but I find myself thinking about my relation with the novels, the characters, and the scenarios they are in. There is something instructive in the musings of writers who make their characters dance through a plausible world, especially those great ones who are both so human that their failings are understandable, and so good that their life is to be emulated.

This is the classic setup for an Aristotelian tragedy. But it still works. The good ones struggle to keep their integrity, even if their integrity depends on a dark hope, or an absurd end. The struggle is engaging inside the hope that it will resolve itself without the emergence of our worst selves. Being thrown (Heideggerian thrown-ness) into the world that cares nothing for me, or my local clan, involves making peace in a Stoic way with the things that I cannot change. But that’s not enough.

I’ve been reading Camus’ Myth of Sisyphus and coming to the conclusion that our circumstances, whatever they appear to be are worth more than any mourning we might put into it. The experience itself is its own reward. I’ve also been reading something of the ecstasy of St. Teresa of Avila. Oh my God, I open myself to an experience of being pierced like her. The pain and the transfinite pleasures not available anywhere else. I remember Thomas a Kempis saying, and I paraphrase, “How many of us would not prefer spiritual pleasures over material ones if they were always available to us?” This rhetorical question makes it obvious that we would choose those pleasures, except that they are not readily available, cannot be conjured up, and leave us a slave of our passion for them. One taste and you will be hooked for life. The funny thing is, that ordinary, everyday freedom, that expressed by the wino, techie, lover, or politician, distracts us.

Not a bad metaphor, addiction to Christ. But God wants more of a relationship than the metaphor of addiction can serve. The objective God, the one that can be sequestered in a box, is not one that can be shown to the skeptic. The enduring God needs no proof, nor does he need our services. He is, however, interested in a relationship, and has sacrificed his son to make that possible.

What’s next? Explore! We don’t need someone to tell us that good things come to those who wait. We need to go out and engage our world.

friends, philosophy, theology

people

Leave a comment

Squaring away my social enigmas takes way more time than I want to put into it. I like people, but then I can only take so much of them also. I need times away from people to vegetate, settle, scrub my brain from the influences and interactions. That is not to say I don’t enjoy those interactions, but the social definition of my self is only part of my being. I need time to return to myself, restore, recharge.

So, lately, I have been pretty busy. Work at school, work at work, work at home, etc. I am in the middle of two class preparations for the two classes I teach at Evangel. I take this seriously, and so spend quite a bit of time getting through this material, and creating presentations that are sequential, rational, well ordered, etc. One thing I have had to do is work Saturdays to catch up and keep up. I am grateful for my job, but Saturday work puts me in a deficit for private time. On top of that, social obligations on Saturday stack up to overload my ability to tolerate people. I start to be inconsiderate, even harsh, and to avoid further breakdowns, sequester myself to some private place. It doesn’t always work. There’s a bitter, harsh edge to my personality that needs free space and time to keep tamed.

I think of the Sabbath laws set in place for Judaism, and the requirement of rest for Christians. OK, I am not the religious sort, the sort that takes to laws and controls like a duck to water. But this requirement of rest, of a Sabbath, is sounding more and more like what needs to happen in my life to respond to my busyness.

Having finished my dissertation over a year ago, I am finally getting my feet back on the ground. I’m not running yet, but I am moving. I still find it hard to read interesting things that are not associated with my schoolwork, but that is getting better. Even though it is for SPS, I am enjoying going through another pentecostal manifesto book by Nimi Wariboko The Pentecostal Principle: Ethical Methodology in New Spirit. He is an African. His writing style is not Western, though it is stimulating and powerful. I will be giving a review of the last chapter in the book and a critique at the SPS meeting in 2013.

What does this have to do with people? I am affectionately attached to the people involved in this endeavor. I have committed myself to scholarship and integrity in order to give a fair look at the material I encounter. I have committed myself to these people, the auditors, readers, and writers. There is a certain pressure to an engagement of this sort, and as I have only recently been recovering from my dissertation, I haven’t been able to give my fully-functioning self to this project. There is a certain amount of envy of the accomplished writers and thinkers in this crowd that I have to get over, and often do so successfully, and a certain mental bruise of the effort of my dissertation that persists, and prevents me from moving out vigorously as I have in the past. There is a loss of naiveté that and that cannot be recovered, and a certain fear that my efforts will again sink me into profound mental turmoil. But I am overcoming that fear, and rising to the challenges ahead.

The scholarly crowd deserves much appreciation for their efforts, and I wish to give it to them both in scholarship and thanks. But the relationships are complicated. I have to avoid cynicism while fostering it at the same time. I am aiming at the golden mean of cynical critique. I really think there is one. It is a living philosophy not a dead text.

digital world, family, philosophy, theology

drupal

1 Comment

Gosh, the installation was easy. My server offers it as an easily installable option. Click . . . done! I find that I need to update and advance my web mojo to keep up with one of my clients. So I am spending hours and hours learning how to do stuff I shied away from before.

That’s OK. It is the pathway now between fear and trembling on one hand and dread on the other.

I finished two projects this week that were sort of looming over my head. They were obligations to the academic community I am a part of and had been ignoring. The first, a review of Amos Yong’s book The Spirit of Creation for a journal that included comments about the book and Amos’ response to them. Dread kept me from that one. I couldn’t face the knowledge of that subject for a while, after I had thoroughly indulged myself in it. The second project was reading a book on theology for Brill, title and author’s name were withheld from me so I could review fairly. Good book, interesting thesis, but I don’t know when it will come out. I had forgotten to do it, and an email from the publisher reminded me. So fear and trembling pushed me to finish it.

Drupal, an open source web development system, a CMS. Interesting, simple structure. I am just beginning my journey.

Today I am going to the movies with my Alpha unit in the afternoon, and pick up my spouse from the airport in the evening.

family, philosophy, rants, theology

a better ethos

Leave a comment

I grew up in a house where respect for science was common currency, not unlike many houses in the United States. My mother, before marrying my father, was a research chemist. Both my parents took it as gospel that science and reason give us useful access to the world and its wonders. I grew up believing the earth was ancient and the universe even older. As readers of National Geographic, we all followed the exploits of the Leakey family as they fleshed out a plausible narrative of ancient paleontology. Louis Leakey was both a follower of Darwin and a devout Christian, not an unusual combination in the circles my parents traveled in.

When I became a believer in the early 1970s I began a long and sometimes tortuous relationship with the evangelical church. I had no problem with Jesus, but some of his followers weren’t so happy with me. God, however, saved me in many ways by the blood of Christ and fellowship of the saints. I needed the church and devoted my life to serving God.

My evangelical adoption came with many things as a package deal. Short hair (no big deal, I was in the Air Force anyway,) a literal interpretation of the Bible, and a deep devotion to God. I’m sure you can guess where we are going with this. I adopted with my new family a literal interpretation of the Bible, itself a very modern method, and struggled to reinterpret the world in those terms. I have to say that in my euphoria of early salvation, I glossed over the troubling consequences of literal interpretation and because of my grateful reaction to God I rebuilt my world with a young earth view.

None of my education at Valley Forge Christian College prepared me to face the consequences of such a naïve view of the scripture, though I was learning that not all scripture could be read literally. I did adopt an old earth view during that time, seeing that it was one reasonably supported view in Christianity. The curious thing was that I defended it with a strange logic of scripture. God perceived that a day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day. So, if time was relative to God, then I also would count the six days of creation to be relative. This realization did nothing to dissuade me from literalism, if I could import a reasonable argument to defend what, on the surface, appeared to be true, that the earth looked like it was very old.

I discovered later that the young earth creationists, many of them my brothers and sisters in Christ, also believed that the earth appeared to be very old. What seemed strange to me was that they spent most of their time proposing arguments more gimmicky than mine to prove that the earth was actually very young. I rebuffed their nuances when I realized that they were not as interested in doing science as they were in discrediting it. I started to see those people as one would see a dull witted uncle who still argues that the New Deal of Roosevelt’s era was a bad idea. You still invite him to Thanksgiving dinner but hope nobody brings up politics. My problem is that I like to get him going and ride the excitement, even though sometimes it turns sour. I don’t think he gets it.

When I was doing my doctoral studies at Temple University, I became interested in the history, philosophy, and sociology of science. I discovered that within these disciplines, a critique of science was emerging that at once acknowledged the middle state of our knowledge and the embeddedness of the scientific enterprise within human limitations. Science, on this view, could not declare its findings with certainty, even though it had mastered technologies of many kinds. I found comfort in the realization that unlike the young earth creationists, the scientists, with many exceptions, were able to critique their own work. That seemed to be a much more honest way of engaging the world, and I adopted that ethos wholeheartedly. I hadn’t abandoned Christ, but believed that he would prefer this sort of humility against the principled dishonesty of the young earth creationists. I call it principled, because it resides within a tradition of biblical interpretation that had for a large part been a profitable means of exploring scriptural truth. I call it dishonest because its participants were not interested in the truth of the world any longer, but building a rational citadel against infidels. Their method had become naïve propositional logic and not faith in God.

In order to enter the kingdom of God one must become like a little child. Between the scientists and the young earth creationists, the scientists were more like little children being guided by wonder, beauty, and curiosity. I am not suggesting that scientists are blameless and more holy than the young earth creationists, but rather that they model an ethos that leads to the kingdom of God. They are also continuing to obey the command of God to subdue the earth.

philosophy, theology

dualism again

1 Comment

I am constantly bumping into references to science that force being scientific into the material/spiritual dualism I have begun to reject. But on that account, I really must define what it is that I think the real world is made up of. As I have said before elsewhere, John A. Wheeler’s quip that “it comes from bit” is an adequate description of what is real. The universe in all its diversity is neither material or spiritual, but rather, information. The experiences of the material world and non-material are all generated within the universe. Why is it that we need to attribute those effects to different kinds of stuff, as if wonder and concrete are opposing each other.

rants, student, theology

an old rant

1 Comment

You may or may not be surprised to know that the insular character of modern conservative church life is one of the chief reasons people reject the gospel. If you are really interested in helping people find Christ you will expand your borders beyond the default comfort zone. As Isaiah said, “Woe to you who are at ease in Zion.” People need saving, and closing ourselves off from them and their ideas is a sure way to get them to ignore us.

We permit football (the modern equivalent of bloody gladiator sports) into our Christian homes, not only because it will get people saved if they realize some of the players are Christians, but because we like it. To shut off science because it somehow sullies our Christian thinking is a bit hypocritical. Some of you may also shun the sports arena. That’s fine. I admire your purity. But Jesus went where the people went. He didn’t sit in the Temple and wait for people to come to him.