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Monday, July 22, 2019

Ben and Ravi

Today I watched Ben interview Ravi:


Before getting to the main point:

1. I've now watched Ben interview Ravi, W. L. Craig, and Bishop Barron. Of the three, Ravi is the most compelling communicator. Craig is dry. Although Barron is affable, he strikes me a joyless.

By contrast, Ravi projects warmth and kindliness. Has a soothing soft-spoken delivery. Due to his vast experience conversing with folks around the globe, he can dip into countless personal anecdotes. He has a more existential emphasis than Craig, although the "meaning of life" is part of Craig's apologetic menu. 

As a young Christian I read some of his stuff, but found it too superficial. So it's nice to come back to him after so many years.


2. Lots of seasoned wisdom in Ravi's answers to Ben. Because he's from India, and continues to do ministry in the Third World, as well as the west, he brings a cosmopolitan perspective to bear, in contrast to apologists whose experience is more provincial and ethnocentric. 

3. I can't tell from his answer what he thinks the role of religion plays in formulating law and public policy. He doesn't think we should impose our religious beliefs on other people, but laws are inherently coercive, and some ethical philosophy or another must inform law and public policy. 

We can draw a roughhewn distinction between forcible conversion and/or penalizing religious minorities, on the one hand, from laws that exemplify the social ethics of a particular faith. 

4. Although I think Ravi usually gave good answers, they might not hold up well if he was having a conversation with a savvy atheist like Graham Oppy or Erik Wielenberg. It might require a more philosophical thinker than Ravi to defend his answers.

5. In his answers to Ben, Ravi took many opportunities to build bridges between Christianity and Judaism. But when it came to leading Ben across the bridge from Judaism to Christianity, I thought Ravi gave a weak answer. You can listen to it for yourself.

His weak answer was ironic since he knew Ben was going to ask him a question like that, even if he couldn't predict just how Ben would frame the question. It's the question Ben is most interested in hearing the Christian answer to, as well why most viewers tune in to watch Ben interview Christian apologists. 

I suspect the reason for Ravi's weak answer is that his ministry is mostly geared to Muslims, Hindus, atheists, and Nones. So he hasn't had occasion over the years to developed a sophisticated answer to that question. Even though he knew it would come up during the interview, he hasn't had time over the years to work out a well-developed answer. 

6. Here's Ben's question:   

Let's talk about an area where we disagree, and that is on the veracity of the NT v. the OT. Let's begin with a broader philosophical framework: what do you think Christianity adds to the world that Judaism didn't in the first place?

i) They never even got around to the veracity of the NT. There's no lack of material on that topic. Two useful treatments are: Peter Williams, Can We Trust the Gospels? and Lydia McGrew, Hidden in Plain View.

ii) So how would I answer the question: what do you think Christianity adds to the world that Judaism didn't in the first place? 

Here's an illustration: in preparation for a painting, some painters first do a series of drawings. For instance, they sketch artistic models from different angles. One creative decision is which angle will best fit into the overall composition of the painting. 

The drawings may be wonderful artwork in their own right. So the painting doesn't replace the drawings. You don't throw the sketchbook away. In a sense, the painting may not even be better than the drawings. But it's more complete. And the painting is the goal of the drawings. They were done with a view to the painting, not vice versa. 

iii) What's the point of the tabernacle or animal sacrifices? Do they have any independent significance? Or does their value lie in what the symbolism points to? There's nothing intrinsically redemptive about animal sacrifice. That can't really atone for sin. As tokens of redemption, they point to the need for a Redeemer. For final redemption. 

iv) In OT history, God sends prophets, God raises up kings, God establishes a priesthood. All these offices mediate God. But you don't encounter God himself. It's just a procession of human representatives speaking and acting on God's behalf and in his place. It's so repetitious, and it never culminates in God himself or direct religious experience. It's buffered and filtered through intermediaries. 

Oh, there's Jewish mysticism, but from what I can tell, that's ersatz mysticism. Grafted onto Judaism from Neoplatonism. Foreign to Judaism. And a literary or philosophical construct instead of having an actual mystical experience of God. 

But with the Incarnation, there's a direct encounter between God and man. Yahweh comes to us, in person. Even more so than in theophanies. To actually meet God face-to-face. Of course, we're human, so God uses a human vehicle. We can relate to that more naturally than angelophanies or fire theophanies. We're not angels. Fire is inanimate.  

There's a paradox to divine revelation. Humans have the greatest affinity for fellow humans. Nothing is more like us or as much like us as another human being. So the closest approach God can make to us is by becoming one of us. By coming to us as a human being. 

But not just a human being. On the other side of the human side is the divine side. To take a comparison, don't you wish you could just ask God any question and he'd answer you in an audible voice? The voice would sound human. It would use human language. Yet God would be the speaker. Behind the voice would be the mind of God. By virtue of the Incarnation, we meet God from the human side of God, yet we meet God himself. God is on the other side of the human side. It's different than a prophet speaking for God.

Of course, most Christians don't have face-to-face encounters with Jesus, although there are credible reports of Jesus appearing to people right up to our own day. But in the world to come, every believer will have an opportunity to meet God himself. Not just priests, prophets, or angels–but the God behind the messengers.  

v) In my experience, Jews typically reduce religion to ethics. (Islam does the same thing.) There's little interest in God, as such. Rather, God is the necessary ground for personal and social ethics. That's his function. God has an instrumental role to play, by providing the underpinnings for social mores. But the orientation is horizontal rather than vertical. 

In Christian theology, God is the exemplar and source of all finite goods. Although God is not a substitute for finite goods, finite goods are not a substitute for God. 

15 comments:

  1. Ravi Zacharias is not a former Hindu, but he is Indian - he grew up in an Anglican family from the area in Southern India (city of Madras(now called Chennai), Tamil Nadu state, and with the other southern state - Kerala are where most "Christians" are in India, that has the most Christians and Christendom (Roman Catholicism, the Mar Thoma churches (Assyrian Orthodox - Nestorian labeled by the Chalcedonians) and other even smaller Protestant groups that are there.

    But he understands Hinduism well and his take down of eastern / Hindu / Buddhist thinking of "both/and"; and his use of the law of noncontradiction, logica, etc. & "A does not equal non A" in apologetics has always been a great teaching that he emphasizes.

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  2. Didn't you also watch the MacArthur Ben Shapiro interview?

    It was great on the gospel and truth; but he had to make several comments with stings that had the unspoken background of Dispensationalism / Israel can do no wrong - replacement theology accusations against anyone who does not tow that theology / even saying something like "almost Anti-semitic" - that made those aspects disappointing for me.

    But he was great on Isaiah 53, the gospel, and witnessing to Ben Shapiro and challenging him.

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    1. I just saw clips of that. I never watched his entire interview with JMac.

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  3. I consider Ravi Zacharias' credibility to be shot. Ship-wrecked through untruths and immorality. See http://www.raviwatch.com - it's by an atheist, but written without any obvious malice, sourced - and has only met with unconvincing and inadequate responses from RZ. He should retire from public life.

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    1. To my knowledge, Ravi has been guilty of resume inflation. As to the charge of sexual misconduct, I'd need to see more evidence from a source that doesn't have an ax to grind.

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    2. Well, that's enough for me. If there's public documentation that for years you significantly inflated your resumé and did so in contexts in which you were claiming those (false) qualifications as reasons to take you seriously, then a career as a public representative of the Christian faith is not for you. You can't be taken seriously, and it's an embarrassment to Christians if we put such people up to make our case.

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    3. Also, the apparent fact that RZ didn't allow anyone else to independently review his communications with the woman (but has only released his own side of the story, apparently unvetted or unreviewed by anyone else) makes him look very bad. At the very best possible interpretation on that issue, he's given everyone a totally unnecessary reason to wonder what he's hiding and why he hasn't invited whoever he's accountable to to make an assessment. Again, this is - at best - very bad for someone who wants to be a public representative of Christianity.

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    4. Yes, all of that scandal in recent years has left me befuddled and disillusioned with him also.

      Though I still like his old law of noncontradiction logic vs. eastern "both/and" Hindu and Buddhist thought.

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    5. David,

      None of this is relevant to my post. All I did was evaluate his answers to Ben.

      There's no duty for me to have an informed opinion about Ravi's ethics. I'm not a donor to his ministry. He's had no influence on my intellectual development.

      I'm not employed by his ministry. I'm not obligated to investigate the allegations, and even if I took an interest in the issue, I'd use something more professional than the amateur investigation of an atheist.

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    6. We discussed the recent controversies surrounding Zacharias in a 2017 thread here.

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  4. Just listened to this interview. I quite enjoyed it. I thought Ravi was good overall, though sometimes he veered off and didn't exactly answer what Ben was asking, and I wouldn't necessarily agree with the particulars of each of his answers. However, all things considered, I thought he did a good job.

    I think a lot of it has to do with Ravi's personality as well as his existential emphasis. He has a way of making a simple statement sound profound. And he often seemed to be taking the listener in hand alongside with him in a kind of journey, as if he was searching or probing for something meaningful to share, as if he was striving to impart a transcendent vision to each and every person he could.

    I imagine if Ravi had become a Hindu guru, then he might've become a popular and inspirational cult leader or swami or somesuch!

    Regrettably the glaring weakness was indeed how Ravi answered Ben's question about Judaism and Christianity. I thought he had a couple of good moments where I thought he was building to a more persuasive answer, but ultimately his answer fizzled out.

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    1. Like the tabernacle and the OT animal sacrifices, perhaps the Sabbath likewise points to need for a redeemer and redemption, viz. Jesus our true and final rest.

      As an aside, the Jewish rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel once wrote the following about the Sabbath: "Shabbat comes with its own holiness; we enter not simply a day, but an atmosphere. My father cites the Zohar: the Sabbath is the name of God. We are within the Sabbath rather than the Sabbath being within us. For my father, the question is how to perceive that holiness: not how much to observe, but how to observe. Strict adherence to the laws regulating Sabbath observance doesn’t suffice; the goal is creating the Sabbath as a foretaste of paradise. The Sabbath is a metaphor for paradise and a testimony to God’s presence; in our prayers, we anticipate a messianic era that will be a Sabbath, and each Shabbat prepares us for that experience: "Unless one learns how to relish the taste of Sabbath...one will be unable to enjoy the taste of eternity in the world to come." It was on the seventh day that God gave the world a soul, and "[the world's] survival depends upon the holiness of the seventh day." The task, he writes, becomes how to convert time into eternity, how to fill our time with spirit: "Six days a week we wrestle with the world, wringing profit from the earth; on the Sabbath we especially care for the seed of eternity planted in the soul. The world has our hands, but our soul belongs to Someone Else."

      Likewise, a couple of articles on the Sabbath from NT scholar Tom Schreiner and OT scholar Andrew Shead:

      https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justin-taylor/schreiner-qa-is-the-sabbath-still-required-for-christians/

      http://beginningwithmoses.org/bt-articles/216/sabbath

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  5. My take on the interview was more negative. When I was in my early 20s I read a lot of Ravi Zacharias's books and listened to a lot of his talks. After a while I got the impression that most of his appeal was stylistic. At one point, after reading his latest book at the time, the charm of his style wore off. It seemed that every point consisted in a long anecdote that had little substance or substance which could have been much more succinctly stated. I haven't read or listened to anything from him since then but I got the same impression in his interview with Ben. It seemed that the majority of the time (or close to the majority) Ravi gave answers that were meandering and not really to the point. At the very end of his meandering answers, he would give a sentence that was more to the point but not clearly supported by what he had just said. This can give the listener the impression that Ravi is masking the fact that he doesn't have good, clear answers with affectation and misdirection (though I don't think this is true).

    Ravi was also clearly out of his depth on the more politically oriented questions that Ben asked. For instance, he seemed to completely misunderstand Ben's question about classical liberalism which is largely an in-house debate. Ravi took the question in the direction of liberal = progressivism, which was off target. This also happened with MacArthur, IIRC (but not on that issue specifically). In these instances, it would be better for the Christian to just say "I don't know much about that area." Instead, they try to come up with some answer that Ben surely knows is fudging, given that this is his wheelhouse. Ben's more politically astute audience probably sees this fudging too. This, in turn, doesn't give a very good impression of Christian apologist types and people can easily come to the conclusion that the Christian might be fudging on issues of religion too.

    (Though Ravi and MacAruther probably aren't fudging, they may just not be wonky enough to know what they don't know.)

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    1. Those are, in fact, fair and good criticisms.

      Personally, I still think Ravi did a good job, but after reading what you've written I think perhaps it's because I don't typically listen to him or watch him.

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  6. "what do you think Christianity adds to the world that Judaism didn't in the first place?"

    I would just add that I'm pretty sure the book of Hebrews was written to answer that very question. It's how I would respond. The blood of bulls and goats was never sufficient to take away sins, the high priest had to give an offering every year for himself as well...but NOW we have a high priest who gave a sacrifice once for all time and it is effective. To whom else did God say, "Sit at my right hand and I will make your enemies a footstool", etc.

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