Fool for Christ

John Stackhouse 

I read a piece issued by a prominent American medium (Religion News Service) that was really badly written, a hodge-podge of fact, stereotype, and outright falsehood that almost certainly was published only because the author identified herself as both a former evangelical Christian and a Native American wrestling with her own identities as such.

There aren’t many heroes left outside superhero comics and movies, are there? Not unalloyed saints, that’s for sure. And that’s okay: No one but Jesus has been perfect, and we’re right to keep our critical faculties about us even when, and sometimes especially when, someone is presented to us in glorious robes of sanctity.

That said, I agree that it’s weird, verging on the pathological, the way even fellow Christians have sharply criticized this young man, initially assuming he was a fanatic who knew nothing about diseases (wrong), languages (wrong), tribal cultures (wrong), and the dark history of imperialism (wrong). In fact, he and his sending agency seem to have been impressively responsible on all those counts. So what’s the problem?

Then we have evangelical Christians chiding him for breaking the law in preaching the gospel to people the government had said were off limits. Excuse me? Anyone read the Book of Acts recently?

Missionary history is in fact full of stories of pioneers cut down upon first contact, only to be replaced by more who were inspired by the initial story who then enjoy success. Let me be clear that of course I am not defending any and all missionary endeavours. Some of them have indeed seemed foolish and fruitless. But I am defending the simple point that someone has to be first, and that someone may well pay the ultimate price in order to get the conversation going. That’s what John Chau did, and it’s ‘way too early to write off his self-sacrifice as foolish and worthless. Let’s just see what happens next.

Last point: For Christians, the worst thing in the world isn’t dying. It’s failing to do the will of God.

https://randalrauser.com/2018/12/21st-century-martyr-a-conversation-on-the-legacy-of-john-allen-chau/

Should Missionaries Just Stay Away?

http://www.contextwithlornadueck.com/2018/11/29/should-missionaries-just-stay-away/

Benevolence and reciprocity

The divine hiddenness argument is a newer argument in the atheist arsenal. Atheists don't have many new arguments. John Schellenberg put this on the map in 1993. Other atheists have tweaked the argument, and his argument has undergone various permutations at his own hands. But his core argument remains the "canonical" version, the frame of reference for most discussions. Here's a recent formulation:

Suppose God perfectly loves Anna. That love would minimally involve benevolence, caring for Anna’s well-being. But it would also involve aiming “at relationship—a conscious and reciprocal relationship that is positively meaningful, allowing for a deep sharing” between them. Moreover, it would involve valuing that relationship for its own sake, and not merely for the sake of something else. Furthermore, it would never cease, and so God would always value, seek, desire, promote, or preserve personal relationship with Anna, although God would not force himself on her. At the very least, says Schellenberg, all this requires that God will always be open to personal relationship with her...even if one does not actively seek or promote personal relationship with another person capable of participating in such relationship…, one makes sure that there is nothing one ever does (in a broad sense including omissions) that would have the result of making such relationship unavailable to the other, preventing her from being able to relate personally to one, even should she then try. So for God to always be open to personal relationship with a relevantly capable created person such as Anna in a manner expressing unsurpassable love is for God to ensure that there is never something God does that prevents her from being able, just by trying, to participate in personal relationship with God...

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/divine-hiddenness/#ArguNonrNonb

The mechanics of the virgin birth

Jason Engwer has a new post on the virgin birth: 

https://triablogue.blogspot.com/2018/11/a-virgin-birth-with-biological.html

Jason has been defending the virgin birth for years. I daresay few Christian apologists have written as much or more than he in defense of the virgin birth. 

1. There are two stock objections to the virgin birth:

i) It's scientifically impossible. A Y chromosome is required to make a human male body. 

ii) It delegitimates Jesus as the Davidic heir.

In the long run we're all dead

This is generally good advice:

http://fakenous.net/?p=46

http://fakenous.net/?p=54

http://fakenous.net/?p=77

That said, I don't think the fundamental problem is lack of skill at the art of argumentation. Mind you, many people would benefit from a course in informal logic, standards of evidence, &c.

The main problem is that many people want certain results, want a particular outcome, and they don't care about the quality of the argumentation. They just want the results. The outcome is what's important, not the means. On that view, a persuasive bad argument is better than an unpersuasive good argument. It's not about true, reason, and evidence. Rather, argumentation in political discourse has a purely instrumental value, to further or secular the objective. The only value is the desired outcome. How you get there is secondary. 

Trained philosophers sometimes resort to atrocious arguments. It's not due to lack of skill. If they're sufficiently invested in an issue, a philosopher may reason just a badly as someone with no training in logic or probability theory. It's too idealistic to think this is just about honing one's skills in the art of argumentation.

If people think this life is all there is, then they are liable to be impatient about the finer points of argumentation. Time is running out to get things done. Lost opportunities can't be redeemed. There are no eschatological compensations. As John Maynard Keynes, put it, "In the long run we're all dead!" So it's now or never. 

If that's their perspective, then the priority is to achieve the goal by any means necessary, as expeditiously as possible. On that view, a convincing lie is more efficient than a complex argument. It comes down to the utility of political discourse to further the agenda. 

About Those Colonialist, Proselytizing Missionaries...

https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2014/january-february/world-missionaries-made.html

Krishna, Christ, and Manitou

Recently, J. P. Moreland did a whirlwind presentation on near-death experiences:

https://www.facebook.com/BiolaApologetics/videos/504055120062148/

Unfortunately, the video froze up near the end. But it was an interesting overview.

A common Christian objection to NDEs is the oft-repeated claim that non-Christian NDErs interpret their purported encounter in non-Christian terms. If we think NDEs are real, that seems to be an argument for religious pluralism. 

In this course of his presentation, Moreland recommended this book:

John Burke, Heaven: Near-Death Experiences, God’s Promises, and the Exhilarating Future that Awaits You (Baker Books, 2015). And Moreland quoted this passage:

Osis and Haraldsson, two researchers, studied five hundred Americans and five hundred Indians to determine how much religious or cultural conditioning shaped one's near-death experience. They noted, "If the patient sees a radiant man clad in white who induces in him an inexplicable experience of harmony and peace, he might interpret the apparition in various ways: as an angel, Jesus, or God; or if he is a Hindu, Krishna, Shiva, or Deva."

Though I have heard researchers state conclusions like this, i have never read of NDErs describing anything like Krishna (who has blue skin), Siva (who has three eyes)... (pp141-42).

I haven't read Burke's book, and I'm dubious about using NDEs to detail heaven and hell. But it does draw an important distinction. Hindus use the names of their gods to denote what they saw, but what they (say they) saw doesn't match Hindu iconography. They're just using the religious designations culturally available to them. But to say they saw a being by that name doesn't mean they saw an individual who corresponds to the Hindu god–because the visual impression is different from the conventional designation. 

To take a comparison, suppose Jesus appeared to an Iroquois brave in the 15C. Suppose the Christophany looks like an ancient Palestinian Jews with a robe, beard, and sandals. The Iroquois brave has no word for "Jesus" or "Christ". So he might call him Manitou. That would be the only designation available to him to denote a numinous, humanoid being. 

That might convey the impression of religious pluralism if we fail to make allowance for the fact that he can only use the vocabulary and categories his culture provides. 

If, however, he provided a visual description that didn't match the traditional Iroquois iconography for Manitou, then it would be invalid to infer that he saw Manitou. Rather, he saw a being whom he calls Manitou because that's the only name he has at his disposal to denote a numinous, humanoid being. It doesn't mean his experience actually refers to Manitou. 

Perhaps, then, NDEs have less religious diversity than meets the eye. In principle, non-Christian NDErs might report meeting a heathen deity because that's their only frame of reference. But they didn't actually see a pagan god. They simply use the name of a pagan god as a placeholder. 

I'm insufficiently well-read on NDEs to know how non-Christian NDEers describe their encounters, so I don't know how applicable that distinction is. But it's something to make allowance for when assessing their reports. 

Publicity-seeker?

Arminian NT scholar and blogger Scot McKnight has a guest post by Ruth Tucker impugning John Chau as a publicity-seeker:

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2018/11/28/john-allen-chau-a-missionary-historian-perspective/

Unless I'm misremembering, I believe Ruth Tucker is an apostate. She wrote a book about her defection from the Christian faith several years ago. That doesn't mean her observations about Chau, Jim Elliot, and Elizabeth Elliot are necessarily wrong, but she does have an ax to grind. I find it odd that McKnight would host her diatribe without any awareness of the conflict of interest. 

Transgender Blasphemy at the ETS

http://whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2018/11/transgender_blasphemy_at_the_e.html

A Virgin Birth With A Biological Relationship Between Joseph And Jesus

A virgin birth doesn't require that there was no physical relationship between Joseph and Jesus. The mechanism by which God accomplished the virgin birth could have involved the transference of material from Joseph to Mary. If somebody is going to object to the virgin birth, Jesus' Davidic ancestry, or whatever else on the assumption that there was no biological relationship between Joseph and Jesus under a virgin birth scenario, then the objector needs to explain how the virgin birth supposedly precludes such a relationship.

A recent illustration of the significance of this issue comes from a commentary on Luke published earlier this year (The Gospel Of Luke [New York, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018]). It was written by two New Testament scholars, Amy-Jill Levine, an agnostic, and Ben Witherington, a Christian. In a section written primarily by Levine, we read:

The verse [Acts 2:30] follows from 2 Sam 7.12, where God promises David, "When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come forth from your body, and I will establish his kingdom." That is, David's heir is to be David's biological descendant. Ben notes that Jesus, as Joseph's adopted child, has all the rights and responsibilities as any child he might have conceived; Amy-Jill notes the lack of sources to justify this claim and finds, instead, what appears to be a Christian adjustment to the original promise to David (36)

She takes Luke 1:36 as evidence that Mary is, at least in Luke's account, "from a priestly family" (36-37) and apparently not a descendant of David.

I've discussed potential Christian responses to Levine's argument in the past, such as here. The evidence for Mary's Davidic ancestry is better than you'd think from reading Levine's comments, for example. But what I'm focused on here is the fact that an appeal to something like adoption by Joseph or Mary's Davidic ancestry isn't necessary. Levine, like other critics who raise this kind of objection, seems to be assuming a mechanism for the virgin birth that she hasn't argued for. Why think there's no biological relationship between Joseph and Jesus under a virgin birth scenario?

And there's no need for only one of the proposed Christian answers to this objection to be correct. I think all three of the answers I've referred to in this post are likely to be true. An adoptive relationship with Joseph would be sufficient to make Jesus a descendant of David in the relevant sense, Mary probably was a descendant of David as well, and the transference of material from Joseph to Mary seems to be the best candidate for the mechanism God used to bring about the virgin birth.

Seasons of faith

Some professing Christians have faith-shattering experiences. It leaves their faith in pieces. And in this life they can't repair it. Some pieces are missing. This causes some professing Christians to lose their faith. Sweep away the remainders. 

But others cling to the shards of glass. Even a shattered faith is better than no faith at all. Sometimes God melts the broken glass and reforms their faith, like a glass-blower. But in other cases, only heaven can replace or refit the broken pieces. 

To vary the metaphor, deciduous trees turn twice: in autumn, the tree symbolically dies. Its leaves turn yellow, orange, red, and brown, then drops its leaves, one-by-one, until  the tree denuded. In Spring, the tree symbolically revives, producing buds that blossom and bloom into flowers and leaves. 

Faith has seasons. Faith in spring and summertime. Like first love or falling in love. Vivacious. Autumnal faith. Darker, sadder. 

Faith in winter. In a sense, faith must die to be reborn. The tree doesn't die inwardly but outwardly, shedding its leaves. Contracting. Withdrawing from the world into a bare essence. Waiting for the sun to return in its spring and summer glory.  

The ethics of evangelism

1. For unbelievers, the death of missionary John Chau is a reductio ad absurdum of Christian theology. Many atheists have no firsthand knowledge of the Bible. Lack a rudimentary grasp of systematic theology. Would be shocked to discover there are intelligent arguments for Christianity. 

2. Chau was attempting to give the tribe an alternative. It's not as if atheists are opposed to challenging what people believe and providing an alternative. Think of all the books, blogs, podcasts, &c., by evangelists for atheism, devoted to talking Christians out of their faith. So they can't consistently object to the general principle. 

3. Consider a polygamist compound in which the cult leader warns his followers about the outside world. Cult members born in the compound have never seen the outside world, hidden behind the high walls of the compound. They've been told it's fatal to step outside the compound. Unspeakable horrors lurk on the other side! 

Suppose debunkers drop iPads onto the grounds of the compound, giving members a chance to see what the outside world is really like. Giving them an alternative vision. An alternative narrative. There's nothing wrong with that, is there? 

4. In addition, many atheists contend that you make your own meaning. Nothing has objective value or ultimate purpose, so it's up to each individual to find out what's important to him. But by that logic, they can't condemn Chau. Even if atheists think Christian evangelism is a fool's errand, they're in no position to judge what makes his life fulfilling. 

What about atheists like Koestler, Hemingway, and Orwell who inserted themselves into the Spanish Civil War. Isn't that foolhardy? Or Byron, who inserted himself into the Greek Revolution? 

What about all the people who O.D. on drugs. That's a dumb way to die, but atheists don't castigate people who die that way. 

What about other people who indulge in high-risk behavior, like homosexuals? Atheists don't condemn their reckless behavior.  

5. There are at least two kinds of metaphors we can use to illustrate the mandate to evangelize. One kind involves protective metaphors. Suppose I intervene so that someone who's high on drugs won't accidentally kill himself. Or should I do nothing? 

6. Another kind involves generosity. Suppose I have a life-threatening illness, but I have the antidote. Suppose another patient has the same illness, but I don't share the antidote with him, even though there's enough for both? 

Should Christians sit on the promise of eternal life, keeping it a secret, or do they have a duty to share that with others? 

What to tell a dying child

Here's a follow up to my previous post:

https://triablogue.blogspot.com/2018/11/deathbed-atheism.html

A longtime reader of Triablogue ran my query by CA. On Twitter, he responded as follows:

@CounterApologis

In fact, if my child did have a terminal illness, depending on the age you wouldn't want to tell them if they couldn't handle it. But you would make them as comfortable as possible and spend as much time with them as possible. /1

What is the alternative? Tell a child who can't handle the reality of death they're going to be with a god that let them get sick and won't heal them, taking them away from their parents? As if that'll make them feel any better. 2/2

1. CA is struggling to be a consistent atheist. Does CA think it's wrong to tell a dying child a comforting lie? Most atheists don't think lying is intrinsically wrong. From a secular standpoint, if it's a choice between a child who dies in terror if you tell it the truth and a child who dies in peace if you tell it a comforting lie, what should an atheist say? Should he speak as an honest atheist or speak as a loving parent? 

This dilemma is less about the child than the atheist. It goes to the question of whether atheism is livable. 

2. Some atheists might bite the bullet and say it doesn't ultimately matter if the child died in peace or died in terror because he won't remember how he died. What difference does it really make whether he was happy or terrified in the last few weeks, days, or hours prior to death? Death wipes out everything that went before. 

3. CA evades the issue by casting the Christian alternative in the most jaundiced way he can think of. To begin with, death will take them away from their parents according to Christianity and atheism alike. And from a secular standpoint, that's permanent, whereas, from a Christian standpoint, there's the hope of reunion. 

Yes, it makes a dying child feel better that he won't pass into oblivion, but go to a nicer place. I had an Aunt Vera who died of diphtheria at 3 1/2. Her last words were, "Kiss me papa, I'm going to Jesus!"

A testimony

https://sixdayscience.com/2015/05/11/my-testimony/

Calendar narratives

Flood stories were widespread in the ancient world. One distinctive of the biblical flood account is its use of dates. There are five dates in the Genesis flood narrative. This is remarkable, since those are the only dates in the entire book of Genesis. 

Typically in ancient literature, an event's timing was indicated by relating it to another event, not by using dates. Timeline dating–plotting events on a transcendent timeline with dates–is common today, but ancient texts used event sequencing, temporally marking an event by relating it to other events. 

Throughout Genesis, event sequencing is used. But five dates appear in the flood narrative and nowhere else in the entire book of Genesis.

An important insight emerges when these dates are potted against the festival calendar of Israel. Three of the five fall directly on Mosaic festival dates. The only exceptions are the first and last, which nonetheless fall at the midpoint of Israel's grain-harvest festivals. All five dates appear to be "scheduled" with reference to Israel's festivals. 

1. The beginning of the flood (Gen 7:11). The flood's beginning date (2/27) is at the center of Israel's grain festivals.

2. The ark's landing (Gen 8:4)…In later Israel, this date would fall during the Feast of Booths. 

3. When the mountaintops became visible (Gen 8:5)…In later Israel, that same date was a new-moon day in between israel's festival days.

4. When the waters were gone (Gen 8:13). By New Years Day (1/1) the waters were gone. New Year's Day is a natural "new beginnings" point.

5. When the ground was dry (Gen 8:14). The ground was completely dry on 2/27. The significance of the flood's beginning in the heart of the grain harvest has already been noted. The same applies to its conclusion on a date one year later and even ten days after. 

These correspondences suggest that the alignment between the five dated flood events and later Israel's festival calendar are not coincidental. Noah's flood was retold in a manner that related his "exodus" to Israel's festival worship and agricultural labors. If this reading is correct, one may still ask whether Noah's flood actually took place on these dates, or whether these dates were added anachronistically. One further feature indicates that these are not dates recorded from observation but are a literary construction: the flood narrative uses schematic, thirty-day months rather than actual varying-length months. This is prima facie evidence of a constructed (rather than observed) timeline. 

The flood narrative uses schematic, thirty-day months. The five months between the beginning of the flood (2/17) and the ark's resting on Mount Ararat (7:17) are rendered as 150 days (Gen 7:24; 8:3) being five months of thirty days each…The use of aesthetically balanced dates and numbers throughout the passage, such as 7s, 10s, 40s, 150, along with the use of schematic months, indicates the constructed nature of this narrative's dates for a legal (rather than journalistic) purpose). It is therefore proposed that the flood account is an agricultural and festival calendar in narrative form: a calendar narrative. 

This function for the flood narrative is comparable to the contemporary practice of telling Jesus' birth story on December 25. Churches do so, not to assure that Jesus was actually born on that date, but to inform Christian observances on that date. Similarly, the flood narrative re-maps the events of Noah's deluge to the calendar of Israel's agricultural labors and harvest festivals for its instructional value. 

There are at least three calendrical features of the flood narrative and exodus narratives that are also found in the creation week, suggesting all three date-laden narratives serve this calendrical purpose. First, the creation week is structured around dates like the flood and exodus narratives. The creation week does not provide month dates like those other calendar narratives, but it does give week dates. Days of the Hebrew week were identified by number. 

This reading cautions against both young-earth and old-earth efforts to read Genesis 1 as a chronology of original creation events…This reading leads to conclusions largely congruent with "analogical day," "literary day," or "framework" views. Michael LeFebvre, “Reading Genesis 1 with the Fourth Commandment: The Creation Week as a Calendar Narrative,” G. Hiestand & T. Wilson, eds.  Creation and Doxology: The Beginning and End of God's Good World (IVP 2018), chap. 1. 

Rough rider or reject?

https://asianroughrider.com/2018/11/27/the-death-of-john-allen-chau-rough-rider-or-reject/

Deadly handshake

https://epistleofdude.wordpress.com/2018/11/28/killing-others-with-a-handshake/

The Caravan

Predictably the liberal media had a freakout over the fracas on the Southern border. Tear-gassing children! A few observations:

i) From what I've read, most of the invaders were adult men. In addition, they threw rocks and bottles at border-control agents. I don't know if the tear gas was used to keep the invaders at bay or in self-defense (to protect the border-control agents).

ii) Tear-gas is actually a pretty mild way to repel a mob. Compare that to shooting marauders. 

iii) From what I've read, the Obama administration deployed the same tactics:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/nov/26/obama-administration-used-tear-gas-border-once-mon/

Was the liberal media freaking out over that?

iv) This is a game of chicken. Who blinks first? The invaders decided to force the issue, so they were repelled. 

v) Using children as a human shield is a cynical tactic. A functional nation can't cave to that kind of open-ended extortion. Can't very well capitulate to whatever someone demands if they threaten to hurt a child (or put a child in harm's way) unless they get what they want. That's anarchy. That tactic mustn't be rewarded. There's no end to it. 

vi) National defense is fundamental duty of any head-of-state, while border control is fundamental component of national defense. You can't have national defense without border control. The Trump administration is doing what a commander-in-chief is supposed to do in that regard. 

vii) That's related in part to the right of private property. We can't open our doors to bandits who will plunder the country. Get on welfare, stay on welfare, commit ID theft, bankrupt the emergency rooms of hospitals, educate their kids at public expense. Siphon off social services they didn't pay into. These are raiding parties. They have no more right to barge in than looters, bank-robbers, house-burglars, and shoplifters. Border enforcement is necessary to protect private property. The livelihood of citizens. The medical and economic infrastructure. Not to mention introducing diseases into the host country. 

viii) In addition, when illegal immigrants commit voter fraud in sufficient numbers to swing elections, the defrauds citizens of the right of self-determination. 

Was John Chau a missionary Rambo?

http://www.dennyburk.com/mission-agency-clears-away-some-false-assumptions-about-john-chaus-mission-to-remote-tribe/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2018/11/28/slain-missionary-john-chau-prepared-much-more-than-we-thought-his-case-is-still-quandary-us-missionaries/

Is immigration a human right?

http://thefederalist.com/2018/07/24/no-one-right-immigrate-united-states/