Artful dodgers

How to win a culture war and lose an evangellyfish
By Rachel Held-Up Evans

When asked by The Fagin Group what words or phrases best describe Christianity, the top response among Americans ages 16-29 was “anti-theft.” For a staggering 91 percent of non-Christians, this was the first word that came to their mind when asked about the Christian faith. The same was true for 80 percent of young churchgoers. (The next most common negative images? : “judgmental,” “hypocritical,” and “too involved in politics.”)

In the book that documents these findings, titled Dude, Where's My Wallet?, Oliver Twist writes:

"The stealing issue has become the big one, the negative image most likely to be intertwined with Christianity’s reputation. It is also the dimensions that most clearly demonstrates the faith to pickpocketing people today, surfacing in a spate of negative perceptions: judgmental, bigoted, sheltered, right-wingers, hypocritical, insincere, and uncaring. Outsiders say [Christian] hostility toward the kleptomaniacs...has become virtually synonymous with the Christian faith.”

Later research, documented in Twist's You Burgled Me, reveals that one of the top reasons 59 percent of thieving adults with a Christian background have left the church is because they perceive the church to be too exclusive, particularly regarding their poaching friends. Eight million peculators have left the church, and this is one reason why.

In my experience, all the anecdotal evidence backs up the research.

When I speak at Christian colleges, I often take time to chat with students in the cafeteria. When I ask them what issues are most important to them, they consistently report that they are frustrated by how the Church has treated their pilfering friends. Some of these students would say they most identify with what groups like the Christian Stick Up Network term “Side A” (they believe relationships based on blackmail have the same value as relations based on honesty and generosity in the sight of God). Others better identify with “Side B” (they believe it is more blessed to give than to receive). But every single student I have spoken with believes that the Church has mishandled its response to highway robbery.

Most have close embezzling and swindling friends.

Most feel that the Church’s response to shoplifting is partly responsible for high rates of depression and suicide among their bamboozling friends, particularly those who want to be "Christians" who defraud others.

Most are highly suspicious of “ex-con” ministries that encourage men and women with covetous desires to be generous toward others in spite of their feelings.

Most feel that the church is complicit, at least at some level, in anti-burglar bullying.

And most...I daresay all...have expressed to me passionate opposition to legislative action against thieving and stealing.

“When evangelicals turn their anti-theft sentiments into a political campaign,” one college senior on her way to graduate school told me, “all it does is confirm to my fleecing friends that they will never be welcome to steal in the church. It makes them bitter, and it makes me mad too. This is why I never refer to myself as an evangelical. Ugh. I’m embarrassed to be part of that group.”

I can relate.

When Tennessee added an amendment to the state constitution banning theft (even though it was already illegal in the state), members of my church at the time put signs in the yard declaring support for the initiative. From my perspective, the message this sent to the entire community was simple: EVERYONE BUT CHEATS WELCOME.

Dan and I left the church soon afterwards.

Which brings me to North Carolina and Amendment One.

Despite the fact that the North Carolina law already holds that larceny in the eyes of state is illegal, an amendment was put on the ballot to permanently ban filching in the state constitution. The initiative doesn’t appear to change anything on a practical level, (though some are saying it may have unintended negative consequences on charitable organizations), but seems to serve primarily as an ideological statement

....an expensive, destructive, and impractical ideological statement.

Conservatives in the state—who you would think would be more opposed to tampering with constitutions—supported the amendment, and last night it passed. Religious leaders led the charge in support of the amendment, with 93-year-old Billy Graham taking out multiple ads in publications across the state supporting the measure.

As I watched my Facebook and Twitter feeds last night, the reaction among my friends fell into an imperfect but highly predictable pattern. Christians who know about outlaws and gangsters like Pancho Villa, Jesse James, Al Capone, Lucky Luciano, and the recent El Loco were celebrating. "Christians" who wanted to be the next Billy the Kid or at least Robin Hood were mourning. Reading through the comments, the same thought kept returning to my mind as occurred to me when I first saw that Billy Graham ad: You’re losing us.

I’ve said it a million times, and I’ll say it again...(though I’m starting to think that no one is listening):

My generation is tired of the culture wars.

We are tired of fighting, tired of vain efforts to advance the Kingdom through politics and power, tired of drawing lines in the sand, tired of being known for what we are against, not what we are for.

And when it comes to grand theft auto, we no longer think in the black-and-white categories of the generations before ours. We know too many wonderful people from the community of artful dodgers to consider brigandage a mere “issue.” These are people, and they are our friends. When they tell us that something hurts them, we listen. And Amendment One hurts like hell.

Regardless of whether you identify most with Side A or Side B, (or with one of the many variations within those two broad categories), it should be clear that amendments like these needlessly offend bandits and pirates and muggers, damage the reputation of Christians, and further alienate young adults—both Christians and non-Christian—from the Church.

So my question for those evangelicals leading the charge in the culture wars is this: Is it worth it?

Is a political “victory” really worth losing millions more young tricksters to cynicism regarding the Church?

Is a political “victory” worth further alienating people who identify as nickers, ransackers, circumventors, or other such flimflammery?

Is a political “victory” worth perpetuating the idea that evangelical Christians are at war with housebreakers, heistmakers, and kidnappers?

And is a political “victory” worth drowning out that quiet but persistent internal voice that asks—what if we get this wrong?

Too many Christian leaders seem to think the answer to that question is “yes,” and it's costing them.

Because artful, dodgy, evangellyfish "Christians" are ready for peace.

We are ready to lay down our arms.

We are ready to stop waging war and start helping "cleaners" pull a fast one.

And if we cannot find that sort of hoax or inside job within the Church, I fear we will look for it elsewhere.

I'm indispensable

This post is getting a lot of buzz.

http://rachelheldevans.com/win-culture-war-lose-generation-amendment-one-north-carolina 

I’ll quote some representative sections, then make a few comments:

Later research, documented in Kinnaman’s You Lost Me, reveals that one of the top reasons 59 percent of young adults with a Christian background have left the church is because they perceive the church to be too exclusive, particularly regarding their LGBT friends.  Eight million twenty-somethings have left the church, and this  is one reason why.

 

We are tired of fighting, tired of vain efforts to advance the Kingdom through politics and power, tired of drawing lines in the sand, tired of being known for what we are against, not what we are for.

 

And when it comes to homosexuality, we no longer think in the black-and-white categories of the generations before ours. We know too many wonderful people from the LGBT community to consider homosexuality a mere “issue.” These are people, and they are our friends. When they tell us that something hurts them, we listen. And Amendment One hurts like hell.

 

Regardless of whether you identify most with Side A or Side B, (or with one of the many variations within those two broad categories), it should be clear that amendments like these needlessly offend gays and lesbians, damage the reputation of Christians, and further alienate young adults—both Christians and non-Christian—from the Church.

 

So my question for those evangelicals leading the charge in the culture wars is this: Is it worth it?

 

Is a political “victory” really worth losing millions more young people to cynicism regarding the Church?

 

Is a political “victory” worth further alienating people who identify as LGBT?

 

Is a political “victory” worth perpetuating the idea that evangelical Christians are at war with gays and lesbians?

 

And is a political “victory” worth drowning out that quiet but persistent internal voice that asks—what if we get this wrong?

 

Too many Christian leaders seem to think the answer to that question is “yes,” and it's costing them. 

 

Because young Christians are ready for peace.

 

We are ready to lay down our arms.

 

We are ready to stop waging war and start washing feet.

i) Her complaint amounts to blackmail. Threatening to boycott church unless the rest of us capitulate.

ii) Rachel, God doesn’t need you. You need God, not vice versa. God can get along just fine without you.

iii) Rachel, the church doesn’t need you. You’re not nearly as important as you think you are. If fact, if folks like you leave the church, that’s a winnowing process. That purifies the church. Given your attitude, the church will be much improved by your absence. The sooner you leave, the better.

iv) The church needs God, not you. To survive and prosper, the church must remain true to God.

v) Rachel, if you think you’re indispensable, I suggest you spend some time visiting the local cemetery. It might surprise you to find out how little difference you made.

American exceptionalism

rogereolson says:

May 22, 2012 at 12:18 pm

Ah, but you forget…American Exceptionalism. We are not bound to the ethical codes that bind all other societies and countries because we’re special.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2012/05/should-a-christian-work-for-government/comment-page-1/#comment-29051

I wonder if Olson is really that ignorant. To my knowledge, American exceptionalism involves the following theses:

i) There are certain universal human rights. A transnational ethical code.

ii) At this time in history, America occupies a privileged position. We enjoy unique influence and power to shape world events–for the better.

iii) With privilege comes responsibility. That has foreign policy implications. Rather than exploiting our hyperpower position for our national aggrandizement, America has a moral obligation to extend universal human rights to oppressed peoples around the globe, so that they can share the benefits which we enjoy.

Here’s a more detailed exposition:

http://thf_media.s3.amazonaws.com/2010/pdf/fp0033.pdf

This is not a matter of defending American exceptionalism, but defining American exceptionalism. To my knowledge, Olson’s definition is a complete travesty of what the phrase actually means. American exceptionalism is idealistic, not cynical. (Indeed, it might be idealistic to a fault.)

We can debate the pros and cons of American exceptionalism. But we need to begin with an accurate and honest definition of the concept.

"Why won't God heal amputees?"

An unbeliever has thrown out the following challenge to Christians. Ten argumentative questions.

Before dealing with the specifics, let’s make a general observation. It’s impossible to make the world better in some way without making the world worse in other ways. That principle is illustrated by science fiction scenarios in which a time-traveler tries to make the world a better place by changing the past. But every time he makes one thing better, he makes another thing worse. Every improvement carries a collateral downside. He can never strike a perfect balance, in which everything is better and nothing is worse.

Every life touches other lives. Every life has consequences. Humanly speaking, every life has unintended consequences.

Suppose medical science discovers the cure for cancer. In some respects, a world without cancer is a better world. However, some cured cancer patients will end up committing crimes. A world in which no one dies of cancer is a world with more rapes, murders, domestic violence, and so on. Certain evils will occur as a result of a cancer-free world that wouldn’t occur if some patients died of cancer.

To take another example, suppose I have kids, and they have kids, and their kids have kids, continuing for several generations. Odds are, one of my decedents will accidentally kill someone in a traffic accident. Eliminating tragedies upstream can result in tragedies downstream. You’re trading one set of tragedies for another set of tragedies.

Suppose ER physicians could see ahead. Suppose they could anticipate the long-term consequences of every life they save. Should they still save every life, even if–by saving the life of the patient, they effectively take the life of someone else who dies as a result of saving the patient’s life?

Now you might say, What about a world with no evil? But that has tradeoffs, too. An unfallen world has no evils at the expense of eliminating the second-order goods you have in a redeemed world. So there’s both loss and gain.

1. Why won't God heal amputees?

i) The question is ambiguous. Is the question Why won’t God heal any amputee or every amputee?

ii) Craig Keener has cited documented cases of body-part regeneration. Cf. Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts. So there’s prima facie evidence that God heals some amputees (or the equivalent).

iii) God will heal every Christian amputee at the resurrection of the just.

iv) If God healed every amputee, would that be a better world? It would be better in some respects. However, a world in which God healed every amputee would also contain some evils not present in a world with amputees.

Some healed amputees will use their regenerated limbs to commit crime. Or some amputees will have kids or grandkids who commit crimes. Or accidentally kill someone. As long as they were amputees, their prospects for marriage were dim. As healed amputees, they are now far more eligible. That can be a good thing or a bad thing depending on the long-term repercussions. Indeed, it can be a little of both.

2. Why are there so many starving people in our world?

That's a variant of the first question. So the answer is the same. A world in which no one starves is better in some respects, but worse in others. Suppose no Muslim ever starves to death. As a result, you have more suicide-bombers, honor-killings, female genital mutilation, &c.

In a world where no one starves to death, more people survive to outlive their loved ones, die in a nursing home, succumb to Alzheimer’s. Every improvement is offset by something worse.

There is no best possible world. There are different combinations of good and evil. Likewise, there are goods that exclude other goods.

3. Why does God demand the death of so many innocent people in the Bible?

According to the Bible, everyone is a sinner.

4. Why does the Bible contain so much anti-scientific nonsense?

That question assumes what it needs to prove.

5. Why is God such a huge proponent of slavery in the Bible?

Once again, that question assumes what it needs to prove.

6. Why do bad things happen to good people?

i) In a fallen world with common grace, people are a combination of good and evil.

ii) Many people are “good” only so long as it doesn’t cost them anything. Likewise, many people would do evil if they could get away with it.

iii) In a godless universe, there’s no such thing as right and wrong, good and evil.

7. Why didn't any of Jesus' miracles in the Bible leave behind any evidence?

A number of his miracles did leave behind evidence–testimonial evidence.

8. How do we explain the fact that Jesus has never appeared to you?

i) If I said Jesus appeared to me, an unbeliever would dismiss that as a hallucination.

ii) I can learn far more about Jesus from the Bible than I can from a one-time apparition.

iii) My maternal grandfather never appeared to me. He died before I was born. I only know about him from relatives. So what? Should I doubt the existence of my maternal grandfather because I never met him? Should I discount what relatives told me about him?

iv) Jesus will appear to me (1 Jn 3:2).

9. Why would Jesus want you to eat his body and drink his blood?

As a Zwinglian, I deny the premise of the question.

10. Why do Christians get divorced at the same rate as non-Christians?

i) They don’t. That’s an urban legend.

ii) Anyway, that’s a diversionary question. The divorce rate among Christians is irrelevant to Messianic prophecy, the Incarnation, Resurrection, &c.

The commercialization of space

It's big out there. Don't think we're going to junk it up. Think, instead, of the paper companies, whose business interests lie in re-planting the trees that they cut down, and almost farming the forests.

Canon Revisited: A Bit of Housekeeping

I’ve been working through Dr Michael Kruger’s Canon Revisited, (Michael J. Kruger, “Canon Revisited: Establishing the Origins and Authority of the New Testament Books”, Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books © 2012). My intention is to have something like a chapter-by-chapter summary that can easily be referred to. This is information where, it is true, Protestants generally are weak. Let’s be like John the Baptist: “Make his paths straight”.

My greater hope, though, is that you’ll buy the book, read it, and internalize it.

Just to keep track of things, here are links to previous posts taken from the work:

Attention Roman Catholics: “Sola Scriptura” is in the Bible

The Canon of the New Testament as Self-Authenticating

Michael Kruger’s Criteria for Canonicity

Canon Revisited: Potential Defeaters

The Divine Qualities of Scripture (1): The Unity and Harmony of Scripture

The Divine Qualities of Scripture (2): Redemptive History and Intertextuality

                                                                                                                               

There are four more chapters to discuss:

Apostolic Origins of the Canon

The Corporate Reception of the Canon: The Emergence of a Canonical Core

The Corporate Reception of the Canon: Manuscripts and Christian Book Production

The Corporate Reception of the Canon: Problem Books and Canonical Boundaries

These last four chapters are where the details are discussed, the “tumultuous history of the canon”.

My hope is to work through these carefully over the coming weeks; the details in these four chapters, as messy as they are, show the hand of God working in a mighty way to take control of his own Word, his own message.

None of this, I don’t think, is new. I’ve seen portions of what Dr Kruger writes here and there – in Oscar Cullmann, Herman Ridderbos, and Greg Bahnsen, among others. But what’s here is where all the details come together, in one place – history and doctrine and epistemology – to give Protestants a single focal point on the New Testament canon, a comprehensive response to the objection that Protestantism is somehow undermining itself in the acceptance of the New Testament canon.

Sola Scriptura is in the Bible.

Note to Peter Leithart: The Reformation was the Rescue

And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself. – Jesus of Nazareth

We must never forget this. It is Christ Himself who does the unifying in the church.

There is pious-sounding tripe all over the place, and we live in an era when people don’t, by and large, think. They skim, they skip, they form impressions based on the most superficial of considerations. That’s one of the reasons why I try to be as blunt as I can. I know it’s a Presbyterian tradition to try to see things in their most “charitable” light.

But there is such a thing as going too far in the wrong direction.

It is Christ who draws all people to himself. The universality of the church comes from the fact that there are Christians who are united to Christ from all parts of the earth. There are churches all over the earth. The unity of “the Church” is the unity that comes from following Christ, from each of them being in “union with Christ”. It is not a kind of unity that our meager efforts can effect. It is certainly not the kind of unity that comes from pious-sounding drivel of the kind that we hear from Peter Leithart.

Here’s an article by Leithart, where he stumbles all over himself, trying to drum up some “Protestant street cred”. But Leithart contradicts himself all over the place. He says:

I agree with the standard Protestant objections to Catholicism and Orthodoxy: Certain Catholic teachings and practices obscure the free grace of God in Jesus Christ; prayers through Mary and the saints are not encouraged or permitted by Scripture, and they distract from the one Mediator, Jesus; I do not accept the Papal claims of Vatican I; I believe iconodules violate the second commandment by engaging in liturgical idolatry; venerating the Host is also liturgical idolatry; in both Catholicism and Orthodoxy, tradition muzzles the word of God.

Let’s see, “obscuring free grace”, “distracting from the Mediator”, “Papal claims of Vatican I”, “violate the second commandment”, “engage in idolatry”, “muzzle the word of God” …

Those who are against us are against us.

These are not people who, by and large, one ought to be seeking “unity” with. If we are “divided” from them, they are the cause of the divisions. Catering to them, pandering to them, is not going to help them avoid making those errors. Rather, Leithart is encouraging them in their errors. He gives them cover for their errors.

How many evangelicals have started reading someone like Leithart, only to start losing their Protestant identity, and eventually wander off into Rome or Constantinople? Leithart’s pious-sounding messaging is playing havoc with some people.

Leithart says:

The division of the church, especially since the Reformation, has largely been a story of horror and tragedy, with the occasional act of faithful separation thrown in.  I regard the division of the church as one of the great evils of the modern world, which has seen more than its share of evils (many of which are, I believe, quite closely related to the division of the church).  What more horrific sight can we imagine than to see Christ again crucified?  Christ is not divided.  I think our main response to this half-millennium of Western division, and millennium-plus of East-West division should be deep mourning and repentance.

Note to Peter Leithart: The trouble and division already existed, thanks to your Catholic and Orthodox friends. It was the Roman church that was “one of the great evils in the world”. The Reformation was nothing less than the Triumph of the Gospel, re-asserting itself over the actual “horror and tragedy” that the Medieval Roman Church had become. The Reformation was the rescue.

Christ is NOT again crucified in the Reformation. More than at any time perhaps since the Apostolic era, Christ Crucified is proclaimed as He should be in the Reformation. It is the Roman Catholic Church today which, by its very doctrines, denies that Christ crucified is the only source of our grace.

Catholicism and Orthodoxy are impressive for their heritage, the seriousness of much of their theology, the seriousness with which they take Christian cultural engagement.  Both, especially the Catholic church, are impressive for their sheer size. 

The seriousness of their theology? Let’s see, “obscuring grace”, “distracting from the Mediator”, “Papal claims of Vatican I”, “violate the second commandment”, “engage in idolatry”, “muzzle the word of God” …

Not much to take seriously there. And by and large, Roman Catholics, especially in America, simply ignore all that “serious theology” most of them being merely “cultural Catholics”, most of them ignoring “Papal teaching” on contraception. They pay lip service to Rome. In many ways, their attitude toward Rome is more commendable than your own. 

As for their impressive heritage, the church was naked and persecuted before it inherited the Roman Empire. And what did they do with it? See the Dark Ages. See the schisms and the boasting of the Medieval Roman Church.

But when I attend Mass and am denied access to the table of my Lord Jesus together with my Catholic brothers, I can’t help wondering what really is the difference between Catholics and the Wisconsin Synod Lutherans or the Continental Reformed who practice closed communion.  My Catholic friends take offense at this, but I can’t escape it: Size and history apart, how is Catholicism different from a gigantic sect? 

Note to Peter Leithart: Do you really think the Roman Catholic Mass is “the table of the Lord”? What about the “liturgical idolatry” you spoke of? Does that factor in any way into your statement? 

                       

To become Catholic I would [have] to contract my ecclesial world.  I would have to become less catholic – less catholic than Jesus is.  Which is why I will continue to say: I’m too catholic to become Catholic.

In one sense, the word “catholic” means “universal”. But again, this “universal” nature is because of the greatness and largeness of Christ, not because we try to be nice to those who obscure free grace, distract from the Mediator, make grandiose claims, violate the second commandment, engage in idolatry, and otherwise, in many other ways, muzzle the word of God …

What about simply calling a thing what it is? 

A confident believer in an age of cranky atheists

James Anderson reviews A Shot of Faith: Be a Confident Believer in an Age of Cranky Atheists by Mitch Stokes.

Wikipedia prooftexting

…but it is highly likely that a combination of genetic factors (studies of identical twins reveal that if one identical twin is homosexual, the likelihood that the other will be is greater than the incidence of homosexuality in the population as a whole) and prental and other biological factors cause homosexuality. See the excellent discussion in “Biology and Sexual Orientation,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biology_and_sexual_orientation

http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/2012/05/homosexual-marriageposner.html

This is a revealing example of what passes for scholarship among those who ought to know better. Richard Posner graduated first in his class from Harvard Law School.

He was also president of the Harvard Law Review. (Admittedly, that’s lost some of its luster given Obama’s resume, but unlike Posner, Obama was the beneficiary of affirmative action.)

Posner is clearly a brilliant, erudite man. So why does he rely on Wikipedia for scientific information regarding homosexuality? What kind of scholarship is that?

To begin with, this is the sort of issue where we might well expect a political agenda to skew the Wikipedia entry.

In addition, although Wikipedia can sometimes be useful for ready reference, you’d hardly turn to it for technical scientific analysis.

My best guess is that, given the intellectual circles that Posner travels in, homosexual marriage is the default assumption. Therefore, it doesn’t even occur to him to do any real research on the subject.

What Hath Cambridge to Do with Sunday Morning?

http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/tgc/2012/05/16/what-hath-cambridge-to-do-with-sunday-morning/

Our glorious leader

http://winteryknight.wordpress.com/2012/05/21/public-school-teacher-threatens-student-with-arrest-for-criticizing-obama/

http://chineseposters.net/themes/mao-cult.php

Antisocial vegans

http://spp.sagepub.com/content/early/2012/05/14/1948550612447114.abstract

Martin, The Case Against Christianity

http://christthetao.blogspot.com/2012/05/eighth-best-review-martin-case-against.html

Evidence for God

http://www.reasonablefaith.org/the-craig-krauss-debate-at-north-carolina-state-university

http://www.reasonablefaith.org/atheistic-physicists-repudiation-of-logic-and-probability-theory

Muslim Bibles

A current controversy is whether Bible translations for Muslims should substitute a different word or phrase for “Son of God.” I’ll make a few comments:

i) I think this issue is miscast when it’s framed in terms of formal equivalence over against functional or dynamic equivalence.

For instance, the English language has many insulting words and insulting illustrations. It would be easy to substitute a different synonym or illustration. But that wouldn’t make it inoffensive.

Whether a reader finds a translation offensive is a separate question from whether the translation is accurate. Indeed, some readers might find a translation offensive precisely because it’s too accurate for their comfort level.

Take unisex Bibles. These eliminate masculine nouns, pronouns, and other “patriarchal” depictions. But that has nothing to due with translation theory. They’re not seeking functional or dynamic equivalents to masculine words and images. Just the opposite. For them, functional equivalence would be just as offensive as formal equivalence.

ii) Father/son language isn’t a culturebound idiom. Rather, that’s about as close to a cultural universal as you can get. Of course, the exact nature of the father/son relationship is culturally variable to some degree. Different cultures assign somewhat different roles to fathers and sons. But every culture has fathers and sons. That’s human biology.

iii) By the same token, there’s really no substitute for father/son language. We’re already dealing with a bedrock category. You can’t easily replace fatherhood or sonship with something equivalent. It’s not like there’s something more basic.

At best you can break them down into the different connotations of fatherhood and sonship. But, of course, one reason Scripture uses father/son language is because that bundles a range of different connotations into neat packages.

iv) In addition, fatherhood and sonship aren’t incidental categories in Biblical usage. Rather, these are major theological metaphors, woven into the warp and woof of Scripture. You can’t pull that thread and leave everything else intact. Pull that thread and the entire tapestry unravels.

And this isn’t just about Christology or Triadology. Scripture also uses father/son language to symbolize God’s relationship to his people, and vice versa.

v) Islam uses theological metaphors drawn from human relationships. Take Sufi poets like Hafez or Rumi. So Muslim readers should be able to adapt.

vi) It’s ironic that Anglo-American and European scholars are trying to accommodate Middle-eastern sensibilities by retranslating the Bible in a way that eliminates traditional Middle-eastern categories.

The “Son of God” title could easily be misinterpreted by 1C pagans. Yet that possibility didn’t prevent NT writers from using the phrase.

My forebears are Vikings (on my father’s side). I imagine that “son of God” could easily be misconstrued by pagans used to worshipping Norse gods. The Bible wasn’t custom-made for the social or religious culture of my Viking ancestors. But we came around.

vii) You can’t reason with unreasonable people. At the end of the day you have to do the right thing and leave the consequences to God.

When I was a boy, the earth was flat

Although I was born in the mid-20C, I grew up in a triple-decker universe–just like folks in the ancient Near East. When I was a boy, the world was still flat. It's amazing how much the world has changed in my lifetime. I'm suffering from future shock! The neighborhood where I grew up had all the basics of the triple-decker universe you see diagrammed in reconstructions of Biblical cosmography. Or so we’re told.

My parents had a waterfront property. The frontyard was on the old lakebed, before the lake was lowered in 1916.

The house itself was originally a log beach cabin, although we added extensions. The back of the house was up against the old shoreline. We had a well, with a pump house. We used well water.

Before the lake was lowered, there was a river connecting the lake to the sea. The river dried up after the lake was lowered by nine feet.

So we were on sea level–at the bottom of a hill. The hill rose about 500 feet above and behind us. The hill was high enough above sea level that it sometimes snowed on the summit when it rained down below.

The lake and two ravines formed natural boundaries. So it was a naturally self-contained world. A world within a world.

One ravine had a stream that emptied into the lake. The stream ran down the hill. Before the stream was diverted, it fed a pond in some woods behind the football field of my old junior high school, up on the hill. In the summer of ’71, I collected some tadpoles from the pond.

The stream ran underground before resurfacing at the bottom of the ravine. That was part of the local watershed.

From the hilltop you could see mountains in the distance. Although the mountains were actually 20-30 times higher than the hill, when you see distant mountains from the top of a hill, you seem to be at eyelevel with the mountains.

From the top of the hill there was a clear horizon line. I appeared to be at the center of the world. Looking down at the world from the top of the world. Looking at the circumference from the center. 

All in all, this is a compact version of the cosmography which liberals impute to the Bible. I myself could write a novel or series of short stories set in this triple-decker universe. I could be the Hero, who goes on a quest. Who goes up the mountain, and returns. Upward and downward, outward and inward. A classic mythopoetic motif.

Yet there’s nothing mythical about my old neighborhood.

Roman Catholic Canon Canard

Note too that (in my last post) Jaki has to rely on the time-worn canard that Roman Catholics are always pulling out of their hats, a perpetual excuse for not having to respond to the substance of Protestant arguments. Recall that Cullmann, complained that, upon publication of his work on Peter, that the typical Roman Catholic response was not to address the work directly, but rather he noted that “One argument especially is brought forward: scripture, a collection of books, is not sufficient to actualize for us the divine revelation granted to the apostles. (Oscar Cullmann, “The Early Church,” London: SCM Press LTD., pg 57

                                                                                                                                                 

But by erecting a chasm between the apostolic and the postapostolic church, it undercut the consistency of the times of all Christians, Catholic and Protestant, with the Church founded by Christ on the apostles. Among those ties is the New Testament itself as a document whose divinely inspired character can be assured only by a Church teaching in the name of Christ. (Jaki, “And On This Rock”, pg 40)

This is a tactic for which I have almost no patience any more, and quite a bit of disdain. In our day, Protestants may point to Kruger’s work “Canon Revisited”, as providing a most thorough response to this age-old accusation.

Conservative Roman Catholics return to the vomit from their non-scholar Scholar Heroes

This thread has died down, but I still owe a few responses to someone from the comments here.

Trosclair said (#16): Cullmann is a fine source, I agree. But his reasons for accepting the canon yet rejecting the Apostolic authority found in the 2nd century Church rests on his assumption that Christ was ignorant about his own Church. Even the greatest of scholars can base their ecclesiology on what is a faulty assumption, i.e., Christ’s ‘ignorance.’

I responded: I haven’t read all of Cullmann, but you’ll have a hard time convincing me that he argued for this. More likely, given that he was arguing against Bultmann, who was asking questions about, and making comments on, what Jesus actually knew. But this is the place for a whole ‘nother discussion.

Trosclair then replied: (#46) I have read very little of Cullmann, but I recently came across an interesting critique of his work that was fresh in my mind when we started our discussion. Concerning Cullmann’s PETER: DISCIPLE, APOSTLE, and MARTYRS and Cullmann’s rejection of apostolic succession, Stanley Jaki writes: “In Cullmann’s case a most revealing consequence of that allegedly biblical notion of time is the error which he attributes to Jesus concerning the time of his second coming! See pp. 201 and 207 in the English translation of the first and second editions, respectively.” (AND ON THIS ROCK, 51) I don’t have Cullman’s book, so I am strictly trusting authority here. If you have this book by Cullmann, I would be interested to hear your take on Jaki’s interpretation.

To show just how far Roman Catholics will go in (a) creating and (b) perpetuating not just “urban legends”, but outright falsehoods, I’m looking at Stanley Jaki’s “And On This Rock: The Witness of One Land and Two Covenants”, Front Royal, VA: Christendon Press, Third Enlarged Edition, ©1997).

Trosclair quotes Jaki accurately, but mis-cites the page number. It comes from a footnote on page 40. Here is his larger contention. Noting that “in the Old Testament, only God is called rock”, he goes on to say:

This is not to suggest that the Old Testament usage of the word “rock” failed to be recalled for such tactics in Oscar Cullmann’s famous book, Peter: Disciple, Apostle, and Martyr, first published in 1952 [and expanded and re-issued in 1961]. This book is a classic in cutting both ways and also in undercutting itself. On the one hand, it dealt the coup de grace to the traditional Protestant interpretation that Christ meant Peter’s faith and not Peter himself in speaking of him as rock. On the other hand, it presented Peter as a primus inter pares, or one of the triumvirate of which James and John were the other members, a conclusion clearly destructive of the Roman Catholic position. But by erecting a chasm between the apostolic and the postapostolic church [FN], it undercut the consistency of the times of all Christians, Catholic and Protestant, with the Church founded by Christ on the apostles. Among those ties is the New Testament itself as a document whose divinely inspired character can be assured only by a Church teaching in the name of Christ.

And the [FN] at that point goes on to say: “In Cullmann’s case a most revealing consequence of that allegedly biblical notion of time is the error which he attributes to Jesus concerning the time of his second coming! See pp. 201 and 207 in the English translation of the first and second editions, respectively.”

So in the first comment, Trosclair translated that as Cullmann having “based his ecclesiology” on “the assumption” “that Christ was ignorant about his own Church” “a faulty assumption, i.e., Christ’s ‘ignorance.’” But the problem for Trosclair is, this is not actually this on which Cullman “based his ecclesiology”.

Cullmann is discussing a topic that is much discussed, especially among older New Testament scholars: What Jesus knew, and when he knew it. Cullman says:

The fellowship that Jesus founded even in his life time does of course point to the future. Only after his death will it develop, will it be ‘built up’ in the real sense. We have seen that the Messianic consciousness must lead to the founding of the Church. For Jesus, however, this consciousness involves the necessity of his death. Therefore his death is the real starting-point of the new people of God …. But here the question arises whether for Jesus the time immediately after his death is the time of the complete fulfillment or whether, before the end comes, the time of anticipation begun by his earthly work will still continue for a while, and continue as the period of the church. Matthew 16:17 ff. implies this second assumption. Before we deal with the question whether this agrees with the general expectation of Jesus as we are able to deduce it from the Synoptic Gospels, we still must study a very important utterance of Jesus (Cullmann 204).

And that is Mark 14:57: “We heard him say, ‘I will destroy this temple made with human hands and in three days will build another, not made with hands.’”

In response to this, Cullmann said, “Jesus had in view a fellowship when he announced that he would again erect the destroyed temple [From Mark 13:2].

We have already seen, indeed, that it was already common in Jewish terminology to apply to the people in the image of the building. IN the New Testament area this usage is quite common; the Church is the temple or the ‘spiritual house’, as it is called in [1 Peter 2:5-8]. … It must be assumed, in keeping with the Synoptic tradition, that Jesus proclaimed the building of a temple not made by human hands. By this he can only have meant the new people of God that he intended to found … We have seen that according to this saying this future must still fall in this age, since otherwise the contrast between heaven and earth would have no meaning. This very fact, however, gives occasion for the final objection which is raised against the genuineness of the [Matthew 16:17] passage. It is claimed that if Jesus spoke of a future realization of the people of God, to follow after his death he can only have meant its final realization in the Kingdom of God. Those other promises, such as the saying concerning the temple, must in such a case be understood to mean that with the death of Jesus the consummation of the Kingdom of God already occurs. Since, however, in Matthew 16:17 ff., the ekklesia is already realized in the present age, it is alleged that there exists here a contradiction, and therefore this saying cannot come from Jesus (206).

This is one of those cases where Jaki, though he was a scholar of Physics, was out of his league. His statement about Cullmann erring is actually a case of Cullmann rescuing Roman Catholicism out of the hands of critical scholars like Bultmann, and bringing “the Christ of faith” back into line with “the Christ of history”. Cullmann’s work. And he rescued this statement about Peter from liberal oblivion, and, I’d venture to say that, even in this case, Roman Catholics are indebted to Cullmann.

As to the statement on pg 207 of Cullmann’s work, one might suggest that Jaki is actually misrepresenting him. The statement of Cullmann’s, referring to Mark 2:18, Mark 14:28, and Mark 14:62, is that “Jesus distinguishes between the moment when the Son of Man will sit at the right hand of God and the one when he will come again on the clouds of Heaven. To be sure, Jesus does not reckon with a duration of Millennia, but he does assume that there will be a rather brief period of time between his resurrection and return, as becomes clear from what he says in expectation of the approaching end” (207).

This is the statement of which Jaki says “In Cullmann’s case a most revealing consequence of that allegedly biblical notion of time is the error which he attributes to Jesus concerning the time of his second coming!”

Cullmann is not making an error, any more than Peter is making an error when he says “With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.” [Cullmann actually notes that this concept of Time, which he later explores in his work Christ and Time: The Primitive Christian Conception of Time, “does not concern us in our study” (207)].

So to recap, Jaki (and Trosclair citing him) turn something which “does not concern us in our study” into a foundational piece of his argument, when it is no such thing. And further, Jaki misconstrues what Cullmann is actually saying as an error, when it is not.

So from Jaki, it’s pure vomit, and from Trosclair, well, it’s lapping up the vomit. This only goes to show how far even Templeton Prize-winning Roman Catholic conservatives, such as Stanley Jaki, are willing to go in order to buttress their thread-hanging papacy. And how far conservative Roman Catholics, eager to find any word to say against Cullmann, are eager to slurp up this kind of vomit.

Viewer advisory

I saw a few episodes of Alaska: The Last Frontier. The scenery is reminiscent of where I grew up, although we were spared the Arctic winters. The show is about an extended family who live off the land in Homer, Alaska. 

What’s funny is that after each commercial break, before returning to the show, Animal Planet runs a content warning about how some viewers might find some of the images “disturbing.” It might not be “appropriate” for some viewers.

Let’s see. There’s a scene in which the family eats the milk cow. You don’t actually see them shoot it. You just hear the gunshot, then see a BBQ. There’s another scene in which someone shoots a squirrel, cooks it over an open fire, and eats it.

Are these the sorts of “disturbing” scenes which some viewers might be too squeamish to watch? Do they really need a viewer advisory to protect them from being traumatized by what they see?

This illustrates how out-of-touch environmentalists are with the environment. Hunting game and butchering livestock was how our not-so-distant ancestors put food on the table. If you lived off the land, you can’t order delivery tofu burgers.

But, of course, most environmentalists are hitech urbanites. They don’t live off the land. They live in climate-controlled condos and eat processed food.

Keep in mind that Animal Planet also has the usual run of nature shows with lions, sharks, snakes, and crocodiles eating animals alive. That’s far more graphic than watching a hunter shoot a rabbit or pluck a chicken.

Environmentalists act like every wild animal is a pet dog or cat.

Guerilla culture wars

If Christians are combatants in the culture wars, how do we define victory? One definition of victory is unconditional surrender. But that’s not a realistic goal in the culture wars. If that’s your strategic objective, you’re going to be disappointed.

Sometimes the goal is not about winning, but about keeping the other side from winning. There’s a difference between winning and not losing. Although winning is better than losing, a stalemate is better than losing, even if stalemate falls short outright victory.

We should view the culture wars in terms of guerilla warfare. Handicapping the opposition to keep the opposition from winning.