Robbing Peter to pay Paul

The current controversy engulfing Mark Driscoll as reignited the issue of pastoral plagiarism. But it's hard to have a fair and rational discussion of the issue because many critics' personal animosity towards Driscoll skews the standard of comparison. Because he's already typecast as the villain, any allegation is plausible and any punishment is suitable. 

My concern is how this distorts the standards we should bring to bear on the question of pastoral plagiarism in general. We need to have consistent, reasonable standards. 

Let's consider some of the propoals. Andreas Köstenberger offers one:

http://hereiblog.com/kostenberger-plagiarism/

A limitation with Köstenberger's proposal is that it pertains to an academic setting. But is that the right standard for the pulpit? 

Moreover, his statement takes for granted that plagiarism, as he defines it, is wrong. But that begs the question of what constitutes plagiarism and what makes it wrong. 

D. A. Carson has strong views on the subject. Among other things, he says:

Second: Taking over the structure, perhaps the outline in exact wording, and other significant chunks, while filling in the rest of the substance yourself, is not quite so grievous but still reprehensible. The temptation springs from the fact that writing a really good outline is often the most creative and challenging part of sermon preparation. Fair enough: if you "borrow" someone else's outline, simply acknowledge it, and you have not sinned.Third: In the course of diligent preparation, you are likely to come across clever snippets and ways of summarizing or formulating the truth of a passage that are creative and memorable. If you cite them, you should acknowledge that they are not yours, either with an "As so-and-so has said" or an "As someone has said." This discipline keeps you honest and humble. 

http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/tgc/2010/12/20/tgc-asks-don-carson-when-has-a-preacher-crossed-the-line-into-plagiarism-in-his-sermon/

What he treats as self-evidently sinful, reprehensible, or dishonest in this context doesn't resonate with me. Except for personal anecdotes, I don't expect a pastor to say anything truly original in his sermon. I don't come to church with the presumption that the pastor is going to break new ground in his sermon. 

Let's take a comparison. I've read that George Whitefield was steeped in Matthew Henry's commentary on the Bible. This fed into Whitefield's evangelistic sermons. I don't think Whitefield routinely credited Henry, but that doesn't bother me. Whitefield was so selfless and guileless. He lived to advanced the gospel. I imagine Henry would be pleased to know Whitefield was using his material to win souls. 

i) Both Carson and Köstenberger are academics, so they define plagiarism in fairly academic terms. They publish commentaries, as well as articles in learned journals. In that context, certain well-established conventions apply. But is that feasible for a sermon? And do we have the same expectations for a sermon? 

In addition, Carson is very gifted. He can operate at a higher level than the average pastor. 

ii) Another problem with academic standards of plagiarism is that academics aren't necessarily as high-minded as their official standards suggest. For instance, I have a book by Nicholas Perrin (Lost in Translation) countering Bart Ehrmen. On the dustcover jacket, Perrin is identified as a "former research assistant to N. T. Wright."

Of course, that naturally raises the question, what does a research assistant do? Or perhaps I should rephrase the question: how much does a research assistant do? Does he dig up articles for his boss to read in preparation for a forthcoming book? Articles which the boss will read on his own? Does he draft a MS for the boss? Is he an uncredited coauthor or even ghostwriter? This raises the specter of barring plagiarism at the front door while letting it ride through the backdoor.  

Let's take a third example:

The central problem with plagiarism is twofold: (1) it is stealing; and (2) it bears false witness. 

http://www.desiringgod.org/resource-library/articles/what-is-plagiarism.pdf?lang=en

That can certainly be an ethical problem, but I don't see that as the "central" problem in pastoral plagiarism. Let's take a comparison. I believe there are the equivalent of essay mills for pastors. A pastor can pay somebody online else to write his sermon for him. Suppose a pastor utilizes that service. Is the "central" problem with doing so that it's stealing and bears false witness? I don't think so. It's not theft. He's paying for it.

Suppose it was an open secret that someone else writes his sermons for him. In that case, it wouldn't be deceptive. 

Yet it would still be wrong for a pastor to resort to an essay mill to write his sermons. Why?

i) A primary duty of a pastor is to teach what the Bible teaches. To do that, he must make a good faith effort to ascertain what the Bible means. He can and should read commentaries and other exegetical literature. But he should evaluate what he reads. If commentaries offer conflicting interpretations, he should sift through the arguments and pick the best interpretation. A pastor should be studious. A lifelong student of Scripture. 

If, however, a pastor simply recites someone else's sermon, then he's making no effort to independently confirm the correct interpretation of the sermon text. It's a coin flip.

ii) In addition, a sermon isn't just a detached intellectual exercise. A pastor ought to be applying the sermon to himself before he applies the sermon to his congregation. The application should arise from his own experience, as he strives to internalize the teaching of Scripture. He needs to be challenged and edified by the Word. He needs a prayer life. That doesn't happen if he makes a habit of reciting someone else's sermon.

iii) In my opinion, the senior pastor of a megachurch has less excuse to "plagiarize" than an overworked pastor who single-handedly shepherds a church of 200 members. Because a megachurch pastor can delegate so many tedious jobs to support staff, that should free up more time to focus on sermon preparation.

Megachurch pastors can easily fall into a vicious cycle. They may originally make their reputation on their homiletical abilities. But once they become famous, they receive a flood of invitations to do speaking engagements. As a result, they have ever less time for sermon preparation. Their preaching made them famous, but their fame erodes their preaching.

Christmas Apologetic Resources

I write a post each year about resources for the Christmas season. Here are links to the posts from previous years:

Size matters

Just a friendly piece of advice before everyone stuffs down all that turkey tonight: remember, remember, the square-cube of November! By which I mean the square-cube law. In case this whole post isn't arbitrary enough.

What is the square-cube law, you may ask?

*cricket sounds*

Well, dear reader (singular, by which I refer to myself)! I shall tell you anyway. It'll be our sciencey factoid of the day. Meh, give or take.

If an object increases in size x, then in proportion its area increases x² while its volume x³. That's the square-cube law.

Say we have an object with area 1cm² and volume 1cm³. Now we double the size of the object. This means the object's area will have increased from 1cm² to 4cm² (quadrupling) while its volume will have increased from 1cm³ to 8cm³ (octupling). This is an example of the square-cube law.

Basically, the volume increases more than the area for the same increase in size.

Now, strength is dependent on area, while weight is proportional to volume. Thus, an object bigger than its original size will weigh more but it might not have enough strength to support its own weight.

In other words, don't eat too much, or you may find yourself a few sizes too big!

Happy Thanksgiving! :-)

We'd rather eat turkey

http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/11/21/v-print/1930423/wed-rather-eat-turkey.html

Visions of Jesus

Does Jesus ever appear to people in post biblical times? The question is ambiguous. We need to draw a preliminary distinction between different kinds of appearances. In the NT, there seem to be at least two different modes:

i) There's a physical appearance. Jesus is physically compresent with the observer, in his glorified body. He occupies the same time and space as the observer. Is tangible.  

Lk 24 & Jn 20-21 are paradigm-cases. 

ii) There's a visionary appearance. Jesus is psychologically present. A trance state or altered state of consciousness. 

Acts 7:55-56 & Rev 1:12-18 are paradigm-cases. 

The former is a "deathbed" vision. If Stephen sees the Father as well as the Son, that would underscore the psychological nature of the appearance–since the Father is a discarnate spirit. It's possible that the "right hand of God" is an idiomatic expression (cf. Ps 110:1). However, the scene seems to envision the divine throne room (a la Dan 7:9-10). So the "right hand of God" is not an isolated phrase, but part of a unified depiction. 

The latter seems to be a Christophany, given its angelomorphic features–like OT theophanies and angelophanies. Although it's possible for Christ to be literally luminous (e.g. the Transfiguration), the description includes symbolic features which evoke OT antecedents (cf. Isa 11:4; 49:2; Ezk 1:24; 43:2; Dan 7:9-12). These aren't necessarily literary allusions so much as the type of numinous experience which gave rise to the OT texts in the first place.  

(ii) stands in contrast to (i), where observers use their sensory organs (eyes, ears, hands).

Cessationists rule out postbiblical appearances of Christ by appeal to 1 Cor 15:8. However:

i) Scholars differ on what is meant by Paul as the "last." Clearly he's the last in that particular literary or chronological sequence. The last in that grouping. The last up until that point in time. 

ii) The list is not exhaustive. It doesn't include the appearance to Stephen.

iii) Even assuming it excludes postbiblical appearances of Christ, in context, that has reference to physical rather than visionary appearances. 

None of this proves that Christ does, in fact, ever appear to anyone in postbiblical times. 

Naturalizing miracles

Mike Riccardi

Even if we say that it was a miracle, though, that doesn’t at all concede the continuation of miracle-workers. Similarly, if someone gets healed as an answer to prayer, neither does that mean that the gift of healing has continued. That part of my comment got left out of your citation: “MacArthur certainly believes that God can and does heal today. He simply believes that the gift of healing is not given today. So God heals, but not through healers.”

i) One problem is that MacArthurites oscillate between divergent criteria. On the one hand, they frame the issue in terms of the continuation or discontinuation of certain "gifts." On the other hand, they frame the issue in terms of the continuation of direct miracles but discontinuation of indirect miracles. But those are not equivalent propositions. For instance, Phil Johnson says There are two kinds of miracles noted in Scripture. 1. Some are remarkable works of God apart from any human agency, where God unilaterally intervened or where miraculous events happened apart from any human agency. 2. The other kind of miracle involves a human agent, who from the human perspective is the instrument through which the miracle comes.

However, God using a human agent as an instrument through the miracle comes is not equivalent to a "gift" for working miracles. What if God empowers someone to heal someone else just once? That involves human agency. But if that's a one-time event, is that a gift of healing? Why must human agency involve a gift of healing? 

ii) Another problem is the ad hoc, hairsplitting distinction, where you say answered prayer is never miraculous. But what is your justification for that false dichotomy?

By collapsing all answered prayers into providential rather than miraculous answers, you're unable to distinguish between three qualitatively different kinds of answered prayers. Let's take some examples:

a) A teenager is hours late arriving home. His Christian parents are very worried. They pray that nothing bad has happened to him. They pray that God will return him safely home. Turns out his car broke down on a deserted road. So there's nothing miraculous about his belated homecoming. 

Of course, the parents are still thankful to have him back safe and sound. And it's possible that their prayers had a counterfactual effect. Absent their prayers, perhaps he would have been murdered by a serial killer.

b) A woman has advanced macular degeneration. Her ophthalmologist tells her that her condition is medically incurable. She will soon go blind.

She has the prayer chain at her church intercede for her. Next week she returns to the ophthalmologist. Her eyesight has been restored. Her ophthalmologist has no explanation. Her recovery is scientifically inexplicable. 

c) Although this is presented as a true story, it will suffice to treat it as a hypothetical illustration:

Early in my ministry I heard teaching on how to pray specifically while attending a seminar in Southern California. In a few weeks, I was to return to Colorado to start my ministry at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden with Ray Womack, a fellow Campus Crusade worker. Unknown to anyone, I wrote a prayer request in my prayer notebook and began to pray specifically that God would provide for me and Ray a white house with a white picket fence, a grassy front yard, within two or three miles from campus, for no more that $130 per month. I told the Lord that this request was a reasonable one on the grounds that (a) we wanted a place that provided a home atmosphere for students, accessible from campus, that we could afford and (b) I was experimenting with specific prayer and wanted my faith to be strengthened.I returned to the Golden area and looked for three days at several places to live. I found nothing in Golden and, in fact, I only found one apartment for rent for $135/month about twelve miles from Campus. I told the manager I would take it and she informed me that a couple had looked at the place that morning, they had until that afternoon to make a decision, and if they did not want it, I could move in the next day. I called late that afternoon and was informed that the couple took the apartment, the last available one in the complex. I was literally back to ground zero.Now not a single person knew I had been praying for the white house. That evening, Kaylon Carr (a Crusade friend) called me to ask if I still needed a place to stay. When I say yes, she informed me that earlier that day, she had been to Denver Seminary. While there, she saw a bulletin board on which a pastor in Golden was advertising a place to rent, hopefully to seminary students or Christian workers. Kaylon gave me his phone number, so I called and set up an appointment to meet the pastor at his place at nine the next morning. Well, as I drove up, I came to a white house with a white picket fence, a nice grassy front yard, right around two miles from Campus, and he asked for $110 per month rent. Needless to say, I took it, and Ray and I had a home that year in which to minister.This answer to prayer, along with hundreds of others I and my Christian friends have seen, was an event that was (1) contingent and did not have to happened according to natural law; (2) very improbable; and (3) independently specifiable (a number of features of the event were specified in my prayer prior to and independent of the event itself taking place). 

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/scriptorium/2007/04/how-to-detect-answers-to-prayer-the-discipline-of-journaling/

Because a MacArthurite is precommitted to a cessationist explanation, he must arbitrarily consign each case to "providence." He can't allow himself to draw any qualitative distinction between these three very different types of answered prayer. 

In my judgment, that kind of statement is light-years away from the kind of deistic/naturalistic rationalism that you seem to want to pin on cessationists. 

i) When MacArthurites exhibit the same dismissive attitude towards testimony evidence for modern healers, miracle-workers, or "prophecies," then that replicates the reflexive disbelief of secular debunkers. 

ii) When, moreover, MacArthurities always opt for a naturalistic explanation over a miraculous explanation in the case of modern charismatic miracles, that replicates the presumptive naturalism of secular debunkers.  

iii) Another problem is that you're taking God's existence for granted. However, the cessationist paradigm argues for God's existence from miracles. In the argument from miracles, God's existence is a conclusion rather than a given. 

If, however, you explain away many "extraordinary" events as the result of natural processes or natural forces, and if you fail to distinguish between providence and coincidence miracles, then you reject a direct and primary evidence for God's existence. 

Saying that the mysterious absence of cancer might simply be owing to an extraordinary working of God’s meticulous providence isn’t a concession to naturalism. 

You're using words ("extraordinary working of God's meticulous providence") without defining your terms or unpacking the key concepts. How do you define providence in contrast to a miracle? For instance, the Westminster Confession explicates the concept of providence by reference to second causes (WCF 5.2). 

On that definition, to say that someone with stage-4 pancreatic cancer was providentially healed in answer to prayer means the cancer disappeared through second causes.  It followed a natural chain of cause and effect. No skips or jumps. No outside intervention. There was no interruption in the causal continuum–in contrast to a miracle, which is discontinuous with the chain of second causes. 

My question is, why should we believe that's how it happens? Do you know a natural mechanism by which stage-4 pancreatic cancer is reversible? Can you identify a continuous natural process by which that occurs? Can you describe the incremental steps by which a dying cancer patient undergoes sudden and complete remission? 

(Perhaps some day medical science will discover a natural explanation for spontaneous remission. In that event, I'd reclassify this as a coincidence miracle.)

And, of course, I don’t at all deny any of the miraculous works that God has done that are recorded for us in Scripture. Jesus’ miraculous healings, the resurrection, even the divine inspiration of Scripture are all things we believe firmly. I hope you would acknowledge that that separates us from the rationalists and naturalists who would seek to explain away even the biblical miracles because they truly cannot abide supernaturalism. Even us “MacArthurite cessationists” are supernaturalists!

i) A basic problem is that MacArthurites define a miracle, not by reviewing biblical events, then classifying different types of biblical events, but by starting with the opposing position (continuationism), then coming up with an armchar definition which will excludes whatever continuationism maintains. It's a reactionary, makeshift definition. Take Phil Johnson's definition: In a Biblical sense “a miracle is an extraordinary work of God that involves His immediate and unmistakable intervention in the physical realm in a way that contravenes natural processes.”

ii) Apropos (ii), given their reactionary, defensive definition, MacArthurites shorten the list of Biblical miracles. Do all of Christ's miracles fit the definition? The draught of fish? Cursing the fig tree? Performing exorcisms? Dispelling fever? The coin in the fish's mouth? Curing internal bleeding? What about other Biblical miracles like the earthquake which freed Paul and Silas? What about natural disasters: the flood (Gen 7), destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen 19), plague of boils (Exod 9), plague of hail (Exod 9), and plague of locusts (Exod 10), or other divine judgments involving natural mechanisms: the fate of Korah and his cohorts (Num 16:31-33); God sends a deadly plague (e.g. Num 11:33; 14:37; 16:46-50; 25:8-9; 1 Sam 5:6ff.; 24:15). 

Did Jesus mispredict the future?

This is a follow-up to a post by Jason Engwer:

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2013/11/were-jesus-and-apostles-false-prophets.html

I'm going to comment on an answer which William Lane Craig gave to a questioner:

http://www.reasonablefaith.org/was-jesus-a-failed-eschatological-prophet

I have been a Christian all my life...However my faith has come under tremendous attack due to my exposure to atheistic arguments that attack my faith. For the most part I have been able to resist many of the arguments atheists have presented to me with...I am trying really hard to hang on to my faith...I am desperate to believe in Jesus but how can I continue to trust in and have faith in Him if he got a the future wrong.Please help me Dr. Craig I am really struggling to deal with this objection to my faith. What do most scholars say on the subject, and did Jesus make a false prophecy?

i) I confess I find it hard to be sympathetic with Jessie. Where are all these atheists coming from? Why is he exposing himself to all these atheists, especially if his faith is so fragile? Is someone forcing him to read or listen to atheists? 

ii) Also, there's tons of Christian apologetic material available on the Internet. This isn't a one-sided debate.

iii) In addition, even if one doesn't own good commentaries (which more laymen ought to invest in), one can often use the "search inside this book" feature at Amazon.com to find the exegesis on a particular verse of a newer commentary. 

My proposal is more modest. I appeal to the well-known fact that we often do not have the original context in which Jesus’ sayings were spoken, much less their precise wording. When we remember that the Gospels do not give us a tape recording of Jesus’ words, that the Gospels are written in Greek, whereas Jesus probably spoke most of the time in Aramaic, that the Gospel writers didn’t even have the device of quotation marks to distinguish direct and indirect speech, we can already see that we don’t have a verbatim transcript of what Jesus said. Jesus’ speeches would often be paraphrased or summarized. The Evangelists sometimes arrange these sayings in different ways. So we shouldn’t think that we always have the words of Jesus exactly as they were spoken or in their original context.

i) Sometimes we don't have the original context. Sometimes an Evangelist relocates a saying. But oftentimes the Evangelist does preserve the original context. The only people who deny that are scholars who regard the Gospels as historical fiction which retrojects the viewpoint and timeframe of the narrator into the past.

ii) Also, the fact that the Gospels rearrange some sayings or events doesn't mean that can't preserve the original context within a given pericope, or preserve the historical chronology over several chapters at a time. Even if they sometimes move a scene around, what is said and done within that scene preserves the original setting or context. 

iii) Gospel sayings are usually contextualized. Craig is denying the accuracy of the narrative contextualization, as if that misrepresents the reference or meaning of the saying. Certainly there are scholars who take that position, but that's inimical to inerrancy.

Indeed, the eminent historical Jesus scholar John Meier doesn’t think that this saying of Jesus is even authentic, that is to say, actually uttered by the historical Jesus. Meier insists that he is in no way trying to avoid the conclusion that Jesus gave a false prophecy—Meier is ruthlessly objective—rather he argues that the evidence shows that this saying is probably not authentic.

i) Why would Craig even float that explanation? It's a really dumb thing to tell a professing believer who says he's going through a crisis of faith.

ii) But it's a dumb position even apart from that. As I've pointed out before (most recently in response to Michael Patton), this is a problem with the whole quest for the historical Jesus. Although that can sometimes be of some apologetic value, as a bridge, Christian faith must be grounded in the Gospels as given, not a critical scholar's redaction of the Gospels. 

iii) Also, Craig's concern with the original context is ironic. After all, AD 70 isn't part of the original context. At best, that's a modern reader's addition. That's a retrospective context (or recontextualization) which we bring to the Olivet Discourse. 

The Discourse was spoken decades before that date. We come to the table after that event, based on historical accounts of the Jewish wars. We read the Olivet Discourse in light of that event. But that's the reader's contribution. And not the original audience, either (not, least, if we date the Synoptics to pre-70 AD). 

The very fact that modern readers often use the Jewish wars of AD 67-70 as their benchmark for interpreting the Olivet Discourse is an unconscious retrojection. That's a reader's identification of the intended fulfillment. It's not as if the text itself singles out that incident.  Why assume the Olivet Discourse must be referring to just one event? 

It does seem as if lately Craig has shifted somewhat to the left. He's made a number of statements that seem to reflect a shift. 

The Calvinist-Libertarian Mashup

http://letthereaderbeware.wordpress.com/2013/11/26/the-calvinist-and-libertarianism-mashup/

Pulpit plagiarism

http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/tgc/2010/12/20/tgc-asks-tim-keller-when-has-a-preacher-crossed-the-line-into-plagiarism-in-his-sermon/

Pastoral plagiarism

The Driscoll affair raises a number of ethical issues...which aren't confined to Driscoll. 

i) I'm struck by how gleeful some of his critics are. They are gloating over his self-inflicted wounds. They were hoping all along that he would say or do something to precipitate his downfall. 

Critics of that stripe need to be honest with themselves about their motivations. They wouldn't carry on and on about an endnote if they weren't opposed to Driscoll before the fateful interview. 

ii) It's a pity to see him self-destruct. He was, at one time, a force for good. He took socially conservative positions in one of the bluest of blue states. His operation is headquartered in King County, which is the bluest county in the heart of a deep-dyed blue state. So the local power elite was always gunning for him. 

Driscoll has made a lot of enemies over the years, so they've been sharpening their knives, spoiling for him to make a serious misstep. Unfortunately for him, he's been playing right into the hands of his waiting enemies.

If the liberal establishment brings him down, it will then turn on his evangelical critics. It's like watching a lion attack another man. The lion is momentarily distracted by his fresh kill. But if you loiter too long, he will look up from his victim, notice you, and come after you. What begins with Driscoll doesn't end with Driscoll. 

iii) What about the issue of pastoral plagiarism? Did you know that Spurgeon was a plagiarist? 

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/adrianwarnock/2007/03/lloyd-jones-monday-the-doctor-spurgeon-and-plagiarism/

If Spurgeon had been a seminary student at the time, he would have been expelled. 

iv) When does  a pastor cross the line into plagiarism? Do we expect a sermon to be the product of original research? That would be unrealistic.

Suppose a pastor is preaching a series of expository sermons on a book of the Bible. Suppose he has half a dozen good commentaries on that book of Scripture which he consults in preparation for each sermon. Suppose his interpretation is often based on what he reads in two or three commentaries.

Do we expect him to give full citation from the pulpit? That would be unrealistic. A sermon is not a book. Oral communication has different conventions than an article in Novum Testamentum. 

Do sermons have footnotes? Depends on whether a pastor writes out his sermon in full. Some do, but others use an outline. Some pastors don't like to be tied to a script. They want the freedom to ad lib. Rely on the inspiration of the moment.

There's a difference between composing a sermon in the privacy of your study, and speaking before a live audience. Seeing real faces. Familiar faces. Associations may come to mind in the course of preaching. 

Suppose the pastor not only gets his interpretation from a commentary, but uses some of the wording. Is that plagiarism? What sort of attribution should he give from the pulpit? 

Do we expect a pastor to express everything in his own words? Keep in mind that by academic standards, paraphrasing a source can also be plagiarism. 

v) Famous pastors often publish their sermons. Their published sermons may be transcriptions of what they said from the pulpit. Not literary productions, but recorded sermons which an anonymous assistant dutifully transcribes. The editorial work of turning sermons into publishable manuscripts may be delegated to assistants. 

A pastor may not even proofread the MS. Moreover, even if he does, he may not remember the source of his ideas five years after he delivered the sermon. 

Some famous pastors have a very long paper trail. If you were to comb through their published sermons, it wouldn't be at all surprising if you could uncover examples of borrowed material that violates academic standards of citation. 

vi) It's certainly possible for a pastor to be guilty of plagiarism. But instead of tossing around facile charges of plagiarism based on models of academic publishing, we need to specify what standards are suited to the more informal nature of preaching. 

To take a comparison, I've been running across a lot of arguments for cessationism lately. I notice that these are not original arguments. These are stock arguments which are typically borrowed and recycled, without attribution, from earlier writers. Technically, many popular modern cessationists are guilty of plagiarism. If these were seminary term papers, they'd be expelled. 

A miracle of many dimensions

"Materialistic Miracles" by Peter Pike.

Why do atheists proselytize?

http://bnonn.thinkingmatters.org.nz/why-do-atheists-proselytize/

Were Jesus And The Apostles False Prophets?

William Lane Craig recently responded to a question about whether Jesus was a failed eschatological prophet (in Matthew 24:34 and elsewhere). While Craig makes some good points, I would answer the question somewhat differently. Some of the most significant evidence isn't addressed by Craig or the person who asked him the question.

The members of the Triablogue staff hold different views of eschatology. A few of us have addressed the subject Craig is discussing from our different eschatological perspectives (Steve Hays as an amillennialist, Paul Manata as a partial preterist, and me as a premillennialist, for example). I briefly summarized some of the most significant points in a post a few years ago. After reading the post I just linked, see chapter 12 in The Infidel Delusion. Other material we've written is linked near the end of the post here.

Sleuthing Driscoll

http://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2013/11/janet-mefferd-presents-documentation-of.html

Knox Chamblin

The late Knox Chamblin's advice to present and future Christians.

BTW, Chamblin's lectures on C.S. Lewis are available here.

Perfect freedom

I'm going to comment on some statements by Alexander Pruss:

http://alexanderpruss.blogspot.com/2013/11/moral-and-perfect-freedom.html

Before getting to the specifics, we need to define "love." "Love" can mean at least two different things:

i) Affection

ii) Acting in the best interests of another

It's possible to act on behalf of another despite not having affection for them. Indeed, there's something commendable about doing good to those you dislike. 

With this distinction in mind, one notices that there is a difference in value between God's creating a being that inevitably loves him back and his creating a being that gets to choose whether or not to love him back. Even if a being that inevitably loves him back is no better, God's action of inviting someone into communion with him very much has something very significant to be said for it that God's creating someone who will inevitably be in communion with him doesn't.

Unfortunately Pruss doesn't explain what makes that "very significant." 

The second point is this. There is a value to loving someone by choice. Now when God and St Francis love each other, each loves the other by choice. Francis chooses to love God, while being able not to. But God likewise chooses to love Francis, while being able not to. 

i) Pruss is half right. Ironically, that's the principle underlying double predestination. God is free to "love" some, but not love others. Unconditional election and reprobation. 

ii) Is love a choice? Depends on whether we define "love" as affection or a loving action on behalf of another. Humans can't simply choose who they have affection for. But they can choose how to treat another. 

iii) Apropos (ii), we choose our friends, but we don't choose our relatives. However, we tend to choose friends on the basis of those with whom we have natural rapport. We choose to associate with them, but we don't choose to like them. Rather, because we find some people likable, we want them to be our friends. 

iv) Conversely, it's a Christian virtue to befriend someone you don't like. Be a friend to them because they need a friend, without the expectation that they will be a friend to you. 

v) Libertarian theism is confronted with a dilemma: freewill theists typically wish to say that humans are free to love or withhold love from God, but God isn't free to love or withhold love from humans. 

Pruss's position is more symmetrical, but in that event, why does he oppose Calvinism? 

A certain symmetry and equality in love are particularly valuable. In the Trinity, we have a symmetry: no Person of the Trinity has the freedom to fail to love another. But we automatically start off with God having a choice whether to be in a relationship of love with a creature, namely through his having a choice whether to create the creature. It makes for deeper equality and symmetry if the creature also has a choice about how to respond to God.

No doubt that would make for a deeper equality and symmetry, but what if the relationship between God and sinners is inherently unequal and asymmetrical–like a mother and her newborn baby?

A love relationship that is chosen on one side but not on another is less valuable through the asymmetry. Imagine a woman who chose to have a baby had a drug that would ensure that the child would love her back. She had a choice, to some degree, whether to love the baby. But she refuses the child a choice about whether and how to reciprocate the relationship.

i) Once again, the reflects the systematic equivocation which runs through Pruss's analysis. He keeps blurring two different kinds of love. As a rule, parents and children don't choose to love each other (in the sense of affection). That's built in. Even in marriage, we try to marry someone with whom we're simpatico. 

ii) Pruss's standard is subversive. A fundamental feature of divine love, as well as the Christian ecotype, is loving the other even when reciprocity is absent. Loving someone in spite of their animosity. God's love for sinners is a paradigm case.

Or take a parent who continues to love a very difficult teenager. Or take a grown child who cares for an elderly parent with senile dementia. Not only is the feeble-minded parent unable to love in return, but the feeble-minded parent may be resentful and resistant. The grown child is caring for the parent despite the parent's inability to appreciate the loving intent. 

How to read a map

One popular attack on sola Scriptura is the objection that an infallible Bible is useless without an infallible interpreter.

i) To begin with, this isn't a hypothetical question for Protestants. We believe in sola Scriptura because that is how God in fact chooses to operate. One could toy with abstract alternatives which have different consequences, but that's irrelevant to the real-world situation God chose to put us in.

ii) Let's take a comparison. If I have an up-to-date street map, that doesn’t prevent me from taking a wrong turn. I can misread the map. I can miss a street sign.

But because I have an accurate street map, I can also reread the map, correct for my mistakes, and find my way out of the maze. I can retrace my steps and find my way back. Circle back and try again until I get it right.

But if the map itself is out-of-date, then I’m hopelessly lost. I have no frame of reference. No standard of comparison.

Even absent an infallible interpreter, an infallible Bible is a great advantage over a fallible Bible.

Inerrancy and the enlightenment

One popular line of attack on the inerrancy of Scripture is the oft-repeated claim that the very concept of inerrancy is a product of the Enlightenment. A concept of truth that only developed during or after the Enlightenment. I've never seen people who say this document their claim. It seems to be a thirdhand claim that began in Philosophy 101 courses on postmodernism, then seeped into theological literature. From there it gets repeated time and over by people who don't bother to trace the claim or check the facts.

I'd simply point out that attacks on the inerrancy of Scripture antedate the Enlightenment by centuries. Take pagans like Celsus (2C) and Porphyry (3-4C), or the medieval Muslim polemicist Ibn Hazm (11C). It would be grossly anachronistic to say they were operating with an Enlightenment or post-Enlightenment concept of truth.

Poythress on inerrancy

Here are two new papers from Vern Poythress on inerrancy:

• "Pedagogical Best Practices for the Doctrine of Inerrancy" (pdf)
• "Inerrancy, Harmonization and the Synoptic Gospels: A Response to Darrell Bock" (pdf)

The sky is falling!

Writers like John Walton and Peter Enns are popularizing the notion that Bible-writers believed in a three-story universe. Let's play along with claim that ancient Jews thought the world was like a building with walls and a roof. What would happen in a major earthquake? There are many references to earthquakes in Scripture. In a major earthquake, unreinforced buildings collapse. Whole towns and villages are leveled. That's something ancient Near Easterners experienced from time to time.

If a triple-decker universe was rocked by an earthquake, it would be like Samson collapsing the temple or the walls of Jericho collapsing. The firmament would come crashing down as the "pillars of the earth" buckled. Minimally, chunks of the cracked firmament would rain down in meteor showers during/right after an earthquake. Huge rocks falling from the sky. There'd be gaping holes in the damaged firmament, through which the cosmic sea would would empty itself. Like an overhead dam that gives way.

Was that the experience of ancient Jews? Did they observe that?

Factophobic shams

by Richard Carrier

Sadly, too many people in the atheism, humanism, or skepticism communities replace objective facts with subjective feelings and defend their Brave Heroes rather than admit when they’ve destroyed their own credibility and their entire efforts have been exposed as a factophobic sham. 

http://freethoughtblogs.com/carrier/archives/4831

What is freewill?

Freewill theists, especially Arminian bloggers and their ilk, speak of freewill as if that's a transparent, self-evident concept. They in turn accuse Calvinists of either denying freewill or redefining freewill in some ad hoc fashion.

As a matter of fact, the concept of freewill is a very complex and hotly contested issue in contemporary philosophy. Here's an overview:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/freewill/

Politics and the English language

"Obamacare-Speak" by Victor Davis Hanson.

Election and prayer

I'm going to comment on this post:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2013/11/can-a-calvinist-pray-for-his-child-to-be-elect/

Recently I heard of a well-known Calvinist pastor, author, speaker, who, on a podcast, testified that he often goes into his little son’s bedroom after he’s asleep and prays over him that he be among the elect.While I certainly understand the pastor’s sentiment and desire, I wonder if this is consistent with Calvinist theology? 
Is it logically consistent for a Calvinist to believe that prayer can play a role (even as a foreordained means to a foreordained end) in bringing it about that a person prayed for be included among the elect?
This seems very different to me from the common Calvinist claim that prayer for the unsaved can be a “foreordained means” to help bring it about that the person, if he or she is elect, comes to repent and believe.    (Although I admit having qualms about the logic of that as well!)
According to Calvinism, God elects individuals unconditionally. Salvation itself is not unconditional, so Calvin argued, because it depends on repentance and faith. However, according to Calvin and most Calvinists, an elect person will come to salvation. God will assure it via irresistible grace. But God uses means which he has foreordained to bring it about that the elect repent and believe.
But is it consistent with Calvinism to believe that God uses human means to decide who will be elect? I don’t think so. I do not remember any Calvinist theologian saying so.
If God used means to decide who is among the elect (e.g., prayer), then election would not be strictly unconditional. 

i) To begin with , what makes Olson think praying to God to do something is equivalent to God using human means to decide what to do? Does Olson think God is undecided unless and until we pray for something? Does God think prayer helps God decide what to do or not to do? 

ii) Since every event is predestined, and some events are causally or teleologically contingent on other events, some divine decrees presuppose other divine decrees. For instance, you can't have a fallen world without a world to fall. In that sense, the decree to create is logically prior to the fall. On the other hand, if the rationale for the fall is to reveal God's justice and mercy in redemption and judgment, then the fall is teleologically prior to creation–as an ends/means relation. 

God decrees our prayers, God decrees our election. Assuming (ex hypothesi) that our prayers factor in divine election, election isn't directly conditioned on what we pray for, but on God's decreeing what we pray for. Put another way, our prayers are conditioned on God's decree that we pray. Predestination is still the cause, while prayer is the effect. God decided who and what we'd pray for in the first place. If we pray that God elect a loved one, that prayer is, itself, the result of God's decree. 

I think there are Calvinists who simply cannot stomach the implication of Calvinism that a loved one, especially a child, might not be elect, so they revert to inconsistency.

Since Olson is not a universalist, his own statement is inconsistent. 

Living on the edge

Yukon Men is about a small down (pop. approx. 300) in northern Alaska, up by the Arctic Circle. One of the interesting things about the show is the father/son dynamic. The show illustrates better and worse parenting techniques. Of course, one can only judge by what the camera shows, and not what goes on when the camera isn't running.

Stan and Joey Zuray have the best father/son relationship. Stan is likable and laid back. Not too pushy. 

If anything, his son is harder to get along with that he is. His son is very competitive with his dad. And fairly aloof, unlike his gregarious, outgoing father. 

There's an undertone of sadness about the relationship. Joey is impatient with his aging father, who can't move as fast as he used to. There's a clear sense of the son replacing the father. The son overtaking the father. Of being valued as long as you're productive. 

Although I haven't seen every episode, one thing about the show is the absence of Christianity. If it's there, it isn't caught on tape. Or very rarely. Just the lack of prayer is conspicuous. These are people who live by their wits. But it's just them against nature. Eventually, nature always wins. They have nothing to fall back on. Just themselves. In an unforgiving environment, that only goes so far. There's no margin for error. One false step and you're a goner. 

James Roberts seems to be a basically nice guy. But because the residents of Tanana never know for sure where their next meal is coming from, it makes even naturally nice guys hard-nosed. James his making some classic mistakes with his teenage son Francis. Provoking him to anger.

Then you have Pat Moore. He isn't temperamentally cut out for life on the edge. He's in panic mode all the time. Lurching from one crisis to another. A nervous wreck. He swears at his own kids, as well as the hired help. His insecurity is exacerbated by the lack of Christian faith.  

Finally, there's Charlie Wright and his son Bob. Although this is where he grew up, Bob doesn't seem to be suited to this lifestyle. Charlie is aggravated by his son's lack of initiative, but it's obvious to an outside observer that his son would have more self-confidence if he wasn't saddled with a domineering dad who's always tearing him down rather than building him up. Charlie crushes his son's spirit–with predictable results. 

Charlie has the survival skills to make it in a tough environment, and he's clearly proud of his abilities. Up to a point, self-reliance is admirable. But Charlie's self-esteem is vested in his skill set. Yet that's very precarious. He lives in a dangerous part of the world. And he has an accident-prone lifestyle. He's only one accident away, one bear-mauling away, from being dependent rather than self-reliant. What happens to a man whose source of self-worth begins and ends with himself when he loses his edge? Accidents aside, the aging process can take the edge off. Like having (or losing) the visual acuity to shoot a moving target at a distance (e.g. geese). This, again, illustrates the lack of Christian grounding. 

Incidentally, even though the town is 80% Athabaskan, for some reason the enterprising problem-solvers seem to be white guys like Charlie and Stan. Does that reflect different cultures? 

Who's hot and who's not

I have a theory about Mark Driscoll, but I don't know enough about his ministry to say if this is correct.

First of all, there's the common narrative of men who fail by succeeding. They never expected to be that successful. Success is unpredictable. Who could anticipate that The Purpose-Driven Church, Left Behind, or The Late Great Planet Earth would be blockbusters? It's often a matter of lucky timing. A window in time when there's an appetite for that. A neglected marketing niche to fill. 

In Driscoll's case, it may be that he started an empire which rapidly outgrew his limited talents. Perhaps he's a lightweight who could only stretch his material so far. Once he ran out of material, he had to resort to more sensational antics as filler. Like a pop vocalist who only has one big hit, one unforgettable song. 

Driscoll has squandered his opportunities, but maybe he never had the reserves of staying power. He just ran out of things to say, because he never had that much to say, and began padding with gimmicks and shock tactics. 

It's like the Peter Principle, where ambitious employees steadily rise to their level of incompetence–at which point they plateau in steadfast mediocrity. In effect, he was promoted one time too many. The job got too big for his modest abilities. 

I think of Gregory Peck in Moby-Dick. Peck was a perfect actor for certain roles, but he had a very narrow acting range. Capt. Ahab is a flamboyant part which was way beyond him. Patrick Stewart could pull it off, but not Gregory Peck. 

Success is a very trying criterion. Some men, like Spurgeon and Whitfield, were wildly successful as young men, but had the ballast not to capsize. Yet for every example like that, you probably have half a dozen counterexamples. 

In fairness, none of us is indispensable. In this life, we all have walk-on parts. Some build taller sandcastles than others, but all of us are building our sandcastles at low tide. Every earthly achievement will be swept away. 

After the dust settles

Given how controversial he already is, I'm struck by how quickly the kerfuffle about the Mefferd interview escalated. The sides were lining up minutes later. 

Personally, I doubt Driscoll is worth fighting over. He's a spent force. I think he blew whatever capital he had some time ago. In theological gravity, rising stars become falling stars. 

So why the explosive reaction to the interview? Like lighting a match in a fireworks factory, it only takes one spark to ignite an instant conflagration.

This isn't really about Driscoll. He's a pawn on the chessboard. A placeholder for other larger issues.

Even before the interview, different sides were prepositioned. This is a turf war. This is about controlling the course of the modern Reformed movement. Will it go in the direction of John Piper, John Frame, John MacArthur, Scott Clark, Tim Keller, Carl Trueman, John Byl, John Collins, Douglas Wilson, Tullian Tchividjian, Philip Ryken, Albert Mohler, Wade Burleson, D. G. Hart, D. A. Carson, Tim Bayly, or Rachel Held Evans? 

Peter Enns made an abortive fifth column effort to infiltrate and destroy from within.  

It's really about anterior issues like confessionalism, continuationism, complementarianism, and Darwinism. That's why the debate gets so heated so fast. It was already polarized going in.

Up to a point, theological competition is healthy. In any big, energetic movement, you're going to have strong individuals with clashing views, as well as institutional inertia and entropy. That's a winnowing process. 

Ultimately, it's not the knights, rooks, and bishops on the Reformed chessboard who determine the state of the game, but the Grand Master who is moving every piece according to his appointed ends. Every piece has a part to play, but at the end of the day, we don't control the outcome. Thankfully, that's in far wiser and greater hands than our own. 

A 50th Wedding Anniversary Celebration

Paul Levy recently posted an article at Reformation21 on the topic of ministers who lose their ministries through sexual sin, but a paragraph caught my eye: “Sex within marriage is God's answer to immorality”:

Love the wife of your youth. Work hard at your marriage. Don’t be dumb enough to neglect this. As men we should be far more brutal in battering one another when we see we’re neglecting our marriages. Spend time together. Don’t just do things like going to the cinema or watching a dvd which means you don’t communicate. My advice to folk in marriage is go to the pub and go there often. The reason being is that there’s nothing you can do in the pub apart from talk, even playing darts or pool you still have to talk. I realise in America you don’t have pubs, you just have bars with 1000’s of TV’s playing basketball and American football and men and women in suits who all look the same discussing trivia. In the US you’ll just need to find somewhere else to go. Sex within marriage is God’s answer to immorality, and so Christians need to work really hard at having good sex lives. In all cases of marital breakdown that I’ve faced this is the area which was cited first.

The flip side of sexual immorality is to be engaged in a life-long marriage. “Love the wife of your youth”, all through a long life, because it is God’s creational plan for a man and a woman.

I was able to see the fruit of that – and its opposite yesterday, as I went to a “50th Wedding Anniversary” party for my aunt and uncle. They invited several hundreds of guests to take part in this tremendous witness of a lifetime, and such an event is a great witness to our world today. Among the guests were those who had an eye on a similar goal, along with a very large number of relatives who would never be able to celebrate such an event, including those who had lost spouses to death, and those who had undergone divorces and remarriage.

God’s plan is a life-long marriage, and it is one of the benefits to observing Gods’ laws.

For my part, I had a tremendous opportunity to enjoy much good conversation, wonderful food and drink, to dance with my wife and daughters, to talk with them about the pure goodness of God’s plans (even when they seem inconvenient), and to come home to an amorous wife who, after 26+ years of marriage and a bout of leukemia, has maybe not much hope of seeing a 50th wedding anniversary, but the understanding that God can and does provide such gifts to people.