christian debating

Ah, knowing when and when not to enter/continue a discussion. And when continuing in a discussion over world-views/values, knowing how to proceed in a fruitful, godly manner. This is difficult. Doug Wilson proffers some advice here:

For many Christians, it seems a reasonable question to ask whether it is profitable for us to engage in public debates at all. Whoever changed his mind because of some public argument? Why wrangle about words? Logomachies just make my head hurt.

In contrast to this, I want to argue that such a quietist position is not only inconsistent with the teaching of Scriptures, but runs directly contrary to it. We are called to speak with unbelievers in the public square, and we are to do so in a way that includes answering their objections. We are called to prevail in such discussions (in a particular way). When we do this right, what is happening is public debate, the kind that can be very helpful.

But before making the case for this, it should be said at the outset that those who want to avoid “unseemly spectacles for Jesus” do have a point. There are some debates that are no good at all, and the Bible tells us expressly to avoid them. But when the Scriptures tell us not to lose our battles in a particular way, we should not infer from this an imaginary duty to avoid fighting those battles at all.

That said, let me begin by noting a few places where Christians are told not to engage in verbal free-for-alls. While we are not to avoid all debates, we are to avoid some debates.

“To speak evil of no man, to be no brawlers, but gentle, shewing all meekness unto all men. For we ourselves also were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another” (Tit. 3:2-3).

We are not to be “brawlers.”

“But foolish and unlearned questions avoid, knowing that they do gender strifes. And the servant of the Lord must not strive; but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient, In meekness instructing those that oppose themselves; if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth; And that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him at his will” (2 TIm. 2:23-26).

We are told here to stay out of stupid and fruitless debates, where the topic being discussed is guaranteed to spiral down into meaningless yelling. The servant of the Lord must not strive. But even here, note that the servant of the Lord must “instruct those who oppose themselves.” In other words, Paul’s rule here is “not this kind of debate,” not “no debate.”

You have to gauge the situation, and read the crowd. There are times when we must not descend to their level (Prov. 26:4). But, since wisdom is not optional, there are times when we must step into their world in order to run the reductio (Prov. 26:5).

So with that caution out of the way, why should we debate? Well, to begin where all Christians should always begin, let’s look at the life of Jesus. Asking whether it is lawful to debate is like asking if it is lawful to speak in parables. Jesus spoke in parables constantly, and He also was engaged in public point and counterpoint constantly.

Jesus adroitly countered a question about His authority with a question about John the Baptist (Matt. 21:27). Jesus shut down the Saducees in a debate about the resurrection (Matt. 22:29). Jesus debated the highly charged issue of taxation (Mark 12:17). Jesus debated the devil (Luke 4:4). Jesus debated the question of healings on the sabbath (Luke 5:22). And Jesus routs His opponents on the question of His own identity (John 8:14). There are numerous other examples. In fact, there are so many examples of polemical exchanges in the gospels that questions about the propriety of polemical exchanges can only arise if people are ignorant of the gospels, or if they come to the gospels with a strong, preconceived idea about Jesus that they picked up somewhere else.

This is odd, but not surprising, because there is a strong unbiblical tradition that tags Jesus as the original hippie, teaching us all to peace out. This runs directly counter to all the hellfire teaching the Lord did, and the numerous debates He won with the establishment theologians, and, as Sayers or Chesterton once put it, let us not forget that time He threw furniture down the front steps of the Temple. Gentle Jesus, meek and mild, not.

That said, it is not surprising that we find instructions that reveal how public clashing is actually a pastoral duty.

“Holding fast the faithful word as he hath been taught, that he may be able by sound doctrine both to exhort and to convince the gainsayers. For there are many unruly and vain talkers and deceivers, specially they of the circumcision: Whose mouths must be stopped” (Tit. 1:9-11).

This not only requires pastors to debate false teachers, it requires them to win those debates.

“And when he was disposed to pass into Achaia, the brethren wrote, exhorting the disciples to receive him: who, when he was come, helped them much which had believed through grace: 28 For he mightily convinced the Jews, and that publickly, shewing by the scriptures that Jesus was Christ” (Acts 18:27-28).

Putting all this together, we see the biblical reasons for debate. We see them both in the example of Jesus, and in the instructions given to pastors in the first century. The point of debating is to stop the mouths of unruly talkers and thinkers. When this happens, it will sometimes not be evident to the false teacher that he has been silenced — even though it is evident to everybody else. This is the valuable service that Apollos provided — he was a help to the believers in how he refuted the Jews on whether Jesus was the Messiah. Translated into a modern setting, if a believer effectively refutes someone arguing for homosexual marriage, or an atheist denying God, the debate on the stage might not be settled at all. But there are many believers out in the audience who have heard those same arguments in numerous classrooms, and they now know that those arguments can be effectively countered. Apollos was a great help to the believers.

In a godly debate, you are trying to win men, not arguments, and you have to remember that many of those you are trying to win are out in the audience. In the great public square issues of the day, there are large numbers of people on the fence. Debates can have a huge impact on that “swing segment.” I would want to say that when we observe how ineffective our debates are, it would be far better to listen to Scripture, and lament how ineffective our debaters are. This is a pursuit that must be encouraged, honored, and praised, and we must provide the requisite training for those who are called to it. And those training programs must turn away those pugnacious types who just want join up with a “who’re gonna call?” Cultbusters.

In conclusion, I would like to say a few things about one of the great proving grounds for debating skills, and that would be the classrooms of secular universities. To what extent should Christians just keep their heads down, and if they speak up, how should they speak up?

I would suggest three things to students in such a position. The first is that if you want to challenge a professor, you should do it with an established ethos. By this, I mean that you should not be a struggling C- student who only does half the reading, and who then goes off at the teacher half-cocked, and then, when you get shut down, cry persecution. Earn your right to speak, and do that by being in the top of the class — or by being in the top of the class before you decided to open your mouth. If your grades drop after that, that’s the professor’s look out.

Second, let most of your opportunities go by you. If you challenge everything that you could challenge (depending on the class) you will be doing it every ten minutes. If you are in a target-rich environment, then you probably shoot at every 25th one. You will make the point effectively enough, and in this setting — trust me — a little bit goes a long way.

And last, as a student, you are not a professor. That means you shouldn’t preach, or attempt to highjack the lecture. There is a place for gospel declaration, but this is not it. Having said this, it is not out of place for a student to ask questions. That is not inappropriate — that is a student’s calling and vocation. And if you ask the right questions for which the professor has no answers, then you don’t have to draw the conclusions. You can do that in conversations with other students after class. Keep your debates (in this setting) in the interrogative.

If you learn to do this well, it may be an indication that you are called to an apologetic ministry after graduation. If that happens, you will have more tools availabe to you than you do as a lowly student.

the unbeliever's truth

John M. Frame in The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God:

In important ways, the unbeliever's knowledge is like the believer's. Surveying the outline of the last section, we can say (1) that God is knowable but incomprehensible to believer and unbeliever alike and (2) that in both cases the knowledge can be described as covenant knowledge. Both believer and unbeliever know about God's control, authority, and presence. The knowledge of the unbeliever, like that of the believer, is a knowledge that God is Lord (cf. passages mentioned earlier). And both forms of knowledge are subject to God's control, authority, and presence. The unbeliever, like the believer, knows God only on God's initiative, though he refuses to obey that authority. His knowledge is not only a knowledge about God, but a knowledge of God himself (Rom. 1:21). Indeed, it is a confrontation with God as present, though he experiences the presence of God's wrath (Rom. 1:18), not His redemptive blessing (cf. Exod. 14:4, where the Egyptians' knowledge of God occurs in the midst of the experience of judgment).

... So we come to the analysis that I consider the most adequate. Let's take it in several steps. (1) All unbelievers know enough truths about God to be without excuse and may know many more, as many as are available to man. There is no limit to the number of true, revealed propositions about God that an unbeliever can know. (2) But unbelievers lack the obedience and friendship with God that is essential to "knowledge" in the fullest biblical sense-the knowledge of the believer. Yet at every moment, they are personally involved with God as an enemy. Thus their knowledge of Him is more than merely propositional. (3) The unbeliever's disobedience has intellectual implications. First, it is itself a stupid response to God's revelation. (4) Second, disobedience is a kind of lying. When we disobey God, we testify to others and to ourselves that God's Word is untrue. (5) Third, disobedience involves fighting the truth-fighting its dissemination, opposing its application to one's own life, to the lives of others, and to society. Sinners fight the truth in many ways. They (a) simply deny it (Gen. 3:4; John 5:38; Acts 19:9), (b) ignore it (2 Peter 3:5), (c) psychologically repress it, (d) acknowledge the truth with the lips but deny it in deed (Matt. 23:2f.), (e) put the truth into a misleading context (Gen. 3:5, 12, 13; Matt. 4:6), and (f) use the truth to oppose God. We should not fall into the trap of assuming that all sinners always use the same strategy. They do not always deny the truth in word or repress it into their subconscious. (6) Fourth, lying and fighting the truth involve affirmations of falsehoods. We must not assume that every sentence uttered by an unbeliever will be false; unbelievers can fight the truth in ways other than by uttering falsehoods. Yet disobedience always involves the acceptance of atheism, whether so stated in words or merely acted on in life (there is no significant difference between denying God's existence and acting as if God does not exist). (7) Fifth, these falsehoods may conflict with true beliefs that the sinner holds. At some level, every unbeliever holds conflicting beliefs, for example, God is Lord and God is not Lord. (8) Sixth, these falsehoods affect every area of life, including the epistemological. Thus the unbeliever has false notions even about how to reason-notions that may conflict with true notions that he also holds. (9) Seventh, the believer and the unbeliever differ epistemologically in that for the believer the truth is dominant over the lie, and for the unbeliever vice versa. It is not always clear which is dominant, which is to say that we do not have infallible knowledge of another's heart. (10) Finally, the unbeliever's goal is an impossible one-to destroy the truth entirely, to replace God with some alternative deity. Because the goal is impossible, the task is self-frustrating (see Ps. 5:10; Prov. 18:7; Jer. 2:19; Luke 19:22; Rom. 8:28; 9:15f.). The unbeliever is condemned out of his own mouth for he cannot help but affirm the truth that he opposes. And because the unbeliever's views are false, even his limited success is possible only because God allows it (see Job 1:12; Isa. 10:5-19). Adding to the fact that the unbeliever frustrates himself, God also frustrates him, restraining him from accomplishing his purposes (Gen. 11:7) and using him to accomplish God's purposes instead (Ps. 76:10; Isa. 45:1f.; Rom. 9:17). Thus the unbeliever's efforts accomplish good in spite of himself.

A Disclaimer

The last paragraph represents the most adequate view of the matter that I know of. Yet the question remains a very mysterious one. Scripture says that the unbeliever knows and that he does not know. Scripture does not give us an epistemological elucidation in as many terms; that elucidation must be drawn carefully out of what Scripture says about other matters. And much more work remains to be done before we will have a formulation that is credible to the church (even the Reformed churches) generally. Van Til is at his best in his Introduction to Systematic Theology (24-27) where he admits the difficulty of the questions (something he does not often do) and rests content with a description of the natural man as "a mixture of truth with error" (27). 1 will continue to assume the truth of the analysis under j above, but I would not advise anyone to be dogmatic about the details. Certainly they should not be used as tests of orthodoxy.

wisdom

From John M.  Frame in The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God (A Theology of Lordship):

... wisdom focuses on the element of know-how, or skill. A wise man is one who has the ability to do something-not just a factual knowledge of something but also the ability to use his knowledge correctly. That use may be in various areas, for example, Bezalel the son of Uri was "filled with the Spirit of God and with wisdom" (NIV reads "skill," "ability") to do the craft work for the tabernacle (Exod. 31:1-6). But more often, wisdom has a moral-religious connotation, so that we may define it as "the skill of godly living" (cf. esp. James 3:13-17). We can see, then, how wisdom, like knowledge, involves an understanding of God's lordship as well as actual obedience to the Lord (Prov. 9:10; cf. 1:7)." We can also see that wisdom, like knowledge, is a gift of God's grace and has a trinitarian origin: God the Father is the source of wisdom, in the Son are hidden all the treasures of wisdom, and the Spirit is the Spirit of wisdom. Wisdom is communicated by the Word and by the Spirit (cf. Exod. 28:3; 31:3; Deut. 34:9; Prov. 3:19; 8:30; 28:7-9; 30:5; Jer. 8:8f.; Acts 6:3; 1 Cor. 1:24, 30; 2:6-16; Col. 2:3; 3:16; 2 Tim. 3:15).

thinking and believing

From Martin Downes:

Fides quaerens intellectum (faith seeking understanding) is a famous phrase of Anselm's. It is a fitting expression for that central vein of faith's quest for intellectual understanding, as fleshed out here by Augustine:

No one believes anything unless one first thought it believable...Everything that is believed is believed after being preceded by thought...Not everyone who thinks believes, since many think in order not to believe; but everyone who believes thinks, thinks in believing and believes in thinking.

Augustine, The Predestination of the Saints, 44:962-3, cited in Wilken, The Spirit of Early Christian Thought, p. xiii-xiv

transforming suffering

Vaneetha Rendall Demski post some thoughts on transforming suffering:

1. Remember that God loves me. Unconditionally, relentlessly, passionately. The cross is a blazing reminder of his love. Nothing can separate me from it. Jesus is always for me. He witnesses every heartache I endure. He discerns the fears I can’t even voice. He weeps with me in my pain
2. Talk to God. I need his help, his perspective, his comfort. Intellectually knowing this affliction is for my good is not enough; I need an encounter with the living God. And when I unreservedly pour out my heart to him, he tenderly meets me. These prayers are not long or eloquent. They may be groans, simple cries of “help me Jesus” or even silence before him. My biggest challenge is not to turn away. Or stew in my anger. Or numb the pain elsewhere.
3. Open the Bible and start reading it. I often resist this straight-to-the-text approach; it can seem so academic. But as I open the Bible’s pages, God speaks to me, whispering his comfort, shouting his promises, showing his grace through his inspired writers — people who were brutally honest about their suffering. They mentor me, modeling that it’s acceptable to lament. To voice my frustration. To express my raw emotion.
4. Remind myself that I am never alone in my suffering. In addition to our triune God, I am surrounded by a glorious cloud of witnesses who see every struggle I experience. While invisible to me, they are part of the spiritual realm, like the angels that Gehazi beheld sitting on chariots of fire. The unseen world. This world is real. And ever watching. Watching to see whether God is my treasure. Whether I will still praise him as my body deteriorates. Whether I will trust him when all looks dark.
5. Recite God’s faithfulness. I have a record of my spiritual highlights, my unmistakable encounters with God, my Ebenezers. The times when God has rescued me. Surprised me with joy. Overwhelmed me with his presence. When I am suffering, I need to review this list. It assures me that this trial will one day pass but God’s faithfulness and love will never fail.
6. Set my mind on heaven. This world is not my home and it is passing away. It will be over in the blink of an eye. And then real life will begin. God has eternity to make up for any suffering in this life. In heaven there will be no more tears or death or crying or pain.
7. Remember that this life is all about God. Everything was created to make much of him whose ways are higher than my ways. I may not understand how, but God is doing something bigger with my life than I can possibly see. My suffering is never senseless; it will not be wasted. He will ultimately use every struggle for my good and his glory.

Read her story here.

afraid of subjective moral reasoning

It is oft said that religion (which many times is code for Christianity specifically) is the reason for the violence in the world. The Beatles gave us Imagine - "and no religion too" - in which the world would be a better place without religion. The claims themselves are a religion but that aside, this is a deception. The world without Christ would be hell. Here is Ravi Zacharias's excellent response to "why are you so afraid of subjective moral reasoning?"

christian unity

Michael Patton is correct. We listen for the point of disagreement. We, especially Christians, would do well to do the opposite. Here is his analysis:

So much of the time we lack perspective in our inquiry. Our minds have the privilege of being pessimistic and skeptical about so many things. We demonstrate the tendency to focus exclusively on what is wrong, while we are seemingly oblivious to the those things which are right. All one has to do is reference their own marriage to see the truth of this!

When it comes to objections to Christianity, there are striking similarities. We stress the problem of evil (if God exists, how do we explain all the evil?), yet fail to realize the “problem” of good (if God doesn’t exist, how do we explain all the good?). Atheists say theists must give an answer to the creation by God, while at the same time dismissing their own obligation to explain the existence of everything else! Skeptics talk endlessly about the discrepancies in the Gospel stories, but are silent about the myriads of agreements which far outweigh what appear to be disagreements, both in number and significance. The unfortunate consequence is that many people (including Christians) become discouraged and full of doubt due to the many disagreements that Christians experience among themselves. Catholic vs. Protestant. Baptist vs. Presbyterian. Calvinist vs. Arminian. Premillennialists vs. Amillennialists. Young Earth vs. Old Earth. The truth of the matter is that for centuries Christians have disagreed among themselves concerning many issues from the interpretation of certain Scriptures to the role of tradition as an authoritative norm in our faith. However, I would encourage people to gain some perspective here. It is time to call on Christians, as well as non-Christians to focus not only on our respective disagreements, but also observe and gain strength from the many areas in which we agree.

In the Credo House, we have placed on one of our walls St. Vincent of Lerins’ dictum (in Latin): “What has been believed everywhere, always, and by all.” This early creed about Christian orthodoxy emphasizes the idea that the most important doctrines of the Christian faith have broad and nearly universal consensus. While there is disunity in the Christian church, essential orthodoxy is defined by those things which have been believed by the entirety of the Christian church. Please remember that minor exceptions do not make the rule here. I am talking about those individuals and groups who legitimately find their roots in any of the three great Christian traditions: Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Eastern Orthodoxy.

This is to say that while there may be problems as a result of disagreements among Christians, these difficulties are miniscule when compared to the problems caused by agreements just for the sake of appearing to be in consensus among Christians.

Here is a sampling of the primary tenants where we find consensus:

All Christians, always and everywhere, have believed . . .

• that there is a God
• that God created all there is
• that God created all there is out of nothing
• that God is sovereign
• that God is powerful beyond imagination
• that God loves people
• that God is righteous
• that God is gracious
• that God is trinity
• that there is equality in the Godhead
• that God created man in his image
• that man sinned and fell from grace
• that man is sinful by nature
• that man, without God’s grace, is without hope
• that Christ is God’s son
• that Christ became man
• that Christ lived a sinless life
• that Christ was put to death on a cross
• that the cross has atoning value for sin
• that Christ rose bodily from the grave
• that man must trust in Christ to be saved
• that Christ is coming again for judgement
• that believers will spend eternity with God in glory
• that unbelievers will spend eternity without God in shame

While this list covers much and is incredibly significant, I could have gone on for a thousand pages. You try. Sit down and begin to write down all the things about which you know Christians agree. From verse to verse throughout the Scriptures, one can demonstrate how Christians are united in their understanding and interpretation of the tenets of our faith. For example, there is a well-know disagreement between some Calvinists and all Arminians about the definition of the word “world” in John 3:16:

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son that who ever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life.”

Some Calvinists will say that the word “world” does not mean every person without exception, but every type of person without distinction (I, as a Calvinist, do not agree). Arminians, on the other hand, believe that it refers to every person without exception. This example illustrates a fine and interesting disagreement, but not one that should overshadow the far surpassing amount of agreement that all Christians have about this verse. All Christians believe that . . .

• it was Yahweh who is in view here (i.e. not another God)
• God’s love was the motivating factor
• God’s only has one unique Son
• belief is necessary to gain the reward
• belief is necessary to avoid the penalty
• there are many people loved by God
• God “gave” his Son in the sense that he sacrificed him
• everlasting life is life with God

Once again, I could go on and on about the consensus that Christians have concerning this one verse. Because of the clarity of the Christian message (what Protestants have called perspicuity), these agreements are far-reaching, significant, and foundational for the Christian faith. It is not unlike having a puzzle with millions of pieces. Once the puzzle is done, a thousand pieces are found to be missing or without placement. The missing pieces in no way hinder one from seeing and understanding the picture itself.

That said, it is not my goal to undermine the importance of working through disagreements. Nor am I contending that all Christians should lay down arms and cease to sharpen each other through their differences. Conversely, what I am saying is very evangelistic and apologetic in nature. If there is a problem for Christians with regard to Christian disunity, far greater problems exist for non-Christians as a direct consequence and the compelling evidence of Christian unity.

atheism

Thanks to Amy Hall for summarizing a New York Times interview with Alvin Plantinga:

Philosopher Alvin Plantinga made a few quotable points in an interview posted by the New York Times on Sunday.

On the claim that lack of evidence for theism is evidence for atheism:

Lack of evidence, if indeed evidence is lacking, is no grounds for atheism. No one thinks there is good evidence for the proposition that there are an even number of stars; but also, no one thinks the right conclusion to draw is that there are an uneven number of stars. The right conclusion would instead be agnosticism. 

In the same way, the failure of the theistic arguments, if indeed they do fail, might conceivably be good grounds for agnosticism, but not for atheism. Atheism, like even-star-ism, would presumably be the sort of belief you can hold rationally only if you have strong arguments or evidence.

On whether or not the existence of imperfections in the world is evidence against God:

I suppose your thinking is that it is suffering and sin that make this world less than perfect. But then your question makes sense only if the best possible worlds contain no sin or suffering. And is that true? Maybe the best worlds contain free creatures some of whom sometimes do what is wrong. Indeed, maybe the best worlds contain a scenario very like the Christian story. 

Think about it: The first being of the universe, perfect in goodness, power and knowledge, creates free creatures. These free creatures turn their backs on him, rebel against him and get involved in sin and evil. Rather than treat them as some ancient potentate might — e.g., having them boiled in oil — God responds by sending his son into the world to suffer and die so that human beings might once more be in a right relationship to God. God himself undergoes the enormous suffering involved in seeing his son mocked, ridiculed, beaten and crucified. And all this for the sake of these sinful creatures. 

I’d say a world in which this story is true would be a truly magnificent possible world. It would be so good that no world could be appreciably better. But then the best worlds contain sin and suffering.

On the atheist argument that “we no longer need God to explain the world”:

Some atheists seem to think that a sufficient reason for atheism is the fact (as they say) that we no longer need God to explain natural phenomena — lightning and thunder for example. We now have science. 

As a justification of atheism, this is pretty lame. We no longer need the moon to explain or account for lunacy; it hardly follows that belief in the nonexistence of the moon (a-moonism?) is justified. A-moonism on this ground would be sensible only if the sole ground for belief in the existence of the moon was its explanatory power with respect to lunacy. (And even so, the justified attitude would be agnosticism with respect to the moon, not a-moonism.) The same thing goes with belief in God: Atheism on this sort of basis would be justified only if the explanatory power of theism were the only reason for belief in God. And even then, agnosticism would be the justified attitude, not atheism.

On the problem with believing in both materialism and evolution:

[I]f there are only material entities, then atheism certainly follows. But there is a really serious problem for materialism: It can’t be sensibly believed, at least if, like most materialists, you also believe that humans are the product of evolution…. The belief that both materialism and evolution are true…can’t rationally be held.

Read the rest of the interview to find out why.

starbucks and james

From David Rudd:

"You can learn a lot more from listening than you can from talking. Find someone with whom you don't agree in the slightest and ask them to explain themselves at length. Then take a seat, shut your mouth, and don't argue back. It's physically impossible to listen with your mouth open."

-- John Moe, Radio host and author of Conservatize Me, From Starbucks cup #280

"My dear brothers, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry..."

-- James, Brother of Jesus and pastor in Jerusalem, From James 1:19

world-view clash

Summary - how do we know anything at all?

Here is Al Mohler's take on the Nye-Ham debate:

Last night’s debate between Bill Nye and Ken Ham attracted a huge international audience and no shortage of controversy—even before it began. Bill Nye, whose main media presence is as “The Science Guy,” and Ken Ham, co-founder of Answers in Genesis and founder of the Creation Museum, squared off in a true debate over one of the most important questions that the human mind can contemplate. That is no small achievement.

I enjoyed a front row seat at the debate, which took place even as a major winter storm raged outside, dumping considerable amounts of snow and ice and causing what the local police announced as a “Class Two” weather emergency. Inside the Creation Museum there was quite enough heat, and the debate took place without a hitch. Thankfully, it also took place without acrimony.

The initial controversy about the debate centered in criticism of Bill Nye for even accepting the invitation. Many evolutionary scientists, such as Richard Dawkins and Jerry Coyne, refuse to debate the issue, believing that any public debate offers legitimacy to those who deny evolution. Nye was criticized by many leading evolutionists, who argued publicly that nothing good could come of the debate.

Interestingly, this points back to the famous debates over evolution that took place in nineteenth century England, when Anglican churchmen faced early evolutionary scientists in (mostly) civil public exchanges. Back then, it was the churchmen who were criticized by their peers for participation in the debate. Now, the table has turned, indicating something of the distance between the intellectual conditions then and now.

Of course, Bill Nye might have felt some moral obligation to debate the question, since he had launched a unilateral attack on creationist parents in a video that went viral last year. In that video, Nye told creationist parents:

“[I]f you want to deny evolution and live in your world, in your world that’s completely inconsistent with everything we observe in the universe, that’s fine, but don’t make your kids do it because we need them. We need scientifically literate voters and taxpayers for the future. We need people that can—we need engineers that can build stuff, solve problems.”

But if Nye had launched the attack, he did not arrive at the debate in a defensive mode. A protege of the late Carl Sagan and the current CEO of the Planetary Society, Nye was in full form last night, wearing his customary bow-tie, and immaculately dressed in a very expensive suit. He took notes with a very fine writing instrument. I like his style.

Ken Ham is a veteran debater on the issue of origins, and he was clearly prepared for the debate. Ham’s arguments were tight and focused, and his demeanor was uniformly calm and professional. The format allowed for a full expression of both arguments, along with spirited exchanges and questions submitted from the audience. What the 150 minute event lacked was any requirement that the debaters answer each other’s questions. That would have changed the way the debate concluded.

The central question of the debate was this: “Is creation a viable model of origins in today’s modern scientific era?” Ham stuck to the question tenaciously. Nye, on the other hand, tried to personalize the debate and kept changing the question from creation to “Ken Ham’s creationism.” Ham was unfazed, and kept to his argument.

As the debate began, it was clear that Ham and Nye do not even agree on definitions. The most friction on definition came when Nye rejected Ham’s distinction between “historical science” and “observational science” out of hand. Nye maintained his argument that science is a unitary method, without any distinction between historical and observational modes. Ham pressed his case that science cannot begin without making certain assumptions about the past, which cannot be observed. Furthermore, Ham rightly insisted that observational science generally does not require any specific commitment to a model of historical science. In other words, both evolutionists and creationists do similar experimental science, and sometimes even side-by-side.

Nye’s main presentation contained a clear rejection of biblical Christianity. At several points in the debate, he dismissed the Bible’s account of Noah and the ark as unbelievable. Oddly, he even made this a major point in his most lengthy argument. As any informed observer would have anticipated, Nye based his argument on the modern consensus and went to the customary lines of evidence, from fossils to ice rods. Ham argued back with fossil and geological arguments of his own. Those portions of the debate did not advance the arguments much past where they were left in the late nineteenth century, with both sides attempting to keep score by rocks and fossils.

In this light, the debate proved both sides right on one central point: If you agreed with Bill Nye you would agree with his reading of the evidence. The same was equally true for those who entered the room agreeing with Ken Ham; they would agree with his interpretation of the evidence.

That’s because the argument was never really about ice rods and sediment layers. It was about the most basic of all intellectual presuppositions: How do we know anything at all? On what basis do we grant intellectual authority? Is the universe self-contained and self-explanatory? Is there a Creator, and can we know him?

On those questions, Ham and Nye were separated by infinite intellectual space. They shared the stage, but they do not live in the same intellectual world. Nye is truly committed to a materialistic and naturalistic worldview. Ham is an evangelical Christian committed to the authority of the Bible. The clash of ultimate worldview questions was vividly displayed for all to see.

When asked how matter came to exist and how consciousness arose, Nye responded simply and honestly: “I don’t know.” Responding to the same questions, Ham went straight to the Bible, pointing to the Genesis narrative as a full and singular answer to these questions. Nye went on the attack whenever Ham cited the Bible, referring to the implausibility of believing what he kept describing as “Ken Ham’s interpretation of a 3,000 year old book translated into American English.”

To Bill Nye, the idea of divine revelation is apparently nonsensical. He ridiculed the very idea.

This is where the debate was most important. Both men were asked if any evidence could ever force them to change their basic understanding. Both men said no. Neither was willing to allow for any dispositive evidence to change their minds. Both operate in basically closed intellectual systems. The main problem is that Ken Ham knows this to be the case, but Bill Nye apparently does not. Ham was consistently bold in citing his confidence in God, in the gospel of Jesus Christ, and in the full authority and divine inspiration of the Bible. He never pulled a punch or hid behind an argument. Nye seems to believe that he is genuinely open to any and all new information, but it is clear that his ultimate intellectual authority is the prevailing scientific consensus. More than once he asserted a virtually unblemished confidence in the ability of modern science to correct itself. He steadfastly refused to admit that any intellectual presuppositions color his own judgment.

But the single most defining moments in the debate came as Bill Nye repeatedly cited the “reasonable man” argument in his presentation and responses. He cited Adolphe Quetelet’s famed l’homme moyen—“a reasonable man”—as the measure of his intellectual authority. Writing in 1835, Quetelet, a French intellectual, made his “reasonable man” famous. The “reasonable man” is a man of intellect and education and knowledge who can judge evidence and arguments and function as an intellectual authority on his own two feet. The “reasonable man” is a truly modern man. Very quickly, jurists seized on the “reasonable man” to define the law and lawyers used him to make arguments before juries. A “reasonable man” would interpret the evidence and make a reasoned judgment, free from intellectual pressure.

Bill Nye repeatedly cited the reasonable man in making his arguments. He is a firm believer in autonomous human reason and the ability of the human intellect to solve the great problems of existence without any need of divine revelation. He spoke of modern science revealing “what we all can know” as it operates on the basis of natural laws. As Nye sees it, Ken Ham has a worldview, but Nye does not. He referred to “Ken Ham’s worldview,” but claimed that science merely provides knowledge. He sees himself as the quintessential “reasonable man,” and he repeatedly dismissed Christian arguments as “not reasonable.”

In an unexpected turn, near the end of the event, Nye even turned to make an argument against Christianity on grounds of theodicy. He asked Ham if it was “reasonable” to believe that God had privileged a personal revelation that was not equally accessible to all. Nye’s weakest argument had to do with his claim—made twice—that billions of religious people accept modern science. He provided a chart that included vast millions of adherents of other world religions and announced that they are religious but accept modern science. That is nonsense, of course. At least it is nonsense if he meant to suggest that these billions believe in evolution. That is hardly the case. Later, he lowered his argument to assert that these billions of people use modern technology. So, of course, do creationists. There are few facilities in the world more high-tech than the Creation Museum.

Nye is clearly not a fan of theistic evolution, since he argued that a purely natural argument should be quite enough for the “reasonable man.” He seemed to affirm a methodological agnosticism, since he sees the question of a “higher power” or “spiritual being” to be one of little intellectual consequence. He did argue that nature is a closed system and that natural selection can allow for absolutely no supernatural interference or influence. In this respect, he sounded much like Stephen Hawking, who has argued that God may exist, but that there is nothing for him to do.

Ken Ham is a Young Earth Creationist (as am I), but the larger argument was over worldviews, and the debate revealed the direct collision between evolution and the recognition of any historical authority within Genesis 1-11. As if to make that clear, in making one of his closing arguments, Bill Nye actually went back to cite “this problem of the ark.”

The ark is not the real problem; autonomous human reason is. Bill Nye is a true believer in human reason and the ability of modern science to deliver us. Humanity is just “one germ away” from extinction, he said. But science provides him with the joy of discovery and understanding.

The problem with autonomous human reason is made clear by the Apostle Paul in Romans chapter 1:

“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things” (Rom 1:18-23 ESV).

The problem with human reason is that it, along with every other aspect of our humanity, was corrupted by the fall. This is what theologians refer to as the “noetic effects of the fall.” We have not lost the ability to know all things, but we have lost the ability to know them on our own authority and power. We are completely dependent upon divine revelation for the answers to the most important questions of life. Our sin keeps us from seeing what is right before our eyes in nature. We are dependent upon the God who loves us enough to reveal himself to us—and to give us his Word.

As it turns out, the reality and authority of divine revelation, more than any other issue, was what the debate last night was all about. As the closing statements made very clear, Ken Ham understood that fact, but Bill Nye did not.

The central issue last night was really not the age of the earth or the claims of modern science. The question was not really about the ark or sediment layers or fossils. It was about the central worldview clash of our times, and of any time: the clash between the worldview of the self-declared “reasonable man” and the worldview of the sinner saved by grace.

ham and guy

Thoughtful insight by Mike Wittmer (I also did not watch the debate):

I did not see the debate last night between Ken Ham and The Science Guy, but I did see many posts on Twitter and Facebook and read the USA Today story in this morning’s paper. Many Christians rightly point out that Ham wrongly thinks the only orthodox way to read Genesis 1 is the way he reads it, but in their (often scornful) posts they may be missing a more fundamental point.

USA Today quotes Bill Nye saying to Ham, “Your assertion that there is some difference between the natural laws that I observe today and the natural laws of 4,000 years ago is extraordinary and unsettling.”

This is roughly the same point that Abraham Kuyper made 100 years ago. Kuyper said there are two kinds of scientists in the world, normalists and abnormalists. Normalists such as Bill Nye believe the world they see behaves in the same way it always has. Abnormalists believe there has been a cataclysmic, catastrophic Fall that has dramatically damaged our world. We don’t know all the ways the Fall has changed our world, but we must believe it did.

Poor Bill Nye. He is observing an accident scene and doesn’t even know there has been an accident. And poor us, if we think that our more enlightened reading of Genesis 1 will earn any more respect from him. If you are a Christian who believes what the Bible says about a historical Adam and a historical Fall, then though you may not agree with Ham’s overly narrow reading, you must still agree that he is on your team. He may be naïve on some of his details, but his theological instincts are Kuyperian (which is a sophisticated way of saying he’s right).

postmodern architecture

Thanks to Justin Taylor for posting this from an address by Ravi Zacharias:

I remember lecturing at Ohio State University, one of the largest universities in this country. I was minutes away from beginning my lecture, and my host was driving me past a new building called the Wexner Center for the Performing Arts.

He said, “This is America’s first postmodern building.”

I was startled for a moment and I said, “What is a postmodern building?”

He said, “Well, the architect said that he designed this building with no design in mind. When the architect was asked, ‘Why?’ he said, ‘If life itself is capricious, why should our buildings have any design and any meaning?’ So he has pillars that have no purpose. He has stairways that go nowhere. He has a senseless building built and somebody has paid for it.”

I said, “So his argument was that if life has no purpose and design, why should the building have any design?”

He said, “That is correct.”

I said, “Did he do the same with the foundation?”

All of a sudden there was silence.

You see, you and I can fool with the infrastructure as much as we would like, but we dare not fool with the foundation because it will call our bluff in a hurry.

white snarl

Doug Wilson:

This is not so much another “I told you so” but rather another “I tried to tell you so.”

The other day I related how, in my debate with Andrew Sullivan, I tried to show that after same-sex mirage had a foothold in our society, the next folks in line, using all the same arguments, would be the polygamists. And here we are, unlike other functions of modern government, way ahead of schedule.

But I also argued something else, even more “out there.” I said that, given the premises we are all being harangued into adopting, there would be no saying no to bi-sexual marriages. In that chain of letters LGBTQ, why are the B’s left out of this grand expansion of marriage rights? Must be the haters.

The response to this argument has usually been something like, “He clearly doesn’t know what a bisexual is. What a maroon.” Ah, but I do know, and I also know that if somebody wants marital expression for that sexual identity, this requires, at a minimum two other people, one of each sex. And because the extra spouses involved don’t have an obligation to have their third squeeze be the shared third somebody, the whole thing spirals into chaos. What begins as a menage a trois turns into a plain old menagerie.

And so the other day something happened in North Dakota, a little something that vindicates me entirely. Now normally I would refrain from using phrases like “vindicates me entirely” out of a concern that I not fall into spiritual pride, but because vindication on this issue, with these points, only results in me being called an idiot, I feel it is a risk I can take.

What happened was this. A dude wanted to get a marriage license in North Dakota to marry a lady. He was already married to another guy back in another state that allows it. But North Dakota doesn’t recognize same sex mirages, and good on them. This means that he was free to marry the girl in North Dakota without running any risk of being charged with bigamy. But now, suppose he moves back to the state that allowed his first marriage, and he takes HER with him? That state does recognize legal marriages performed in North Dakota. And this leads to the question that I am sure is on everyone’s mind — what will happen when the three of them try to sign up for Obamacare before the deadline?

The answer to that pressing question is an answer that proves that in at least one area we have achieved true equality in the eyes of the law. When they sign up for Obamacare, all three of them, nothing will happen, just like with regular folks.

So here it comes — a Christmas word to the faithless. I am using the word faithless in both senses. I am speaking to those who do not believe, and I am speaking to those who are being disobedient to what they actually do know (Rom. 1:19-20). Ultimately the two categories are only one, but I am speaking to those who are without faith and those trying to throw it away, wanting to pretend they never had it.

The Bible says that when folly gets to this point, it is not an instance of us escaping from God’s hands, but rather a case of us falling into His hands. The wrath of God is defined in Romans 1 as God giving us up, giving us over to our lusts. When He does this, we run headlong and destroy ourselves. This is the wrath of God upon us. It is not a case of us behaving badly in ways that will eventually incur the wrath of God, but rather a proof that we have already dragged the wrath of God down upon our own heads. It is upon us now.

You conduct parades in the street celebrating your ignorance of what it means to be male and female, and it turns out that this ignorance means that you don’t know what a human being is. Assume for a moment that your class assignment came from Pope’s Essay on Man — “Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; The proper study of mankind is man.” If that is the class you are enrolled in, the bad news is that you are flunking it — on the level of a chemistry major not knowing what a molecule is. This is how the blindness descends. Blindness, when it descends, falls upon the eyes. Feminists don’t know what a woman is, and humanists don’t know what a human is. This is like a geologist not knowing what a rock is, but you can get away with it for a short time if you are prepared to respond to every challenge from the haters with “because shut up.”

When you are in a free fall, there is no arbitrary place you can choose and say “thus far and no farther.” It is your judicial system that is in the middle of a bad parachute accident. You are the ones headed for the ground with a huge white snarl flapping behind you. You no longer have the option of saying that you want to stop now, before it gets troublesome. You should have thought of that before jumping out of the plane.

There is nothing left that you can do. All your presidents, your generals, your intelligence officials, your politicians, your solons, your pundits, your poets, your songwriters, your movie directors, your activists, your community organizers, and your chattering classes are, all together, headed for that sickening sound of impact.

I said there is nothing you can do, but by that I meant there is nothing for you to do from within your own bag of tricks. You are done. You are dead. It is all over.

But there is one thing you can do. You can repent — not because it isn’t hopeless, but because it is. You can pray — not because that is something desperate people always do for no good reason, but rather because it is something that desperate people do for very good reason indeed.

You must repent of your sins the way the Bible defines them. Central to your sinning has been your loss of understanding of what a human being is. You have hated God, and so you have hated the image of God. So repent of your evolutionism, your promiscuity, your autonomy, your philosophies. You must pray to the true God, and not to an idol. You may not pray to the vapory and generic God found in our civil liturgies. You must pray to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. He is the Father of mercies.

In short, America must return to Jesus. It is not complicated.

totality of truth

From Francis A. Schaeffer in A Christian Manifesto:

True Spirituality covers all of reality. There are things the Bible tells us as absolutes which are sinful–which do not conform to the character of God. But aside from these the Lordship of Christ covers all of life and all of Life equally. It is not only that true spirituality covers all of life, but it covers all parts of the spectrum of life equally. In this sense there is nothing concerning reality that is not spiritual.

Related to this, it seems to me, is the fact that many Christians do not mean what I mean when I say Christianity is true, or Truth. They are Christians and they believe in, let us say, the truth of creation, the truth of the virgin birth, the truth of Christ’s miracles, Christ’s substitutionary death, and His coming again. But they stop there with these and other individual truths.

When I say Christianity is true I mean it is true to total reality–the total of what is, beginning with the central reality, the objective existence of the personal-infinite God. Christianity is not just a series of truths but Truth–Truth about all of reality. And the holding to that Truth intellectually–and then in some poor way living upon that Truth, the Truth of what is–brings forth…personal results.

how to argue

From Kevin DeYoung - More Arguments That Are Less Then Meets the Eye:

Three years ago I wrote a post about six popular arguments that should be less persuasive than they often are.

1. The Big Nasty. One of the best ways to discredit your opponent is to give his position a nasty sounding name.

2. The Third Way. That Isn’t. The problem is when people argue for a third way like it’s the only sane option between two crazy extremes.

3. Categorize and Conquer. Once you’ve assigned the categories you’ve already given the strong impression that no one view is more correct than another. You sit above the whole mess and can see the parts of a larger whole.

4. Preemptive Strikes. This approach doesn’t anticipate arguments, it merely tries to preempt them by defining would-be opponents in unflattering terms.

5. Affirm Then Deny. In this approach you simply say one thing and then say the opposite. “I’m not saying you’re fat, I’m just saying your grossly overweight.”

6. We’ve Been Wrong, So You Are Wrong. The argument usually goes like this: “I can’t believe you are holding to these outdated beliefs. Sure, you think the Bible is on your side, but Christians used to think the sun went around the earth, and Christians used to defend slavery from the Bible.”

If you traffic the blogosphere, or just scroll down Hootsuite or your Facebook page, you will find these arguments in abundance. And they very often carry the day. But on closer inspection, the reasoning is often much less than meets the eye.

Like these four other arguments, which, when combined with the original give us an even ten.

7. One Story to Rule Them All. People love stories. People are moved by stories. There’s nothing wrong with that. Conservatives probably need to improve in their ability to make their ideas powerful through the use of stories. But just because someone has a gut-wrenching story does not mean the position they are advocating is morally praiseworthy. We see this kind of argument all the time. If the Democrats want to pass Obamacare, they will tell the story of some sorry soul who can’t get healthcare because he inherited a tragic condition. And if the Republicans want to overturn Obamacare, they will tell the story of a sad family who lost their favorite doctor and now can’t afford their old health plan. We respond to these stories and think, “That’s terrible. That’s not fair. Something must be done to help these people!” That’s a fine reaction, but it doesn’t mean the proposed plan will be effective or prudent.

Public policy always deals in tradeoffs, so if we are going to do more than feel knee-jerk sympathy for people we must learn to think beyond stage one (as Thomas Sowell calls it). This is especially true when debating economic policies or budget proposals. If the government spends a trillion dollars, somebody is going to helped by that. There will be stories to tell. The money isn’t just flushed down the toilet (although, you never know). Likewise, if funding is cut for something, someone will be hurt. With 300 million people in the country, someone is bound to be adversely affected by almost every policy decision. We have to see that there are always tradeoffs. Money doesn’t grow on trees. You can’t print it without negative ramifications either. We have to look at the whole picture and not just the one story that brings a tear to our eye.

8. Unequal Stats Equal Discrimination. This argument is tricky because there may be merit to it, but by itself it doesn’t prove anything. It’s an easy argument to make and convincing to many people, but life is more complicated to expect that every field, every profession, every school, every conference, every department, every political body, every denominational committee, and every industry will equally represented by across the spectrum of gender, race, sexual preference, and religious belief. We tend to be highly selective in using the unequal representation argument, employing it when our issue is at stake and ignoring it in most of our day to day lives.

9. Some People With Your Beliefs Are Stupid. Human beings are fallible. We don’t live up to our ideals. Our hearts can find a way to twist any good idea, act in utterly inconsistent ways, and use the best of beliefs to justify the worst of behavior. Just like meeting one really nice Nazi family man does not make The Final Solution a good idea, so meeting one nutty homeschool dad does not make all of conservative Christianity a joke. If Jesus had Judas, we are bound to have some undesirables in our camps too.

10. We Feel Bad So Your Arguments Must Be Bad. Again, like most of these weak arguments, there is something important to consider. As Christians, we do care about others and don’t want to hurt people. But some people are easily hurtable. In fact, some people are looking for every opportunity to be offended, aghast, appalled, outraged, and generally put out. Can you imagine if Jesus gave in to the professional offense-takers in his day? He would have shut down his ministry after a couple weeks. Rational discourse in our day has been hijacked by those who operate with the less than cogent, but incredibly powerful, philosophical principle: I hurt, therefore I am right.

More and more, I’m convinced that one of the chief apologetic aims in our day is to get people to think. An introductory course on logic could really serve the cause of the gospel among younger generations.

natural law

A mouthful on natural law by Doug Wilson:

“The idea of a binding moral covenant on all persons, with salutary relevance even for the spiritually unregenerate, gave the covenant of works tremendous impetus for political theology” (Glenn Moots, Politics Reformed: The Anglo-American Legacy of Covenant Theology, p. 80).

Of course all Reformed thinkers know that everything is connected, but we can still sometimes be surprised at how closely connected it all can be. What do natural law, the covenant of works, theocracy, regeneration, and homosexual marriage have in common? They are all different aspects of the same subject, that’s what.

For reasons I went over a number of times in the Federal Vision fracas, I really don’t like using the name “covenant of works.” It just confuses things, and one of the things it confuses is the crucial need for a “covenant of works.” I much prefer to use covenant of creation, or a name the Westminster Confession uses elsewhere, covenant of life. But unless we hold to a covenant of creation, distinct from a covenant of grace, we will have no basis for speaking to certain public policy issues of the day, like homosexual marriage.

Several books could be written on this, and I'm going to try to do it in just several paragraphs, so bear with me. If the church is going to speak authoritatively in the public square — theocracy — then there needs to be a basis for speaking to the non-believers. The covenant of creation provides that basis. Suppose one of them comes back with “Well, we don’t believe in your covenant of creation,” and asks you what you think of them apples. The reply is that the covenant of creation is the only possible basis for natural law, which he does recognize (perhaps in spite of himself). He cannot account for this natural law within the framework of his worldview, but it is there nonetheless. For example, the late Christopher Hitchens did not use the language of natural law, but he sure appealed to it all the time.

If there is to be a intersect between church and state, then we have the problem of the wheat and tares times ten. Not only do we have to have a theological framework to deal with the baptized unconverted, but we also have to have a framework to deal with the unbaptized unconverted. How do we declare the lordship of Christ over all things when a significant number of people are obviously outside the covenant of grace?

Failure to look these facts straight in the eye will tend, inexorably, to transform the claims of theocracy into ecclesiocracy, and from that into a separated ecclesiocracy. And when our separated ecclesial community gets out to the woods of Montana, we will not practice homosexual marriage among ourselves out there. But we will have absolutely nothing to say to the infidels in San Fransisco, and if anybody suggests that we send them a prophet to declare their wicked ways to them, we will find our theological toolchest to be empty of tools, and full of excuses. You see, we don’t believe in natural law and nature/grace dualisms.

hopes and god's word

Walt Mueller posts My Hopes, Homosexuality, and God's Word:

This morning I ran across and posted this thought-provoking quote from J.I. Packer: "Our business is to present the Christian faith clothed in modern terms, not to propagate modern thought clothed in Christian terms. . . . Confusion here is fatal."

I'm sure that all of us are guilty here on something. It's just that most of us don't know it. . . which is, by the way, the reason we should engage in ongoing, never-ending, deep introspection of every nook and cranny of our lives. . . all conducted under the illumination of God's Word.

I was hit by this reality again the other night while spending more time in James K.A. Smith's Everyday Discipleship, the chapter entitled "Can Hope Be Wrong?" in particular. Smith offers up his critique of the "New Universalism" . . . the kind of universalism propagated by Rob Bell in his book Love Wins. This new brand of universalism is what Smith calls a "christocentric" or "evangelical" universalism. In other words, all human beings will be saved in Christ. Smith says that what drives this increasingly popular belief is not a close reading of the Bible's claims about eternity, but an understanding of the nature of God that leaves people saying things like "I can't imagine a God who would send a person to hell" and "I hope that God doesn't send people to hell."

Smith goes on to ask this question: "Are these hopes and imaginings sufficiently warranted to overturn the received, orthodox doctrines concerning final judgment and eternal damnation?" Then, he critiques each. When he critiques the hermeneutic of hope, he wonders if our hopes can ever be wrong. His example is personal. He loves his wife and he can't even begin to imagine a life without being husband and wife forever. But then he reads the words of Jesus in Matthew 22:30. . . words that clearly say that at the resurrection, people will neither marry nor be given in marriage. Now, the dilemma for Smith when he asks, "Should I nonetheless hope that marriage endures in eternity? Should I profess that I can't know this (since Scripture seems to suggest otherwise), but nonetheless claim that somehow hoping it might be true is still faithful? Or should I submit even my hopes to discipline by the authority of Scripture?"

Wow. Read that last question again. Those are powerful and timely words that apply to so much more than who gets to go to Heaven and whether or not we will be married in eternity. Smith reminds us that when "what I hope for" eclipses a more theocentric approach to these and other issues, we are in trouble. And that's what I think J.I. Packer is driving at as well.

While I was reading all of this, I rewound to the evening about thirty-five years ago when one of my best friends sat me down to tell me that he was gay and that he was embracing his homosexuality. When he asked me for my response, a battle began to rage inside of me. I wanted more than anything else to tell him that there was nothing at all wrong with his decision, his leanings, and his embracing this kind of sexuality. I wanted to love, affirm, and accept my friend. I hoped that his same-sex behaviors wouldn't matter. But on the other side was my need to submit my hopes (some, which if I'm honest, still hold true today on a whole plethora of issues) to someone bigger than myself. And so the battle continues between my hopes. . . driven by my belief that I might just have all of this (and everything else) figured out better than the One whose will and way I must submit myself and my hopes to. . . and my need to have those hopes disciplined.

moral dimension of rationality

From John Piper's Think:

Carnell on the Moral Dimension of Rationality

In 1957 Edward John Carnell published a powerful book called Christian Commitment: An Apologetic. Apart from the Scriptures it was probably this book that opened my eyes most to the moral dimension of rationality. In other words, Carnell made clear that there is a profound sense in which being irrational is immoral. He went beyond Descartes’ “I think, therefore, I am” and argued, “I think, therefore I am morally obliged to admit the reality of my own existence.”1 Human existence and logical inference are intrinsically moral. He illustrates:

When Aristotle tried to refute the skeptics, however, he encountered the  frustrating fact that the  skeptics used the  law of contradiction to deny the law of contradiction. . . . After exhausting all his dialectical powers, Aristotle had to bow to the  truth that only men of character can apprehend rational ultimates. . . . Aristotle, like Kant, illuminates the fact that the rational life cannot get on with it unless the moral life is firm.

The Games Professors Play at School

The immoral dimension of relativism is most obvious when relativists live their lives. They simply do not live them as though relativism were true. Professors may play the academic game of relativism in their classes, but when they go home they get upset when their wives don’t understand what they say. Why do they get upset? Because they know that there is an objective meaning that can be transmitted between two human beings, and we have moral obliga tions to grasp what is meant.

No husband ever said, “Since all truth and language are relative, it does not matter how you interpret my invitation to sleep together.” Whether we write love letters, or rental agreements, or instructions to our children, or directions for a friend, or contracts, or sermons, or obituaries, we believe objective meaning exists in what we write, and we  expect people to try to understand. And we  hold them accountable (and often get upset) if they don’t.

Nobody is a relativist when his case is being tried in court and his objective innocence hangs on objective evidence. The whole system of relativism is a morally corrupting impulse. It brings with it duplicity and hypocrisy. It is a great bluff. And what is needed in our day is for many candid children to rise up as in the fairy tale and say, “The king has no clothes on.”

christian atrocities

Simple response by Hank Hanegraaff to the "What about the atrocities committed by Christians?" smokescreen.

This is a classic smokescreen question often asked to avoid having to grapple with the evidence for authentic Christianity. At best, it involves a hasty generalization. At worst, it’s a way of “poisoning the well.”

To begin with, this question was anticipated by Christ, who long ago proclaimed that his followers would be recognized by the way they lived their lives (John 15:8). Thus to classify as Christian those who are responsible for instigating atrocities, is to beg the question of who Christ’s disciples are to begin with. As Jesus pointed out, not everyone who calls him “Lord” is the real deal (Matthew 7:21–23).

Furthermore, this question implies that Christianity must be false on the basis that atrocities have been committed in Christ’s name. There is no reason, however, why we can’t turn the argument around and claim that Christianity must be true because so much good has been done in the name of Christ. Think of the countless hospitals, schools, universities, and relief programs that have been instituted as a direct result of people who have the sacred name of Christ upon their lips.

Finally, those who use this argument fail to realize that the validity of Christianity does not rest on sinful men but rather on the perfection of Jesus Christ alone (Hebrews 7:26; 1 Peter 2:22). Moreover, the fact that professing Christians commit sins only serves to prove the premise of Christianity—namely, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23); thus all are in need of a Savior (1 John 3:4–5).

For further study, see R. C. Sproul, Reason to Believe (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1982); Lee Strobel, The Case for Faith (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000), chapters 4 and 7.

Matthew 7:21-23 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me you evildoers!’”