Month: July 2008

Categories
Science & Technology Theology

Groothuis on McGrath

Douglas Groothuis’ review essay on natural theology (Books & Culture, July/August 2008) is disappointing, particularly in its treatment of Alister McGrath’s work. Groothuis considers McGrath’s “In the Twilight of Atheism” to be “unphilosophical.” Twlight, however, is more of a historical than a philosophical argument, as Groothuis observes. For philosophical arguments, Groothuis should have turned to McGrath’s “Intellectuals Don’t Need God (and Other Myths)” as well as McGrath’s more pastoral work on these themes, “Doubting.” Concerning very specific historical, philosophical, and theological arguments against the “new atheists,” Groothuis could have read McGrath’s “Dawkins’ God: Genes, Memes, and the Meaning of Life” and “The Dawkins Delusion.”

Groothuis does refer in an off-handed footnote to McGrath’s “The Science of God,” but he apparently completely misunderstands McGrath’s Scientific Theology project, which is fleshed out more fully in three massive volumes that Groothuis fails to mention. Far from “remov[ing] the possibility that [natural theology] provides evidence for the existence of God apart from the Bible,” McGrath states explicity, in the very pages cited by Groothuis, that “[o]n the basis of a detailed survey of the biblical material, it seems that a knowledge of God [from nature], however limited, is indeed presupposed.” (Science of God, p. 79.) McGrath then carefully demonstrates, followingThomas Torrance, why Karl Barth’s wholesale rejection of natural theology was an overreaction to some of the intellectual currents of Barth’s day. (Science of God, pp. 82-91).

McGrath concludes the section on natural theology in The Science of God by affirming that “the human mind possesses the capacity to recognize [God’s] work of creation as such, and to draw at least some reliable conclusions concerning the nature and character of God from the created order.” (Science of God, p. 89.) Groothuis’ real beef with McGrath’s Scientific Theology seems to be McGrath’s careful conclusion that this affirmation is not a “‘necessary truth of reason,'” but rather rests on some presuppositions that can be known only through revelation. This is hardly a “redefinition” of natural theology, pace Groothuis, but rather is fully consistent with the Reformed tradition concerning human noetic limitations.

While it is inexcusable that Groothuis gives such short shrift to McGrath’s earlier work, it is inconceivable that Groothuis missed McGrath’s magesterial new book, “The Open Secret: A New Perspective on Natural Theology.” McGrath there lays out a detailed, balanced, nuanced, and thoroughly Reformed and Biblial natural theology, summarized as follows: “A Christian natural theology is about seeing nature in a specific manner, which allows the observer to discern in what is seen the truth, beauty, and goodness of a trinitarain God who is already known; and which allows nature to function as a pathway towards this same God for secular culture as a whole.” (The Open Secret, p. 148.)

One wonders whether Groothuis’ real problem with McGrath is that, unlike many American rationalistic apologists — including Groothuis — McGrath consistently refuses to buy into the false notion that analytic philosophy can provide logical proof of God or that “strong” intelligent design theory adds anything meaningful to reasoned apologetics. In fact, in his anti-Dawkins books, McGrath properly takes the strong intelligent design program to task as a warmed-over version of William Paley’s long-discredited “watchmaker” argument. It seems that, in some circles, any theologian who questions the strong intelligent design lobby gets “expelled” from the discussion. Yet, McGrath is warm to the Reformed and Patristic understanding that nature displays “intelligent design” in its beauty and regularity, and that the “fine tuning” of the universe for human life “corresponds to a Christian understanding of the nature of God.” (The Open Secret, p. 244). It is a shame that Groothuis’ own limited horizons blind him to McGrath’s signficant contribution to developing a natural theology for our times.

Categories
Humor

Boating Accidents?

I’m taking the New Jersey boating safety course (required to operate a boat in NJ or NY). This entry in the student manual is particularly helpful:

Causes of Accidents / Striking a Submerged Object:

…Plain bad luck, as many times there is no way to see a submerged or partially submerged object before striking it.

Gee, thanks for the tip!

And this one:

Every boater should take a first aid course, including CPR and treatment of hypothermia. Being able to provide minimum first aid may prevent you from having to cut short your boating day.

Yeah, we wouldn’t want grandpa’s heart attack to ruin our boating day!

Here is the manual’s graphic for dangers when fishing or hunting from a boat (seriously):

Categories
Books and Film Science & Technology

Become a Filmanthropist

A very cool site that allows bloggers to show free documentary films: SnagFilms.

Categories
Spirituality

Golf

Scot McKnight writes light-heartedly on “Why Golf is Better than Soccer.”  I had the opportunity to play New Jersey’s top public course, Ballyowen, twice in the past two days.  Both days were special, with lovely weather and good playing partners, including my brother.  Sunday I handily broke 100, which is very good for me particularly on this course, and yesterday I missed it by one shot, after a disastrous front nine and a good back nine.  When the afternoon shadows are falling across the fairways, a summer breeze is blowing, and the little white ball arches against a blue sky on its way to a soft landing on the green — how grateful I am to be alive!

Categories
Epistemology Humor Theology

A Third Way Between Modernist Rationalism and Postmodern Relativism

Here’s a lengthy quote from a recent book that touches on epistemological debates within evangelical Christianity. Who wrote it?

On the face of it, we seem set, at least in America, for an unyielding confrontation between foundationalism and postfoundationalism — a ‘take no prisoners’ war in which there can be only winners and losers.

But there is another way. A chastened modernism and a ‘soft’ postmodernism might actually discover that they are saying rather similar things. A chastened or modest modernism pursues the truth but recognizes how much we humans do not know, how often we change our minds, and some of the factors that go into our claims to knowledge. A chastened postmodernism heartily recognizes that we cannot avoid seeing things from a certain perspective (we are all perspectivalists, even if perspectivalists can be divided into those who admit it and those who don’t) but acknowledges that there is a reality out there that we human beings can know, even if we cannot know it exhaustively or perfectly, but only from our own perspective. We tend to slide up to the truth, to approach it asymptotically — but it remains self-refuting to claim to know truly that we cannot know the truth. To set such a modest modernism and such a chastened postmodernism side-by-side is to see how much alike they are. They merely put emphases in different places.

So who said it? D. A. Carson, in his interesting new book Christ and Culture Revisited. I think Carson says some very valuable things here. In fact, he seems to be reflecting the sort of “critical realism” that I think is the most fruitful contemporary approach to epistemology. I might not endorse all of Carson’s critiques of the emerging church, but the sort of perspective he offers here is most welcome, in my view.

Categories
Epistemology Theology

Humble Apologetics — Book Review

John Stackhouse is fast becoming one of my favorite writers. His book Humble Apologetics is a winsome approach to offering our apologia — the reasons for the hope that is within us — in our pluralistic world.

A substantial strength of this book is Stackhouse’s admonishment that we engage in apologetics that are appropriate to our cultural time and place. The Church no longer dominates western society, and basic Christian truths are no longer assumed. for many who are engaged in the culture wars, these facts are cause for, well, war. But as Stackhouse notes,

[w]hat is not so clear to many Christians . . . is that multiculturalism and extensive religious plurality can offer an opportunity for Christians to shed the baggage of cultural dominance that has often impeded or distorted the spread of the gospel. It may be, indeed, that the decline of Christian hegemony can offer the Church the occasion to adopt a new and more effective stance of humble service toward societies it no longer controls.

This call to an apologetic based on service is much needed today.

Stackhouse also helpfully critiques apologetic efforts that require one person to answer every question and provoke a moment of crisis in order to close the deal. As Stackhouse notes,

“[w]hen it comes to anything important in life as a Christian, and particularly in apologetic conversation that aims to benefit the neighbor, we remember this cardinal principle: You can’t do it all no matter what you do, so don’t try! We are part of the Church, which itself is only one corporate player in God’s great mission of global peacemaking. We must do just what we each can do, and trust the ret of the Chruch and God himself to do their parts as well.”

A key point here is that apologetics, like every other endeavor in the Christian life, is about love, not about “winning” arguments.

Like all work on apologetics, Stackhouse’s broader project is epistemological — the question “how do we know and what can we know it” relates directly to the question “what reasons can we present to others for belief in Christ.” I’ll quote a key passage at length because it’s so important:

[g]iven historic Christian teachings regarding the finitude and fallenness of human beings and of our thinking in particular, we must be careful not to claim too much for what we believe. We Christians should not need postmodernists to tell us that we do not know it all. We should not need anyone to tell us that all human thought is partial, distorted, and usually deployed in the interest of this or that personal agenda. We can be grateful for those postmodern voices that have reminded us of these truths, but we believe them because our own theological tradition says so.

Thus we are as committed as we can be to what we believe is real, and especially to the One whome we love, worship and obey as the Way, the Truth and the Life. We gladly offer what, and whom, we believe we have found to be true to our neighbors in the hope that they also will recognize it, and him, as true. We recognize that there are good reasons for them not to believe, even as we recognize there can be good reasons for our own doubts. Indeed, we can recognize taht God may have given them some things to teach us, and we gratefully receive them in the mutual exchange of God’s great economy of shalom.

We recognize, ultimately, that to truly believe, to truly commit oneself to God, is itself a gift that God alone bestows. Conversion is a gift. Faith is a gift. God alone can change minds so that those minds can both see and embrace the great truths of the gospel, and the One who stands at their center.

Not surprisingly, some rationalist evangelicals have criticized this call to epistemic humility. In my view, however, Stackhouse hits the epistemic nail on the head. A holistic apologetic, that treats others as fellow human beings rather than targets, one way or another will recognize that we don’t know it all, and will point away from ourselves to Christ. This is the ultimate goal of all the arguments and evidence we can muster.

Categories
Theology

Frame on Enns; and the "Data" of Scripture

Here is a good article by John Frame on Pete Enns’ Inspiration and Incarnation (HT: Conn-versation). Frame, who was at WTS for many years and is now at RTS, is critical of Enns’ project, but not harshly so. For example, Frame states that

“[o]n the question of bias in historical writing, I largely agree with Enns. I agree that“there really is no such thing as objective historiography. It is certainly true that often Scripture doesn’t present narratives in chronological order. The standards of “historical” writing in the ancient world were different from our own. Evangelicals have generally recognized this.”

In his conclusion, he writes

I commend Enns for writing a very stimulating book, packed with useful, digestible information about Scripture and the literature of the Ancient Near East. His motive is to help the church to move away from a sort of over-defensive treatment of Scripture rigidly defined by a grammatical-historical method that Scripture itself doesn’t endorse. I applaud that as well. I do nevertheless disagree with the book more than I agree with it.

So Enns is not here the Devil incarnate. Too bad the discussion hasn’t had this kind of tone all along.

On the disagreements, Frame reveals a key issue — I think, the key issue — dividing the factions: he says Enns

shows an unwillingness, curious for an evangelical, to say anything about the relation of inspiration to historical factuality. When he speaks about “evidence” for this or that event, the evidence is always inductive, never an appeal to divine inspiration as evidence. Perhaps Enns thinks that inspiration is such an event that we may never appeal to it as evidence. I think that position is inconsistent with Scripture’s own view of itself.

The really divisive issue is about the historicity of some of the events narrated in scripture, particularly in the Old Testament, whether the Bible itself counts as a historical datum, and if so, the extent to which this is the case. Frame is a presuppositionalist, and so for him, taking the Bible as God’s inspired word means that Biblical narratives that present themselves as factual must be taken as factual and that other evidences must be interpreted in light of those narratives. If there appears to be a conflict between the Biblical data and data from other sources, we might find that we’ve misunderstood the text, but outside data can never falsify the text.

The accomodationist position, in contrast, says data outside the text can help us understand the meaning of the text even to the point of showing that God may have used a human writer to convey theological truth in making reference to narratives that are historically inaccurate.

The presuppositional inerrantist says, “the Bible says there was a worldwide flood, therefore there was in fact a worldwide flood. If data from the natural sciences show that there was no worldwide flood, perhaps we’ve misunderstood what the ancient writers meant by ‘worldwide,’ or perhaps the scientific data starts from incorrect presuppositions.” The accomodationist says, “the Bible says there was a worldwide flood but this is clearly contradicted by data from the natural sciences. Perhaps we’ve misunderstood what the ancient writers meant by ‘worldwide,’ or perhaps the ancient writers are referring to a tradition that is more fictive than real, which God employs for a theological point in scripture. It’s possible the natural sciences are mistaken on this, but the data are so strong that this seems almost impossible.” (I should be clear that Enns doesn’t say exactly this in his book; other accomodationists, such a Kent Sparks, say this sort of thing explicitly). This question of what sort of “data” scripture comprises, I think, is the hinge not only of the Westminster faculty debate, but of all contemporary evangelical debates about the precise contours of inspiration, inerrancy, and/or infallibility.

Personally, I find this a very difficult question. On the one hand, I lean towards Frame’s view. If scripture is God’s word, and scripture tells us some event happened, it seems to me that we are bound to confess that it happened. It is helpful that Frame and others in his “camp” acknowledge that the human side of scripture means our interpretations of the events scripture portrays must be provisional, and that extra-Biblical data can indeed help us see more clearly the kind of history scripture gives us, without giving up all historical referents. And it is important to remember that our ultimate posture towards God’s word is reverence and faith.

At the same time, I find Enns and other accomodationists helpful in pointing out in detail some of the ways in which scripture really is quite obviously human. It’s immensely refreshing to be able to “relax” a bit in the effort to figure out and defend how every Biblical story that seems strange to modern ears fits together with our much more detail-oriented scientific worldview. What a blessing not to have to invent a new pseudo-science and not to have to engage textual criticism and archeology in the fear that the Bible and the Christian faith might be proven untrue by the fruits of “secular” scholarship! What grace not to have to compartmentalize the way one thinks about truth and knowledge!

I guess I’d like to chart a middle course here. The Bible narrates key events in redemption history that, it seems to me, need to have an historical referent for the narrative to hold together: the fall of man, the flood, the exodus, the conquest. From the text alone, however, it is clear that these events are often presented in a highly contextualized way, appropriate to the unique literary conventions and genres used by the human writers of scripture. Moreover, modern approaches to scientific and historical knowledge, which have their own integrity, also shed light on the situatedness of the Biblical text. So, we shouldn’t press for an unworkable synthesis between the Biblical narratives and modern scientific / historical scholarship, nor should we reject scientific or historical-critical conclusions out of hand; but at the same time we should affirm a historical referent for Biblical narratives that purport to be offering real event in redemption history. This is my best effort right now to be faithful and truthful as an informed layperson. Thoughts?

Categories
Law and Policy Science & Technology

Book Review — Science for Sale

Daniel S. Greenberg is a seasoned science journalist who has been reporting on research and industrial science for over forty years. In Science for Sale:  The Perils, Rewards, and Delusions of Campus Capitalism, Greenberg explores the web of relationships among academic science, private industry, and government.

The primary strength of Greenberg’s approach to this question is his journalist’s ability to tell colorful stories, often based on personal interviews with key players, which elucidate both individual personalities and big questions. For example, Greenberg has Drummond Rennie, an activist and editor of prestigious medical journals, explain a key problem in scientific publishing: “’What we’re talking about . . . is the influence of money on research that my journal and other journals publish. The distorting influence of it. And this distorting influence is huge.’” This sort of first-hand testimony – and there is much of it in this book – is a powerful indictment of the supposed Mertonian neutrality of academic-industrial-government science.

The primary strength of Greenberg’s book, alas, is also a major weakness. Very often, the book reads like a string of tedious, unending anecdotes and quotations lacking a cohesive vision for reform – which is a fair description of the book as a whole. In a very brief concluding section on “Fixing the System,” Greenberg suggests “transparency” is the key to reform, but he never explains what this might mean. In a major omission, he does not examine at all whether “open access” publishing models might help push things towards greater transparency. Moreover, his dismissal of the Bayh-Dole Act and other legal developments that have encouraged universities to privatize their research through patent protection is so cursory that it flies by almost unnoticed. Yet the tension between “open” and “property” models of scientific research surely is both a driver and a symptom of the problems Greenberg exposes in his anecdotes and interviews.

On the whole, Science for Sale contains some useful source material for those who are interested in the sociology and business of institutional science in an age of money. It also will open the eyes of those who naively assert the neutrality of the scientific establishment. It does not, however, provide any meaningful proposals for reform.

Categories
Biblical Studies

The Rising Messiah Stone

Much virtual ink is being spilled about a recently discovered Jewish stone monument dating from the first century A.D. that might refer to a messiah who will die and rise on the third day.  In the popular press, the claim is being made that this monument challenges the uniqueness of the Christian story concerning the death and resurrection of Jesus.  Here is a place where some evidentiary apologetics can be useful.

The truth seems to be much less dramatic:  the stone’s inscription is hard to decipher and probably doesn’t refer to a dying and rising messiah at all.  There is a good analysis here and an even more skeptical one here. 

Biblical Archeology Review published a transcription of the tablet back in January.  Some folks on the “biblical-studies” listserv pointed me to the following lines as the ones possibly referring to a messiah who dies and rises in three days (lines 19-21 and 80 — context for line 80 given here):
 
19. sanctity(?)sanctify(?) Israel! In three days you shall know, that(?)for(?) He said,
20. (namely,) yhwh the Lord of Hosts, the Lord of Israel: The evil broke (down)
21. before justice. Ask me and I will tell you what 22this bad 21plant is,
 
and
 
75. Three shepherds went out to?/of? Israel …[…].
76. If there is a priest, if there are sons of saints …[…]
77. Who am I(?), I (am?) Gabri’el the …(=angel?)… […]
78. You(?) will save them, …[…]…
79. from before You, the three si[gn]s(?), three …[….]
80. In three days …, I, Gabri’el …[?],
81. the Prince of Princes, …, narrow holes(?) …[…]…
82. to/for … […]… and the …

In recent days, one expert claims to have deciphered the missing lines in line 80, so that it reads as follows:  “In three days you shall live, I, Gabriel, command you.”  Well, I claim no expertise in this field at all, but as some of the experts I linked above observe, this reading of the obscured words apparently is highly contestable, and even then it isn’t clear in context that the reference is to the resurrection of the messiah on the third day (among other things, tying even this text to the messiah requires some supposition about what Old Testament passages the inscription is alluding to).  At the very least, there doesn’t seem to be any reason for a sensational claim that there was a well established tradition of a messiah who dies and is raised on the third day from which the early Christians borrowed.

Let’s assume for a moment, though, that this tablet does refer to a messiah who will be raised on the third day.  Would that necessarily detract from the Christian claim that Jesus really was that messiah?  I don’t see why that would necessarily be the case.  The Jewish community that wrote these apocalypses was highly devout.  If the “rising messiah” interpretation of this tablet is correct, could it be that at least in some sense the people in this community were able through studying the scriptures and by the spirit of God to gain an inkling of what the coming of the messiah actually would be like?  Would the Gospels only be borrowing from this tradition, or reflecting its fulfillment?  It seems to me that much more would be required to show that the early Christians appopriated a rising messiah tradition about Jesus while knowing that Jesus was not really raised.

There is, however, one place in which this tablet could weaken one argument about the resurrection:  NT Wright’s assertion in “The Resurrection of the Son of God” that the notion of an individual resurrection would have been foreign to the first Christians, such that they wouldn’t have invented what would have been viewed as a ludicrous story by the surrounding Jewish and pagan cultures.  But even here, it seems to me we’d have to be much more careful about defining the relevant cultures.  According to this article in Biblical Archeology Review, no one knows the provenance of this stone.  Did it reflect views that would have been known and held by a wide swathe of the culture in which Christianity was born, or the views of a counter-cultural minority such as the Essenes, or the views of an even smaller and more obscure sect?  Wright provides substantial evidence that the prevailing belief in first century Jewish and pagan culture rejected the possibility of an individual resurrection.  This could still be good evidence even if there were pockets of sub-cultures in which such a belief existed.