This is How We Should Read the Christmas Story

Think about this for a moment:

• A miracle baby is born to a couple too old to have children.
• A son is born as a sign that God's people will be redeemed.
• Someone named Yeshua will lead God's people into enjoyment of the blessings promised to Abraham.
• A shepherd-king comes out of Bethlehem.
• A wicked king tries to kill all the male babies, but one escapes: the one through whom redemption will come to God's people.
• God speaks through dreams to a man named Joseph, the son of Jacob, who comes to Egypt for the redemption of God's people.

You may recognize these as the stories of Zechariah and Elizabeth and John the Baptist; of Mary and Jesus (in Hebrew, Yeshua); of the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem; of the escape from king Herod to Egypt; and of Joseph, the son of Jacob and husband of Mary.

These are also the stories of Abraham and Sarah and Isaac; of Isaiah; of Joshua (also Yeshua in Hebrew); of king David; of Pharaoh and Moses; and of Joseph the son of Jacob and grandson of Isaac.

The characters in the Christmas story recorded in the early chapters of Matthew and Luke re-live the stories of the redemption of God's people.  In this way we see a confirmation that all the old stories were pointing to this story.  This is how we need to see Christmas: as the beginning of the climax of a long history of redemption, which begins with Adam and leads all the way to Mary.

Wait; this picture's not accurate!  They left out the little drummer boy!
(from Abraham Hondius, 1663)

Of course, a story that has been going on for a couple of millennia will have a climax that lasts a few years.  It lasts about thirty, in fact, and the other end of it is captured in two other holidays: Good Friday and Easter, where some of the other stories of redemption are re-lived:

• The seed of the woman defeats Satan—the story of Eve, and the story of Mary.
• A holy God must punish sin, but people can be saved through the wooden way God provides—the story of Noah's ark, and the story of the Cross.
• God tells his people how a lamb may die in their place for their sin—the story of the Passover, and the story of the Cross.
• A prophet is in darkness for three days.  His message is a light to the Gentiles, a preaching of repentance and forgiveness of sins for them—the story of Jonah, and the story of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The last prophet to hail the coming of the Christ sums it all up nicely: John the Baptist:

"Behold the lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world!"

Why would a loving God let so many bad things happen?

In a recent post, I presented three questions I've heard young people ask--people who think highly of Jesus and even seem to want to become Christians and follow Him, but worry they can't without sacrificing their rationality, their decency, or both. I addressed the first and second questions in my last three posts. Here is the third question:

Question 3: Why would a loving God let so many bad things happen?

This is the problem of evil, a problem as important as it is ancient. Boethius in The Consolation of Philosophy memorably compared this problem to a Hydra: Every time one version of it is dealt with, two more versions sprout up in its place.

I suspect that the biggest problem with evil is not that it is very hard to find answers to this question; answers are easy to find. The biggest problem is that evil hurts, and having a few answers doesn't automatically make it stop hurting.

But, as Boethius says, there is still a big problem with finding answers: While it is easy to find some, finding them all is a never-ending affair. So is articulating all the old answers perfectly. These are two reasons I will not pretend to answer Question 3 here, in a single blog post.


Boethius and Lady Philosophy discuss the problem of evil.
    Instead, I will do something better. I will point you to some places where some of the best answers are articulated. As God says in Time Bandits, "I think it has something to do with free will," but that's not all there is to it.

• Try Augustine's On the Free Choice of the Will or Confessions for the classic free will response to the problem of evil as well as Augustine's wonderful idea that evil does not exist (evil is, strictly speaking, a lack of good, not a thing that exists in itself).
• Try Boethius' The Consolation of Philosophy for a very personal response to a very personal experience with evil. Boethius tackles the problem from several angles. (I made this short cartoon version of the story).
• Try C. S. Lewis' The Problem of Pain. Pain is God's "megaphone to rouse a deaf world." Also included in this edition: Lewis' own experience with suffering in A Grief Observed.
• If you dare tackle recent analytic philosophy, Alvin Plantinga's God, Freedom, and Evil is a classic in the area.
• You could also try Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God by Marilyn McCord Adams, a Christian look at the really, really, really, really evil evils.

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To sum up: There are good answers to this question, starting with free will. But you will have to do some studying if you really want to understand this issue.

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To sum up my last four posts:

There are three big questions that keep people away from Christianity.

Question 1 is: Can I be a Christian and still believe in evolution? And the answer is: Yes. (But you don't have to.)

Question 2 is: Why would God send people to hell just because they haven't heard about Jesus? Maybe the best answer to this is another question: Who says God does?

Question 3 is: Why would a loving God let so many bad things happen? And the answer is: There are reasons. Maybe you can't understand all of them perfectly, but you can understand a little bit. If you really want to understand it all, you will have do some studying.

Why would God send people to hell just because they haven't heard about Jesus?

In a recent post, I presented three questions I've heard young people ask--people who think highly of Jesus and even seem to want to become Christians and follow Him, but worry they can't without sacrificing their rationality, their decency, or both.

I addressed the first question in my last two posts. Here is the second question:

Question 2: Why would God send people to hell just because they haven't heard about Jesus?

(I've also heard some related questions, such as Why would God send anyone to hell? and Why would a loving God send me to hell just because I'm not convinced Christianity is true?)

A proper look at this issue requires a lot more than a blog post. But I can explain, rather briefly, one reason people who worry about this issue don't need to worry. That reason is that Christian theology doesn't necessarily say that the people they're concerned about–the ones who live and die without hearing the Gospel properly explained–are all going to hell.

There are different views on this sort of thing within the area of soteriology (the study of salvation). Here are two of the generic views:

Exclusivism: This is the view that there is one way to be saved, Jesus Christ, and that only those who follow Christ in this life will be saved.

Inclusivism: This is the view that there is one way to be saved, Jesus Christ, but that some who do not follow Christ in this life will nonetheless be saved through Him.

Obviously according to Inclusivism it is not the case that everyone who hasn't heard about Jesus goes to hell. This is the view of C. S. Lewis as well as the official stance of the Roman Catholic Church. So you can be a Christian and not even bother asking the question!

Of course, the really important question is: Will Cinnamon be there when I get to Heaven?
 

Different versions of Exclusivism are outlined in a very good little book by Robert Wittmer. One of these versions is Soft Exclusivism, the view that, to anyone who responds properly to general revelation (the sort of revelation Paul talks about in Romans 1), God will give sufficient special revelation (the sort of revelation God gives through Jesus, an aposle, or a prophet) to be saved. Now a Soft Exclusivist can be an optimist or a pessimist. An Optimistic Soft Exclusivist thinks this actually happens sometimes; a Pessimistic Soft Exclusivist thinks it never happens. Wittmer himself is a Pessimistic Soft Exclusivist. My old theology teacher William E. Bell, is an Optimistic Soft Exclusivist, and even thinks there is some, admittedly ambiguous, biblical evidence for this view.

Obviously, if Optimistic Soft Exclusivism is correct, then Question 2 is not a big deal: People don't go to hell just for not hearing about Jesus. People who respond to God's general revelation properly will hear enough about Jesus to be saved, and there are some such people.

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To sum up: There are orthodox views in Christianity that implicitly deny there is even any need to ask Question 2!

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To sum up my last three posts:

There are three big questions that keep people away from Christianity.

Question 1 is: Can I be a Christian and still believe in evolution? And the answer is: Yes. (But you don't have to.)

Question 2 is: Why would God send people to hell just because they haven't heard about Jesus? Maybe the best answer to this is another question: Who says God does?

Evolution is a poor test for rationality

In my last post, I presented three questions I've heard young people ask--people who think highly of Jesus and even seem to want to become Christians and follow Him, but worry they can't without sacrificing their rationality, their decency, or both.

The first question is: Can I be a Christian and still believe in evolution? They seem to be reasoning that rational people accept evolution, but Christians don't accept evolution, and so Christians are not rational.

As I explained in my last post, Christians can accept evolution, and many do. But there's another problem with this reasoning. Many people have the idea that you must accept evolution if you're a reasonable person who has been properly informed of the evidence for it--that acceptance of evolution is a test for rationality.

But evolution is a very poor test of rationality. Let me explain.

This jacaranda tree has nothing to do with the topic of this post. But it's very pretty, isn't it?

You should know two things.

First, you should know that, in academic society, it is generally considered unacceptable to reject evolution.  Generally, in the academic circles I've traveled across America (admittedly, not that many), it is simply assumed that rational and well educated folk are evolutionists.

Second, you should also know that it is acceptable in academic society to be a theistic evolutionist. You can think God created life and still be considered rational, just as long as you think God used evolution to do it.

Now, one more bit of preliminary observation, and then in the next paragraphs I will finally get to the point. The case for evolution, like the case for most theories in science, is cumulative; you don't argue for it from a single piece of evidence; you argue that it is the best explanation of several different pieces of evidence. Now the evidence for evolution can be divided into two main categories. There is the evidence that life evolved, and there is the evidence that natural processes are sufficient to account for life on earth as we know it today. The first kind of evidence only supports the claim that it happened, while the second kind of evidence supports the claim that it happened in a certain way, that is, by natural causes. The first kind of evidence includes, but is not limited to, the fossil record. The second kind of evidence would include, for example, instances of natural selection at work creating changes in a species.

But therein lies the problem. A theistic evolutionist can believe that God, not natural processes alone, is responsible for the emergence of life on earth as we know it today. In other words, the entire second category of evidence for evolution has not convinced him. (Or else his doctrine of creation has an odd deistic region, since he thinks natural causes acted without guidance from God to create the species on earth today.)

But this leaves him with just the one category of evidence, which on its own is much less powerful than would be the evidence taken as a whole. His confidence in evolution is (or should be) proportionate to the evidence that it happened, not proportionate to the entire cumulative case for the theory of evolution.

These matters should really be discussed over tea.

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To sum up: Theistic evolution is thought to be rational. But this means it is rational to reject one category of evidence for evolution, and this means that rejecting evolution itself is rational–or at least it is somewhat less irrational than is commonly thought.

To put it differently: If it really is rational to accept theistic evolution, then, since the evidence for evolution includes a category of evidence which does not convince a theistic evolution, it is rational to reject the overall conclusion that this evidence is supposed to support–or at least is less irrational than is commonly thought.

To put it still differently: If some people can rationally reject the second category of evidence for evolution, I don't see why other people should automatically be considered irrational just because they aren't convinced by the evidence that remains.

And if people who reject the theory of evolution altogether are irrational, then so are all the theistic evolutionists who reject one of the categories of evidence for evolution–or at least they are less rational than is commonly thought.

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To sum up this post and my last post:

There are three big questions that keep people away from Christianity.

Question 1 is:

Can I be a Christian and still believe in evolution?

And the answer is:

Yes. (But you don't have to.)

Questions 2 and 3 to be addressed in future posts.

Questions my students asked

Over a period of two years I spent many hours in my office at a liberal arts college in northwest Georgia talking with a variety of students who had signed up for my philosophy classes. Many students were not Christians but were very interested in spiritual matters. A number of these seemed to want to be Christians, but were held back by various questions.

Berry College

Here are the three questions that seemed to trouble them the most.

1. Can I be a Christian and still believe in evolution?
2. Why would God send people to hell just because they haven't heard about Jesus?
3. Why would a loving God let so many bad things happen?

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These are extremely important questions.

If my students are indicative of what other young people in north America (not to mention the rest of the world) are thinking, they represent many millions who think very highly of Jesus and admire a great deal in Christianity but worry they can't become Christians without surrendering their rationality (Question 1), their decency (Question 2), or both (Question 3).

Fortunately, there is no need for them to worry. Over the next few weeks I will explain why, starting with the first question, which I will address in this post and the next.

One of the many questions my students didn't ask is "Have you ever eaten monkey brains?" (The answer is "no.")
(Picture attribution: Cara Chow (Charlotte1125). From here.)

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Question 1: Can I be a Christian and still believe in evolution?

As bloggers report, the tension between Christianity and evolution is a huge factor behind vast numbers of young folk abandoning their faith. Here is what they seem to be thinking:

Premise 1: All (or practically all) rational people accept that the species on earth today emerged through the process of evolution. a
Premise 2: No (or practically no) orthodox Christians accept that the species emerged through the process of evolution.
Conclusion: So no (or practically no) orthodox Christians are rational.

This is a good argument in that the premises provide very good support for the conclusion. The problem is that both premises are false.

The view that God used the process of evolution to create the species we see on earth today is called theistic evolution. Many orthodox Christians accept theistic evolution. I'm not aware of any very good reason for calling it a heresy.

(As is the case with inclusivism, whether or not theistic evolution is the correct view is, of course, a different question.) (If you want a test for orthodox Christianity, research the Nicene Creed and the primary heresy it refutes. Rejecting that heresy, Arianism, is a pre-requisite for orthodox Christianity.)

Another question they never asked me is, "Have you ever eaten fried flying termites?" (The answer is "Yes, several times. They taste somewhat like peanuts. But they don't look like this termite. Go here to see what they look like.")
(Picture attribution: Discott (talk). Picture from here.)

Of course, there are better and worse ways to be a theistic evolutionist. It's important to adhere to the authority of Scripture. A Christian who is a theistic evolutionist should be a Beth, not a Chris.

I'll address the second premise in my next post.

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Update: Other posts in this series:
Evolution Is a Poor Test for Rationality

Why would God send people to hell just because they haven't heard about Jesus?

Why would a loving God let so many bad things happen?

Halloween stuff

It's Halloween! Did you know that zombies are theologically significant? They are!

Theologically significant zombies

On this and related matters, see my earlier post at TTC.

And, most importantly, have you seen the Halloween cartoon where Homestar Runner is a Christ figure? (Did the folks who manage HomeStarRunner.com mean him to be a Christ figure? Probably not. But he is one just the same: the dumbest Christ figure ever.)

Stop Trying to Boil Frogs Alive! It Won't Work!

Something else my Sunday School teacher was wrong about - you can't boil frogs by slowly turning up the heat on them.  

According to armchair biologists, if you stick a living frog in a frying pan (who first thought of doing this?) and gradually turn up the heat, the frog will never notice the temperature increase due its cold-blooded nature and it will burn alive, boiling from inside out by its own blood. (Pastors think nothing of providing this grotesque image to families with children.)  In the same way, these people tell us that we have the heat turned up on us, so to speak, when we accept things in our lives that we shouldn't; it starts small, but allowing a few bad things to happen will eventually lead to a society that forsakes all morality!

Anyway, the part about the frog is false. Completely false. There is actually a branch of science that concerns itself with cold-blooded animals and how they react to heat changes and one of their scientists, Dr. Victor Hutchison, has been widely quoted as calling this a pure myth. Believe it or not, scientists have actually performed this experiment only to see the frog jump out of the water when it was uncomfortable.

"Hmm, it's getting hot in here, I wonder if I should leave? Nah, I'll wait it out and see if it gets better. I wonder if these garlic cloves should worry me..."

But this is also untrue from a more rhetorical standpoint.  If slight changes kept us from noticing things, then no one would notice when their body gained weight or when gas prices rose.  (Click here for Dilbert's take on this sort of logic.)  People are more perceptive than that.

So, pick a different analogy next time.  Preferably one that doesn't involving asking people to imagine animals dying.

Is This How We Worship?

Click on the picture if you can't make out the words:

This isn't how we should worship. But I think this is how we do worship sometimes, or at least how we sometimes wish we could worship.

• We try to ascend to heaven on the hot-air balloons of our emotions.
• We care little what the songs we worship God with actually mean, but we prefer them to mean very little. Otherwise, we might have to reflect on the words, and that might mean reflecting on theology, and we don't like reflecting on theology, because it doesn't feel as good as getting emotionally worked up.
• If the music is loud enough to risk damage to our ears, we don't care. Loud music makes the emotional experience better, and having strong feelings for God is a higher priority than our health. (Never mind what the Bible says in 1 Corinthians 6:20.)
• We leave the worship service and go about our daily lives. We haven't been transformed, but we do have the satisfaction of feeling like we really, really liked God at church this morning. We have nothing to remember from the worship service throughout the week--except for how much we really, really liked God last Sunday.
• It's ok if our lives are no better this week than the last, if we aren't any holier or more virtuous this week than the last, because come next Sunday we'll sing some upbeat songs again and really, really like God again.

That's how we think--sometimes. But, of course, we're wrong.

In Favor of Complementarianism

The posts on the egalitarianism vs. complementarianism issue have been very good. The most important thing I can add to the discussion has already been added.

I'm a complementarian, but I won't attempt a thoroughgoing defense of it here. A very good defense of what I would call a very soft complementarianism has already been made at TTC. Instead, I'm just going to make a few useful points which, as it happens, tend towards supporting the complementarian view.

First, we should remember that, given the authority of Scripture, it only takes one biblical passage to guarantee that a position is correct.

Now I'm not aware of a lot of passages that can plausibly be interpreted as supporting egalitaranism. (Several of the more plausible candidates, such as Galatians 3:28, have already been ably addressed at TTC.) But quite a few passages can plausibly be interpreted as supporting complementarianism.

So here is the second consideration: It seems that the burden of proof is on the egalitarian to show that Scripture does not support complementarianism.

Third consideration: Egalitarians should be very careful trying to read Ephesians 5 as promoting their view. Paul says in verse 21, "Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ" (NIV 1984). Many assume this command is both universal and symmetrical: Every Christian X must submit to every Christian Y, and vice versa. This is a lovely reading, and something very like it is a correct reading of Philippians 2.

But I don't see how this could be a correct reading of Ephesians 5. Does it even make sense for masters to submit to servants, and how could Paul, who knew the Torah so well, command parents to submit to their children?

Fourth, don't confuse a refutation of the "doormat theory" for a promotion of egalitarianism. Preferring and laying down one's life for another is not the same thing as submitting to that person. Christ does this for the Church (Philippians 2), but this doesn't mean He submits to her; it only means he loves her.

Saying that sacrificial giving equals submission is at best a confusion of categories. At worst, it borders on blasphemy because it suggests that God submits to us created beings.

Fifth, let's remember that all Christians are under the authority of God and Scripture. If women are to submit to their husbands, it is for the sake of Christ, for whose sake also husbands are to love their wives as Christ loves the Church. That is no easy job, for the Cross is no picnic. The Bible tells us all to submit to God in some way that makes us uncomfortable.

Albert, Beth, and Chris: A Tale of Three Christians

A Tale of Three Christians

Albert gets up on a soapbox and says, "A woman can't be the head pastor of a church because Paul says she can't. If she says she's called to be a pastor, then she must be confused about her call!"

Albert steps down. Beth steps onto the soapbox and says, "A woman can be the head pastor of a church! If Scripture said otherwise, then of course I would change my thinking. But what Paul says in those passages isn't entirely clear, and I don't really understand it. But he is quite clear about loving one another. And loving one another means welcoming all women who are called to be pastors."

Beth steps down. Now Chris gets up on the soapbox. He says, "A woman can be the head pastor of a church! Paul says they can't, but he was wrong."

The Obvious Agreement

These are generic figures. They stand for countless individuals and churches and a number of denominations.

These days Beth and Chris typically get along, sometimes forming their own churches or denominational affiliations. It's easy for them to work together because they share an obvious agreement: They both agree that a woman can be the head pastor of a church.

The Obvious Disagreement

Beth and Albert often don't get along. Sometimes they just split and go their separate ways. A degree of separation between them is understandable, and may be necessary; if they worship together week by week, eventually Beth is probably going to want to preach, and Albert will have a crisis of conscience when she does.

But sometimes they go further than just not worshiping together. Sometimes they fight. Sometimes they call each other names; Beth might call Albert a narrow-minded fundamentalist; Albert might call Beth a liberal heretic.

It is easy for them to disagree because they have an obvious disagreement: They disagree on the rightness of a woman as the head pastor of a church.

The Underrated Disagreement

Beth and Chris disagree on the authority of Scripture. Beth submits to the authority of Scripture, and Chris does not. This disagreement concerns the importance of the very book on which their religion is based, the Bible. This disagreement is about what a Christian takes to be authoritative. Beth believes Scripture is a sovereign authority. Chris does not.

The Underrated Agreements

Albert and Chris actually agree on what Paul says. If they were all performing a disinterested analysis of the biblical text, Albert and Chris might well get together to convince Beth that her exegesis of Paul is poor!

But here is the really important point: Albert and Beth agree on the fundamental issue, the authority of Scripture, and they should treat each other accordingly: with love and respect.

Albert should try to explain to Beth what he thinks he (and Chris) can see in Scripture that she can't. And Beth should try to explain to Albert why she thinks he's not seeing so clearly, or what she thinks she can see in Scripture that he can't.

In a word, Beth's agreement with Chris runs shallow, but her agreement with Albert runs deep.

C. S. Lewis as Theologian and Christian Philosopher

In recent months I have said a lot about C. S. Lewis. Here is a short summary:

First, I recommend reading John Stott's Basic Christianity and N. T. Wright's Simply Christian alongside Lewis' Mere Christianity.

Second, I state two theological disagreements with Lewis.

Third, I tell how I learned that Lewis really does reject the penal substitutionary atonement.

Fourth, I explain why C. S. Lewis is one of the great philosophers.

Fifth, I explain why C. S. Lewis is one of Christianity's great rhetoricians.

Sixth, I defend C. S. Lewis from the charge that he is a universalist heretic.

C. S. Lewis' face again. I'm all out of ideas for captions. (Picture from here)

I think a very, very short summary would be in order. It's coming up soon. But first we need to make a distinction between two things Christian thinkers can do.

First, there is biblical exegesis, the practice of discovering and explaining what the Bible means.

Second, there is everything else Christian philosophers and theologians do: developing a Christian worldview, understanding Church history, discovering a Christian perspective on everything not explicitly mentioned in the Bible, figuring out how Christianity relates to Plato and other non-Christian philosophers, etc. Since these other modes of Christian thought ought to be guided and governed by good biblical exegesis, I think we could call them "theology" in a broad sense. Another good term is "Christian philosophy" since it includes seeking wisdom in the manner of a Christian.

Now here is the very, very short summary. When it comes to biblical exegesis, I think we should approach C. S. Lewis with a degree of caution. (This is probably true of anyone who doesn't know Hebrew; it's certainly true of me!) But when it comes to Christian philosophy, or theology in the broad sense, Lewis is great. He's among the best of these Christian thinkers, and he might be the most helpful one to write in a century or more--or at least the most helpful one to write in English.

C. S. Lewis Is Not a Universalist heretic

Apparently there is a nasty rumor going around that C. S. Lewis is a universalist heretic. This isn't true.

Is this the face of a heretic? Nay, 'tis the face of THE DEVIL HIMSELF! (Picture from here)

For starters, Lewis isn't a universalist. He's an inclusivist.

That should be enough to refute the charge that he's a universalist heretic. But there's more: Inclusivism isn't a heresy.

There are four generic views that need distinguishing:

Exclusivism: This is the view that there is one way to be saved, Jesus Christ, and that only those who follow Christ in this life will be saved.

Inclusivism: This is the view that there is one way to be saved, Jesus Christ, but that some who do not follow Christ in this life will nonetheless be saved through Him.

Pluralism: This is the view that there are many ways to be saved.

Universalism: This is the view that all are saved.

There are, no doubt, different versions of each view and some hybrid views between the generic views. But these are the generic views it is most helpful to remember.

The best instance of Lewis' inclusivism is the story of Emeth, the Calormene in The Last Battle who was accepted by Aslan (who represents Jesus) because his worship of the false god Tash was a true worship. (There is actually an interesting Wikipedia article on Emeth.) The opposites of Emeth were those characters who had a false worship of Aslan and were not accepted by him, such as Shift the ape.

There is also a beautiful description of inclusivism in That Hideous Strength: "This is the courtesy of Deep Heaven: that when you mean well, He always takes you to have meant better than you knew."

Now this view may not be correct. But I don't see any convincing reason to call it a heresy. Of course, this all depends on using the right definition of "heresy." I'm not quite ready to attempt a precise definition of heresy, but I do want to say this: All heresies are theological errors, but not all theological errors are heresies. Heresies are not just theological mistakes, but impermissible ones. (I happen to think Dispensationalism, for example, is mistaken, but it's definitely not a heresy. Arianism, on the other hand, definitely is a heresy.)

The nasty rumor about Lewis comes from an exclusivist perspective. Now inclusivism and exclusivism are not both right, so one of them is wrong. All the same, I don't think we should call either view a heresy.

At any rate, if we do call inclusivism a heresy, we should give a very careful definition of heresy while we're at it. If you think inclusivism is a heresy, I'd love to hear why! I'd also like to hear what definition of heresy you're using.

But we have to look to the Bible to see which view is correct; I'd recommend a very careful reading of the first few chapters of Romans for a start. I also recommend chapter 8 of Michael Wittmer's Don't Stop Believing.

C. S. Lewis and Other Great Christian Rhetoricians

The Christian Church has had some great rhetoricians over the centuries. The ones that come to my mind are Augustine, C. S. Lewis, Ambrose, and Charles Spurgeon.

(Personally, I would like to rank these four as the best, and probably in that order too. But I am unqualified to make that call; at any rate, they are among the best.)

Rhetoric should be understood in classical terms. It's not just about delivering pretty speeches or writing pretty essays. It was the capstone of the education system of the Roman world for a good long while, taught to a student who had learned grammar and dialectic (logic). In other words, a good rhetorician has a good command of language and knows how to put words together (grammar); he knows how to argue for a position (dialectic); and he knows how to weave words and logic together in a pleasing way (rhetoric).

Rhetoric is the art of persuasion; a person who delivers a pretty speech or pens some lovely writing, but fails to persuade anyone, has failed as a rhetorician.

Lewis' rhetoric is superb. He has a masterful command of the English language, an equal ability to reason, and an astounding way of putting it all together. The result is that he often says in a paragraph, one a child can understand, what an average scholar may take many pages to say--if not an entire (and perhaps tedious) book. The same scholar would immediately become mired in a long (and perhaps interminable) academic debate with other scholars over the matter. But for most readers of Lewis the academic debate is rarely necessary. We understand him right off; we understand the case he is making, and we have a working understanding of the position he is articulating without the benefit of much hard study.

My point is not that there's anything wrong with hard study, academic debate, and long books. My point is that a good rhetorician can frequently communicate with most of the advantages of scholarship, but with the added advantage of being able to make a big idea make sense to the rest of us non-experts.

This is another reason Lewis is worth reading. If you haven't read him yet, try reading Mere Christianity and see for yourself. You shouldn't read only Lewis. But for heaven's sake, don't neglect to read Lewis!

C. S. Lewis Is One of the Great Philosophers

I may have disagreed with C. S. Lewis on some theological points (see here, here, and here.). But that doesn't mean I don't think very highly of him.

An expert on Boethius defines a philosopher as "a wise cognitive manager and developer of civilization." By this definition of a philosopher, C. S. Lewis might be the greatest philosopher of the twentieth century.

I think a lot of people know that Lewis is a great Christian worldview writer, by which I mean that if you want to know how to view the world Christianly, you need to read C. S. Lewis. (More good Lewis work: The C. S. Lewis Blog.) Fewer know that he's a very good philosopher, at least by this definition of philosophy (and some others).

One of these things is not like the others! Most of these pictures are of great philosophers. But one isn't. Can you tell which one?
(Pictures from here, here, here, and here.)

I bet no one else managed to summarize Plato's Republic in eight words: "The head rules the belly through the chest" (from The Abolition of Man).

I recently learned, in another book by Lewis, that this illustration wasn't originally his; he borrowed it from some medieval literature. It just goes to show that C. S. Lewis doesn't have a lot of original thoughts. I mean that as a very high compliment.

Original thoughts are overrated. Lewis was wise enough to want good thoughts, not original ones. He understood that, in the span of a single lifetime, we will have more success having good thoughts if we study the thoughts of good thinkers from ages past than if we just try to come up with our own.

Lewis' own thoughts came to him through Scripture, Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Boethius, and even Confucius. He put these thoughts into new settings, his great books: Mere Christianity, The Great Divorce, The Screwtape Letters, The Abolition of Man, The Chronicles of Narnia, and the Space Trilogy. I would speculate that no one in the twentieth century did more than he to preserve the wisdom of past civilizations: ancient Greece, ancient Rome, medieval Europe, ancient Israel, and even Confucian China.

Some of these people didn't have a lot of original thoughts because their minds were filled with the thoughts of great philosophers and theologians. One of them didn't have a lot of original thoughts because his mind was almost completely empty.
(Pictures from here, here, here, and here.)

It's fitting that Lewis was one of the few great readers of Boethius in our age. Boethius is just such a philosopher. His greatest work, The Consolation of Philosophy, available here, also contains very few ideas that were his own; they were borrowings or developments from earlier thinkers like Plato, the Stoics, and Augustine. (Literary elements are also borrowed from Homer, Greek myths, Augustine's dialogues, and sources I'm not educated enough to recognize.) But Boethius' combination of all these ideas and literary elements was a highly original masterpiece.

Boethius himself wrote in the days of the declining Roman Empire. But his book preserved some of the best things from ancient Greece and Rome, and it helped to create medieval Europe. If modern Western Civilization should fail, don't be surprised if Lewis' books help to create the civilization that replaces it.

Several videos featuring the Boethius expert I mentioned begin here. This video will help introduce you to Boethius' Consolation. (As usual, the book is way better than the movie.)

A nerd and a Friday night's existential crisis

Some years ago I was at Dallas Baptist University taking a class with Dr. William E. Bell. He's second from the left here. I learned about the penal substitutionary atonement, and happened to learn that, according to Dr. Bell, C. S. Lewis denied the doctrine.

No, not that William Bell. (Picture by Gage Skidmore, available here.)

I considered Lewis to be the great Christian thinker that he is. I grew up on Lewis: originally the Narnia books and movies (the old BBC ones, with the bad special effects and the awesome portrayals of the White Witch and Puddleglum), then Screwtape Letters in middle school and Mere Christianity in high school. My family has been reading Lewis for several generations.

My reverence for Dr. Bell was no less. I saw him as the bulwark of orthodoxy and serious biblical teaching that he is.

So my college hero was telling me that my childhood hero was a heretic whose salvation was uncertain as a result of his bad doctrine. This was a big deal. We're talking about a genuine existential crisis here (though I admit I've had worse existential crises in my time).

So, of course, I went to the library and wrote a paper. What else is a little nerd with an existential crisis supposed to do on a Friday night?

In it, as I recall, I tried to make three points.

1. In Mere Christianity Lewis doesn't deny the penal substitutionary atonement. He just admits that the modern mind has trouble understanding the idea, and then suggests an understanding of the atonement that makes sense to the modern mind: the theory that Jesus paid our debts on the cross. (Looking at the relevant passage recently, I had to admit I may have misread it; I think he really does reject the penal substitutionary atonement here, although it wasn't the main point of the passage.)

2. The theory that Jesus paid our debts on the cross is an orthodox theory. Here I cited a passage in the New Testament; it may have been 1 Timothy 2:5-6. I also alluded to the old hymn that says of Jesus, "He paid a debt he did not owe/I owed a debt I could not pay/I needed someone to wash my sins away."

3. In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Lewis illustrates the penal substitutionary view of the atonement in Aslan's death in place of Edmond.

I shared my paper with Dr. Bell, who read it more than once. He thought it was a valiant effort to defend Lewis, but he wasn't convinced.

Now up to this point I still thought Lewis did not reject the penal substitutionary atonement, but Bell shared with me a story that finally convinced me: that Lewis had personally told J. I. Packer that he did not accept the penal substitutionary atonement. Packer had personally passed this information on to Bell, who now passed it on to me. I now pass it on to you.

The third point from my paper is puzzling in light of this, but I think it may yet be correct. I suspect that in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe Lewis wrote a better book than even he intended, and managed to illustrate an extra view of the atonement. (See here for a brief word on the Christus Victor view he intentionally depicted. )

Still the man.
(Picture from here)

C. S. Lewis is still the man. This may suggest a poor memory on my part, but I can only think of about three sentences in all of the fifteen or so books I've read by Lewis with which I disagree. It is largely because of the occasional problem like this that I suggested that Christians read N. T. Wright and John Stott alongside Lewis. But C. S. Lewis is irreplaceable. A solid grounding in ten or twenty of his little books will do any Christian good, and, I might add, will probably do more good than thirty or forty large books in philosophy and theology.

P. S. Todd Kappelman, another of my favorite undergrad teachers, wrote this on the need to read Lewis. I agree.

P. P. S. This sort of allegation that C. S. Lewis is a heretic and the author of "demonic fantasies" is no doubt well-intentioned; but it is incorrect, impolite, unhelpful, poorly researched, and hardly worth the time I've already spent writing this sentence.

Two Disagreements with C. S. Lewis

I took in C. S. Lewis with my mother's milk (and Francis Schaeffer with my father's lectures). I am glad I did. But even Lewis makes mistakes. Here are two of them.

Still Awesome.
(Picture from here)

1. Disbelief in the authority of Scripture. Lewis believes that some things (admittedly few) included in Scripture by its authors are incorrect. Disagreeing with Scripture is not a good idea. I have never actually read him disagreeing with anything in Scripture, so it seems the effects of this mistake are relatively minimal. But a friend I trust told me that it happens in Lewis' commentary on the Psalms, which I happen not to have read.

2. Rejecting the substitutionary atonement. The "atonement" is what Jesus did on the Cross to reconcile sinners to God. There are several views of the atonement, and I happen to think that more than one view can be correct (on which I'd suggest reading chapter 6 of Michael Wittmer's Don't Stop Believing). But I think the basic meaning of the atonement is the idea that Jesus on the Cross received the full punishment for our sins. In the background of this view is the Old Testament idea of the transferrence of guilt to a sacrificial lamb or a scapegoat. This is called the "substitutionary atonement" view because Jesus is our substitute.

Lewis affirms at least two good views of the atonement, that Jesus paid our debts on the Cross and that the Cross and the Resurrection conquered Satan and freed creation from his power. Unfortunately, Lewis also rejects the idea of the substitutionary atonement.

This is one reason why, as I said in an earlier post, N. T. Wright's Simply Christian and John Stott's Basic Christianity are such helpful companions to Mere Christianity. They handle these issues better than Lewis. Stott is especially clear on the substitutionary atonement in light of the Old Testament.

I'll say more about Lewis and the atonement later.

P. S. I should have used the term "penal substitutionary atonement" above rather than just "substitutionary atonement." --MB, 4-10-12

Note to C. S. Lewis fans

I'm sure many readers of Thinking Through Christianity are also readers of C. S. Lewis. So, before I begin, let me state one thing clearly: I love C. S. Lewis.

I write this post to inform C. S. Lewis readers who haven't heard that, in addition to Lewis' Mere Christianity, there are two other books (also by Anglicans) which they would do well to read: John Stott's Basic Christianity and N. T. Wright's Simply Christian.

Athough I haven't read Mere Christianity in a while, I can't think of a single disagreement with its contents. But the book does have one crucial weakness, and that is Lewis' limited understanding of the Old Testament. To its credit, Mere Christianity is enriched by Lewis' familiarity with ancient and medieval philosophy; but philosophy is no substitute for the Old Testament. Stott and Wright have a deeper understanding of the Old Testament and do as good a job communicating Old Testament themes to a modern audience as Lewis does communicating ancient and medieval themes to a modern audience.

Mere Christianity is a wonderful book. Those who have already read it should also read Basic Christianity and Simply Christian, also wonderful books.

Those who haven't read Mere Christianity should read all three. Stott's and Wright's books should accompany Lewis' book, not replace it.

In a later post I hope to explore some other weaknesses of Lewis. Not because I don't love him, but because I do, and because I love what he loved, Christianity.

Valentine's Day, Singleness, & The Church: Part II

A few friends of mine, who grew up in solid Christian environments as children of pastors, mentioned to me they didn't think the Bible said anything about singleness. No doubt exists in my mind that these friends knew, and could easily find, the passages in the Bible that dealt with marriage but the lack of knowledge that the Bible spoke into their lives of singleness seemed a significant issue.

A basic understanding of hermeneutics tells us that one comes to any text with preconceived notions of what it should or does say. The best exegete tries to compensate for this issue but cultural understandings may so influence their thinking that they can't see out of that paradigm.

I propose we do this with marriage when we read the Bible. We put our cultural views--our views that come from our current Christian culture-- into what the Bible actually teaches on marriage and singleness. We tend to believe it is a Biblical mandate to be married except, of course, for those few people who are called to singleness. So we read the Bible accordingly, only seeing those parts that talk of marriage and how it plays a role in our lives and represents our future with Christ. We do not see the parts that talk about singleness.

So, let's take a look starting in Genesis and look at creation with an eye towards singleness. In Genesis 2:18-22 it says:

The Lord God said, 'It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a companion for him who corresponds to him.' The Lord God formed out of the ground every living animal of the field and every bird of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them, and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So the man named all the animals, the birds of the air, and the living creatures of the field, but for Adam no companion who corresponded to him was found. So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep, and while he was asleep, he took part of the man’s side and closed up the place with flesh. Then the Lord God made a woman from the part he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.
 

Many foundational insights exist in these passages of Genesis that tell us who we are as humans and who God created us to be. Most people look to these chapters to tell us about God's mandate for marriage. But take a moment to look at this passage from the perspective of God creating us also to be single--at least for a time.

The passage starts with God stating that it is not good for man to be alone. Of course, God knows that none of the animals are going to be the match for Adam but he still has Adam go through the naming process. Why would God do this? This question persists to be an interesting one with many commentators weighing in but I'd like to look at it from the perspective of singleness for some answers.

During this time of naming the animals Adam was going through a God-ordained period of singleness. Adam was waiting and hoping and expecting a companion to come along. At the very beginning God created this process of singleness in humans. It seems God wanted Adam to go through this. It seems that God wanted Adam to learn and grow during this time.

Singleness then, in some sense, seems to be our natural state. Marriage is something that God created for us while in this life—it doesn't exist in our eternal state. He created marriage as a teaching tool and as a way for us to experience a healthy way to feed our need for real relationships in this world. But, we need not act like being single is wrong. God creates us as singles (everyone is born single), as individuals, and even, as with Adam, requires us to be single for a time period in our lives.

Moving into the New Testament now, Paul says in 1 Corinthians 7:7-9:

I wish that everyone was as I am. But each has his own gift from God, one this way, another that. To the unmarried and widows I say that it is best for them to remain as I am. But if they do not have self-control, let them get married. For it is better to marry than to burn with sexual desire.

Again, in this oft quoted passage on singleness and marriage we tend to put on our 'marriage goggles' and look at it assuming that we should get married, often as quickly as possible. In the context Paul is addressing a question that the church in Corinth asked regarding abstaining from sex altogether. Paul is talking about when it is appropriate and not appropriate to have sex. If you read the previous verses this is clear, but we often just pull out a few verses making it easy to misinterpret the meaning. In 1 Corinthians 7:1-7 the verses right before the verses I quoted above it says:

Now with regard to the issues you wrote about: “It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.” But because of immoralities, each man should have relations with his own wife and each woman with her own husband....Do not deprive each other, except by mutual agreement for a specified time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then resume your relationship, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. I say this as a concession, not as a command. I wish that everyone was as I am. But each has his own gift from God, one this way, another that.

Paul says both engaging in sex and abstinence are appropriate but in the correct contexts. It also seems we may fool ourselves into thinking that when Paul says that those who do not have 'self-control' should get married that he is speaking to anyone who has thoughts about sex and/or desires to have it. Most likely this was not his intent. The culture of that time was rampant with ways to express yourself sexually from temple prostitutes to brothels. If you are participating in those options, it is better to get married and have sexual relations in a marital context but he'd prefer if everyone stayed single as he was.

Obviously the Bible does address singleness through the passages I talked about as well as several others I've not looked at here. I'll continue to look at more Biblical passages on the topic and develop the theology of singleness and marriage more fully in upcoming posts.

Read more in the intro piece to this series:
Valentine's Day, Singleness, & The Church: Part I
.

Valentine's Day, Singleness, & The Church: Part I

In honor of Valentine's Day I will post several entries on singleness and the church. Improper Christian thought on singleness is one of the greatest disservices Christians have perpetuated. Even now, with the single adult demographic at 50 percent or more in this country very little is said on the topic. We throw around comments about how Paul was single and Jesus was single. We mention that Paul said a few things on singleness in the New Testament and we sometimes talk that some may have that 'gift'. Beyond that, not only do we not talk or think about singleness in a theological way, the church adamantly promotes marriage as 'the way' for individuals and society to function properly at all. Many Christians don't realize the Bible has any comments on singleness whatsoever.

I'm 32 and unmarried. I've spent most of my life single in every sense of singleness. I've participated for about ten years now in healthy young adult singles ministries in two different churches. I just finished a year co-leading one of those ministries.

My thinking seriously on this topic started about four years ago. My friends and I were talking about how once someone has a boyfriend (or girlfriend) they automatically are moved into a different category. Singles treat the individuals in the newly formed couple differently and couples do also. They are out of one 'club' and into another. What necessitates this change? It seemed more fundamental than just that these two people may now have built-in plans for a Friday night. The change, we realized, has something to do with the beginning of the hope being realized of having a spouse.

At the same time as this conversation my discussion group at church was studying N.T. Wright's Surprised by Hope. Wright addresses the idea of the Christian hope -- what we hope for and what we tend as a church to be missing in the discussion. It struck me as a similar story to what I was experiencing as a single person. Could it be that God gave us singleness to teach us about the present in the same way theologians say God gave us marriage to teach us about the future?

I'll unpack that concept in my future posts. Until then, let me direct you to two very different views on singleness:

Albert Mohler has several entries on his blog regarding singleness.

John Piper takes a very different view. Read or view one of his sermons on the topic or you can download his book, This Momentary Marriage, which has a chapter on singleness.

See my next post in the series:
Valentine's Day, Singleness, & The Church: Part II

The Theology of Sport

In case you haven't heard, the Super Bowl is this weekend. Seems to me like a good time to look at the 'Theology of Sport'. Every year around this time the debate of 'what Christians should do' in regards to the Super Bowl seems to arise. What about churches that have evening or afternoon services on Sundays? Do you cancel them? Manipulate it to be longer, shorter? Incorporate the game into the meeting time? All answers could be valid. Should Christians even watch or participate in sports?

The question I want to touch on here goes a bit beyond those questions to how Christians should think about sports -- about the games played, about watching, about participating and about winning. I have some links to resources and articles I've looked at recently discussing this issue.

A few weeks ago I presented at a missions conference a workshop entitled, 'The Theology of Technology.' Many of the same principles apply for this topic. Logically this makes sense because if you have a true Christian worldview the same principles will inform any thought on any category of human life.

The core of the issue is actually, I believe, the same as what Thomas Ladd posted below in his post entitled, "Misunderstanding Christianity's "Negative" Anthropology". I'd suggest reading the whole post but a poignant excerpt is:

For what we believe humanity can be -- what each human being can be -- is even more than a restoration of the original image we bore. We believe that through the transformational power of the Spirit of God, those who believe in Jesus Christ are being made into His likeness!

I believe that "through the transformational power of the Spirit of God" all things-- humans, nature, technology and sports are being moved from their current state of fallenness into a state of redemption. Sport, as a category, is not evil but because of the current fallenness of all things is as susceptible to evil as anything or anyone else.

The topic is too broad for me to get in-depth in one entry. Hopefully I'll post more going forward. But, for now, to think through many aspects of the theology of sport look at these links:

Another Look: It’s Holy Week in America from internetmonk.com
and two links I appreciated from there are:

Christians, Sports and Compromise from Jesus Creed
and
Sports Fanatics from Christianity Today

I also just looked over Tom Krattenmaker's book, Onward Christian Athletes, which brings up many intriguing thoughts on the link between Christians and sports in this country.

And, Verite Sport has some very interesting articles and papers on the topic.

WHY WE FOLLOW SPORTS

I worked as a sports reporter for several years for Portland's newspaper website. I mainly worked in the area of high school sports. The worst thing I covered was a player dying or having a serious medical issue. I also worked in news for awhile and often covered war and death but when it was related to an athlete, especially high school or college, it took on a whole other meaning. I believe the issue is twofold. One, we believe athletes are in good physical condition and shouldn't have these issues. But two, sport, in some sense, is not real. But death is very real and when the two meet fantasy and reality collide.

Sport mimics real life in a way that only sport can. We build each competition, each season, each race into a battle of good and evil. Just as, as Christians believe, real life is. Sport gives us a chance to either, by participating or being a spectator, see the human body and mind used in exceptional ways. Ways that must reflect, somehow, the image of God. Sport gives us a way to bond as community -- the team, trainers and coaches or the local high school, city or state. Just as in real life we long for community in our families, workplace and with our Creator.

Humans get drawn to things that, whether we know it or not, show us a truer sense of ourselves and of God. I easily see how sport is one of those things on both counts. Sports fans see, that somewhere, at the core, the nature of sport reflects something true to a reality that is hard to see or more often hard to deal with. So, we like sports.

At least in sport, generally, the battle between good vs. evil is pretend. The 'good' team wins and the 'evil' team loses. Sometimes, depending your alliance, the 'evil' team wins and the 'good' loses. This also reflects life as we know it currently. But, the evil of it all really isn't that evil because sports aren't real. It's just a game.

Therefore reporting on the death of an athlete or a sex scandal in a locker room was one of the worst things I had to do. It moves the unreal into the real -- the evil is a true evil not the fabricated evil of a team losing or the wrong team winning. But, just as how there is another season in sports, there is another season in reality. There is a future hope. As Mr. Ladd wrote in his post below, "a future in which sin"...and death... "does not have the last word and in which your flaws and failures don't have the final say when it comes to defining what you are."