Review of “Christian Apologetics: Past and Present,” Volume 2
Christian Apologetics: Past and Present is a two-volume compendium of primary sources that document the variety of reasons Christians have given in defense of their faith over the two millennia of its existence. This second volume covers the period from 1500 to the present. The authors divide it into four parts: (1) “The Reformation, Post-Reformation (Protestant), and Catholic Reformation”; (2) “Modernity and the Challenge of Reason,” from roughly the late 17th through the mid-19th centuries; (3) “The Global Era: Christian Faith and a Changing World,” which covers the mid-19th through early 20th centuries; and (4) “Issues Today and Tomorrow,” which covers the mid-20th century to the present. Each section includes selections by authors from across the ecumenical spectrum–Protestant and Catholic–with Reformed evangelical authors receiving special focus in parts 3 and 4. Each part begins with an “Introduction” that frames the historical context the excerpted apologists worked within and concludes with a “Follow-Up” that briefly describes apologetic authors and works not excerpted for the book. I recommend both volumes for Christian apologists, pastors, seminary professors or readers, or laypeople interested in the historical development of Christian apologetics.
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Destined for Trials (1 Thessalonians 3:3–4)
Many American Christians assume that if they believe and God and do what is right, God will bless them.
Sometimes, this takes the extreme form of the Word of Faith theology, which assures believers that God will give them what they confess. If they confess health, they will be healthy. If they confess wealth, they will be wealthy. Popularly, this extreme is known as the Prosperity Gospel, the Health-Wealth movement, and Positive Confession—or more derisively, Name It and Claim It or Blab It and Grab It.
More often, however, this assumption takes the form of America as a Christian nation. “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord,” Psalm 33:12 says. As long as the Lord is God in America, the argument goes, he will bless America with peace and prosperity.
Whereas Word of Faith theology focuses on the individual, Christian nationalism focuses on the collective. Either way, however, the assumption is the same: If you are good, you will be well.
This common assumption of American Christians is more American than Christian, however. It is not true to the experience of Christians in the New Testament, vast swaths of Church history, or even Christians in the modern day. Indeed, the New Testament at places seems to teach precisely the opposite: If you are good, you will be treated ill.
Consider what Paul, Silas, and Timothy wrote in 1 Thessalonians 3:3b–4:
For you know quite well that we are destined for [trials]. In fact, when we were with you, we kept telling you that we would be persecuted. And it turned out that way, as you well know.
We are destined for trials. We will be persecuted. Suffering is the lot of the faithful.
Do you believe this? If not, consider this partial list of the fate of New Testament believers: John the Baptist was beheaded, Jesus Christ was crucified, Stephen the deacon was stoned, James the apostle was executed, James the Lord’s brother was stoned, Paul was behaded, Peter was crucified upside down. Were these men less faithful than we are? Less holy? Less blessed?
Or consider believers around the world who suffer for confessing Jesus Christ as Lord. It has been said that we live in the Age of Martyrs right now, for more Christians were killed for their faith in the Twentieth Century alone than in the previous nineteen centuries combined. Were these Christians less faithful than we are? Less holy? Less blessed?
Or might it be the case that we Americans have confused Christianity and comfort? Have we wrongly identified the American Way of Life with the the Way, the Truth, and the Life? Do we perhaps not suffer because we don’t turn off the TV, put down the potato chips, rise off our couches, and go on some mission for God to win the souls of the lost and relieve the misery of the poor?
I ask these questions not to provide a definitive answer, but to unsettle my comfortable soul—and yours.
Marriage: Caring, Not Controlling
In this video, Dr. Jim Bradford continues his devotional series on marriage. This is part 4 of 7.
Ask the Superintendent with Dr. George O. Wood (January 23, 2011)
In this video, I interview Dr. George O. Wood about current events and pressing issues in the Assemblies of God. He addresses a range of issues, including the plight of Iranian AG adherents who have been arrested by the government, the consolidation of the three national AG schools, the involvement of AG pastors in politics, and many more. Dr. Wood is general superintendent of the Assemblies of God in the United States. He’s also my dad.
Love Jesus, Love His Church (1 Thessalonians 2:17–20)
Do you ever miss church?
By miss, I do not mean “to fail to be at or present for.” Every Christian misses church in this sense now and again. Rather, by miss, I mean “to notice the absence or loss of.” According to 1 Thessalonians 2:17–20, Paul, Silas, and Timothy missed the Thessalonian church in this second sense.
But, brothers and sisters, when we were orphaned by being separated from you for a short time (in person, not in thought), out of our intense longing we made every effort to see you. For we wanted to come to you—certainly I, Paul, did, again and again—but Satan blocked our way. For what is our hope, our joy, or the crown in which we will glory in the presence of our Lord Jesus when he comes? Is it not you? Indeed, you are our glory and joy.
Being “orphaned” expresses the experience of absence or loss in a powerful way. As orphaned children have an “intense longing” to be reunited with their dead parents, so the missionaries desired to be present against with the Thessalonians. And as an obstacle (death) stands in the way of orphans realizing their desire, so an obstacle (Satan) stood in the way of the missionaries realizing theirs. What a poignant image of unfulfilled desire!
The missionaries also employ a startling set of words to describe their relationship to the Thessalonians: hope, joy, crown, and glory. This set is startling because you would think it described how the missionaries felt about Christ himself. Isn’t he the Christian’s hope (1 Tim. 1:1), joy (Phil. 4:4), and glory (2 Cor. 4:4)? Doesn’t he give us the crown (2 Tim. 4:8)?
But glory is a reflected property. If Christ is glorious, then so are those in him. If we glory in him, then we glory in them…and hope and rejoice.
Two points of application immediately suggest themselves:
First, you cannot love Christ without loving the church. This goes against the grain of much of contemporary culture, which claims to love Jesus but hate Christians. This hatred is understandable. Christians can be an uptight, self-righteous, hypocritical, and judgmental lot: “miserable sinners,” in the words of Thomas Cranmer. But isn’t it uptight, self-righteous, hypocritical, and judgmental to hate uptight, self-righteous, hypocritical, and judgmental people—as if to say, “I’m OK, but they’re seriously messed up”? And didn’t Jesus love miserable sinners and give his life for them (Gal. 2:20)? If you love Jesus, you’ll love whom he loves, and he loves the church.
Second, if you love the church, you’ll notice its absence or loss. You’ll hope for, rejoice in, and glory at the love, acceptance, and forgiveness that are present whenever two or three are gathered in Christ’s name. Alternatively, you’ll rail against the satanic obstacles that keep the church from experiencing and sharing Christ’s love, acceptance, and forgiveness. Either way, you’ll long for a better way of living with people in Christ’s kingdom.
So, do you miss church?
The World Wide Religious Web for Tuesday, January 24, 2012
OPTIMISM & HOPE ARE DIFFERENT CREATURES: Disability: A Thread for Weaving Joy.
The great French Jesuit Henri de Lubac once wrote, “Suffering is the thread from which the stuff of joy is woven. Never will the optimist know joy.” Those seem like strange words, especially for Americans. We Americans take progress as an article of faith. And faith in progress demands a spirit of optimism.
But Father de Lubac knew that optimism and hope are very different creatures. In real life, bad things happen. Progress is not assured, and things that claim to be “progress” can sometimes be wicked and murderous instead. We can slip backward as a nation just as easily as we can advance. This is why optimism—and all the political slogans that go with it—are so often a cheat. Real hope and real joy are precious. They have a price. They emerge from the experience of suffering, which is made noble and given meaning by faith in a loving God.
STATISM AS RELIGION: Secular Theocracy: The Foundations and Folly of Modern Tyranny, Part 1.
The point is this: the rise of the modern state was in no way the solution to the violence of religion. On the contrary, the absorption of church into state that began well before the Reformation was crucial to the rise of the state and the wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
FROM DOMINION TO DEMISE: For the religious right, faith without works.
The movement of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson has been in decline for some time, but recent events suggest that they are wandering in the political wilderness.
Just last year, the Left was portraying religious-right “Dominionists” as an imminent threat to American democracy. Now it’s saying they’re nothing to worry about. If the Dominionism bubble burst so quickly, was it ever really a threat in the first place? Or just a bunch of hype from the usual suspects?
GROSS, GOD, OR GIFT: Why Christians are criticizing my Christian marriage and sex book.
God has a plan for sex: that it is to be enjoyed between one man and one woman in the context of marriage. This means that there are certain types of sex acts that abuse and misuse the good gift of sex that God gave, and that we are to honor God with our bodies by living our sexual lives in a way that glorifies him and honors the scriptures.
In our book, we blow up some common misconceptions about sex (like that the Bible prohibits stripteases or oral sex). We help people understand that it’s God’s intent that we steward and enjoy the gift of sex, like every gift he gives, in such a way that is glorious to him, good for our marriages and a lot of fun.
CAN WE SEE OBAMA AND GINRICH’S TITHE RECORDS TOO? Tax records show Romney donates millions to Mormon church.
“This is a country that believes in the Bible,” Romney said. “The Bible speaks about providing tithes and offerings. I made a commitment to my church a long, long time ago that I’d give 10 percent of my income to the church. And I’ve followed through on that commitment.”
BELIEVING SIX IMPOSSIBLE THINGS BEFORE BREAKFAST: Strong meat, not milk: Are some things impossible to believe?
Given all that Hodge says about this subject, I can only conclude that if someone asked him “If it were revealed to you in a way you could not doubt that God does what is morally wrong would you still worship him?” he would reply that he would not because then, by dint of sheer intuition (as he means it), that would not be God. In other words, it’s an impossible hypothetical situation. The only difference between him and me is that, somehow, in a way I cannot grasp, he didn’t think “doing, approving or commanding what is morally wrong” includes what Calvinism says God does. I think he contradicted himself because it is intuitively true that “morally wrong” includes what Calvinism says God does (whether Calvinists grasp that or not). But he was no less “judging God’s morality” than I am. Neither of us is. We are simply explaining what it is possible and impossible to believe.
FAKE, BUT ACCURATE? Why Women Leave the Church—and Come Back Again.
On a foundational level, the vision of Henderson’s book is important. As Henderson notes, the topic of gender and the church is rarely marked by genuine listening. Opposing parties tend to approach the debate with preformed conclusions and generalizations, which produces little in the way of progress. A book in which women’s stories are allowed to “speak for themselves” (xix) is a welcome change.
It should here be noted that the Barna study, which Henderson cites at the outset, has been contested. After its publication, The Wall Street Journal ran a response from Rodney Stark and Byron Johnson in which both scholars discredited the study’s findings. They concluded that “across 38 years, there have been only small variations in church attendance, and Barna’s reported 11 percentage-point decline in women’s church attendance (to 44% from 55%) simply didn’t happen.”
Whether or not Barna’s findings are legitimate, the church is still called to reach the millions of lost women in this world. It is therefore incumbent upon Christians to listen to the voices of women inside and outside the church if we are to make disciples and retain them.
HAPPY (BELATED) RADICAL REFORMATION DAY! Why W Celbrate Radical Reformation Day.
Radical Reformation Day? Absolutely! But isn’t Reformation Day enough? Absolutely not! While Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary continues to celebrate the biblical progress made during the Protestant Reformation with Reformation Day on Oct. 31, we are compelled to honor the recovery of New Testament Christianity with Radical Reformation Day on Jan. 21. On this day in 1525, after an extended period of intense Bible study in the original languages, a period described by an early chronicler as an “extraordinary awakening and preparation by God,” [1] the first Anabaptists or “Brothers,” as they called themselves, recovered the New Testament practice of baptizing only believers.
LOVER IN A DANGEROUS TIME: Interview: Bruce Cockburn.
Cockburn says when he first became a Christian in the early 1970s, “it was unfamiliar territory. I listened a lot to people who claimed to know a lot about it which—the people on TV and the fundamentalist types who were quick to tell you they know all the answers. After a while, it was very clear that they were deluding themselves. At least I wasn’t cut out to have that kind of approach to things.
“To me, everything in life is a process. There is no stopping point; you never land. If you think you’ve landed somewhere, watch out, because God or whoever is gonna pull the rug out from under you, and you are going to have to start thinking again, trying to understand how you fit into things.”
Cockburn says he doesn’t care whether people believe he’s a Christian or not.
“What’s important is recognition that there is a spiritual side of life, and that needs to be paid attention to,” he says. “There’s a real distinction between materialism and a sense of the cosmos being a deeper place than that. If it’s a deeper place, then what does that ask from us? I don’t know the answer. I’m still working on it, and that is perhaps why people are willing to listen to the stuff I put into songs.”
NOT A GOOD IDEA: Westboro Baptist Church Plans To Protest Joe Paterno’s Funeral. If memory serves, Nitney Lions fans rioted when Penn State fired Paterno. I can’t imagine they’re going to cotton to a bunch of fundamentalist cranks protesting his funeral.
Were Paul, Silas, and Timothy Rank Anti-Semites? (1 Thessalonians 2:14–16)
The casual reader of 1 Thessalonians 2:14–16 might conclude, at first glance, that Paul, Silas, and Timothy were rank anti-Semites.
For you, brothers and sisters, became imitators of God’s churches in Judea, which are in Christ Jesus: You suffered from your own people the same things those churches suffered from the Jews who killed the Lord Jesus and the prophets and also drove us out. They displease God and are hostile to everyone in their effort to keep us from speaking to the Gentiles so that they may be saved. In this way, they always heap up their sins to the limit. The wrath of God has come upon them at last.
Christ-killers, Gentile-haters, maximal sinners, and objects of God’s wrath: In the sad history of the Church, Gentile Christians have cited descriptions of Jews such as these to justify their anti-Semitism, discrimination, and pogroms. Words have consequences, and after the Shoah, sensitive Christians can’t help but wince at what the missionaries wrote.
Words also have contexts, however, and we misinterpret them when we read them in light of our history instead of their own.
So, to begin, the casual reader of 1 Thessalonians 2:14–16 concludes Paul, Silas, and Timothy were rank anti-Semites. But each of the missionaries was himself a Jew. Paul described himself as “a Hebrew of Hebrews” (Phil. 3:5). The Jerusalem Council thought so highly of Silas that it commissioned him to carry news of the law-free gospel to Gentile converts (Acts 15:25–27). And Timothy, though the product of a religiously mixed marriage, thought enough of his Jewish heritage to undergo circumcision as a young adult (16:3). If the missionaries hated Jews, then they hated themselves. They did not hate themselves, so they did not hate Jews.
Moreover, though the missionaries wrote harsh words about the Jews who opposed Christ and the early Christian prophets, these words were not their last words. Remember, after all, that Paul himself at one time “approved of their [the Jews’] killing him [Stephen]” (Acts 8:1). (Stephen was a Jewish believer and the Church’s first martyr.) Just prior to meeting Christ on the road to Damascus, Paul was “still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples” (9:1). And then, this “Christian-killer” and “Gentile-hater” became the apostle of the living Christ to the Gentiles. If God’s grace changed him, it could change them too.
And then, finally, remember that the power-relationship between Jews and Christians in the first century was the reverse of what it became in later centuries. On occasions, Jews who did not believe in Jesus persecuted those who did. Not all of them, of course—for many came to faith in Christ—but some of them. (See Acts 7:54–8:3; 9:1–2, 19-31; 13:49–52; 14:1–7; 17:5–9, 13–15; 18:5–6; 21:27–36; 23:12–22 for incidents involving Paul.) Did this produce in the missionaries a desire for vengeance? No. Instead, they praised the Thessalonian believers for imitating their joyful suffering (1 Thes. 2:14, cf. 1:6).
Love for Jews. Hope for the redemption of enemies. And willingness to endure rather than inflict suffering. These were the missionaries’ attitudes. They should be ours as well.
The World Wide Religious Web for Monday, January 23, 2012
39 YEARS OF BAD LAW: The Unbearable Wrongness of Roe.
Today [i.e., January 22, 2012], thousands of people at the March for Life in Washington, D.C., are commemorating the thirty-ninth anniversary of a legal and moral monstrosity, Roe v. Wade, and its companion case, Doe v. Bolton. The two cases, in combination, created an essentially unqualified constitutional right of pregnant women to abortion—the right to kill their children, gestating in their wombs, up to the point of birth. After nearly four decades, Roe’s human death toll stands at nearly sixty million human lives, a total exceeding the Nazi Holocaust, Stalin’s purges, Pol Pot’s killing fields, and the Rwandan genocide combined. Over the past forty years, one-sixth of the American population has been killed by abortion. One in four African-Americans is killed before birth. Abortion is the leading cause of (unnatural) death in America.
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This brings us to Roe’s utter indefensibility as a matter of constitutional law. If the U.S. Constitution actually protected such an extreme personal legal right to kill the human fetus, that would be troubling enough, but the trouble would be with the content of the Constitution. The further problem with Roe is that it has absolutely no basis in the text, structure, or history of the Constitution. No rule or principle of law fairly traceable to the text, discernible from its structure, or fairly derived from evidence of intention or historical understanding of an authoritative decision of the people, remotely supports the result reached in Roe. In terms of fair principles of constitutional interpretation, Roe is perhaps the least defensible major constitutional decision in the Supreme Court’s history.
LAZINESS & STUPIDITY: Belching Up More Abortion Cliches.
Milbank didn’t interview a single person for his piece. Having never been to the March for Life, he has no plans to do so now. It’s a mistake to announce that you are canceling your subscription to a liberal paper, because that allows someone like Milbank to puff himself up with false virtue and bogus, self-aggrandizing courage — oh, those crazy right-wingers just don’t like truth-to-power journalists.
The problem isn’t bias as much as criminal, sinful incuriousness. It’s laziness and stupidity.
BAD BUSINESS: The Business of Religion vs. Jesus.
It sounds good and aspirational, but it can also be horribly arrogant. It makes very clear who gets it and who doesn’t, elevating “us” over “you people.” And doing that has always given us a good feeling. In fact, it was exactly what the Pharisees were about.
ACCORDING TO 46% OF CHURCHGOERS, YES: The Church Has No Effect On Your Life?
As a sociologist, however, I think the claims by these 46% are pretty dubious. One quintessential claim of sociology is that the socialization we receive is not only powerful and consuming, but is also subtle, often leaving us unaware of the forces that have shaped us. Of course, the fact that these 46% believe their church to have no impact on their lives is certainly an interesting fact, and tells us something important about their relationship with their church (and is likely correlated with their frequency of church attendance). But I would say that it is their belief that is the interesting finding here, not a reality that church actually has no effect on people. Does this reflect a special inability of religious organizations to affect change in the lives of believers, or is it merely another example of the difficulty we have noticing and acknowledging the social forces that shape us?
RELATED: Why Even Go to Church?
So, back to the people whose church attendance hasn’t really impacted their lives, but have nonetheless, had personal experiences with God while attending church. Would they have been able to have those same experiences (at least in intensity) if they had never attended church? Maybe that’s the value of attending church (or synagogue, or Friday prayers, etc.), to “hang out” with others who have the same or similar beliefs, and who are also searching for the same sorts of connections. I could be wrong but it seems to me that the power of religion isn’t in the (mythical) individual experience rather, it is in its inherent social nature.
NOT FUNNY, BUT TRUE: Comedian Stephen Colbert on the Gift of Suffering.
“She [Colbert’s mother] taught me to be grateful for my life regardless of what that entailed, and that’s directly related to the image of Christ on the cross and the example of sacrifice that he gave us. What she taught me is that the deliverance God offers you from pain is not no pain— it’s that the pain is actually a gift. What’s the option? God doesn’t really give you another choice.”
JUST PLAIN WRONG: Five founders who were skeptical of organized Christianity and couldn’t be elected today. Riiiggghhhttt. Let’s count the ways this goes wrong. (1) Washington was a latitudinarian Anglican, not an evangelical Christian. But his constant appeals to Providence (always capitalized) and conventional practice of Christianity (think Eisenhower) would not have lost him any votes among evangelicals. They would’ve driven atheists up a wall, however. (2) Adams was not an evangelical, but he was a devout Unitarian. In other words, he attended church, prayed, and read his Bible. His public religious language was conventional, and he expressed his theological doubts in more private venues (e.g., letters). In 1800, he was the Federalist candidate, who compared him favorably to Thomas Jefferson, whom they accused of atheism. He lost that election, but not because of his religion. (3) In that same 1800 election, Jefferson’s Federalist opponents made much of his heterodoxy. However, southern Baptists (among other free-church types) loved his stances on political issues. So, here we have a heterodox candidate supported by one group of Christians on political grounds against another group of Christians, whose accusations were theological. Jefferson won. My guess is that the same would happen today. (4) Baptists similarly supported Madison because of his political views. (5) Thomas Paine probably would’ve lost because The Age of Reason made fun of the beliefs of the very people (Baptists) whose votes he needed. (Even Jefferson kept his heterodox views largely private.) He also would’ve lost because of his rabid support of the French Revolution. Scorecard: Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison all won their elections, in cases where religion was a campaign issue. The last two won because of the support of one group of Christians over against another group of Christians. So, this author is just plain wrong.
OBAMA LOSES THE VOTE OF A LIBERAL DEMOCRAT CATHOLIC: J’ACCUSE! Why Obama is wrong on the HHS conscience regulations.
But, yesterday, as soon as I learned of this decision, I knew instantly that I also could not, in good conscience, ever vote for Mr. Obama again. I once had great faith in Mr. Obama’s judgment and leadership. I do not retract a single word I have written supporting him on issues like health care reform, or bringing the troops home from Iraq, or taking aggressive steps to halt the recession and turn the economy around. I will continue to advocate for those policies. But, I can never convince myself that a person capable of making such a dreadful decision is worthy of my respect or my vote.
DERANGED AND MORALLY REPUGNANT ASSERTION: Jewish paper’s column catches Secret Service’s eye.
[Jewish Telegraphic Agency] also quoted Opher Aviran, the Israeli consul-general in Atlanta as saying he was “appalled at this deranged and morally repugnant assertion. We condemn such calls in the strongest possible terms.”
LESSONS LEARNED: The Travesty of the Texas Evangelical Summit: And Four Lessons It Teaches.
- 1. If you jump into the middle of a food-fight, you’re going to get slimed…
- 2. The older generation of evangelical activists don’t have the influence they once did…
- 3. The older generation of evangelical activists are victims of their own success…
- 4. The younger generation of evangelical leaders are not feeling the same anti-Romney hysteria as their elders…
FORGIVENESS? YES. BUT THE PRESIDENCY? Why Gingrich’s ‘open marriage’ allegation may not scare off evangelicals.
Still, even before this week’s allegation from his ex-wife, Gingrich’s personal baggage had given many evangelicals pause.
“Forgiveness is not the issue here, trust is the issue,” Land said. “Redemption is something that’s in our code as evangelicals, but trusting someone with the presidency is something entirely different.”
WAR OR SOCIAL VALUES? Evangelicals, Ron Paul, and War.
Is supporting war more important for evangelicals than their social values? Isn’t Ron Paul a social conservative? He opposes abortion, gay marriage and promiscuous sex, he has never been divorced and certainly supports family values, but he believes in limited government. Two of his brothers are ministers. Why then are evangelical leaders now opting for Santorum, and before him Gingrich? The one big area of disagreement with Ron Paul is war; foreign wars and the domestic one against drugs. For this they oppose him. Santorum supports unending war in Afghanistan, backing Israel without limit and a new war against Iran.
BETTER AN ADULTERER THAN A MORMON? OR A CONSERVATIVE THAN A MODERATE? Mormon Gap Prevails in SC.
In other words, had evangelicals voted like non-evangelicals, Romney would have won the primary, 38 percent to 33 percent. But since fully 65 percent of GOP primary voters counted themselves as evangelical, he lost, 28 percent to 40 percent. And lest anyone think that Gingrich, the Catholic convert, can’t be the Huckabee of 2012, be it noted that Newt actually did a point better among evangelicals in the Palmetto State than Mike did in 2008.
WEALTH & HAPPINESS? Upside of the Downturn.
We all know the bad news. But is there anything good that can be extracted from all this misery? I certainly don’t celebrate our economic suffering, nor do I wish it to continue, but I do think there are potential benefits. They come from two sources: a reduced focus on material success as the measure of all things (because material success has become less likely), and reduced expectations. Why are these benefits? There has been a research boom in recent years on the determinants of well-being, and it shows that material wealth contributes too little to well-being, once incomes are above subsistence, to justify people’s efforts. And it shows us that lowered expectations may enable us to derive satisfaction from life events that would have left us disappointed in the boom years.
