Romans 1:22 strikes again

Posted on June 9, 2009 by me

Daily, it seems, I find examples to prove the truth of Romans 1:22, “Claiming to be wise, they became fools.”  I will probably start a new category for this.

Today’s example comes from the Debunking Christianity blog, which contains flashes of near-brilliance, as well as some of the most foolish thinking on the planet.  The specific post is by a guy named Spencer, who thinks he has a new approach to argue with Christians about the Resurrection. His idea?  Because we believe “God raised Jesus from the dead,” Christians not only have to prove the resurrection happened, they also have to prove that God did it. (I guess he thinks that perhaps Jesus was raised from the dead by someone like Satan, who was just playing a joke. )

His point is essentially true, that proving that Jesus resurrected does not logically prove that God was the cause of Jesus’ resurrection.  He, of course, fails to realize that there is no way for him to prove that his system of logic proves anything.  He also fails to realize that Christians don’t have to prove a thing.  He’s the guy trying to disprove something.

As W.C. Fields once said, “Go away, kid, ya bother me.”

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How to find God (… but I didn’t know he was lost?)

Posted on June 8, 2009 by me

Following up on my last two posts which dealt with finding a place from which to properly discover and discuss who the God of Christianity really is, here is an exerpt from NT Wright, from The Meaning of Jesus – Two Visions (pp 214,215):

The key issue in all theology is how to speak truly of God. If we are to speak of something that transcends space and time, this is beyond our ordinar world, how do we know what we are talking about? How can we know whether we are talking sense, let alone true sense?  How can we be sure that we are not … merely projecting our own self-image or our authority-figure fantasies on to the cosmic stage and calling them “god”?  The mainstream Christian answer has always been that, though the one true God is in various ways beyond our imagination, let alone our knowledge, and though even such knowledge as we may have is beyond our own unaided power to attain, this God has not left us to speculate, imagine, or project our own fantasies onto the screeen of transcendence; this God instead, through self-revelation, has given us such knowledge as is possible and appropriate for us.  And the same mainstream Christian answer has gone on to say that this self- revelation has taken place supremely in Jesus, the crucified and risen messiah of Israel.

The whole point of such a claim is, of course, that the one true God is known in Jesus himself, the human being who lived, worked, and died in first-century Palestine. Take that away, or split the historical Jesus off from the Christ known in faith, as some have tried to do, and you are left without a revelation of the one true God within our own world, the world of physicality and history.

…

… by close attention to Jesus himself, we are invited to discover, perhaps for the first time, just who the creator and covenant God was and is all along.  (Italics are mine)

This passage strikes at the heart of many attempts to write-off Christianity as just another invented religion.  The key is in Jesus himself, the guy who we read about in the Gospels.  It is important, then, for those who don’t want to face this Jesus, to try to discredit history through bad – even dishonest – scholarship.  At least honest atheists have stopped trying to prove that the man Jesus didn’t exist, which proved to be just embarrassing.   Not only is it reasonably certain that the Jesus of the Gospels did in fact exist and was executed by Pilate, the evidence for the resurrection is compelling, to use Anthony Flew’s adjective.

If someone wants a revelation of God, here it is, in the 1st 4 books of the New Testament.  The 4 authors have their own viewpoint, as eyewitnesses and reporters always do, but contrary to Bart Ehrman’s foolish interpretations, the paint a remarkably whole picture of Jesus.

This, of course, brings us back to the issue of whether the Gospels are, in fact, inspired documents. However, even if we just look at them as any ancient text, they serve their purpose.  Christians do not (or should not) worship the Bible; it is, however, the Word of God – that which formerly was in oral form, reduced to writing.  However, our faith is based on Jesus himself, who continues to reveal himself to Christians today.

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Science as Religion

Posted on June 8, 2009 by me

Scientific fundamentalists claim that science is the disinterested pursuit of truth. But representing science in this way is to disregard the human needs science serves. Among us, science serves two needs: for hope and censorship. Today, only science supports the myth of progress. If people cling to the hope of progress, it is not so much from genuine belief as from fear of what may come if they give it up. The political projects of the twentieth century have failed, or achieved much less than they promised. At the same time, progress in science is a daily experience, confirmed whenever we buy a new electronic gadget, or take a new drug. Science gives us a sense of progress that ethical and political life cannot.

Again, science alone has the power to silence heretics. Today it is the only institution that can claim authority. Like the Church in the past, it has the power to destroy, or marginalise, independent thinkiers. (Think how orthodox medicine reacted to Freud, and orthodox Darwinians to Lovelock.) In fact, science does not yield any fixed picture of things, but by censoring thinkers who stray too far from current orthodoxies it p reserves the comforting illusion of a single established worldview. From the standpoint of anyone who values freedom of thought, this may be unfortunate, but it is undoubtedly the chief source of science’s appeal. For us, science is a refuge from uncertainty, promising — and in some measure delivering — the miracle of freedom from thought; while churches become sanctuaries for doubt.

– John Gray, from Straw Dogs

h/t to Rod Dreher

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WWJD

Posted on June 4, 2009 by me

This is a follow-up to my last post, Atheists: Forget the Old Testament, in which I introduced the concept that the Old Testament paints an imperfect picture of God.  The writer of Hebrews makes this point, as well as the Gospels of Matthew and John.

John’s Gospel introduces Jesus as the Logos – the Word – of God.  (Interestingly, Aristotle’s concept of logos was “to argue from reason.”)  Logos was also identified in later Greek philosophy with the creative force of the universe. In the first chapter, John states:

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

The Logos (who was “in the beginning”) became flesh.  In verses 17 & 18  we read,

17For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known.

Here John makes an interesting contrast: In the OT, we have the Law, and a God whom no one has seen.  In Jesus, we have grace and truth, and God is now known through Jesus.  The implication here is that even though the Law does testify to God’s holiness, it doesn’t give us a good picture of God (the Father).  Only Jesus, the Logos, “God the one and only,” has made God (the Father) known.

Now, the Old Testament contains some great stuff; however, whenever we start to get an idea of God from the OT, we should stop and ask, “What would Jesus do?”  Assuming the Bible authors were correct in that God does not change, and that Jesus indeed is a perfect representation of the Father, we need to compare our Old Testament notions of God to what we know about Jesus.   If there’s a conflict, who do we believe?  On one hand we have an imperfect, incomplete revelation of God, on the other, a perfect revelation.

This is not to say we now know and understand everything; Paul makes it clear in 1 Cor. 13 that we don’t. However, we have the testimony of 4 Gospels as to the character of Jesus. We saw his reaction to sinners, and his reaction to the self-righteous. We saw his emotion concerning death, and his anger when confronting hypocrisy.  How dare we take an Old Testament stand on issues where Jesus would seem to have taken the opposite stand?

Interestingly, Jesus held a higher standard than the Pharisees did when it came to sin; not only is action sin, but so is desire!  However, whenever Jesus confronted someone caught in sin, what was his response?  He forgave them, he healed them, and he had dinner with them!

What this tells me about the seeming contradictions between the “old, mean” God and “gentle” Jesus is that it may not be our perception of God which is the issue; perhaps it is our perception of the nature of sin.  Time and again Jesus spoke of and dealt with sin as if it were a sickness, a plague from which humanity was suffering.  Come to think of it, so did the God of the Old Testament!

The problem with the WWJD test is that we end up with seeming contradictions which we are unable to resolve. What do we do then?  My personal opinion is that we hold to what is clear, and wait for the fog to lift on the rest.  We have to get used to the fact that we still see only in part.  We just have to remember, Jesus’ own words, “no one knows the Father except me.”

There are those, of course, who will insist on holding on to the OT sketch of God, especially if there’s someone to condemn, or if you need a God to hate.  Choosing an imperfect picture of God over the Logos tells me more about the person doing the choosing than about God.

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