Charles Spurgeon on Reading

Spurgeon on reading

C.H. Spurgeon

We will look at [Paul's] books. We do not know what the books were about, and we can only form some guess as to what the parchments were. Paul had a few books which were left, perhaps wrapped up in the cloak, and Timothy was to be careful to bring them. Even an apostle must read.

Some of our very ultra Calvinistic brethren think that a minister who reads books and studies his sermon must be a very deplorable specimen of a preacher. A man who comes up into the pulpit, professes to take his text on the spot, and talks any quantity of nonsense, is the idol of many. If he will speak without premeditation, or pretend to do so, and never produce what they call a dish of dead men’s brains – oh! that is the preacher.

How rebuked are they by the apostle! He is inspired, and yet he wants books! He has been preaching at least for thirty years, and yet he wants books! He had seen the Lord, and yet he wants books! He had had a wider experience than most men, and yet he wants books! He had been caught up into the third heaven, and had heard things which it was unlawful for a men to utter, yet he wants books! He had written the major part of the New Testament, and yet he wants books!

The apostle says to Timothy and so he says to every preacher, “Give thyself unto reading.” The man who never reads will never be read; he who never quotes will never be quoted. He who will not use the thoughts of other men’s brains, proves that he has no brains of his own. Brethren, what is true of ministers is true of all our people. You need to read. Renounce as much as you will all light literature, but study as much as possible sound theological works, especially the Puritanic writers, and expositions of the Bible. We are quite persuaded that the very best way for you to be spending your leisure, is to be either reading or praying. You may get much instruction from books which afterwards you may use as a true weapon in your Lord and Master’s service. Paul cries, “Bring the books” – join in the cry.

J.P. Moreland on Apologetic Character

So understood, an apologetic character is not a set of answers a person memorizes and adds to a life otherwise defined without regard to the apologetic mandate. No, an apologetic character is a way of being present in the world, an approach to life, a part of the very structure of one’s embodied soul. Just as there is a difference between someone who can spit out answers from one’s home medical book and a skilled physician who sees the world as a doctor, so there is a difference between one who memorizes a set of answers to certain apologetic questions and one who has an apologetic character. An apologetic character is part of the very warp and woof of one’s journey, of one’s very life as a disciple. So understood, it will increasingly exemplify a set of virtues and exhibit mastery of a range of skills … The development of an apologetic character cannot be reduced to mastery of a set of questions and answers, to a set of skills, or even to a list of virtues. While such a set or list is very helpful for focusing one’s training efforts, we must never forget that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Training believers to exemplify an apologetic character includes, but goes far beyond, any list of answers, skills, or virtues. It is an entire way of living. Thus, such training will always require role models who are themselves examples of an apologetic character. As a result, it is far more important for a Christian school to help its faculty to grow as apologists than it is to learn skills for teaching “apologetic techniques” to students.

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For more on this, see the original post.

Tatoos

This is from Earthen Vessels by Matthew Lee Anderson. (Thanks to Paul Adams for this.)

The cultural logic, then, of tattoos depends upon the body being a canvas for our self-expression, a lump of clay that we style in ways that express the hidden core of who we are. Tattoos are an aesthetic technique—the program of control and domination—melded with a contrarian aesthetic and applied to our bodies. The practice of tattooing treats the body not as our place of personal presence in the world, but as an object for our self-construction. (p. 113).

Review of Tim Challies, The Next Story. First published at Denver Journal

Tim Challies, The Next Story: Life and Faith After the Digital Explosion. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Books, 2011. 204 pages. No index. $19.99. Reviewed by Douglas Groothuis.

“If you want to know what water is, do not ask a fish.” So goes the ancient and sagacious Chinese proverb. We are often rendered oblivious to that in which we are immersed. We then become incapable of wise judgments about our environments. Habituation replaces critique, and our lives consist in second-nature reactions devoid of discernment. Of course, the living of life requires that we not critique every commonplace (lest we paralyze ourselves); yet as Christians we are emphatically and repeatedly exhorted by Scripture to unmask and avoid worldliness. What is common may be ungodly—or at least unprofitable. Jesus went so far as to proclaim to the Pharisees that “You are the ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of men, but God knows your hearts. What is highly valued among men is detestable in God's sight (Luke 16:15; see also 1 John 2:15-17). James also declares that “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world” (James 1:27).

Most Christians take such warnings to apply only to doctrinal deviation or immoral conduct. We must hold firm to “the faith that was once for all entrusted to God’s holy people” (Jude 3) and not be “blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming” (Ephesians 4:14). This is true. However, worldliness is often more insidious than what is conveyed in overtly false teaching or modeled in blatantly immoral living. Worldliness, that which makes the ungodly seem normal and the godly seem abnormal (David Wells), can seep in under the door, crawl in through the cracks, and flow in through the vents—all unannounced. This afflicts us when our taken-for-granted habits engender sensibilities (modes of thought, perception, and conduct) that make us less likely to hear God’s voice, to do God’s will, to redeem the time (Ephesians 5:16), and to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom (Psalm 90:12).

Lest all this concern about subtle worldliness seem too abstract or pedantic, consider my testimony concerning the strange effects of contemporary digital media. My Anglican church celebrates communion every Sunday, and considers this shared sacred event to be the climax of the liturgy. All are invited forward to receive the cup and the bread (or a blessing if one is not a baptized Christian). One morning, I noted a young family walking up the isle for communion. One child was being carried and another was taken by the hand. As they moved toward the chalice and the bread, the father began gazing at his glowing cell phone as he walked toward the minister. He finally looked away from whatever was entrancing him and looked up to be told by the minister that he was now receiving “the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Even several years ago, such a bizarre scene would have been impossible, since telephones were tied to land lines or because cell phones were just phones and not miniature entertainment consoles. But this bemused soul could not turn his phone off even in preparation to receive communion, which the Bible warns is a very sobering matter (1 Corinthians 11:17-34). Even taking communion was subjected to the multitasking afforded by digital technology.

Popular blogger, author, and pastor Tim Challies offers a tonic for these kinds of aberrations in his short, clear, and compelling book, The Next Story. While Challies is very much at home in the world of digital media (his blog is one of the most popular in the Christian community), he realizes that the recent profound changes in our means of communication (all empowered by the Internet) pose momentous challenges to Christian integrity. In the terminology of Neil Postman, digital media have anecological effect. They do not simply add new gadgets and gismos; they change the whole atmosphere of communication and life in general. This book winningly contributes to a small—but it seems growing—literature of Christian critiques of media technology. Fifteen years ago any critical analysis of the Internet was typically dismissed as cranky primitivism (“You cannot turn back the clock”). But in recent years, I am heartened to find more secular and Christian assessments of the Internet that are less messianic and more skeptical.

Challies addressed digital technologies in their historical, functional, and theological dimensions. He challenges Christians to consider technology as both a gift and an area of moral discernment. Unlike the majority of evangelicals, Challies realizes that each technology shapes its message and the ones who use it. That is, technologies are not neutral vessels for communication. In Marshall McLuhan’s justly well-known words, “The medium is the message.” Therefore, each technology should be scrutinized (or exegeted) concerning its often invisible but substantial effects. To give us some perspective, Challies provides a brief but insightful overview of the rise of electronic technologies, looking at how previous technologies such as the telegraph and camera radically altered society.

Challies brings together three features of technology for assessment: our everyday experience of technology, a sound theory of technology, and a wise practice of using technology in its various forms. His focus throughout the book is not merely sociological or psychological; he also develops a biblically faithful and God-honoring understanding and practice of technology. To that end, he includes an “application” section in the chapters of Part 2, as well as questions for discussion, which makes the book ideal for small group study. Early in the book, Challies explains that technology can easily become an idol, and warns the reader of this sin throughout the work.

In Part 2, Challies offers the meat of his concerns, discussing matters of communication, distraction, information, visibility and privacy. These chapters offer much wisdom about the nature and effects of digital technologies, and resonate with the influence of savvy media theorists such as Marshall McLuhan and Neil Postman, as well as more recent writings. (It is difficult to stay current on rapidly-changing Internet technologies, but Challies astutely takes the pulse of cyberspace.) While embracing the benefits of things like email, blogs, twitter, Facebook, etc., he warns of the dangers of becoming distracted by trivia, of losing our embodied relationships, and of being betrayed by careless things posted on line.

Having written on and studied in this field for some time (see The Soul in Cyberspace[Baker Books, 1997]), I found little with which to disagree—and much that was familiar to me. What stood out to me, however, were Challies’s observations in chapter eight: “Here Comes Everybody (Truth/Authority).” In The Soul in Cyberspace, I worried about “the fate of truth in cyberspace.” But that was before the emergence and dominance of Google and Wikipedia, the two main sources of authority on the Internet today. Since the Bible teaches that God reveals truth in various ways to make himself known and to thus advance his Kingdom, Christians should be especially alert to ways in which the Internet can distort truth and hinder knowledge (justified true belief).

Challies contrasts the old Encyclopedia Britannica with Wikipedia. The former was expensive, took up much physical space, could only be updated through the printing of expensive new editions, and was rooted in recognized authorities for its thousands of articles. By contrast, Wikipedia is free (if you have Internet access), takes up no physical space, is updated constantly, and is written by anyone who wants to contribute to or originate articles. Furthermore, unlike the Encyclopedia Britannica, which had a set number of entries, Wikipedia entries expand endlessly on all topics. Challies notes that “The wiki model is increasingly regarded as the best means of arriving at truth, of building a repository of knowledge” (p. 163). Yet this should trouble us, since this model is undisciplined by intellectual authority—even if some limited content control is offered. (To offer an example of the unreliability of Wikipedia not included by Challies, I know a seminary professor whose biographical entry briefly [and falsely] included a reference to his marriage to a pornography star.) Challies aptly summarizes the problem by arguing that Wikipedia presents truth as consensus. However, the majority may be wrong. As Exodus 23:2 states: "Do not follow the crowd in doing wrong. When you give testimony in a lawsuit, do not pervert justice by siding with the crowd.” Truth is a property of statements that rightly represent reality. False statements (however popular) fail to do so. Truth is not determined by democratic vote or Wikipedia consensus. (For more on the nature of truth, see chapters three and four of my book, Truth Decay [InterVarsity, 2000].) While Wikipedia has some limited usefulness in tracking down more reliable sources that are linked in its articles, it should not be viewed as a legitimate authority on anything. For several years I have had to lecture my students on this, since they sometimes use Wikipedia in footnotes.

Similarly, Challies comments that Google presents truth as relevance—another deeply defective concept. A Google search will reveal a ranking of cites based on algorithms that detect the number of links to a particular page (to oversimplify). For example, Challies says that when he searched for “What is Truth?” on Google, the second result was the Wikipedia entry, which offered multiple views, of which the “Christian conception was just one option among many” (168).

While Challies does not use the term, his discussion of Wikipedia’s and Google’s sense of truth and authority concerns epistemology: the discipline investigating the sources, standards, and limits of knowledge. Although his treatment of this question is preliminary and not academic, it is, nevertheless, indispensible for those who desire to possess and exhibit cognitive virtue. This consists in habitually comporting one’s mind and senses in ways that discern truth and reject error. As the Apostle Peter said, “Wherefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 1:13, KJV; see also Romans 12:1-2). This is no easy task, especially when one enters the digital domain where information overwhelms, but where truth and wisdom are much harder to find.

Despite its often trenchant critiques of digital technology, one feature of the book itself betrays the less than salutary results of technological influence. Most on line writing, particular in blogs, dispenses with indenting the beginning of paragraphs. The Next Story does so as well (perhaps to imitate Internet style). When I add a post to The Constructive Curmudgeon (one of my blogs), I have no choice but to use non-indented paragraphs. The technology makes that (bad) decision for me. However, books are produced with more typographic options, and I find no good reason not to indent paragraphs. Not to do so is aesthetically displeasing and defies tradition unnecessarily. Further, although it may be unrelated to technological influence, the inner front cover and first page of the book are black instead of white, thus ruling out note-taking on these surfaces. This is annoying to anyone who is accustomed to making their own index at the front of a book. (The book also lacks an index and bibliography, but does include footnotes.)

I have one last quibble. Challies commendably takes a humble approach throughout the book, confessing his own mistakes in relating to technology and affirming his own need for God’s wisdom in these efforts. Near the end of the book, he writes of how he “sought to reduce inputs and to spend more time encountering the best information and less time encountering the least significant” (195). Challies unsubscribed from many blogs and tried to de-emphasize email. These were wise moves. But his next choice struck me as odd and against the grain of the book: “I even cancelled delivery of the newspaper” (196). As Challies himself claims, one of the problematic features of text on screens is that they tend to be skimmed instead of read, and so encourage less rigorous analysis. (This point is made in more detail in Nicholas Carr’s book,The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to our Brains [W.W. Norton, 2010].) One way to counteract this tendency to skim and surf written material on the Internet is to remain immersed in printed material: newspapers, magazines, and books. I am sure that Challies has not abandoned print (he often reviews books on his blog), but perhaps he should have kept the newspaper.

The Next Story is an accessible, smart, and spiritually-provoking exploration of the effects of digital technologies. If you want to know what water is, do not ask a fish. But if you want to know what digital technologies are and what they are doing to us, ask Tim Challies (among others).

Douglas Groothuis, Ph.D.
Professor of Philosophy
Denver Seminary
July 2011

Obama and The Muslim Brotherhood

The Obama administration embraces the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization long-committed to the downfall of the Judea-Christian West and to the ascendancy of barbaric sharia law.

Charles Colson on the American creed.

Google Preview of Groothuis Book

You can get access to a Google Preview of Christian Apologetics on the InterVarsity Press page advertising my book.

The Truth About Islam

“The chasm [between Islam and Christianity] cannot be bridged by rickety planks of compromise. Syncretism would be equivalent to surrender; for Islam thrives only by its denial of the authority of the Scriptures, the Deity of our Lord, the blessedness of the Holy Trinity, the cruciality and significance of the Cross, (nay, its very historicity) and the pre-eminence of Jesus Christ as King and Saviour. And this denial is accompanied by the assertion of the authority of another book, the Koran, the eclipse of Christ’s glory by another prophet, even Mohammed, and the substitution of another path to holiness and forgiveness than the way of the Cross. These denials and assertions are imbedded in the Koran and are the orthodox belief of ninety percent of the people. On every one of these points the true Moslem stands arrayed in armor against the missionary and the Truth, of which he is the custodian and preacher.” (Samuel Zwemer, “The Chasm” The Moslem World, vol. IX, no. 2/April 1919, pp. 112-113)

The Constitution and Slavery (note qualification added)

The Constitution was not perfect, but it was moving toward abolition. Thus, the founders (as their ideas were represented in the Constitution) were working to end slavery eventually. Thus, Michele Bachmann's comments about the founders working to end slavery were essentially correct (but not in every detail), despite the fact that the Constitution in itself did not end the institution.

Please read this article by David Foster on the Constitution and slavery.

The Lone Tree Declalation

The following was released in conjunction with the upcoming Western Conservative Summit, sponsored by Colorado Christian University. I fully endorse it.

1. In our adherence to the self-evident truths of the American Founding, we are conservatives.

2. In our debt to the civilizational heritage of Jerusalem, Athens, Rome, London, and Philadelphia, we are Westerners.

3. In our concern for the mounting threat to liberty, seeing freedom in the balance, we convene with solemn purpose at this Summit.

4. We seek a conservative renewal for our country through civic action that puts principle above party, resists the corruption of power, bridges intramural disagreements or rivalries, and protects an open public square centered on the nation’s Judeo-Christian core.

5. We commit ourselves unswervingly to a political and social order that upholds individual freedom and personal responsibility, limited government and the rule of law, free enterprise and private property, traditional family values and sanctity of life, compassion for the poor and voluntarism in service to others, natural law and morality, strong defense and secure borders, all in keeping with the original intent of the Constitution.

6. We reject, and will resist, the socialist temptation, transnational progressivism, secular utopian illusions, appeasement, disarmament, or capitulation to jihad and sharia.

Kindlized

A book I co-edited, In Defense of Natural Theology (InterVarsity, 2005), is now available on Kindle. This is good, since there will be no more printings of the paper edition. It includes essays by J.P. Moreland, Paul Copan, Keith Yandell, and others.

Technological Nostalgia (corrected)

Here is some technological nostalgia from an old guy. Let's go in the way-back machine to 1976.

We had telephones: one per house. The receiver is connected to the base by a short cord. You dial; you do not punch. Long-distance costs a lot of money. You get "busy signals." There are no voice mails. There is no call waiting. There are no personal computers. Computers are big, strange things that the civil government and corporations have. My mother once addressed a letter to "Dear Computer," since we were not getting resolution on an unjust bill. People wrote letters; romances were conducted this way; friendship were preserved (and destroyed) this way. Cars had no computers, so many fixed their own cars.

TV stations were received by rabbit ears (antennae). TV screens were small. You could not record TV shows; it was real time or nothing. In Alaska, where I grew up, we got TV shows two weeks late, because the tapes had to be shipped up from the lower 48 (as we called it).

Music came on vinyl discs or on the radio or live. Music was only portable in car radios. Eight-tracks allowed you to play your own music in the car.

There were no electronic security checks in airports.

Banking was done by talking to humans at a physical location or sending things in the mail. Electric guitars has wah-wah pedals, phase shifters, and distortion boxes and echoplex and reverb. That was it. There were no electronic drums. Synthesizers were just being introduced.

Video games were no more sophisticated than the glacially slow game, "Pong." There was no Internet. Books were bound in paper and not electronic.

Yes, it was pre-historic--and we puzzled less over the black boxes that pervade and dominate our technopolis today.

Doug Groothuis teaching at Metro State this fall

I am teaching Introduction to Philosophy this fall (as an Adjunct Faculty) at Metro State College of Denver on Saturdays from 11:00-13:30. These are my texts:

1. Ronald Nash, Life’s Ultimate Questions. Zondervan.

2. Plato, The Trial and Death of Socrates. Barnes and Noble.

3. Blaise Pascal, Human Happiness. Penguin.

4. Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism and Human Emotions. Citadel.

Alvin Plantinga and Christian Philosophy

Here is a heartening essay by historian Mark Noll on the recent conference for Alvin Plantinga's retirement. It gives an instructive overview of the development of Christian philosophy in the past sixty years. As a Christian philosopher, I must gladly give thanks to God.

Mussolini and Us

Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) on fascism: “The Fascist State organizes the nation, but leaves a sufficient margin of liberty to the individual; the latter is deprived of all useless and possibly harmful freedom, but retains what is essential; the deciding power in this question cannot be the individual, but the State alone.”

Michele!

Here is an excellent article on Michele Bachmann from The Weekly Standard.

We have lost the art and discipline of attending to the sacred.

My email to Hugh Hewitt

Dear Mr. Hewitt:

For several days, you have been upbraiding Congresswoman Michele Bachmann for not appearing on your program recently, insinuating that something nefarious is going on. This puzzles and bothers me, since she may simply have more important things to do for the moment. You are not a king-maker, however influential you may be.

Mrs. Bachmann is the strongest and most principled conservative candidate (far more so than Mitt Romney). As such, she deserves far more respect than you are now giving her.

Sincerely,

Douglas Groothuis

The Accidents of Style

From Charles Harrington Elster, The Accidents of Style: "What readers crave is writing that respects their intelligence, not writing that mimics their vulgarisms" (p. 35). I recommend this careful, witty, and needful corrective to sloppy writing.

Truth Animals

Of all the creatures in the universe who experience what is the case, we are the only ones who make explicit what is the case, and assert that it is the case. We are explicit, or truth-bearing and falsehood-bearing animals, and to see truth truly is to see ourselves truly.--Raymond Tallis, "Saving Truth," Philosophy Now, May/June, 2008, p. 39.

Which worldview best explains this fact?

Backmann and ID

Michele Bachmann supports Intelligent Design in the schools. The civil government should not dominate the ideology of the state schools, as it now does. Darwinism is the de facto religion of mandatory, state education. How free and democratic is that?

My tax money goes to support a scientifically-flawed ideology that I do not accept and which I oppose. This is wrong. A wise politician will see it. Michele Backmann does.

Pro-life or Not?

Find out who the consistently pro-life Republican candidates are.

Leibniz in The Monadology (1714):

And supposing that there were a machine so constructed as to think, feel, and have perception, we could conceive of it as enlarged and yet preserving the same proportions, so that we might enter it as into a mill. And this granted, we should only find on visiting it, pieces which push against another, but never anything by which to explain perception. This must be sought for, therefore, in the simple substance and not in the composite or in the machine.

My Candidate

Michele Bachmann in The Wall Street Journal.

Doug Groothuis on Backbone Radio

My conversation on "Backbone Radio" from last Sunday (one hour) is now posted under segments #3 and #4.

Thoughts on Prayer

What is prayer for a Christian? There are so many aspects and dimensions of it. Consider a few:

1. Who is the object of prayer? All of or any member of the Trinity.

2. What is the quality of prayer? Humility, faith, claiming promises made in the Bible; singlemindedness, which battles distraction.

3. What are the modes of prayer? praise, adoration, thanksgiving, confession, petition, intercession, lament.

4. What is the frequency of prayer? Pray without ceasing: an attitude of openness and conversation with God. There are also seasons of protracted and often agonizing prayer: prayer as hard, demanding work; prayer as joyful exaltation in the being of God (rare for me)

5. What are the results of prayer (if done well)? A clear conscience (because of confession); a better knowledge of Scripture (because one prays through Scripture, especially the Psalms); answers to prayer which evoke thanksgiving and more faith; unanswered prayer, leading to lament, discouragement, and even despair (see Psalm 88).

6. What are the environments of prayer? In special sessions with others; alone; in the church service; on the go; during times of rest; even in dreams; prayer for special occasions: invocations, benedictions, exhortations.

Doug Groothuis on Denver Radio

I will be on "Backbone Radio" (KNUS-AM) Sunday, June 5, from 6:00-7:00 PM with Ross Kaminsky to talk about Christians and politics.

A Well-Instructed Tongue for the Weary

⁴ The Sovereign LORD has given me a well-instructed tongue,
to know the word that sustains the weary.
He wakens me morning by morning,
wakens my ear to listen like one being instructed. --Isaiah 50:4.

This passage is from one of the servant songs, which presage the coming of the Messiah, Christ Jesus. Since his followers are called to walk in steps, we too should learn how to be instructed by the Sovereign Lord to have a "well instructed tongue to know the word that sustains the weary." We need to learn this from God, considering the perfect example of Jesus, who comforted the afflicted.

The chronically ill desperately need a word that sustains the weary, for they are so terribly weary--weary of doctors, tests, medicines, the misunderstanding of friends of family; weary of broken dreams, broken relationship ships, bodies that betray them, weary of life under the sun and east of Eden. Instead of hearing words from "well instructed tongues," they too often her from tongues on fire with anger, impatience, unkindness, and simple ignorance. This compounds the chronic misery and tempts them to despair.

Here is a word to the well: Consult the Sovereign Lord for words that sustain, nourish, and encourage the weary. This is a skill that needs to be learned in the crucible of other's suffering. It is neither fun or easy. But it is necessary to show love to those suffering in ways that most of us can scarcely understand. "Each heart knows its own bitterness, and no one shares its joy" (Proverbs 14:10).

Instructed words to "the least of these," the brethren of Jesus, are words of love, from the God of love. As such, they are patient and kind, neither rude nor self-seeking; they persevere under pressure and do not fail (I Corinthians 13).

Please ask God, the God of all comfort, the Sovereign Lord, to give you a "well instructed tongue that sustains the weary. This requires heart-work, since out of the heart, the mouth speaks. But God can enter deeply into the hearts of the meek and humble.

On Twitter

I am on Twitter. I usually use complete sentences and give links to significant articles.

Lament: A Few Lines

Some of us need to lament our lack of lamentation,

our desire to "move on" without

dwelling in

and reflecting upon

the pain that so grips the world.

Lament: A Few Preliminary Prods

Only man laments. Animals feel pain and express sorrow, but not as we do (although they often deserve our pity). They do not carry these sorrows in the souls, write poems with them in mind, cry out or turn against heaven in their wake. We do all this, as well as philosophize about our painful memories, questions, and accusations. We address God, world, man, and nature--our pain in full--in silent thoughts, by whispers mouthed alone, prayers prayed through tears, through shouts in the public square, as we write books, read books, hurl books across the room, rip books to shreds in fits of pointless passion.

Lamentation is an inescapable mode of the human being, yet humans seldom fathom its depths or mine its resources. No one pursues lament, engaging deliberately in lamentable activities. Yet lament pursues us, dogs us, gets under out skin and refuses to be sweat out, cleaned off, or cleared away. It is in our bones, sometimes as fire, sometimes as rot, sometimes as both at the same time.

It is not simple anger, nor is it simple sorrow; but is rather a strange mixture of both brought to the point of reflection, analysis, and heightened anguish.

Interview

This is a meditation on the unborn child and his perils. Please watch and reflect on it.

Rouault and Gaga

Frenchman Georges Rouault (d. 1957) painted sad clowns, judges, and prostitutes. I think today he might paint sad pop stars like Lady Gaga.

The End is Near

The signs are everywhere. The end is near--the end of the compact disk. My on-line CD store is going out of business, and I cannot resist buying a few at $4.99, shipping included. Borders and Barnes and Noble have drastically reduced their CD selection. Borders no longer has a discrete jazz section for CDs. I can think of only one Denver-area store with a rich selection of CDs--Twist and Shout.

What does all this mean for music and culture? Music has been increasingly miniaturized and made more portable in recent decades. It has also dematerialized. The preferred form is the MP3, which is a cluster of data stored in various devices. Now the link of the medium and the music is gone. For many years, album art and liner was as significant as the music. CDs retained this to some extent, but on a smaller scale. With MP3 files, there is no container for the music. It just in--somewhere in cyberspace.

Further, music becomes more de-contextualized. The play list replaces the order of pieces on a recording. We shuffle on through. The idea of a concept album--a coherent body of work establishing and developing a set theme--is nearly dead. (In 2007, Neal Morse created a concept album based on the struggles of Martin Luther, but this is now very rare.)

I am reluctant to go the way of the iPod. I do not favor dematerialization, however economically expedient. I cannot bring myself to think of dematerialized books at the moment.

Truth and contradiction

1.0: Contradictory statements cannot be held in tension, since they cannot both be true: A or non-A.

1.1: Nor can they be balanced or celebrated.

2.0: Those who write as if 1.0 and 1.1 are false, should not be taken seriously.

Against the Conventionalist (or Contractarian) Basis for Morality

From C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (1943), chapter three, “The Reality of the Law.”

Some people say that though decent conduct does not mean what pays each particular person at a particular moment, still, it means what pays the human race as a whole; and that consequently there is no mystery about it. Human beings, after all, have some sense; they see that you cannot have real safety or happiness except in a society where every one plays fair, and it is because they see this that they try to behave decently. Now, of course, it is perfectly true that safety and happiness can only come from individuals, classes, and nations being honest and fair and kind to each other. It is one of the most important truths in the world. But as an explanation of why we feel as we do about Right and Wrong it just misses the point If we ask: "Why ought I to be unselfish?" and you reply "Because it is good for society," we may then ask, "Why should I care what's good for society except when it happens to pay me personally?" and then you will have to say, "Because you ought to be unselfish"—which simply brings us back to where we started. You are saying what is true, but you are not getting any further. If a man asked what was the point of playing football, it would not be much good saying "in order to score goals," for trying to score goals is the game itself, not the reason for the game, and you would really only be saying that football was football—which is true, but not worth saying. In the same way, if a man asks what is the point of behaving decently, it is no good replying, "in order to benefit society," for trying to benefit society, in other words being unselfish (for "society" after all only means "other people"), is one of the things decent behaviour consists in; all you are really saying is that decent behaviour is decent behaviour. You would have said just as much if you had stopped at the statement, "Men ought to be unselfish."

And that is where I do stop. Men ought to be unselfish, ought to be fair. Not that men are unselfish, nor that they like being unselfish, but that they ought to be. The Moral Law, or Law of Human Nature, is not simply a fact about human behaviour in the same way as the Law of Gravitation is, or may be, simply a fact about how heavy objects behave. On the other hand, it is not a mere fancy, for we cannot get rid of the idea, and most of the things we say and think about men would be reduced to nonsense if we did. And it is not simply a statement about how we should like men to behave for our own convenience; for the behaviour we call bad or unfair is not exactly the same as the behaviour we find inconvenient, and may even be the opposite. Consequently, this Rule of Right and Wrong, or Law of Human Nature, or whatever you call it, must somehow or other be a real thing—a thing that is really there, not made up by ourselves.

And yet it is not a fact in the ordinary sense, in the same way as our actual behaviour is a fact. It begins to look as if we shall have to admit that there is more than one kind of reality; that, in this particular case, there is something above and beyond the ordinary facts of men's behaviour, and yet quite definitely real—a real law, which none of as made, but which we find pressing on us.

Postman

A Neil Postman-type question: What problem was twitter created to solve?

Groothuis Preaching

I am preaching on "The Call of the Resurrection," at Wellspring Anglican Church this Sunday (May 15) at 9:00 and 10:35. Visitors are most welcome to this friendly, caring, and biblical church.

Desiderata

Practice the denials that are the basis of greatness.

Concentrate moral and intellectual energies on First Things, things that matter...no matter what.

Deny in order to affirm the primal values of committed and thoughtful work.

Hell

“The magnitude of the punishment matches the magnitude of the sin. Now a sin that is against God is infinite; the higher the person against whom it is committed, the graver the sin—it is more criminal to strike a head of state than a private citizen—and God is of infinite greatness. Therefore an infinite punishment is deserved for a sin committed against Him.”
--Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Ia2ae. 87, 4.

Beauty

Philosopher Roger Scruton writes a profound and gracefully-written article on Beauty and Desecration, from City Journal.

The Death of Osama

Christian philosophers (myself included) comment on the death of Osama.

Outline for My Contribution to a Panel Discussion on Rob Bell, Tuesday, May 3, at Denver Seminary

Douglas Groothuis, Ph.D.

Professor of Philosophy, Denver Seminary

A Guide to the Rational Analysis of Rob Bell

One of the ways in which the damned will be condemned is that they will see themselves condemned by their own reason, by which they claimed to condemn the Christian religion—Blaise Pascal.[1]

I. The Bible on the Seriousness of Teaching the Bible

A. The office of teacher, preacher

1. Judgment of teachers (James 3:1-2)

2. Preparation for teaching (2 Timothy 2:15; Titus 2:7-8)

3. The need for knowledge in teaching (Malachi 2:7)

4. The danger of false teaching (Jeremiah 8:8; Matthew 15:1-8)

5. The danger of false prophets (Matthew 7:15-23)

6. Satan is the father of lies and must be resisted (John 8:44; James 4:7-8; 2 Timothy 2:24-26; 2 Corinthians 10:3-5)

B. The importance of critical thinking as a Christian

1. Love God with all your mind (Matthew 22:37-40)

2. Test the spirits (1 John 4:1-6; 2 Corinthians 11:14)

3. Test all things (1 Thessalonians 5:21-23)

C. Theological reasoning

1. Sound exegesis (biblical theology): 2 Peter 3:16

2. Sound theologizing logically (systematic theology): the “whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:27)

3. Avoid paradox, enigma, mystery as much as possible: we need to grow in the “knowledge of God”

But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and forever! Amen.—1 Peter 3:18

4. Theology for the glory of God, the advancement of the kingdom (the mission of God), the good of the church and the world (Matthew 6:33; 28:18-20; 1 Corinthians 10:31; Colossians 3:17)

II. The Rob Bell Phenomenon

A. Books: Velvet Elvis, Sex God, Love Wins

B. Nooma videos: short, impressionistic, personality-driven

C. Ethos: undogmatic, exploratory, open-ended, skeptical, often flippant

D. Method or style in theology: raise questions, generate confusion, suggest possibilities; embrace tension and paradox; rejection of rational certainty (see Luke 1:1-4).

Faith: mystery, paradox, speculation, hope

Reason: truth, knowledge, certainty

E. Bell advocates pantheistic books: Ken Wilber, A Brief History of Everything (in Velvet Elvis); Huston Smith, The Soul of Christianity (in Love Wins). Against, see Doug Groothuis, Unmasking the New Age.

III. Love Wins: Some Issues

A. Apologetic purpose: win people who have rejected Christianity because of its doctrines of heaven and hell.

B. Good points

1. The earthly and present tense value of the Kingdom of God. Influence of N.T. Wright. See also the work of G.E. Ladd on the Kingdom of God.

2. Addresses texts which seem to teach universalism

C. A few of the many problems with Love Wins

1. Not clear on justication by faith alone (Ephesians 2:8); may deny it

2. Not clear on substitutionary, penal atonement of Christ; may deny it.

3. No rigorous reasoning concerning the afterlife

a. Suggest post-mortem salvation, salvation in other religions (see Ephesians 2:12)

b. Touches on passages without sufficient development

4. Bell seems to advance three propositions in Love Wins

a. Everyone is saved: God wants all to be saved; God gets what God wants.

b. Everyone is not saved. We can refuse God’s love.

c. We don’t know if everyone is saved or not.

5. These statements are inconsistent with each other; they cannot all be true

6. We need better thinking about issues of ultimate concern (Isaiah 1:18)

Reading:

1. D.A. Carson, Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church (Crossway, 2005). Helps explain some of the weaknesses of the emerging church, of which Bell is somewhat associated.
2. Douglas Groothuis, “What about Hell?” from The Christian Research Journal. On line at: http://www.equip.org/PDF/DH198.pdf.
3. Douglas Groothuis, Christian Apologetics: A Comprehensive Case for Biblical Faith (InterVarsity Press, August, 2011). See chapters on hell and religious pluralism especially.
4. Douglas Groothuis, Truth Decay: Defending Christianity from the Challenges of Postmodernism (InterVarsity, 2000). Advocates a very different view of truth and epistemology than does Bell.
5. Gordon Lewis and Bruce Demarest, Integrative Theology (Zondervan, 1987-1993). A thorough and rationally sound method of theologizing.
6. J.P. Moreland, Kingdom Triangle (Zondervan, 2007). Guide to the importance of a Christian mind, spiritual discipline, and charismatic power for ministry.
7. Christopher Morgan, Robert A. Peterson, eds. Hell Under Fire (Zondervan, 2003). Defends the historic, orthodox view of hell.
8. Robert A. Peterson on this, Hell on Trial: The Case for Eternal Punishment (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 1995). His arguments against universalism and annihilationism are found in chapters eight and nine respectively.
9. Francis A. Schaeffer, The God Who is There, 30^th anniv. ed. (InterVarsity Press, 1968; reprint, 1998). A stellar model of apologetic and cultural engagement from an evangelical perspective. Explains the faith/reason dichotomy that Bell employs.
10. Francis Schaeffer, True Spirituality (1971; reprint, Tyndale, 2001). Modern classic.
11. T.L. Tiessen, “Hell,” in William A. Dyrness and Veli-Matti Karkkainen, eds. Global Dictionary of Theology (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2008), pp. 372-376.

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[1] Blaise Pascal, Pensées, trans. A. Krailsheimer (New York: Penguin, 1966), 175/563, p. 84.

Banning Laptops in the Classroom

[First published in The Teaching Professor.]

The classroom should be a consecrated place—a dedicated space for attending to ideas not normally addressed as ardently elsewhere. Strange, good, and serendipitous things happen there. Questions are newly formed, puzzlement gives way to intellectual pursuit, and insights arrive serendipitously. On the other hand, even after earnest preparations, professors can be greeted with vacant stares, wandering eyes, stupefied silences, or irritatingly inept comments. We struggle to win, keep, and enrich our students’ attention.

The classroom the environment should be ripe for teaching and learning. (Neil Postman observed that one is not teaching if no one is learning.) This requires earnest preparation for the professor, but students also need to attend and respond rightly. Critical thinking is imperative for philosophy (my discipline) and does not happen automatically. Teachers can encourage critical thinking in several ways: by giving quizzes, showing appreciation for student’s apt comments, and even by letting them stew in their culpable ignorance. But there is another element changing the classroom and threatening its positive prospects: the laptop and similar portable Internet-connected devices. Academics have weighed the pros and cons of this situation, but let me offer some battle-scarred reflections.

I teach two different kinds of students at two institutions. I teach philosophy full-time at the graduate level at a theological seminary. Here most students can afford expensive technologies. I also teach as an affiliate faculty member at a large city college in downtown Denver. These students are younger and less affluent, and almost never bring laptops to class. Still, they can be distracted by hand-held devices. In this setting, my syllabus states that no device should be used to get access to any outside source, although I allow students who have laptops to them for taking notes.

One of these undergraduates stands out. A young Latina woman sparkled with philosophical curiosity and asked some bang-up questions. After I raised a seeming contradiction concerning atheistic Existentialism’s difficulty in asserting any moral meaning for conduct in a meaningless world, she asked, “Is there any worldview that doesn’t contradict itself?” A philosophy professor can live a few weeks on such utterances. That comment came when did not bring her laptop. With laptop in hand, she sat in the very back of the room, said nothing, and all but disappeared into the machine—another case of the “absent presence” that technology easily affords.

My graduate students are a different story. About ten years ago, laptops began to appear in the classroom here and there. Those busily typing seldom looked at me or at other students or at their books. One student spent the entire semester gazing exclusively at her laptop. In recent years the percentage of laptop users surged to over fifty percent, and the classroom began to change radically in ways I had never before experienced. As Postman would have put it, the changes were ecological, not merely additive. That is, the very nature of the classroom was changing, not just a few isolated elements of it. The laptop users were often absorbed in their machines, and their activities often distracted others. I vainly tried to counter this threat of the absent presence by calling for “laptop down” interludes. When I came to a particularly important point, I would ask that all laptops be closed, so that the students could look up and listen more intently.

But matters worsened. Many students in my Ethics class were sending and receiving emails, shopping, and even checking their eHarmony accounts. This violated the conditions of the syllabus. So, I gave a fifteen-minute lecture (perhaps sermon) on the ethics of the classroom: We are here to learn together, to reflect on the texts, to pursue truth through rationality. We need to attend to each other, develop dialogue, and create a “truth zone.” Laptops threaten all of this.

This impassioned message did little good. My spies reported further infractions. I then drew up a short “covenant” for students to sign, stating that students would only use their laptops for taking notes. As I handed this out, a student publicly rebuked me for being so heavy-handed. We later reconciled, but this short-lived, one-man student insurrection deepened my resolve to do something serious about the creeping plague of digital distraction. (I have since gotten more ammunition from John Medina’s Brain Rules, which argues that our brains are simply not designed for multitasking, in the classroom or elsewhere.) I put the following statement (somewhat edited) in my syllabi the next term, where it has remained in all my subsequent courses.

No laptops are allowed in the classroom. While many students will use them responsibly, many will disappear behind the screens. For this reason, I am banning them from the classroom. The classroom needs to be a zone for knowledge and inspiration. Knowledge needs students and students need knowledge. We need to breathe ideas together without the distraction of alien mediation. Therefore, please print out the class notes for the day and be ready to take notes and discuss the material face-to-face, voice-to-voice, soul-to-soul.

The break was now complete. I would no longer compete with those thin, powerful, and distracting devices. Many students had abided by the rules and only typed class notes. But even then, something was lost in the classroom.

My ban did, however, foreclose some good possibilities. Students would sometimes search on line for items that were pertinent to class. When I mentioned that a Hindu priest had opened a session of congress in prayer for the first time recently, a student asked, “What exactly did he pray?” I gave a rather inadequate summary. Then another student replied, “I found it. May I read it?” He did, and it contributed to our discussion as we analyzed the theology of the prayer. Those kinds of episodes enriched our environment; but they were all too rare. Nor could they offset the significant losses caused by digital diversions. However, if a disabled student needed a laptop to compensate for a sensory difficulty, I would gladly allow for that.

It has been three years since I banned laptops. No complaints have appeared on the anonymous student evaluations. Students say they are less distracted and more focused in class. I note that without laptops they are more engaged with both me and other students. I believe that my step backward into the pre-laptop era was really a step forward into a better classroom. Consider joining me.

• Douglas Groothuis is Professor of Philosophy at Denver Seminary and Affiliate Faculty in Philosophy at Metropolitan State College of Denver. He is the author of The Soul in Cyberspace (Baker, 1997).