[Here is an essay by Kerby Anderson on the flap over the new documentary claiming that the bones of Jesus Christ have been discovered. I haven't seen too much analysis of this yet, but stay tuned.]
Tales From the Crypt: Do we have the bones of Jesus?
Written by Kerby Anderson
The last week in February started out with an incredible announcement. James Cameron (director of the film “Titanic”) and Simcha Jacobovici announced that they have found the bones of Jesus! At their news conference, they promoted their Discovery Channel special “The Lost Tomb of Jesus” that will air on March 4th and also promoted the book by Simcha Jacobovici and Charles Pellegrino entitled The Jesus Family Tomb: The Discovery, the Investigation, and the Evidence That Could Change History released by Harper-Collins.
If proved reliable, these findings would call into question the very cornerstone of Christianity: the resurrection of Jesus. But are they true?
The foundational claim is that they have discovered the family tomb of Jesus Christ. But is this really the tomb of Jesus or his family? There are many good reasons to believe this tomb has no relationship at all to Jesus and his family. Many are asking what to think about these claims. Therefore, I put together a quick two-page summary of some of the criticisms and concerns that surfaced in the first few hours after the announcement. Before we look at those criticisms, let’s first review the history of this tomb.
We have known about this tomb since it was discovered in 1980. Back then, Israeli construction workers were digging the foundation for a new building in a Jerusalem suburb. Their digging revealed a cave with ten limestone ossuaries. Archeologists removed the limestone caskets for examination.
When they were able to decipher the names on the ten ossuaries, they found: Jesua, son of Joseph, Mary, Mary, Mathew, Jofa and Judah, son of Jesua. At the time, one of Israel’s most prominent archeologists (Professor Amos Kloner) didn’t associate the crypt with Jesus. He rightly argued that the father of Jesus was a humble carpenter who couldn’t afford a luxury crypt for his family. Moreover, the names on the crypt were common Jewish names.
All of this hasn’t stopped Cameron and Jacobovici from promoting the tomb as the family tomb of Jesus. They claim to have evidence (through DNA tests, archeological evidence, and Biblical studies) to prove that the ten ossuaries belong to Jesus and his family. They also argue that Jesus and Mary Magdalene might have produced a son named Judah. However, a number of biblical scholars say this is a really just an old story now being recycled in an effort to create a media phenomenon that will sell books and guarantee a large audience for the television special.
First, does it really make sense that this wouldbe the family tomb of Jesus? Remember that Jesus was in Jerusalem as a pilgrim and was not a resident of the city. How would his family be able to buy this tomb? As we already mentioned, Joseph (who probably was not alive and died in Galilee) and his family did not have the funds to buy such an elaborate burial site. Moreover, they were from out of town and would need time to find this tomb location. To accept this theory, one has to believe they stole the body of Jesus and moved it to this tomb in a suburb of Jerusalem all within about a day’s time.
Second, if this is the family tomb of Jesus and his family, why is Jesus referred to as the “son of Joseph?” As far as we can determine from history, the earliest followers of Jesus never called Jesus the “son of Joseph.” The record of history is that it was only outsiders who mistakenly called him that.
Third, if this is the family tomb of Jesus, why do we have the name of Matthew listed with the rest of the family? If this is the Matthew that traveled with Jesus, then he certainly was not a family member. And you would have to wonder why James (who remained in Jerusalem) would allow these inscriptions as well as allow the family to move the body from Jerusalem to this tomb and perpetrate a hoax that Jesus bodily rose from the grave. Also, the fourth-century church historian Eusebius writes that the body of James (the half-brother of Jesus) was buried alone near the temple mount and that his tomb was visited in the early centuries.
Fourth, there is the problem with the common names on the tombs. Researchers have cataloged the most common names at the time. The ten most common were: Simon/Simeon, Joseph, Eleazar, Judah, John/Yohanan, Jesus, Hananiah, Jonathan, Matthew, and Manaen/Menahem. These are some of the names found on the ossuaries and thus suggest that the tomb belonged to someone other than Jesus of Nazareth and his family. In fact, the name Jesus appears in 98 other tombs and on 21 other ossuaries.
Finally there is the question of the DNA testing. Apparently there is evidence that shows that the DNA from the woman (in what they say is the Mary Magdalene ossuary) and the DNA from the so-called Jesus ossuary does not match. So they argue that they were not relatives and thus must have been married.
But does the DNA evidence really prove that? It does not prove she is his wife. In fact, we really don’t even know who in the ossuaries are related to the other. Moreover, we do not have an independent DNA control sample to compare these findings with. At best, the DNA evidence shows that some of these people are related and some are not.
All of this looks like sensationalism from Simcha Jacobovici (who has a reputation as an Indiana-Jones type) and James Cameron (the director of the highly fictionalized “Titanic”). The publicity s certain to sell books and draw a television audience, but it is not good history or archaeology.
© 2007 Probe Ministries
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Monday, February 26, 2007
Film Suggestions
Someone suggested that I ask my august body of blog readers to suggest thoughtful and artistically satisfying movies of recent vintage. Please feel free to do so, with a brief discription. I may see "Amazing Grace" in the near future.
Oscar Omission: What Would Schaeffer Think?
Recently, I have been rereading several of Francis Schaeffer's books. Schaeffer was the intellectual mentor I never met, the one who ignited my desire to speak the truth to the contemporary world without fear and with love and reason. Although North Americans throw this phrase around promiscuously, The God Who is There truly did "change my life" for the better when I read it in the fall of 1976. I went on to read all of his books within a few years.
But on the night of the Academy Awards, I find myself realizing that I am not much like Schaeffer in one respect: I ignore much of popular culture. I don't attend movies. (Of course, I don't watch television.) I have perhaps seen three movies in the past decade. They repulse me, by and large; and I have better things to do. This was not the case in the 70s and 80s. I would often attend films, try to discern their worldview, reflection on how they were shaping the culture, and try to give a Christian response--just as Schaeffer did. But in the late 1980s something radically changed. North American films became horribly garish and offensive, by and large. My wife and I stopped attending.
It is true that theater culture is diminishing. Miniaturization strikes again. We have "the home theater." Many people watch films on DVDs at home. They subscribe to NetFlicks, and so on. My wife watches very old movies she tapes off of TV. I don't. That's it.
Have I betrayed my mentor, or has culture changed so radically that abstention is better than interaction? I honestly don't know. Sometimes after rereading a Schaeffer book, I want to view a film just to analyze its worldview commitments and understand what many people are exposing themselves to on a regular basis. Then again, I remember all the unread books, the music to listen to, the bike rides to take, and so on. (The other day, I illustrated nihilism with a scene from "Annie Hall" by Woody Allen. Most of my students were not born when it came out...)
I hear there are philosophically significant foreign films and perhaps a few North American ones as well. But I am far out of the loop.
Dear Francis, what would you think of me? I am committed to the Lordship of Christ, to Reformation Theology, to outthinking the world for Christ, for showing that Christianity is true, rational, and pertinent. That will not change. But I have changed, and culture has changed.
But on the night of the Academy Awards, I find myself realizing that I am not much like Schaeffer in one respect: I ignore much of popular culture. I don't attend movies. (Of course, I don't watch television.) I have perhaps seen three movies in the past decade. They repulse me, by and large; and I have better things to do. This was not the case in the 70s and 80s. I would often attend films, try to discern their worldview, reflection on how they were shaping the culture, and try to give a Christian response--just as Schaeffer did. But in the late 1980s something radically changed. North American films became horribly garish and offensive, by and large. My wife and I stopped attending.
It is true that theater culture is diminishing. Miniaturization strikes again. We have "the home theater." Many people watch films on DVDs at home. They subscribe to NetFlicks, and so on. My wife watches very old movies she tapes off of TV. I don't. That's it.
Have I betrayed my mentor, or has culture changed so radically that abstention is better than interaction? I honestly don't know. Sometimes after rereading a Schaeffer book, I want to view a film just to analyze its worldview commitments and understand what many people are exposing themselves to on a regular basis. Then again, I remember all the unread books, the music to listen to, the bike rides to take, and so on. (The other day, I illustrated nihilism with a scene from "Annie Hall" by Woody Allen. Most of my students were not born when it came out...)
I hear there are philosophically significant foreign films and perhaps a few North American ones as well. But I am far out of the loop.
Dear Francis, what would you think of me? I am committed to the Lordship of Christ, to Reformation Theology, to outthinking the world for Christ, for showing that Christianity is true, rational, and pertinent. That will not change. But I have changed, and culture has changed.
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Doug Groothuis letter to The Chronicle of Higher Education
[This edited letter of mine was published in the February 16, 2007 edition of The Chronicle Review. It responds to an article by Lawrence M. Krauss, "Reason, Unfettered by Faith," The Chronicle Review, January 12.]
To the Editor:
Lawrence Krauss does little more than assert that religious beliefs are unfounded. ...
For example, he says, "Even scholars with years of training in theology and history have trouble combining the possible existence of divine purpose with a universe governed by natural laws." But the concept of a universe governed by nothing but natural law is the very definition of naturalism (or philosophical materialism), a worldview that excludes in principle a creator or designer. Of course naturalism is incompatible with theism; no theologian — or anyone else — could make them friends.
While theistic philosophers and theistic scientists readily accept the existence of natural laws,...they also point out that empirical investigation has given good evidence that the universe was created (otherwise the Big Bang has no cause or explanation) or designed (otherwise the fine-tuning of so many cosmic constants necessary for life remains inexplicable, and many irreducibly complex molecular machines cannot be adequately accounted for). ...Moreover, there are solid philosophical and historical arguments for biblical miracles such as the resurrection of Jesus (see Richard Swinburne's The Resurrection of God Incarnate).
Professor Krauss fails to interact with any of these arguments. Instead he simply claims that religious beliefs must emanate from bad sources. Now who is being unreasonable?
Douglas Groothuis
Professor of Philosophy
Denver Seminary
Littleton, Colo.
To the Editor:
Lawrence Krauss does little more than assert that religious beliefs are unfounded. ...
For example, he says, "Even scholars with years of training in theology and history have trouble combining the possible existence of divine purpose with a universe governed by natural laws." But the concept of a universe governed by nothing but natural law is the very definition of naturalism (or philosophical materialism), a worldview that excludes in principle a creator or designer. Of course naturalism is incompatible with theism; no theologian — or anyone else — could make them friends.
While theistic philosophers and theistic scientists readily accept the existence of natural laws,...they also point out that empirical investigation has given good evidence that the universe was created (otherwise the Big Bang has no cause or explanation) or designed (otherwise the fine-tuning of so many cosmic constants necessary for life remains inexplicable, and many irreducibly complex molecular machines cannot be adequately accounted for). ...Moreover, there are solid philosophical and historical arguments for biblical miracles such as the resurrection of Jesus (see Richard Swinburne's The Resurrection of God Incarnate).
Professor Krauss fails to interact with any of these arguments. Instead he simply claims that religious beliefs must emanate from bad sources. Now who is being unreasonable?
Douglas Groothuis
Professor of Philosophy
Denver Seminary
Littleton, Colo.
Sunday, February 18, 2007
Stuffed Animal Rights: Animals of Fabric Speak Out!
1. Animals of fabric (stuffed animals) are no less significant than animals of flesh. If you think otherwise, you are a fleshist.
2. They deserve to be washed regularly. Don't you?
3. They need counseling before and after being put into the dryer.
4. They should never be abused (punched, stepped on, piled on top of each other, made to listen to Kenny G, etc.).
5. They should never have idiotic comments attributed to themselves, such as, "Teddy says he thinks a Pro-Life Democrat will run for President in 2008").
6. They should never be given to the dogs as playthings. A stuffed animal would never hurt a dog.
7. They should be repaired when damaged. You go to the doctor, don't you?
8. They should never be thrown out, but rather given a proper burial (with a eulogy).
9. They should never be left out in the elements (even at roadside memorials). Would you stay outside for days on end?
10. No one should spend more than a fraction of their income on procuring stuffed animals. Even they know they are not real and shouldn't be made into idols.
2. They deserve to be washed regularly. Don't you?
3. They need counseling before and after being put into the dryer.
4. They should never be abused (punched, stepped on, piled on top of each other, made to listen to Kenny G, etc.).
5. They should never have idiotic comments attributed to themselves, such as, "Teddy says he thinks a Pro-Life Democrat will run for President in 2008").
6. They should never be given to the dogs as playthings. A stuffed animal would never hurt a dog.
7. They should be repaired when damaged. You go to the doctor, don't you?
8. They should never be thrown out, but rather given a proper burial (with a eulogy).
9. They should never be left out in the elements (even at roadside memorials). Would you stay outside for days on end?
10. No one should spend more than a fraction of their income on procuring stuffed animals. Even they know they are not real and shouldn't be made into idols.
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
More Jazz Awards
In light of the responses to my self-generated Curmudgeon Classics Awards (and because of other musings on music), here are more.
1. Utterly in his own transcendent category: piano: Thelonious Monk
2. Contemporary tenor saxophone: Michael Brecker (RIP)
3. Piano: Bill Evans
4. Fusion drummer: Billy Cobham
5. Fusion electric guitar: Alan Holdsworth
6. Fusion electric bass: Stanley Clark
1. Utterly in his own transcendent category: piano: Thelonious Monk
2. Contemporary tenor saxophone: Michael Brecker (RIP)
3. Piano: Bill Evans
4. Fusion drummer: Billy Cobham
5. Fusion electric guitar: Alan Holdsworth
6. Fusion electric bass: Stanley Clark
Monday, February 12, 2007
Evolution Sunday: Groothuis Responds
[This story is from today's Rocky Mountain News.]
Church makes evolutionary change over time
February 12, 2007
Here's a neat historic twist: Sunday, in the same Denver sanctuary where William Jennings Bryan, that fiery foe of evolution, is believed to have thundered out an oration 96 years ago, the Rev. Mark Meeks was celebrating a new national church movement called . . . Evolution Sunday.
"I don't need a religion that explains everything, or a sacred text that conforms to my understanding," Meeks told 60 worshippers at Capitol Heights Presbyterian Church, 1100 Fillmore St.
"Scientific exploration can help us understand our religion," continued Meeks, a cozy, bearded presence in a well-seasoned fleece sweater.
On the other side, he said, are biblical literalists who believe "the world came to be 6,000 years ago, already ripe, so to speak . . . They make an idol of the sacred texts, trying to reduce God to our own understanding."
The Bryan link? It's a fanciful but fun stretch. Legend has it that Bryan came to the Capitol Heights church to stemwind at its 1911 opening. Fourteen years later, he was the legendary prosecutor of evolution teacher John Scopes.
Nearly 100 years later, Bryant is nearly forgotten, while the fight over evolution has proved to be timeless.
About a dozen Colorado churches took part in Evolution Sunday, a movement begun last year by Michael Zimmerman, a dean at Butler University in Indianapolis. He's collected 10,000 clergy signatures supporting evolution over creationism.
Nor do the Evolution Sunday supporters like the "intelligent design" theory, says Doug Groothuis, a Denver Seminary philosophy professor who himself writes and debates extensively in support of intelligent design.
"By examining the evidence empirically," Groothuis says, "intelligent design people appeal to certain features of nature that they think are better understood according to a designing mind rather than some mindless process."
But to Evolution Sunday-goers, notions of a grand designer threaten to undermine the science.
"It fosters contempt for scientists in general, and voters are worried scientists aren't doing real science, and so they slash science funding, which is so important to this country," warned Cathy Russell, an evolutionary biologist who celebrated Sunday at her Boulder church.
By the way, Evolution Sunday is pegged to the birthday of Charles Darwin, who turns 200 in two years. (Imagine that celebration.) Russell will be there: "I'm totally passionate about this."
torkelsonj@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5055
Church makes evolutionary change over time
February 12, 2007
Here's a neat historic twist: Sunday, in the same Denver sanctuary where William Jennings Bryan, that fiery foe of evolution, is believed to have thundered out an oration 96 years ago, the Rev. Mark Meeks was celebrating a new national church movement called . . . Evolution Sunday.
"I don't need a religion that explains everything, or a sacred text that conforms to my understanding," Meeks told 60 worshippers at Capitol Heights Presbyterian Church, 1100 Fillmore St.
"Scientific exploration can help us understand our religion," continued Meeks, a cozy, bearded presence in a well-seasoned fleece sweater.
On the other side, he said, are biblical literalists who believe "the world came to be 6,000 years ago, already ripe, so to speak . . . They make an idol of the sacred texts, trying to reduce God to our own understanding."
The Bryan link? It's a fanciful but fun stretch. Legend has it that Bryan came to the Capitol Heights church to stemwind at its 1911 opening. Fourteen years later, he was the legendary prosecutor of evolution teacher John Scopes.
Nearly 100 years later, Bryant is nearly forgotten, while the fight over evolution has proved to be timeless.
About a dozen Colorado churches took part in Evolution Sunday, a movement begun last year by Michael Zimmerman, a dean at Butler University in Indianapolis. He's collected 10,000 clergy signatures supporting evolution over creationism.
Nor do the Evolution Sunday supporters like the "intelligent design" theory, says Doug Groothuis, a Denver Seminary philosophy professor who himself writes and debates extensively in support of intelligent design.
"By examining the evidence empirically," Groothuis says, "intelligent design people appeal to certain features of nature that they think are better understood according to a designing mind rather than some mindless process."
But to Evolution Sunday-goers, notions of a grand designer threaten to undermine the science.
"It fosters contempt for scientists in general, and voters are worried scientists aren't doing real science, and so they slash science funding, which is so important to this country," warned Cathy Russell, an evolutionary biologist who celebrated Sunday at her Boulder church.
By the way, Evolution Sunday is pegged to the birthday of Charles Darwin, who turns 200 in two years. (Imagine that celebration.) Russell will be there: "I'm totally passionate about this."
torkelsonj@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5055
Sunday, February 11, 2007
Grammy Inspired Jazz Awards (for fun, but serious music)
Inspired by the institution known as the Grammys, I hereby create the Curmudgeon Classic Awards for greatest jazz musicians and album--not limited to contemporary musicians.
Jazz musicians:
1. Saxophone: John Coltrane.
2. Small combo: John Coltrane Quartet.
3. Big Band drummer, soloist: Buddy Rich. No one else is close.
4. Small combo drummer: Elvin Jones, Tony Williams.
5. Piano: Herbie Hancock, McCoy Tyner, Keith Jarrett.
6. Trumpet: Miles Davis (pre-electric).
7. Bass: Jimmie Garrison.
8. Circular breaching champion (saxophone and a lot of other things): Roland Kirk
Jazz albums:
1. John Coltrane, "A Love Supreme."
2. John Coltrane, "Crescent."
Contemporary favorites:
1. Alto Saxophone: Kenny Garrett, Greg Osby.
2. Tenor Saxophone: Joshua Redman, Branford Marsalis, Charles Lloyd, Wayne Shorter, Sonny Rollins (living legend category, just below Coltrane).
3. Drums: Brian Blade, Dave Stewart, Jeff Watts, Roy Haynes (living legend).
4. Guitar: Pat Metheny, Pat Martino.
Jazz musicians:
1. Saxophone: John Coltrane.
2. Small combo: John Coltrane Quartet.
3. Big Band drummer, soloist: Buddy Rich. No one else is close.
4. Small combo drummer: Elvin Jones, Tony Williams.
5. Piano: Herbie Hancock, McCoy Tyner, Keith Jarrett.
6. Trumpet: Miles Davis (pre-electric).
7. Bass: Jimmie Garrison.
8. Circular breaching champion (saxophone and a lot of other things): Roland Kirk
Jazz albums:
1. John Coltrane, "A Love Supreme."
2. John Coltrane, "Crescent."
Contemporary favorites:
1. Alto Saxophone: Kenny Garrett, Greg Osby.
2. Tenor Saxophone: Joshua Redman, Branford Marsalis, Charles Lloyd, Wayne Shorter, Sonny Rollins (living legend category, just below Coltrane).
3. Drums: Brian Blade, Dave Stewart, Jeff Watts, Roy Haynes (living legend).
4. Guitar: Pat Metheny, Pat Martino.
Saturday, February 10, 2007
Letter to Christianity Today from Dr. Gordon Lewis
[My esteemed colleague, Dr. Gordon Lewis, wrote this leter to Christianity Today recently. Since they may not print it in its entirety, I wanted to make the full argument available to my intrepid readers. Dr. Lewis, now 80, is an evangelical treasure.]
Letter to the Editor of Christianity Today
From: Gordon R. Lewis, Sr. Professor of Theology and Philosophy,
Denver Seminary
Re: “Five Streams of the Emerging Church” (CT February 2007, pp 35-39).
Commendably, Scot McKnight seeks to “practice the way of Jesus;” sadly, he fails to follow Jesus’ way with words. Does not McKnight’s assertion that “no language is capable of capturing absolute truth.” contradict what Jesus said to his heavenly Father? “I gave them the words you gave me” (John 17:8). “I have given them your word” (v.14) and “your word is truth” (v.17).
Apparently McKnight’s wordless god is not the God who has spoken in human languages. “In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son” (Heb 1:1-2).
Like the mystics of the world’s religions, as well as Kierkegaard and Barth, McKnight presupposes that God’s thoughts are infinitely different in every quality from any concepts expressed in human language. So what God reveals is himself, not information about himself. Apparently McKnight overlooks the fact that God created men and women in his image and that the image includes a mental capacity for receiving revealed information. A believer’s new nature is “renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator” (Col 3:10).
So McKnight alleges that, “God didn’t reveal a systematic theology but a storied narrative, and no language is capable of capturing the Absolute Truth.” However, in the midst of the Bible’s true stories are indicative sentences asserting what is the case. In the narrative of Jesus’ conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well, he asserted, “God is spirit.” When walking on the road to Emmaus, Jesus explained, “A spirit does not have flesh and bones.” Such affirmations are the building blocks of a consistent view of God. The parables illustrated the true information Jesus taught about his kingdom.
Logic haters to the contrary, Jesus used indicative sentences conveying propositions to teach about God, angels, human souls or spirits, his own deity and mission, signs of the end of the age and a spirituality that exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees. Paul’s letters, furthermore, began with doctrinal assertions before moving to their applications in life. If McKnight’s postmodern theory of language were true, Jesus and Paul would be guilty of “linguistic idolatry!” In contrast, Jesus said, “The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life: (John 6:63). His assertions were not limiting but liberating. “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:31-32).
Although systematic theologians claim that divinely revealed assertions are necessary to evangelical spiritual experience, they do not regard them sufficient for every aspect of life. Yes, anyone who comes to God must believe the revealed information that he exists (Heb 11:6). Assent to the truth of that proposition should guide one’s holistic commitment to its personal referent, the living Lord of whom it speaks. “God is spirit” does not completely encompass infinity; God’s awesome being has many other characteristics.
One who practices the way of the articulate Jesus teaches the truth of his assertions. As he said, “These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me” (John 14:23-24). “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away (Mat 24:35).
Letter to the Editor of Christianity Today
From: Gordon R. Lewis, Sr. Professor of Theology and Philosophy,
Denver Seminary
Re: “Five Streams of the Emerging Church” (CT February 2007, pp 35-39).
Commendably, Scot McKnight seeks to “practice the way of Jesus;” sadly, he fails to follow Jesus’ way with words. Does not McKnight’s assertion that “no language is capable of capturing absolute truth.” contradict what Jesus said to his heavenly Father? “I gave them the words you gave me” (John 17:8). “I have given them your word” (v.14) and “your word is truth” (v.17).
Apparently McKnight’s wordless god is not the God who has spoken in human languages. “In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son” (Heb 1:1-2).
Like the mystics of the world’s religions, as well as Kierkegaard and Barth, McKnight presupposes that God’s thoughts are infinitely different in every quality from any concepts expressed in human language. So what God reveals is himself, not information about himself. Apparently McKnight overlooks the fact that God created men and women in his image and that the image includes a mental capacity for receiving revealed information. A believer’s new nature is “renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator” (Col 3:10).
So McKnight alleges that, “God didn’t reveal a systematic theology but a storied narrative, and no language is capable of capturing the Absolute Truth.” However, in the midst of the Bible’s true stories are indicative sentences asserting what is the case. In the narrative of Jesus’ conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well, he asserted, “God is spirit.” When walking on the road to Emmaus, Jesus explained, “A spirit does not have flesh and bones.” Such affirmations are the building blocks of a consistent view of God. The parables illustrated the true information Jesus taught about his kingdom.
Logic haters to the contrary, Jesus used indicative sentences conveying propositions to teach about God, angels, human souls or spirits, his own deity and mission, signs of the end of the age and a spirituality that exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees. Paul’s letters, furthermore, began with doctrinal assertions before moving to their applications in life. If McKnight’s postmodern theory of language were true, Jesus and Paul would be guilty of “linguistic idolatry!” In contrast, Jesus said, “The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life: (John 6:63). His assertions were not limiting but liberating. “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:31-32).
Although systematic theologians claim that divinely revealed assertions are necessary to evangelical spiritual experience, they do not regard them sufficient for every aspect of life. Yes, anyone who comes to God must believe the revealed information that he exists (Heb 11:6). Assent to the truth of that proposition should guide one’s holistic commitment to its personal referent, the living Lord of whom it speaks. “God is spirit” does not completely encompass infinity; God’s awesome being has many other characteristics.
One who practices the way of the articulate Jesus teaches the truth of his assertions. As he said, “These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me” (John 14:23-24). “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away (Mat 24:35).
Friday, February 09, 2007
Are Newspapers Dying?
Upon our return to Centennial, we noted that The Rocky Mountain News had shrunk and was redesigned as a tabloid. The heft was gone; it seemed emaciated. The Rocky Mountain News and The Denver Post are now distributed by the same company and are housed in the same building, although their editorial leadership is distinct. This is a cost-cutting move. This follows a trend of several years: people--particularly younger people, "wired people"--are turning to other news sources. One cartoon depicted two twenty-somethings looking at a newsstand. One said to the other, "I don't get it. It's a day old and you have to pay for it." Is there a point to the daily newsprint?
Major newspaper put most of their material on line. News is posted as it breaks. Why wait until the next day? Why bother with the dirty paper, most of which you never read, and that ends up in the garbage? Is one's preference or attachment for the newspaper merely generational? I was brought up reading it, writing letters to editor, clipping articles, and writing editorials in my junior and high school papers and later in major city newspapers. Nevertheless, in almost five months in Sun City West, Arizona, we did not take the newspaper. I listed to the radio (NPR and Talk Radio--quite a contrast), read The New York Times and other sources on line, and read magazines and books.
Newspapers have their constitutional draw backs and trade-offs. They separate and present a collage, unlike a book or magazine. They splatter divergent articles on the same page, often without much coherence or integration. (This is Marshall McLuhan's insight.) They are incessantly daily; that is, they seldom put things into an historical context. Editorials may articulate such a context, but they are boxed in to 500-750 words. Some feature stories run as a series, which may go on for several days. This may provide more context and depth, if they are well-researched and well-written. But some stories are there simply to fill space. There has to be news, after all. But why? Maybe silence or a blank page would be better for the soul.
Images end to dominate most newspapers now. USA Today is modeled after television, as Neil Postman pointed out long ago. Images are not conceptual, but impressionistic, incapable of abstraction or analysis.
Yet newspapers have their allure, a justified uniqueness worth preserving. They are embodied--not as substantial or long-lived as books or even magazines, but they exist off of the screen. The screen carries with it an entirely different set of sensibilities. (I wrote of this in a chapter of a book, "The Book, The Screen, and the Soul," in The Soul in Cyberspace. That book was put onto a CD-ROM, ironically.) The screen moves. One screen can house an unlimited number of different words or images; it is not inscribed upon, but filled with markings without ink.
Heft has its virtues; bulk has its rewards. You pick up the paper; bring it in; leave it out; pick through it; talk about it with family members (the same paper; you do not have many people staring at different screens). You can clip a story. You can rip it to shreds in disgust or crumple it up and throw it across the room--good curmudgeonly performance art. You may find something unexpected, something a search engine would not reveal. The paper is not constituted or styled for your own individual interests, as is so much of the internet. You take what it gives and see what you find.
This past Sunday, I spent an hour in a local Starbucks, reading The Old Gray Lady's Sunday edition. (I didn't buy it, but borrowed it from the stand, and put it back--pretty much--as I found it.) There was a review of a book about the dark side of Paris and other interesting things and ridiculous things--a narcissistic and pointless story about a new professor's anxieties about his sartorial comportment. Yes, I could have read this on line, but it wouldn't have been the same. You don't turn through pages on line, you search for articles. Those pages, encountered as pages, may yield a serendipitous reward. And the pages will not mysteriously disappear, as data on screens so often does. Yes, I may spill my coffee on it, but it won't short-circuit anything.
There are the inevitable trade-offs with any medium, electronic or not. But newspapers have their charm, their telos, their place in our culture. May their demise be denied, or at least prolonged.
Major newspaper put most of their material on line. News is posted as it breaks. Why wait until the next day? Why bother with the dirty paper, most of which you never read, and that ends up in the garbage? Is one's preference or attachment for the newspaper merely generational? I was brought up reading it, writing letters to editor, clipping articles, and writing editorials in my junior and high school papers and later in major city newspapers. Nevertheless, in almost five months in Sun City West, Arizona, we did not take the newspaper. I listed to the radio (NPR and Talk Radio--quite a contrast), read The New York Times and other sources on line, and read magazines and books.
Newspapers have their constitutional draw backs and trade-offs. They separate and present a collage, unlike a book or magazine. They splatter divergent articles on the same page, often without much coherence or integration. (This is Marshall McLuhan's insight.) They are incessantly daily; that is, they seldom put things into an historical context. Editorials may articulate such a context, but they are boxed in to 500-750 words. Some feature stories run as a series, which may go on for several days. This may provide more context and depth, if they are well-researched and well-written. But some stories are there simply to fill space. There has to be news, after all. But why? Maybe silence or a blank page would be better for the soul.
Images end to dominate most newspapers now. USA Today is modeled after television, as Neil Postman pointed out long ago. Images are not conceptual, but impressionistic, incapable of abstraction or analysis.
Yet newspapers have their allure, a justified uniqueness worth preserving. They are embodied--not as substantial or long-lived as books or even magazines, but they exist off of the screen. The screen carries with it an entirely different set of sensibilities. (I wrote of this in a chapter of a book, "The Book, The Screen, and the Soul," in The Soul in Cyberspace. That book was put onto a CD-ROM, ironically.) The screen moves. One screen can house an unlimited number of different words or images; it is not inscribed upon, but filled with markings without ink.
Heft has its virtues; bulk has its rewards. You pick up the paper; bring it in; leave it out; pick through it; talk about it with family members (the same paper; you do not have many people staring at different screens). You can clip a story. You can rip it to shreds in disgust or crumple it up and throw it across the room--good curmudgeonly performance art. You may find something unexpected, something a search engine would not reveal. The paper is not constituted or styled for your own individual interests, as is so much of the internet. You take what it gives and see what you find.
This past Sunday, I spent an hour in a local Starbucks, reading The Old Gray Lady's Sunday edition. (I didn't buy it, but borrowed it from the stand, and put it back--pretty much--as I found it.) There was a review of a book about the dark side of Paris and other interesting things and ridiculous things--a narcissistic and pointless story about a new professor's anxieties about his sartorial comportment. Yes, I could have read this on line, but it wouldn't have been the same. You don't turn through pages on line, you search for articles. Those pages, encountered as pages, may yield a serendipitous reward. And the pages will not mysteriously disappear, as data on screens so often does. Yes, I may spill my coffee on it, but it won't short-circuit anything.
There are the inevitable trade-offs with any medium, electronic or not. But newspapers have their charm, their telos, their place in our culture. May their demise be denied, or at least prolonged.
Monday, February 05, 2007
The Downside of the Wireless Classroom.
[Some of the students at my own institution are using their laptops to play video games and do on line shopping while attending lecture classes. Apparently, this problem is rampant. I am very impressed with the insights of Dr. Bugeja's article, which are similar to some of the idea's articulated in my book, The Soul in Cyberspace.]
The Chronicle of Higher Education
From the issue dated January 26, 2007
FIRST PERSON
Distractions in the Wireless Classroom
Getting your students' attention may be as simple as requiring them to turn off the technology
By MICHAEL J. BUGEJA
When Kevin and Mollie Cooney recently visited their daughter's psychology class at the College of William and Mary, they noted how attentive students seemed to be in the large lecture hall.
The Cooneys, who are both news anchors for the CBS affiliate in Des Moines, Iowa, and who sit on the advisory council of the journalism school I head at Iowa State University, were intrigued by the tapping of the laptop keys as students appeared to be taking copious notes. "As we looked over their shoulders from our back-row seats," says Mollie Cooney, "we found instead they were on Facebook, Dave Matthews Band Web sites, instant-messaging friends, and e-mailing fellow classmates."
"Granted," she adds, "these students were in the minority, and our daughter swears she never takes her laptop to class for that reason. But as parents who pay hard-earned money to send kids to school with better computers than we will ever own, it's a bit disconcerting as to how they are actually being used!"
That scenario is happening across the country. Cynthia M. Frisby, associate professor of strategic communication at the University of Missouri, has noticed students on MySpace and eBay during her lectures. She has also noticed more failing grades. The final straw, she says, came in an e-mail message from a student "complimenting my outfit, failing to realize that the time stamp was on the e-mail, further suggesting that he was not paying attention to my lecture."
Now she bans laptops in large lecture courses and has a clause in her syllabus about the inappropriate use of technology. The result? "Huge increases in attention and better performance on exams," she says. "Students have even mentioned that they feel like they are doing better without the laptop."
Syllabus clauses warning against the misuse of technology are increasingly common. In my own school of journalism, about 20 percent of syllabi contain such warnings. Some examples:
"Anyone who engages in rude, thoughtless, selfish behavior, such as use of a cellphone for instant messages, games, etc., will have his or her cellphone confiscated until the next class session and will be excused from the class. The cellphone will be returned after the student apologizes to the class at the next class session."
"If your cellular phone is heard by the class, you are responsible for completing one of two options: 1. Before the end of the class period you will sing a verse and chorus of any song of your choice or, 2. You will lead the next class period through a 10-minute discussion on a topic to be determined by the end of the class. (To the extent that there are multiple individuals in violation, duets will be accepted)."
As more and more classrooms go wireless, technology warnings on syllabi soon will be as standard as the ones about cheating (which laptops also facilitate). In 2004, only about a third of classrooms provided wireless Internet access, according to the annual Campus Computing Survey. Wireless networks now cover more than half (51.2 percent) of college classrooms.
My own university, one of the most wireless in the country, may be experiencing those problems ahead of the curve. As the number of wireless access points has increased on the campus, so has the number of reports of Web surfing, text-messaging, and gaming during class.
Other high-tech institutions are seeing the same phenomenon. I became acquainted with Ione DeOllos, an associate professor of sociology at Ball State University, after USA Today interviewed me about her institution's purported status as the most wireless in the nation.
Last year, she says, the University Senate adopted a policy "that allows professors to limit technology use in classrooms. Senators had received complaints from faculty members about students who were using computers to play games, watch videos, and e-mail and instant-message others." The Senate decided it needed to make a clear statement to students "that inappropriate use of technology would not be tolerated."
DeOllos added a warning about in-class use of cellphones to her own syllabi, and plans to extend it to include laptop computers, banning them on a case-by-case basis.
Shutting off the wireless. You can't. In a few short years, universities have moved from dial-up, to wired Ethernet, to controlled Ethernet (which could be switched off), to wireless.
Dennis Adams, chairman of the information-sciences department at the University of Houston, wrote about shutting off wireless networks in the September 2006 issue of Communications of the ACM, the flagship journal of the Association for Computing Machinery. "While classroom access to the Internet may be a wonderful teaching tool," he wrote, "it can also be a barrier to learning."
Adams admitted in an interview that turning off wireless was nearly impossible. But you can see why he is tempted. In "The Laptop Backlash," an article published in the October 14, 2006, issue of The Wall Street Journal, a reporter who sat in on Adams's "Management of Information Systems" course observed: "While Prof. Adams lectures, five students use an online chat room to post comments on his lecture. ... Another student spends nearly two-thirds of the three-hour class playing computer chess, instant-messaging, and viewing photos of a fraternity party posted on the Web." The reporter also saw another student buying shoes on eBay.
In his Communications essay, Adams cites a 1972 work by Eda LeShan on "the Sesame Street syndrome." She argued that, by overemphasizing the idea of right and wrong answers, the show taught children that thinking and questions are irrelevant because adults do the asking and answering. Nowadays, the syndrome "has come to describe students who expect to be entertained as they learn," Adams wrote. "If the entertainment doesn't come from the front of the wireless classroom, it comes from the Internet."
Theodore Roszak, whose books include The Making of a Counter Culture and The Cult of Information, has sounded that warning for decades. When cellphones started ring-toning in his classroom at California State University's East Bay campus, the professor of history retired.
"What kids need to learn," he says, "and what teachers must commit themselves fiercely to defending, is the fact that the mind isn't any sort of machine, that thinking with your own naked wits is a pure animal joy that cannot be programmed, and that great culture begins with an imagination on fire. We should remind our children at every turn that more great literature and more great science were accomplished with the quill pen than by the fastest microchip that will ever be invented."
Roszak's greatest fear is that technology "will reduce the mind to the level of the machine."
The Google syndrome. If Sesame Street taught generations that there are right and wrong answers, Google reinforces that lesson but makes no claim as to the accuracy of the answers.
Certainly, search engines and databases are vital in many disciplines, especially the medical sciences.
"In the setting of the medical school, particularly clinical encounters, wireless access is actually beneficial," says Lawrence H. Phillips, a professor of neurology at the University of Virginia. "There is often competition between students on rounds to see who can access clinically useful information the fastest.
"On the other hand, I think my 16-year-old and her friends text-message each other continuously during class and other times when they should be studying," he adds. "The IM function on the computer goes continuously when she is working on the computer at home. This type of behavior will certainly carry over into the college classroom."
Will the emerging distracted generations be able to meet complex challenges on the horizon, like global warming and pandemics?
David D. Ho, chief executive officer of the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center and a professor at Rockefeller University, is best known for his work in suppressing viral replication through the use of multiple-drug therapies. Early in his AIDS-related research, he would come upon treatments that succeeded in the lab but failed in humans — "but that's science," he has said. Soon he came to understand that the AIDS virus mutates rapidly, resisting each individual drug. That's when he and his team turned to mathematics, calculating probabilities of the virus mutating simultaneously around multiple therapies. Odds were in the patient's favor.
Computers can calculate those odds in a nanosecond, but they cannot formulate the question nor conceive the process by which to do so. Neither can Google.
"We should be teaching our students to think creatively or to become innovators, not just test takers," he says.
David J. Skorton, president of Cornell University, says that students have been doodling since the days of chalk and slate, "but the ability to check the weather or game scores or the headline news from their laptops during class puts an unprecedented barrier between the student and the instructor."
Coping methods. Dennis Adams, at the University of Houston, is adapting to the wireless classroom. When he makes an important point, he asks students to close their laptops and listen. "I don't abuse this," he says, "but use it as a way to summarize or to communicate a difficult concept." He concedes, however, the problem is probably more in changing the way professors teach.
That is predictable. According to the French philosopher Jacques Ellul (1912-94), technology is autonomous and "radically modifies the objects to which it is applied while being scarcely modified in its own features."
Apply technology to the economy, and the economy henceforth is about technology. Apply it to journalism, and journalism is about technology. Apply it to education, and education is about technology. All must adapt, and in so doing we lose centuries of erudition because principles no longer apply in practice. Worse, because autonomous technology is independent of everything, it cannot be blamed for anything.
To combat technology distractions, some universities are relying on educational campaigns to make students more sensitive to classroom etiquette. The University of Wisconsin at Madison provides information via links to Web pages that faculty members can note in their syllabi. One link (http://www.doit.wisc.edu/network/wireless/advice_stu.asp) encourages students to stay on task and not distract others or themselves. Another (http://www.doit.wisc.edu/network/wireless/advice_fac.asp) provides ground rules for wireless use and classroom laptop etiquette.
Jane Drews, information-technology security officer for the University of Iowa, believes that a solution to wireless distractions is etiquette education. "From the person who endlessly chats on a phone while in a restaurant, to someone's pager or cell going off in the middle of a presentation or lecture, we are creating a society of very rude technology users. We have an online class offered to freshmen that includes a Responsible Computing' module, with a section on netiquette.' I've suggested it be expanded to include classroom etiquette, too."
I have been advocating a required orientation class, "Interpersonal Intelligence," informing first-year students about when, where, and for what purpose technology is appropriate or inappropriate.
Perhaps the best suggestion comes from my associate dean, Zora Zimmerman, who proposes that student government take the lead with a campaign to "Reclaim the Classroom."
Despite digital distractions, ever-larger class sizes, decreased budgets, and fewer tenured colleagues, professors still are responsible for turning students on to learning. To do so, we just may have to turn off the technology.
Michael Bugeja, director of the Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication at Iowa State University, is the author of Interpersonal Divide: The Search for Community in a Technological Age (Oxford University Press, 2005).
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Chronicle of Higher Education
From the issue dated January 26, 2007
FIRST PERSON
Distractions in the Wireless Classroom
Getting your students' attention may be as simple as requiring them to turn off the technology
By MICHAEL J. BUGEJA
When Kevin and Mollie Cooney recently visited their daughter's psychology class at the College of William and Mary, they noted how attentive students seemed to be in the large lecture hall.
The Cooneys, who are both news anchors for the CBS affiliate in Des Moines, Iowa, and who sit on the advisory council of the journalism school I head at Iowa State University, were intrigued by the tapping of the laptop keys as students appeared to be taking copious notes. "As we looked over their shoulders from our back-row seats," says Mollie Cooney, "we found instead they were on Facebook, Dave Matthews Band Web sites, instant-messaging friends, and e-mailing fellow classmates."
"Granted," she adds, "these students were in the minority, and our daughter swears she never takes her laptop to class for that reason. But as parents who pay hard-earned money to send kids to school with better computers than we will ever own, it's a bit disconcerting as to how they are actually being used!"
That scenario is happening across the country. Cynthia M. Frisby, associate professor of strategic communication at the University of Missouri, has noticed students on MySpace and eBay during her lectures. She has also noticed more failing grades. The final straw, she says, came in an e-mail message from a student "complimenting my outfit, failing to realize that the time stamp was on the e-mail, further suggesting that he was not paying attention to my lecture."
Now she bans laptops in large lecture courses and has a clause in her syllabus about the inappropriate use of technology. The result? "Huge increases in attention and better performance on exams," she says. "Students have even mentioned that they feel like they are doing better without the laptop."
Syllabus clauses warning against the misuse of technology are increasingly common. In my own school of journalism, about 20 percent of syllabi contain such warnings. Some examples:
"Anyone who engages in rude, thoughtless, selfish behavior, such as use of a cellphone for instant messages, games, etc., will have his or her cellphone confiscated until the next class session and will be excused from the class. The cellphone will be returned after the student apologizes to the class at the next class session."
"If your cellular phone is heard by the class, you are responsible for completing one of two options: 1. Before the end of the class period you will sing a verse and chorus of any song of your choice or, 2. You will lead the next class period through a 10-minute discussion on a topic to be determined by the end of the class. (To the extent that there are multiple individuals in violation, duets will be accepted)."
As more and more classrooms go wireless, technology warnings on syllabi soon will be as standard as the ones about cheating (which laptops also facilitate). In 2004, only about a third of classrooms provided wireless Internet access, according to the annual Campus Computing Survey. Wireless networks now cover more than half (51.2 percent) of college classrooms.
My own university, one of the most wireless in the country, may be experiencing those problems ahead of the curve. As the number of wireless access points has increased on the campus, so has the number of reports of Web surfing, text-messaging, and gaming during class.
Other high-tech institutions are seeing the same phenomenon. I became acquainted with Ione DeOllos, an associate professor of sociology at Ball State University, after USA Today interviewed me about her institution's purported status as the most wireless in the nation.
Last year, she says, the University Senate adopted a policy "that allows professors to limit technology use in classrooms. Senators had received complaints from faculty members about students who were using computers to play games, watch videos, and e-mail and instant-message others." The Senate decided it needed to make a clear statement to students "that inappropriate use of technology would not be tolerated."
DeOllos added a warning about in-class use of cellphones to her own syllabi, and plans to extend it to include laptop computers, banning them on a case-by-case basis.
Shutting off the wireless. You can't. In a few short years, universities have moved from dial-up, to wired Ethernet, to controlled Ethernet (which could be switched off), to wireless.
Dennis Adams, chairman of the information-sciences department at the University of Houston, wrote about shutting off wireless networks in the September 2006 issue of Communications of the ACM, the flagship journal of the Association for Computing Machinery. "While classroom access to the Internet may be a wonderful teaching tool," he wrote, "it can also be a barrier to learning."
Adams admitted in an interview that turning off wireless was nearly impossible. But you can see why he is tempted. In "The Laptop Backlash," an article published in the October 14, 2006, issue of The Wall Street Journal, a reporter who sat in on Adams's "Management of Information Systems" course observed: "While Prof. Adams lectures, five students use an online chat room to post comments on his lecture. ... Another student spends nearly two-thirds of the three-hour class playing computer chess, instant-messaging, and viewing photos of a fraternity party posted on the Web." The reporter also saw another student buying shoes on eBay.
In his Communications essay, Adams cites a 1972 work by Eda LeShan on "the Sesame Street syndrome." She argued that, by overemphasizing the idea of right and wrong answers, the show taught children that thinking and questions are irrelevant because adults do the asking and answering. Nowadays, the syndrome "has come to describe students who expect to be entertained as they learn," Adams wrote. "If the entertainment doesn't come from the front of the wireless classroom, it comes from the Internet."
Theodore Roszak, whose books include The Making of a Counter Culture and The Cult of Information, has sounded that warning for decades. When cellphones started ring-toning in his classroom at California State University's East Bay campus, the professor of history retired.
"What kids need to learn," he says, "and what teachers must commit themselves fiercely to defending, is the fact that the mind isn't any sort of machine, that thinking with your own naked wits is a pure animal joy that cannot be programmed, and that great culture begins with an imagination on fire. We should remind our children at every turn that more great literature and more great science were accomplished with the quill pen than by the fastest microchip that will ever be invented."
Roszak's greatest fear is that technology "will reduce the mind to the level of the machine."
The Google syndrome. If Sesame Street taught generations that there are right and wrong answers, Google reinforces that lesson but makes no claim as to the accuracy of the answers.
Certainly, search engines and databases are vital in many disciplines, especially the medical sciences.
"In the setting of the medical school, particularly clinical encounters, wireless access is actually beneficial," says Lawrence H. Phillips, a professor of neurology at the University of Virginia. "There is often competition between students on rounds to see who can access clinically useful information the fastest.
"On the other hand, I think my 16-year-old and her friends text-message each other continuously during class and other times when they should be studying," he adds. "The IM function on the computer goes continuously when she is working on the computer at home. This type of behavior will certainly carry over into the college classroom."
Will the emerging distracted generations be able to meet complex challenges on the horizon, like global warming and pandemics?
David D. Ho, chief executive officer of the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center and a professor at Rockefeller University, is best known for his work in suppressing viral replication through the use of multiple-drug therapies. Early in his AIDS-related research, he would come upon treatments that succeeded in the lab but failed in humans — "but that's science," he has said. Soon he came to understand that the AIDS virus mutates rapidly, resisting each individual drug. That's when he and his team turned to mathematics, calculating probabilities of the virus mutating simultaneously around multiple therapies. Odds were in the patient's favor.
Computers can calculate those odds in a nanosecond, but they cannot formulate the question nor conceive the process by which to do so. Neither can Google.
"We should be teaching our students to think creatively or to become innovators, not just test takers," he says.
David J. Skorton, president of Cornell University, says that students have been doodling since the days of chalk and slate, "but the ability to check the weather or game scores or the headline news from their laptops during class puts an unprecedented barrier between the student and the instructor."
Coping methods. Dennis Adams, at the University of Houston, is adapting to the wireless classroom. When he makes an important point, he asks students to close their laptops and listen. "I don't abuse this," he says, "but use it as a way to summarize or to communicate a difficult concept." He concedes, however, the problem is probably more in changing the way professors teach.
That is predictable. According to the French philosopher Jacques Ellul (1912-94), technology is autonomous and "radically modifies the objects to which it is applied while being scarcely modified in its own features."
Apply technology to the economy, and the economy henceforth is about technology. Apply it to journalism, and journalism is about technology. Apply it to education, and education is about technology. All must adapt, and in so doing we lose centuries of erudition because principles no longer apply in practice. Worse, because autonomous technology is independent of everything, it cannot be blamed for anything.
To combat technology distractions, some universities are relying on educational campaigns to make students more sensitive to classroom etiquette. The University of Wisconsin at Madison provides information via links to Web pages that faculty members can note in their syllabi. One link (http://www.doit.wisc.edu/network/wireless/advice_stu.asp) encourages students to stay on task and not distract others or themselves. Another (http://www.doit.wisc.edu/network/wireless/advice_fac.asp) provides ground rules for wireless use and classroom laptop etiquette.
Jane Drews, information-technology security officer for the University of Iowa, believes that a solution to wireless distractions is etiquette education. "From the person who endlessly chats on a phone while in a restaurant, to someone's pager or cell going off in the middle of a presentation or lecture, we are creating a society of very rude technology users. We have an online class offered to freshmen that includes a Responsible Computing' module, with a section on netiquette.' I've suggested it be expanded to include classroom etiquette, too."
I have been advocating a required orientation class, "Interpersonal Intelligence," informing first-year students about when, where, and for what purpose technology is appropriate or inappropriate.
Perhaps the best suggestion comes from my associate dean, Zora Zimmerman, who proposes that student government take the lead with a campaign to "Reclaim the Classroom."
Despite digital distractions, ever-larger class sizes, decreased budgets, and fewer tenured colleagues, professors still are responsible for turning students on to learning. To do so, we just may have to turn off the technology.
Michael Bugeja, director of the Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication at Iowa State University, is the author of Interpersonal Divide: The Search for Community in a Technological Age (Oxford University Press, 2005).
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Saturday, February 03, 2007
The Strange Silence: Omission Explosion
No one is commenting on the kind of activities I am proposing instead of consuming the spectacle of football. Everyone is weighing in on football. That is telling in itself.
What about the alternatives proposed? They were supposed to be provocative and edifying.
What about the alternatives proposed? They were supposed to be provocative and edifying.
Thursday, February 01, 2007
More Super Bowl Party Ideas
1. Read a good book in one sitting.
2. Inspect your soul in silence for one hour.
3. Pray for the American church to wake up.
4. Pray for the global church, especially the suffering church.
5. Lament what needs to be lamented.
6. Rejoice in your salvation (if you are saved).
7. Ask yourself where you will spend forever (it isn't in a football stadium).
8. Read The Book of Romans.
9. Memorize Scripture.
10. Sing unto the Lord.
11. Recite Scripture unto the Lord.
12. Associate with the lowly.
13. Compose an essay on the moral viciousness of football.
14. See how many push ups you can do.
15. Organize your library (of books!).
16. Write a hand-written letter to someone.
17. Call someone you miss and try to edify them.
18. Fast unto the Lord, seeking wisdom.
19. Repent what needs to be repented of.
20. Listen to John Coltrane's "A Love Supreme" in one sitting through headphones.
21. Write poetry--even bad poetry.
22. Read poetry--only good poetry.
23. Pray for the Victoria's Secret Models.
2. Inspect your soul in silence for one hour.
3. Pray for the American church to wake up.
4. Pray for the global church, especially the suffering church.
5. Lament what needs to be lamented.
6. Rejoice in your salvation (if you are saved).
7. Ask yourself where you will spend forever (it isn't in a football stadium).
8. Read The Book of Romans.
9. Memorize Scripture.
10. Sing unto the Lord.
11. Recite Scripture unto the Lord.
12. Associate with the lowly.
13. Compose an essay on the moral viciousness of football.
14. See how many push ups you can do.
15. Organize your library (of books!).
16. Write a hand-written letter to someone.
17. Call someone you miss and try to edify them.
18. Fast unto the Lord, seeking wisdom.
19. Repent what needs to be repented of.
20. Listen to John Coltrane's "A Love Supreme" in one sitting through headphones.
21. Write poetry--even bad poetry.
22. Read poetry--only good poetry.
23. Pray for the Victoria's Secret Models.
Super bowl Party
The Curmudgeon Super bowl party is unlike any other:
1. You do not watch it.
2. You do not talk about it.
3. You do something constructive instead.
You abstain for edification.
1. You do not watch it.
2. You do not talk about it.
3. You do something constructive instead.
You abstain for edification.
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Question
"Are there any worldviews that don't contradict themselves?" This astute question came from a young student in my Ethic class at a local college. We have been discussing the meaning of life, worldviews, and ethics through the readings in Vice and Virtue in Everyday Life, 7th edition, edited by Sommers and Sommers.
I have filled in the worldview dimension of things through my lectures and outlines. We are asking which worldview can give an adequate support for moral values. We have assessed Eastern religious views and atheism (Bertrand Russell, Camus, Sartre).
I answered, "I think so, but you need to think it through for yourself. The rest of this class will be a way to do that."
A philosophy professor can live on a good question like that for quite some time. Ah, the serendipity of the enchanted classroom!
I have filled in the worldview dimension of things through my lectures and outlines. We are asking which worldview can give an adequate support for moral values. We have assessed Eastern religious views and atheism (Bertrand Russell, Camus, Sartre).
I answered, "I think so, but you need to think it through for yourself. The rest of this class will be a way to do that."
A philosophy professor can live on a good question like that for quite some time. Ah, the serendipity of the enchanted classroom!
New book by Phillip Jenkins
[This review was just published in DenverJournal.]
Philip Jenkins, The New Faces of Christianity: Believing the Bible in the Global South. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. 252 pages with index.
Philip Jenkins, Distinguished Professor of History and Religious Studies at Pennsylvania State University, is a prolific author and a clear, engaging writer who has addressed a host of different topics in his many books. Recently, however, he has captured the attention of many evangelicals because of two of his recent works. In 2001 he published Hidden Gospels, a blistering attack on revisionist interpretations of Jesus. He convincingly argues that headline-making scholars of the Jesus Seminar sort traded far more heavily on novelty and sensationalism than on critical and judicious scholarship. In 2002 he made even more waves with the publication of The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity, which brought acclaim from many sources, evangelical and otherwise. The thesis of that book—that Christianity is exploding in unprecedented and often heterodox ways outside of Europe and North America (that is, in “the global south”)—is further elaborated in this fascinating and important book on how these new expressions of Christianity are appropriating the Bible for themselves, often apart from Western influences. Jenkins is a Roman Catholic whose own theological perspective is fairly muted throughout the book. He writes more as a chronicler than as a theologian or philosopher, although his own take on the global south’s engagement with Scripture does come to surface in several places, as I will note below.
Jenkins begins by noting that African Anglicans are far more conservative than the bulk of their American counterparts. While American Anglicans (Episcopalians) may tolerate or endorse homosexual behavior, abortion, and other liberal shibboleths, African Anglicans take the Bible in a more straightforward way. Bishop Benjamin Nzimbi of Kenya says, “Our understanding of the Bible is far different from them. We are two different churches.” Generally speaking, those in the global south—African or otherwise—approach the Bible without the secular influences that have pressed down on Western forms of Christianity. These Christians are thus far more open to the supernatural reports of Scripture—given the spiritual worldview of their native cultures--and take the Bible to have a supernatural power of its own not often considered by Western Christians, even of a more conservative bent.
After considering the more conservative theological approach of Christian movements in the global south in the chapter, “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?” Jenkins presents chapters on the basic view of those in the global south on the efficacy of Scripture, the understanding of the Old Testament in light of the New, the understanding of poverty and wealth, the engagement of good and evil, their theology of persecution and vindication, the struggle between good and evil, and the relationship of women and men. He concludes with reflections on the global south’s understanding of Scripture can challenge American Christians.
Each chapter is richly illustrated with stories and ideas from Christians in Africa, South America, Korea, and elsewhere. Jenkins realizes that he must simplify and generalize considerably to speak of the global south’s take on the Bible, since these many Christians do not all speak with one voice. However, he does discern common themes and finds areas in which Western Christians can learn from these other believers. Jenkins is not romantic in his exposition, however. While his editorial voice is generally soft, he does highlight areas of concern for those in the West. For example, a pressing ethical question for Christians in much of Africa is polygamy. Besides the occasional headline in the United States about Mormon-influenced polygamists, this seldom gets our attention, and practically stimulates a protracted debate. When I participated in an apologetics question-answer session with a small group at Denver Seminary in 2004, the first question was asked by a student from Ghana. What should be done with a man who converts to Christianity who already has several wives? In my many years of teaching ethics, I had never spoken on that topic and had never been asked about it. The answer I gave, however, was far different from that given by many native Africans who read the stories of the polygamous patriarchs and find justification for polygamy as an ongoing institution. (Jesus speaks against this in Matthew 19:4-6 where he recognizes the monogamy as the original and blessed order of creation.)
While Jenkins seems skeptical of the realities of the demonic and the need for direct spiritual engagement with these realities, many in the global south see the situation very differently. In this sense, they are far closer to a biblical worldview than most American Christians who somehow read over or relativize the many biblical passages that speak to the realities of the struggle between the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of darkness and which declare the cosmic victory of Jesus Christ (see Acts 13:1-12; Ephesians 6:10-18; Colossians 2:13-15, and so on). As Jenkins writes, “…precious little is left of the New Testament after we purge all mention of angels, demons, and spirits. Shorn of healing and miraculous cures, the four gospels would be a slim pamphlet indeed” (99). Jenkins reports that one Western Christian leader was surprised to find that upon his arrival in Africa he was expected to cast out demons, something with which he had no familiarity. While Jenkins’ handling of this material on the engagement of the supernatural is uneven (he does not fathom very clearly the dynamics of the occult world), a reader more deeply rooted in the inspiration, authority, and inerrancy of Scripture should come away with a more profound respect for the workings of the spiritual world.
This important book deserves much more discussion, since Jenkins covers so much ground so provocatively. Jenkins is not, however, without his faults. For example, he makes several summary statements about Islam in relation to Christianity that reveal both his lack of awareness of Islam’s utter incompatibility with Christianity and Islam’s intrinsically militant nature. (For a better informed and insider perspective in Christianity and Islam see Mark Gabriel, Islam and Terrorism [Lake Mary, FL: Frontline, 2005].) Nevertheless, the book provides a needful cartography of the new, sprawling, global, Christian landscape. Given the expansion of Christian faith in the global south and its waning influence in the West, the global south’s perspective on Scripture should be of central concern to Christians who take the Bible seriously as the epistemological foundation for their faith. What can these sisters and brothers teach us? How might we help correct and instruct them? Where has their interpretation of Scripture fallen prey to syncretism? Where has ours fallen prey to secularism and its anti-supernatural prejudices?
Jenkins does not straightforwardly consider the objective authority and meaning of Scripture, although he mercifully does not adopt a postmodernist approach that dissolves every text into endless social contingencies. It is not clear whether he thinks that the Bible has a determinate meaning that is ascertainable through proper study (exegesis). However, if this is not the case, the danger is that Scripture becomes a wax nose that can be twisted into many different shapes. Scripture itself warns against this (Jeremiah 8:8; Matthew 15:1-4; 2 Peter 3:16). Therefore, in learning how nonwestern Christians approach the Bible, Western Christians should consider whether their interpretations and appropriations truly fit the objective meaning of the text. (On the philosophy of hermeneutics, see William Klein, Craig Blomberg, and Robert Hubbard, Introduction to Biblical Interpretation: Revised and Expanded. [Nashville: Nelson Reference, 2004].) This engagement should be neither a call to unthinking conservatism (“We’ve got all the truth already, thank you.”) nor to unanchored liberalism (“It’s all up for grabs, since orthodoxy is what you make it.”). Rather, as a Puritan of old put it, “There may yet be more truth to break forth from God’s word.” Notice the emphasis on “truth” in that statement. The inspired truth has always been there; however, it may have gone unrecognized because of our cultural blinders. However, we will also find errors, ignorance, and turpitude in the global south, since they, too, “see only a reflection as in a mirror” (1 Corinthians 13:12). But By considering how those in the global south are reading, believing, and applying the Bible, we may be able to find more truth in Scripture than we might have otherwise. (Consulting the new Africa Bible Commentary, Tokunboh Adeyemo ed. [Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2006], which is edited and written by Africans with a uniformly high view of the Bible, can assist us to this end as well.)
Douglas Groothuis Ph.D.
Professor of Philosophy
Denver SeminaryDecember 2006
Philip Jenkins, The New Faces of Christianity: Believing the Bible in the Global South. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. 252 pages with index.
Philip Jenkins, Distinguished Professor of History and Religious Studies at Pennsylvania State University, is a prolific author and a clear, engaging writer who has addressed a host of different topics in his many books. Recently, however, he has captured the attention of many evangelicals because of two of his recent works. In 2001 he published Hidden Gospels, a blistering attack on revisionist interpretations of Jesus. He convincingly argues that headline-making scholars of the Jesus Seminar sort traded far more heavily on novelty and sensationalism than on critical and judicious scholarship. In 2002 he made even more waves with the publication of The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity, which brought acclaim from many sources, evangelical and otherwise. The thesis of that book—that Christianity is exploding in unprecedented and often heterodox ways outside of Europe and North America (that is, in “the global south”)—is further elaborated in this fascinating and important book on how these new expressions of Christianity are appropriating the Bible for themselves, often apart from Western influences. Jenkins is a Roman Catholic whose own theological perspective is fairly muted throughout the book. He writes more as a chronicler than as a theologian or philosopher, although his own take on the global south’s engagement with Scripture does come to surface in several places, as I will note below.
Jenkins begins by noting that African Anglicans are far more conservative than the bulk of their American counterparts. While American Anglicans (Episcopalians) may tolerate or endorse homosexual behavior, abortion, and other liberal shibboleths, African Anglicans take the Bible in a more straightforward way. Bishop Benjamin Nzimbi of Kenya says, “Our understanding of the Bible is far different from them. We are two different churches.” Generally speaking, those in the global south—African or otherwise—approach the Bible without the secular influences that have pressed down on Western forms of Christianity. These Christians are thus far more open to the supernatural reports of Scripture—given the spiritual worldview of their native cultures--and take the Bible to have a supernatural power of its own not often considered by Western Christians, even of a more conservative bent.
After considering the more conservative theological approach of Christian movements in the global south in the chapter, “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?” Jenkins presents chapters on the basic view of those in the global south on the efficacy of Scripture, the understanding of the Old Testament in light of the New, the understanding of poverty and wealth, the engagement of good and evil, their theology of persecution and vindication, the struggle between good and evil, and the relationship of women and men. He concludes with reflections on the global south’s understanding of Scripture can challenge American Christians.
Each chapter is richly illustrated with stories and ideas from Christians in Africa, South America, Korea, and elsewhere. Jenkins realizes that he must simplify and generalize considerably to speak of the global south’s take on the Bible, since these many Christians do not all speak with one voice. However, he does discern common themes and finds areas in which Western Christians can learn from these other believers. Jenkins is not romantic in his exposition, however. While his editorial voice is generally soft, he does highlight areas of concern for those in the West. For example, a pressing ethical question for Christians in much of Africa is polygamy. Besides the occasional headline in the United States about Mormon-influenced polygamists, this seldom gets our attention, and practically stimulates a protracted debate. When I participated in an apologetics question-answer session with a small group at Denver Seminary in 2004, the first question was asked by a student from Ghana. What should be done with a man who converts to Christianity who already has several wives? In my many years of teaching ethics, I had never spoken on that topic and had never been asked about it. The answer I gave, however, was far different from that given by many native Africans who read the stories of the polygamous patriarchs and find justification for polygamy as an ongoing institution. (Jesus speaks against this in Matthew 19:4-6 where he recognizes the monogamy as the original and blessed order of creation.)
While Jenkins seems skeptical of the realities of the demonic and the need for direct spiritual engagement with these realities, many in the global south see the situation very differently. In this sense, they are far closer to a biblical worldview than most American Christians who somehow read over or relativize the many biblical passages that speak to the realities of the struggle between the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of darkness and which declare the cosmic victory of Jesus Christ (see Acts 13:1-12; Ephesians 6:10-18; Colossians 2:13-15, and so on). As Jenkins writes, “…precious little is left of the New Testament after we purge all mention of angels, demons, and spirits. Shorn of healing and miraculous cures, the four gospels would be a slim pamphlet indeed” (99). Jenkins reports that one Western Christian leader was surprised to find that upon his arrival in Africa he was expected to cast out demons, something with which he had no familiarity. While Jenkins’ handling of this material on the engagement of the supernatural is uneven (he does not fathom very clearly the dynamics of the occult world), a reader more deeply rooted in the inspiration, authority, and inerrancy of Scripture should come away with a more profound respect for the workings of the spiritual world.
This important book deserves much more discussion, since Jenkins covers so much ground so provocatively. Jenkins is not, however, without his faults. For example, he makes several summary statements about Islam in relation to Christianity that reveal both his lack of awareness of Islam’s utter incompatibility with Christianity and Islam’s intrinsically militant nature. (For a better informed and insider perspective in Christianity and Islam see Mark Gabriel, Islam and Terrorism [Lake Mary, FL: Frontline, 2005].) Nevertheless, the book provides a needful cartography of the new, sprawling, global, Christian landscape. Given the expansion of Christian faith in the global south and its waning influence in the West, the global south’s perspective on Scripture should be of central concern to Christians who take the Bible seriously as the epistemological foundation for their faith. What can these sisters and brothers teach us? How might we help correct and instruct them? Where has their interpretation of Scripture fallen prey to syncretism? Where has ours fallen prey to secularism and its anti-supernatural prejudices?
Jenkins does not straightforwardly consider the objective authority and meaning of Scripture, although he mercifully does not adopt a postmodernist approach that dissolves every text into endless social contingencies. It is not clear whether he thinks that the Bible has a determinate meaning that is ascertainable through proper study (exegesis). However, if this is not the case, the danger is that Scripture becomes a wax nose that can be twisted into many different shapes. Scripture itself warns against this (Jeremiah 8:8; Matthew 15:1-4; 2 Peter 3:16). Therefore, in learning how nonwestern Christians approach the Bible, Western Christians should consider whether their interpretations and appropriations truly fit the objective meaning of the text. (On the philosophy of hermeneutics, see William Klein, Craig Blomberg, and Robert Hubbard, Introduction to Biblical Interpretation: Revised and Expanded. [Nashville: Nelson Reference, 2004].) This engagement should be neither a call to unthinking conservatism (“We’ve got all the truth already, thank you.”) nor to unanchored liberalism (“It’s all up for grabs, since orthodoxy is what you make it.”). Rather, as a Puritan of old put it, “There may yet be more truth to break forth from God’s word.” Notice the emphasis on “truth” in that statement. The inspired truth has always been there; however, it may have gone unrecognized because of our cultural blinders. However, we will also find errors, ignorance, and turpitude in the global south, since they, too, “see only a reflection as in a mirror” (1 Corinthians 13:12). But By considering how those in the global south are reading, believing, and applying the Bible, we may be able to find more truth in Scripture than we might have otherwise. (Consulting the new Africa Bible Commentary, Tokunboh Adeyemo ed. [Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2006], which is edited and written by Africans with a uniformly high view of the Bible, can assist us to this end as well.)
Douglas Groothuis Ph.D.
Professor of Philosophy
Denver SeminaryDecember 2006
New Book about Francis Schaeffer's Apologetics
[This was just published in DenverJournal, the on-line book review journal of Denver Seminary.]
Bryan A. Follis, Truth With Love: The Apologetics of Francis Schaeffer. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2005. $15.99 paperback. 206 pages, no index.
As one who awoke to the intellectual richness and cultural depth of the Christian worldview in the mid-1970s through the writings of evangelist-apologist-activist Francis Schaeffer (1912-1984), I often worry that the next generation will fail to heed the challenge and receive the inspiration Schaeffer gave us through both his writings and his life of discipleship. Truth With Love is thus heartening because it winsomely explains both the rational and the relational apologetic of Francis Schaeffer to those who may not have otherwise heard the good news.
This book is a revised doctoral dissertation, but one that succeeds in being both intellectually meaty and existentially appealing to those outside the strictly academic crowd. There are plenty of quotations and footnotes, as well as personal interviews with those who knew Schaeffer well. While such a well-documented book needs an index of names and subjects as well as a bibliography, unfortunately, it has neither.
The promotional sheet put out by the publisher claims that the book can help ingratiate Schaeffer to “the emergent conversation” (or the emerging church movement). While the book itself does not take this particular angle (except to say that Schaeffer’s approach is appropriate for reaching postmodern unbelievers), Schaeffer should appeal to those in the emergent movement who are weary of religious cliches, formulas, legalism, and dead orthodoxy, since Schaeffer left those things behind when he abandoned the Fundamentalist movement in the early 1950s. Schaeffer’s approach will also offer them a theological and philosophical depth not always encountered in “the emergent conversation.”
Follis begins with a chapter called “Schaeffer in Context,” which traces briefly Schaeffer’s historical and theological background. Schaeffer came of age during the Fundamentalist/Modernist split and was a Fundamentalist Presbyterian minister until the early 1950s when he and his wife Edith formed the L’Abri (which means “shelter”) community in the Swiss Alps as a safe place for those seeking “honest answers to honest questions,” as Schaeffer put it.
Schaeffer was always a man of the Reformation. His break with the legalism and lack of love in Fundamentalism never severed him from his Calvinistic commitments, although he was never a doctrinaire or pugilistic kind of Calvinist (as many are today). Thus, Follis begins with a chapter called “Calvin and the Reformed Tradition,” which explores Calvin’s doctrines—particularly the image of God, the noetic effects of sin, and general revelation—as they relate to apologetics. Follis notes that those in the Reformed tradition interpreted Calvin in various ways, due possibly to some imprecision or ambiguity in Calvin’s writings on the subject. The Old Princeton school of A.A. Hodge, Charles Hodge, B.B. Warfield, and J. Gresham Machen found in Calvin incentive to develop a strong apologetic based on the deliverances of reason—reason that was accessible even to the nonChristian mind. This apologetic approach involved argumentation from natural theology and the giving of Christian evidences for the reliability of Scripture. On the other hand, Abraham Kuyper, the great Dutch theologian, journalist, and politician, took a presuppositional approach that granted no substantial common ground between the believer and the unbeliever. This method greatly influenced Cornelius Van Til (one of Schaeffer’s professors), who developed it through a long career at Westminster Theological Seminary and is known for his “presuppositionalism.”
With this foundation laid, the next three chapters assiduously analyze and defend Schaeffer’s apologetic method against various charges. Chapter two, “Arguments and Approach,” explains Schaeffer’s apologetic, which developed organically out of years of face-to-face evangelism with hundreds of questioning souls—mostly students and younger people—in the 1950s and 1960s. (His books came later and all grew out of his conversations, lecturing, and preaching.) The church was no longer communicating biblical truth to the younger generation because each employed different ideas of truth. The seismic cultural and intellectual upheavals of the twentieth century had brought formerly common sense notions of truth and its discovery into question. Schaeffer, ever the student of people in their concrete situations, realized that the battle for hearts and minds and cultures was being waged on a new level. Christians could no longer assume that unbelievers even understand the basic ideas of the Christian worldview. Therefore, Schaeffer traced the decline of the idea of objective truth as it affected philosophy, theology, and the arts, and sought to bring people to a realization of its implications for meaning, morality, and humanness.
Schaeffer argued that since we are made in God’s image and dwell in God’s world, we cannot totally suppress the objective truths of our unique humanity (“the mannishness of man,” as he put it). This includes our conscience and our desire for real love and significance. But insomuch as the unbeliever is consistent with his nonChristian worldview, he must deny one or more of these truths and put himself into a position of tension between the logic of his presuppositions and what he really takes the world to be like. Schaeffer aimed to highlight this by “taking the roof off” of the nonChristian worldview. This was preliminary to presenting the Christian message. Once one understands the inadequacies of one’s worldview, the Christian message will look far more credible, especially if it answers questions otherwise unanswerable. Schaeffer was particularly adept at this form of negative apologetics, but never practiced it in a combative or insensitive manner. In fact, he strictly warned against engaging in apologetics as a game. He always affirmed that Christianity must be lovingly presented as objectively true, rational, and meaningful to all of life. We need not put Christianity into a nonrational, mystical “upper story” untethered to facts and logic. No, Christianity explains all of life better than any rival viewpoint.
Follis’s next two chapters, “Rationality and Spirituality” and “Academic or Apologist?” take up matters of debate concerning Schaeffer’s apologetic method and whether or not it was consistently Reformed. Follis covers this contested terrain fairly well, although most of these debates are at least two decades old and of little interest to those not already interested in Schaeffer or in apologetic method. Nevertheless, Follis sizes up the key issue adroitly and defends Schaeffer’s apologetic approach, which he identifies as a nontechnical form of verificationism. That is, Christianity is presented as a hypothesis to be verified or refuted by various lines of evidence. In this, Schaeffer’s approach was similar to that of the brilliant apologist Edward John Carnell. But Schaeffer seldom quoted Carnell, and the similarity of method seems to be more coincidental than the result of studied emulation. Schaeffer was, therefore, neither a presuppositionalist nor an evidentialist, although he has been wrongly accused of being both. Although Schaeffer did build a cumulative case for the rationality and livability of the Christian worldview, he did not stress the specific historical evidences for the reliability of the Bible. While this dimension of historical verification has always been a vital part of apologetic endeavor, the need for a substantial apologetic from history has increased in light recent scholarly and popular interest in “the historical Jesus.” Follis would have done well to make this point, but he does not. Moreover, even the more philosophically developed verificationism of Carnell does not support natural theology per se. But in recent decades the various arguments for God’s existence—ontological, cosmological, design, moral, and religious experience—have been revived and formulated quite cogently. Any well-orbed contemporary apologetic should make good use of these cognitive resources.
Follis underscores the fact that Schaeffer was not an academic by training or vocation. He did not have endless leisure time to spend in the study in order to refine his theories. People were literally pounding on the doors wanting to talk about the meaning of life! Schaeffer painted with a broad brush, but seldom blurred the issues. He never claimed to be the last word on any subject, but always gave an important first word on how subjects should be addressed.
The last chapter, “Love as the Final Apologetic,” argues that Schaeffer’s apologetic was never a matter of abstract theorizing. Rather, it was born of person-to-person engagement in Schaeffer’s own home at L’Abri where he and Edith practiced radical hospitality. Schaeffer believed that “the final apologetic” was the love among Christians and of Christians of unbelievers. Decades before evangelicals began to write on “community,” Schaeffer advocated and lived out a radical dependence on God in community. The Schaeffers began L’Abri by simply opening their home to skeptics and inquirers. This became a full-time ministry as hundreds of people came to study, work, and eat with the Schaeffers and other Christian workers. There was a cost: family life was stretched, all the Schaeffer’s wedding gifts were trashed, and some of the pilgrims were less than pleasant to work with. Schaeffer’s later books and global influence stemmed from this lived-out reality. There was no grand plan for a series of books or an influential intellectual platform. There was, in fact, no methodology! Rather, the Schaeffers wanted to live in such as way as to demonstrate the reality of God. They did not solicit funds or advertise their ministry. Instead, they prayed, served, and sought God day by day.
Follis emphasizes that the principles they lived out are articulated in Schaeffer’s book, True Spirituality, which is crucial to Schaeffer’s entire apologetic. Schaeffer taught that one must live in total and constant dependence on the Holy Spirit for the entirety of the Christian life, including apologetic and evangelistic encounters. Prayer is as important as solid arguments. They must go hand in glove.
Follis wisely argues that Schaeffer’s wedding of rational argument with a loving personal presence is well suited to reach contemporary unbelievers influenced by postmodernism. In fact, in some ways, Schaeffer saw postmodernism coming without calling it by name. For example, in Escape from Reason, he critiqued Michel Foucault before most evangelicals had even heard of him. While many postmoderns seem uninterested in “consistency” (an important concept and word for Schaeffer), they are very concerned with “honesty.” So, one can use Schaeffer’s method of “taking the roof off” of nonChristian worldviews by appealing to honesty. For example, “Can you honestly value humans above animals on the basis of a materialistic philosophy? Are you being honest with your own beliefs about this?” Or: “Can you honestly affirm that love has genuine meaning if we are nothing but the result of time, chance, matter, natural law, and long periods of time? Can you honestly say that?”
Despite being timely, well-written, well-researched, and careful in its treatment of the topic of Schaeffer’s apologetic, Truth With Love has a few drawbacks. First, the book does not emphasis sufficiently the role of art and beauty in Schaeffer’s apologetics. Christianity, according to Schaeffer, must be commended through artistic beauty and the appreciation of the arts as much as it should be rationally defended through arguments. This element of beauty in the Christian life served as an integral aspect of Schaeffer’s overall apologetic. Follis makes some mention of this theme but, to my mind, does not do it proper justice. For example, despite copious references to the Schaeffer corpus, there is no reference to Schaeffer’s important and insightful booklet, Art and the Bible. Second, Follis mishandles a few matters of the philosophy of religion as well. He gives a caricatured description of foundationalism, not mentioning there are various versions of foundationalism. When Follis gives an excursus on Reformed epistemology (advanced principally by Alvin Plantinga) he does not sufficiently explain its relationship to Schaeffer’s method, which was not that of a Reformed epistemologist.
Despite these minor flaws, my hope is that Truth With Love will help initiate another generation of thinking Christians into the large and inspiring world of Francis Schaeffer.
Douglas Groothuis, Ph.D.,
Professor of Philosophy
Denver Seminary
December 2006
Bryan A. Follis, Truth With Love: The Apologetics of Francis Schaeffer. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2005. $15.99 paperback. 206 pages, no index.
As one who awoke to the intellectual richness and cultural depth of the Christian worldview in the mid-1970s through the writings of evangelist-apologist-activist Francis Schaeffer (1912-1984), I often worry that the next generation will fail to heed the challenge and receive the inspiration Schaeffer gave us through both his writings and his life of discipleship. Truth With Love is thus heartening because it winsomely explains both the rational and the relational apologetic of Francis Schaeffer to those who may not have otherwise heard the good news.
This book is a revised doctoral dissertation, but one that succeeds in being both intellectually meaty and existentially appealing to those outside the strictly academic crowd. There are plenty of quotations and footnotes, as well as personal interviews with those who knew Schaeffer well. While such a well-documented book needs an index of names and subjects as well as a bibliography, unfortunately, it has neither.
The promotional sheet put out by the publisher claims that the book can help ingratiate Schaeffer to “the emergent conversation” (or the emerging church movement). While the book itself does not take this particular angle (except to say that Schaeffer’s approach is appropriate for reaching postmodern unbelievers), Schaeffer should appeal to those in the emergent movement who are weary of religious cliches, formulas, legalism, and dead orthodoxy, since Schaeffer left those things behind when he abandoned the Fundamentalist movement in the early 1950s. Schaeffer’s approach will also offer them a theological and philosophical depth not always encountered in “the emergent conversation.”
Follis begins with a chapter called “Schaeffer in Context,” which traces briefly Schaeffer’s historical and theological background. Schaeffer came of age during the Fundamentalist/Modernist split and was a Fundamentalist Presbyterian minister until the early 1950s when he and his wife Edith formed the L’Abri (which means “shelter”) community in the Swiss Alps as a safe place for those seeking “honest answers to honest questions,” as Schaeffer put it.
Schaeffer was always a man of the Reformation. His break with the legalism and lack of love in Fundamentalism never severed him from his Calvinistic commitments, although he was never a doctrinaire or pugilistic kind of Calvinist (as many are today). Thus, Follis begins with a chapter called “Calvin and the Reformed Tradition,” which explores Calvin’s doctrines—particularly the image of God, the noetic effects of sin, and general revelation—as they relate to apologetics. Follis notes that those in the Reformed tradition interpreted Calvin in various ways, due possibly to some imprecision or ambiguity in Calvin’s writings on the subject. The Old Princeton school of A.A. Hodge, Charles Hodge, B.B. Warfield, and J. Gresham Machen found in Calvin incentive to develop a strong apologetic based on the deliverances of reason—reason that was accessible even to the nonChristian mind. This apologetic approach involved argumentation from natural theology and the giving of Christian evidences for the reliability of Scripture. On the other hand, Abraham Kuyper, the great Dutch theologian, journalist, and politician, took a presuppositional approach that granted no substantial common ground between the believer and the unbeliever. This method greatly influenced Cornelius Van Til (one of Schaeffer’s professors), who developed it through a long career at Westminster Theological Seminary and is known for his “presuppositionalism.”
With this foundation laid, the next three chapters assiduously analyze and defend Schaeffer’s apologetic method against various charges. Chapter two, “Arguments and Approach,” explains Schaeffer’s apologetic, which developed organically out of years of face-to-face evangelism with hundreds of questioning souls—mostly students and younger people—in the 1950s and 1960s. (His books came later and all grew out of his conversations, lecturing, and preaching.) The church was no longer communicating biblical truth to the younger generation because each employed different ideas of truth. The seismic cultural and intellectual upheavals of the twentieth century had brought formerly common sense notions of truth and its discovery into question. Schaeffer, ever the student of people in their concrete situations, realized that the battle for hearts and minds and cultures was being waged on a new level. Christians could no longer assume that unbelievers even understand the basic ideas of the Christian worldview. Therefore, Schaeffer traced the decline of the idea of objective truth as it affected philosophy, theology, and the arts, and sought to bring people to a realization of its implications for meaning, morality, and humanness.
Schaeffer argued that since we are made in God’s image and dwell in God’s world, we cannot totally suppress the objective truths of our unique humanity (“the mannishness of man,” as he put it). This includes our conscience and our desire for real love and significance. But insomuch as the unbeliever is consistent with his nonChristian worldview, he must deny one or more of these truths and put himself into a position of tension between the logic of his presuppositions and what he really takes the world to be like. Schaeffer aimed to highlight this by “taking the roof off” of the nonChristian worldview. This was preliminary to presenting the Christian message. Once one understands the inadequacies of one’s worldview, the Christian message will look far more credible, especially if it answers questions otherwise unanswerable. Schaeffer was particularly adept at this form of negative apologetics, but never practiced it in a combative or insensitive manner. In fact, he strictly warned against engaging in apologetics as a game. He always affirmed that Christianity must be lovingly presented as objectively true, rational, and meaningful to all of life. We need not put Christianity into a nonrational, mystical “upper story” untethered to facts and logic. No, Christianity explains all of life better than any rival viewpoint.
Follis’s next two chapters, “Rationality and Spirituality” and “Academic or Apologist?” take up matters of debate concerning Schaeffer’s apologetic method and whether or not it was consistently Reformed. Follis covers this contested terrain fairly well, although most of these debates are at least two decades old and of little interest to those not already interested in Schaeffer or in apologetic method. Nevertheless, Follis sizes up the key issue adroitly and defends Schaeffer’s apologetic approach, which he identifies as a nontechnical form of verificationism. That is, Christianity is presented as a hypothesis to be verified or refuted by various lines of evidence. In this, Schaeffer’s approach was similar to that of the brilliant apologist Edward John Carnell. But Schaeffer seldom quoted Carnell, and the similarity of method seems to be more coincidental than the result of studied emulation. Schaeffer was, therefore, neither a presuppositionalist nor an evidentialist, although he has been wrongly accused of being both. Although Schaeffer did build a cumulative case for the rationality and livability of the Christian worldview, he did not stress the specific historical evidences for the reliability of the Bible. While this dimension of historical verification has always been a vital part of apologetic endeavor, the need for a substantial apologetic from history has increased in light recent scholarly and popular interest in “the historical Jesus.” Follis would have done well to make this point, but he does not. Moreover, even the more philosophically developed verificationism of Carnell does not support natural theology per se. But in recent decades the various arguments for God’s existence—ontological, cosmological, design, moral, and religious experience—have been revived and formulated quite cogently. Any well-orbed contemporary apologetic should make good use of these cognitive resources.
Follis underscores the fact that Schaeffer was not an academic by training or vocation. He did not have endless leisure time to spend in the study in order to refine his theories. People were literally pounding on the doors wanting to talk about the meaning of life! Schaeffer painted with a broad brush, but seldom blurred the issues. He never claimed to be the last word on any subject, but always gave an important first word on how subjects should be addressed.
The last chapter, “Love as the Final Apologetic,” argues that Schaeffer’s apologetic was never a matter of abstract theorizing. Rather, it was born of person-to-person engagement in Schaeffer’s own home at L’Abri where he and Edith practiced radical hospitality. Schaeffer believed that “the final apologetic” was the love among Christians and of Christians of unbelievers. Decades before evangelicals began to write on “community,” Schaeffer advocated and lived out a radical dependence on God in community. The Schaeffers began L’Abri by simply opening their home to skeptics and inquirers. This became a full-time ministry as hundreds of people came to study, work, and eat with the Schaeffers and other Christian workers. There was a cost: family life was stretched, all the Schaeffer’s wedding gifts were trashed, and some of the pilgrims were less than pleasant to work with. Schaeffer’s later books and global influence stemmed from this lived-out reality. There was no grand plan for a series of books or an influential intellectual platform. There was, in fact, no methodology! Rather, the Schaeffers wanted to live in such as way as to demonstrate the reality of God. They did not solicit funds or advertise their ministry. Instead, they prayed, served, and sought God day by day.
Follis emphasizes that the principles they lived out are articulated in Schaeffer’s book, True Spirituality, which is crucial to Schaeffer’s entire apologetic. Schaeffer taught that one must live in total and constant dependence on the Holy Spirit for the entirety of the Christian life, including apologetic and evangelistic encounters. Prayer is as important as solid arguments. They must go hand in glove.
Follis wisely argues that Schaeffer’s wedding of rational argument with a loving personal presence is well suited to reach contemporary unbelievers influenced by postmodernism. In fact, in some ways, Schaeffer saw postmodernism coming without calling it by name. For example, in Escape from Reason, he critiqued Michel Foucault before most evangelicals had even heard of him. While many postmoderns seem uninterested in “consistency” (an important concept and word for Schaeffer), they are very concerned with “honesty.” So, one can use Schaeffer’s method of “taking the roof off” of nonChristian worldviews by appealing to honesty. For example, “Can you honestly value humans above animals on the basis of a materialistic philosophy? Are you being honest with your own beliefs about this?” Or: “Can you honestly affirm that love has genuine meaning if we are nothing but the result of time, chance, matter, natural law, and long periods of time? Can you honestly say that?”
Despite being timely, well-written, well-researched, and careful in its treatment of the topic of Schaeffer’s apologetic, Truth With Love has a few drawbacks. First, the book does not emphasis sufficiently the role of art and beauty in Schaeffer’s apologetics. Christianity, according to Schaeffer, must be commended through artistic beauty and the appreciation of the arts as much as it should be rationally defended through arguments. This element of beauty in the Christian life served as an integral aspect of Schaeffer’s overall apologetic. Follis makes some mention of this theme but, to my mind, does not do it proper justice. For example, despite copious references to the Schaeffer corpus, there is no reference to Schaeffer’s important and insightful booklet, Art and the Bible. Second, Follis mishandles a few matters of the philosophy of religion as well. He gives a caricatured description of foundationalism, not mentioning there are various versions of foundationalism. When Follis gives an excursus on Reformed epistemology (advanced principally by Alvin Plantinga) he does not sufficiently explain its relationship to Schaeffer’s method, which was not that of a Reformed epistemologist.
Despite these minor flaws, my hope is that Truth With Love will help initiate another generation of thinking Christians into the large and inspiring world of Francis Schaeffer.
Douglas Groothuis, Ph.D.,
Professor of Philosophy
Denver Seminary
December 2006
Saturday, January 27, 2007
Conference for World Christians at Denver Seminary
Denver Seminary will be hosting a Conference for World Christians, featuring my good friend, Tony Weedor as the speaker. Tony has an M.Div. from Denver Seminary, with an emphasis in Philosophy of Religion. He is the Director of Centerpoint International, a ministry dedicated to rebuilding the moral, intellectual, and spiritual foundations of his native country, Liberia. I will be introducing Tony each day. Please attend for a richer understanding of the advancement of the Kingdom globally. Denver Seminary is located at 6399 S. Santa Fe Drive in Littleton, Colorado.
1/29 Conference for World Christians 11:00 am
Tony Weedor, speaker, "Overview of the Church Going Home"
Ministry Fair 12:00 noon - 1:00 pm
1/30 Conference for World Christians 11:00 am
Tony Weedor, speaker, "The Homeward Bound: Asia, Latin America, Africa"
Food from Around the World Lunch 12:00 noon - 1:00 pm
1/29 Conference for World Christians 11:00 am
Tony Weedor, speaker, "Overview of the Church Going Home"
Ministry Fair 12:00 noon - 1:00 pm
1/30 Conference for World Christians 11:00 am
Tony Weedor, speaker, "The Homeward Bound: Asia, Latin America, Africa"
Food from Around the World Lunch 12:00 noon - 1:00 pm
Friday, January 26, 2007
The First Ever: Curmudgeon Cruise
Book your spot now on the first ever annual Curmudgeon Cruise. Why bother with the chronic entertainment, endless overeating, celebrity speeches, predictably good weather, and perpetual sight-seeing offered by standard, boring cruises when you can have these lectures given in person with a scowl?
1. Eight principles on how to offend friends and enemies with the truth.
2. How to dissolve an audience in mirth without ever smiling.
3. Six principles for using the Bible to embarrass yourself and others.
4. How to insult others without them knowing it--right away.
5. Speed reading Kierkegaard (and other curmudgeons) for fun and profit.
6. Nine ways to denude celebrity Christians.
7. Seven ways to refer to obscure thinkers and jazz musicians in everyday language such that others are amazed, perplexed, and dismayed.
8. And much, much more!
This special, limited offer cruise offers absolutely no creature comforts, no self-congratulatory events of any kind, and will sail only in rainy, rough, windy weather--in order to toughen the soul for curmudgeonly enterprise.
Space is limited. Sign up today!
1. Eight principles on how to offend friends and enemies with the truth.
2. How to dissolve an audience in mirth without ever smiling.
3. Six principles for using the Bible to embarrass yourself and others.
4. How to insult others without them knowing it--right away.
5. Speed reading Kierkegaard (and other curmudgeons) for fun and profit.
6. Nine ways to denude celebrity Christians.
7. Seven ways to refer to obscure thinkers and jazz musicians in everyday language such that others are amazed, perplexed, and dismayed.
8. And much, much more!
This special, limited offer cruise offers absolutely no creature comforts, no self-congratulatory events of any kind, and will sail only in rainy, rough, windy weather--in order to toughen the soul for curmudgeonly enterprise.
Space is limited. Sign up today!
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