As an amateur philosopher/theologian, I often run across apologetical studies and apologitsts. Christian philosophers seem to naturally fall into the role of apologist by virtue of the very nature of philosophy. After all, philosophy deals with those key questions. Where did we come from? How did we get here? Where are we going? What is the meaning of life? Christians believe that the Bible has the answers to those questions, but of course as soon as you introduce the idea of God into the equation, you also introduce other issues. There’s the problem of evil. There’s the Euthyphro Dilemma. There’s the paradox of sovereignty and free will.

These topics fascinate me to no end. But I’ve heard countless people talk down about the idea of philosophy. They say things like “You think too much.” (I actually had someone say that to me). I often wonder what the point is. After all, should I concern myself more with knowing the truth more than studying error (as though I do that all day).

The analogy of the counterfeit bill always comes up. They say that bankers don’t study counterfeits in order to be able to recognize them, they study the real bill so well that they instantly recognize a counterfeit. Therefore, we shouldn’t concern ourselves with what the world says or thinks. We should simply focus on knowing the Bible really well and telling the Gospel straight from Scripture. God will give us the opportunities to do this. I’m not going to completely bash this way of thinking. God can certainly use this method, but as far as the logical argument goes, J.P. Morland exposes it for the logical problem it is by starting with the fact that the analogy simply isn’t true! Bankers don’t actually behave that way.

But the question has still been raised. What do we do with apologietics? Is it necessary? Does it do any good. How do we rectify the fact that “you can’t argue anyone into salvation,” which is true by virtue of the fact that salvation by definition is a change of heart and mind which the Holy Spirit must produced, with verses like 2 Corinthians 5:11 which says “…knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others,” and 1 Peter 3:15: “…always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you?” In short does apologetics have a place? If so, what is it?

I’m not going to give this concept the full philosophical treatise I could give it and it probably deserves. However, I am going to affirm simply that I believe apologitics to be important and never more so than in the present day. I am also going to give an analogy for what I believe it’s role is. Think of this as a parable

Picture evangelism as a baseball game. If you don’t like baseball, I’m sorry. I do, and it’s baseball season, so…… tough! Picture evangelism as a baseball game. You’re the home team, and the unsaved person is the away team. Try not to go into too much detail about it. The detail isn’t the point. Don’t take it to far, just imagine that through the first 8 innings or so of give and take, you’ve either played to a tie or the unbeliever has a slight lead. Again, don’t get too hung up on how, or what the first 8 innings represent, or what if the lead is bigger for him, or what if I’m ahead. I’m not intending this analogy to be that complex. Just simply imagine that it’s the top of the ninth, you’re on defense, and you’re tied or down by a run.

Apologetics is like the pitcher that you run out to the mound in the top of that inning. He can’t win the game for you. It’s literally impossible for him to score any runs. That’s not his job anyway. His job is simply to keep the game close so that in the bottom of the ninth the offense (the Gospel) has a chance to win it.

This has never been more evident to me than in the testimony of someone I know. He ran from God from the time when he was a kid, and he threw up every philosophical smoke screen you could think of in the way. You couldn’t talk to him about God without the problem of evil coming up. Every time there was always some resentment over issues stemming from one thing or another. But, through it all, he finally came to Christ recently. And you know what got him? No, he didn’t logically assent to getting saved after someone thoroughly explained to him the problem of evil or some other philosophical dilemma. No he wasn’t “argued into salvation”. His conversion came after listening to a John Piper sermon on, get this, John 3:16. The simplest of them all! It’s a divine “gotcha” that almost ranks up there with God naming Abraham and Sarah’s son “laughter”!

But imagine that through all his philosophical smoke screens nobody had ever been there to address the problems. Imagine nobody had ever even thought through the problem long enough to give any kind of coherent problem. Don’t worry I’m not propping myself up here, I was not the one God used in this regard, someone else was - and even if it was me it’s still to God’s glory and credit, right? The point is, if nobody had ever been there, how easy would it have been for him to simply right off the Christian faith as ridiculous and unfounded. I fear that when we shy away from apologitics we run the risk of presenting a structured, rigid systematic theology that looks harsh, cold, irrelevant and dead. This is much of the problems that the Emergent Church is trying to address. I would contend, however, that instead of abandoning the theology like the Emergents appear to be doing, we ought to embrace the doctrine and understand it better so that we could better defend it.

But what of the dollar bill analogy? Let’s go back to baseball. How would that pitcher prepare? Sure, he can work really well in the off season on perfecting his pitches. He can get a really good fastball that’s really zippy and always goes where he wants to. He can get a really great changeup that looks just like a fastball coming out of his hand, but makes Bugs Bunny whiff about eight times. He can perfect a curve ball, slider or any other pitch, but he’s still not quite ready.

The best pitchers know exactly who is at the plate. Every batter has strengths and weaknesses. Every batter has hot and cold zones in his swing. Some can’t hit the ball up and in. Some can’t hit the ball down and away. Every batter has pitches he can’t hit, and others he drives. Some can’t catch up to a fastball. Others can’t lay off a curve ball tailing out of the zone. The best pitchers know exactly who is at the plate and exactly what his strengths and weaknesses are. He knows exactly what pitches to throw and exactly where to put them so that the batter can’t hit it well. This preparation requires studying the opposition to gain this kind of knowledge. When we study the arguments of the opposition, we know exactly what the weaknesses of these philosophical smoke screens are and exactly how to keep them from making our witness irrelevant by driving a ball out of the park.

And of course we don’t study the enemy to the exclusion of knowing the truth. The pitcher doesn’t study the opposing batters so much that he forgets how to throw his fastball! He gets the fastball down first, and then learns when and how to use it. We ought to know the Truth of Scripture first, but as we learn it, keep our ears to the ground as to what the opposition might send at us.

Of course if we really wanted to we could probably expand this analogy. Perhaps the first 8 innings have to do with how to build the witnessing opportunity: living as an example of sanctification, reaching out in love and service, etc. If I really wanted to go overboard I could talk about the 9 hitters that the unbeliever would send to the plate. Hey this sounds like a book! Ha! But wait, I said I didn’t intend for it to be that complex. No, I think I’d rather leave it here, at least for now. Apologetics is important. It helps to dilute the smoke screen of philosophical objections that people have to God so that when they get to the bottom of the ninth, the gospel can do its job without having to make up fourteen runs.

What are your thoughts?

But how does this jive with being a Christian. I’ve been mulling this one over for a while. Can I rightly be against taxes if I’m a Christian. What does the Bible say about taxes? Matthew 22:17-21 comes to mind. Several of the religious leaders of the day pose the question to Jesus, “Should we pay taxes to Caesar?”. What’s Jesus’s response? He holds up a coin and says “Whose image is on this coin?” They answer that it is Caesar’s so he delivers the line in verse 21. “Therefore render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”

So from this the most direct interpretation is that Jesus is telling us to honor the earthly King by giving him the taxes due to him. This is backed up by Romans 13. Case closed right? Maybe. This brings me back to my original question. Who is Caesar? At that day Caesar was the emperor - the supreme king over all the known world. Why was the coin Caesar’s - because he commissioned its minting and allowed his citizens to use it. It bore his image as a branding mark. But what about today? Who is Caesar in our culture? I think most people would say it’s the federal government. We don’t have a king, but we still have a central federal government that comissions the minting of money and allows its use. Therefore the federal government is Caesar and the money we owe in taxes is the federal government’s. Render unto the federal government what is the federal government’s. Case closed now?

I don’t think so. I think we’re missing a very key part of the equation. We have a unique situation here in this land. Abraham Lincoln described it best. We have a government that is “of the people, by the people and for the people.” I would argue then that the people are Caesar. In Rome the government was of, by and for Caesar. Now the government is of, by and for us. And as our stewards, the federal government owes us what is ours, not the other way around. We commission the federal government’s use of our money for the common good. So when the government uses our money to “establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity”, we allow it. But when they use our money to allow and fund the injustice of illegal immigration, insure domestic strife, dismantle our common defence, promote individual welfare and destroy the blessings of liberty to ourselves and especially our posterity, that is when we balk.

It is not as though citizens thing Caesar should not have his money. It is as though Caesar is unhappy with an underling who is using his money in a way he does not wish it to be used. I think this fundamentally makes sesne. It’s how I reconcile my Libertarian stance with my Christian world view. I think it works very well together. Thoughts?

Christianity is repeatedly ridiculed as a fairy tale belief. They say things like “Kids, you know how Santa Claus turned out to be fake? Just remember that when your parents tell you about Jesus.” Faith in general is repeatedly characterized as irrational and unthinking. So it comes as no surprise to me that someone might grow up in the church being taught doctrine but never being taught why or how to think critically about it and eventually come into contact with a non-believer who does have some rational logic behind their rejection of God, and the person is naturally drawn to it.

Why does this bother me? Because it’s false! Faith and reason are not antithetical. Faith is part of reason and reason is part of faith. But the notion that Christianity can only be concluded by laying aside your brain is ridiculous, yet I see it all over the web.

Who’s to blame for this? I firmly place the blame on Fundamentalism - the most cultic era of Christianity that lead people to believe truth just because we say it’s true and not ever think critically about it. Some evangelicals have tried to rescue it, but the effects of modernism are still far to entrenched in people’s memories of the church, that it’s easy to make this characterization.

What do we do? Teach people (especially our kids) how to think! Teach them philosophy. Teach them logic. Teach them church and secular history. Teach them these things along with teaching them the Bible and how to have a sincere faith. That’s my perspective anyway.

Stick with me people.

Have you ever heard someone (usually a pastor) say something like the following:

The word “awesome” is a big word. Only God is awesome. We should only use the word “awesome” to refer to God, because when we use it to refer to lesser things, we imply that God is not awesome.

I cannot begin to describe how much this drives me nuts! I’m sorry. I have a lot of respect for some of the people who have said this, but intellectually it’s quite a dumb thing to say. I call my first witness: Dictionary.com:

Awesome:

1. adj: inspiring awe.
2. adj: showing or characterized by awe.
3. adj: Slang: very impressive

OK. So I guess we have to figure out what “awe” is. I said “awe” A-W-E!!!! (sorry… George of the Jungle….)

awe:

1. noun: an overwhelming feeling of reverence, admiration, fear, etc., produced by that which is grand, sublime, extremely powerful, or the like.
2. verb: to inspire with awe

So, to sum up. By definition an awesome thing is a thing that inspires reverence, admiration or fear in someone who encounters it. Basically, it’s something that makes one feel the weight of his own smallness (if I’m allowed to make up words) at coming into contact with something so much bigger than him.

God most certainly does this. In fact he is the most awe inspiring of all! In the Bible, any time someone came into God’s presence they did an immediate face plant! Check out Isaiah 6! “Woe is me!” is the reaction to seeing God. Why? Because even the most Christ centered human is prone to primarily focusing on himself - at least for those of us in the West. We’re just wired to think that way. We spend our whole lives with ourselves at the center, battling to shove it out of the way so Christ can come in. And we ought to fight this battle all the time, but when we see God for who he is, we immediately realize how poor of a job we’ve been doing.

So I’m all in favor of using the word for God, and recognizing how awesome he is, and how much more awesome he is than anything else. But stand at the edge of the Grand Canyon and tell me you’re not filled with wonder, reverence, admiration and fear. Tell me at that very moment that you don’t feel small! Tell me when you watch the Top Ten on Sports Center that you don’t suddenly feel like a very poor athlete when presented with the evidence of so many who are greater than you! Tell me, guitarists, when you hear Jimmi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughn or Eddie Van Halen shredding you don’t feel quite poor in your ability to play. Sure you’re inspired to try harder and get better when you see an amazing catch made on the sidelines. Sure you’re inspired to try harder and get better when you hear Eruption. But that’s what awe is!

Truth be told, we have no context for understanding what the word means if we don’t see it in our daily lives. Would we know what the Bible means by calling God our Father if we did not ourselves have earthly Fathers? The author of Hebrews draws on this in chapter 12. So we look around and realize there are many awe inspiring things in this world, and it is because of that, we know what it is to be in awe of something. From there we turn our eyes on the one who’s awe inspiring nature is currently shielded from us who are made to wait in anticipation of the day when it will be revealed.

Hype. That’s what it is. You know it. The next great thing is happening and you can’t wait, because it’s going to be awesome. There’s that word! So you wait and you wait and you wait, and it finally gets here, and either it’s a huge let down or it lives up to its hype. We’re supposed to have this same type of anticipation for the day that God is revealed to us. St. John mentions this in his first epistle. “Beloved we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.” St. Paul as well draws on this in his epistle to the Corinthians “For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away… For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.”

So it’s not only OK to be caught up in awe by other things in this world. In fact it’s quite Christian. For God made this world, and all the wonders it holds - even the Grand Canyon which is a result of the Flood, a judgment of God upon man’s sin. Even the works of sinful men like Eddie Van Halen and Jimmi Hendrix can be enjoyed in a sense of awe at the God who invented music, the creative mind and the fingers required to play such beautiful music. It is divine to be enthralled at the prowess of those who through competition display their quality on the field of play. For in doing so we worship the God who made the man. But we must always remember that when we stare in awe of creation or creature, that we should direct our gaze upward to remember the creator. For when we forget the creator, our affections lower and then nothing is awesome, for there is no most awesome in our eyes. Awesome then becomes just another word.

Which is probably the heart of the objection. It appears to these people that the word has become trivialized to the point of having no meaning. I will grant this. It has been abused to the point of having almost no meaning at all. But then so has almost every other word in the English language. Does this mean that we should tear words out of our vocabulary and avoid their use because others misuse them? Of course not, for then words like beauty, good, bad and even love would have to be stricken from our lips. May it never be so. Let us instead try to redeem the proper meanings of these words by using them properly ourselves.

• Biblical Theology
• The 5 Solas
• Moderate Realism (Essentialism) (as opposed to nominalism, bleh!)
• Philosphy (as defined by its etymological roots: phileo (love) sohpos (widsom). The fear of the Lord, being the beginning of wisdom, therefore true philosophy is the fearful love and pursuit of God (in an intelligent and philosophical way, of course). As opposed to the contemporary view of philosophy which accords more with the appalling practices of the Sophists, who were more in love with rhetoric and the ability to argumentatively prove or disprove anything they wanted to because they were great at twisting words.
• Socratic Logic

If you can find a name that sounds cool, encorporates some or all of those ideas, and will work well in a blog setting, I’ll gladly use it, give you credit, and be your friend forever. Seriously… even if you occasionally turn into a huge purple monster.

Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?

A more monotheistic way of putting this would be “Is what is moral commanded by God because it is moral, or is it moral because it is commanded by God?”1.

Now you’re probably wondering what this has to do with anything. First I’ll have to explain the implications of this dilemma. On the one side you have a God who loves something for what it is (loving the pious because it is pious). This is a reaction. God is loving the lovely, and therefore is subject to the object loved. I don’t know if that makes sense. It is as though it were possible for something to command God on the basis of it’s loveliness. Or take the morality way of looking at things: You have a God doling out commands because that’s what is moral. He’s not defining morality in that sense, he’s merely passing it along.

We can immediately see the issue with this, because it would appear that if this were the case, then God is not the supreme being of the universe. He must not be, as we aver, the ultimate reality. There must be something outside of himself that is the standard for what is pious, lovely, moral and good. This is simply not how the Bible portrays God, so we balk at something like this.

The second half seems a little easier for us to swallow. The second half implies that God is active and in charge. He defines what is lovely by loving it. He is the trend setter. He is the definer of morality, for in issuing a command, he creates a rule.

This is far more pleasant on our theological palate. It puts God in charge. He’s the creator after all. Job question God and God’s response was to name all of the incomprehensible things that He had done which Job was nowhere near enough to witness. God is so much more powerful and unimaginable, and we do not dare put any limits on his power, sovereignty and authority.

This is where many of my “Reformed” (if I can use that term) brethren tend to fall. If you were to pose this question, they would state that it was obviously the latter. But we must be very careful with this one. For, though the first seems obviously wrong to us, the second may not be any more correct. We have to be careful to understand a few things and set some parameters before we say this. And you understand that by setting parameters we are interfering with the thing itself. We are qualifying and unqualified statement.

Let me explain. As I have understood (likely incorrectly) the Islamic faith, Allah is a fickle god. His will can change from one day to another, and his whims are absolute. So much is this the case, that (as I understand it) a persons right to enter heaven is never truly secured (except by Jihad Martyrdom). A person can keep the five pillars their entire lives and upon crossing death’s threshold they come face to face with Allah, their entrance into heaven is determined by his final say. Which means that if Allah is having a “bad day” he can banish the most righteous person, while he can allow the filthiest wretch on a “good day”. It’s all up to his mood, apparently.

DISCLAIMER: I acknowledge that my experience and understanding of Islam is very low. I have not studied it much for myself. I’ve only synthesized what I’ve heard others say. Therefore I am aware that I may be thoroughly misrepresenting the Islamic faith. If that is the case, then I apologize, especially if you are a follower of Allah yourself. If you have constructive insight to share, please feel free to comment. I do not with to continue in ignorance. I would love to learn more about your faith in an open dialogue. But that is neither here nor there. It is thoroughly beside my point. My intention here is not to accurately portray Allah or the Islamic faith. My intention was simply to draw a scenario in which we would not want the second half of the dilemma to be true. For if God’s will - his loves; his affections - are changing from day to day, then the second half is deadly! For he may love faithfulness today, and adore treachery tomorrow! He may love love today and adore hatred tomorrow! He may love giving today and adore thievery tomorrow! A God who’s will changes would be a tyrant if the second half is true.

So I think we’re at an impasse. It can’t be the first, for God cannot be subject to anything outside himself. And it can’t be the second, for an unqualified second half would open the door to an equally unbiblical God. So what’s the answer?

Now you can stop jumping up and down. I be I’m thinking of the same $10 word you are. Immutability. Don’t we Christians believe in this doctrine that states that God does not change? He is the same, yesterday, today and forever? Don’t we believe that? Of course. It’s Biblical. Check out Hebrews 13:8. So that should be our answer, right? Since God is immutable, then we’re free to release the power of the second half of Euthyphro to him. Right?

You’re on the right track, but you haven’t quite reached the station. This is what I meant earlier about qualifying an unqualified statement. The second half of the Euthyphro dilemma implies that God can love whatever he desires to love and thereby make it pious. I like to restate the Euthyphro dilemma like this: “Does God do what is good because it is good, or is what God does good because it is God who does it?” So if the second half is true, then God can do whatever he wants and make it good. He can love today and hate tomorrow and they’re both good. But the problem is he can’t contradict himself. And also we have his immutability. The law of non-contradiction is a standard. Also, the fact that he is immutable is a standard. Therefore, there is some sort of standard to which God adheres when he loves piety, commands morality and does goodness. He’s not just making it up as he goes. So this implies a bit of the first. God is bound by some definition of piety, morality and goodness.

So the answer appears to be both/and. And this is the point where it either blows your mind, or sounds completely ridiculous, because being the supreme being of the universe. Being ultimate reality, God is the definition of all these things. He’s the definition of consistency, immutability and non-contradiction. These are not things that are outside of him, they are within him. So God by his own character, defines goodness by what he does, because he does what is according to his own nature.

It’s really confusing when we speak in such grand terms like morality and goodness on such a universal philosophical scale. Let’s get a smaller example. I’m a person. I have likes and dislikes. Let’s take food for example. There are certain foods that I like. Do I like them because I consider them good, or do I consider them good because I like them. See how on this scale both sides appear to be saying the same thing. Isn’t liking them the same as considering them good? Take into account that I don’t just generally change on a whim what I like or dislike. Of course I’m an imperfect example. We humans are fickle. I may like cheeseburgers today, and pizza tomorrow, and that’s ok, because I’m not defining global morality

I think we think of goodness in the wrong way. We tend to see God’s laws, commands and moral code as an imposition. Which is why we even ask the first half. We wonder why God is sending down this seemingly arbitrary list of dos and don’ts for us to follow, even though they don’t make much sense to us in and of themselves, and I think that’s because we have the wrong view of the purpose of morality.

We speak of good people and bad people. In a Gospel message you’ll probably hear something about the difference between them and what happens to each group ultimately (you should if the message is worth its salt). But you don’t just hear this in a Biblical context. Most people would agree that a child molester is a bad person. Most would agree that Osama Bin Ladin, Adolf Hitler and many others to be bad people, while we look at some as good people. We ask questions like “Why do bad things happen to good people?” Even people who do not acknowledge the Bible’s standard of morality, or even any standard of morality outside of themselves still speak in such terms, and would probably agree with my assessment of the aforementioned individuals.

Let’s take an amoral example. Let’s say I plant a tree, and I think I am planting an apple tree. I do everything right in the process. I plant it at exactly the right time of year. I put it in exactly the right place in my yard so as to have the most possible room to grow, the easiest access to sunlight and water, and cast the best shade possible. What will determine whether my tree is good or bad? Would we not say it is a bad tree if it does not grow very tall, cast much shade and yield much fruit? We’d say it’s a good tree if it grows very large, casts a huge shadow and produces many apples, of course! So in other words, if I plant a tree, it’s a good tree if it fulfills its purpose and it’s a bad tree if it does not fulfill its purpose. Right?

I think this is an interesting way to think about morality. Be careful, I’m not advocating Machiavellianism (at least not for us). I’m not saying the ends justify the means. If you’re not reading me carefully you might misread that from what I said, but it’s not what I said. It’s not the trees intentions that are important. The important purpose is that of the tree planter. Who is the planter of our tree? Read Genesis 1:26 with me “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.’” For a long time I thought that this was just merely descriptive. I thought God was just saying that his likeness would be the blueprint for how he designed us and that’s it.

But I think that’s wrong. I think there’s something deeper. I think he’s speaking of creative purpose. He’s not just saying that he’s the cast from into which we will be molded. That word image conjures up the idea of a picture. If I take a picture of myself, am I just trying to create something that looks like me for no reason whatsoever? Of course not! I’m trying to communicate with it. I’m trying to show people what I look like. We send pictures with applications when we’ve never met face to face. We often discover new friends for the first time on that wonderful place called Facebook! (Or we find out the names of ‘friends’ we’ve been hanging out with, but thought it was passed the socially acceptable point to ask what their name is). At any rate, a picture communicates something about the person it in it. It’s imperfect, of course. The picture is not the person. But the picture is a representation of the person. It’s a representative. A proxy. An agent. An ambassador. A liaison. Need I go on?

I fully believe that is the deeper meaning behind Genesis 1:26. God created this wonderful, beautiful world, which he created out of his own Triune love of and for himself (think about that in the context of marriage…. two becoming one……. way beside the point….). He sat back and looked at this wonderful creation and said, “sweet, but I need a representative.” He wanted to send a picture to the world; to the angels - so that they would have some way of better grasping what he is like. Is it very difficult to grasp then what the essential point of morality is, then? It’s not just some imposing list of arbitrary dos and don’ts. It’s God saying, “Look, I’ve created you to be my ambassador to this world. You’re supposed to be like me. This is what I’m like, be like this!” God’s law is our greatest revelation (aside from Immanuel himself) of who God is. This is why Christ’s presence was so powerful. It’s why he was called the second Adam! I’m getting ahead of myself. Is it any wonder that there was only one rule in the Garden of Eden? Adam and Eve had perfect fellowship with God. They knew intimately what he was like, how to emulate it, and had no reason to do otherwise. Once they broke that rule, their ability to know how to fulfill their creative purpose became damaged, so God had to send the law. Not because he wanted to be oppressive, but because he wanted to help them do what they were supposed to do!

We relate to this, don’t we? Has your mother or father ever said to you “When you go out there you’re not just you. You represent our family?” Or maybe a teacher said it before a field trip? Or maybe a youth leader before a church outing? We understand the idea of representation. When a child behaves a certain way, people immediately associate that behavior with the parent. Either the child learned it from the parent, or the parent failed to supress it. It’s the same with us. We reflect our maker. And when we reflect him poorly, we’re not doing our job. We’re bad trees. That’s why it’s sin. That’s why God uses the imagery of trees that don’t bear fruit being torn down and thrown into the fire! There’s a reason we were put here. If we’re not doing it, we’ll be torn down so another tree that will bear fruit can take our place.

I hope this makes sense and isn’t just inane babbling. The answer then to the Euthyphro dilemma is all four. A, B, Both and Neither. Because in the context of the true understanding of the True God and the true nature of morality, it doesn’t make a lot of sense. Of course God commands morality because it’s moral. Because morality is defined by that which accords to God’s nature, which is what he commands. It’s a big circle. So the question doesn’t make sense.

But why did I mention Calvinism? Sometimes we Calvinists have a tendency to harp on God’s right to do whatever he wants. He is Sovereign, after all. But we have to make sure that when we do that we also include the explanation of his immutability, for if we don’t, then is there really a difference between the God of Calvin and the god of Mohammad?

Questions? Comments? Snide Remarks? Concerns? Orders for Pizza? Yeah, it’s like 1AM. I’m going to bed folks! Have fun

References

1. Wording taken from Wikipedia’s article on the Euthyphro Dilemma.

Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it. For since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable, and every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution, how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? It was declared at first by the Lord, and it was attested to us by those who heard, while God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will. (Hebrews 2:1-4)

The main point of these verses is the importance of paying attention to the Word of God and heeding what it says - particularly the Gospel of Christ. That’s simple enough to see, but I’m intrigued by the way he makes this point. Many times the wording of the Bible might seem confusing to many people. We wonder “Why did he say it that way? Couldn’t he have just said what he wanted us to see?” I’m a firm believer that when the wording is complex it isn’t because the writer is intending to be unclear of elusive, but rather that there is some reason why he has said it this way. So I want to show how I broke this passage down.

The Writer here makes a logical correlation. He begins this chapter with his conclusion: Therefore we must pay closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it. Then he sums up his argument. Now we have to look back to Chapter 1 for his major premise. Chapter 1, in fact, in its entirety is the major premise: Jesus is superior to the Angels. Ch 1 vs 1-2 begins the comparison, by mentioning that Jesus Christ has now replaced all vehicles previously used to deliver God’s revelation. He then explains in the rest of the chapter that Christ is superior to the angels, who are one of these vehicles. As a matter of fact, our English translation may have unfairly biased our interpretation of this. We read “angel” and likely jump to the conclusion that The Writer is speaking of Gabriel, Michael and others. However, the root word for “angel”, ?????????, transliterated “ang’-el-os” or “angelus” in Latin literally means “messenger”. By implication, then, the plain sense interpretation of this would be that The Writer is referring to all those who have previously carried the revelation of God, be they angels (as we understand them), human or otherwise. This would then imply that when The Writer continues on in subsequent chapters to compare Christ to Moses, he is not simply moving from one bullet point to another, but moving from general to specific. I find this interpretation compelling for there are precious few moments in the Old Testament when the message of God was delivered by an actual angel. Most of the revelation of God had been delivered by prophets. Thus, since no mention of prophets is given in the comparison to Christ, except for Moses, it can be induced that angels is meant as a broad stroke. I don’t believe that The Writer intended Moses to be representative of all the human prophets, for I believe him to be representative of The Law instead. It would be as though someone mentioned Christ to us, we would not assume that they were talking about him as a represtentative of all the Apostles, though Jesus was certainly the greatest Apostle (btw, Apostle also means messenger :)), we would understand this to be a mention of the very foundation of our faith. It was the same for Jews: Moses was the foundation of their faith. He wrote their Torah. He lead them from Egypt and delivered them to the cusp of the Promised Land. All of this was by God’s leading, but they still looked up to him - a great deal more than we look up to Paul or Peter.

That, however, is not necessarily intrinsic to this syllogism. What is important is the major premise: Jesus Christ is a superior messenger than the angels. The minor premise may be found following the conclusion. It’s a somewhat convoluted way of presenting a logical argument, but who presents logical arguments concisely anymore? Verse 2 gives the minor premise, which is in short: “The revelation of the Angels (previous messengers) proved reliable, and those who neglected it were punished for neglecting it.” So the argument goes like this:

• A: Jesus Christ is a superior messenger than all the angels
• B: The message of the Angels proved reliable and all those who neglected it were punished.
• Therefore C: We must pay much closer attention to what we have heard (through Christ).

He goes on to explain this in verse 3 of chapter 2 when he says, “How shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation?” This is the end of the thought that gave us our minor premise. The whole sentence is: “For since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable, and every transgression or disobedience recieved a just retribution, how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation?” See it? He’s saying If the inferior (angels) was so reliable that those who transgressed were punished, then the revelation of the superior (Christ) will be all the more reliable and the punishment for those who neglect it all the more assured, which leads The Writer to conclude that it is necessary for us to pay closer attention to such revelation lest we “drift away”, which is significantly putting it lightly. This major thought of his will become a characteristic theme of this book, showing up again at choice points in chapters 6 and 10, to the degree that many use these texts as evidence for an Arminian understanding of security.

But for today, let’s take away the point that the testimony of Christ is sure and trustworthy, and therefore it is worth our trust and consideration. Many times we behave as though we choose our beliefs based on what works for us. It’s characteristic of the world we live in. Spend any time in open air evangelism and you’ll see it all over. People want what feels good to them or what serves their needs and desires. It’s often the same rubric people use when they pick which presidential candidate will receive their vote. Candidate A promises to lead based on principals of right/wrong, and to protect the core of what makes our country what it is, while Candidate B promises to do nothing but give people what they want and so Candidate B wins. That’s an intentional caricature of the situation, of course. Many times there’s a good mixture of A and B in both parties, but the fact of the matter is, most voters look for B instead of A, which is wrong. We choose religion like we choose our fast food restaurants. Which isn’t going to keep me up at night? I can’t eat at Taco Bell - too many beans! But we should be choosing the things worthy of our faith based on the merits of them, whether they are right and true and trustworthy. The author of Hebrews says that Christ is a sure testimony, and therefore he deserves our trust and attention. And if we don’t give it to him, woe to us for the judgment will come.

Michael Patton, co-teacher of the online lay-seminary program The Theology Program, wrote an article about this on the blog Parchment and Pen. He discusses three characteristics of imbalance: Overstatement, Unqualified Superlatives and Non-contingent Propositions. In other words, statements like “I am absolutely certain that…”, or “This is the only explanation for…” or “There is no doubt that…” or “Everyone knows…” or “The Scripture is obviously clear on…”, etc. These kinds of statements for me are usually just by products of the writing process - not quite so intentional injections of eloquence, which really aren’t eloquence. It’s actually really a detractor, because it makes me sound all clichéd. But it’s also a detractor because it makes me unbalanced. It makes me at least appear that I haven’t considered the other side of the argument. I don’t want to forget to consider the other side. I don’t want to appear that way either. So if I do this, call me out. Seriously. And if it appears that there’s another side I haven’t considered, tell me about it.

You may wonder about my Calvinism series. Remember that the Calvinism series started as a bit of an outworking of my own frustration at not being able to discuss these things with anyone other than my wife (and Strugill). As I went along I tried to become more balanced with it, and will try to even more in the future. In that one, the circumstances that caused me initially to start it up pushed me toward being more apologetic - arguing for the legitimacy of the position - instead of irenic - considering all sides in an attempt to find the best explanation and refine my truth. I will try to be more balanced as we go. It’s for this reason that I think I might try to post a series of articles at the end (either in another series or as an epilogue to the first) defending my opposition (or have someone else do it so long as they play fair. Any volunteers???)

I hope that I can avoid making the kinds of mistakes that I abhor. I really detest when people try to color their opposition as unintelligent or evil. This is one of the things - quite honestly - that has initially leaned me toward Rob Bell over MacArthur in my Emergent Church issues. I’m still reading for that one, by the way. I haven’t yet come to any major conclusions worthy of cataloging. But for now, suffice it to say that Bell’s attitude generally seems to be one of humility. If you read Patton’s blog, you’ll see where he points out that in the world we live in (yes Postmodern), people look for someone who is humble. He calls it “epistemic humility”. It’s basically an acknowledgment that there’s a possibility that you could be wrong.

And that’s OK, but it’s also the rub. Postmodernism isn’t about denying absolute truth. Not really. Many many people think it is. The Emergent Church isn’t about denying doctrine for the sake of a wishy washy liberal gospel. Not really. John MacArthur thinks it is. One of the primary characteristics of postmodernism is that postmoderns are skeptical of anyone who would say “I have the answer don’t look anywhere else.” Why does that fly in the face of conservatives? Well, we believe we do have the answer. We believe that Jesus is the truth. We believe that the Bible is the truth. But the problem is that while Jesus is truth and the Bible is truth and both are infallible, we often make the illogical jump to that meaning that our interpretation of it is also infallible. This turns people off majorly. So Bell and others try to engage people in an irenic fashion, maintaining epistemic humility, which to those on the right appears to be an abandonment of truth.

But Patton has a very interesting comment that might enlighten us. He says

Please note, this is not a postmodern concession to relativism, for I am not advocating that people hide convictions or not take stand for what they believe. Neither am I saying that you cannot have great degrees of certainty and assurance about many of your convictions. I am simply telling people that if you overstate your case, no matter what it is, I will have a hard time listening to what you have to say, and I think I speak for many.

It’s not about denying the truth, it’s about modifying the way we communicate our truth so that it doesn’t turn people off. This is the problem I have with many conservatives. One of Patton’s commenters mentioned pastors who take an approach of “let me straighten out your theology”. I’ve met these kinds of pastors. The poster says, “It presumes a level of perfectionism that an honest examination of our humanity and fallibility should reject”. I as much as the next guy is as guilty as any of these people of considering ourselves to be more smart or right than we may be. We could all do with a little sharpening.

To be fair I also liked the Chesterton quotes a couple of the other commenters posted. It’s important to remember that while we are being epistemically humble, that we not throw out our convictions, and that we don’t do it just because it’s cool or a ploy to artificially create credibility, because honestly the tools of Overstatement, Unqualified Superlatives and Non-cogent propositions are all modernist credibility tricks. But true genuine humility is a good thing for the discussion.

Which is why when the Mormon’s came to my door the other day, I talked to them. I listened. I couldn’t quite divorce my roots enough to actually invite them it, but I asked them questions - ones I hoped were tough. And we left in a spirit of peace. I didn’t bash them, they didn’t bash me. And I think I might have learned something about Mormonism, because all I’ve ever known about it is what my conservative friends have told me, and I hope they learned something about Reformed Christianity. Hopefully this gives me a better understanding. Hopefully I planted a seed in their lives that God can use to bring them to greater knowledge of him.

Ultimately that’s what my goal is: to proclaim Christ’s truth however I can. Whether it’s by my attitude or actions or articulation (like the alliteration?), whenever and wherever possible, without using clichés and without worrying about trying to make sure this one gets saved, or gets right, because ultimately that’s God’s job.

My heart breaks for the people who’s only view of Christianity and God comes through the lens of closed-minded judgmental people. I’ve seen the other side and it’s beautiful and I wish they could see it for themselves. Don’t allow anyone to condemn people who try to show them. I think there might be an analogy somewhere I could draw on, but for now I’ve done about six paragraphs of digression and need to close this out. I do want to point out that I’m not all in favor of Bell and against MacArthur at this point. I think MacArthur has some great things to say and his primary concern (namely preserving the authority of Scripture) is genuine, valid and important. And Bell is not without his weaknesses. But I’ll get to that discussion later.

Of course, as a believer in God who also places a high emphasis on rationality, I see this as somewhat of a challenge. There are many out there on both sides, who would have us believe that thinking and believing don’t go together. The underlying assumption is that Christians are blithering idiots who refuse to see truths or facts right in front of their faces. Unfortunately there are far too many Christians about whom that accusation is true. We have dropped the ball in many ways when it comes to dealing with rational arguments against our cause. We don’t do a good job of giving the reason for the hope that we have, and this causes us to lose credibility.

Now I don’t think that it’s necessarily possible to convince someone to turn to Christ by engaging them in logical arguments, because I fully believe that conversion is the work of Christ, but I do believe it’s important to show ourselves to be logical, rational and intelligent. Why? Because as Christians our primary responsibility is to image Christ - to image God - to be his representatives on this earth. And God isn’t stupid! God is the pinnacle of Truth, knowledge and wisdom, and when we act in such a way that portrays us as misguided, willfully ignorant, backwards and stupid, we do God a disservice by showing an image that is false.

This does not mean that our position is wrong. I take much heart in the testimonies of C.S. Lewis and Lee Strobel - guys who considered themselves to be rational and scientific and logical and set out to try to prove Christianity false, only to end up as two of it’s greatest defenders in the 20th Century (and beyond for Strobel). They came to Christ not by having some ooshy gooshy emotional experience in which they felt convicted of their sins and had some weepy sobbing walk up an aisle to the alter at a church. They came to Christ because they were convinced using their rational minds that his claims were right.

One of my favorite apologetical arguments is one C.S. Lewis made. You’ve probably heard of it. Many people claim that Jesus Christ was a great teacher - a prophet from God - but nothing more. The problem is that they forget the things that Jesus said. The prophets before him shared many characteristics with him - yes, but they all prophecied of the One to come. Jesus claimed to be that One. He stood in the midsts of the Jewish community and read aloud from Isaiah a prophecy about the Messiah and then said, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” That’s powerful stuff. Jesus claimed to be God. He claimed to be the savior. He claimed perfection.

I love John Piper as a teacher. But he’s human. Piper makes mistakes, and if you ask him I’m confident he’d admit it. Piper’s not God. He’s not infallable. Same goes for John MacArthur. Same goes for Rob Bell. Same goes for R.C. Sproul, Rick Wilson, Bill Brown, C.S. Lewis and every other teacher in the world - Christian or atheist. Every good teacher acknowledges his own weaknesses and humanity. Jesus didn’t acknowledge any. He claimed deity.

So because of that, Lewis argued, we cannot claim that he was a good teacher. We must place him in a different category then. He was either incorrect and didn’t know it - which would make him essentially a lunatic. Or he was incorrect and did know it - which would make him the worst possible liar. Or he was exaxctly what he claimed to be: Lord. Jesus was either a Liar, a Lunatic or He was Lord. He could not have been just a mere teacher or prophet that people blew out of proportion.

I like this argument because, while it doesn’t prove anything about who Jesus was positively, it attacks the middle no man’s land that everyone likes to feel safe in. “Deniers” (for lack of a much better term), like to take that middle ground so as not to be offensive, but still not accept the full ramifications of accepting Christ. Those who push tolerance love this ground. Lewis says it hasn’t a leg to stand on. If you acknowledge the logical validity of this argument, then you must either embrace Christ fully or reject him uterlly. You cannot keep holding him at arms length and saying, “Yeah I like you over there, but don’t come any closer.”

I like this, because I think it was the argument that was the strongest in favor of Lewis turning to Christ. I feel compelled to issue some caveats here. I can feel the conservatives I know chomping at the bit of this one, so let me just get something out in the open: Yes Lewis was an Anglican. So what? There I said it.

Anyway, back to the point. I’m tying this together, I promise. As you can tell I’m rather fascinated by CS Lewis, and not just because his world of Narnia captivated me, but because he’s great at the apologetics. Two of the books I’ve wanted to read by him are The Problem of Pain (1940) and A Grief Observed (1961), particularly the latter, because it was written following the death of his wife Joy Gresham. They deal specifically with the issue Epicurus dealt with above. Pain. Evil. Suffering. Why?

This is a dilemma for us Christians, especially those of us in the reformed tradition, who hold so highly the doctrine of God’s sovereignty. It’s a problem because when stated in the way Epicurus stated it, it looks to logically prove God to be either evil or non existent. And when we don’t engage in the argument, we look either like idiots or uncaring. So here’s the argument again. It deals with the coexistence of God and evil and the fact that God hasn’t eradicated evil yet. To Epicurus God is either

1. Willing to stop evil, but unable
2. Able to stop evil, but unwilling
3. Able to stop evil and willing
4. Unable and unwilling to stop evil

If the first, then he is powerless. If the second, then he is evil. If the third, then he is not sovereign. And if the fourth he is not God.

Now I’m not going to take a two wills approach on this issue. I’ve known too many Thomists (exactly 1) to know that that won’t fly with good philosophers. There are several levels at which this breaks down. First is the assumption that God owes it to us to stop evil. Now this isn’t an altogether illogical assumption because God has proclaimed his love for us. In fact God is love, so it would be impossible for God to be unloving. But God is also just and in many cases treating someone justly is the most loving thing one can do, so allowing evil to occur to someone who justly deserves it is not evil.

Second is the assumption that the evil serves no purpose. Let me state this another way. Suppose my 8 month old son was crawling on the floor one day and finds some piece of garbage that he decides to eat. Fortunately for him I am a good parent and I see him and take it way from him. He screams and fusses at being thwarted in his desire to ingest the trash, but I don’t feel the least bit sorry for him. Now, even if I did not then pick him up and put him in his high chair where I delivered to him a plate full of good nutritius freshly prepared food for him to eat, I would not be considered evil for having allowed such a calamity to occur to him. It was for his good. Allowing the evil was a means to an end.

According to a Reformed Christian Worldview, nothing in this world occurs without God’s direct cause or intentional allowance. He is not aloof. He is not unaware. He knows. He cares. He does and he allows. Does this then make him evil for allowing bad things to happen?

First no. Because nobody is good. We often look at things like 9/11 and thing that evil is this big unfair force out there that punishes the innocent. But we are not so innocent. We are not as bad as the terrorists, or as they supposed we are, but let’s not kid ourselves, we murder infants by the thousands every day. We allow the poor to whither and die (I’m not attacking economics or politics, I’m talking about the heart of every person.) Seriously. When was the last time you went to a ball game and didn’t even notice the poor people begging on the street? And I’m no better than you. We’re not such a glistening gem of innocence are we. I don’t even have to talk about original sin here. The fact of the matter is, all you have to do is watch a fat, ugly guy think he has a chance with a pretty girl. We all think we’re better than we really are. We all think we deserve more than we really do. Why do you think our country is so obsessed with law frivolous law suits? But I digress. I think you’ve gotten my point.

Second. The evil allowed does have a purpose. God’s glory. This happens in several ways. 1) He uses it as a tool to call someone to himself 2) He will one day in the end show himself glorious by defeating evil once and for all. It’s like every hero in every book or movie. You know that moment right before the climax, when it looks like Blofeld is going to get away with his dastardly plan and Bond is going to be smashed to bits, or blown apart, or whatever. And then Bond gets out of whatever trap he’s in and gloriously thwarts the bad guys, and it’s more glorious because of it. Imagine if the movie consisted of Spectre hatching their plan, only to find Bond standing in the room. He shoots them all and walks out. Movie over. Crisis averted. It would last ten minutes. It would be boring, predictable and pointless. But when it’s done like it’s done, you’re left with that warm fuzzy when Max Zorin falls to his death, and you know Bond is the greatest hero ever.

Yeah, it’s seriously like that. In the end, when evil seems to be at it’s all time worst and Satan looks like he’s going to win, that’s when God’s going to step in and finish it all off, and the rest will just be a great denoument - for eternity. And God will be shown as the greatest hero ever.

Finally, of course, there’s Romans 8:28. Don’t scoff at it. I know it’s cliche, but it’s true. No matter what happens, it works out for good. What is good: to be conformed to the image of his son as we’ve been predestined to be. So, God gets glory in this life time by using good and bad events to shape Christians into a less distorted image of him, to reclaim their created purpose.

So, it’s obvious I think the second is true. God is able to stop evil, but he’s unwilling to stop it. By that I mean he’s unwilling to stop it now. He will stop it one day, and it will be a great event. Does this mean God is machiavellian? You decide that. I admit that it kind of does, but that doesn’t necessarily make it false. I’d like to hear your thoughts.

I’m very curious to read C.S. Lewis’s books because I want his thoughts on the issue.