Perspectively Speaking

Well, I sort of put my foot in my mouth with some of my earlier rants against the books avoidance of presuppositionalism. There are two chapters that address apologetic issues from a clear presuppositional foundation. Although Van Til is only mentioned twice in the footnotes, Bahnsen manages to get mentioned in the main text two or three times.

RZIM clearly follows Schaeffer’s eclectic method approach. Ravi wants apologetics to address worldview issues, but he either fails to see or somehow disagrees that any method which does not call into question the unbeliever’s presuppositions in light of the Christian worldview is not addressing worldview issues. When an apologetic calls into question the unbeliever’s assumptions and shines the Christian worldview on them, they are taking a presuppositional rout. How can I say Ravi fails to see this or disagrees? Look at the arguments in the first part of the book. Listen to some of Ravi’s answers in his Q&A at universities. If these were done at a worldview/presuppostional manner, it is obvious that the answers/arguments would take a different form in many cases. This is not to say that it is all devoid of worldview/presuppositional material. No one can consistently neglect worldview/presuppositional issues and hope to get anywhere. Thus, even John Lennox in his mostly classical debate with Richard Dawkins must rely upon presuppositionalism at one point in the discussion. Read the rest of this entry »

Lutzer’s book raises some interesting questions as to the relationship between the church and state, the relationship between contemporary American neo-conservative Christians and Christians in Nazi Germany, how far should Christians allow the government to go in murdering innocents (whether Jews or the unborn) before taking serious action, and what sort of actions should be taken? Should we follow Bonhoeffer’s example or something more like Niemoller’s? Read the rest of this entry »

McGrath gives an interesting chapter on atheism. I’m sorry to have criticisms with it because I notice that I seem to have criticisms with most of what I read and I don’t want to just be a nay-sayer. I hope that the subsequent analysis and criticisms (in this and other posts) will be from a genuine disagreement with humility rather than from being a fault finder.

McGrath begins the chapter with a review of his own journey from atheism to Christianity and makes an excellent point that, “one of the best ways of defending Christianity is simply to explain what Christianity actually is” (23). I couldn’t agree more and this what I often find myself doing in apologetic encounters. Once you explain the Christian worldview most of the atheist objections fall apart. However, McGrath makes the following statement just prior to the previous one: “I was an atheist partly because I had misunderstood Christianity. My objections were often directed against a caricature, a straw man” (ibid). We need to keep in mind that the atheist will find true Christianity no less offensive than his caricature, apart from the grace of God. In fact, many times, I have found that the atheist finds true Christianity to be much more morally deplorable than his caricature. The gospel is a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Greeks, but to the called…

Read the rest of this entry »

Al Mohler posted a blog today about a Swiss ethics panel that decided plants have rights. I was surprised to find that Mohler’s comments, which include comments from Wesley Smith, are very similar in some aspects to a paper I wrote just a month ago for my Earth Science class on a related issue: the Everglades. I even made the biocentric distinction and argued that it was a natural product of rejecting the Christian world view, which is theocentric. However, I did not take as radical a stance as Mohler when he states:

“The very idea of “plants rights” indicates a loss of cultural sanity. Until now, this cultural confusion has been most evident in the animal rights movement — a movement that presents some legitimate ethical concerns but pushes its ideology beyond sanity. The failure to distinguish between human beings and the larger animal world is a hallmark of a post-Christian culture. The extension of this ideology to vegetation is a frightening sign of mass delusion.”

In my paper I argued that from a theocentric model we must recognize that the value of the creation, whether it be a bug or a wheat field, is not dependent upon its utility to man but is ultimately tied to the fact that it bears the finger print of its Creator and is “good,” as God said. I argued that man is more valuable than the rest of the created order but this doesn’t mean that man can treat the creation in an arbitrary manner. Man is a steward of God’s creation. Man’s “ownership” of the earth is based upon God’s primary ownership and we do not have “free reign” over our selves or our property, as many Libertarians argue. (My paper was specifically seeking to answer the problem of the Everglades from a Christian Libertarian perspective. I am “Libertarian,” in a sense, in my politics and I made several modifications to the Libertarian system which fails to take account of God other subsequent things.) Read the rest of this entry »

Amy’s chapter on Postmodernism will be informative to those who are unfamiliar with it or its basic origins, though it certainly isn’t in-depth. This chapter seeks to examine and answer three postmodern challenges: (1) theoretical questions about textual authority, (2) historical questions about textual authority, and (3) Existential questions about textual authority. This will be a very helpful section for many who are just getting into apologetics because these types of questions concerning Scripture come up in virtually every apologetic encounter.

The first section, on theoretical questions about textual authority, is dealt with in a presuppositional manner, although she does not identify it as such. I have listened to the RZIM radio podcasts for a long time now, long enough to hear some of the programs cycle through, and it seems to me that they have a strange avoidance of mentioning presuppositionalism and yet seem to rely on it often. This comes up in chapter two as well. I find this rather irritating, especially when they give a presuppositional principle or illustration and rather than say, “by the way, if you want to hear someone really expound upon the method behind this check out Van Til,” they will either not give any credit where credit is due or give credit to Lewis! I have nothing against Lewis and he does have some presuppositional thought scattered through his writings but he certainly wasn’t consistent or even self-conscious in his application. That RZIM does not discuss apologetic method impoverishes their readers and listeners who would benefit much more from knowing how to approach apologetics on a methodological basis rather than simply knowing how to respond to a particular objection. It’s as if I were to talk about laissez-faire economics and then say “Hey, if you want to know more about this, check out writings of John Maynard Keynes…” Why wouldn’t I just tell them to check out Adam Smith or Ludwig von Mises? It just doesn’t make any sense. (Sorry, but that is the only example I could think of… maybe I throw in a theology example later.) This first section is broken down into Suspicion of Any Claim to Authority, Authority as Power Play, and Authority and the Question of Interpretation. Each of these sub-sections is very short, about three paragraphs, and briefly lays out the problem and then gives an even briefer answer. So this section is very surface level, but not too much needs to said once the reductio has been put forth. Read the rest of this entry »

[See introduction]

Ravi Zacharias’s Introduction: An Apologetic for Apologetics is excellent and, unfortunately, necessary in today’s Christian community. As someone who often discusses apologetics and has taught a class on apologetics to fellow Christians, I cannot tell you how often I have heard the remark, “But isn’t the Bible like a lion in a cage? We don’t need to defend Christianity, we just need to let the lion out of the cage.” Translation: We should just make assertions about our faith and not bother to provide answers to atheistic challenges or justifications to our own assertions. Bahnsen, of course, had an excellent answer to this: It is true that God doesn’t need our apologetic, but God does require for us to give one. God also doesn’t need preachers or missionaries, but we are still to have preachers and missionaries. Ravi Zacharias has another approach in this introductory essay: reductio absurdum:

“Apologetics is a subject that ends up defending itself. The one who argues against apologetics ends up using argument to denounce argument. The one who says apologetics is a matter of pride ends up proudly defending one’s own impoverishment. The one who says conversion is a matter of the heart and not the intellect ends up presenting intellectual arguments to convince others of this position. So goes the process of self-contradiction” (p xi-xii). Read the rest of this entry »

Beyond Opinion is the newest book (as far as I know) authored and edited by Ravi Zacharias and his RZIM team. It is a collection of apologetic essays by various members of RZIM that allegedly seeks to “suggest a new vision for Christian apologetics in this century. Their aim is an apologetic governed by human relationship and committed to winning people rather than arguments” (from the back cover). So far I have only read the introduction and the first two chapters and I have found them to be very different from one another, in my opinion. In light of this, I thought it would be best to write a review of each individual essay rather than of the book as a whole. So far I have not seen a new vision for Christian apologetics and I have not seen any special focus on relationships rather than on arguments. Many of the apologetics texts that I have encountered have seen the need for personal relevance and so I do not see this as a new vision, but maybe I have been exposed to good texts. Still, this is not to say that what I have read is not good; we shall see how the rest of the book goes and I will reserve any final judgment for the end.

Perhaps no greater confusion exists today than that of the love of God. The non-Calvinist is absolutely convinced that the Reformed view of God is unloving, the religious pluralist, the postmodern, and the emergent are to greater or lesser degrees convinced that the orthodox/fundamental Christian does not grasp the love-relationship aspect of God, the atheist is convinced that the Christian portrayal of God is far from loving, and even those who would be considered fundamentalists/orthodox by these former groups often believe that we should not contend for sound doctrine because it is “unloving.” “Love,” they say, is not worried about defending itself. You just let the lion out of the cage (i.e. you just make assertions without backing them up).

In light of such confusion, the singularly most important aspect of Carson’s book is that it draws legitimate distinctions in categories/types of love and recognizes that “love” is contextually dependent. What is so ironic about the profundity of this book is that it shouldn’t be profound at all. That there are different types of love that are contextually defined is one of the most obvious aspects of our own lives and that we should fail to recognize such distinctions with God is rather amazing and sad. We have no difficulty in speaking of our love for pizza, our love for our marital partner, or our love for our children or parents without fallaciously collapsing one category into the other and yet Christians, liberal and conservative, and secularists do this almost religiously when it comes to speaking of the love of God. As James White often puts it, why do we assume God’s love is like peanut butter where it has to be spread equally everywhere?

It is a shame that Carson does not delve deeper into each section; the book is a thumbnail sketch rather than a full treatment on the topic. I am unclear on how to take Carson’s development of the subject of God’s salvific love towards the world. It is rather ambiguous as Carson leaves it but with some development (and perhaps modification or clarity) it would prove to be a helpful distinction between his salvific love for the elect.

[P.S. I had written a nice analytical oultine of the book too that I thought would be helpful, but stupid wordpress messed up the formatting of the outline by taking away my indentation and messing up my spacing between points so I decided to delete it.]

The Constitution Party was going to try and get Ron Paul if he would run, but of course he wouldn’t. I had heard instead that they were going to try to get Bob Smith, but apparently they didn’t do that either. I was surprised to see them go with Chuck Baldwin because I had no idea they were even considering him. Baldwin ran for VP with Mike Paroutka last presidential election and he is my friend’s uncle (the friend to the right in the picture in my About Me section). I don’t agree with Chuck’s theology (he is dispensational and non-Calvinist) but he is pretty good on political matters. Check out his acceptance speech. Also, I have had his website linked to my blog for about a year now (under blog roll). He’s got my vote.

[Note: Sorry for not getting to that TAG post. I really didn't plan on writing these last three and really don't have much time but as I read the articles the posts are related to I thought I could throw together some quick thoughts. My last final exam is tomorrow, so, Lord willing, I will have that TAG post in the near(er) future; although, there are a few books I would like to read before putting it together.]

Most Christians view the global warming problem as a hoax. The fact is that all we have is a correlation between average temperature and atmospheric CO2 and attempts to attribute causation between one or the other may suffer from the post-hog-ergo-propter-hoc fallacy. The current popular opinion is that as atmospheric CO2 increases so does average global temperature, since CO2 is a green house gas. That CO2 is a green-house gas is indisputable, as far as I know. Thus, it would seem to be a safe bet that our CO2 emissions are having an effect on global temperature. Another hypothesis says that as global temperature increases, the oceans are able to absorb less CO2 and, therefore, the level of CO2 increases in the atmosphere because the average global temperature has increased. Nevertheless, even under this hypothesis, the increase in atmospheric CO2 will further increase the global temperature as a feedback mechanism rather than as a direct cause. A third hypothesis is that there is no direct correlation between average global temperature and CO2 in the atmosphere. Read the rest of this entry »

Obama doesn’t think that stopping the average 20% tax on gas will have any effect on gas prices… strange, to say the least. If there is an alternative to gas it will create competition and should help lower the price of gas; however, if there is such an alternative it is far into the future. Ethanol will cause the price of corn to rise along with rice and other negative economic/ecological consequences. Electric motors are inefficient, expensive, and can create just as much pollution in their production as combustion/gas engines in their burning of fuel.

As for the “price gouging” of oil companies, there is no such thing because there is no such thing as a “just price” and the idea that we are paying “too much for gas” is illusory. Furthermore, the price of gas is not high, it is surprisingly low when one takes into account inflation, taxation (20% tax on gas compared with 1.5% in 1950), and supply/demand. Finally, the idea that gas companies are making “windfall profits” is laughable. Water utilities, tabacco, software, shipping, and publishing all have a greater margin of profit than oil and gas companies. All of this info and more can be found in article #5 of 08 Articles of Note.

I think the general public needs to realize that there is no gas price problem before we end up shooting ourselves in the foot by trying to fix something that ain’t broke. The only way we will pay less for gas is if the government lowers the gas-tax, curbs inflation by halting the printing of new money, and frees up the market to allow competition. Unfortunately, the general public will seek to rectify the situation by means that will only worsen the “problem.”

(Image from Mises.org)

The idea that government is supposed to solve every problem of society will eventually lead to a government which must control every single aspect of society; however, this still won’t solve many of the problems. China has tried to solve the population problem (which is actually a food problem) by limiting the number of births a family can or should have. But in China boys are more valued than girls and so families have more boys and soon they have an over population of boys. (Or, under a different scenario, it is possible that God sovereignly causes the people to start to produce more of one sex rather than the other.) How do you solve this problem? By the Socialist, Nationalist, or Keynesian logic, the government has to say not only how many children you can have but what type of children you can have. The government may subsidize the abortion of boys or the birthing of girls, but since the government has no calculus to say how many boys or girls one should have at any given moment, it is always correcting some gross “error” in the amount of boys or girls. Thus, not only is the government, which is just an extension of the people, sinning by meddling in affairs they have no business meddling in and not only is it sinning in promoting the murder of innocents but it is simply throwing society from one dilemma (too many boys) into another dilemma (too many girls). But the slope is steeper still: once people buy into the idea that government can regulate the type of children we have for the betterment of society what happens when we need more smart people or more beautiful people? What if we need a whole bunch of scientists or a whole bunch of models (the models to drive the economy through advertisal appeal)? What do we do with the inept people already existing? What if we have too many coolies who can’t learn the newly needed trade? Should we euthanize them since they are eating capital while not contributing to our needs? Those who believe the government should interfere with every social ill believe centralized coercion is the best (efficient) or only means to solving problems. If this is true, then the best or only means to solving the problem of too many coolies or not enough scientists is centralized coercion, even if not to a euthanizing extent. Read the rest of this entry »

I plan to write on the necessity of maintaining the “strong modal” version of TAG in the near future. Stay tuned

[Note: I first heard the term "strong modal" as opposed to "weak modal" applied to TAG by the apologist Paul Manata in discussion with Mike Butler and Tim Harris. His stipulated definition was that the strong modal (or was it modally strong?) version of TAG maintains the impossibility of the contrary while the "weak modal" version sees TAG as useful but not conclusive.]

Well it has been almost a year since my last post. I suppose I disappeared without a trace for a while but I really needed to take the time off to grow and figure out where I’m going and what I’m doing. Right now I’m pretty busy between work and school with finals after next week. Lord willing, I will have some posts and book reviews in the near future… I just have to remember how this software works.

I have made some changes to my static pages. I’ve categorized the Currently Reading and Currently Listening section by year (07 obviously signifies 2007 audio/reading and 08 2008 audio/reading.) There are some lectures and books I still need to finish from 07, maybe this summer. I am adding a page for important or note worthy articles to read.

I must admit that I have become very skeptical of historical analysis over the years. I have read too many books that paint a slightly different picture than what I read from another source. A level of subjectivity and inaccuracy always creeps in according to the author’s focus, goal, bias etc. (Of course, not being a historian myself, I can only assume that this is inaccuracy; after all, they can’t all be right.)

Nevertheless, I enjoyed Schaeffer’s analysis and found it to be very insightful and “prophetic” at points. Schaeffer ties the whole postmodern shift back to Aquinas’s Nature/Grace dichotomy (I realize that many people would disagree with Schaeffer’s analysis of Aquinas) and proceeds to outline how this dichotomy developed into the postmodern mindset.

Some of the things that really bug me about Schaeffer’s writing are that he feels it necessary to make up new words (i.e. true truth, mannishness of man, modern modern…  I mean seriously, “true truth”?) and the amount of repetition in historical analysis. Concerning the latter: looking back after a year I understand that Schaeffer was trying to lay the groundwork for a distinctively Christian and quasi-presuppositional analysis of history. His books such as How Should We Then Live, The God Who Is There, and this one (and some others) all have a similar focus. I don’t suggest that you read these books one after another, lest you get irritated with the repetition, but space them out so you can appreciate his brilliance, even if he isn’t always right.