Apologetics

Review: Jesus Behaving Badly

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Jesus Behaving Badly

Jesus Behaving Badly, Mark L. Strauss. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2015.

Summary: Explores some of the disturbing acts and statements of Jesus, that actually reveal his counter-cultural message and mission.

A number of years ago I was leading a Bible discussion with a group of students on Mark 7:25-30, where a Syrophoenician woman asks Jesus to drive a demon out of her daughter. He answers her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs” (Mark 7:27). A student in the group commented, “I understood everything that was going on until Jesus opened his mouth.”

I suspect he wasn’t the first person to read the gospels and, and instead of finding “gentle Jesus meek and mild,” discovered challenging Jesus, disturbing and troubling. Mark L. Strauss has written this book for those who don’t find everything they encounter in reading the gospels easy to swallow and wonder how a person could possibly give their ultimate allegiance to a Jesus who says and does such disturbing things.

The instance I cite is just one of those Strauss explores in chapters that explore whether or not Jesus spoke in revolutionary or pacifist terms, was loving or angry, a scorched earth prophet cursing fig trees and killing a herd of pigs. Was he a works-oriented legalist demanding the rich sell all to attain heaven, a hell fire preacher (Jesus says more about hell than anyone in the Bible), an anti-family crusader who speaks of hating one’s parents, a racist (as in the passage above), a sexist, and an anti-Semite? In the end was he a deluded prophet of the end time who ended up a decaying corpse?

Strauss goes behind the scenes as it were, and explains the background and intent of some of Jesus most puzzling acts. He doesn’t “explain away” these things, but rather brings out the radical implications of who this Jesus is. While offering various ideas about hell that Christians affirm, he upholds the idea that God won’t just ignore evil and leave it unpunished. He points out that his word to the Syrophoenician woman was the diminutive of dog, softening the insult, yet provoking the woman to answer him in kind, and win, not only the argument (the only one who ever did and a woman at that!) but Jesus’ commendation and the deliverance of her daughter. He offers plausible interpretations of the end times sayings that demonstrate that Jesus did not get it wrong, and good reasons to believe that Jesus rose from the dead.

The book is a great one to give to the skeptic or seeking person or even the believer who is troubled by these things. Strauss’s discussions reveal a considerable background in biblical scholarship (he is a professor of New Testament) and yet very readable and easily understood.  Here is a sample, in his discussion of Jesus harsh words and conflicts with the religious leaders:

    “It becomes clear in this context why Jesus responded in such a forceful manner. He believed that his coming was the center point in human history, the climax of God’s plan of salvation. There was no plan B. His mission was to call Israel to repentance and faith in preparation for the kingdom of God. Anyone who opposed this message stood in defiance of God. Jesus said, ‘Whoever is not with me is against me” (Mt 12:30//Lk 11:23). When the leaders of Israel rejected Jesus, he had no choice but to reject their authority and to publicly denounce them. He calls them ‘blind guides’ because, from his perspective, that is what they were. They were leading God’s people astray and missing out on God’s plan of salvation–the climax of human history.”

Strauss puts this out to his readers both forthrightly and yet gives them space to consider for themselves whether he has made his case. He acknowledges that not all will buy it, which I think for many is winsome. He deals with liberal scholars like Albert Schweitzer, and debunking critics like Bart Ehrman, whose work and television appearances may have swayed some.

The book includes a study guide which can be useful for both individuals and groups discussing the book. The season leading up to Good Friday and Easter Sunday sometimes leads to discussions about the significance of Christ. This is a timely book to make sense of a Jesus, who, as Rebecca Pippert describes him in Out of the Saltshaker, could be both “delightful and disturbing.”

Review: Fool’s Talk

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Fool's Talk

Fool’s Talk, Os Guinness. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2015.

Summary: Guinness argues for the recovery of the lost art of persuasion that combines good apologetic work with evangelism and is aware of the many people Christians address who are not open to their message.

This is a book that Os Guinness has been preparing for a lifetime to write. Throughout his life, Guinness has been presenting the Christian faith in the public square, not only with the interested but also those who are not, those who would oppose or are disinterested in the Christian message and worldview. The book reflects a summation of the lessons he has learned and his urgent sense that the pressing need for Christian witness today is a recovery of the lost art of Christian persuasion. We know how to proclaim and we know how to protest. But do we know how to persuade those with whom we differ, engaging both minds and hearts?

He contends that often we settle for mere technique, whether that be “canned” evangelistic presentations, or “canned” arguments for the faith. This often is not enough because such approaches assume the interest of the person with whom we engage. Yet to persist in the work of persuading is urgent for those who love God because our enemy seeks to rob God of glory either by questioning his existence or by impugning God with the blame for humanity’s problems.

He argues that we take the approach used by Erasmus in The Praise of Folly, becoming the “holy fool” a kind of court jester representing the kingdom of heaven pointing out the follies of unbelief, and perhaps at times following the holiest fool of all, the Lord Jesus. [Having read and reviewed this biography of Erasmus recently, my interest is piqued to read In Praise of Folly!] He then plunges into considering the anatomy of unbelief, and how often it is ultimately not simply an intellectual incapacity to believe, but a heart-driven unwillingness to believe because of what this would mean for one’s life.

This calls for different forms of persuasion depending on the person. It may mean the turning of tables on them, pressing them to the ultimate conclusions of their beliefs (for example, “relativizing the relativizers”), if they are a person who prides themselves on consistency. For others, less consistent, it may be exploring the disturbing “signals of transcendence” that point to a reality other than can be explained by their worldview. The challenge is bringing a person to a place of facing the inadequacy of the belief they’ve embraced to be willing to consider something different.

The latter chapters consist of several warnings for the advocate of Christian faith. One is the “know-it-all” attitude that is not characterized by a humility before truth. Another is hypocrisy in one’s life where one’s claims and one’s character fail to match up. And finally, he warns of the ways we may betray the faith. The four step process of embracing an assumption of modern life as superior, abandoning all that does not square with this, adapting whatever faith is left around this, and finally assimilating into the culture. What Guinness points out is the danger in our efforts to engage with the culture, that if we are not clear on what must be central and unchanging, that we will make fatal compromises.

Perhaps the most significant idea here, and one worth further development, is this idea of the “holy fool.” As Guinness observes, there have been some, like Erasmus, G.K. Chesterton, Pascal, Muggeridge, and Lewis, who with wit, humor, and incisive argument point out the weaknesses and follies of others while commending by persuasion and a kind of winsome humility the transforming nature of Christian faith. Such an approach takes both truth and people seriously, engaging heart and mind, not with canned approaches or sterile arguments, but warm-hearted persuasion that gives people reasons for heart, soul, mind and strength to love God more than all else.

One might ask, “where is God in all this?”, and at points this seems like a book on the Christian rhetorician’s art, and this alone is all that is needed. What Guinness reminds us of, is that while the Christian communicator always is dependent of the work of God in those with whom they communicate, the person may often only become aware of this as they come to the place of commitment. He writes, and with this I’ll conclude:

     “Intriguingly, this fourth stage of the journey is often when God’s presence becomes plain for the first time. The wholehearted step of faith of the new believer is far more than simply his or her own step. At one moment a seeker making her commitment knows as she has never known anything before that she is more responsible for the step of faith than for any other choice in life, and that she has never been more fully herself than in taking it. But the next moment she knows too that the One she thought was the goal was all along the guide as well. She knows that she has not so much found God as that God has found her. All the time the seeker thought she was seeking, but actually she was being sought, for God can only be known with the help of God. ‘The hound of heaven,’ as the poet Francis Thompson called God, has tracked the seeker down” (p. 248).

 

 

Review: Grand Central Question

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Grand Central QuestionGrand Central Question, Abdu H. Murray. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2014.

Summary: Every worldview addresses the fundamental “why” questions of human existence and the author contends that the worldviews of secular humanism, pantheism, and Islam each have a “grand central question” and that the grand central questions posed by these worldviews find their deepest and most satisfying answers in the Christian gospel.

Abdu Murray grew up as a Muslim, trained as a lawyer, and spent years questioning the beliefs of those around him–atheist, Christian, pantheist–until he was confronted with some questions of his own that led to a his embracing the Christian faith.

In this book, Murray begins with the important and costly search for truth, acknowledging that this could lead to great loss–of respect, of family, even of life–and leaves us with the question of what the truth is worth for us. He then explores the idea that every worldview in some way addresses some basic questions including:

  1. What explains existence? Or is there a God?
  2. Is there an objective purpose and value to human existence?
  3. What accounts for the human condition?
  4. Is there a better life or salvation from our present state?

He contends that each of the belief systems–secular humanism, pantheism, and Islam–is particularly concerned with one Grand Central Question that receives the greater emphasis in that system. For secular humanism, it is the question of the basis of human dignity when there is no God. On what can the inherent value of humans be grounded? For pantheism, it is the question of how do we escape (and explain) suffering? Finally, for Islam, it is the question of the greatness of God, and how one might worship a great but unapproachable God.

In three sections, Murray expands upon the central question for each worldview, showing how the worldview attempts to address this, the shortcomings of those explanations and why he believes the Christian gospel provides the most cogent and satisfying explanation. For the secular humanist, simply asserting the intuition of our worth may not be enough if we come up against superior beings considering us expendable. Appealing to fine-tuning arguments of design, Murray proposes the grounding of our worth in God as his image bearers.

Likewise, pantheism argues for the elimination of desire as the basis for the escape from suffering. Yet this does not do away with the reality of suffering. Christian faith speaks of a God who enters into our suffering, and rather than trying to deny or transcend its existence offers meaning in suffering as well as an ultimate deliverance from it.

Finally, and perhaps especially valuable because of the author’s own prior beliefs, is his exploration of Islam. He particularly explores the idea of “God is greater” and proposes that the very things Islam denies are in fact what offer the greatest possible God, a God who is One not only as we are but uniquely one essential deity in three persons, a God whose love arises from the eternal relations of the three, and a God who may be approached in worship because he approached us in his Son. Furthermore, this Jesus did not have a substitute die on the cross, hardly a sign of greatness, but died as the substitute for humanity.

He concludes with the proposal that the Christian gospel does not address one Grand Central Question but provides answers that address the range of questions about human existence that intellectually satisfy and can spiritually transform.

I appreciated the idea of a “grand central question”, although I wonder if proponents of these worldviews would be comfortable with this rubric. His discussion showed evidence of many dialogues with people who hold the views he is addressing, but I wonder if the book would have felt more authentic if he had dialogue partners from these three “worldviews” responding to his proposals.

I think what set this book apart was the sensitive and insightful exploration of Islam, including his narrative of how careful study of the Qur’an actually led to his examination of the gospels. I hope he will write further on Muslim-Christian engagement, which seems so important and needed in our day.

 

Review: God is Great, God is Good

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God is Great, God is GoodGod is Great, God is Good, William Lane Craig and Chad Meister, eds. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2009.

Summary: This collection of essays provides thoughtfully reasoned responses to the leading challenges to Christianity posed by the New Atheism.

Since the time of the publication of this collection of essays, the attacks of the New Atheism upon Christianity have abated somewhat. Christopher Hitchens is no more upon this earth. Perhaps this movement has come to a growing self-awareness of its own hyper-fundamentalism and intolerance, and some of its own tendentious claims.

This book was written at the height of these attacks and provides intellectually rigorous responses helpful both for engaging conversations with atheists, and to bolster the faith of Christians who might have been shaken by some of the accusations of the New Atheists.

The first section of the book, “God Is”, deals with responses that no reasonable person could believe in the existence of a God. William Lane Craig directly addresses the arguments of Richard Dawkins against the classic arguments for God’s existence, pointing out weaknesses in all his arguments, and particularly in his argument against the teleological argument, evident in the fine-tuning of the universe. J. P. Moreland then proceeds to show how theism better explains the nature of human beings than a scientific atheism. And Paul K. Moser lays out the argument for the morally perfect God of Christian theism.

The second section turns to the greatness of God, evident in the finely tuned universe of physics, according to John Polkinghorne, the complexity of biological life as described by Michael Behe, and not confuted by evolutionary explanations of religion. Those using the material by Behe may want to familiarize themselves with the criticism of Behe subsequent to this essay and his response.

The third part of the book considers the goodness of God, responding to New Atheist critiques of the goodness of God and the existence of evil (Meister), the contention that religion is evil (McGrath), that the Old Testament laws and its lawgiver are evil (Copan) and that the idea of God and the existence of hell are irreconcilable (Walls). For those who want a distilled version of Copan’s lengthier treatment in Is God a Moral Monster?, his chapter in this book is a good, concise summary of his arguments.

The final section explores why all this matters. It begins with Charles Taliaferro’s essay on revelation, and the reasons one might seek to look through the Bible to see what it reveals of God. Scot McKnight gives us an overview of the Jesus we might never have met. One of the most interesting essays is Gary Habermas on the resurrection and the evidences for the resurrection claims being well established within weeks or months of the event, as well as written down in Paul’s letters within twenty-five years. Lastly, Mark Mittelberg speaks of the importance of a faith response to Christ.

The book closes with an interview between Gary Habermas and Anthony Flew, chronicling Flew’s journey from atheism to theism and a review of The God Delusion by Alvin Plantinga, demonstrating that Dawkins never sustains his claim that belief in God is the result of delusion. These two pieces alone, along with Habermas on the resurrection, make this book worth the price of admission.

This is a useful resource for someone talking with an atheist friend posing substantive questions, or, as I mentioned above, for someone troubled by some of the challenges to faith (none of which are really “new”) that the New Atheists have posed.

 

 

Review: Exposing Myths About Christianity

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MythsExposing Myths About Christianity by Jeffrey Burton Russell, Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2012.

Summary: Under eight headings, this book offers 145 short essays responding to lies, legends, and half-truths about Christian faith in contemporary discussions, giving concise, thoughtful and catholic responses (in the sense of representing the wide swath of Christianity) helpful both to the person exploring the faith and to apologists and others who proclaim it.

“Christianity is anti-scientific.” “Christians are creationists who deny evolution.” “Early Christians suppressed the true religion of Jesus.” “Protestantism is puritanical.” “Miracles are explained away by science.” “God is a product of structural and chemical arrangements in the brain.” “Nothing is true.”

Perhaps you’ve heard these ideas and wonder if there is a cogent response. Perhaps you believe them and wonder how Christians with a brain in their heads could still embrace Christian belief.

Jeffrey Burton Russell is a Guggenheim fellow and professor of medieval history who has probably written the landmark work on the concept of the devil in five volumes as well as a book that argues that 19th century anti-theists invented the idea that medieval Christians believed that the world was flat. So he comes with impressive credentials for debunking the debunkers.

Following a chronology of pre-Christian and Christian history, his book is organized around eight headings:

  1. Christianity is Dying Out
  2. Christianity is Destructive
  3. Christianity is Stupid
  4. Jesus and the Bible Have Been Show To Be False
  5. Christian Beliefs Have Been Shown to Be Wrong
  6. Miracles are Impossible
  7. Worldviews Can’t Be Evaluated
  8. What’s New is True

The articles range from a paragraph or two to five pages or more, depending on the subject. Because of the nature of this project, none can be considered an exhaustive response and in fact books have been written on many of the issues he covers (and he provides an ample bibliography at the end of the book for further study).  At times, one wishes for greater nuance, as in his discussion of Christianity as a western colonial religion. While acknowledging the millennium long ascendancy of western Christianity, the plea that both early and contemporary Christianity is global in scope does not excuse the complicity of Christian institutions in colonialism at certain points in history. At other times, such as discussing Christian views of war, one finds a far more nuanced discussion. All this is to say that no one will agree with Russell at all points.

Nevertheless, what I found winsome was Russell’s discussion of the broad sweep of Christianity rather than one particular segment, particularly in a work published by an evangelical publisher. In discussing Mary, for example, he respectfully presents Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox views of Mary. He argues that what all have in common is that none permit the worship of Mary.

Sometimes his discussions are careful to define both what Christians mean and don’t mean by a particular term, such as “original sin”. This particular essay, as many others, included sparking insights, this being an example:

“Original sin is actually a democratic idea. Without believing in original sin, one person might pride himself or herself on being better than another and one group or race or nation might claim to be better than others. The idea that absolutely everyone is a sinner makes it much harder to be arrogant and judge others” (p. 263).

I think there are several groups of people who will find this book of help. One would be those who are considering Christian faith but have been given pause by one or more of these contentions. To read through this book, or at least sections on issues troubling one, is to listen to a cogent defender of the faith who provides good counter-reasoning to the myth purveyors and debunkers of Christian faith. Those whose interest is apologetics (the defense of the faith) will find this as a good primer on the wide range of questions that arise with pointers to more in-depth resources where further study is needed. Finally, many who preach or otherwise proclaim the faith will find themselves called upon to respond to many of the questions raised in this book. Most of the time, what is wanted is not a dissertation but a concise and thoughtful response, precisely what Russell gives us.

The Month in Reviews — December 2014

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One last look back to 2014! I finished and reviewed a number of books in December, heavy on the religious side because the books tended to be shorter than the third volume of Teddy Roosevelt’s biography or the Jeff Shaara account of the fall of Vicksburg which took longer to read. This month’s books included both a theology of racial conflict and reconciliation from an Asian American perspective and a novel set in Mississippi during Freedom Summer in 1964. I reviewed a new book on the life of C.S. Lewis looking at it from the light of life crises Christians might face. In the thought-provoking category was a new apologetic approach by Universe Next Door author James Sire, and Ken Bailey’s take on the nativity story in the form of a play. Maybe one of my “last reads” from 2014 will make your “to be read” pile in 2015. So here’s the list with links to my reviews:

1. Following Jesus in a Culture of Fear, by Scott Bader-Saye. This is a thoughtful book on the ways fear can hinder us, how various entities exploit our fear, and how we might live with courage and faith in a fear-filled culture.

Culture of FearCrisis of a ChristianChain of ThunderEastern Orthodox2. C. S. Lewis and the Crisis of a Christian, by Gregory S. Cootsona. This book takes the unusual approach of considering what we might learn from the life of Lewis as we confront life crises related to coming to faith, confronting challenges to faith, and facing the ultimate crises of suffering and death.

3. A Chain of Thunder, by Jeff Shaara. The fall of Vicksburg is the subject of this historical fiction account of this turning point of the Civil War. Shaara helps us understand what seige warfare was like for both armies and for the civilians of Vicksburg.

4. Introducing Eastern Orthodox Theology, by Andrew Louth. This book gives us an outline of Eastern Orthodox theology as it shapes the practice of Eastern Orthodox worship and life.

5. The Cross of Christ, by John R. W. Stott. John Stott considered this his most significant work and it is indeed a model of rich theological reflection that explores the nature and significance of Christ’s atoning work.

Open HeartsGospel MarketplaceCross of Christ

6. The Gospel in the Marketplace of Ideas, by Paul Copan and Kenneth D. Litwak. The authors explore the relevance of Paul’s Mars Hill message in Athens to communicating the Christian message with faithfulness and relevance in our own day.

7. Open Hearts in Bethlehem, by Kenneth E. Bailey. This play will revise your ideas of what happened in Bethlehem and our “no room in the inn” narrative.

8. The Autobiography of Saint Therese: The Story of a Soul, by Therese de Lisieux. The “story” here is one of Therese’s intense love for Christ from childhood to pleading with bishop and pope to enter the cloister to her death at 24.

Saint ThereseApologetics beyond SeeingColonel Roosevelt9. Apologetics Beyond Reason, by James W. Sire. This book maps a different apologetic approach from most rational apologetics, arguing for “signals of transcendence” throughout creation and in literature that point us to God, if we will see this.

10. Colonel Roosevelt, by Edmund Morris. The third and final installment of Morris’s biography covering the last decade of Roosevelt’s life, how difficult it was for him not to be president, and his harrowing journey down the River of Doubt.

11. Freshwater Road, by Denise Nicholas. Set in small town Mississippi in Freedom Summer, this novel narrates the journey of a young black woman from Detroit and the choices she must make to face both her own family story and the vicious, entrenched racism of the South in the 1960s as she runs a Freedom School and seeks to prepare local residents to register to vote.

Peace CatalystsRacial ConflictFreshwater Road

12. Racial Conflict and Healing: An Asian-American Theological Perspective, by Andrew Sung Park. The author explores the reality of painful experiences of racism using the Korean concept of han and develops a theology of seeing rooted in the Korean concepts of hahn, jung, and mut that envisions a new reconciled community.

13. Peace Catalysts, by Rick Love. The author, who leads an organization committed to “just peacemaking” between Muslims and Christians maps the biblical principles and practices that an individual, organization or community can take to pursue peace.

The Christmas holidays afforded some extra time to curl up with a good book, a warm drink, and some good music. I hope you have opportunities like that in the winter months ahead. If you read one of these let me know what you think. And if you find something else good, I’d love to hear about it!

Review: Apologetics Beyond Reason: Why Seeing Really Is Believing

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Apologetics Beyond Reason: Why Seeing Really Is Believing
Apologetics Beyond Reason: Why Seeing Really Is Believing by James W. Sire
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

There is everything.
Therefore there is a God.
Either you see this or you don’t.

This epigraph at the beginning of James W. Sire’s latest book captures the “apologetic” for the Christian faith that Sire proposes. In the course of the book, he rings the changes on this syllogism, substituting for “everything” the terms “literature” and “the music of Johann Sebastian Bach” among others.

What he addresses here are the limits of reason to “prove” the existence of God or indeed to convince someone of the truth of the Christian faith. Using his own life story as an illustration, he contends for a “messy” approach to apologetics that is neither deductive or inductive but rooted in the idea that there are “signals of transcendence” that we might encounter wherever we look that point us to God and which are made sense of by the narrative of creation, fall and redemption we find in the story of scripture.

He begins with his encounters with Cartesian philosophy and the autonomy of human reason and the ultimate futility and implicit nihilism that results when human reason is pursued to its logical conclusions illustrated in the works of science fiction writer Stanislas Lem. There is a conundrum is using autonomous reason to articulate the futility of autonomous reason that in itself is a signal of transcendence. But where does one start?

Instead of reason as a starting point, Sire argues that the only place to begin is with God. That is, we don’t begin with what we can know, or epistemology, but rather with being itself, or ontology. We begin with God to know everything else (and either we see this or we don’t!). Sire proposes a threefold argument from this starting point:

1. An argument from God, not to God.
2. An argument from everything to God.
3, An argument from our personal experience — direct perception of God.

The remainder of the book is an unpacking of this argument from the world of literature and the arts interwoven with his personal experience. He begins with a literary theory of the work of authors in creating a “secondary world” that, when done well, points us back to the “primary world” in which we live. Thus, whether the writer believes in a God or not, Sire argues, he or she cannot help but signal the transcendent in their work. He illustrates this with both the works of a Christian, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and the work of Virginia Woolf. If there is indeed a God, we cannot create a world that is reflective of Primary reality without also pointing back to God and opening oneself to the possibility of directly perceive the reality of God. He then illustrates this with the fictional account of a bereaved professor from a fictional college in Ohio that seemed to me reminiscent of A Severe Mercy by Sheldon Van Auken.

The concluding chapter moves from our perception, our seeing of God, to the story Sire believes makes the most sense of what we perceive of God and the rest of Primary Reality. He invites the reader to move beyond the signals to the One signaled, narrated in the Christian scriptures and centering in on Jesus Christ, who incarnated the reality of God.

I should confess at this point that I am at least a casual friend of the author. He has spoken on several occasions at collegiate ministry functions I have hosted. We have teamed up as program staff at student conferences. So there is no question of me being a sympathetic reader of his work. The argument he makes is one with which I would concur. But a couple of comments are probably in order.

As I’ve interacted with questioners about the Christian faith, I often find myself asking, “do you want there to be a God?” and “if I were to give reasonable responses to your questions, would you consider becoming a Christian?” I’m well aware that others see the same reality I do and just “don’t see” or don’t want to. Sire really doesn’t address the question of “what about those who don’t see?” And perhaps there is nothing to be said but to commend them to God in our prayers.

The other comment is that Sire argues from literature throughout the central part of this book. This is beloved ground for him and there will be others who appreciate the subtleties in the literature he cites. It is a world I am increasingly coming to enjoy. Yet I realized a great many do not know this world or are even put off by it. I don’t think there is a good response for this except to say to follow the thread of the argument, which connects to everything, and not simply everything in literature.

Sire’s book comes out of a career of teaching, writing, and serving as a traveling apologist. It reflects great wisdom in understanding both the messiness of apologetics and the reality that it will often be those signals of transcendence and our perception of them that will lead to faith. But as he has written, either his readers will see this, or they won’t.

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Review: The Gospel in the Marketplace of Ideas: Paul’s Mars Hill Experience for Our Pluralistic World

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The Gospel in the Marketplace of Ideas: Paul's Mars Hill Experience for Our Pluralistic World
The Gospel in the Marketplace of Ideas: Paul’s Mars Hill Experience for Our Pluralistic World by Paul Copan and Kenneth D. Litwak
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Relevance and faithfulness. Any teacher of any religious tradition is faced with this tension as they move from one cultural context to the next. One has to connect both with the thought world and life experiences of one’s hearers in terms they readily grasp, and one needs to faithfully communicate the substance of one’s religious beliefs without compromising their essence.

The authors of this book believe the Apostle Paul’s Mars Hill discourse provides a very helpful model for how one may do this in the case of Christianity. Athens represented the intellectual center of the Roman empire and was a crossroads of the various beliefs commonly held in Paul’s day from the worship of a pantheon of deities to the more refined philosophies of Epicureanism and Stoicism. The authors observe how this is not unlike our own context which they see steeped in both post-modernist assumptions about truth and materialistic naturalism. (I am surprised that they did not give more attention to Eastern influences in our society and the pantheistic monism that characterizes many discussions of “spirituality.”)

One of the first questions the authors answer is whether Paul succeeded in this task. Some commentators have argued that Athens represented a failed strategy of “contextualized preaching” from which Paul retreated when he went on to Corinth and decided to preach nothing but “Jesus Christ and him crucified.” They show how Paul’s message, while using the language and letters of the Greeks, actually reflected ideas rooted both in the Hebrew scriptures and the preaching of Christ elsewhere. And, like elsewhere, some believed while others did not. There were many other cities, like Philippi that Paul left with just handfuls of believers.

Through a detailed study of the content and rhetoric of Paul’s message, the authors show that Paul knew his audience, knew their leading thinkers, and framed the gospel in terms they could grasp, yet without shrinking away from controversial contentions, most notably, the idea of the resurrection. They conclude that we may also pay attention to the instances of “unknown gods” in our culture, the signals of awareness of the transcendent in our hearers, the process people undergo in their journey to faith, and the important work we may need to do in challenging the idolatries of our day. Ultimately we must also point to Jesus as the climax of history and the one who fulfills in his life, death, and resurrection our highest ideals.

This is a helpful contribution to the discussion of Paul’s Mars Hill message and whether it may serve as a model for contemporary Christian witness. The authors not only defend this contention but show in very practical terms how this might work out in a twenty-first century context.

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Review: C. S. Lewis and the Crisis of a Christian

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C. S. Lewis and the Crisis of a Christian
C. S. Lewis and the Crisis of a Christian by Gregory S. Cootsona
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book does something different from most books about C. S. Lewis or his works. The purpose of this book is neither biography, nor an exposition or critique of part or all of the writing of Lewis. Rather, the writer seeks to introduce Lewis through the lens of the existential crises of life, as Lewis experienced them, as the author experienced them, and as we may experience them, either as atheists or Christians or in our common humanity.

Cootsona summarizes the life of Lewis around crises he experienced as an atheist, apologetic crises he grappled with as a Christian, and the existential crises of suffering, evil, and death that every human being must face and that Lewis faced in his own losses of mother and wife, as well as in his own final decline.

But this is not simply biography. Around these three major types of crises, Cootsona introduces us to what Lewis said and wrote about these matters. Thus, this book could serve as an introduction to the relevance of Lewis’s writing for a new generation of reader.

First of all he concerns himself with “crises” of atheism. One of these is the self-contradictory and self-defeating nature of naturalism–if there is no design, if all is random, and if rationality is an epiphenomenon, then our certainty about these assertions, and this very sentence are up for grabs. Naturalism can offer no real sense of meaning, yet we act as if life is meaningful. Finally, even though we can posit no basis in naturalism for any transcendent moral law, we act as if it is so, that there are things that are really wrong.

Then he moves on to crises peculiar to embracing Christian faith. One of these is the crisis of pluralism: how may we believe in the uniqueness of Christ when there are so many alternatives. Isn’t this simply one myth among many? In this context, Coosona introduces us to Lewis’s famous “liar-lunatic-Lord” trilemma. Secondly, he explores the question of authority and the nature of biblical authority. Here he “outs” Lewis as not among the inerrantists. Yet Lewis believed the Bible was authoritative because of Christ and the Church’s witness, because, for its human faults, it carried the Word of God, at even sections Lewis might consider “mythical” (such as the creation accounts) were not fictional but true, and that the Bible forms the lives of those who read it, including Lewis. Lewis believed the miracles that were recorded as historical facts, including the miracle of the resurrection. Thus, Lewis challenges both fundamentalists and liberal skeptics in the way he reads and understands the scriptures.

The final section explores existential questions. One is the question of emotivism. Ought I base my decisions simply upon feeling or are there moral standards that I might live by regardless of feelings? Second, how do we make sense of suffering? He explores not only the arguments in The Problem of Pain but also those in the more intensely personal A Grief Observed that explore both where purpose may be found in suffering and yet the fundamental mystery we face in much suffering. Finally we see how Lewis regarded death, including his own approaching death.

Throughout, Cootsona weaves together his own experiences, Lewis’s life and writing, as well as how this has proven helpful to others. Cootsona introduces us to some of his own archival research along the way where this illumines how Lewis might approach a question. Yet his priority focus is to demonstrate how the works of Lewis that are available to most readers address these crises of life.

That begs the question: do we need this book if we have Lewis’s books on our shelves? Strictly speaking, the answer is no. But for the skeptic or young believer who is not well-acquainted with Lewis, this book can serve as a helpful doorway into the works of Lewis. The book also serves as a basic apologetic for Christian faith for a person who is asking the questions or wrestling with the crises the book explores. I do think the book would be helped with recommended readings of Lewis at the end of each chapter relevant to the chapter discussion. There is a bibliography at the end that includes some material on where to start in reading Lewis and includes a lists of his works, biographies, and other scholarly work on Lewis.

[This review is based on a complimentary e-galley version of this book provided by the publisher through Netgalley. I have not been in any other way compensated for the review of this book.]

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Christianity and Me, part 2

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A friend of Ben’s who describes himself as a “prodigal” has joined our conversation and written thoughtfully on both what he appreciates about Christianity and why he’s not a Christian. Thought you’d enjoy seeing some of the conversation between the three of us.