Note to the New Atheists: What we need isn't less religion, but better theology.

Michael Spencer of iMonk fame has asked for responses on a great open thread:

This thread is for this question: How have you resolved the tensions in your own life and thinking between science and your faith? What has been your journey? What was particularly significant in that journey?

I’m especially interested in those who were brought up in conservative Christian environments with typical conservative assumptions about the Bible.

The thread has attracted numerous interesting responses, some from professional scientists. The comments represent numerous perspectives, but almost all of them are from believers who have realized there is no substantive conflict between Christianity and the deliverances of science. Here's a sample from "Theo":

I didn’t encounter much tension between my faith and science growing up. We went to a Baptist church that occasionally taught on creationism and such, but they didn’t really shove it down our throats or make any “you must believe this or else..” sort of statements. My high school AP physics teacher was also the Bible club sponsor. I attended a Christian affiliated university (Baylor) and all my professors were Christian (or at least signed a statement of faith to get their job). So I breezed all the way through college with a masters in physics without ever having really been challenged in my faith as a scientist.

Now I am at a state university working on my Ph.D. My thesis adviser and many people that I work with are openly hostile toward Christianity. It is certainly a more challenging environment, but having known so many Christian scientists (not those kind) has left me with a confidence that I’m not alone in my faith.

Just one observation on the evolution debate. As an experimental physicist, I deal with exact equations and extraordinarily precise, repeatable measurements. All that is required of an evolutionary biologist is the ability to tell a good story (”the shape of the pig’s snout evolved over millions of years to be just the perfect tool to hunt out truffles”, or whatever.) I know they are doing their best with the facts they have available (and there is a bit more to it than just a story), but I find it humorous that it gets equal billing under the single term “science” along with physics or chemistry.

There are some great responses in the thread. I recommend reading through them if you're interested in the relationship between Christianity and science.

Rodney Dunning of Very Important Stuff has been on an anti-Southern Baptist crusade recently, and I've been reading what he's had to say with an interested but cynical eye. One of his recent posts demands more than a mere reading, however. Unfortunately, exaggerations, misrepresentations, and slanderous caricatures of one's theological opponents are nothing new to the "debate" between theological liberals and conservatives, but this attack on Southern Seminary, an institution with which I have been affiliated for the last seven years, surpasses the normal liberal-conservative sniping that goes on in the theological blogosphere. It borders on, for lack of a better term, institutional defamation.

Dunning links to an article in Ethics Daily, a theologically liberal cultural journal that generally speaks of conservative Southern Baptists as if they were the hand-picked agents of Satan on earth. The article, by one Pastor Keith Herron, throws some remarkable and strongly-worded accusations at Southern Seminary. The interesting thing is that Herron offers virtually no evidence in support of these accusations and, as someone intimately associated with the institution, its faculty, and its students, I can safely say that Herron's accusations are nakedly false. They are not only false and unfounded, but Herron (and Dunning, by proxy) turns them into weapons designed to damage the seminary's reputation among Christians, and that I cannot tolerate. The seminary and its officials have publicly taken positions in the past with which I have strongly disagreed, but I love Southern for its gospel-centeredness, its theological convictions, its unyielding pursuit of academic integrity, and for the ridiculously high quality of people that work and attend there.

How do you interpret Scripture? Take Scot McKnight's Hermeneutics Quiz here. I scored a 57, which is in the "moderate" range.

[HT: Nihil Fit]

I generally refrain from posting on issues relating to politics or the media on this blog, but some stories are just too odious to ignore. Breitbart ran this piece from the Agence France-Presse. The story portrays itself as an objective report about the U. S. military, but in reality it is little more than a cleverly-constructed theological hit piece. The premise is that there are individuals in the U. S. Armed Forces who feel they have suffered religious discrimination from some overzealous evangelical officers:

Since his last combat deployment in Iraq, Jeremy Hall has had a rough time, getting shoved and threatened by his fellow soldiers. The trouble started there when he would not pray in the mess hall.

"A senior ranking staff sergeant told me to leave and sit somewhere else because I refused to pray," Hall, a 23-year-old US army specialist, told AFP.

Later, Hall was confronted by a major for holding an authorized meeting of "atheists and freethinkers" on his base. The officer threatened to discipline him and block his re-enlistment.

I have no doubt that there are instances of this sort of bad behavior on the part of Christians. Every socio-political-religious group has its fools. The Christian church has them, so do the Muslims, as well as the atheists. Heck, I'd be willing to bet that you could even find a few Unitarians who like to bust heads every now and then. No group is comprised of flawless members, and hence this is not controversial. In an organization as large as the United States Armed Forces (about 2.9 million strong), it is not surprising to find all sorts of unacceptable behavior, even among Christians.

The story portrays this to be a widespread phenomenon. For example, the head of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation claims to have 6,800 accounts of this sort of abuse at the hands of Christians in the military. The MRFF and some of the offended soldiers that are quoted in the piece seem to think that a military coup by evangelical soldiers is close at hand. But a Pentagon spokesperson says that there have been only 100 formal complaints about religious harassment filed over the past two years. Let's crunch the numbers here. If the higher number is correct (and I do not concede for a moment that it is), then of the 2.88 million members of the U. S. military, less than a quarter of 1 percent of them have suffered harassment at the hands of these dastardly fundamentalists. If the lower number is correct, then it's about .0035 percent. You will forgive me if I find incendiary remarks drumming up fears about those who want to "create a fundamentalist Christian theocracy" in the military a bit hyperbolic. Perhaps the MRFF has been studying the Joe McCarthy playbook.

But the AFP story holds its cards until the very last sentence. The unnamed journalist interviews a former chaplain who says he was harassed for not towing a certain theological line. The final quote belongs to the anonymous chaplain:

"As a soldier, many times you want to believe you're fighting on the right side. It's easy to kill someone if you believe that they're going to hell and that they are religiously opposed to you."

Of course! If you hold to the exclusivity of salvation through Christ, you may become a murderer! I'm sure all the evangelicals in the military are constantly engaged in a vicious internal battle, struggling to will themselves not to cut the throats of their unbelieving comrades in their sleep.

I do not give the AFP a pass on this issue simply because the quote comes from a source that was interviewed and not the actual author of the story, just as I would not give them a pass if they were to give the final word to someone who said that holding Jewish beliefs might cause someone to want to drink human blood. That this statement would even be quoted is unconscionable, and it only serves as an illustration of the schizophrenia that surrounds the notion of "tolerance" in contemporary western culture. To the anonymous former chaplain (and to the AFP) I would say: you do not show the dangers of religious intolerance by making equally egregious and inflammatory statements about the beliefs of evangelicals. That's like trying to spread the virtues of pacifism by randomly kicking people in the groin.

You scored as Anselm, Anselm is the outstanding theologian of the medieval period. He sees man's primary problem as having failed to render unto God what we owe him, so God becomes man in Christ and gives God what he is due. You should read 'Cur Deus Homo?' Anselm 100% Karl Barth 80% Charles Finney 60% John Calvin 53% Jonathan Edwards 33% Martin Luther 33% Friedrich Schleiermacher 27% Augustine 27% Jürgen Moltmann 13% Paul Tillich 7% Which theologian are you? created with QuizFarm.com

[HT: Through the Veil]

"What Lessons Can Progressives Learn from Evangelicals?" is an intriguing article at the far (far) left news outlet Alternet about the influence the emergent church movement is having - or could potentially have - on the American religious and political landscape. The author is a political liberal who sees emergent churches as the model for progressive communities and organizations. The article focuses on Rob Bell and Mars Hill church in Grand Rapids (although I prefer that other Mars Hill), and continually points out that churches like Bell's are meeting community needs like no other organization can:

If you compare the Mars Hill complex to progressive community centers or union halls, it has no rival ... In this way, churches have left progressives in the dust in terms of serving and engaging people directly. The union hall is the left's nearest equivalent, but not only is it dying, it rarely attempts to serve anywhere near as many of the needs -- spiritual and practical -- as churches do.

I think the author is right here, but of course it is more than emerging churches that do that. Even the most Bible-thumping fundamentalist church can serve the exact same communal function. But the article sees Bell and other emerging leaders as sort of revolutionaries, changing the way the church embodies the kingdom of God from the inside out.

I'm not sure I agree that the emerging church is so revolutionary; the type of Christianity described seems like sort of an orthodox-lite social gospel movement. I have some of the same suspicions and reservations about the oft-unholy alliance between evangelicals and the Republican political agenda as some of the folks mentioned in the article, but I have an equal level of suspicion about a movement that would co-opt certain far left political stances in the name of Christ.

For example, many people in the movement take a hard pacifist stance, and the article praises one Shane Claiborne, a Christian who "is currently living in Iraq to 'stand in the way of war.'" Now, I know virtually nothing of Shane Claiborne. His Wikipedia page gives little information other than that he is radically committed to helping the poor. For all I know, he may be an orthodox saint of the highest pedigree, the type of Christian that I won't even be able to see in heaven because he is so near to the throne of God while I am craning my neck on the back row. However, I have a hard time swallowing any claim that this sort of hard pacifism is a Christian stance, or what Jesus would do in our situation, or whatever.

Why? It's simple: Jesus never commented on the wars of the Romans. Period. I'm no expert on the history of Roman military campaigns, but by all accounts the Roman emperor when Jesus walked the streets of Jerusalem was Tiberius, who was very aggressive (and successful) in expanding the northern borders of the Roman Empire by making war on the Germanic tribes and their allies. And let's not forget that Roman campaigns like Tiberius' were textbook examples of what an Empire is all about: merciless, brutal, expansion of land and resources through military conquests solely for the purpose of expanding Rome's power. Jesus was no doubt aware of all this, and yet he paid no attention to it. Or at least, if he did, it didn't turn up in the gospels. Hence I have a hard time imagining that, were he in our position, he would be in Baghdad sloganeering against U. S. troops. This accusation of gerrymandering Christianity so that it will fit with a certain modern political stance cuts both ways: the politically liberal Christian can be just as guilty as the politically conservative Christian of doing it.

Consider also this quote by someone involved in the movement:

Zydek characterizes the movement this way: "We want to get back to the roots of Christianity, to the essence of Christianity, which is about service to those in need, sacrifice, denial of self for others -- it's about [Jesus saying] 'pick up your cross and follow me.' But for too long we've spread a gospel of suburbanism, of self-centeredness, of capitalism, of political conservatism -- but not the gospel: the gospel that came from Christ."

Again, Jesus spoke nary a word about capitalism. He spoke often about the dangers of loving money, and he certainly had no love for the temple being used for commercial purposes, but he just doesn't comment on which economic system is his Father's favorite. Further, this rejection of capitalism seems historically naive. Capitalism has its drawbacks, but the truth is that people living under western capitalism have a higher quality of life than just about any other group in human history. And besides, what will you put in its place? Socialism? Marxism? Please. I refer anyone who still defends these ideological stupidities to the Siberian gulags or the workers' paradise of Kim Jong Il. And what, exactly, is "suburbanism"? Does it refer to the fact that many modern people live a "suburban" lifestyle? I live in a little house in the suburbs of Louisville. I have a dog, and a yard, and a fence, and an SUV, and a retirement account. I spent six hours today working in my yard trying to make it look good and thus keep my propery value up. What, exactly, is wrong with that? How is that unChristian?

The quote above is also hopelessly misguided. It gives two options for the "essence" of Christianity: (1) service to others and (2) suburban, capitalistic, self-centered political conservatism. Well. I had always thought the "essence" of Christianity was the redeeming work of Christ on the cross, the historical event that breaks down the dividing wall between man and God, the bloody atonement for human sin that reunites us with our Maker. Let's not forget that. Service to others is certainly a neglected aspect of kingdom living for many Christians, but if we elevate it to the "essence" of Christianity we strip the cross of its glory and its power.

This post has gone on too long, and has unfortunately contained an inordinate amount of rambling. I intended it to be a sort of sic et non statement that recognized the aims of the emergent church and praised it for its cultural successes while raising concerns over some of its theological and political emphases. I think I focused too much on the latter, but it's 11:00 p.m. now and I'm ready to go to bed. Perhaps I'll save the praises for another day.

[Oh, and HT to Rhett Smith]

There is no getting around the following fact: for many people the gospel of Jesus Christ is deeply, grossly, and sometimes obscenely offensive. But this is necessarily so. Any religion or worldview that includes a robust concept of salvation is likely to be offensive to a large number, perhaps a majority, of people. The apostle Paul famously spoke of the gospel as being an "offense" (Gal. 5:10-11), and as a "stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles" (1 Cor. 1:23). Moreover, the mind of man in his natural state is inclined against the things of God (Rom. 8:6-8), and thus when he is offended by the gospel he is simply acting according to his nature.

What should we as Christians think about this? Surely on the face of things we all want to get along with our neighbor, to refrain from personally offending him if at all possible and, more importantly, to refrain from assigning any greater level of defect to him than he actually deserves. But the gospel not only forces us to believe and proclaim things that are certain to offend him (and thus raise his ire in our general direction), but it requires us to see in him the supreme defect, the defect of being out of favor with God and thus out of harmony with the ultimate purpose of human existence.

In some sense this is unfortunate. It is also necessary. If we throw out the offense of the gospel then we also throw out its benefits, and of course the supreme benefit of the cross is salvation. It seems that any notion of salvation in the robust religious sense will never be immune from the charge of offensiveness. When I attain salvation, I realize that I have attained it from something, and on the Christian view that something is primarily the punitive judgment of Almighty God, but secondarily it is my own limitations as a finite being. When I say to my neighbor, "Salvation is available for you," to me it seems as if I am offering him the cup of living water, as if I am simply pointing him to a doorway that he may walk through and receive eternal life. To him, however, he hears in that simple statement a condemnation of his very nature. I say, "Salvation is available for you." He hears only, "There is something wrong with you."

This scenario creates tension between the church and the world, and hence there is a temptation that offers itself to us as Christians to abandon the offense of the gospel. And while it is true that there are some in our ranks who seem to unnecessarily increase the offense, it will do no good to the kingdom if we attempt to decrease it. This should be the lesson learned from liberal theology. There are numerous positive aspects of liberal theology that we classical Christians should learn from: its emphasis on social justice and showing compassion to the poor, for example. But the liberal theologians also want to make the gospel palatable to all people by diluting or doing away with unpopular notions such as sin and judgment, and in doing so they have inadvertently diluted or done away with salvation itself. Authentic Christian faith has no option but to embrace the offense of the cross of Jesus Christ, torture, nails, blood and all.

In my philosophical theology seminar this week, my professor had us engage in an old-fashioned, medieval style disputatio. My team was tasked with defending the idea that there could be no more than one omnipotent being, and we had a mere ten minutes to prepare. This is actually a fairly important question, as any case for traditional monotheism needs to be able to show that any being who possesses the properties that we usually assign to God (omnipotence, omniscience, omnibenevolence, etc.) could have no extant rivals. In other words, traditional monotheism needs to show not only that God (traditionally defined) exists but that only one God exists.

Denny Burk has a good list of news stories and scholars' responses to this whole Jesus tomb silliness.

Liberal theologians: "There ain't no hell."
Conservative theologians: "The hell there ain't!"

[HT to a 19th century preacher quoted in this book.]

When I started this blog, I never wanted it to be a place where I took part in the discussion of tawdry scandals. But I do want to make one point about this business with Ted Haggard, who has apparently now made a partial confession. I don't remember which network it was on and I couldn't find the transcript online, but I remember seeing a report on evangelicals a year or so ago on TV. One of the churches they highlighted was Haggard's church in Colorado Springs. They focused on how Haggard's message was a far cry from the traditional view of preaching: he did not focus on hell and wrath and very rarely talked about sin. Instead he focused on encouraging people.

I remember the interviewer asking Haggard, "Why don't you ever preach about sin?" Haggard smiled and said something to the effect of, "We don't worry about that because Jesus already took care of that for us!"

I remember thinking what a tragedy that was. Here was a pastor of a megachurch, with a flock of thousands under his care, who barely understood salvation. Haggard apparently thinks that salvation equals justification, and that's it. No need to worry about sanctification, mortification of the self, or any of that nasty Puritan business.

But this is not an accurate picture of Christian salvation. Salvation does not simply mean being justified as righteous based on Christ's atoning work. Justification is certainly the initial (and arguably the most important) aspect of salvation, but there are also sanctification and glorification. Being justified means we are declared righteous in the sight of God. So even when we sin post-conversion, Christ's blood covers that sin for us. Sanctification means that we actually start becoming more righteous through the power of the Word and the Spirit. Glorification is that moment when we are ultimately freed from the power of sin and receive a new nature that is not tainted with sin.

But it does no good for a pastor to act like justification is all there is to being saved. By ignoring the sometimes difficult process of sanctification, he may be overlooking people in his congregation who are struggling with serious sin issues. We all have to fight the inner demons now and then, and it looks like Pastor Haggard was fighting one of the biggest one of them all.

This weekend my wife and I attended our ten year high school reunion, and I had a long conversation with an old friend that ran the gamut from politics to philosophy to theology and back again. During our discussion we touched on the topic of theological liberalism, and I told my friend I could never embrace a full-blooded liberal theology, not simply because I disagree with its methods and conclusions, but for the stronger reason that at some point liberal theology ceases to be Christian, as it throws out core Christian doctrines even though it wants to retain the "Christian" label. My friend asked me, "OK, what are the core Christian doctrines that are non-negotiable?" I threw out a few of them, but it got me thinking: what are the non-negotiable Christian doctrines without which any belief system can't properly be labeled Christian?

I'll venture a few, although there are plenty more:

• God exists in reality as an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent Spirit, and as one divine Being and three divine Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
• Jesus Christ was both fully human and fully divine.
• Human sin is both real and ultimately significant, and because of sin humans are separated from God and under His judgment.
• The only hope for reconciliation between God and man is the atoning work of Jesus Christ: his death, burial, and resurrection.

Even within these parameters there is a wide area for disagreement. For example, does the Atonement mean that all people will be saved? Or only the elect? Is salvation appropriated through faith alone, or faith plus works? I'm moderately Reformed in my theology, so you can probably figure out where I fall on these issues.

Now it seems common sense to say that any denial of these fundamental Christian doctrines would obviously entail a denial of Christianity, just as, say, spying for the Chinese government would disquality one from being justly labeled as an American patriot. But this is an important point, because there are individuals and groups who want to merit the term "Christian" and yet deny even these foundational doctrines. John Shelby Spong, for example, has advocated a "non-theistic" version of Christianity, and by this I understand him to mean a "Christianity" that does not posit that there is such a person as God. In related news, I am going to call myself a vegan right before I go have a nice filet mignon and a glass of milk.

The idea that I am stating here is certainly not a new one. The monumental statement of the difference between classical Christianity and liberal theologies is J. Gresham Machen's Christianity and Liberalism, originally published in 1923. But it's an idea that's worth restating, as postmodern sympathies are pressing more and more people to be flexible in defining Christianity. But you can't take a pig and name it a lion just because the present zeitgeist is disposed unfavorably toward actual lions. Christianity is what it is, and that's historical orthodoxy, and that's that.

Consider this, anonymous reader: you may be under the impression that you are in charge of your life, that you are the captain of your fate and the master of your soul. But the classical Christian view is that your life was made for the glory of God, exists presently for the glory of God, and will be a shining display of the glory of God at some future date. In other words, the only reason you have a life is so that it can fulfill God's purposes, not your own. There is God's glory at the end of the road, and that is all. Your life was made for this. All other purposes of the Christian life - a restored relationship with God, everlasting joy and peace, the removal of the stain of sin - are encapsulated in this single monolithic purpose: that God should be glorified.

Now anyone with even the blandest apprehension of Christian theology ought to have their hackles raised at this prospect. They should know that the glory at the end of the road is reached in only one of two ways. The first way that God is glorified in the life of the individual is through the act of redemption. There is glory all along the way: in the transformation of a wicked human into a creation that is both holy and wholly new, in the perfect, restored relationship that comes into existence between the mortal and the divine, in the cohabitation of the community of the redeemed in the kingdom of God, and most of all, in the bloody show of the Son of God as he dies on the cross, the one event that makes all of the others possible. God is glorified in the display of both His love and His justice, and the Atonement is the wonderful, terrible display of both at once: His love being displayed in the fact that He would cast His own son into the jaws of death to save sinners, an act that also displays His justice in pouring out His wrath against sin.

But there is a second way that God's glory can be displayed in your life, dear reader, and here the story becomes less pleasant. If at the cross God's glory was shown in a display of matchless love, it is in the belly of hell that His glory is shown in matchless justice. For God to let sin go unjudged and unpunished would be a perversion of justice. Thus in the condemnation of the sinful there is also a display of God's majesty and grandeur, just as His glory was displayed in the spectacle of the cross.

Thus there are two possible endings for the road of life, both of them glorifying the Creator of all life in the end. There is glory for Him in the act of redemption - as well as peace, meaningfulness, and eternal life for us - and there is glory for Him in the act of condemnation. His eternal splendor is shown in both His boundless love and his terrible wrath.

I admire Bill Vallicella, aka the Maverick Philosopher, for his keen philosophical insight, his sharp wit, and his commitment to some form (I'm not sure which) of theism. In a recent post he confessed his ignorance of what we evangelicals mean when we use the term "inerrant" about the Bible, and opined on why he couldn't accept inerrantism as he understands it:

To focus my difficulty, consider Genesis. At Gen 1, 3 we read about the creation of light on the first day. But then in verses 14-19 we read about the creation of sources of light on the fourth day. But surely physical light cannot come into existence before the coming into existence of sources of physical lights such as sun, moon, and stars. Genesis also implies that the creation was a temporal process lasting six or seven days. But it is obvious that time, however construed, is a contingent being and so in need of creation. Since time is one of the 'things' created, creation cannot be a temporal process. The creation of time cannot occur in time. And if time is uncreated, then creation is not ex nihilo.

I don't want to address these two particular issues, which I think are fairly easily dealt with. I only want to point to some responses to Bill's understanding and questioning about what inerrancy means. Bill seems to think that any sort of subscription to inerrancy as it is traditionally defined - say, for example, in the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy - entails belief in false propositions, such as the belief that the Earth was created in six literal days and is only a few thousand years old.

But John DePoe points out that Bill seems to misunderstand the scope of inerrancy as Christians have traditionally defined it:

Bill begins by initially considering “inerrancy” as a form of “literalism.” Many people make this assumption, and quickly conclude that inerrancy is an obviously false doctrine. But this is not what any evangelical means by inerrancy. Inerrancy is a belief about the truth of the Bible–in particular that the Bible contains no falsehood. Literalism is a (terrible) method of interpreting the Bible, which maintains that all Scripture should be read literally. I’ve always been perplexed that people fail to see the difference between inerrancy and literalism. Making this distinction is an important first step to realizing that inerrancy isn’t obviously false.

I think this is right: belief in inerrancy does not necessarily entail a belief in total and unmitigated literalism. In other words, there are portions of the Bible which may not have been intended by the authors - both divine and human - to be read as literally true. For example, it is clear that when John sees the dragon of Revelation on the shore of the sea, he does not mean that a physical, scale-covered, smelly dragon will at some point stand on the seashore. He intended this passage to be read metaphorically.

The difficulty is the task of determining when the biblical authors - both divine and human - meant to be literal and when they didn't. Many claim that the only legitimate reading of Moses is that he meant the opening chapters of Genesis to be read as six literal days of creation and that therefore the Earth is between six and ten thousand years old. But many evangelicals - including many who hold to inerrancy - do not believe that this is necessarily the correct reading. Many Christian scholars are conservative in their theology and inerrantist in their approach to Scripture but hold to other views of creation that are also closer to the claims of science. The two major options currently are the Day Age Theory and the Literary Framework Theory. So Vallicella seems to be objecting to a form of inerrantism that is not held by all inerrantists.

Keep in mind here that I am not advocating any particular model of interpreting Genesis. I'm still not sure where I stand on that topic right now, although I do reject a young earth model. For now I'll say I currently vacillate between the Day Age model and the Literary Framework model, both of which I think are compatible with inerrancy as it is traditionally understood. But I also say the verdict is still out.

John DePoe has done some great original thinking in this excellent post by pointing out a serious philosophical problem that exists for open theism. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, open theism is a theological position that claims God's omniscience only extends to past and present events, but not the future. This is in obvious opposition to the traditional view that God's knows all truths: past, present, and future. The proponents of open theism claim that it eliminates the tension between God's foreknowledge and free human action. Sometimes this tension is formalized into an argument that claims God's foreknowledge and human free will are mutually exclusive and thus incompatible:

1) All past events are fixed.
2) If God has knowledge of my action x at future time t, then He has always had that knowledge.
3) Therefore, God had knowledge of my future act x at some point in the past p.
4) Since He knew it at p, God's knowledge of x is fixed.
5) Since God's knowledge of x is fixed at p, then my action is also fixed at p.
6) If my action is fixed at p (i. e. in the past), then I am not free to refrain from it.
7) Therefore, human free will is not compatible with God's foreknowledge.

Open theists claim their theology conveniently solves this problem, and thus there has been a movement among some Christians - including evangelicals - to accept and promote this view. The open theist's claim is that it would be impossible for God to have knowledge of the future, since the future doesn't exist yet. In the same way that Christians say that God is limited by the rules of logic - He can't make 2+2=5, for example - He is also logically limited by the existence of time.

Now it's certainly important to form philosophical objections to open theism, but as Christians we are also called to form theological and biblical objections to such false teaching. There are numerous biblical passages that attest to God's complete knowledge of future events. For this post, I'll only point to one that I think deals a fatal blow to any variety of open theism that claims to be compatible with the traditional view of Scripture as inspired and inerrant:

your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.

Psalm 139:16

The entire text of Psalm 139 could be used to show the falsehood of open theism; statements like, "Before a word is on my tongue, you know it completely, O LORD," do not bode well for the open theist. But verse 16 in particular can be used in a trenchant defense of the traditional view. The Psalmist makes three claims about God's foreknowledge. First, he says that all his days were "ordained" by God. Second, those days were recorded in His book, and third, all of this was done "before one of them came to be." There can be no more explicit description of actual foreknowledge than this, since explicit foreordination obviously entails foreknowledge.

If we are to understand how God's foreknowledge is compatible with human free will, it doesn't do the church any good to abandon the biblical teaching for vain philosophizing. Many Christian thinkers have set forth various solutions to the problem that are much more convincing that the easy way out offered by open theism.

But this is how heresies have usually developed. Someone encounters some aspect of Christian theology that is difficult to understand or contains paradoxes, and they fall into error by offering an unbiblical solution. For example, since some have seen the traditional doctrine of the Trinity to be difficult or incoherent, they have fallen into the error of modalism, the view that God does not exist as one Being in three Persons but that He has used different forms (or modes) throughout time: as the Father in the Old Testament, Jesus in the New, and the Holy Spirit in the church age. It is the same with open theism. But if Jesus himself admitted that some theological teachings were hard (John 6:60), should we not admit their difficulty without abandoning them? It doesn't make sense to say that all of our doctrines should neatly fit into our logical and cognitive systems. There are likely an infinite amount of truths about God that we do not have the ability to comprehend, but are compelled to accept by the truth of His Word. We should expect to find some paradoxes - but not contradictions - in our doctrine of God. In other words, we should not be surprised that the eternal God is not only a being of great knowledge and power, but also of great mystery.

[ChristianThinker's note: For a great scholarly defense of the traditional position, I recommend Bruce Ware's God's Lesser Glory: The Diminished God of Open Theism.]

This article by R. R. Reno over at First Things claims that much of contemporary theology is ignoring analytic philosophy to its own peril:

Are there currents of modern philosophy that affirm the power of reason, support the universality of truth, and defend the objectivity of knowledge? ...is there a form of contemporary philosophy that seeks foundations?... The answer is, I think, yes. It is called analytic philosophy, and it dominates the English-speaking world. Yet it seems invisible... Alvin Plantinga, Peter van Inwagen, William Alston, and the rest of the Society of Christian Philosophers can meet for twenty years, but theology remains blind to ways in which analytic philosophy can contribute to the “evangelization of culture” and renewal of theology that John Paul II—and now Benedict XVI—identify as singular imperatives in the West.

Reno's point is that in the joint struggle among theological traditionalists against postmodernism, analytic philosophy could be a powerful ally. But the current neglect of the analytic tradition

is even more striking when we think about what is actually going on in the academy. Aren’t the governing sentiment and thrust of analytic philosophy—its logic-chopping, its punctiliousness about argument, and its tireless defense of reason—obvious to even the most casual observer? The opposition to the spirit of postmodern philosophy is evident.

I think Reno is generally correct here, at least when it comes to more mainstream or Catholic theology. The evangelical theological circles that I am familiar with are certainly no friends of continental philosophy, but there is a cursory familiarity with analytic philosophy, or at least with Alvin Plantinga. But that familiarity is cursory at best. I've long had thoughts that are in the same family as some of Reno's. The role that analytic philosophy could play in the theological task of cultural engagement and renewal is monumental. Certainly it is no replacement for traditional theology, and yet it can serve as a buttress to it, as well as helping theology clarify its language and its claims. I've often thought that the analytic method ought to be applied to traditional theology, that we should create an 'analytic theology,' so to speak. Such a task would be gargantuan, but in my opinion it would provide a more effective counterbalance to postmodernism.

[HT: Matthew Mullins at The Prosblogion]

Dan Edelen over at Cerulean Sanctum has a much-needed post addressing the objectionable tactics that characterizes some of the overzealous doctrinal watchdogs of the evangelical blogosphere. Here's a bit:

Over time, the tone on some of these blogs and sites has turned particularly gleeful in routing perceived enemies. But just as God takes no delight in the downfall of the wicked, rather hoping that they would repent, no Christian blogger should do a "Ha! Ha!" a la The Simpsons' Nelson Muntz when they see a perceived enemy stumble. Nor should we joke about error or make fun of our enemies. And while it is fine for the Apostle Paul to "wish they'd go emasculate themselves," none of us is Paul, or even a pale copy of him.

I've been wanting to post something like this for a long time, but I think Dan makes a very good case for what I was wanting to say. As Christians we have a biblical responsibility to root out and eliminate false doctrine from the church. But of course there are right ways and wrong ways to do this. Taking Dan's tactic of not mentioning names, I’ve caught the main writer on one of the premiere heresy-hunting sites spouting severe disinformation about her theological opponents. I suspect this stems more from ideology-fueled ignorance than deliberate deception, but it’s a good example of what Dan is talking about. I've added Cerulean Sanctum to the blogroll on the left.

[HT: Evangelical Outpost]

The Conservative Philosopher posts the following quote by David B. Hart from an article in the current issue of First Things:

Religion, after all (as everyone knows), is a realm of purely personal conviction sustained by faith, which is (as everyone also knows) an entirely irrational movement of the will, an indistinct impulse of saccharine sentiment, pathetic longing, childish credulity, and vague intuition. And theology, being the special language of religion, is by definition a collection of vacuous assertions, zealous exhortations, and beguiling fables; it is the peculiar patois of a private fixation or tribal allegiance, of interest perhaps to the psychopathologist or anthropologist, but of no greater scientific value than that; surely it has no proper field of study of its own, no real object to investigate, and whatever rules it obeys must be essentially arbitrary.

Now, as it happens, theology is actually a pitilessly demanding discipline concerning an immense, profoundly sophisticated legacy of hermeneutics, dialectics, and logic; it deals in minute detail with a vast variety of concrete historical data; over the centuries, it has incubated speculative systems of extraordinary rigor and intricacy, many of whose questions and methods continue to inform contemporary philosophy; and it does, when all is said and done, constitute the single intellectual, moral, spiritual, and cultural tradition uniting the classical, medieval, and early modern worlds. Even if one entirely avoids considering what metaphysical content one should attach to the word "God," one can still plausibly argue that theology is no more lacking in a substantial field of inquiry than are history, philosophy, the study of literature, or any of the other genuinely respectable university disciplines.

(James R. Stoner, Jr., et al., "Theology as Knowledge: A Symposium," First Things [May 2006]: 21-7, at 26 [italics in original])

"Christianity is a myth," declared the professor in my college folklore class. "However," he continued, "that doesn't necessarily mean it isn't true." The word "myth" as it has come to be used in the common vernacular simply means "something that isn't true." So in this sense the idea that President Bush was behind the attacks of 9/11 is clearly a myth.

But let's distinguish for a moment between this common definition of myth and the somewhat different notion of mythology. What is a myth in this second sense? According to the Encyclopedia Mythica, a myth is

a story of forgotten or vague origin, basically religious or supernatural in nature, which seeks to explain or rationalize one or more aspects of the world or a society ... Broadly speaking myths and mythologies seek to rationalize and explain the universe and all that is in it. Thus, they have a similar function to science, theology, religion and history in modern societies.

Mythology, then, serves the same function as a worldview, but in narrative form. It is a way in which people understand themselves in relation to reality, what there actually is, and thus it is a way in which people understand their own meaning.

Now back to my question: is Christianity mythology? Well, not in the first sense of being a story that isn't factually true. But do mythic stories have to be false? To put it another way, does the concept of myth entail falsehood? C. S. Lewis certainly didn't think so. In his excellent essay, "Myth Became Fact," he defends the idea that Christianity is the one, true, factual myth. He sees the function of myth as that of taking abstract truths and completing them, and thus completing human knowledge:

In the enjoyment of a great myth we come nearest to the experiencing as a concrete what can otherwise be understood only as an abstraction ... When we translate we get abstraction - or rather, dozens of abstractions. What flows into you from the myth is not truth but reality (truth is always about something, but reality is that about which truth is), and, therefore, every myth becomes the father of innumerable truths on the abstract level. Myth is the mountain whence all the different streams arise which become truths down here in the valley; in hac valle abstractionis ["In this valley of separation"]. Or, if you prefer, myth is the isthmus which connects the peninsular world of thought with that vast continent we really belong to. It is not, like truth, abstract; nor is it, like direct experience, bound to the particular.

For Lewis then, mythology may help us better understand those ultimate, metaphysical, and sometimes mysterious truths about the world in which we live. However, Lewis sees the Christian story as the myth, the one that teaches us the ultimate truth about reality itself. But unlike the other mythologies, the Christian story is factually true, and that is what makes it so important:

Now as myth transcends thought, Incarnation transcends myth. The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact. The old myth of the Dying God, without ceasing to be myth, comes down from the heaven of legend and imagination to the earth of history. It happens -- at a particular date, in a particular place, followed by definable historical consequences. We pass from a Balder or an Osiris, dying nobody knows when or where, to a historical Person crucified (it is all in order) under Pontius Pilate. By becoming fact it does not cease to be myth: that is the miracle. I suspect that men have sometimes derived more spiritual sustenance from myths they did not believe than from the religion they professed. To be truly Christian we must both assent to the historical fact and also receive the myth (fact though it has become) with the same imaginative embrace which we accord to all myths. The one is hardly more necessary than the other ...

Those who do not know that this great myth became Fact when the Virgin conceived are, indeed, to be pitied ... We must not be ashamed of the mythical radiance resting on our theology. We must not be nervous about 'parallels' and 'Pagan Christs': they ought to be there - it would be a stumbling block if they weren't. We must not, in false spirituality, withhold our imaginative welcome. If God chooses to be mythopoeic -- and is not the sky itself a myth -- shall we refuse to be mythopathic? For this is the marriage of heaven and earth: Perfect Myth and Perfect Fact: claiming not only our love and our obedience, but also our wonder and delight, addressed to the savage, the child, and the poet in each one of us no less than to the moralist, the scholar, and the philosopher.

In a world of where rationalism and materialism act as usurpers to the epistemological throne, the declaration of the true myth of Christianity - the story of the world above reaching down to the world below - is essential. The fact is that many people do believe in various mythologies: they literally idolize their favorite sports teams, or musicians, or pop singers, or political theories, and yet none of these can do the job, for they are all unfortunately tied to the finite and temporary realm in which we live. The myth of the dying, atoning God, of eternity's Messiah who saves mankind, is also fact. It is the one true mythology, the one true story by which faltering humanity may chart its course to eternity.

[Note: "Myth Became Fact" can be found in the excellent anthology of Lewis' essays and articles, God in the Dock.]

On Monday I posted on why I thought 1 Corinthians 9:19-22 provided a biblical basis for ministry methodologies that sought to be relevant to the culture for the sake of the Gospel. This post was picked up by various blogs, among them was Monday Morning Insight, where Todd Rhoades posted the full text of what I had written. The MMI post was in turn picked up Jim at Slice of Laodicea, who had this to say:

A popular Church Growth Movement website ran an article yesterday, that attempted to justify the "whatever works" methods of relevance that are often used to draw crowds to seeker-driven churches. As you might have guessed, their view centers around the misuse of what is probably that movement's flagship bible verse, in which Paul says that he is willing to "become all things to all men".

The misuse of this verse, has lead to a thorough lack of regard for the bible's instructions to be not conformed to the world. And as Iain Murray once said "The most insidious opposition to the Gospel has come from within worldly churches".

Jim then went on to quote extensively from a sermon by Clay Miller that elaborates on the context of the passage in question. Jim posted a comment here yesterday and clarified that his "whatever works" comment was referring to MMI and not to me. He also pointed out that he feels my interpretation of 1 Cor. 9 is at variance with Miller's interpretation, so I have to assume that he means my post was an example of a "misuse" of that text. He then asked me to interact with Miller's comments, and I told him I would gladly comply.

It looks like my post on relevance has hit a few nerves. Todd Rhoades posted the full text over at Monday Morning Insight. This was picked up by the doctrinal watchdogs over at Slice of Laodicea, who claim I am promoting a "whatever works" approach to church growth. Looking back over the post and reviewing my thought processes at the time, I fail to see how that could be the case. Anyone who knows me would say that my views don't come anywhere close to the sort of theological pragmatism Slice of Laodicea accuses me of. I'll be working on a sermon today, so I don't have time to respond. I'll post a rejoinder in the next day or two.

Let me get something out of the way first: I am not emergent, or at least I don't think I am. The fact is that I think the emerging church has a lot of good things to say to evangelicals about doing ministry, but there are also aspects of the movement that I think are way off base, if not downright silly. As an example of the latter, think of Brian McLaren's call for a five-year moratorium within the church to discuss what the Bible really says about homosexuality.

With that out of the way, I want to address the idea that the church should be relevant to the culture, a foundational principle of the emerging church and a touchstone of criticism for the movement's critics. But I'm with the emergents on this one. I think there is definitely a biblical basis - if not a biblical mandate - for Christians to be relevant to the culture so that they may be more effective in evangelism. Consider the following passage:

For though I am free from all men, I have made myself a slave to all, so that I may win more. To the Jews I became as a Jew, so that I might win Jews; to those who are under the Law, as under the Law though not being myself under the Law, so that I might win those who are under the Law; to those who are without law, as without law, though not being without the law of God but under the law of Christ, so that I might win those who are without law. To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak; I have become all things to all men, so that I may by all means save some.

1 Corinthians 9:19-22 (NASB)

Now what exactly is Paul saying here? If we take Paul's attitude toward evangelism in these verses as a paradigm for all Christians, as I think we should, then we can sum up this paradigm in a proposition R:

R = As a means to effectively evangelize the lost, Christians should adapt themselves to the culture and lifestyles of the unsaved, as long as the means of adaptation fall within a biblical and doctrinally faithful framework.

This seems to me to provide solid biblical grounds for a constant reinvention of how we as Christians present ourselves as agents of the kingdom, as long as we do so within a biblical framework and while holding to orthodox doctrine. I think that most emergents would claim that this is all they are doing. However, I think a legitimate criticism is that some of them are trying to do it without holding to doctrinal fidelity, a la McLaren. And although this claim is sometimes made by emergent critics, I seem to see a lot more wholesale condemnation of the emergents' desire to be "relevant" than with exactly how they are trying to be relevant. Consider the following bit of cuteness that has been making the rounds of the blogosphere recently:

Emerging Armor

Finally, be passionate in the Lord, and in the transparency of His authenticity. Put on the authentic accoutrement of God, that you may be able to appear relevant within the spirit of the age. For our struggle for relevance is not against flesh and blood, but against steeples, against propriety, against the dry doctrines of denominations, against the spirit of inauthenticity within our stodgy churches. Therefore, take up the accoutrement of God, that you may be able to be passionate at the coffee shop, and having done everything, to appear relevant. Be relevant therefore, having pierced your eyebrow with the mark of latent rebellion, and having recently ordered a double-shot vanilla latte, and having put on your lower leg the preparation of a tattoo; in addition to all, taking up your copy of The Emerging Church, with which you will be able to extinguish all the inauthentic non-missional impulses of submergent critics. And take the BlackBerry of connectedness and the iPod of background noise which is “the word up, Dog.”

Ephesians 6:10-17 (sort of)

Now I know this isn't an argument per se, but I do think it represents an attack on the idea of relevance itself, rather than on the misapplication of relevance. But the fact of the matter is that many evangelicals are stodgy, white collar, Republican squares whose lives are so different from contemporary young people as to have almost no point of contact with them. And I'm not saying that if you are one of those stodgy stiff-shirts - I am something of one myself - that you should change, I'm only saying that for the church to be effective, some Christians need to break out of traditional molds into new ways of doing ministry. That is relevance, and I think that was a goal of the apostle Paul in his evangelistic endeavors. Where the emergents go wrong is when they sacrifice doctrinal fidelity to seem relevant. But for those who do it right, they should not be criticized but commended.

What I am saying is this: many critics claim that emergents only want to be relevant because they are ashamed of the gospel and want to force it to fit in to the mold of a rebellious world. But this is not how the emergents view themselves. They focus on relevance for one reason: to be more effective evangelists and ambassadors of the kingdom of God. When they do it according to Paul's idea of "becoming all things to all men," they are right. When they sacrifice good theology for it, they fail. In my view, maintaining relevance is an essential part of proclaiming the gospel, at least when it is done correctly.

Via Cerulean Sanctum I found Chandrakant Chavada's blog. Chavada is apparently something of an apostle in India, spreading the gospel and overseeing various ministries. He has some interesting stories, like this one about a man who was healed of paralysis, resulting in a number of conversions in the local village. His blog is full of posts about miracles and large-scale conversions and community awakenings. This move of God has apparently roused the ire of local enemies of the cross, however, and there is a nationalist attempt at forced reconversion of some of the Christians there, a frightening prospect that we should keep in our prayers. I'm going to keep my bets on the success of the gospel, however.

I long to see this sort of thing in America and Europe, but I feel the non-charismatic evangelical community here does not see this sort of revival for one simple reason: we do not seek it. We love our theological debates on polity and the sovereignty of God, we love to stand firm on issues such as justification by faith and biblical inerrancy, but by and large we fail to seek the power of God displayed in any way that might make us uncomfortable. Perhaps in the end we are - unlike our Indian brethren - children of the Enlightenment in a more significant sense than we think. We value the intellectual and the reasonable things of God over supernatural displays of His power and glory. We worship Him in the crystal clear waters of truth but neglect worshipping Him in the fire of the Spirit. This is to our shame. I pray that the evangelical church would realize this and cry with Habakkuk, "LORD, I have heard of your fame; I stand in awe of your deeds, O LORD. Renew them in our day, in our time make them known; in wrath remember mercy." (Hab. 3:2) When good theology is united with a passion for the power of God, then He may use us to shake the foundations of the kingdom of darkness. Until then we will continue to sound the horn of cultural retreat in the west.

Consider this your theology lesson for the day. Fide-O has a brief rundown of the different types of Calvinism. I fall pretty squarely in the Amyraldian camp.

[HT: Smart Christian]

Michael Spencer over at Internet Monk has a great post about the history of Southern Baptists' relationship with the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements. Here's a bit:

Southern Baptist leaders have, until recently, given a broad and generous nod to movements in the convention that encouraged a strong emphasis on the contemporary power, work, gifts and movement of the Holy Spirit. Leaders as diverse as Billy Graham and Paige Patterson have written affirmingly of the gifts of the Holy Spirit operating through churches and in believers. Leaders such as Avery Willis and Henry Blackaby have been deeply influenced by a charismatic-style approach to the work of the Holy Spirit. Blackaby particularly appears to be very sympathetic to a kind of personal revelatory and empowering work of the Holy Spirit that sounds much more charismatic than the average Baptist church.

The impetus for Spencer's post is the recent decision by the trustees of the International Mission Board to forbid missionary candidates from practicing a private prayer language (i. e. speaking in tongues) even though Jerry Rankin, president of the IMB, speaks in tongues himself. Rankin had nothing to do with the decision, however, and this decision and others have already started some controversy.

I myself do not speak in tongues, but I know Southern Baptists who do. I do, however, have an affinity for the charismatic mindset and its emphasis on the power of God. I grew up in a Southern Baptist tradition that focused strongly on both the Word of God and the power of God, and I was actually converted at a pentecostal/charismatic revival. Those early encounters with God in that revival have been the foundational points for my understanding of my own salvation experience; I believe the Bible because I have encountered the God that appears on its pages.

And although recent shifts in the convention via the IMB policies and others do not encourage me, I remain a Southern Baptist because I think we get closest to the mark of authentic Christianity. I'll try to explain what I mean. On this issue of tongues, the power of God, etc., I see two camps that represent opposite errors. The error stems from not really paying attention to Jesus' words in John 4:23:

Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.

On one side there is the truth-heavy camp that emphasizes the propositional truths of Scripture over the working of the Holy Spirit. I put someone like John MacArthur and most other cessationists in this camp. They believe that the only (or at least the primary) miracle available to mankind today is the Word of God. They do not emphasize the powerful working of the Holy Spirit through miracles and wonders, and thus I don't think they understand that "the kingdom of God is not a matter of talk but of power." (1 Cor. 4:20)

On the other side are the off-balance charismatics who emphasize the Spirit over the truth. This is the Spirit-heavy camp. On this end of the spectrum all that matters to Christian living is having experiences of God and His power, with scriptures that deal with these "power issues" taking precedence over more abstract theological issues. This de-emphasis on biblical truth has led to excesses and errors in the prosperity and word-faith movements.

The truth is that most evangelical, SBC, and pentecostal/charismatic churches fall somewhere in the broad middle of this spectrum. I feel blessed to be a child of both the charismatic power emphasis and the SBC Reformed theology emphasis. And although I long for God to renew his miraculous works in our day for His own glory, I just get too weirded out when I go into many charismatic worship services. The SBC tradition of emphasizing both the truth of the Word and the power of the Spirit (without saying too much about tongues, for right or wrong) seems just about right to me. I wish that we could shift a bit more to the "Spirit' end of the spectrum, but if I am going to err I want it to be toward the "truth" end. That's because I believe John MacArthur does have the Holy Spirit, but I'm not sure some of the off-balance charismatics are very close to the truth.

[HT to Smart Christian for the link to Internet Monk]

As a (somewhat) related post to some musings from earlier today on a "theology of encounter," I thought I'd link to David Bayly's insightful comments on the Reformed tradition's treatment of "extra-biblical" prophecy, along with some surprising statements by Calvin himself. I am a moderately Reformed Baptist, but I most definitely do believe that God speaks today, at least to individuals for (1) their own edification and (2) so that they can know His will for their lives. I'm less sure about a continued prophetic office, but the verdict is still out on that one.

For me a helpful distinction to be made is the intended audience of the revelation. I know that when God speaks to me it has no place in the Bible simply because it is not a word that is for all people at all times. Thus we might distinguish between "global revelation," intended for all mankind and "local revelation" to the individual for his or her own benefit. That doesn't come close to solving the problem that Bayly is addressing, but to me it's helpful.
(HT: Smart Christian)

I've been thinking recently about what it actually means to encounter God, be it in prayer, or worship, or through an experience of beauty, or whatever. The biblical drama is essentially one long tale about God initiating encounters with humans in order to achieve His purposes in history. The defining event of my life was the inbreaking of God into my life when I was converted at age 19. It was an encounter with the personal God of the cosmos, the result being a Copernican revolution in the constitution of my thoughts, beliefs, and emotions.

It seems to me that evangelicals would benefit greatly if they devoted as much mental energy to the development of a theology of encounter, for lack of a better term, as they do to other areas of theology. I suppose that such a theology would best fit into our understanding of the doctrine of God, or the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, or even into our soteriology. It seems that we spend all of our energy into properly exegeting our reading of the Word of God, while shortchanging any inquiry into our experience of God Himself, even though the primary theme of the Bible is redemption. And redemption involves a restored relationship, and you can't very well have a relationship with someone if you don't encounter them every now and then.

I use the term "encounter" rather than "experience" because I am trying to ward off the feverish warnings against relying on "experience" that characterizes a certain block of evangelicalism. That sort of thinking seems entirely incorrect to me, based solely on the fact that it is nowhere found in the biblical record, and the whole message of the Bible is one of humans having divinely-initiated encounters with God. The writings of the Psalmist, even though he didn't have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, provide a perfect example of a human's passionate devotion to encountering God, not because he loves the experience but because he loves God Himself.

Not only do I think wholesale warnings against mystical experiences are wrong, I think they can be downright dangerous. The simple fact is that if I only had access to the Word of God and never to God Himself, the Christian life would be unlivable for me. I can't express the relief it gave me to hear one of my seminary professors (who will remain unnamed) say that the only real Christianity is one that includes an experience of God. The emphasis on knowing and understanding the Word can come with a tragic cost if the goal of that activity is not the cultivation of a relationship with God that includes personal experiences with Him through the Holy Spirit.

The warning against the dangers of mystical experience is a legitimate warning if its goal is to eliminate the desire in some Chrisitians for an experience with God to be an end in itself. But having experiences with God as a means to an end - that end being a healthy, thriving relationship with the Living God - is not only helpful but vital to true Christianity.

The reason the development of a theology of encounter is so vital is so that Christians can properly understand, evaluate, and recognize genuine experiences of God. The answer to the problems that mystical experiences pose is not the elimination of those experiences but a proper understanding of them.

Now it's true that our Pentecostal and charismatic brethren have been writing about their experiences with God for years. But those writings tend to lack the exegetical and theological sophistication that characterizes much of the Reformed tradition, and the worst of them are examples of hyper-emotionalism and how not to seek an experience with God.

Perhaps someone could point out to me some high-level "encounter theology" that I am missing, but right now the closest thing I can think of are the writings of the Christian philosopher William P. Alston, who sees Christian mystical experience as being foundational to faith itself. I am more of a philosopher, and only an average theologian at best, but I hope that some bright young theologian out there will take on this task very soon.

I try to avoid the Huffington Post like a plague. The writers there, when they descend from the high horse of progressive liberal righteousness to speak about "fundamentalists," tend to misunderstand and therefore misrepresent everything that evangelicals believe in or stand for. But I stumbled across an opinion piece from the Post by Tony Campolo that I found very interesting. It's called "Is Christianity a Casualty of War?" and the gist of the piece is this: American evangelicals have actually harmed the cause of Christ by wedding themselves to the conservative Republican agenda, specifically as it relates to the war.

Now let's set the issue of Campolo's theology aside for a moment, as well as the issue of whether the Republican agenda matches the caricature of it as it is daily portrayed in the Huffington Post. Rather, I want to examine the argument that Campolo is making, and more importantly, how he is making that argument. I also want to be as gentle to Rev. Campolo as I can, as the progressive wolves at Huffington are ripping him to shreds in the comments section of his post for even calling himself "evangelical" and implying that missionaries might actually be doing valuable work for humanity.

Let's begin with a quote:

Recently, I sat in dismay as I watched a television show that featured a prominent Christian author defending the use of torture in the war against terrorism. I was outraged that this man could try to make a case for followers of Jesus condoning such an immoral practice. I shared my feelings with a group of fellow Evangelicals and was stunned when the consensus that emerged from this group of Christians was in agreement with this author ...

I came away from that discussion with a sense that many of us Evangelicals have given up our moral compasses and wandered into an ethical wasteland where we are not only losing our souls, but also losing our testimonies as good people. Checking around, I found very little condemnation of America's use of torture from those pundits of Christian Fundamentalism who usually can be counted on to speak out with righteous indignation whenever our government provides even the appearance of evil.

What I want to say here is that the way Campolo makes his case here doesn't seem to be very fair. That's because he is simply saying, "These people calling themselves Christians believe in torture. Can you believe that?" This is a common ploy to use when one wants to make some assertion but doesn't really want any discussion on it. It's akin to me saying, "Kenny thinks raping children is morally acceptable. Can you believe that?" We really wouldn't have to have any discussion on the matter, and I think I would be justified in saying that without hearing Kenny's side of the story. So I'll grant that there is a class of moral statements with which we can do this, the aforementioned one being a good example.

But the case is far from closed on the issue of the security of sovereign nations. I should first point out that I agree with Campolo in principle. It isn't very Christian or self-sacrificial or loving to tortue someone. But I should also point out that the word "torture" conjures up images of emaciated people being stretched out on the rack or of a religious infidel having his tongue cut out, and that is not what the contemporary discussion of torture is about. It is above all an issue of national safety and security, and that is a very different thing.

Campolo makes the following statement, "The question is would Jesus ask, 'What doth it profit if you gain information from a tortured terrorist and lose your own soul?'" Now in the way he frames it he's exactly right. Suppose someone says to you, "We may be able to get some info from Mr. Jones here about a potential link from Mr. Smith to the known terrorist Mr. Johnson who has ties to Al-Qaeda, but we can only do it if we rip out his fingernails." No one who follows Christ or who seriously reads the New Testament would ever do or support such a thing, or at least I don't think they would.

But we also have to present another scenario. Suppose someone says to you, "Mr. Johnson here knows the whereabouts of a nuclear bomb that is going to level Chicago tomorrow, but he won't give up the info. But if we deprive him of sleep then he'll squeal like a stuck pig." This is quite a different matter. The real issue is how Christians are to handle clear ethical dilemmas. Campolo might say, "No, absolutely not! It isn't Christlike to deprive someone of sleep!" And then of course, because of his inaction - BOOM! - 3 million people die. Well, is that very Christlike? My point here is not to answer these questions, but to show that the case is most definitely not closed on this issue or on many others involving the war.

There is a very simple way that some people have of quoting Jesus' sayings, "Turn the other cheek," or "Blessed are the peacemakers," and then making the leap from there to a total unmitigated pacifistic position. These folks often act as if Jesus didn't also say, "I have not come to bring peace but a sword," and "Let him who has no sword sell his cloak and buy one." That's not even to mention Paul's explanation that the state does not "bear the sword for nothing," and is a minister of God in its capacity to execute justice (all of these quotes are my paraphrases, by the way). It is not a simple matter, even for the New Testament Christian, to determine how to conduct matters of defense, justice, and safety. But I don't think it's right to assert a total pacifistic position any more than I think it's right to assert a total war-mongering position.

I don't mean to imply here that I hold unqualified support for the Iraq War, or that I "support" torture, or anything like that. The fact is that I supported the war in its function of ridding the world of Saddam's capability to produce weapons of mass destruction. But now that its function has morphed into one of creating democracy in Iraq, the verdict is still out. Campolo is certainly serious about his convictions, and I respect his concern for the world's "image" of the Gospel. I only want to point out that the issue is not as clear-cut as he makes it out to be.