Every Thought Captive

Many in the emergent movement are fans of deconstruction. They may be drawn to the promise of new theological and sociological horizons promised by deconstructing the recent past, but as Jonathan Brink notes, that may come with a price. For him, deconstruction is an emotional endeavor. As soon as we begin to call beliefs into question, we are bound to experience things akin to anxiety, even fear, as the things we were brought up with fall off one by one. As a good deconstructionist, he notes that the more people he reads and encounters, the more conclusions he comes in contact with.

Problem is, the older I got the more I realized that there isn’t really one great conclusion. There’s several conclusions.

He even sees problems with other points of view:

You see, the more I walk down the path of deconstruction, the more I’m beginning to see the holes in the fabric.

But, he assures us, we shouldn’t worry too much about his deconstruction. He doesn’t apply it to Scripture, only the interpretations of Scripture.

And to be clear, I’m not talking about deconstructing Scripture. Oh what a beautiful gift is Scripture. I’m deconstructing human attempts to understand Scripture.

That is a nice reassurance, but I am curious about how that gets fleshed out. It seems to me it will be difficult to protect Scripture from the blade of deconstruction while deconstructing the interpretation of the thing. So when Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth and the life, no person comes to the Father except through me,” and someone takes that to mean, “Jesus is the only way to the Father,” how is the second subject to deconstruction without immediately subjecting the first?

Deconstruction is a dangerous path to walk down for a believer who might be described as one of the “People of the Book.” How can we avoid subjecting Scripture to the deep subjectivity of this interpretational technique? After all, it is a compilation of books written by people who, for the most part, are now dead, and who, every one of them, was part of a radically different culture from anyone alive today. Scripture is tailor-made for deconstruction.

It seems to me that deconstruction has few to no upsides and suicidal downsides. Each alleged positive has an analogue in thoughtful analysis, and each downside does nothing but cut its own throat. In other words, it is possible to get all the gains of deconstruction without committing intellectual hari-kari. Concerning the downsides, a theory that alleges interpretive value is in the reader and not in the text leads to obvious and unavoidable absurdities. Deconstructionists disagree with that all day long, but that only makes their position even that much more ironic.

As for possible upsides, as Brink notes, there is the promise of openness to different conclusions and different points of view; even an irenic interaction with new ideas. Fundamentally, I see no difference between that and thoughtful analysis aimed at the truth. The deconstructionist may retort, “ah, but we do it with humility.” To which I might say their definition of humility needs to be reconstructed. Humility does not refer to truth, it refers to character. Humility does not forbid a person from sound and firm belief, it forbids them from vanity.

I also experience an emotion with deconstruction: intellectual repulsion.

With the rising of the emergent church movement and talk of living in a postmodern world, the subject of apologetics has been all the rage in some circles. Some are happy to declare traditional apologetics irrelevant in our new world where the best thing a Christian can do is invite another to share in their story. On the other end of the spectrum is the belief that the rational defense of the faith not only serves the purpose of discipleship, but even evangelism. In his recent article in CT, God is Not Dead Yet, William Lane Craig argues that apologetics are not only not irrelevant, but as useful now as they have ever been.

After Craig assesses the bulk of the traditional arguments for the existence of God, he asks, “Why Bother?” Craig makes the bold and provocative assertion that we do not live in a postmodern world, despite all the declarations to the contrary. In fact, he argues, to bend the subject of Christian apologetics to postmodernism would be catastrophic as it would reduce the truth of Christ to just another voice among a cacophony of views. He notes:

This sort of thinking is guilty of a disastrous misdiagnosis of contemporary culture. The idea that we live in a postmodern culture is a myth. In fact, a postmodern culture is an impossibility; it would be utterly unlivable. People are not relativistic when it comes to matters of science, engineering, and technology; rather, they are relativistic and pluralistic in matters of religion and ethics. But, of course, that's not postmodernism; that's modernism! That's just old-line verificationism, which held that anything you can't prove with your five senses is a matter of personal taste. We live in a culture that remains deeply modernist.

As a matter of practical fact, I think Craig is right. I have students who are knee-jerk relativists until they come face to face with reality themselves—they learn they can’t really live out the relativism they have been muttering about religion and ethics most of their lives. But, on the level of belief, I may not be inclined to agree with Craig wholeheartedly. I think the relativism in our culture has lead to an unusual condition where most people (especially most younger people) are content to live with the deep cognitive dissonance Craig cuts through with his evaluation. In other words, more and more people are content to live as if the world is not relative (morally or religiously) while believing (on at least some significant level) that it is.

Nonetheless, Craig is right to remind us of the social, evangelistic, and even discipling benefits of the apologetic tasks. I think if we dismiss it as no longer relevant, we do ourselves more harm than good.

This is a good post about the spate of "Jesus and Corporate Leadership Tips and Tricks" literature out there in the evangelical world: Jesus is not a CEO.

To add to what the author said, I think one of the fundamental errors most pastoral leadership litertature makes is beginning with an assumption akin to philosophical pragmatism.

Pragmatism is a distinctly American philosophy, "who can argue with success?" It is a view that sees success and numerical results as more important than abstract concepts like "truth" or "morality." The most recent philosophical pragmatist, Richard Rorty, famously wrote, "truth is what your peers let you get away with."

Though very few evangelical pastors are hard-core pragmatists, they are primarily concerned with measurable results nonetheless. And that makes them vulnerable to bad philosophy.

Enter the concept of Jesus as corportate leader. If successful corporations are our measure of accomplishment, and we want to be successful leaders following Christ, we are tempted (deeply tempted) to view Jesus as a successful corportat CEO.

Ultimately, it is a deep corruption of the life of Christ and the Kingdom of God here on earth.

This is a great video of three very solid thinkers discussing postmodernism and the emergent movement. They say several things that need to be said and heard about the necessity of truth (what Schaeffer called “true truth”) for a Christian worldview and the inability of the emergent movement to handle it.

Much of the emergent reaction I have seen to this clip is a little silly. Many accuse the presenters of having never read any of the basic emergent literature when they, in fact, discuss what they read specifically in the clip. I have also found that to be an emergent tactic when you find a soft spot—“you didn’t really read what he wrote.” And even more emergenty is the smarmy sigh of disappointment that the presenters were not irenic or circumspect in presenting their views on the matter.

But this is one of the core problems with an emergent point of view. Because of their postmodern commitments, they are unable to take a serious stand on anything except a stand against anyone who takes a stand on anything. To them, a catch phrase like “irenic” is synonymous with, “you can’t make judgments.” And that, to be sure, is a really bad place to begin building serious and life-transforming theology. Not only is it a view that commits suicide (it is itself a judgment), it is not what any emergent thinker actually believes or practices.

What the world needs is not more fuzzy thinking about god-in-general or spirituality-in-general. It needs Christians who know how to speak the truth in love—beginning with the truth, and also beginning with the love.

I read a commentary on Mark 8 the other day that I thought summarized well one of the places where the emergent movement is going wrong. In the context of Peter’s confession that Jesus is the Messiah, Jesus’ acceptance of the title, Jesus’ description of his life and then his description of the life of the disciple, the scholar wrote, “A false view of Messiahship leads to a false view of discipleship.” In other words, if we are unable to come to grips with the truth Jesus spoke about himself, our life of following Christ will miss the mark.

But that doesn’t sound irenic to me.

While reading Flew’s book, There is (no) a God, I read this anecdote about a lecture by Wittgenstein on the Oxford campus. Wittgenstein is a very influential, if not difficult to understand, philosopher in 20th century thought. This story buttresses my theory that philosophers can be some of the funniest people around.

I personally witnessed Wittgenstein in action at least once….His announced subject was “Cogito ergo sum,” derived, of course, from the French philosopher Rene Descartes’s famous statement “I think therefore I am.” The room was packed. The audience hung on to every one of the great man’s words. But the only thing I can now remember about his comments is that they had absolutely no discernible connection with the announced topic. So when Wittgenstein had finished, Emeritus Professor H. A. Prichard got up. With evident exasperation, he asked what “Herr Wittgenstein”—the Cambridge Ph.D. [Wittgenstein has earned] was apparently not recognized at Oxford!—“thought about Cogito ergo sum.” Wittgenstein responded by pointing at his forehead with the index finger of his right hand and saying only, “Cogito ergo sum. That’s a very peculiar sentence.”

On the occasion of Antony Flew’s new book, There is (no) a God, there has been a small flood of comment from both sides of the aisles: Christians seem very pleased that one of the most respected philosophical atheists of the past century has come to a form of deism, and atheists are not so pleased. When Flew originally produced his transition for an interview with Philosophia Christi, the Christian reaction was quite excited. But now with the publication of this new book, the atheists are having their say.

First of all, I heard about this NYTimes piece on Flew through the CU graduate philosophy e-mail list. The message said that this article is about “Flew’s conversion to Christianity.” The author of the e-mail clearly did not read to the third paragraph where the author noted, “Flew still rejects Christianity.” The e-mail got it wrong for reasons inherent in most of the atheistic reaction to the whole matter: they would rather label and personally attack him than deal with any of the argumentation behind his change of mind.

Before discussing certain portions of the NYTimes article by Oppenheimer, I think it is useful to mention that it appears that Flew did not have as much to say in his own book at it might seem. Through Oppenheimer’s research, he seems to have discovered that much of the book was ghostwritten for and edited through Flew, instead of the other way around. It also does seem that Flew suffers from a certain kind of memory disorder that keeps him from remembering names and dates. Although that is a little disappointing to me (I am currently reading the book), a couple of other things should be noted. Many more books than we are aware of are ghost written and very little is made of it. If the author has the final editing say about what is published, we tend to not be too upset. Secondly, if the philosophical tables were turned, I am not so sure memory lapses about names and dates would matter all that much. And thirdly, by the time Oppenheimer reaches that point in the article, his severe personal distaste for what Flew has done is transparent. The article he writes is the worst form of sophomoric ad hominum bludgery possible.

Oppenheimer attacks the academic qualifications of Flew’s coauthor, Varghese by noting he has none in particular. Oppenheimer’s qualification to asses the arguments involved, according to his byline, is that he, “is [the] coordinator of the Yale Journalism Initiative and editor of The New Haven Review. He last wrote for the magazine about the Hollywood acting coach Milton Katselas.” Not exactly who I would pick to asses the facts if Alvin Plantinga converted from Christian Theism to deism.

Throughout the article (and the book cites several other similar examples of this kind of behavior on the part of leading “new atheists”), Oppenheimer treats Flew like a doddering old fool. These excerpts are only a taste of what Oppenheimer’s journalistic training has taught him about assessing a situation:

Flew himself — a continent away, his memory failing, without an Internet connection — had no idea how fiercely he was being fought over…

With his powers in decline, Antony Flew, a man who devoted his life to rational argument, has become a mere symbol, a trophy in a battle fought by people whose agendas he does not fully understand.

When at last Flew speaks, his diction is halting,…

This is all in contrast to the one brave atheist who tried to keep Flew in the fold:

Richard Carrier, a 37-year-old doctoral student in ancient history at Columbia, is a type recognizable to anyone who has spent much time at a chess tournament or a sci-fi convention or a skeptics’ conference. He is young, male and brilliant, with an obsessive streak both admirable and a little debilitating.

According to Oppenheimer’s account, Carrier is the genius who is on top of things, and Flew is the puppet who has been coerced into belief in his old age. In fact, Oppenheimer is quite clear about Flew being coerced:

But it seems somewhat more likely that Flew, having been intellectually chaperoned by Roy Varghese for 20 years, simply trusted him to write something responsible.

Intellectuals, even more than the rest of us, like to believe that they reach conclusions solely through study and reflection. But like the rest of us, they sometimes choose their opinions to suit their friends rather than the other way around. Which means that Flew is likely to remain a theist, for just as the Christians drew him close, the atheists gave him up for lost.

Seriously? Flew was blindly lead by the hand for 20 years like a diminutive German attracted to a crazy woman’s candy house in the middle of the forest?

And then there is this gem of cultural projection:

Flew also had a longstanding affinity for conservative politics — he was an adviser to Margaret Thatcher — that made him unusually approachable for some Christians. In the light of his natal comfort with religious folk and his agreeable politics, Flew’s eventual alliance with Christians doesn’t seem so strange.

So apparently, we should not be surprised that an old man, barely able to speak or think clearly should wind up in the hands of Christians because he has a “longstanding affinity” for conservative politics. Not only is that the kind of childish assertion I would disallow in my college-level philosophy papers, it is factually false. For the first several years of his adult life, Flew was a card-carrying member of the Communist party.

So the article was a farce.

So far, the book has at least been enlightening. The first few chapters and sections are dedicated to the various steps in his philosophical atheism, his core arguments, and the reactions he received from all sides. For me, the book has been far more educational than this ridiculous article. I am actually getting a clearer grasp of his atheism than I had before.

The core principle Flew asserts in the beginning of this book is that we all have a duty to follow the evidence where it leads. He may have done exactly that for very real and meaningful philosophical and scientific reasons. If you are to believe Oppenheimer, however, we should follow evidence until it points us toward a God. Then we should start flinging mud.

I did not know this (but am not surprised) that there is an organized effort to “Blog Against Theocracy.” One post in particular caught my attention this morning. In it the blogger is concerned that evangelicals are making their way into schools through biblical literacy initiatives and Intelligent Design. One of the blogger’s arguments against evangelicalism in schools is their stated goal of global evangelism. He even quotes from the doctrinal statement of my denomination, the Assemblies of God.

This growing criticism of “theocracy” is an interesting one to me. First of all, I don’t think the, “they evangelize people” argument carries any weight. Any group with serious convictions is trying to gain adherents, and the more they gain, the happier they will be. No doubt, Bloggers Against Theocracy would like more people to hold their views than fewer, and they are actively evangelizing them. As a consequence of their own argument, they should be legislated out of our schools.

On a much more interesting note is the claim that Christians in the public square constitutes a breech of the “separation of the church and state” doctrine. Since there is no such thing in our Constitution, this is a political/philosophical view. What are the presuppositions that lead to this view?

One might be the fact/value distinction which holds that religion is a private value that does not make truth claims about reality, and thus cannot be considered with seriousness in the public square. On the other hand, secularism has a grip on the facts of the world (science, etc.) and is the only serious contender for the public mind. This simple sweeping away of religion has been attacked on several levels, and when we learn what it means to know things and have them correspond with reality, there is nothing that excludes religious knowledge. Science (naturalistically understood) does not have privileged access to the world.

Another presupposition might be that religion – Christianity in particular – has been proven false. But this view would just be naivety and wishful thinking.

Another would be that religion is not open to thought, reflection, or even modification. As a result, a culture “ruled” by religion would be disastrous to open thought and dangerous to dissenters. And since we value an open and thinking society, religion needs to be relegated to the margins. But this again is a mistaken notion of Christianity. No doubt there are a plethora of examples where “fundamentalism” or other forms of Christianity have denied the life of the mind, but they would be the exceptions to the rule, not the rule. For example, the University system so prized by free-thinkers was established by the Church as an institution of innovation. It was Catholic universities that taught the sun was the center of the solar system; medieval universities constantly critiqued and analyzed doctrine and refined theology. One of the reasons we know Thomas Aquinas and not his predecessors was his innovation on their work.

Christianity, where it is allowed to flourish according to its own worldview, is currently less of a threat to free-thought than secularism. After all, who is trying to exclude whom from schools?

I think that when all the reasons for the separation of church and state (as opposed to this short list) are laid on the table, they all fail for good reasons. Religious views have just as much legitimate access to the public as do secularist views.

Some books take a long time for me to get through because I get all caught up in following endnotes and tracking down other resources. I think I read the best endnote I have ever read in a tremendous book I am reading, For The Glory of God, by Rodney Stark.

In his chapter on “God’s Handiwork: The Religious Origins of Science,” endnote 179 occurs in a section introducing evolution, Darwinism and science. In the middle of critiquing the thin science of Darwinism, these sentences shows up: “My reluctance to pursue these matters is based on my experience that nothing causes greater panic among many of my colleagues than any criticism of evolution. They seem to fear that someone might mistake them for Creationists if they even remain in the same room while such talk is going on.” The first sentence was tagged with endnote 179, which intrigued me because there was no direct quote.

The endnote: “I was advised by several colleagues that to criticize evolutionary theory would damage my ‘career.’ This merely hardened my resolve to suffer no more of this arrogant occultism.”

Yeah, baby. Yeah!

I don’t mind being a little alarmist from time to time. After reading one of the latest Breakpoint Commentaries by Chuck Colson, I feel like sounding one of those alarms. The essay dealt with a now “old” story about rampant relativism among our churched youth. What caused Colson to write this essay was a story that linked that relativism in some middle school kids to their parents and pastor. Speaking for one of their worldview trainees, “Centurions,” Colson relates this story:

Everything was going fine until the group reached lesson 10 [in their youth worldview training course]. Lesson 10 leads the kids through a series of choices to learn to recognize the difference between matters of truth and matters of taste. One of the choices, “believing Islam, Buddhism or Christianity,” flashed on the screen.

Our Centurion—I’ll call her Joanne, told me what happened next: “The students went nuts. All but one of the eight leaders completely balked at the concept of distinguishing Christianity as true and other religions as false.”

Joanne learned that several of the seventh graders had talked to their parents or pastors over night. But the result of those conversations was shocking. One girl had written a paper that night on “why we shouldn't hurt others feelings by claiming our way is right.” One young lady had met with her pastor, who told her no one can be sure of truth. “It is all perspective,” he said. The students agreed that they should not offend others by saying Christianity is true. Only one was prepared to teach it.

I think it is very simple: a person who has lost a sense of truth either becomes the pawn of power or a power-player himself or herself. When the concept of a truth that exists outside a person or a culture is lost, all that is left is propaganda and power.

It is one of the great ironies of postmodernism. Pomos are quick to say they react against the power plays of Enlightenment truth with something more able to listen, dialogue, and flex. Though truth has been used as a concept to oppress in the past, there is absolutely no necessary connection between the concept of objective truth and coercion. Conversely, where there is only culture, convention, or personal conviction to appeal to—as is the case with postmodern relativism—there is only power. As a brief example, I may argue that my view of justice and fair play is superior to yours, and the evidence I muster in support of my claim has nothing to do with who is closer to reality. The only way to implement my view is to become more powerful than the other. There is no convincing or argumentation in a postmodern, relativistic world, there is only emotivism and assertion. As a result, there is a necessary connection between postmodern relativism and coercion.

Young people who grow up with the mush of relativism have doomed themselves to insignificance. They have condemned themselves to being pawns in propaganda games with nothing substantial to appeal to in order to counter the views of others. “I don’t feel that way,” is not a counterview—it is a feeling.

My denominational journal, Enrichment Journal, has a wonderful article on the issue of genetic makeup and behavioral determination in general, and on the search for a “homosexual gene” specifically. The article does a wonderful job of dealing with the state of the science on the issue. Though there have been a handful of rather publicized studies done that purportedly show that homosexuality is a genetic (and by strong implication unalterable) trait, none of them have stood up to scrutiny. (The video link gives you more information than the article excerpt.)

There are a couple of very important points that are not often dealt with when the issue of the behavior of homosexuality and genetic make-up are raised. First of all, if we want to morally justify some behavior based on the genetic foundation for that behavior, it is logical to extend our justification then to other behaviors that have a stronger genetic base than the first behavior. For example, there is more evidence connecting certain genetic markers to violent behavior than to homosexuality. If we want to use genes to justify homosexuality, it is reasonable to expect us to justify violent behavior to a greater degree. If I am OK with homosexuality based on the science, then I am really OK with violence.

The fact that most people don’t want to take that logical step—even those with a vested interest in the connection between genes and homosexuality--means the real issue is not about genetic make-up at all. The question of behavior (outside of extraordinary cases of pathology) is irreducibly a moral question.

Genes are not destiny. They may predispose someone to be an abuser given the right environment, but we rightly hold that person to a higher moral standard, and consider them morally responsible for their actions. This moral standard necessitates that we assume the person genetically predisposed to violence has the wherewithal to obey a higher, non-physical law. We expect him or her to overcome genes and environment and obey a moral precept.

Even the language we use to describe this moment of moral decision is revealing. We may colloquially rephrase that last sentence to say, “We expect him or her to disobey genes and environment and obey a moral precept,” but that would be technically false usage. “Disobey” in the first usage is loose in its meaning while “obey” in the second is strict—we equivocated. We cannot obey something that does not give binding orders. Cancer does not order (in a moral sense) cells to reproduce uncontrollably; civil governments do order citizens to not kill each other.

When encountering this very touchy and sensitive issue in the public square, we need to be clear on our moral reasoning. Though there clearly are genetic and environmental predispositions, those do not necessarily predetermine behavior. If they did, moral culpability would be a completely different notion than we rightly hold it to be.

There is a wonderful post at STR concerning Hitchens' recent book and debate about religion and the existence of God. If you don't know, Hitchens' book is God is Not Great, and is the latest is a string of anti-Christian books. (A wonderful pastor who has engaged him in debate blogs here.)

One of Hitchens' claims, as Melinda notes at STR, dates back to Hume--extrodinary evidence is needed for the "extrodinary" claims of Scripture. The implication is that the evidence required to support Scriptual claims cannot be produced. STR quotes a former philosophy professor of mine (Dr. Gary DeWeese) dealing with Hitchens' remark. It is worth a careful read.