Inspiration and inerrancy

Recently, I’ve been thinking about my stance on the inerrancy of Scripture. I’ve come to the conclusion that one can be an orthodox Christian (at least as far as one’s beliefs go) without believing in inerrancy.

Not driving to church on a snow day? Pansy…

Via the BHT, I read Mark Driscoll’s veiled chastisement of people who didn’t show up to worship because of the snow. Totally asinine.

The worst part is when Driscoll implicitly compares driving to church on a snow day to Jesus’s death on the cross. What the f*ck?

This isn’t even worth arguing over.

Peacemaking ain’t for wusses

‘Blessed are the peacemakers,’ says the Bible. This is very true in terms of the other world, but in terms of this one they are very miserable. They do not want to be the hammer, and because of this they are continually the anvil, beaten from all sides.

- Pierre Bayle, “Eppendorf, Henry of”

Daniel Radosh interview

You should read the Daniel Radosh interview over at Reason Magazine. He understands evangelical subculture better than evangelicals do.

Things unsaid, now written

From Josh Claybourn, the following question:

What is something you feel you can’t say in church, or around other Christians?

My answers:

1. Youth ministries that: (1) effectively separate the youth off from the congregation as a whole, thus encouraging a “hive” mentality; (2) spend most of their energy trying to program “fun” events to bring in the masses; (3) spend little energy trying to disciple the kids already there; (4) don’t speak honestly about sex; (5) teach the faith without any regard for the 2000 years behind it; (6) reduce the faith to a bunch of nice sounding moral platitudes; (7) fail to be a safe place to ask tough questions; (8) are run by some young guy with a cool goatee but no brain—suck. Really suck. Not only that, but they wreck the kids their supposed to help.
2. Where are all the attractive and intelligent Christian single girls?
3. Please don’t ply me with your bullshit pop psychology in your sermons. If I want Oprah, I’ll watch daytime TV. But I don’t want Oprah.
4. Most hymns written in the 20th century absolutely blow, both musically and lyrically. The tunes are hard to sing and the lyrics are namby-pamby.
5. How come God feels so distant all the time?
6. Please, if you’re gonna do anything contemporary-sounding in church, get people who know how to play their instruments.
7. We should celebrate the Eucharist every freakin’ week, and we should invite the kiddos to the table to partake too.
8. Why does the church’s coffee and lemonade have to taste so bad?
9. And (for the CRC people I worship with) there are colleges other than Calvin and Hope. I know it’s hard to believe, but there are. Get your kids out of the weird Dutch bubble/Grand Rapids enclave.

Theological skepticism

I’ve been reading some Pierre Bayle lately (in case you didn’t gather that from my last post). I feel a kinship with the guy: he was a Calvinist who despaired at the ability of reason to do anything high-powered, including speculative theology; I’m a (quasi? ex? sort-of?) Calvinist who despairs at the ability of reason to do anything high-powered, including speculative theology. It’s sorta nice to know that there are other theological skeptics out there.

Allow me to clarify my theological skepticism. First, it’s source: my reasons for being a somewhat skeptical about theology arise from a general conviction I have to the effect that when it comes to matters having to do with the deep structure of reality (e.g., cosmology, human origins, metaphysics properly-speaking, most of systematic theology, etc.), our cognitive abilities are working at the very edge of (if not beyond) their capacities. As a result, any warrant we have for beliefs in these matters of inquiry is tenuous at best; it certainly doesn’t reach the level necessary for knowledge. Now, I certainly have beliefs about the various topics listed above (I believe that the Big Bang happened, that evolutionary theory (partially?) explains human origins, that there aren’t any composite objects, that Hell is probably more like separation from God rather than eternal conscious torment), but I am very hesitant to say that these beliefs constitute knowledge for me. And I’m inclined that if others believe these things, their believings don’t constitute knowledge either. (This generalization step may be problematic, but forget about it for now.)

Second, one must be careful to distinguish the sort of skepticism I am advocating from a sort that I utterly reject, that which goes by the labels “Cartesian skepticism” or “external-world skepticism.” (This was the sort of skepticism Moore undertook to refute by noting that he had hands.) I think that the usual arguments for Cartesian skepticism fail (hence, the moniker for this blog), and that I have a ton of knowledge about the external world.

Perhaps it may help to get at the distinction between Cartesian skepticism and what I have called “higher-level” skepticism by appealing to a distinction made implicitly by Descartes himself. We should distinguish between cognitio and scientia; we may translate these roughly as “animal knowledge” and “scientific knowledge,” respectively. Now, do not confuse this distinction with Ernest Sosa’s distinction between animal knowledge and reflective knowledge. I suspect that the sides of our distinctions perhaps overlap (in the case of animal knowledge perhaps exactly), but reflective knowledge in Sosa’s epistemology has a much narrower scope: with reflective knowledge, Sosa intends to show that our animal knowledge is reflectively defensible. Scientific knowledge, as I mean it, is not intended as a kind of defensible animal knowledge; it is instead knowledge that goes beyond animal knowledge. For what animal could have knowledge of such marvelous things as quarks and leptons, or the causes of the Industrial Revolution, or the Immaculate Conception? (Perhaps possession of animal knowledge is a necessary condition on the possession of scientific knowledge. Ipse fiat.) So, my Christian skepticism derives from a more general skepticism about scientific knowledge in general.

Third, I should probably say something about the scope of my theological skepticism. As I mean it, theological skepticism is not meant to encompass the things expressed by the Nicene Creed, those things which characterize “mere” Christianity. I’d contend that those things may very well constitute animal knowledge for most (if not all) Christians. (Thank you Alvin Plantinga and William Alston for this handy li’l move.) But other things: the doctrine of condign merit, the doctrine of justification by faith (alone?), transubstantiation, double asymmetric predestination, the government theory of atonement, the inerrancy of Scripture, papal infallibility, speaking in tongues, dispensational premillenialism—I could go on forever here—are theories. Mere theories. Like String Theory is a mere theory. Things like I have just listed are things accessible only at the edge of our cognitive abilities (and perhaps accessible only beyond them).

There are a few problems with the view. I will mention them only to shrug my shoulders at them (for the time being).

First problem: it seems like you, O Silly Skeptic, have no principled distinction between Christian animal knowledge and Christian scientific (not to be confused with Christian Scientific, of course) knowledge.

Response: if what you mean by “principled distinction” is “no set of necessary and sufficient conditions for a claim to be a candidate for animal or scientific knowledge,” then you’re probably right. But maybe this is okay. Maybe Quine was right when he said that science and common sense are located along a continuum, with no clear division between the two. I’d say something similar: animal and scientific knowledge (including that of the Christian type) lie along a continuum, no clear break obtaining between the two. I would also say, however, that I know a bit of Christian scientific knowledge when I see one (hence, my examples above).

A more serious problem is this: you might think that the Holy Spirit guides our theologizing. But if this is the case, if He will lead us into all Truth, then your Christian skepticism fizzles. (No thank you to Alvin Plantinga and William Alston for this handy li’l move.)

Maybe you’re right. I’d like to see a more explicit formulation of the argument. But here’s a response to the one sketched. At best, what this objection gets to is this: if the Holy Spirit wants to teach us that p, where p expresses some heavyweight theological doctrine (say, the doctrine of transubstantiation), then He will work His influence on our cognitive abilities so that we acquire warrant for our belief in the doctrine of transubstantiation. Now, I’m willing to grant the conditional. I’m unwilling to grant the antecedent. And that’s what you need to run a successful objection; unfortunately, you’re modus ponens has nothing to ponens.

Whew. I’ve been wanting to get that off my chest for a while.

Anyway, tomorrow I’m in Chicago for THRICE. I’m gonna get my post-hardcore on.

Pentecost

There is a manner of speaking common to many evangelicals. When recounting decisions made in the past (especially ones they regard as significant), evangelicals will say things like “I felt God leading to me to decide to do x“, or “The Holy Spirit told me to do x” and so on. For the longest time, I’ve hated this manner of speaking. I have epistemic reasons for hating it: I’ve always wondered how in God’s name someone could know that God wants her to go to the College of Musical Knowledge, or that the Holy Spirit is leading her to date so-and-so. I, for one, have never felt the requisite certainty to attribute any of my decisions to some direct communication from the Lord. So call me skeptical.

Today, the sermon was on this very subject, and it was the occasion for me to acquire some theological reasons to hate this manner of speaking. Today, I realized that this manner of speaking is born of twin motives: (1) on the one hand, people speak this way (and think this way) out of a sincere desire to honor God’s will; and yet (2) people speak this way (and think this way) in order to rationalize certain decisions (past or present) to themselves or others. They look for a rubber stamp, so to speak, and what better rubber stamp than that of Almighty God?

The first reason, God-honoring as it seeks to be, is born of a certain neurosis that evangelicals have inherited from the Puritans. This neurosis derives from the view of God’s sovereignty that makes Him out to be a kind of micro-manager. According to this view, God has a definitive desire about every single piddling thing, from what clothes I should wear today, to where I should go to school. Supposing that this is correct (and I doubt that), the neurosis arises when people begin to think that if they screw up one little thing, then the whole machine will collapse, that they will somehow find themselves outside of “God’s will.” Funny enough, this neurosis doesn’t take into account the other half of the sovereignty equation that Calvinists love to trumpet: that God’s will cannot be resisted. But neuroses rarely respond to reason anyway.

I needn’t say much about the second reason. People who use God’s name to validate their own peculiar agendas are violating the 3rd Commandment; they employ God’s name for empty endeavors. Without repentance, they are vessels of wrath.

Today in the sermon, I realized that I don’t believe that God has a definitive desire about every piddling thing. He has deigned to give me choice in certain matters; He has given me freedom to live my life as a I please, so long as I do one thing: follow Jesus.

I used to worry about what God wanted me to do with my life. The answer has always been the same: follow Jesus. Goodbye evangelical neurosis.

On not feeling the Easter mojo

Len vander Zee returned to the pulpit in church today. As usual, he preached a very good sermon about the disciples on the road to Emmaus. The gist of it: the resurrected Jesus makes His presence known in the more mundane episodes of life, even something as mundane as walking down the street.

Part of me is quite skeptical about this. I certainly don’t feel the presence of God very much in my life. There was a point a few months ago where I most certainly did, but when things got better (they were pretty terrible back then) God seemed to fade away. This seems to be common in the lives of many Christians I know: when the going gets tough, they feel God close to them, and when the going gets easy, He disappears.

For a long time now, I have operated on the assumption that my inner spiritual life should somehow conform to the rhythms of the liturgical calendar. Usually it does. But since Christmas, everything has been so out of whack for me. So now I catch myself wondering whether Easter matters that much. Of course, I believe that the Lord’s life, passion and resurrection do matter—more than anything else—but I rarely feel in my gut that this is true. This is just a fact about how my beliefs divide up. Some things I both believe and feel to be true; other things I believe to be true, but I don’t really feel them in my gut. Most (if not all) of my Christian beliefs fall in this latter category.

I wonder if this is a problem, being in the habit of feeling blasé about the Faith. I have moments where I feel quite moved by what I believe, but these are merely moments. Most of the time I just dodder along—believing all the same—but never really feeling it. I guess that I’m inclined to think it’s a problem, but a problem I can’t really do much about. Oh sure, I could do things to manipulate my emotions, but I figure that in the long run this would merely damage my faith.

So I’m not quite sure what I’m supposed to do. I guess just press on, one day at a time.

Icky icky poo

Not only is evangelicalism prone to irreverent corniness, but sometimes she tends right towards blasphemy.

(Hat-tip to Brant Hansen)

See also A Major Argument Against God and Stupid Church People.

Sometimes I want fire and brimstone

Haven’t been able to sleep much tonight, since I’ve been having nightmares about how horribly shitty “people” can be to people. (How’s that for understatement?)

A few days ago, I read the chapter in Tim Keller’s new book defending a Ludovician conception of hell. If there is in fact such a state/place, then C.S. Lewis’s model captures its essence, in my humble opinion.

But then I read stories like the one about the suffering and indignity that Dorothy Dixon endured. Fury overpowers me; rage flows through my veins. I want fire and brimstone; I want the wrath of God to be poured out upon the unjust like napalm. Hell, I want the Augustinian (or the Thomistic) model of hell to capture its essence. I want people like Michelle Riley to suffer for their iniquities, in a manner commensurate with the suffering they have inflicted on the innocent.

The sad thing is that Ms. Riley will probably spend 20-25 years in a relatively comfortable prison, where she won’t have to abide being shot at with a BB gun, beaten with a baseball bat, burned with a hot glue gun, and starved. Even if they were to execute her (which isn’t probable, since Illinois from 2000 has imposed a moratorium on executions), she would go quietly and gracefully—thanks to a little bit of potassium chloride—to whatever fate awaits her.

Despite all this, on a reflective level, I’m not comfortable with this reaction. After all, I worship a God who thought it not beneath Himself to suffer the most brutal torments at the hands of beings who are but dust. And His response was (and is) forgiveness. This is something that has always boggled my ass about the Christian faith: that justice and mercy aren’t incompatible; they meet in the cross.

I pray that God would grant poor Dorothy Dixon justice, rest and peace—child of Adam though she be. I pray also that He would be just to Ms. Riley—and merciful if that be His inscrutable will.