Time

(Linda and I, Christmas Eve 2010. Linda seems unaffected by time. I, on the other hand...)

In 2010 I will turn 61 years old. Where has the time gone? And what, anyway, is "time?" Here's a review of some philosophical ideas about time. (Special thanks to Manuel Velazquez's excellent Philosophy: A Text With Readings, 11th edition)

PLATO (Ancient Greek philosopher, 429-347 BCE)

• "Time" exists independently of events that occur in time.
• "Time is like an empty container into which things and events may be placed; but it is a container that exists independently of what (if anything) is placed in it." (SEP) 

ARISTOTLE (Ancient greek philosopher, 384-322 BCE)

• Time does not exist independently, contra Plato, of the events that occur in time.
• This view is called "Reductionism with Respect to Time."
• This means that "all talk that appears to be about time can somehow be reduced to talk about temporal relations among things and events." (SEP)
• The idea of a period of time without change is seens as incoherent.
• Thus "time" cannot exist independently of what is placed in it. Apart from events, no time exists.

AUGUSTINE (Augustine of Hippo, 354-430)

• Time, in a sense, does not exist.
• The past no longer exists.
• The future does not yet exist.
• Only the present moment is real.
• But the present moment has, in itself, neither a past nor a future.
• The present moment is timeless.
• "Time," from God's perspective, is different from our perspective.
• God is outside of time.
• Time is like a line of events stretched out before God.
• Every moment - past, preent, and future - lies on this line. Everything on the "line of time" is fixed. This is God's perspective. (Cmp. C.S. Lewis who, in Mere Christianity, employed Augustine's view of time.)

McTAGGERT (British philosopher M.E. McTaggert, 1886-1925)

• The flow of time as we experience it is unreal.
• "Time" is a fixed series of moments, each moment either "before" or "after" the other moments. This is "objective time."
• We can also think of "time" as a sequence of flowing moments. Each moment changes or flows from "future" to "present" to "past." This is "subjective time."
• "Past," "present," and "future" are incompatible with each other. Therefore it is impossible for the same thing (viz., the same "moment") to be simultaneously future, present, and past.
• But if time did "flow," then every moment would have to be future, and then present, and then past.
• So the idea of subjective time as a sequence of flowing moments is unreal.
• Subjective time is unreal. Out experience of time as "passing" is an illusion.
• Following this McTaggert said, "I believe that nothing that exists can be temporal, and that therefore time [subjective] is unreal." (The Nature of Existence)
• "Time" is an unchanging, fixed series of events frozen onto the "line of time" that makes up the series. But this is not really time, because there is no flow or change here. And, since subjective time is unreal, time cannot be real.

KANT (German philosopher Immanuel Kant, 1724-1804)

• Time - whether subjective or objective - is simply a construct of the human mind.
• "Time" and "space" are categories of the mind that the mind uses to organize the flow of changing sensations.
• Kant said, "Time is therefore given a priori." "Time" as a mental category is "prior to experience" and organizes or categorizes experience.
• Time is not real but is a mental construct.

BERGSON (French philosopher Henri Bergson, 1859-1941)

• "Objective time," the "time" of the scientist, is just a conceptual abstraction, a construct of the mind.
• The image of time as a line is simply an image; the concept of objective time is only a concept. Neither images nor concepts can get at the reality.
• Only what we directly experience is real; viz., what we "intuit."
• We directly exeperience or intuit the flow of time. Bergson says we have the "intuition of duration."
• Real time is subjective time. This is the "flow of time" that I experience moving from future, through present, and into the past.
• Objective time is an intellectual reconstruction and thus is an illusion."Time" does not actually exist "out there" in the world (it's not a reality transcendent to human subjectivity).

WILLIAM LANE CRAIG (Christian theist, 1949 - present)

• Apart from events time does not exist.
• Prior to creation time did not exist.
• A personal God need not experience a temporal succession of mental events. "God could know the content of all knowledge - past, present, and future - in a simultaneous and eternal intuition." (See Craig, "God, Time, and Eternity")
• "The proper understanding of God, time, and eternity would be that God exists changelessly and timelessly prior to creation and in time after creation."
• There are no "events" prior to creation. Therefore, since God exists prior to creation and is an "eventless" being, "time" does not exist prior to creation. At the creation of the unvierse time begins. On a relational view of time God now relates to the universe, "and God subjects himself to time by being related to changing things."

STEPHEN HAWKING (Physicist, author of A Brief History of Time, 1942-present)

• Time is understood in relation to events. Hawking writes: "Since events before the Big Bang have no observational consequences, one may as well cut them out of the theory, and say that time began at the Big Bang. Events before the Big Bang, are simply not defined, because there's no way one could measure what happened at them... [T]he universe, and time itself, had a beginning in the Big Bang, about 15 billion years ago. The beginning of real time, would have been a singularity, at which the laws of physics would have broken down." (See here) 

(For diagram + explanation, see here.)

Bring In the New Year by Worshiping With Us!

At Redeemer we'll bring in the New Year with worship.

New Year's Eve, Redeemer Fellowship Church.

Begins at 9 PM.



Bring some snacks to share with others (we'll do this after midnight).

Blessings!

Two Books to Read Together

I am inviting any interested persons to join me in reading one or two books with me in the first three months of 2010.


Book 1 - Abide in Christ, by Andrew Murray. You can purchase this book for $9 at amazon.com, or read it online for free here. We will be in John chs. 14-17 through March 2010. The central theme is: remaining in Jesus, like a branch is connected to a vine. This book, which has a number of short chapters, can be read devotionally.

Book 2 - Muslims and Christians At the Table, by Bruce McDowell and Anees Zaka. $11 at amazon.com here. I am diving in to more Islam studies in 2010, as a preparation for some things I believe God has for me to do in the days ahead. I invite you to tag along with me as this is one book that has been recommended to me by a close friend who is a missionary in a Muslim nation.

PROTOCOL

Read one (or two) of these books with me.

Send your thoughts, comments, what God is saying to you, questions, to me.

I will post them on my website - johnpiippo.com - and interact with them there. I will use your name in the posts. I may choose to edit your writing.

Any questions, let me know.

Blessings!

John

"Avatar's" Pantheism Is Not Real Pantheism

(What's more fun than webbing about "Avatar?")

With the movie "Avatar" the worship of Nature has again stepped forward. God is made equal to Nature; "God" = "Nature"; by "God" we really mean "Nature." Persons are part of Nature. We are to commune with Nature, to "be one with Nature." And, in Avatar, we see that Nature sides with those who commune with it and call out its name. "The Na’Vi are saved by the movie’s hero, a turncoat Marine, but they’re also saved by their faith in Eywa, the “All Mother,” described variously as a network of energy and the sum total of every living thing." (Douthat)

The idea that Nature is a being with consciousness is worthy of being rejected for the following reasons.

1. Science does not support this metaphysical claim.

2. History and personal experience argue against Eywa-theory. "Nature," simply as nature, seems indifferent. We call Nature "Mother Nature," and label the hurricane "Katrina," but they do not answer (unlike "Avatar's" Eywa) when we call their names.

3. The historical fact that some ancient peoples worshiped Nature is not an argument for the truth of the idea that Nature is a being with a mind of its own. To think so is to commit, in logic, the genetic fallacy.

4. Philosophical pantheism does not support Eywa - theory. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's essay on "Pantheism" states: "Where pantheism is considered as an alternative to theism it involves a denial of at least one, and usually both, central theistic claims. Theism is the belief in a "personal" God which in some sense is separate from (transcends) the world. Pantheists usually deny the existence of a personal God. They deny the existence of a "minded" Being that possesses the characteristic properties of a "person," such as having intentional states, and the associated capacities like the ability to make decisions." (emphasis mine) Call Nature "Eywa" if you want, but "Eywa" does not have intentional states. So the Cameron-idea at the end of "Avatar" where Eywa "responds" is, on philosophical pantheism, absurd. SEP concludes: "Worship and prayer are not suitable to pantheism." Read the etnire SEP essay to understand this.

As a Christian theist what am I to make of nature? Here's a thought from C.S. Lewis's Miracles which tells us that Nature is not to be considered God, but viewed differently.

"I spoke just now about the Latinity of Latin, It is more evident to us than it can have been to the Romans. The Eng-lishness of English is audible only to those who know some other language as well. In the same way and for the samereason, only Supernaturalists really see Nature. You must go a little away from her, and then turn round, and lookback. Then at last the true landscape will become visible. You must have tasted, however briefly, the pure water frombeyond the world before you can be distinctly conscious of the hot, salty tang of Nature’s current. To treat her as God,or as Everything, is to lose the whole pitch and pleasure of her. Come out, look back, and then you will see ...this as-tonishing cataract of bears, babies and bananas: this immoderate deluge of atoms, orchids, oranges, cancers, canaries,fleas, gases, tornadoes and toads. How could you ever have thought is was the ultimate reality? How could you everhave thought that it was merely a stage-set for the moral drama of men and women? She is herself. Offer her neitherworship nor contempt. Meet her and know her. If we are immortal, and is she is doomed (as the scientists tell us) torun down and die, we shall miss this half-shy and half-flamboyant creature, this ogress, this hoyden, this incorrigiblefairy, this dumb witch. But the theologians tell us that she, like ourselves, is to be redeemed. The‘vanity’ to which she was subjected was her disease, not her essence. She will be cured in charac-ter: not tamed (Heaven forbid) nor sterilized. We shall still be able to recognize our old enemy,friend, playfellow and foster-mother, so perfected as to be not less, but more, herself. And that will be a merry meeting."

"Avatar," Homo Religiosus, Sensus Divinitatis

Jonah Goldberg of the LATimes has a nice article on "Avatar" - "'Avatar' and the Faith Instinct."

Highlights include:

• James Cameron rips off movies like "Dances With Wolves" and "Pocahontas" and inserts their religious cliches into "Avatar."
• Goldberg agrees with James Douthat, who calls "Avatar" an "apologia for pantheism."
• Goldberg quotes John Podhoretz, who says that Cameron made "Avatar" "not to be controversial, but quite the opposite: He was making something he thought would be most pleasing to the greatest number of people." ("Avatarocious")
• What would have been controversial would be something like this: "a movie in which the good guys accepted Jesus Christ into their hearts."
• What turns out to be "pleasing to the greatest number of people" is "unapologetically religious" (Cameron's metaphysical utilitarianism).
• So - watch "Avatar," and behold the current state of Western religious culture.
• Goldberg uses Nicholas Wade's The Faith Instinct to explain this surprising discovery:  "Humans are hard-wired to believe in the transcendent."
• Goldberg quotes philosopher Will Herberg: "Man is homo religiosus, by 'nature' religious: as much as he needs food to eat or air to breathe, he needs a faith for living."
• The faith instinct is "baked into our genes."

These findings, if they are true, surely will disappoint today's evangelical atheists, because God-belief will not essentially be something "irrational" that can be logically and empirically argued against.

The thought that now comes to me is that Wade's thesis can possibly fit into the noetic framework of Christian theism. It would here be instructive to read Michael J. Murray's essay "Belief in God: A Trick In Our Brain?" (in Contending With Christianity's Critics, eds. Paul Copan and William Lane Craig). Murray concludes his essay with:

"For the moment it seems perfectly acceptable for the Christian to hold that God created the world, human beings, and human minds in such a way that when they are functioning properly, they form beliefs in the existence of rocks, rainbows, human minds, and God...  This discovery echoes the claim made four hundred plus years earlier by John Calvin that 'there is within the human mind, and indeed by natural instinct, an awareness of divinity." (Copan & Craig, 57)

Global Muslim Population

To see:

• A country's estimated 2009 Muslim population, and
• the percentage of its population that is Muslim and the percentage of the world Muslim population it represents

Go here.

Why is this important? Read this.

Avatar's Noble-Savage Pantheism

Today I: filled up the bird feeders in my back yard; tied to position one of them so squirrels could not get to it (which one enterprising squirrel did with incredible feats of mental ability and physical flex-ability, showing that a squirrel is smarter than a person; viz., me); made chili which is now slow-cooking; did some reading; talked witha  few people on the phone; talked with Linda; trembled as Linda started cleaning out the family room closet; and wrote on my website between it all as thoughts came to me.

Now, I write of "Avatar." We saw it yesterday. I recommend seeing it, if only for the 3-D effects. Visually, it's stunning. And the story line? It's the "noble savage" theory re-heated and pantheism celebrated. For a very good essay explaining America's EckhartTolleDeepakChopraOprahWinfreyJamesCameron-love affair with pantheism, see Ross Douthat's helpful nytimes essay here.

Douthat writes: "Pantheism has been Hollywood’s religion of choice for a generation now. It’s the truth that Kevin Costner discovered when he went dancing with wolves. It’s the metaphysic woven through Disney cartoons like “The Lion King” and “Pocahontas.” And it’s the dogma of George Lucas’s Jedi, whose mystical Force “surrounds us, penetrates us, and binds the galaxy together.”" "Avatar" is not about "when nature calls" but when one calls on "nature" and "nature" comes to the rescue. Which, of course, is a metaphysically silly idea. And, as we have known for some time now, the "noble savage" theory has no actual application.

I think Douthat is on target as he describes today's pantheism as expressive of the desire to find some kind of meaning in all of this mess when one has abandoned theism. "We pine for what we’ve left behind, and divinizing the natural world is an obvious way to express unease about our hyper-technological society. The threat of global warming, meanwhile, has lent the cult of Nature qualities that every successful religion needs — a crusading spirit, a rigorous set of ‘thou shalt nots,” and a piping-hot apocalypse."

I like rescue stories where good defeats evil. As this happens in "Avatar" I was cheering inside (as Scandinavians prefer over outward cheering). Unfortunately for pantheism, its noetic framework is fundamentally unable to account for such a thing. Whereas theism can. I simply cannot make sense of morality within a pantheistic framework. Douthat writes: "The question is whether Nature actually deserves a religious response. Traditional theism has to wrestle with the problem of evil: if God is good, why does he allow suffering and death? But Nature is suffering and death. Its harmonies require violence. Its “circle of life” is really a cycle of mortality. And the human societies that hew closest to the natural order aren’t the shining Edens of James Cameron’s fond imaginings. They’re places where existence tends to be nasty, brutish and short."

Douthat concludes: "If there’s no escape upward — or no God to take on flesh and come among us, as the Christmas story has it — a deeply tragic one. Pantheism offers a different sort of solution: a downward exit, an abandonment of our tragic self-consciousness, a re-merger with the natural world our ancestors half-escaped millennia ago. But except as dust and ashes, Nature cannot take us back."

The Jerusalem School of Synoptic Research

(In Israel, on top of Masada, overlooking the Dead Sea)

I am enjoying reading David Bivin's New Light on the Difficult Words of Jesus: Insights from His Jewish Context. Bivin is part of The Jerusalem School of Synoptic Research, a consortium of Jewish and Christian scholars dedicated to understanding better the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke), and to rethinking the Synoptic Problem. Our friends Hal and Mirja Ronning are two of the great scholars who belong to JSSR.

For example, chapter two of Bivin's book is called "Following a Rabbi." It's very clear and helpful to understand what it meant to call Jesus a "rabbi," which he was. There's a saying from a hundred years before Jesus that says, "Let your home be a meeting-house for the sages, and cover yourself with the dust of your feet, and drink in their words thirstily." (Bivin, 12) The idea of one's feet being "covered with dust" is about someone who would follow after a rabbi and walk the dusty roads and paths with him as he traveled from place to place. "One literally had to follow a rabbi to learn from him, so if your rabbi traveled, you did too." (14) Bivin writes, "Had people not opened their homes to the rabbis, it would have been impossible for them to reach the masses with their message." (12)

Go to JSSR's website for a number of free articles. And thanks, Josh, for the Christmas gift of this book!

Islam & the Persecution of Christians

Why is Europe afraid of the "Muslim Invasion?" Perhaps mainly because Muslims nations rank poorest in the area of religious tolerance, and high on religious persecution. See yesterday's nytimes essay on the minaret, veil, and burqa problem in France. “Today in Europe the fear of Islam crystallizes all other fears. In Switzerland, it’s minarets. In France, it’s the veil, the burqa and the beard.”

I often read the Jerusalem Post online (the blessing of reading foreign newspapers online!). Today the JP has a very good essay on a Muslim who converted to Christianity in Egypt and was, consequentially, tortured for it. Majed El Shafie was born in Cairo, Egypt, the son of a prominent Muslim family of lawyers. Shafie converted to Christianity when he was 18. He says:

"During my years in law school in Alexandria the persecution of Christians was going on all around me and it made me wonder why it was happening. For the first time in my life I started to think about it. I started asking questions of my best friend Tamer, who was a Christian, and I started reading the Bible. I started making comparisons between the Bible and the Koran. And that's when I decided to convert to Christianity."

But converting from Islam to any other religion is dangerous if you live in a Muslim country. "Under Shari'a law such conversions are understood to be a capital offense - enforced by the death penalty in some states, and bringing about various abuses and vigilante tactics in others. Nonetheless, Shafie was outspoken about his new faith."

Shafie says:  "After I converted I wrote a book about the difference between Islam and Christianity which soon caused me to be arrested and imprisoned. There were three charges. The first charge was that I was trying to make a revolution against the Egyptian government. The second charge was that, because I was seeking equal rights for Christians, I was accused of trying to change the state religion to Christianity. The third charge was that I worshiped Jesus. So in fact I looked at the judge and I said, 'Guilty as charged.'"

Shafie was then imprisoned and tortured.  Read the whole, sad, engaging story in the Jerusalem Post here. See also Shafie's website, One Free World International, where Safie now lives in Toronto.

(I have had pastors from Egypt in my seminary classes who have personally told us of Muslim persecution against them in Egypt.)

Living the Interrupted Life

(In Starbuck's... in what city?)

Years ago I would get frustrated when my life got interrupted. Then God told me the interruptions were my life. (Thank you Henri Nouwen)

I have some plans for today. Having a to - do list is good. Planning is good. God, also, has plans for today, and they include me and you. Therefore, be prepared to have your plans interrupted and rejoice.

Real followers of Jesus are interruptable. When God says "come," they "come." I remember once having plans to travel with our college student ministry for a Saturday at the dunes on Lake Michigan's shoreline. I love doing this kind of thing and was so looking forward to going with Linda and my two young sons! The morning came, and the boys were sick. They could not go. Linda could not go. But I felt frustrated because I wanted so much to go. I was willing to leave Linda with our sick boys and go and have fun at the beach. God spoke to me and cut through my selfish protesting. Of course I did know that college students were able to have a great day at the beach without me being there. "I" just felt interrupted, and was angry. (Note: "frustrated" is just another word for "angry.")

Real life is a series of interruptions. Many of these interruptions are your life, and to selfishly not go after them is to miss the calling and work of God, through you, to others, rather than to the advancement of your own little self. Marriage and family and ministry and friends and work require a flexibility of the spirit to go with the flow of what's happening rather than be always angry because things aren't going "according to plan." Whose plan? That's the basic question.

Jim Wallis on "Prosperity"

"God doesn't mind prosperity and wealth, as long as we share it." - Jim Wallis

See Jim Wallis interviewed here at washingtonpost.com.

Wallis is asked, "What's the problem - why don't people share out of their prosperity?"

Wallis: "Greed. Sin. It's an old problem. When you are always competing with the 'Joneses' instead of looking out for the 'Joneses' you and they will be in trouble before long."

Wallis has long been a solid voice, articulating the ethics of the Kingdom, showing us how to understand politics from a Jesus-perspective. Anyone interested should read, as a beginning, God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It. 

See The Washington Post's "On Faith" section for good stuff on faith, God, religion, etc.

Jesus and the F-word

I love introducing people to the Real Jesus and his beautiful kingdom. I have met many people bound in the kingdom of darkness who curse and swear and use the f-word a lot. In fact, God has now, again, led me to people who want to talk yet swear all the time right in front of me. Does it bother me that they talk like this? No, not really. I have actually found some of them to be more real and authentic than some Christians I know. I find myself thinking, "This is the kind of person who could be a real Jesus-follower!"

In my BC-days every fourth word out of my mouth was the f-word. That's just the way I talked, and I thought nothing of it. Is every fourth word out of my mouth now the f-word? No. Why not? 1) Because Jesus doesn't talk like this; and 2) because in my culture it is mostly off-putting and will hinder people from listening to what I believe God wants to say to us (1 & 2 are probably related). While Jesus himself doesn't talk like this, Jesus loves people even if they talk like this. When someone says the f-word Jesus doesn't say "I'm outta here!"

The Mission is not: get people to stop swearing. The Real Mission is: witness to the sozo-ing work of Jesus in your life. Jesus isn't waiting for people to clean up their acts before he meets them. If that were true you and I would still be waiting to meet Jesus. I've been with "Christians" who get really offended when some non-Jesus-follower uses the f-word, and then see it as their divine mission to first clean out the mouths of these people before they love them. In fact, I've known "Christians" over the years who won't lift a finger to serve in God's kingdom but will complain about some other Christian who swore. I think Satan just loves it when that kind of stuff happens. To the many of us who are going after people we cry out "Get behind us, legalists!"

I find it helpful to remember that the Bible is an R-rated book. In that light it was laughable when secular critics complained that Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" was too graphically violent. The Bible's R-rating is there because it contains some pretty wild sexual situations. Like Genesis 19, where old Lot gets drunk and has sex with his two daughters. How would you film that? Have you read the "Song of Solomon" recently? And, in the Bible we have the word "dung." Do you know what that 4-letter word means? God doesn't seem the slight bit embarrassed that he put it in there, now wishing he hadn't as if it were a "typo."

What about the third commandment - "You shall not take the name of the Lord in vain?" Well, it's important not to do that. But this was never essentially about "swearing." Matthew McMahon writes: "In looking closely at the third commandment we will find more than we bargained for. We as Christians break the third commandment more often than any pagan who may be screaming "God D_____t" or "Jesus Christ!"" What can McMahon mean by this?

When something is "vain" it is empty, and of no real value. To take God's name "in vain" would then include things like: promising God you would do something and then not doing it; promising before God that you will remain faithful to your spouse and not remaining faithful; saying "God bless you" when someone sneezes and not intending to bless them at all. Isn't that too legalistic? I don't think so. It's just a good example of vain-ness. In such instances "God bless you" does not really mean "God bless you." Sounds like true vanity to me.

To use God's name in vain is to misuse the name of God, in any way. Saying "God D_____t" or "Jesus Christ!"" can, and probably are, examples of this. But so much more is included. The matter really goes deep into the human heart. Like singing "Here I Am to Worship" without having a heart of worship. Like singing "I Love You Lord" and not loving the Lord. Like saying "Amen" to the words of Jesus while not following Jesus and living out His words. All hypocrisy is sheer vanity. "Christians" who are consistently "outraged" when others say "God D_____t" or "Jesus Christ!"" may themselves be consistently violating the third commandment.



So what if you meet a person who hyper-exgurgitates the f-word? For me the answer is: just witness to the sozo-ing activity of Jesus in your life. Love them, as you have been loved. Trust God to do the rest.

Pseudo-Independence As a Sign of Depression

"To act from independence is one thing, from compulsion, another." (Peter Kramer, Against Depression, 91) The difference between the two is the difference between free will and the determinism that mental illness imposes.

This means what often seems like an act of independence out of one's free will is actually the polar opposite (or a variation thereof); viz., of bondage. Thomas Merton once wrote, e.g., that anyone who smokes a cigarette every time they feel the urge to do so is not free, but enslaved.

One sign of true freedom is, therefore, the ability to choose against one's urges or feelings. In such freedom one is not psychologically, or clinically, compelled. Kramer tells the story of a woman named "Mariana" who appears, to her suitor "Harry," to march to the beat of her own drum. Kramer writes: "Often, these traits signal independence. They indicate confidence...  [But] In this instance, I thought, the identical behaviors signal illness."

It's hard to judge between the two. How many times, in ministry, have I been fooled? I have, I think, often seen the real thing. Usually my clarity about this comes after months and years of changed behaviors. I don't spend an over-amount of time trying to judge, but over the years a number of real misjudgments cause me to be more cautious. The person on Sunday morning who declares their freedom is, at times, far from it.

Kramer cites C.S. Lewis's devotion to his dying wife Joy Davidman as exemplary of the real thing. In Lewis's case "it is not the illness that elicits affection or passion, but rather the injured beloved's integrity in the face of deterioration." (92)

So it is that there are plenty of people who shout about their "freedom" to be sexually promiscuous while being oblivious to their bondage. If their friends misread the social cues as signs of an independent person, that would be like looking at an apple and declaring it not to be an apple. "The social response to depression gies rise to paradox and oxymoron." (93)

Why "depression?" Kramer argues that such pseudo-dependent behavior is often a signal of depression. His excellent book spells this out, and much more.

Jesus Did Not Drive a Cadillac

Some "prosperity Gospel" teachers argue that Jesus was materially wealthy. They do this to justify their own false "prosperity" teachings. Today at cnn.com we see the article "Passions over 'prosperity gospel': Was Jesus wealthy?" Prosperity teacher Thomas Anderson reasons: "Jesus couldn't have been poor because he received lucrative gifts -- gold, frankincense and myrrh -- at birth."

Stop here. Behold the vainglory of eisegesis.

• Jesus was born in a feeding trough.
• Jesus' parents did not have a room in the Ritz-Carlton.
• Jesus is a newborn baby.
• This newborn baby is given gifts, "at birth."
• That... makes Jesus a wealthy man?

New Testament scholar Luke Timothy Johnson calls Anderson's argument "completely illogical." ""So Martin Luther King must have been a millionaire," he says. "Crowds followed Siddhartha Buddha and he was poor. And mobs followed Mahatma Gandhi, and Gandhi wore a diaper, for God's sake." The argument that Jesus was wealthy because the soldiers gambled for his clothes at his crucifixion doesn't makes historical sense, either, says Johnson, author of "Among the Gentiles: Greco-Roman Religion and Christianity."" Johnson says this because part of the prosperity-eisegesis says that the soldiers gambled for Jesus' undergarments because Jesus was wearing million-dollar undies (or Calvin Klein). Soon we'll see paintings of Jesus dying on a cross (which was, at that time, criminal-expendable-scandalous) wearing designer clothes. Luke Timothy Johnson says, "Crucifixion was the sort of execution carried out for slaves and for rebels," Johnson says. "It wasn't an execution for wealthy people."

The entire Kingdom of God message of Jesus in the actual Gospels (note: rarely seen on American TV because of the need to raise funds for one's own personal ministry) shows a preferential option for the poor. This is why Mary sings her song. And then there are the things the Real Jesus says about money. His words are found in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

The CNN article says: [Baylor U. professor] "Bruce W. Longenecker says life in Jesus' world was brutal. About 90 percent of people lived in poverty. A famine or a bad crop could ruin a family. There was no middle class. "In the ancient world, you were relatively poor or filthy rich, there's very little in-between," says Longenecker, author of "Engaging Economics: New Testament Scenarios and Early Christian Reception." The New Testament is full of parables where Jesus actually condemns the rich and praises the poor, Longenecker says. In the sixth chapter of the Gospel of Luke, Jesus actually curses the rich, he says. "The only way you can make Jesus into a rich man is by advocating torturous interpretations and by being wholly naive historically," Longenecker says.

Anderson reasons that Mary and Joseph "rode in a Cadillac" because they rode on a donkey. I confess I do not even know how to respond to such thinking. If they "rode in a Cadillac" in first-century Israel then they not only could have stayed in a hotel, they could have owned the hotel. The Son of Man would have had a roof over his head. (Matthew 8:20) And Mary would have sung a different song in Luke 1.

Instead of:

"My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant. From now on all generations will call me blessed, for the Mighty One has done great things for me— holy is his name. His mercy extends to those who fear him, from generation to generation. He has performed mighty deeds with his arm; he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts. He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty."

P-Gospel eisegetist Tom Brown says that the proof that Jesus was a wealthy man "is scattered throughout the New Testament. One example: The 12th chapter of the Gospel of John says that Jesus had a treasurer, or a "keeper of the money bag." "The last time I checked, poor people don't have treasurers to take care their money," says Brown."

Are you kidding me? In that culture it was not uncommon for someone to carry the group "purse." In Jesus' disciples case the purse was small (envision Judas hauling a bag of money the size of Santa's bag). Judas stole from that purse (John 12:4-6). So was Judas rich? Later, he is given thirty pieces of silver to betray Jesus. That amount was symbolic, being the amount needed to buy a common slave. (equivalent to $25 U.S.) That is not a lot of money to a man who had been hauling the megabucks-bag of Jesus and his wealthy entourage. (Note: Here in America rich people carry their own wallets and purses. I carry a wallet. Today is Christmas morning. Therefore, my wallet does not have a lot of money in it.)

Prosperity-gospel proponents emulate the very honor-shame hierarchy that Jesus came to invert. They leave this world's masses feeling guilt because they do not have enough "faith" for more money, with their current impoverishment being the visible shame-filled sign of their "lack of faith."

My suggestion is: do a Jim Bakker-thing. When P-Gospel preacher Bakker was in prison he read, actually read, the four Gospels. He underlined everything Jesus said about money. Bakker then wrote his book I Was Wrong.

Realize Your Own Faults

(Justus DuPlessis - third from the right: David DuPlessis, immediately right of the Pope)

Somewhere in my first year at Redeemer (over 17 years ago!) a good-hearted man came up to me after church. He was crying, wrapped his arms around me, and sobbed, "I don't care what others are saying about you. I think you are a great pastor." While embracing him, and with eyes wide open, I said, "Thank you."

Charles Spurgeon once wrote, 'Get a friend to tell you your faults, or better still, welcome an enemy who will watch you keenly and sting you savagely. What a blessing such an irritating critic will be to a wise man, what an intolerable nuisance to a fool!'

There is a time and a place to be told of one's faults. This will come either directly from God, mediated through the Scriptures by the Spirit, or via a friend who knows you and loves you. You have faults. Are you correctable? When this is a God-thing it is received with words like "Thank you, God, for revealing this to me." God uses people who come to grips with their own faults. God cannot use people (very much) who do not have periodic "Search me O God" moments.

Fifteen years ago the great South African leader Justus DuPlessis spoke at our church. I found him to be a powerful person of God, and attribute what God was able to do through Justus to things like his humility and teachability. He must have been 70 years old when he was here. He stayed at our house. I asked him, "What was it like to meet with the Pope?" He pulled a picture out of his wallet and there was Justus standing with the Pope. Maybe I should now show him some pictures of me on vacation? I don't think so!

Justus said, "I want to meet personally with you and show you something." The next day we met in my office, where he pulled out a 300-page doctoral dissertation written by a South African Christian leader. It was on the gift of tongues and other charismatic phenomena. Justus had just spoken at Kenneth Copeland's church, and Copeland had extra copies made so Justus could give me one. "I want you to review this and tell me what you think. I believe God could greatly use this work to help pastors. Please let me know what you think about this tomorrow."

I took the dissertation home and began to read. It was good work, but I thought that pastors would never understand it. It was highly technical and academic and filled with dessertationisms. Now I had a dilemma. I had to tell Justus what I really thought.

The next day we met again in my office. I told Justus the truth of what I thought. Pastors would not be helped by this book in its present form. I will never forget what happened next. Justus said, "Let's go into the sanctuary and pray." Once in the sanctuary, now standing by the communion table, Justus said, "Let's kneel." Then Justus prayed. I did not know what to expect. He prayed, "O God, thank you for sending me to a man like John who would tell me the truth and point out my error." Justus asked God for forgiveness, thanked God for his great mercy and grace, and thanked God for me." As for me and my soul, we were in the presence of God. I was not thinking about how great I was in doing this, but that here next to me was a man a lot wiser and far more experienced than I, and I was getting another one of those great life-lessons that will never be forgotten.

Be teachable.
Realize your own faults.
Confess them before God.
Thank God for the rescue.

"Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.
See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting."
- Psalm 139:23-24

Friends With God (and 289 Facebook Friends)

(Two very good friends)

I have 289 Facebook "friends"... and counting. Some of them I do not even know. I would not recognize them if they walked into the room and sat next to me. I'd say, "Who are you, and what are you doing here?" They respond, "I am Facebook friend # 227."

"Oh. Sorry... I don't know you. I never knew you. I'm not even sure I want to know you."

In real life (not the matrix of social networking) one can have only so many friends. In my life, I've mostly had one or two at a time. As a little kid my two friends were John and Neil. I knew them, to some degree. Now my best friend is Linda. I know her very well, though not completely. And she knows me very well. Only God knows me better than Linda knows me.

God knows you very well. God knows you completely. God has countless billions of friends. You are one of them. At this point I love what A.W. Tozer has written:

"An infinite God can give all of Himself to each of His children. He does not distribute Himself that each may have a part, but to each one He gives all of Himself as fully as if there were no others."

In this life I have one very close friend, a number of real but casual (more or less) friends, and 289 Facebook friends, some of whom I do not know. And, God refers to me as his friend. Jesus said "I lay down my life for my friends. And you are my friends." Personalize this. Let it sink in. The omni-God of the universe knows you fully and yet loves you and calls you his friend and invites you into the circle dance of eternal Triune friendship. Gasp at this. Bow. Be glad.

I Left Twitter, Therefore I Am Free

I know - some time ago I left Facebook, but I got back on. Facebook has some use for me, whereas I: never use Twitter; never think of using Twitter; never even think of Twitter; never think "Gee - I must be missing something because I'm not using Twitter; wonder why in the world others are now using Twitter; now think that Twitter has had its day in the sun; hear the sound of shackling chains wrapped around my mind breaking as I just closed my Twitter account; and proclaim that I'll never tweet again. I am William Wallace, being tortured and impaled by Twitter, and declare that I have had enough of this twitter-torture, step off the rack, and walk away crying "Freedom!!!"

My Christmas Week

Here are some things I am doing this week to "remain in Jesus, the Vine."

• Listening to a lot of Christmas music. It is beautiful, isn't it?! Linda and I have found Andrea Bocelli's new Christmas cd astounding.
• Spending a lot of personal time with God. Just me and Him. I continue slow-cooking in John chapters 14-17. I keep a spiritual journal. When God speaks to me, I write it down in my journal. I remind you of Exodus 33:11, which we looked at in Sunday morning's worship service: "The LORD would speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks with his friend." This is the kind of relationship I want with God! Remember what Jesus tells his disciples in John 15:15 "I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you."
• Taking me-and-Linda time. We're going to see a movie or two. I am looking forward to seeing "Invictus," a story about South Africa's Nelson Mandela. Maybe "Avatar" too.
• Ministering to people both within and without the Redeemer family. Tody there are some hospital calls I will be making. And Linda and I are always open and alert to how God wants to use us and flow through us to others. For us, even though we need times to refresh ourselves, ministry is life. Can things get any better than being wielded by God to save and rescue others? I don't think so!
• Meeting with our incredible staff on Tuesday morning for coffee, sharing, and just being together.
• Coming to Redeemer for an hour on Christmas Eve to be with all of you, our very beloved and power-filled passionate followers of the Real Jesus! How grateful we are for every one of you!
• Serving in the Soup Kitchen meal on Saturday night.
• Reading. My "hobby" has always been and remains reading multiple books at a time. I am a perpetual learner, and enjoy filling some of my time in this way. I am currently reading Imam Qazwini's autobiography American Crescent. Qazwini is the Imam of the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn. A few weeks ago I met with the Muslim leader of ICA. I feel God is telling me to study more deeply about Islam, and that he has some things for me re. this in the days ahead.
• Being interrupted. I just got a phone call from one of my communtiy college students. He told me he wants to talk about some of the things about God that I was teaching in my class. I told him, "See you in thirty minutes."

Have a truly meaning-filled, blessed Christ-mas!

What the Dark Night of the Soul Is and Is Not About

At times I have read or heard someone say that they are going through a "dark night of the soul," and by this refer to a time of personal suffering. This is not the "dark night" St John of the Cross was speaking of in the classic The Dark Night of the Soul.

To explain. John of the Cross was a mystic. "Mysticism" comes from the Greek word muo, which means "to conceal." There is, on mysticism, a way of "knowing" God that cannot be gained via things like the physical senses. Mystical literature speaks of such knowing as "dark knowledge."

John of the Cross, in The Ascent of Mount Carmel, writes: "The first night or purgation is of the sensual part of the soul, which is treated in the present stanza, and will be treated in the first part of this book. And the second is of the spiritual part; of this speaks the second stanza, which follows; and of this we shall treat likewise, in the second and the third part, with respect to the activity of the soul; and in the fourth part, with respect to its passivity." In the first "night" or "purgation" of the soul one's senses are "darkened." If one wants to know God in the sense of a God-encounter than this, precisely, cannot be gained via the 5 physical senses. They must be darkened.

For John of the Cross there are a series of darkenings, which then leafe the soul without any of its ordinary tools to rely on in the quest to know and be known by God. This is good, since, for a mystic like John, God cannot in principle be known this way. John writes: "And the second night, or purification, pertains to those who are already proficient, occurring at the time when God desires to bring them to the state of union with God. And this latter night is a more obscure and dark and terrible purgation, as we shall say afterwards." (Ascent)

The soul is purged of its active senses and eventually becomes passive, receptive. This is what Meister Eckhart means when he uses the word "Gelassenheit" to mean a passive "letting be," as opposed to an active grasping-after God. In the "Passive Night of the Senses" God purges the soul of its default ways of knowing. John calls this purgation "horrible," since in it we lose our normal way and can feel disoriented. But this is a holy disorientation, as we are being prepared for a unitive knowledge of God that cannot be gained with the separative physical senses. One experiences a great sense of loss, only to emerge into the greatest gain possible: knowledge of the ineffable God that comes to meet us.

The heart of John's "dark night" is expressed in these words:

"The night which we have called that of sense may and should be called a kind of correction and restraint of the desire rather than purgation. The reason is that all the imperfections and disorders of the sensual part have their strength and root in the spirit, where all habits, both good and bad, are brought into subjection, and thus, until these are purged, the rebellions and depravities of sense cannot be purged thoroughly."

I have long been attracted to the mystical tradition, for the following reasons.

1. Surely knowledge of God cannot be captured in the steel nets of literal language.
2. Surely God, in his essence, is beyond what our abilties can grasp.
3. If "God's ways are not our ways," then it seems reasonable to think that there are limits to our human abilities when it comes to knowing the ways of God.
4. I have often had the sense, especially in times of praying, that I am meeting God in a way that is both "beyond" me and more real than sense experience.
5. Weekly I talk with ordinary non-theologians in my congregation who describe encounters with God that are both real and indescribable (in essence).
6. Jesus' words in John chapters 14-17 imply a strong "in us" and "in God" experience that is better captured, often, in Christian mystical literature than in the evangelical hyper-rational environment I was trained in and loved.

The greatest danger of over-emphasizing mystical experience of God is that, at times, the mystical literature describes the contemplative union with God as an ontological union, a union of being. Here one gets "lost in God" to the extent that one is metaphysically the same as God. Surely, on Christian theism, there remains a metaphysical distance between us and God. Mysticism, at its extremes, conflates us and God so that we are ontologically one. I do not think that is true, nor do I find it helpful.

On another note, when I read the early pages of Dark Night I see similarities between the way our church and others worship. Reading sections of Dark Night remind me of the worship songs that are songs sung by the beloved to the Lover of our souls. To me that is very good, since there is a hymn-culture that more stresses the distance between us and God, thus taking the Emmanuel-encounter out of the church.

We Are Becoming Normal

Virtual Gifts for Virtual Friends

Social Networking - Pros & Cons

In Exodus 33:11 we read that "the LORD would speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks with his friend." I think face to face friendships are closer than Facebook friendships. (Many have commented on the use of "friend" on social networks like Facebook, usually admitting that Facebook "friends" are, mostly, different from face to face friends.)

In John 15 Jesus calls his disciples "friends." The Greek word here is philoi, which is from philia, one of the four Greek words for "love." Jesus' words "I call you friends" could be translated as "I call you the ones I love." Philoi has nuances of intimacy that our English word "friend" does not capture.

My son Dan and his wonderful wife Allie are in their second year working in Japan. It's been a year since we have seen them. Linda and I do appreciate Facebook because we pull up pictures they post there. But better than that is when we talk with them on the phone. Best of all will be this coming April when they return home after two years away and we will see them, face to face, and hug them.

No doubt, social networking is huge and will only get bigger. It surely has its positive aspects. It is also transforming the traditional idea of "community" as a face to face, actual physical-presence kind of thing. Hence, for me, arise some concerns, and some cons of social networking. One "con," e.g., may be: "The hours per day of face-to-face socializing have declined as the use of social media has increased. People who use these sites frequently are prone to social isolation. Parents spend less time with their children and couples spend less time together even when they live in the same house, because they are using the Internet instead of interacting with each other." One "pro" of social netowkring may be: "Social networking sites allow people to create new relationships and reconnect with friends and family. Increased communication, even online, strengthens relationships."

Surely many examples of the blessedness of social networking can be given. And yet, as cited above, I have concerns over some parents who seem to dwell on Facebook, making me wonder about them and their marriages and families. Some Facebook-prophets are needed to call these faces back to the land of physicality.

Surely a strong case can be made for the superiority of face-to-face rather than Facebook when it comes to friendships. One wants to hold the beloved in one's arms rather than merely touch the screen. Because persons are psycho-physico-spiritual beings, the most meaningful way to engage and potentially befriend real persons must include physical presence. Even though the days of Facebook text-weddings is coming, it's a lot better to physically kiss your life partner standing before the presence of family and friends. 

For a good list on the pros and cons of social networking check this out.

Coming Events at Redeemer

REDEEMER COMING EVENTS



Dec. 24, Christmas Eve – 6-7 PM. We present our “Gifts to the Savior,” plus have communion together and end with candlelight singing.


Dec. 31, New Year’s Eve – 9 PM – 1 AM – We worship our way into the New Year! Bring snacks to share at midnight.


Redeemer Ministry School - Winter Trimester Classes


• T/Th, 9:30-11 - Worship II, Holly Benner


• Tues, 5-7 - Prophecy, John Piippo & Josh Bentley


• Teaching & Preaching, Wed., 9:30 - 1, John Piippo


• Kingdom of God II (Healing & Deliverance), Fri., 9:30-1, Josh Bentley


The Winter Trimester begins Tuesday, Jan. 5. If you are not a full-time student and want to take an RMS class, the cost for the Prophecy class is $75 - for books and materials. All other classes are $240.


Saturday morning, Feb. 6 - Workshop - "The Power of Servant Leadership", with Jim Hunter  -  8:30 a.m. – Noon


To lead is to serve - This is how Jesus described the essence of leadership. Servant Leadership involves serving others by identifying and meeting their legitimate needs (as opposed to wants) and seeking their greatest good. John Maxwell, renowned leadership author/speaker, flatly asserts, “Leadership is influence, nothing more, nothing less.” According to that definition, we are all leaders because we all influence and impact others every day. Indeed, Jesus calls us to be leaders - “salt” & “light” - to influence the world for good.


So please come! Whoever you are - Student, parent, coach, teacher, manager, pastor - All will benefit from this workshop because we all influence others!


Redeemer’s own Jim Hunter will lead this paradigm/ life changing workshop. Jim is the author of two internationally best-selling books: The Servant & The World’s Most Powerful Leadership Principle. His books have been translated into fourteen (14) languages and have sold over 3.25 million copies worldwide. Jim's clients include many of the world’s most admired organizations including American Express, Best Buy, Nestlé, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and the United States Air Force, Army & Navy.


A free will offering will be taken at the conclusion of the event with all proceeds going to the Bangkok Nightlight ministry.


Sunday evening, Feb. 14 – We will be one of several hundred churches across the nation showing Darren Wilson’s new film “Furious Love.” Darren is the son of Gary and Linda Wilson, and grew up in Redeemer.


May 27-30 – Bethel School of Supernatural Evangelism at Redeemer, with Chris Overstreet.


June 27-July 2 – our annual summer conference in Green Lake, Wisconsin, with Randy Clark and Redeemer’s Worship Team.

Which Nations are Poorest When it Comes to Religious Freedom?

The Pew Forum Report on Religion and Public Life yesterday said that "nearly 70 percent of the world's 6.8 billion people who live in countries that have severe restrictions on religion." It is mostly Muslim nations who impose such restrictions.

The report ranks countries by one index that assesses government restrictions on religion and another that measures social hostilities or curbs on religion that stem from violence or intimidation by private individuals or groups.

From this link we read:

The Government Restrictions Index is based on 20 questions used by the Pew Forum to assess state curbs on religion at the national, provincial and local levels.


"Is public preaching by religious groups limited by any level of government?," and "Taken together, how do the constitution/basic law and other national laws and policies affect religious freedom?" are among the questions asked.

Both lists rank 198 countries worldwide and are based on scales of 0-10. Saudi Arabia was the only country to appear on both "very high" lists. The rankings fall under four categories: "Very High," "High," "Moderate" and "Low".

Following are the countries ranked as the most restrictive or "Very High" on both lists. The first list has 10 countries, the second has 11.

GOVERNMENT RESTRICTIONS INDEX

Very High or Top 5 percent of scores from 6.7 to 8.4.

Saudi Arabia, Iran, Uzbekistan, China, Egypt, Burma (Myanmar), Maldives, Eritrea, Malaysia, Brunei.

SOCIAL HOSTILITIES INDEX

Very High or Top 5 percent with scores from 6.8 to 9.4

Iraq, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Somalia, Israel, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Saudi Arabia.

I remember, in my U-Toledo dialogue with a Muslim Imam who was from Egypt, that I shared about persecution of Christians in Egypt on the basis of statistics such as these, plus three Egyptian pastors who were recent students of mine. The Imam just shook his head in disagreement.

The Pew Forum Report is the kind of thing that makes some of us wonder about what will happen if Islam grows in our country. Perhaps the Interfaith Dialogue efforts of ICA are in a significant minority? Is there something intrinsic to Islam that disallows freedom of religion?

Burial Shroud Found from Jesus' Time

(The Temple Mount, Jerusalem)

Researchers/archaeologists in Jerusalem found a burial shroud from the time of Jesus. DNA tests showed the person had leprosy. It was found in a tomb complex on the edge of the Old City of Jerusalem.

Greg Boyd on the Violent God of the Old Testament

Greg Boyd is doing some blogging on his forthcoming book Jesus Versus Jehovah: Understanding the Violent God of the Old Testament in Light of the God of the Cross.

See also the U-Notre Dame conference, now on video, with its phenomenal, diverse presenters - here.

What the Word Became

Multiple Choice - choose the correct answer, which is also the best answer.

1. In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And the Word became a text and dwelt on our I-phone.

2. In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And the Word became a Face and dwelt on Facebook.

3. In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And the Word became a download and dwelt on our hard drive.

4. In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

Better to have God make his home with us and in us (John 15) then God as: 1) merely a text; 2) only a Face; 3) just a download out of the ethersphere.

Better "Emmanuel" that "Text-uell," "Face-uell," or "Download-uell."

The Word: not just some more words, not just another pretty face, not just some software that takes up more space. The Word was one of us.

"The Word was first, the Word present to God,
God present to the Word.
The Word was God, in readiness for God from day one.
Everything was created through him;
nothing—not one thing!— came into being without him.
What came into existence was Life, and the Life was Light to live by.
The Life-Light blazed out of the darkness; the darkness couldn't put it out...

...The Word became flesh and blood,

and moved into the neighborhood.
We saw the glory with our own eyes,
the one-of-a-kind glory,
like Father, like Son,
Generous inside and out, true from start to finish."

(The Message)

Stephen Toulmin

Although I teach logic and, in many ways, love it, in no way do I think that everything is "logical" and can be understood via logic. "Life," surely, is not captured by the steel nets of logic. Love is not essentially logical, and any attempt to logically argue for this is to ask one to fall in love with Mr. Spock. And moral issues cannot be understood by abtract logic sans context, as Stephen Toulmin told us years ago.

Toulmin the philosopher died on December 4. I was introduced to Toulmin in Harold I. Brown's philosophy of science class. When I was applied for Ph.D studies at Northwestern U. and the U. of Chicago, Toulmin was teaching at the latter. In The Uses of Argument Toulmin "criticized formal logic as an overly abstract, inadequate representation of how human beings actually argue. He also challenged its claims to universality, as well as its faith in absolute truth and moral certainty."

From the nytimes Toulmin-tribute we read: “Stephen’s essential contribution was to bring philosophy back from the abstractions of reason and logic — the world of Plato and Descartes — to the human condition,” said Roy Pea, a professor of learning sciences and education and the director of the Stanford Center for Innovations in Learning at Stanford University. “He argued that if we want to understand questions of ethics, science and logic, we have to inquire into the everyday situations in which they arise.”

Harold I. Brown spoke of Toulmin because Toulmin's Foresight and Understanding: An Enquiry Into the Aims of Science was often mentioned "in the same breath as Thomas Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions.” 

"Mr. Toulmin’s provocative ideas often encountered resistance at first, especially in Britain, and his work on argument was no exception. He proposed, instead of formal logic’s three-part syllogism, a model of persuasive argument consisting of six components. Some, he maintained, apply universally but others do not. Arguments, in other words, do not unfold in a Platonic ether, but in particular contexts. The Toulmin model proved to be highly useful for analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of arguments. It is commonly used in debate manuals, for example, but its applications have extended to the rhetorical interpretation of literary texts, computer science and artificial intelligence."

See also Michael Ruse's tribute to Toulmin here.

Toulmin argued that, in things like moral reasoning, historical and cultural contexts must be taken into account. One does not just argue "logically" in some kind of epistemic vacuum. The absolutism of idealized formal logic "fails to consider the field-dependent aspects of argument. Advocating a universal truth, absolutists believe that a standard set of moral principles — regardless of context — can solve all moral dilemmas. But Toulmin purported that many of these standard principles cannot be applied to day-to-day life in the real world." (Pamela Johnson, here)

Muslim-Christian Dialogue

A good friend of mine who is a Muslim scholar, and missionary in an Arab-Muslim nation, has communicated with me that a very good book to read on Muslim-Christian dialogue is: Muslims and Christians at the Table: Promoting Biblical Understanding Among North American Muslims, by Bruce McDowell and Anees Zaka.

I'm especially inviting Redeemer people (my home church) to join me in reading this text, and then discussing it together. All this is in preparation for the greater witness to Muslims that God is calling me, and us, towards.

I expect to be making posts re. this in the days ahead, so I invite any readers to talk with me about these things.

Live the Imbalanced Life

Jesus did not come to show us how to "balance our lives." Life, for Jesus, is not some balancing act. Life is not a pie graph that is cut into pieces, the purpose of which is to ensure that every important piece gets attention: God, church, prayer, work, kids, play, exercise, paying bills, the golf game, etc. etc. Life is not a check-list of "to do" items. God's "to do" list for us has one item only: God.

Jesus wants the whole pie, all 100% of it. Life is to be lived from that perspective. "All" is to be given in love and worship and service to God. If your heart was a pie, then love the Lord your God with the whole thing, and not just a slice. Don't save any of it for yourself.

Hebrew culture did not have access to pie graphs. They thought hierarchically. Kings deserve one's entire worship and allegiance; blind beggars, women, and children deserve nothing. Jesus, in what is called the "upside-down kingdom" or "Great Reversal," reverses the whole hierarchy, shockingly so. The Real King is born an "expendable." The Real King dies the life of a societal non-person on a cross. All this kingdom Jesus-activity is to be understood, not from the perspective of an equally balanced and sliced pie, but from the honor-shame hierarchy. Jesus didn't compartmentalize his life doing a lot of self-promoting things and then give a percentage of his time sacrificing for us.

Hierarchies prioritize. Prioritize your life. Expend your life on the most important things; be pruned of the unimportant. The King has come to you. Give all your heart, soul, mind, strength, life, time, money, talents, in sacrifice to him and the cause of his Kingdom. In this way get out of balance.

The Meaning of "Nothing" in Heidegger

(Martin Heidegger)

Michael Gelven introduced me to Martin Heidegger's Being and Time when I was an undergraduate at Northern Illinois University. Gelven was, for me, one of the best teachers I've ever had. He combined brilliant scholarship with an ability to communicate it to lesser beings like myself. And, his method of teaching and evaluating become the one I now use in all my teaching.

In my seminary studies I did an independent study with theologian Tom Finger on Being and Time. Thank you, Tom, for taking that time with me. And I feel certain I understood very little of what Heidegger was saying and doing. Yet the being-taught by Gelven and Finger served and still serves as helpful in now understanding Heidegger, I think, more than I did 35 years ago. Let me try with some "later Heidegger" bullet-points + auto-commentary.

• Heidegger-studies are usually divided into study of the Heidegger of Being and Time, and then the "later Heidegger."
• I'm looking at Heidegger apart from his involvement in Nazism, an unfortunate development.
• Theologically, to understand Bultmann and Tillich one must understand Heidegger.
• If Heidegger is interested in God, his is a non-metaphysical God.
• Traditional ontology understood persons in terms of their relationship to "things"; in terms of the way things are. In doing this humanity was "led astray" by being.
• "Being" was the center of Heidegger's thought.
• Heidegger's term for human being was the German word Dasein. Literally, Dasein simply means "being-there." Heidegger uses this term to indicate that humanity must be studied in terms of its own structure rather than in relation to other "things."
• Heidegger speaks of Dasein as being "thrown." That does not mean there is a "thrower." Rather, as James Robinson has written, Dasein's "thrown-ness" "relates it to Dasein's own projection of itself. Dasein is grounded in nothing outside itself." ("The German Discussion of the Later Heidegger," by James Robinson; in The Later Heidegger and Theology, eds. James Robinson and John Cobb. I find Robinson's writing on Heidegger clear to me, and am using his essay as a foundation for my bullet-points.) With this in mind, consider this quote from Heidegger, who says that the aim is "to let that which shows itself be seen from itself in the very way in which it shows itself from itself." (In Anthony Thiselton, The Two Horizons, 26)
• This is the meaning, in Heidegger, of "nothing." Dasein is grounded in "nothing" outside itself. For Heidegger there is "nothing" beyond Dasein. Robinson writes: "Dasein, held out into nothing, is beyond all beings, and has in this sense attained ultimate transcendence, the goal of metaphysics." Heidegger explains this in his lecture What Is Metaphysics? (Sartre's "nothingness" in Being and Nothingness is both indebted to Heidegger's phenomenology of being and misunderstands Heidegger and goes in a direction that is non-Heideggarian.)
• For Heidegger, there is nothing beyond Dasein, not a transcendent God, not to the universe as "the sum total of all beings" (Robinson, 11), and not to some Cartesian subject from which a world of things can be established. Beyond Dasein, nothing lies. The answer to the metaphysical question that haunted philsosophers from Plato to the present is: "nothing." As Robinson says, "the answer to the metaphysical question is at the same time the end of metaphysics." (12)
• Keep all of this in mind in order to understand Tillich's idea of God as the "ground of being."
• Bultmann is indebted to Heidegger's phenomenology of being in the being of Dasein. The idea of hermeneutics is purely descriptive. Bultmann says, in regard to Heidegger's hermeneutics, "I learned from him not what theology has to say but how to say it." (In Thiselton, 28)

All serious students of Christian theology need to come to grips with the influence of Heidegger's anti-metaphysical phenomenology of Being.

Escaping From Folk Christianity

(Downtown Monroe)

Just as folk Buddhism has largely usurped real Buddhism in Thailand, so has folk Christianity long over run real Christianity in America. For example, "Clement Akoto, 52, a D.C. resident...  said he does not see a conflict in his wide-ranging beliefs. Akoto, a Catholic who attends Mass every week, said he believes in astrology and communication with the dead and ghosts." The August survey reported by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life "shows Americans' beliefs to be more complex than might be expected." Can a person believe in Jesus and astrology? It is, of course, logically possible to believe such a mixture of things. The Pew survey shows Amerians actually do conflate such things in the soup of their beliefs. Citing another example, 22% of those claiming the label of "Christian" also believe in reincarnation, the rebirth of the soul in another body.

In our attempts to introduce people to the Real Jesus we battle against a number of folk beliefs that have little or no connection to the Jesus of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Here are some "folk Christian" things I think I see, followed by a few methodological considerations.

Folk (faux) Christian ideas include:

• the "prosperity gospel"; viz., the idea that Jesus wants to make you rich, as if that were on his kingdom-expanding agenda
• the "drug Jesus"; viz., the idea that we can "smoke a little Jesus" and get high on Jesus and that abiding in jesus is somehow analogical, physically and mentally, to drug-induced highs
• the "alcoholic Jesus"; viz., the idea that "getting drunk on Jesus" is like an alcoholic drunk who staggers around incoherently and just generally makes a fool of himself and alienates himself from other sober people (as if that was the kind of behavior seen in the early church when they were accused of drunkenness, which of course it was not)
• the "rule-concerned Jesus"; viz., the idea that, e.g., the clothing we wear is either especially displeasing or pleasing to God; that wearing hats and slacks in the sanctuary is an abomination to God; that Jesus is primarily concerned with external physical appeaance at all (which he was not, but was concerned with the human heart)
• the "hymn-singing Jesus"; viz., the idea that Jesus was especially fond of the "old hymns," with "old" meaning the 19th century in Europe and America (forgetting that Jesus and the early church is 1800+ years older than this)
• the "orderly Jesus": viz.,  the idea that Jesus is very concerned about the length of religious services and is especially bent out of shape when the service "runs too long"
• the "pageantry Jesus"; viz., the Jesus who desires that buku bucks be spent on lavish, panoramic church programs that entertain people
• the "mega Jesus"; viz., the idea that size = relevance as regards God's Kingdom, and that size is needed to change the world
• the "balanced Jesus"; viz., the idea that Jesus came to show us how to balance our lives (while in actuality the Jesus-life is fundamentally imbalanced, with the love of God encompassing all things)
• the "non-7-11 Jesus"; viz., the idea that Jesus despises repetition (7 verses sung 11 times) in worship singing (thus forgetting the idea that tribal worship is always repetitive, even functioning in Hebrew culture as a form of meditation which is, precisely and essentially, repetitive)
• the "butler Jesus"; viz., the idea that Jesus is a divine butler sent to satisfy all our human goals and the establishing of our own personal kingdoms
• the "political Jesus"; viz., the idea that Jesus believes in the hope of nations and political systems and that our hope is in achieving "Christian nations" (while actually saying things such as "My kingdom is not of this world)
• the "American Jesus"; viz., the idea that "America" is the summum bonum of Jesus' plans and purposes (while saying, again, that his kingdom is not of this world... not at all)
• the "rule-giving Jesus"; viz., the idea that Jesus came not to set us free but to pile on more rules for us to follow, thus increasing our current oppressed condition
• the "King James Jesus"; viz., the idea that Jesus himself spoke in King James english and anyone who reads the Christian Scriptures, even in their original autographs, has just purchased a ticket to hell
• the "striving Jesus"; viz., the idea that Jesus did what he did and said what he said because he tried a lot harder than we do (instead of Jesus' John 14-17 teachings on remaining/dwelling/abiding in the perichoretic Triune unity of the Godhead)
• the "make a decision Jesus"; viz., the idea that Jesus wants us to make some decision for him, as if that was the essence of "salvation" (getting sozo-ed) 
• the "angry-at-you Jesus"; viz., the idea that Jesus gets really ticked off at you and at times is in a very bad mood regarding you, and then appoints religious people to point this out to you and judge you and condemn you
• the "formulaic Jesus"; viz., the idea that there are a series of steps involved in the real following of Jesus (as opposed to a relationship with Jesus, which can never be reduced to some formula)

A Few Methodological Considerations in the quest to escape folk Christianity and follow the Real Jesus

• Read the 4 Gospels. There you will encounter the Real Jesus
• Read the Pauline letters as further complementary and supplementary revelation about the Real Jesus
• Identify core elements of the Real Jesus. For example, Jesus warns us about money, and has a preferential option for the poor.
• Interpret following Jesus through his basic message, which is the message of the kingdom of God/heaven. In knowing Jesus, everything stands or falls with this.
• Discern nationalistic, ethnic, and temporal frameworks that spin the Real Jesus in the wrong way.
• Daily be in relationship with Jesus (see John 14-17).
• Soak yourself in Jesus' words in Matthew 5-7 (the incredible "Sermon on the Mount")
• Hang around and fellowship with people who, above all, want Jesus and his kingdom.
• Finally, never presume to have the final word on Jesus. History is filled with good people who put a spin on Jesus that we now see to be historically conditioned. Probably you and I are doing that to some extent, too.