blogical fallacy: November 2005

Wednesday, November 30, 2005

New Genesis

I am currently fleshing out my sermon for this Sunday, and since it is the Advent season, I decided to speak on Matthew 1. I'm a little worried because, as you probably know, Matthew 1 is the genealogy of Jesus- not a popular sermon topic. As I have studied this, I have been surprised to find how incredibly exciting and pertinent this passage is. Here are some of my preliminary findings (from commentaries by N.T. Wright, D.A. Carson, Leon Morris, and others):

First, the word translated "genealogy" in verse 1 is the Greek word "genesis." Just as the book of Genesis recounts the story of the first creation, so Matthew recounts the story of the new creation. Jesus' story is the story of redemption, of restoration, of new genesis.

Second, this genealogy is somewhat different than most: it includes four women- and not the four that you would think. Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba are hardly the women you would expect to be prominently displayed in the record of the Messianic line. So why are they there? Perhaps because they are all gentiles (Bathsheba was an Israelite, but she was married to the Hittite Uriah), and Matthew was pointing out that Jesus was the fulfillment of the promise made to Abraham that through his seed all the families of the earth would be blessed (looking both forward and backward to the universality of the gospel). Also, look at the sexual sin associated with these women. Matthew seems to be showing his readers that in saving His people from their sins, Jesus was saving both Jews and Gentiles (once again, looking both forward and backward to the universality if the gospel).

Third, this genealogy tells the story of God’s plan for redemption- chapters of exile and exodus, leading up to the final exodus into the Kingdom of God: Egypt (exile) to the Promised Land (exodus), the Promised Land to Babylon, Babylon (exile) to… the Kingdom of God (exodus), the birth of the Messiah! Matthew is telling his readers that the long awaited exodus is here in and through Jesus.

Finally, note that verse 22 tells us that Isaiah’s prophecy has been fulfilled- this Jesus is the one who would be called Immanuel, which means “God with us.” This child, born of a virgin, is God with us. He is not only the long awaited Messiah, He is God! God will save His people from their sins. He will bring redemption, He will bring restoration, He will bring new genesis.

Common Ground, Part 6

How then should we reconcile the differences between presuppositionalism and traditionalism? First, it seems that in some ways they are saying very similar things without realizing that they are simply defining terms differently. A plain clarification such as has been outlined in this blog can be of use. Also, perhaps, as is argued by Gary Habermas in the book, Five Views on Apologetics, presuppositionalism is merely an incomplete apologetic (241). Better yet, it seems to be more of an epistemology which should overarch all of apologetic practice. Every apologist is a presuppositionalist, whether consciously or not. God is assumed in every argument because no statement, whether premise or conclusion, can be made intelligibly without the assumption of God.

With presuppositionalism as an epistemology, all apologetic methods are valuable. If someone is looking for reasons to believe in God, there is classical apologetics. If someone else wants proof of the deity of Christ, there is evidential apologetics. If a believing brother is having doubts about his faith and wants to see the probability of the truth Christianity, there is the cumulative case method. In fact, it appears that John Frame has almost endorsed this idea in his section of the book, Five Views on Apologetics: “I see considerable common ground between presuppositional apologetics and the other schools of thought…. I gladly join with Habermas in testing Scripture by scriptural criteria, and I do not automatically reject theistic proofs and Christian evidences as nontranscendental” (357).

So, can an apologist faithfully commend and defend Christianity to an unbeliever while granting a level of common ground in the areas of evidence and reason? It appears that we can indeed. And is it possible to reconcile presuppositional apologetics to traditional apologetics? Not only is it possible, but in the end we see that there is significant overlap in the apologetic methods. Moreover, it might even be possible for them to be complimentary to one another. With the solid epistemological foundation that God is revealed even in our laws of thought and order, we are sure to glorify Him as we defend the gospel whether by means of logic, or evidence, or simply our Christian testimony. God, in his infinite power and wisdom, has created every man in the imago dei. Thus, when the Christian or the atheist decides to open his mouth and argue, he displays this amazing truth to all.

Hope in the Garden

My good friend Paul Johnson wrote the following for our church to use as the First Sunday of Advent Reading, and I thought it was worth posting. Stay tuned for more...

The Christmas season is a time of celebration. However, there are many conflicting ideas of what exactly should be celebrated. It might seem to an outsider that our purpose for the Christmas season is to celebrate family, or possibly food, or even evergreen trees - and, sadly, most of the time they wouldn’t be far from the truth. In a world of conflicting ideas, it is easy for us to lose sight of what is truly important and exalt things that are not in themselves bad, but may cause us to miss the point of the celebration.

In order to be reminded why we celebrate this season, we will be focusing our attention on the advent, or coming, of our Lord Jesus Christ. Each week we will recognize a theme and a location that is associated with the coming of Christ. This Sunday we will look at hope in the Garden of Eden.

The Garden of Eden may seem to some to be an odd place to start, especially since our focus is the hope that Christ brings and the garden is most usually associated with the fall of humanity. But right on the heels of our fall into sin there comes a promise from God—a promise that is delivered, oddly enough, as a curse to the enemy, the serpent: “He shall crush your head and you shall bruise him on the heel.” Already, in the garden, we see our first glimpse of the savior who will come to crush the enemy and give us hope. Our hope is first seen in the garden in the fact that we are fallen and in need of regeneration in order to have a right standing with God, we hope for regeneration. In other words, we are continually looking forward to the time when God reaches down and saves us from ourselves.

You might be thinking, “This is all well and good, but what does it have to do with Christmas?” The advent of Jesus Christ is the culmination of our hope. All of our longing for regeneration is finally made manifest in the birth of a tiny baby in a lowly stable. This is why we celebrate. We celebrate the advent because hope has come to the world—“In Him was life and that life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness and the darkness can not overpower it.”

Common Ground, Part 5

If logic and reason have their source in the mind of God, and all people use the laws of logic to think and live, then it is therefore true that all people think and live based on the mind of God. It is then also true by implication that all people have the ability to use reason as a means to get to God. And when a person uses reason to discover the truth of Christianity, he also realizes the shocking truth that it was God who led him the whole way. It turns out that neutrality really is a myth, but the good news is that this “neutrality” that had once been repudiated by pressuppositionalists actually turns out to be biased toward God’s side. This so called “neutrality,” it had been argued, is a weapon of the atheist. It now seems much more likely that this “neutrality” is a weapon of the theist.

Obviously this does not mean that reason and logic cannot be used as a tool to disprove God, as many atheists and skeptics have shown us. But it does mean that the way in which they use these tools is fallacious, twisted, and in the end, untenable. Cornelius Van Til is very useful in helping us see how this twisted thinking comes about. Summarizing Romans chapter one, he argues that the unbeliever knows God clearly, but he suppresses that truth and exchanges it for a lie (Frame, Christian Apologetics, 107). The noetic effects of sin have caused him to reject the truth, and yet he finds that he cannot live apart from the truth at certain levels. In order to argue that there is no absolute truth, the relativist must agree with the universal truth that there is no truth, thus reducing his view to absurdity. He cannot be right without being wrong. If an apologist is to accept his view for the sake of the argument (position of neutrality), he can help the relativist come to the conclusion that his view is ultimately untenable. The common ground in this case is the fact that there is absolute truth, and it is knowable, and indeed, assumed by the relativist for everyday reasoning and survival.

Our Ultimate Hope

What is the ultimate hope of the Christian? I’ll give you a hint; it’s not heaven. Now hear me clearly: I’m not saying that we don’t look forward to heaven (a term that will be fleshed out in later blogs); we do indeed. But the ultimate hope of the Christian is more than just the idea of heaven-- it is inextricably tied to Christ and His work. The ultimate hope of the Christian is resurrection. Consider Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 15:20-28:

But now Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who are asleep. For since by a man came death, by a man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, after that those who are Christ's at His coming, then comes the end, when He hands over the kingdom to the God and Father, when He has abolished all rule and all authority and power. For He must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet. The last enemy that will be abolished is death…. When all things are subjected to Him, then the Son Himself also will be subjected to the One who subjected all things to Him, so that God may be all in all.

Paul here is saying that Christ is the type or model of every Christ follower. He is the first fruits. You’ll recall from the Old Testament that the practice of giving the first and best crop to God in thankfulness for his provision is always followed by the harvesting of the entire crop. In the same way, just as Christ (the first fruits) has been resurrected and glorified bodily, so shall we (the entire harvest) be resurrected bodily. Our hope is not that we will someday enjoy eternal disembodied bliss, floating around on clouds in the presence of God. Our hope has to do with the final and eternal defeat of sin and death, and the resurrection of all creation! I would like to emphasize here the point that eternity will not be less physical, it will me more physical. Let us not forget that God created the heavens and the earth, and everything therein, and it was very good. And when Christ returns, not only will we be resurrected, but there will be a redeemed heaven and earth. One way you can think about this is that not only do Christians get to go to heaven, but creation gets to go too.

In his book entitled, The Resurrection of the Son of God, N.T. Wright says of this text, “Paul is trying to teach the Corinthians to think eschatologically… of the way in which the future has already burst into the present, so that the present time is characterized by a mixture of fulfillment and expectation, of ‘now’ and ‘not yet’, pointing towards a future in which what happened at the first Easter will be implemented fully and the true God will be all in all” (333, Italics added).

May we be inspired by the truth that we are living between the First and Second Advent of Christ. May our prayer be that of Jesus; that His kingdom may come and His will be done on earth as it is in heaven. May our hope be the resurrection.

Common Ground, Part 4

In their textbook entitled Introductory Logic, Douglas Wilson and James Nance (two devout presuppositionalists) state that “God created man with the ability to reason…. Without the ability to reason, we would be unable to talk, preach, read, or follow God’s commands…. Logic is not devised by man, but neither is it created by God, like trees and stars are. Rather, it is an attribute of God which is reflected in creation” (1). If this statement is true, then it is also true that when an unbeliever uses logic validly, he necessarily enters the realm of theism. Again, this does not mean that he admits this fact, but it does mean that he has abandoned neutrality. As John Frame aptly points out, “If the subjectivist stops at red lights and seeks to avoid eating poisonous materials, we may conclude that he is really and objectivist at heart” (DKG, 120).

R.C. Sproul, John Gerstner and Arthur Lindsley (three devout classical apologists) make a similar point with regard to epistemology in their book, Classical Apologetics. They argue that there are three basic assumptions held by theists and nontheists alike: 1) the validity of the law of noncontradiction, 2) the validity of the law of causality, and 3) the basic reliability of sense perception. “These assumptions are necessary for science in its broadest sense. They are not only prerequisites for knowledge, but are necessary assumptions for life itself” (72).

Common Ground, Part 3

If we are going to speak about neutrality, it is of the utmost importance that we define this term so that we may dispel any apparent disagreements. If, by neutral, we mean that the apologist abandons his assumption of God and assumes an argument that presupposes no possibility of God, then not only is this unbiblical, but it is also nonsense. If, however, by neutral we are simply saying that the apologist does not overtly start out with the presupposition that Christianity is true, rather he relies on common ground with the unbeliever, namely the laws of logic (which are from the mind of God, and thus presuppose Him), to form an argument that leads naturally to theism, then we are speaking about a method that is both biblical and compelling.

It should be noted that it is agreed upon by many if not all apologetic methods that to assume order, logic, and the validity of argument itself, requires a basic acknowledgement of absolutism. In other words, any argument requires point and counterpoint, right and wrong, and thus, an absolute standard. Absolute standards imply an Absolute Standard Giver, whom we tend to call “God.” This moral argument is very much like the reverse of the transcendental argument which states that “God’s revelation is the only source of meaning and rationality in the world” (Frame, Christian Apologetics, 110). In the first statement we are saying that since there is meaning and rationality in the world, there must be a God. In the second statement we are saying that since there is a God, there can be meaning and rationality in the world. This is a presupposition (whether consciously admitted or not) that any consistent person must hold in order to open his mouth and defend his claim.

Therefore, if an atheist makes the claim “There is no God,” he must assume God in order to hold his view. In fact, if anyone wishes to defend any point of view, he proves that he assumes God in some fashion. This would therefore suggest that traditionalists are far from presenting neutral (in the unbiblical sense noted above) arguments, for they indeed undermine atheism at every turn.

Common Ground, Part 2

The main problem presuppositionalists have with views such as classical apologetics is the issue of neutrality for the sake of the argument. The argument on the side of classical apologetic method (as well as others) holds that one valid way to defend the claims of Christianity is to argue from a neutral position (not holding to theism or atheism at the outset) to theism, and subsequently to Christianity by using evidence and/or logical arguments.

At this point, the presuppositional apologist may object, stating that this is a sinful way of thinking for the Christian, and is thus off limits. How can a Christian ever start from a position of neutrality, thus being open to atheism, without compromising his argument as well as his submission to the Lordship of Christ? John Frame claims that “They [traditionalists] do, however, tell the unbeliever to think neutrally during the apologetic encounter, and they do seek to develop a neutral argument, one that has no distinctively biblical presuppositions… I do believe that its position is unbiblical” (Apologetics to the Glory, 6).

In this quote, Frame argues that developing neutral arguments is unbiblical, and thus out of the question for Christians. This statement, however, introduces the straw man fallacy, namely in the premise that traditionalists seek to develop a neutral argument that has no distinctively biblical presuppositions. Are these neutral arguments unbiblical? Is there even such a thing as a neutral argument? If not, would these arguments assume God or atheism?

The World Has Ended?

I am currently reading The Present Future by Reggie McNeal, and in it he states that "We are entering a new epoch of human history called the postmodern age. The postmodern world will demand a new church expression, just as did the rise of the modern world" (5).

Now, I don't disagree that the church in North America is woefully irrelevant to its culture, and is doing very little on the whole to develop its members into winsome ambassadors for Christ to the world. However, it seems to me to be a non sequitur to say that the reason for this is because we're not enough like the culture around us, and so we need to find a postmodern church expression. The reason the church doesn't make a difference in the world is not because the church has failed to speak the language of the culture, rather it is because she has failed to speak at all. She has lost her ancient voice, and her ancient mission (or should I say commission).

The Church was born into a world of relativism, pluralism and polytheism; and what did she do? She transformed the culture around her- all the way up to the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. She did not do this by conforming herself to the ideologies and thought patterns of that culture, but by proclaiming (in the power of the Holy Spirit) the truth that Jesus Christ is Lord, and His Kingdom has come and is coming. She did this by demonstrating through transformed lives that life needs to be transformed. She did this by being different from the culture around her, and therefore being relevant to the culture around her.

If the church in any way found a new expression at the rise of the modern world, so much the worse for the church. But the cure to a modern church expression cannot be its replacement with a postmodern one; no more than a cancer which eats up another kind of cancer can be considered a cure. As Doug Wilson once said, “Modernity? Postmodernity? A plague on both your houses.” The cure will come when the church remembers her ancient vision and commission, and dares to speak and act with the confidence and devotion of the martyrs.

Sitting, Walking and Standing

The Wycliffe Bible Commentary on Ephesians notes that “the contents of the epistle can be summarized by the three words sitting, walking and standing. By position, the believer is seated with Christ in the heavenlies (2:6); his responsibility is to walk worthy of the calling wherewith he has been called (4:1); and this walk is further seen as a warfare in which he is engaged against Satan and all his hosts and in which he is exhorted to stand against the wiles of the devil (6:11).”

As I read this it reminded me of a converse statement made in Psalm 1: “How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the path if sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers! But his delight is in the Lord, and in His law he meditates day and night.”

Those of us who are in Christ do not sit in the seat of scoffers; rather we have been saved by grace and are therefore seated with Christ in the heavenly places. We do not walk in the counsel of the wicked, rather we walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which we have been called. We do not stand in the path of sinners, rather wear the full armor of God, so that we may be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil.

Common Ground, Part 1

Much debate has taken place regarding which is the “right” apologetic method for Christians to adopt as they commend and defend their faith. On the surface, the pressing question seems to be, “How do we effectively win the unbelieving world to Christ?” But as we seek to answer this question, the presuppositional apologists will point out that this question may be a bit short-sighted. Perhaps the more complete question is “How do we effectively win the unbelieving world to Christ in a way that is obedient to Scripture?” In his book, Christian Apologetics, Cornelius Van Til clarifies the dilemma: “…This implies a refusal to grant that any area or aspect of reality… can be correctly interpreted except it be seen in the light of the main doctrines of Christianity” (124). On the surface, this seems to pose a problem to any apologist who seeks to argue the existence of the God of the Bible on the basis of scientific/historical evidence or logic/reason. Can an apologist faithfully commend and defend Christianity to an unbeliever while granting a level of common ground in the areas of evidence and reason, or is this a rebellious way of thinking which can only lead to atheistic conclusions?

To be continued...

Trial and Error

In an attempt to come up with a catchy title for this blog (not that the current title is such), there were many rejects. Here is a sampling from the graveyard of the best/worst (depending on your point of view):

-Hot Bliggity Blog
-Blog-Eat-Blog
-Blogwash
-Blog In the Dock
-God in the Blog
-Blogtoberfest
-New Kid on the Blog
-Theoblogian
-Blogma (my favourite, but it was already taken!)
-Pilgrim's Blogress
-Blogwild
-Cheeseblogger & Fries

Just to name a few. I decided on blogical fallacy because...
1) All cool blogs have sweet names
2) This website is a cool blog
3) Therefore, this website has... um...well, I got tired of trying to be witty and just chose one that rolls off the tongue.