This post was written by Mark Hansard on October 15, 2008
In “Down on the Transplantations,” Anita Kuhn, an editor for Touchstone Magazine, reviews a recent article from the New England Journal of Medicine about the definition of patient death and when it is ethical to remove a patient’s organs for transplant. According to Kuhn, the NEJM authors admit that the definition of patient death has been changed to allow more favorable conditions for organ transplants. The old dead donor rule (”cold, blue and stiff”) is no longer in use because in the 1960’s it was changed to “devastating neurologic injury.” This definition, commonly referred to as “brain death,” allowed the organs to be removed from a body when they were still in use. Often, organs die when the patient dies, and so are not useful for transplant. But brain-dead patients still have functioning organs, and their bodies appear alive–they metabolize, excrete waste, and even mature sexually. This, of course, has raised ethical questions in the minds of some ethicists and medical practitioners about removing the organs from such a patient.
Therefore, some experts have proposed a definition of “cardiac death,” in which the patient’s heart is not operative for three to five minutes. But this also has ethical difficulties, as it is possible to revive a patient’s heart even after five minutes of ceased activity. Kuhn writes that this often leads to an ethically inconsistent position in which “irreversible cessation of cardiac function,” comes to mean “we won’t try to resuscitate.”
Interestingly, Kuhn goes on to note that the NEJM authors, instead of retreating to the old dead donor rule because of ethical problems with the new rules, instead say that the problem has been the dead donor rule itself. What is needed, they say, is informed consent ahead of time, either from the patient or the patient’s family, that the organs can be removed even from “irreversible neurologic injuries that do not meet the technical requirements of brain death.” Kuhn gives an interesting analysis and critique of this view, which definitely worth reading here.
This post was written by Randy Newman on October 2, 2008
Is there an integrating force that joins evangelism and cultural influence? In other words, are Christians supposed to engage in works to change society or just in one, which is to change hearts? To add a specific point to it, should Christians called to the university try to influence the academic and social climate of their campus or just teach their specific classes and occasionally share the gospel with colleagues and students?
To be sure, the teaching and evangelizing are non-negotiables. But is there also a call to promote well being for students in other aspects besides academics or spirituality?
A little historical perspective may help. For much of church history, almost 1900 years of it, the church saw social responsibility and evangelism as two sides of the same Christ-centered, gospel-infused coin. The twentieth century is an anomaly. A split, which began long before the 1900s, became a great schism during the so-called Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy. The liberal wing abandoned beliefs in doctrines which are central to the Christian faith: the deity of Christ, the authority of scripture, the lostness of people without Christ, etc. They replaced evangelism (since people really didn’t need salvation) with social action.
This prompted two responses. One voiced by J. Gresham Machen and echoed by many conservatives, was that Christianity and Liberalism are really two different religions. H. Richard Niebuhr described liberalism as, “A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.”
The second response was to separate evangelism from “the social gospel.” “Evangelism is what ‘Christians’ do and ’social action’ is what
liberals do.” After a while, there arose almost a knee-jerk reaction to any kind of social action done by Christians. The conservatives objected to any such involvement with warnings of “where that kind of thing ends up.”
But the same J. Gresham Machen (a theologian who helped form Westminster Theological Seminary) who saw liberalism as a completely different belief system than the gospel was not ready to neglect the need for social change. In fact, he saw social action as pre-evangelistic.
I actually have these words of his framed and hanging in my office: “False ideas are the greatest obstacles to the reception of the Gospel. We may preach with all the fervor of a reformer and yet succeed only in winning a straggler here and there, if we permit the whole collective thought of the nation or of the world to be controlled by ideas, which, by the resistless force of logic, prevent Christianity from being regarded as anything more than a harmless delusion.”
He called the church to change the environment in which people heard the gospel so they would be more receptive to it. Influencing education, promoting justice, caring for people’s physical needs, and displaying love to those least deserving of it were all part of the pre-evangelism he encouraged.
There’s much more to this argument. Please stay with me. I’ll share more of my thinking about this in a future Antecedents entry.
Part 2
This post was written by Randy Newman on September 25, 2008
Christianity is an intelligent faith. It demands and encourages thought.
Consider the many exhortations to recall to mind the past deeds of the Lord. The Psalms model and urge us to “remember,” “meditate,” “reflect,” and “dwell on” the truths about God and his dealings. (See, for example, Psalm 77:10). The person who will be like a tree instead of like chaff attains this by “meditating on the law of the Lord” (Psalm 1:2). Note that the same verb, translated as “plot against” is used in the partner Psalm (2:1) to show that every mind is engaged in one way or another: either for God and his law or against him and his anointed one.
At crucial points in the epistles, we are told to “renew our minds” (Rom 12:1), “set our minds” (Col. 3:1), and to be “like-minded” (Phil 2:2).
This contrasts dramatically with Eastern mysticism, which seeks to empty one’s mind of words or content. It also contrasts starkly with common contemporary views of spirituality (even among Christians), which encourage people to feel more than think (as if these two aspects of personhood are in conflict with one another).
On occasion, as I’ve discussed certain topics with Christian friends, I have been told, “You think too much!” Well, I’ve given a lot of thought to this accusation. (This is meant to be a joke!) I think that’s impossible. We cannot think too much. We can think well or we can think poorly. We can think deeply or we can think shallowly. We can think Biblically or we can think with a host of other influences shaping the thoughts in our minds. We can think in ways which mold us into people who resemble Christ or we can think in ways which feed upon lusts, anger, self-righteousness, foolishness, or hopelessness.
Let us think well, actively, continually, deeply, Biblically, prayerfully, and meditatively.
This post was written by Matt Bazemore on September 17, 2008
In Part II of Dynamics of Spiritual Life, Richard Lovelace switches his attention from the aspects of renewal to the renewing of the church. By renewal, he is referring to the sanctification process whereby the Holy Spirit works in the individual, transforming him into the image of Christ. He begins this part of the book with a focus on the local congregation and prescribes some principles for implementing the aspects of renewal covered in Part I of his book. He observes a phenomenon which he calls the sanctification gap, a “conspiracy to somehow mislay the Protestant tradition of spiritual growth and to concentrate instead on frantic witnessing activity, sermons on John 3:16 and theological arguments over eschatological subtleties” (p. 232).
According to Lovelace this laying aside occurred as a reaction to hyper-calvinism. With hyper-calvinism many of the requirements of the Christian life were lumped into conversion (p. 233-5). This implied one had to be a practicing mystic in order to be considered a Christian. The reaction led to a lessening of the requirements for initial conversion. Charles Finney is characteristic of this reaction by his call for “instantaneous commitment and instantaneous conversion.” While hyper-calvinism made it difficult for those to enter the kingdom, the reaction made it easy for people to enter on the basis of simple faith and initial repentance. The result of this reaction was that sanctification was left out of place.
With sanctification out of place Christians were left with a general ignorance of how to grow from the Real to the Ideal. The Ideal is simply that which comes to mind when we think of the end result of the Christian life, i.e. individuals fully transformed into the image of Christ. It also includes the feeling that we often have when we feel like we should be more spiritually mature than we are. The exhortation from many pulpits is to be like Jesus, and three more things to do are adumbrated as application. Unfortunately there is very little connection between such sermons and what believers experience on an every day basis. Hence we feel guilt and shame for not being farther along in our journeys when we fail to measure up. The Real is this every day experience of our own sin that still exists in us. It is the constant awareness that we are not even close to being like Jesus and we have no idea how to change. We are left constantly aware of where we should be, without the knowledge and skill of moving in partnership with the Spirit from where we are in that moment in our growth and development.
The sanctification gap, therefore, is the ignorance of how to move from the Real, where we truly are, toward the Ideal, where Jesus is. Because of the sanctification gap, Christians often engage in frantic witnessing activity, sermons on John 3:16, etc., in order to feel like they are doing something that contributes towards their growth. They do not have the tools, so to speak, to partner with the Spirit in the process of sanctification and are left in the shallowness of outward activity without inner transformation. This shallowness ultimately leaves us thirsty.
As Lovelace closes his chapter he discusses three things of importance regarding the closing of the sanctification gap. I will mention only one. The first thing to do is open ourselves to the truth and recognize that it is there. Our problem, both individually and corporately, is that the content of our spirituality is anemic and superficial and thus people looking in from the outside see a spirituality that does not correspond to our claims about the Christian life. This hurts our credibility. As Lovelace states, “…unless what we export is more than a two-dimensional [i.e. superficial] caricature of Christian spirituality, we will not overcome the credibility gap among consumers” (p. 236).
This is the crucial point for Christians desiring to be faithful in the academy. An anemic spirituality will have at least two effects. First, it will not provide the nourishment that one needs as a redeemed image bearer of God in light of academic culture. Second, Christianity will not be worthy of consideration by those who appreciate having depth or richness of life, which, I think, includes a large number of academics.
This post was written by Randy Newman on September 8, 2008
Many people speak of the current shift from modernism to postmodernism as seismic. Is it really that huge? I believe it is. For years, church historians spoke of the four eras of Christianity – the age of the church fathers, the medieval period, the reformation, and the modern (or post-enlightenment) period. Some suggest that we now add a fifth portion to our time charts. I agree with them.
It’s not just that gradual adjustments are taking place – along the lines of the shifts from the 1930s to the 1940s or other decade passages. Postmodernism and the realities of pluralism are radically (“to the root”) altering how we know not just what we know. In other words, we are in the midst of an epistemological earthquake.
The good news is that we can learn from ways the church responded to other epochal shifts. The bad news is that there are still uncharted, unprecedented waters ahead.
At other times of radical rethinking, the church looked diligently into the Scriptures for clarification and answers to challenges. Emerging from those times of crisis were documents like The Apostles Creed, Martin Luther’s Theses, The Chicago Statement on Inerrancy, and others that helped God’s people think clearly and speak boldly about central tenants of the faith.
We rejected unitarianism in favor of trinitarianism. We said no to universalism and restated the realities of God’s final judgment. We answered the attacks on the scriptures’ authority and accuracy with resolutions about inspiration. We dug into the ancient texts as well as the dusty earth (through archeology) and affirmed that God had indeed spoken and his word was not convoluted.
Today we face challenges no less formidable than the church fathers and the reformers did. We need to follow their lead and not shirk from the attacks. Intellectuals in a wide range of academic fields need to join in the efforts. The task is too multifaceted to rely solely on theologians.
Some are saying we must respond to the shift from modernism to postmodernism by returning to modernism and just restate old arguments – perhaps louder. I think this would be incomplete. Others are saying we need to not only adapt our modes of communication but also change the very content of our message. “Everything must change,” they cry and they really do mean “everything.” I can’t imagine a more foolish response. (Nevertheless, such siren calls are gaining a very large hearing).
It is good that people are asking foundational questions – How do we know anything? Is there anything unique about the scriptures? Can God really be known in a personal way? Is there really only one way to heaven? What exactly did the cross accomplish?
It is bad that many inside the church are retreating in the face of such questions. In the next blog, I’ll offer some suggestions about how we respond in these deeply challenging, opportunity-laden days.
This post was written by Matt Bazemore on August 26, 2008
Previously I argued that developing and refining a theology of life is important for living as an integrated being as God intended. What comes into focus from a theology of life is a way of life. A way of life is the ordered aggregate of practices, responses and activities in which a person participates that grows out of that person’s theology. Let me expound on this definition. An ordered aggregate is a collection of entities arranged in a non-random way. An example of an ordered aggregate is the DNA molecule. DNA is a collection of certain molecules arranged in a particular order. An example of an unordered aggregate is a pile of sand. An ordered aggregate is implied by one’s understanding of what life is—it is ordered because it is informed by one’s theology of life.
The “practices, responses and activities” mentioned above are generic terms that summarize the whole range of what one does. “Practices” are things such as celebrating Christmas, going to church every Sunday, as well as the classic spiritual disciplines. Practices are regular, proactive steps that one takes in life. “Responses” are more passive in that they are ways in which we respond to unanticipated events in our lives. For instance, the Good Samaritan had a response of love toward the victim that he encountered. It was an unanticipated circumstance that arose, requiring a response. Responses also include ways we react to tragedy when it hits close to home. “Activities” refers to things that are not regular like practices but are still things that we do, whether internal or external. For example, mowing the lawn is an external activity, whereas thinking about mathematics is an internal activity. Again, I am using these three terms to refer to everything and anything that humans do. “Christian spirituality,” then, refers to both the theology of life and the way of life for the individual.
An important advantage of conceiving of “Christian spirituality” in these terms is that it helps counteract dehumanizing effects of many things in modern life, including compartmentalization in the academy. Compartmentalization occurs in the academy because the university values the gathering of information, but typically provides very little encouragement for other humanizing activities of the mind such as meditation and reflection. For example, “How does this research shape who I am?” is not a question that scholars are encouraged to ask in most academic settings. Concerns about goodness and beauty in every discipline have been marginalized in the modern academy as well as in modern culture as a whole. This marginalization is dehumanizing in that it leaves out an appreciation of goodness and beauty which is so essential to leading a flourishing human life. “Christian spirituality” as described above would enable one to recognize some dehumanizing effects of academic culture and take steps, such as including time for reflection in one’s daily schedule, to counteract it.
This post was written by Randy Newman on August 18, 2008
People with PhD’s in one field often get asked their opinions about things in just about every other field. This seems to be especially true at church. If you’re a professor in physics, you may get asked to teach Sunday school. You’re a teacher, after all. Most professors I know don’t fall into the trap of thinking they’re wise in all fields just because they’re highly educated in one.
Nevertheless, the questions will come. If you haven’t been asked already, I would guess it’s only a matter of time before someone asks you if you’ve read The Shack and they’ll want to know what you think of it.
Written by a businessman who simply wanted to explain to his children what kind of spiritual odyssey he’d been on for the previous 11 years, The Shack has become a publishing phenomenon with sales in the millions and devotees buying the book by the caseload to give to anyone and everyone they know.
Another thing I know about professors is that they’ve got too much to read. So, let me save you a little bit of time. You don’t need to read this book. It’s poorly written, theologically subversive, and ultimately profoundly unhelpful for people who may seem to find comfort or aid in the short run. You can find a very thorough (17 pages!) examination of the theological issues and other aspects of the book linked here to the very fine website The Discerning Reader (be sure to read the pdf version).
For our purposes here at Antecedents, I’ll tell you that certain theological issues have been considered complex and difficult for one very significant reason: they are complex and difficult. The reason the church, for the past 2000 years, has wrestled with the doctrine of the Trinity, the purpose and results of the atonement, and the nature of divine revelation is because those topics are multifaceted and loaded with implications for the living out of faith in Christ.
When people throughout history have sought to simplify the Trinity or tame the atonement or minimize the authority of scripture, the results have been disastrous – with long-term legacies of impotent churches, damaged lives, and abandoned missions and evangelism programs.
Yes, I am aware of the strength of language I’m choosing for this blog. I believe the book is that harmful. And the fact that so many evangelical Christians miss the implications or downright displays of heresy is terribly disturbing.
To be sure, there are some things Young gets right and there are parts that can help people forgive or move past offense. But the negatives far outweigh any positives.
Here’s just one example – the issue of subordination. Contrary to what William P. Young writes in his book, there is subordination within the Trinity. The Father is not submissive to the Son. Most blatant of all, the Trinity is not submissive to us! This does make a difference and, again, a brief look at the church’s history of doctrinal teaching will show you where these kinds of reworked theology have led.
Many people defend the book by saying, “It’s only a novel. Give it a good-faith reading.” This doesn’t hold. Sure, it’s a novel. But it’s a novel with a very clear agenda – to state theological truths that can help people overcome pain, abuse, or tragedy. What I am saying is that it does indeed communicate a theology – one that is harmful not helpful, subversive not substantial, and ultimately, one that may lead people to embrace a god who really will not give them long-term comfort or strength.
A review in Christianity Today identified the author as one “who’s made peace with God about his past, but is still not at peace with the church.” Unfortunately, the god he’s made peace with is not the God of the Bible. As a result, I doubt he’ll ever make peace with the church that worships that God.
The CT editorial urges us to not “pounce on theological errors without first taking the time to understand the story behind them.” Fair enough. Pouncing never reflects the grace of the gospel and I do admit that much that has been written about this book and other issues is far from charitable. I think I do understand the story (I tried to read it as thoroughly as I could) and I think it provides a very different answer than the Biblical gospel.
The fact remains that our friends and others who have experienced tragedy or been subjected to abuse or been treated cruelly by the church need something much better than what is offered to them in The Shack. Interestingly, many people in those kinds of situations have not resorted to rewriting orthodox theology.
Joni Earickson Tada’s many writings are theologically rich and orthodox and have helped people find the Triune God who is simultaneously holy (and therefore wrathful towards sin – something The Shack denies) and loving (far more than the “Trinity” William Young creates) and atoning. Gerald Sittser’s A Grace Disguised clings to the truth of Scripture as he tells of the car accident that tragically took the lives of his mother, wife, and daughter. (Buy that book by the caseload!). Jonathan Edwards got fired from his church after serving it sacrificially for many years. He didn’t rewrite his theology to make sense of his mistreatment.
We would do far better to offer our struggling, suffering, or abused friends some of the writings of authors like these instead of The Shack.
This post was written by Matt Bazemore on August 11, 2008
The Teacher in Ecclesiastes rightly said, “Of making many books there is no end, and much study is weariness to the flesh” (Eccl. 12:12, ESV). Living a life that values the mind is hard work and can be very tiring. But there is a danger that lurks in the shadows from which we must guard ourselves. The danger is that in developing one’s mind one ceases to live as an integrated being, i.e. neglecting the rest of one’s humanity. Since this neglect of one’s humanity is a very big topic I will be expounding on it, highlighting those things that have surfaced in my thinking as it currently stands.
In order to live a fully human life we need to have a grasp of what life is. Paul Gould in The Two Tasks of the Christian Scholar correctly locates the task of integration in the human person, who in turn finds himself in the meta-narrative of Scripture. It is in this meta-narrative that we also find the answer to the question of what life is.
Everyone has his own understanding of life which is dynamic and is (typically) refined over time. As Christian scholars we must call this understanding a theology of life in virtue of God’s relation to humanity. The word “theology” implies this relation as well as the knowledge God has revealed through Scripture and Creation. For example, we find that our Triune God is a humanist in the sense that he is for human flourishing. The glimpse we have of the Garden of Eden is a rich and full experience of life as it was meant to be. We also find in his general revelation that he has structured the world in a way that allows us to flourish as his image bearers.
I understand that in defending one’s dissertation one is usually asked how one’s work contributes to humanity’s knowledge. I think an important activity for Christian scholars to pursue is to reflect on how their field of study contributes to a biblically grounded theology of life. How does your field contribute to human flourishing? Such reflection is a crucial first step towards living as an integrated being.
This post was written by Mark Hansard on August 1, 2008
In the 1980’s the Christian College Coalition published the “Through the Eyes of Faith” series of undergraduate textbooks to integrate Christian thought with different academic disciplines. Ronald Well’s History Through the Eyes of Faith, published in 1989, is part of this series. Wells is a professor of history at Calvin College.
While quite dated now, Wells’ book, which is meant to supplement a secular textbook on the history of Western Civilization, gives a simple overview of Western history with an eye toward important ideas that shaped, or were shaped by, Christian thought. It connects a certain flow of ideas, beginning with Greek thought and running through the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and Postmodern thought. As is the case with books of this kind, the specialist in any one of these time periods may be scandalized at its simplicity. Nevertheless, it remains a helpful introduction to the flow of Western ideas, as well as an analysis of these ideas from a Christian perspective.
For example, in his discussion of America as an Enlightenment experiment, Wells asks if “the American idea” of unwavering faith in progress, particularly material prosperity as a means to happiness, is really consistent with the Christian ideas of the Fall and personal satisfaction primarily through Christ. While there are a number of complicated issues here that Wells doesn’t have the space to discuss, he is at his best when he is questioning how such ideas fit within historic Christian theology. His aim is to prick the thinking of the undergraduate, and in that he is largely successful.
On the other hand, his philosophy of history leaves much to be desired, particularly as it applies to Jesus. In his third chapter, “The Historicity of Jesus,” Wells declares that the “historical Jesus” was a man who lived in Nazareth and was crucified by the Romans, whereas “Jesus Christ, ‘the risen Lord’” is known through faith. The “risen Jesus” is not particularly supported by history, because the Gospels were written by “people of the faith community,” and are not independent accounts (among other problems which he lists). While he declares that there are other ways to obtain knowledge besides empirical investigation (through the Holy Spirit, for example), Wells’ bifurcation here between the “historical Jesus” and the “risen Jesus” has the effect of rendering the “risen Jesus” something less than knowledge (or at least, something less than academically respectable). His view seems to “relativize” knowledge in that the “risen Jesus” tends to become merely one of many perspectives on Jesus.
But it is not at all clear that events such as the Resurrection cannot be adjudicated through historical investigation. While it is true that interpretation and subjectivity are part of what the historian brings to the process, it doesn’t follow that the Gospels cannot be investigated for their historical reliability, their proximity to actual events, and so forth (and in fact, a number of scholars have recently done just that, with positive results. See Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses or N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God). To take the Risen Jesus out of the purview of history seems to concede too much to the (unfortunately too common) secular presuppositions in the Academy.
This post was written by Mark Hansard on July 23, 2008
Christianity Today recently interviewed Pastor and author Tim Keller on his book, The Reason for God, and how he approaches conversations with intellectuals who don’t believe in Christ. We have already posted a positive review of Keller’s book on the blog here.
I believe Keller has some excellent practical wisdom in this interview that is quite applicable to reaching academic colleagues for Christ.
First, notice that he discusses the plausibility of the Gospel, and how it differs from culture to culture. Some in Eastern cultures will have different intellectual barriers to coming to Christ than others in Western cultures, (or university cultures, or scholars in a particular field, for that matter). Since the plausibility of the Gospel varies for different groups of people, we ought, with the guidance and help of the Holy Spirit, to adjust our God conversations accordingly. And we can see the Apostles did this in Scripture, as they related the Good News to various groups of people. For example, if we compare Peter’s speech in Acts 2 with Paul’s speech at the Areopagus in Acts 17, the speeches are quite different because the hearers came from different cultural backgrounds (pious Jewish backgrounds and Greek philosophical backgrounds, respectively).
As well, Keller has some wise practical advice on keeping certain political and theological issues out of a conversation about the Gospel, because they are peripheral to the issue of the acceptance of Christ and who he was. Certain political ideologies, or particular views on creation and intelligent design, for example, while important, are not essential for a person to know the Lord.
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