I recently
received an email from my good friend, Ellis Potter, and wanted to pass it on
to you. My review of Ellis’ fine book, 3
Theories of Everything, is available on Ransom’s website here. If you haven’t
read it, please do so or order the audio version if you prefer.
Dear Friends:
3 Theories of Everything (3TOE) is now
available as an audio book.
It is
beautifully narrated by Ed Burrowes, who has a great voice and wonderful sense
of drama and narration. Enjoy.
Help make
this news go viral. You know how.
The audio
book is available from:
CD
baby here.
In Christ,
Ellis
I don’t
usually use this space to plug events, but this one is simply too good to ignore.
My dear and respected friend, Wesley Hill, author of Washed and Waiting, will be speaking at a conference October 10-11,
2014 hosted by Trinity School for Ministry where he teaches. I recommend that
you consider attending.
This, by
way of description from the brochure:
How
can our churches speak the Good News of Jesus Christ to our lesbian, gay,
bisexual, transgender, and queer neighbors? And how can their faith and
discipleship be nurtured so that they, in turn, can use their gifts and
exercise their ministries in our churches? “Christian Faith and Same-Sex
Attraction” is a conference designed to explore these questions. The historic
biblical teaching on marriage and sexuality affirms that marriage is a covenant
between a man and a woman, requiring fidelity and chastity, while the chaste
single state is equally honored and celebrated. Such teaching requires
sacrifice and discipline on the part of gay Christians (as it does for all
Christians), but it also affirms the blessings and opportunities that gay people
bring to the life of faith. “Christian Faith and Same-Sex Attraction” will
provide a forum in which to examine these questions for the sake of Christian
witness in our world today.
For details, information on speakers and to register, use
this link.
This is a
very scholarly book. How do I know? Two things. First, in the Preface Dr.
Chapman lists those he believes will be interested in the book: “scholars of
Judaism in antiquity,” “students of early Jewish and Christian interactions,”
and “scholars of the New Testament and early Christianity.” A few of my friends
fall into one of those categories but not many. The second reason I know this
is a scholarly book is that throughout the book Chapman quotes from Latin,
Hebrew, Greek, Syriac, and Aramaic sources, without always including an English
translation.
So, you may
ask, why am calling attention to Ancient
Jewish and Christian Perceptions of Crucifixion? It is true that I am
honored to call David Chapman a friend, but I feel no obligation from our
friendship to post something about his book. Nor is this blog turning in a new
direction to become a resource of interest only or primarily to scholars in
academia. My reason is that I am convinced this book will be of interest to one
other group—admittedly not too large—not mentioned by Chapman in his Preface.
Each
generation finds an offense in the Christian gospel. Tim Keller recently
commented that Muslims don’t like Jesus’ teaching to turn the other cheek while
they approve of his teaching on marriage, while the average person in Manhattan
loves the notion of nonviolent response but finds Jesus’ thinking about
marriage and sexual morality grating and out-of-touch. If the gospel is truly a
word from God to a human race that is deeply broken because it refuses the
grace of its Creator, Redeemer, and Judge we should expect that something in
that gospel will be offensive to them, will cut sharply across the grain of
their hubris and insistence on autonomy.
In our
postmodern western world at the beginning of the 21st century one
place of offense in the gospel is the necessity of Christ’s death—and in such a
gruesome fashion—in order for redemption to be possible. Why didn’t God just
forgive us? Isn’t the Son dying on the cross at the insistence of the Father a
form of divine child abuse? Isn’t the notion of blood sacrifice a rather
primitive, even barbaric conception that suggests Christianity needs some
updating?
Those of us
outside the world of academic scholarship who want to learn from the scholars
who do the heavy research will profit from Ancient
Jewish and Christian Perceptions of Crucifixion. The book helps us
understand how Christ’s crucifixion was perceived by those who heard of it and
how the biblical accounts can be better set within their historical and social
contexts as we seek to explain their meaning. Certainly there is far more
detail in this careful work than is needed for the average conversation on the
necessity and significance of Jesus’ crucifixion, but that it can be a helpful
resource I have no doubt.
One thing
Chapman’s study did for me is explain how the topic of crucifixion (in the
broadest sense) is not limited to the New Testament and the Old Testament
prophesies, but has echoes far back into the narratives of Old Testament
history. Suspension (sometimes after death by stoning) of the body, hanging,
and impalement all were often equated in the ancient mind with crucifixion (in
the narrower sense we think of it in Roman times) and appear as far back in the
biblical record as the story of Joshua when the Israelites are first entering
the land promised to them by God. Just as the death penalty evokes strong
reaction today, these even more public and gruesome displays of execution did
not go unnoticed and unremarked.
The fact
that the cross is an embarrassment to the postmodern secular mind must not be
allowed to cause us to quietly ignore it as we engage our world. A gospel
without the cross is not the gospel of Christ, nor does such a gospel have
power to save. Faithfully witnessing to the kingdom does not mean allowing the
world to shape our message, it means out thinking the world so that its
opposition to the gospel is met with truth spoken with quiet confidence and
compelling reasoning. Ancient Jewish and
Christian Perceptions of Crucifixion can help in that process. We are
indebted to David Chapman for the many hours he spent squirreled away in
libraries in the research for this book, a task to which he is called and
gifted.
Book recommended:
Ancient Jewish and Christian Perceptions
of Crucifixion? By David W. Chapman (Grand Rapids, MI; Baker, 2008) 262
pages + appendix + bibliography + indices.
Photo: the author with Drs David and Tasha Chapman.
There is a simple story we usually tell about the things we
believe: we were presented with the alternatives, carefully examined the facts,
and came to a studied conclusion about what is true. The truth of the matter,
of course, is far more complicated.
For one thing there is an essential link between knowing and
doing that we must never ignore. It is why St Paul can speak of “the obedience
of faith” (Romans 1:5) without for a moment suggesting that the Christian’s
relationship to God through Christ is based on works, or on meriting grace in
some way. Rather, we are embodied creatures so what we know and what we do is
inextricably tied together. What I truly believe is evident in how I live,
regardless of what I claim to believe. How I live effects what I believe
because beliefs that do not resonate with the give and take of life are for
that reason suspect.
Once we begin to reflect on this, it is clear that what is
involved is far more richly nuanced than we might initially imagine. In i told me so: Self-deception and the
Christian Life, philosopher Gregg Ten Elshof (professor of philosophy at
Biola University) examines one aspect of the process of belief more carefully.
He argues that one thing we do is selectively give attention to things—we have
to since there is far too much going on to give full attention to everything.
But he also argues that this thing we do so naturally and subconsciously has an
effect on what we believe.
In The Violent Bear It Away, Flannery O’Connor’s Tarwater is a man busy
about the task of suppressing his knowledge of Christ. O’Connor's description
of Tarwater's inner life is worth quoting at length:
In
the darkest, most private part of his soul, hanging upside down like a sleeping
bat, was the certain undeniable knowledge that he was not hungry for the bread
of life. Had the bush flamed for Moses, the sun stood still for Joshua, the
lions turned aside before Daniel only to prophesy the bread of life? Jesus? He
felt a terrible disappointment in that conclusion, a dread that it was true… He
tried when possible to pass over these thoughts, to keep his vision located on
an even level, to see no more than what was in front of his face and to let his
eyes stop at the surface of that. It was as if he were afraid that if he let
his eye rest for an instant longer than was needed to place something—a spade,
a hoe, the mule's hind quarters before his plow, the red furrow under him—that
the thing would suddenly stand before him, strange and terrifying, demanding
that he name it and name it justly and be judged for the name he gave it. He
did all he could to avoid this threatened intimacy of creation.
William James said that “my
experience is what I agree to attend to. Only those items I notice shape my
mind.” The most common strategies for long-haul self-deception involve the
management of attention. Through habitual and systematic management of my
cognitive gaze, I can come to believe things that I wouldn’t believe were I to
attend indiscriminately to my surroundings. Through attention management, I
exercise a degree of control over what comes into my mind. And this, in turn,
affects what I believe.
I first came to the study of
philosophy through an interest in apologetics. I found philosophically trained
Christian apologists handling with some care the difficult questions that
others in my Christian context seemed to gloss over. Is there good evidence for
God's existence, for the reliability of the Scriptures, or for the historical
resurrection of Jesus? Can the reality of evil be squared with the existence of
the Christian God? I read books on these and other topics by Christian
apologists. I found the evidence supporting the truth of orthodox Christianity
impressive, and that was a source of great comfort and increased faith.
Before long, though, I also noticed
that the people most impressed by the arguments favoring orthodox Christianity
were the orthodox Christians. Now this in itself isn't at all surprising. I
suppose the people most impressed by the arguments for anything will be the people who believe in that
thing, whatever it is. The people most impressed by the evidence for
extra-terrestrial life, for example, will tend to be the people who believe in
extra-terrestrial life. Arguably, it’s because they’ve found the evidence compelling that they now believe what they
do. So a correlation between people who find the evidence for Christianity
compelling and people who believe that Christianity is true is not surprising.
What struck me, though, was the
seeming infrequency of a change of mind
in either direction upon initial confrontation with the evidence. Christians I
knew who carefully considered the evidence for the first time tended to find it
impressive. Non-Christians I knew who carefully considered the evidence for the
first time tended to find it wanting. And if they didn’t, they’d likely fault
the person articulating their side of the issue for a less-than-adequate presentation
of the evidence. I’ve found it almost as unlikely that people will change their
minds about Christianity at a debate as it is that they will change their
sports loyalties after seeing their favorite team lose.
But how do we do this? How do
Christians manage to find the same body of evidence supportive of Christianity
that non-Christians find to discredit Christianity? How do Christians and
non-Christians alike manage to remain unimpressed by the evidence against their
position? The answer, in part, is that we do this by managing our attention. To
a significant degree, we control the character of our experience by deciding
what to attend to. Those experiences, in turn, result in our having the beliefs
that we do.
This reality has profound implications for our own faith,
and for how we engage in conversations with non-Christians over what beliefs
are best supported by the available evidence. And I’d love to hear people’s thoughts
about that.
Source: i told me so: Self-deception and the
Christian Life by Gregg A. Ten Elshof (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans; 2009)
pp. 31-33.
Not long ago I visited a friend who said that he had recently been convicted about the fact that he’d not really “checked into the veracity” of his Christian beliefs. So he had recently made it something of a project to look into the evidence for and against the Christian tradition into which he’d been born and raised. He wanted to take a step back and see whether or not the stuff he’d been raised with was actually true. I asked him what he’d been reading. He pointed me to a collection of about eight to ten books on the evidence for and against Christian belief on his shelf—not bad for a busy professional with a young family. But upon closer examination, I noticed that all of the books had Christian authors.
“These books are all written by Christians,” I pointed out.
“Yep. I’ve been making apologetics a sort of hobby. I especially like the stuff by Craig, Strobel, and Geisler.”
“Do you suppose there are non-Christians writing on this topic?”
“I suppose there probably are.”
“Do you know who they are?”
“No. I haven’t really looked for that sort of thing.”
Now I don’t mean to suggest that what my friend was doing is a bad idea. There’s nothing wrong with trying to shore up your faith with evidence. There’s a wealth of very good material out there on the rationality of Christian belief, and Christians do themselves a favor by getting acquainted with it. But to think of this as a genuine checking into the veracity of Christian belief is a bit of a stretch. It’s a bit like checking into the claims of “holistic medicine” by reading only those studies written by its practitioners and ignoring the critical treatment of these practices in “mainstream” medical journals.
Source: I Told Me So: Self-deception and the Christian life by Gregg A. Ten Elshof (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Publishing; 2009) pp. 34-35.