Truth, Humility, and Apologetics (Groothuis)

Here’s a great quote from a great book.

“Postmodernists fret mightily about arrogance and dogmatism, but to avoid them they typically rebound into the equal and opposite errors of cheap tolerance and relativism.  However, a belief in the objectivity of truth and its importance for all of life does not entail an arrogant attitude or an unbending, irrational dogmatism.  Despite the strong convictions that drive this book, I want briefly to distinguish two claims, lest I be misunderstood.  It is one thing to claim that objective, absolute and universe truth exists.  It is quite another to claim that one has mastered these objective, absolute and universal truths or that one has nothing more to learn and is in no need of correction.”

“I will argue strenuously for the former claim but (not being omniscient) make no pretense to the latter.  In fact, it is precisely belief in a truth beyond one’s own thoughts and culture that allows one to be rebuffed and reconstructed by reality.  We can, therefore, be realigned by the truth and with the truth.  This nonnegotiable distinction should engender humility, not arrogance; a quest for reasonable certainty through dialogue, not dogmatism through mindless affirmation and denunciation.”

“Richard John Neuhaus’ comments ought to serve as a tonic for the Christian thinker, myself included, who may be tempted by visions of intellectual grandiosity. ‘Few things have contributed so powerfully to the unbelief of the modern and postmodern world as the pretension of Christians to know more than we do…If Christians exhibited more intellectual patience, modesty, curiosity, and sense of adventure, there would be few atheists in the world, both of the rationalist and postmodern varieties.’”

You can find this quote on pages 12-13 of Truth Decay by Douglas Groothuis.  If you want a scholarly, Christian, and informative resource on truth, I highly recommend this book.  Amazon even has some used copies for well under $10.  Also, if you’re interested, I’ve commented on Groothuis’ magnum opus, Christian Apologetics on the blog earlier (HERE and HERE).

shane lems

sunnyside, wa

Truth, Epistemology, and Baseball

  Since I like baseball and certain philosophical discussions, I thought this was a good illustration that shows a few different ways people view truth.  (And I’ll refrain from explaining how calling strikes is tough because the strike zone is more like a cube than a square.)  Is truth objective, subjective, or a social construction?  Os Guinness illustrates it this way. 

“A simple way to illustrate lies in the story of the three baseball umpires debating their different philosophies of umpiring. 

‘There’s balls and there’s strikes,’ says the first, ‘and I call them the way they are.’

‘No!’ exclaims the second umpire.  ‘That’s arrogant.  There’s balls and there’s strikes and I call them the way I see it.’ 

‘That’s no better,’ says the third.  ‘Why beat around the bush?  Why not be realistic about what we do?  There’s balls and there’s strikes and they ain’t nothing till I call them.‘

The first umpire represents the traditional view of truth – objective, independent of the mind of the knower, and there to be discovered.  The second umpire speaks for moderate relativism – truth ‘as each person sees it’ according to his or her perspective and interpretation.  And the third umpire blatantly expresses the radically relativist, or postmodern, position – ‘truth’ is not there to be discovered; it is for each of us to create for ourselves (p 13).”

Guinness’ book, Time for Truth, is basically a discourse that argues “truth is far from dead.  It is alive and well and, in an important sense, undeniable.  And it is far from inconsequential.  Truth matters supremely because in the end, without truth there is no freedom.  Truth, in fact, is not only essential to freedom; it is freedom, and the only way to a free life lies in becoming a person of truth and learning to live in truth.  Living in truth is the secret of living free (p. 14).”

This is a great book on the topic of truth.  The subtitle explains it well: Living Free in a World of Lies, Hype, and Spin.  This book will help you wrestle through Jesus’ words: “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples.  Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:31-32 NIV).

shane lems

Christianity for Modern Pagans

This is a great book for those of you who like apologetics, philosophy, epistemology, and theology: Christianity for Modern Pagans by Peter Kreeft.  In this book, Kreeft gives a short commentary on the Pensees of Blaise Pascal (d. 1662).  Kreeft arranges the Pensees in a topical order to make them easier to read and digest.  Here is a big picture outline of this book: 1) The Problem: The Human Condition, 2) Two Popular Pseudo-Solutions, 3) How to Find the Truth, the Real Solution, 4) Six Clues along the Way, 5) The Turning Point, the Wager, and 6) The End, the Point of it All.  The book is just over 300 pages of witty, provocative, and even disturbing thoughts about life, death, God, and Christ.  I like this part of Kreeft’s introduction.

“Pascal is the first post-medieval apologist.  He is ‘for today’ because he speaks to modern pagans, not to medieval Christians.  Most Christian apologetics today is still written from a medieval mind-set in one sense: as if we still lived in a Christian culture, a Christian civilization, a society that reinforced the Gospel.  No.  The honeymoon is over.  The Middle Ages are over.  The news has not yet sunk in fully in many quarters.”

“It has sunk into Pascal.  He is three centuries ahead of his time.  He addresses his apologetic to modern pagans, sophisticated skeptics, comfortable members of the new secular intelligentsia.  He is the first to realize the new dechristianized, desacramentalized world and to address it.  He belongs to us.  This book is an attempt to reclaim him” (p. 12-13).

Later, Kreeft writes this.

“The world will do anything to get rid of the consciousness of sin, for the smell of its sins stinks to high Heaven and makes Sodom and Gomorrah look like a church service.  There is enormous social and psychological pressure, inside the Church as well as outside her, to ignore, deny, or minimize sin, as Molina and the Jesuits did in Pascal’s day.  It seems that the most important question in the world, ‘What must I do to be saved?’ (Acts 16:30), is never asked; and if it is, the answer is not to be born again, but just born; not otherworldly but this-worldly; not repentant but respectable; not self-denying but self affirming (see Mt 16:24).”

“Yet even if every voice in the world should preach the gospel of spiritual auto-eroticism, there are two voices that tell us we are sinners in need of a Savior: the voice of conscience within and the voice of God without: in Scripture, in all the prophets and saints and above all in the teaching of Jesus and his living Church.  And these two voices, not society’s, are the only two we can never escape, in this world or the next.  Better to make peace with them even if it means war with the whole world, rather than vice-versa.  That is not Jansenism, it is simply Christianity” (p. 14- 15).

I realize Pascal wasn’t a proto-evangelical, but his writings – and this book Kreeft wrote – are certainly full of wisdom and intelligence that will benefit anyone interested in these things.  Note: this book isn’t a beginner’s text on apologetics or philosophy; it is more in the category of intermediate or advanced.  Don’t get it unless you’re somewhat familiar with these areas of study.  I’ll blog more on it later, DV.

Here’s the full info: Peter Kreeft, Christianity for Modern Pagans: Pascal’s Pensees Edited, Outlined, and Explained (San Fransisco: Ignatius Press, 1993).

shane lems

Jesus, Creed, Knowledge, and Faith

 Most of us understand that the phrase “No creed but Christ” is very unhelpful for two reasons: 1) it is illogical because it is creed in and of itself, and 2) one has to define “Christ,” and in so doing, the result will be something like a creedal statement.  Geerhardus Vos tackled this unhelpful anti-creedal attitude which was evidently around 100 years ago:

“Faith presupposes knowledge, because it needs a mental complex, person or thing, to be occupied about.  Therefore, the whole modern idea of preaching Jesus, but preaching him without a creed, is not only theologically, not merely scripturally, but psychologically impossible in itself.”

And more.

“The very names by means of which Jesus would have to be presented to people are nuclei of creed and doctrine.  If it were possible to eliminate this, the message would turn to pure magic, but even the magic requires some name-sound and cannot be wholly described as preaching without a creed.  The vogue which this programme has acquired is to some extent due to the unfortunate, and altogether undeserved, flavor clinging to the term ‘creed,’ as though this necessarily meant a minutely worked out theological structure of belief.  That is not meant, but belief there must be before faith can begin to function, and belief includes knowledge [Matt. 8.10, Lk. 7.9].  This knowledge may have been gathered gradually, almost imperceptibly, from countless impressions received during a brief or longer period of time, but epistemologically it does not differ from any other kind of mental act however acquired.  To be sure, mere knowledge is not equivalent to full-orbed faith, it must develop into trust, before it is entitled to that name.”

For more on this from Vos, see the context of page 389 in Biblical Theology: Old and New Testaments.

shane lems

Knowledge, Reason, and Theology

 I like this paragraph from Kevin Vanhoozer’s Drama of Doctrine (p. 301).

“Getting knowledge is more like plotting one’s position with a set of maps than it is building a house on a foundation or catching fish in a net.  Theological cartography is a dramatic exercise of holy reason.  Reason is holy not in the sense that many moderns might think it – namely, as our noblest and most sublime faculty, a sacrament of universal truth – but rather because it is set apart and transformed for the purpose of serving the truth of the gospel.  The drama of reason consists precisely in this: Will we reason to the glory of God?  Theological thinking is responsible to revelation, to just those forms of testimony that God has taken up into his own communicative action and that now constitute the canon.  There is nothing more dramatic than coming to know God.  The question is: Will our minds participate fittingly in the drama of redemption?”

Kevin Vanhoozer, Drama of Doctrine (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2005).

shane lems