John H Armstrong

A Reasonable Catholic and Evangelical Dialog

Blogger Joe Heschmeyer is a Roman Catholic and an attorney in Washington, D.C. He has been reading my blogs, and interacting with me via these blogs, for several years now. I have found Joe to always be a reasonable, intelligent and fair-minded apologist. He is a very conservative and devout Catholic. I disagree with a great deal of what he writes. But he, like me, is not a “read meat” fighter. He is a lover of all things related to Jesus and the church, especially the Catholic Church. His all roads lead to Rome stance is common among many young bloggers but it is unconvincing to me. Yet I find him often helpful and always fair. A Catholic friend, who is reader of Joe’s blog and of mine as well, sent me a link to an article that Joe wrote on June 15 about the movement of people (converts) between Catholic and evangelical Protestant churches. (I wrote about Catholic reasons for leaving their church just a few weeks ago.) Why do Catholics leave? Research suggests some important reasons that I wrote about and Joe acknowledges as well. Why do evangelicals become Catholic? There is less formal research here, so far as I can tell, but I have read both sides of this discussion and had more than a few friends who left to become Catholic. Joe’s voice is one that I warmly welcome even though I would wish for a little more openness on his part. He is insightful and generous. Please read his comments.

By the way, Joe is a serious baseball fan just like me. He has to be a true, die-hard fan because he loves the Kansas City Royals. This love has to be genuine since too many fans only support winners. For years I supported horrible Atlanta Braves losing teams but still showed up and wore my colors. I did not get on the band wagon in the 1990s when the Braves had all that great pitching and winning teams and were self-proclaimed to be “America’s Team.” (They never were except in Ted Turner’s marketing brain!)

Joe was born and reared in Kansas City, thus his childhood love for his team is rooted in place and passion. Joe now lives in Alexandria, Virginia. I hope someday I can meet Joe face-to-face. I have grown to love and admire him for his work and faithfulness.

C. S. Lewis: An Inspiration for My Blogs

Several months ago a reader of these blogs wrote me a gracious email encouraging me in my work and mission. He added that he had recently read C. S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity once again and as a result of this reading he had realized that the posture Lewis was teaching from was one that he rarely saw these days among Christians. He further noted that as he read Lewis he realized the numerous times he acknowledged that his own explanation might be inadequate, thus his argument might not help everyone who read his work. Lewis openly stated that people should not be bothered by either of these problems because it is the reality of the thing that he wrote about that really mattered much more than the clarity of human understanding.

My friend suggests, rightly I believe, that C. S. Lewis always seemed willing to do what many people seem unable to handle psychologically.

1. Admit his personal limitations.
2. Humbly put forth his best explanations and understandings in an attempt to help readers.
3. Leave the reader free to treat the author as a peer who is simply trying to help. His attitude seemed to be: “Take what you find useful and leave what you don't.”
4. He goes so far as to make you (the reader) actually feel comfortable if you disagree with him.

The irony here is that this seems like a really weak selling point to many people today. My friend says that in reality this is the only honest sell and the one that I think will reach people in a way that frees them to have real ownership of their own beliefs rather than having caved into dogmatic pressure only to find later that they have to rethink almost everything.

My friend thanked me for seeking to be transparent. I honestly hope this is the case. I know that I write my posts for several reasons:

1. To express my own fears, doubts, questions, joys, humanness and growth.
2. To encourage you, the reader, to seek God not my wisdom or particular insights.
3. To help you think, often “outside the box,” so that your ideas will truly be your ideas as best you understand and process them through the revealed Word in Jesus Christ.
4. To exalt Jesus above all others, and to prayerfully seek first the kingdom of God, along with you as my brothers and sisters. By this means I can speak to friends, both those I know and those I am getting to know through this means and even in person as God allows that to happen.

Soli Deo Gloria!

Apologetics and Debate

I love apologetics. In fact, I have taught a graduate course titled: “Apologetics for Postmodern Evangelism.” Christian apologetics is a pretty interesting discipline if you are a person of the mind who is called to explain and defend the faith well. But  for all of my love for apologetics I do not love a lot of what is called apologetics by a growing number of evangelicals. Even more puzzling to me is the growth of a similar type of apologetics among some conservative Catholics. Let me explain.

From the earliest days of the church Christian apologetics has been an important part of the study of theology. It is a branch of thought that aims to present a reasoned defense for Christian faith. It does this by increasing both the knowledge of the faith and the knowledge of how the Christian faith can answer the basic questions critics use against it.

One could well say that interest in apologetics began with the Apostles Peter and Paul. Clearly, it was developed extensively by early Christian writers such as Origen and St. Augustine. The study and use of apologetics has developed extensively over the centuries (cf. Dulles, A History of Apologetics) and still merits serious study. Apologists have based their defense of Christianity on different approaches to historical evidence and philosophical arguments. There are several different types/schools of apologetics in Protestantism; e.g. pre-suppositionalism, evidentialism, Reformed epistemology, etc. There is also a variety of approaches in Catholicism but these differences do not seem to be as fiercely debated as among evangelicals.

The best overview of serious apologetics, from a historical perspective, is the late Cardinal Avery Dulles superb book, A History of Apologetics. It is a classic. All reasoned and reasonable discussion about the work of apologetics ought to begin here, with two feet solidly planted in classical Christianity. Dulles was a most excellent writer and a great ecumenist scholar as well. The best popular twentieth century apologist was probably C. S. Lewis. Interesting, Lewis was a layman, at least in terms of his training. This demonstrates that great writing about the faith can be done by non-professional theologians.

The most frequently cited biblical text for the work of apologetics is 1 Peter 3:15. The apostle says: “And if someone asks about your Christian hope, always be ready to explain (apologia: defend) it” (NLT). Put alongside of Paul’s words to “let God transform you into a new person by the way you think” (Romans 12:2, NLT) we have in these two texts a powerfully clear call to use your mind to glorify God and explain and defend the faith as best you can. Apologetics, contrary to some misconceptions, is not about being defensive but rather about clearly explaining the faith to those who ask and question the believer. Real apologetics has great value but I am not convinced that it has supreme value, at least not in the light of the three great virtues of faith, hope and love. There is no better argument for faith than these, as 1 Peter makes plain as well. Philip Yancey, in Rumors of Another World, adds, “No one ever converted to Christianity because they lost the argument.” I know of one possible exception to this but in this instance it led to the convert becoming a rather mean-spirited apologist.

Over the course of my lifetime a “new” kind of apologetics has emerged in many conservative circles. This defense has often become a cover for attacking the faith of other Christians. It began with books on the cults and then expanded to include a number of sects and Christian groups that are not cults in any normal sense of that term at all. Worse still, it has now become a cover for exposing the mistakes of others on the Internet. I think this type of thinking is actually behind the controversy I wrote about (July 26-30) regarding the lies and deception of Ergun Caner. There is a particular kind of personality that seems to love this type of debate and feeds off of it. Combine this with a story that draws such attention and some people have all they need to fight a great battle for the faith. What I am suggesting is that there is actually a “personality type” that embraces this kind of “apologetic ministry.” This can then become an excuse for a poorly formed character that simply loves the whole nature of debate about words. People buy this and promote it. It works. I actually had someone try to convince me some years ago that I would never draw the kind of financial support I could use to build my mission unless I was willing to engage in this kind of debate. I marveled in private and have honestly never been seriously tempted since. I am sure I owe that to the grace of God. I know I was not wise enough to know better at that time in my life.

I do not deny that lies from Christian leaders should be exposed or that false teachers should be opposed in the right way. I do deny that we do this well in modern instances. Much of this tough work is done in close quarters by those who have been given an ecclesial responsibility to deal with such issues. Since evangelicals do not have an ecclesial structure that deals with these matters well people tend to pick and choose their swords and battles. This is democracy at its worst, especially when it gets connected to so-called apologetics. In the modern context of radio, television and the Internet a full-blown cottage industry has grown up around this type of apologetics. This ministry has little or nothing to do with convincing unbelievers of the “hope” that Christian faith brings to those who embrace it.

I went back to 1 Peter recently and read the whole context around the 1 Peter 3;15 verse that is cited by apologists. It intrigues me that the context in Peter’s letter is about Christians living such good lives that unbelievers will see “your honorable behavior” and “give honor to God” (1 Peter 2:12). And in 1 Peter 3 the context is one of Christians being told to do good in the midst of suffering. The idea here clearly does not seem to be that we should talk and talk in negative and aggressive ways. It is just the opposite. We should live quiet, good and godly lives  of service and dignity, In this context we should be prepared to give our apologia for the faith.

This all intrigues me profoundly. I think this underscores what I was getting at in July when scores of “apologists” responded to my attempts (not all that well framed I concluded at the end) to address the dangers of Internet gossip and slander.

The present apologetics debates have invited angular and angry people to use various means to promote their brand of defending the faith by attacking others, even other Christians in many cases. Take the way some evangelical apologists spend so much time attacking Catholics. (There is a place for clearly explaining the doctrinal differences between Catholic and non-Catholic beliefs. This can be done in a context of mutual respect that actually helps Christians grasp why we differ and what it means.) Then you can hear the same response from certain Catholic apologists. They spend untold time and dollars writing and speaking against evangelicals for their false teaching. (I have a little more sympathy with this since some evangelicals have so badly misrepresented Catholic beliefs and then torn families apart in the process. The opposite is true for sure but I have more first-hand experience with people who left the Catholic Church and then became fierce in their opposition to their birth church!)

I have gained a great deal of good from Catholic radio over the last ten years but when they start explaining evangelicals I have to turn it off. Why? The presentation provokes me to a response I do not like in me. I wish the programmers would simply promote the edifying and truthful insights of Catholic faith in all its richness. The truth is that this type of apologetics (against evangelicals) raises donations on their side as well. Again, I would love to be invited to a dialogue with some of these Catholic brothers and sisters and let people see how we can agree, and disagree, but still live in the love of Christ without stereotyping our "opponents."

I am often provoked, in mostly positive ways, by the writer Anne Lamott. She is hard going for some sensitive folks but she forces me to think more deeply and struggle in ways I should. Lamott says, in her book Grace (Eventually): “You can tell that you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.” That about sums it up.

How Do We Answer Young Post-modern Skeptics?

A friend of mine recently sent me a statement posted by a college student on Facebook about his view of Christianity. My friend was initially appalled by the remarks this young skeptic made but after looking at this a bit more carefully he said that he began to think this kind of response from the young skeptic represented the harsh reality of much of the message that modern day evangelical Christianity has presented concerning the salient points of our faith. My Christian friend wrote on his Facebook page: “My sense is that if we are primarily about doctrinal precepts then maybe this young person is right. If, on the other hand, we are about being living and acting and serving ‘the least of these’ in the same manner as Jesus and empowered by his Spirit, then it is much harder to reject compassion, love, and hope.  ‘They will know we are Christians by our love, by our love . . .’ as the chorus goes.”

My older and wiser friend included the student's statement when he wrote to me and then gave me his response to it below. It seems to me that if we are to positively affect such young people in our post-Christendom culture, millions of whom are staying away from the faith in droves, we will have to be more than a set of doctrines which are believed among us before we can truly unbelievers into our fellowship.

The Skeptic’s Statement

Christianity: The belief that some cosmic Jewish zombie can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him that you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree. Makes perfect sense. HAHA =)

Christian Friend’s Response

Well, your response is very creative and I fear that you have listened well to what Christianity presents itself as in much of our culture. It is this kind of message that we often put out for people before we say or do anything else. Could you believe in a community that is really and genuinely incarnational? If we are a group whose reality is merely a set of ideas, then you might be right about us as Christians. If we are a community that continues the life, work and ministry of Jesus in the way that we actually live and serve those who Jesus came to give good news to, then I think you might have a harder time being snarky and dismissive of both our claims and lives.

The Skeptic Responds

I was referring to the basic belief. I wasn't in any way trying to dismiss any of the charitable works that religious institutions provide. At the same time however, I refuse to let religious institutions claim monopoly on charitable works, as I would like to think at some base level, we as humans don’t need the threat of eternal damnation to make us be nice to our fellow man.

Christian Friend’s Response

I really was not condemning you or finding fault with your analysis of the Christian message as it is presented in much of the culture. As a matter of fact, I think you have shown some over-the-top humor in summarizing that message when the primary effort of evangelism is to get others to accept as truth a set of doctrines that seem very counter to empirical understandings. But I think there is more to the message than you have heard or perhaps consider. My suggestion is that you might seek out a community that primarily wants to live out the message of Christ, which can be summarized as "love God and love your neighbor". If the community is primarily concerned with justice, peace and reconciliation, welcoming the stranger, and genuine worship then I think you might find that there is a different Christianity than you have experienced. Are there places like this - yes! In the interest of intellectual honesty you need to keep looking a little deeper. Good luck on your journey.

I agree with everything you have said about religious institutions and their lack of an exclusive claim to doing good and that the threat of eternal damnation does not do much to inspire others to good behavior. Smug dismissiveness and "snarkiness" with a spirit of condemnation does not do much for the church either. Again, I think these things can function as a stereotype and serve to obscure being able to see the truth of the Church as well.

The Young Skeptic Responds Again 

I was raised Methodist. I've read the bible. Have you ever read the book Stranger in a Strange Land? Because there is some pretty off the wall stuff in it, but on the whole, "thou art god", in its full explanation, hits rather close to home into what I have determined to be the most reasonable explanation of what we search for in the divine.

Christian Friend’s Response

Thanks, and please believe me that I am not trying to convert you. I appreciate your comments and think that the Church could learn a lot by listening to you and others who hold the same view. Just keep an open mind and don't let yourself become blinded by a sort of humanistic fundamentalism. It suffers from the same limitations that frustrate you with the church. God bless you my friend

This kind of response is rooted in the what I have called post-modern apologetics. This does not mean we have no intellectual answers for the kind of doubts and questions people ask of our faith. It does mean we must live well and create a community that incarnationally lives the faith if we expect anyone to listen. This is not post-modern at all. Actually, it is both ancient-faith and pre-modern. If we were to grasp this we would begin to see how much like the first century the West has become in terms of how it does or does not hear our witness.

The Foolishness of the Gospel to Modern Thought, or Why Postmoderns Are Right to Question Our Empirical Christian Methodology

Missional-theologian Lesslie Newbigin (1909-1998) said the requirement for a missionary encounter with a culture is having the “courage to hold and proclaim a belief that cannot be proved in terms of the axioms of [that] society.” One of Newbigin’s primary insights can be seen in this very comment. The gospel cannot be reduced to the axioms of Western society, especially the axioms that are deeply rooted in Enlightenment categories of thought and proof. One of the reasons postmodernism raises serious issues for many thoughtful Christians is because they realize that the axioms of the past have failed us and cannot be used to preach or prove the gospel in our time.

In his classic book, Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture, Newbigin adds:

This may sound simplistic but it is not. Our modern scientific culture has pursued the ideal of a completely impersonal knowledge of a world of so-called facts that are simply there, that cannot be doubted by rational minds, and that constitute the real world, as contrasted with opinions, desires, hopes, and fears of human beings, a world in which the words purpose and value have no meaning.  This whole way of trying to understand the totality of human experience rests on beliefs that are simply not questioned. For every attempt to understand and cope with experience must rest on some such belief . . . All understanding of reality involves a commitment, a venture of faith. No belief system can be faulted by the fact that it rests on unproved assumptions; what can and must be faulted is the blindness of its proponents to the fact that this is so.

Here Lesslie Newbigin profoundly grasps what I believe to be a major issue in the modern evangelical way of trying to prove truth and argue about the gospel. He adds this insightful application:

The gospel is not a set of beliefs that arise, or could arise, from empirical observation of the whole human experience. It is the announcement of a name and a fact that offer a starting point for a new and life-long enterprise of understanding and coping with experience. It is a new starting point. To accept it means a new beginning, a radical conversion. We cannot side-step that necessity. It has always been the case that to believe means to be turned around to face in a different direction, to be a dissenter, to go against the stream. The church needs to be very humble in acknowledging that it is itself only a learner, and it needs to pay heed to all the variety of human experience in order to learn in practice what it means that Jesus is King and Head of the human race. But the church also needs to be very bold in bearing witness to him as the one who alone is that King and Head (Foolishness to the Greeks, 148-49).

When Lesslie Newbigin says the gospel is not based upon, nor does it arise from, empirical observation he is referring to the empirical method. The empirical method is the approach to truth and reality that says we discover a truth by way of experimentation and scientific principles. By this means we can be certain as to what is right or wrong. We observe and we make conclusions. We see the human condition, the need for an answer and then posit that the gospel can be proven to be true if we follow a proper historical and empirical method. Being proven true we can now take this message into the culture and convince others that we hold to the truth, namely the gospel. Newbigin says the gospel is the announcement of the name of Jesus and the fact of his life, death and resurrection. This gospel is the “starting point for a new and life-long enterprise of understanding and coping with experience. It is a new starting point.” The Christian is right to be humble before all truth claims, including those of non-Christians. But this humility does not preclude the conclusion that “the church also needs to be very bold in bearing witness to him as the one who alone is that King and Head.”

My prayer in light of this type of thinking is simple:

Jesus, my King and my Head, I am, and always will be, a learner. This means I still need to learn what it means to truly name you as Lord and King. Help me to be quick to learn, slow to judge and yet bold in bearing faithful witness to your gospel in this age where the wisdom of empirical thought is being properly questioned by postmodern voices.

The Influence of C. S. Lewis on Head and Heart, Part 3

I have suggested that C. S. Lewis was a truly great evangelist and apologist, though a reluctant one in a profound sense. I want to conclude my sundry thoughts about why Lewis is so important to us by a few quotations from Lewis himself.In an essay title "Man or Rabbit," written in 1946, Lewis says:

Here is a door, behind which, according to some people, the secret of the universe is waiting for you. Either that's true, or it isn't. And if it isn't, then what the door really conceals is simply the greatest fraud, the most colossal "sell" on record. Isn't it obviously the job of every man (that is a man and not a rabbit) to try to find out which, and then to devote his full energies either to serving this tremendous secret or exposing and destroying this gigantic humbug?

Think about this one for a moment. Though I think the modern atheists, called by themselves the Four Horsemen (e.g. Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett) pose a threat to the faith of non-thinking people, or to people who are predisposed against Christ for whatever the reason, Lewis suggests that it is there job to "expose . . . this gigantic humbug" if that is what they think it really is. (They obviously do believe this if you read their work.) But note, he says this to make a powerful point. We who do believe must serve this "tremendous secret" with "full" effort and all our human energy. I think Lewis would welcome these four men onto the stage of modern debate and then seek to show listeners why their arguments may appear to be important but in fact they deny both the hunger of the human heart and the logic of clear thinking. But isn't there a real danger that we respond to the Four Horsemen by recommending that Christianity is good regardless of whether or not it is really true? This is the way I have heard some people argue against these four unbelievers. Lewis wrote an essay in 1945 titled, "Christian Apologetics." In it he says:

One of the great difficulties is to keep before the audience's mind the question of truth. They always think you are recommending Christianity not because it is true but because it is good. And in the discussion they will at every moment try to escape from the issue "True--or False" into stuff about a good society, or morals, or the incomes of Bishops, or the Spanish Inquisition, or France, or Poland--or anything whatever. You have to keep forcing them back, and again back, to the real point. Only thus will you be able to undermine . . . their belief that a certain amount of "religion" is desirable but one mustn't carry it too far. One must keep on pointing our that Christianity is a statement which, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The one thing it cannot be is moderately important.

So defending the faith requires us to use our intellects. For far too many this is a novel idea. We must see the challenge of the modern atheists, the so-called four horsemen, as a wonderful opportunity for presenting the truth of the faith, not simply lame arguments about the utility of our faith in our private lives. We must show that our faith makes sense of life as we really know it. It is rooted in claims that explain things cogently and in the kind of facts that make real sense of human history. Lewis, in the same essay, concludes:

I think we must attack wherever we meet it the nonsensical idea that mutually exclusive propositions about God can both be true.

Many Christians, in attempting to explain or defend the faith, fall into this very trap. The clear headed thinking of C. S. Lewis will help them avoid this ugly ditch.

The Influence of C. S. Lewis on Head and Heart, Part 2

My good friend Dr. Jerry Root teaches a class at the Wheaton Grad School on C. S. Lewis. In the catalog it is listed EVAN 694 but the title is "C.S. Lewis: Apologist to the Head and the Heart." This is a course I wish I could take and someday maybe I will. Jerry is not only an inspiring teacher but he is a great student of all things C. S. Lewis.

In his syllabus Jerry asks, "Why was Lewis so effective?" He answers, "In part, his effectiveness stemmed from his holism; that is, he spoke to the head and the heart." I could not agree more.

C. S. Lewis speaks to my heart in a way that few modern writers do. He wrote out of deep personal experience. He was, as some young people would put it, "real." His journey to the faith, recounted in his own moving story Surprised By Joy, and his subsequent growth into a deeper and more mature faith, are both inspiring and spiritually formative. 

But Lewis never sacrificed his profound intellectual skills to be a Christian. He had some serious intellectual barriers to faith and needed to resolve these in order to believe well. He worked at resolving these barriers all his life. I believe he worked at these out of a deep desire to answer his own questions. We just happen to be the beneficiaries of this work. In the process Lewis became adept at presenting the gospel to others and thus he became a kind of reluctant evangelist and world-renowned apologist. He was also a literary genius, employing a number of different genres. This is one reason why his work will remain useful well beyond one or two generations.

Jerry Root says that Lewis models for us a holistic approach to life that employed two approaches to knowing God. The first approach was romantic. This approach considers the qualitative aspects of one's relationship with God. This is the way of story and narrative. This is the way that employs imagination. This is also a reason why Lewis has a particular attraction for young adults more than ever. I have become impressed, much too late in my life I fear, that I never developed this approach well. I am presently writing an new series of ACT 3 Weekly articles (I encourage you to subscribe to these at www.act3online.com) that will show you how we cannot do good theology and real discipleship without using the gift of imagination. I think most academic theologians miss this by a million miles and this is a major reason why the church suffers under this kind of thinking. It gives good theology a really bad name in many circles. It is also a major reason why theology is employed as a weapon in debate more than as rich food to nourish the life and soul of the faithful. The romantic approach is the way of the heart. It accounts for the deepest longings of our heart. It wonders, and ponders and goes outside of the categories of thought that easily limit us.

Jerry Root says the second approach Lewis employed was rational. He was profoundly concerned with the reasonableness of Christianity. This is why he did the kind of apologetics that he did. He wanted to show, both to himself and others, that you need not throw away your intellect to believe the Christian faith. He was not a theologian but he was a master at this way of thinking and thus teaches more theology to ordinary folks than most theologians would accomplish in ten lifetimes.

These two approaches are not antithetical in any sense. They are complimentary and thus they are the two halves of a holistic understanding of God and of living the faith out in everyday life. This is also why Lewis is the "apostle of the modern Christian" in a profound way. Not only must we know God through both approaches but we must become efficient in ministering his gospel to others by using both. Some confuse all of this with intellectualism. This is a category mistake. All people, including those with no formal education at all, must use both their mind and their heart to truly love God. This is true because Jesus plainly taught that we must "Love the Lord your God, with all your heart, all your soul and all your mind" (Matthew 22:37). Lewis will truly help you do this.

The Influence of C. S. Lewis on Head and Heart

Some have referred to the late C. S. Lewis as "an apostle of faith and reason," or the apologist of "heard and heart." Lewis was arguably one of the great integrators of faith and learning in the 20th century. He also impacted my life deeply when I was a student at Wheaton College in the 1960s.

Before I transferred to Wheaton, from the University of Alabama, I only knew of Lewis because of his famous book Mere Christianity, which is really a collection of short presentations he gave over the BBC radio network during World War II. When he died, on the same day as President Kennedy's death, I did not take notice at all, since I was freshman in high school and had not yet even heard of him. 

Lewis remains as important as ever, indeed more important in my estimation, precisely because he was a serious thinker, a serious Christian and an intellectual who spoke clearly to ordinary people. This rare combination has made him a role model for me ever since I studied his work under the late Dr. Clyde Kilby (photo left), my professor at Wheaton who personally knew Lewis and then became one of America's early advocates of his writing. Through Dr. Kilby many of the manuscripts and remains of Lewis' life and work are now housed at Wheaton College at the Marion Wade Center. The Wade Center brings guests from all over the globe to study Lewis and is an important repository of English and apologetic work.

Lewis cannot be understood until you realize that he was first and foremost a Christian evangelist. The word evangelist has fallen on hard times in modern American Christianity. We almost cringe when we hear the term these days. But Lewis, the scholar, was an evangelist. He called himself a rhetor (one given to rhetoric, thus persuasion) and an evangelist (one who attempted to bring people to faith in Christ). Lewis told students, "Woe to you if you do not evangelize." A professor who says that today is seen as "over the top." We do not like too much passion about our evangelism. It makes us nervous. It sounds judgmental. Many emergent Christians almost never use the word. But then many evangelicals never talk about Jesus either, not even in church if you listen carefully enough.

Lewis as an apologist who engaged in direct evangelism. He wrote about the Christian faith and he sought to prove why it was intellectually reasonable. He did not try to prove the faith, in typical evidentialist ways, so much as he removed barriers to belief and helped those who were weak in faith to see that they could reasonably embrace Christ and remain intellectually honest. One British historian called Lewis the single most effective person proclaiming the gospel in England in the 20th century. I agree.

C. S. Lewis influenced me in my early attempts to do evangelism and apologetics precisely because his arguments made sense and helped me to see why and how my faith addressed the big issues of the time. He still does that for me. But he eventually did a lot more for me. About fifteen years ago I discovered C. S. Lewis as an ecumenist. I always knew about his ideas regarding "mere Christianity." But I never deeply explored them. His ecclesiology is not well-developed since he was not a theologian. But his profound insights into human nature, and the way people thought, helped him to see through the maze of church conflicts and then to make some rather profound observations that foster the kind of ecumenism I have come to believe in so deeply. In a letter Lewis once wrote:

It takes all sorts to make a world; or a church. This may be even truer of a church. If grace perfects nature it must expand all our natures into the full richness of the diversity which God intended when He made them, and Heaven will display far more variety than Hell. "One fold" doesn't mean "one pool." Cultivated roses and daffodils are no more alike than wild roses and daffodils. 

On church division he once wrote a letter in which he said:

Disputations do more to aggravate schism than to heal it; united action, fortitude and (should God so will) united deaths---these will make us one.

In his famous Mere Christianity he wisely counseled:

Our divisions should never be discussed except in the presence of those who have already come to believe that there is one God and that Jesus Christ is His only Son.

More on Lewis in tomorrow's post.

The God Who Wasn't There: No Serious Threat to the Faith of Christians

The God Who Wasn't There is a 2005 documentary film on the "Jesus myth." It is the work of ex-fundamentalist Brian Flemming. I missed all the excitement about the film, if there was much. I recently discovered it on Netflix and since apologetics is a keen interest of mine ( I teach it academically) I thought it looked like a pretty interesting attack upon the “myth of Jesus.”

The film producers believe this documentary will do to religion what Bowling for Columbine did to the gun culture and Super Size Me did to the fast food industry.  Of the three films Bowling for Columbine was the most interesting but none of these films did a great deal to change minds or actions regardless of your view of their importance or their impact on the larger culture. Hype does not mean that minds are being changed regardless of what side you are on in a debate. Most "pop" documentaries are the ideological dreams of writers and producers who have an odd angle (conservative or liberal) and want to promote it. Really good documentaries, which I enjoy a great deal, are generally done by PBS.

The God Who Wasn’t There “irreverently lays out the case that Jesus Christ never existed.” This claim, which is not new, is advanced with the following claims:

1) The early founders of Christianity seem wholly unaware of the human Jesus. Jesus was a mythical figure and the details of his life were added more than five decades after his death. A case is made, using a simple time line, that since Paul wrote his letters first, and the four Gospels were written several decades later, that this time gap is just too huge to accommodate serious history.

2) The letters of Paul were written four decades before the first Gospel and Paul mentions none of the stories or details of the life of Jesus at all, not even quoting Jesus. (This is patently wrong!) He does mention the crucifixion, resurrection and ascension but only in a manner that sees them as taking place in a mythic realm.

3) The death-resurrection-ascension sequence of the Gospel events was common in pagan myths and other religions. Others stories mentioned in the Gospels also occurred in previous mythologies and religions and were simply copied by the early Christians.

4) The Jesus of the Gospels bears a striking resemblance to other ancient heroes and the figureheads of pagan savior cults.

5) Contemporary Christians are largely ignorant of the origins of their religion. Interviews are included to prove this point.

6) Fundamentalism is as strong today as it ever has been, with an alarming 44% of Americans believing that Jesus will return to earth in their lifetimes, 22% saying it will be in the next five years or so.

All of the above claims are not new, with the possible exception of number five. They were all made in antiquity (except of course numbers five and six) by brilliant critics of Christianity who used far better arguments than those employed by Brian Flemming. Ancient Christian apologists, two of whom Flemming cites out of their context, answered many of the very claims this film makes. Flemming presents most of this material as if it was really some new discovery that he wove together for this film! One Christian blogger noted: “Anyone with the most cursory knowledge of the early ecumenical councils will know of the fierce debates which took place on the humanity and divinity of Christ: the Creeds of the Church did not come from nowhere.” Amen!

The fifth assertion made above is accurate and thus may be the only thing in the film that I found worth seeing. (The film is so badly made, and poorly patched together with clips taken from several old films about Jesus, that any awards for cinematography would be a real joke!) Flemming cleverly uses about six different Christians, not scholars or serious apologists, to demonstrate that most Christians are ignorant of the origins of their religion. I have no doubt that he is right in this claim. But it proves absolutely nothing about his bigger claim that the Jesus story is a “myth.”

Flemming presents what he believes is overwhelming proof by using interviews with several popular atheists, including the infamous Sam Harris. The Los Angeles Times said the film is “provocative—to put it mildly.” I didn’t find it provocative in the least. If I wanted to undermine Christian faith I would look for something far more professionally and carefully made than this sad excuse for a credible documentary. It was a total waste of time to watch it.

If you want to know more about the film a simple Google search will reveal both fans and critics coming from a number of perspectives. Count me as another critic, not because the “Jesus myth” idea is not worthy of apologetic debate but because this film doesn’t make a serious contribution to that debate. Sadly, the film borders on buffoonery. I had hoped that I could find something here to use in one of my apologetics classes but this film is too easy to refute.

 

The Challenge of Pluralism

I wrote yesterday about the challenges being faced by the Episcopal Church (ECUSA). The question behind the question that I raised is the issue of pluralism. How dangerous is pluralism? For that matter, what is pluralism and why should serious Christians really care about this question?

Let's begin with the fact that not everyone practices the same religion. If this were not so we wouldn't need to consider the question of pluralism or Christian apologetics. Increasingly tolerance is being defined in various pluralistic ways, ways that present serious challenges to orthodox Christians and Christianity. But few bother to define what is actually meant by pluralism before they begin to throw the term around very widely. Some conservative writers have referred to me as a pluralist in spite of the fact that I affirm the creeds and councils of the Church and embrace the faith of a historic Protestant denomination. This gross misuse of the term has pushed me to come to terms with the several ways that this term is used, and abused, by modern Christians.

John G. Stackhouse, Jr., in his excellent book, Humble Apologetics: Defending the Faith Today (Oxford, 2002), writes: "Pluralism is a word we encounter all the time, but few speakers or writers pause to define what they mean by it. Pluralism has at least three definitions" (page 3). So what are the three kinds of pluralism Stackhouse sees as germane to serious apologetics?

1. Pluralism as mere plurality. In its most basic form pluralism is simply "the state of more than one." A supermarket presents a plurality of choices to shoppers. Sociologically a proliferation of goods and services, which characterizes all of modern society, is a state of pluralism.

This definition of pluralism is value-free. If there is more than one religion we then have a state of plurality, thus religious pluralism. One can even say that there is a kind of pluralism within Christianity itself since there are a number of versions of Christian faith and practice, not just one.

What has changed, especially in our new globalized context, is that religions exist alongside one another in places where once this could never have happened. Muslims live in my neighborhood and Buddhists attend schools in my community. Whenever someone refers to the number of religious choices that exist in their neighborhood as pluralism this should not mean they embrace another faith or condemn it, per se. It is simply an observable fact. By observing the fact, and embracing it rightly, we can foster peace among all people in the right way.

2. Pluralism as preference. This second use of the term goes a bit further. It affirms "that it is good that there is more than one" religion. Here the use of the term pluralism moves from sociology to theology, or maybe strictly speaking, to ideology. It goes from "what is" to "what ought to be."

But even here the term pluralism has various uses. I might express the wish that there should be several faiths side-by-side, believing that it is good for the larger community in which I live, without embracing another religion as ultimate truth. All of us prefer certain kinds of plurality. Plurality, even in matters of faith and practice, has its limits but a society may well function best where there is some measure of tolerance and respect for different expressions and beliefs deeply held within it. America, though not founded by Muslims for sure, is one society that can tolerate such beliefs in a meaningful way and not disintegrate into "tribal" religious conflicts. The "establishment clause" creates a society where this can happen in a healthy context that is still predominantly Christian. At the same time we can have a distinctly Christian influence within our culture if we are willing to live among others in faith and love. I personally hope that we will follow this course, though this is also being threatened in our time, more by secularists than by people of other faiths. 

3. Pluralism as relativism. This level of pluralism goes well beyond the first two. It says that no option is to be preferred to another and no faith is finally right as over against another faith. There are very different ways that people express this kind of pluralism when it comes to religion.

Some practitioners of Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, etc. are convinced that they believe the right faith but then they are very uncomfortable in saying their faith tradition is the best one. This is a type of pluralism that leads to relativism, at least a "soft" type of relativism. There can be a naive relativism here if a person does not, to cite just one example, think Judaism (for example) is to be preferred to Nazism, a critical historical example.

A more sophisticated version of this kind of pluralism as relativism would say that all options are partially good and partially bad. They can all be "appreciated as more or less approximate versions of ultimate reality" (Stackhouse, page 6-7). There is a sense in which this is not relativism at all since people who think this way may still believe someone may hold a better view, or maybe even an ultimately correct view.

This relativistic thinking abounds in the religious realm. New Age faith and practice praises "all religions" (a very common practice in America now) while it still says one way of faith is to be chosen over another. This is what the philosopher John Hick does when he prefers Christianity but leaves the door wide open to all other faiths at the same time.

Radical pluralism argues that no one has universal, objective truth. This kind of pluralism, the sort that seems to be ripping apart older Christian denominations these days, argues that relativism is necessary to be truly open and loving. This becomes, as the late Allan Bloom said, "the only virtue." In this setting the "true believer, " regardless of what they believe, is in deep trouble. It is this sort of relativism that will not only destroy churches but whole societies. When there is no final judgment to be rendered about what is right and wrong, and all we have is competing systems of ethics and religious practices, the one person (or faith) we will not tolerate is the one who believes that they know objective, final truth.