The life of one of TV’s most successful shows lies in the balance. Phil has backers and antagonists. But the reaction of the culture to his words brings to light a contemporary issue: the transforming idea of liberal society. The problem facing a so called liberal society is this: liberal society, always priding itself on the liberty of its citizens, is threatened by the very tolerance it sought to defend. Liberal society has, up to now, focused on universalizing the rights of the people, but now it talks about sex. A lot. The first question is: why? What changed? Jonathan Chaplin argues that what was in the background, civil society,…
-
-
Creation and Evolution: Plantinga’s Solution
Just how do we relate science and faith, specifically, the Christian faith? Christians who take their Bible seriously will also take reason seriously. God is eminently reasonable; one could even say God is reason. But all too often there is a feeling that Christians are caught between irrational, reason and science denying positions and compromise with their faith. Plantinga outlines three approaches to the problem. First, the two-truth approach. According to this view one might affirm a proposition in science and deny it in theology. Second, the truth-from-a-standpoint approach suggests that we can hold to apparently contradictory propositions since we can be sure of both being true according to the discipline…
-
Good Grouping, Bad Shot
What if all the people who have ever existed got together in a massive wiki project and, with unlimited time, were tasked in defining God? There is one rule: they must do it without reference to the Bible. And what if they came to agreement, if they worked until they had an utterly coherent doctrine of God, what would they have achieved? In target shooting there are two kinds of score, one that refers to proximity to a target and one that refers to proximity to other shots. Scoring well by virtue of consistency is called good grouping. If all my shots are close together, but far from the bull’s…
-
Young Earthers and Presuppositionalism
Does one’s view of origins have anything to do with apologetic method? This was the subject of a recent debate held at Southern Evangelical Seminary. Three views were held at the debate. Jason Lisle argued that a presuppositional apologetic assumes a hermeneutic of literalism. Since presuppositionalists typically hold that scripture is the ultimate authority on what is true and since there is no indication found in the text that the six day creation account was anything but an account of actual events in 24 hr days there is no reason found in scripture to abandon a young-earth, six day creation position. The only reason for abandoning this view is found…
-
Review: “The Next Story: Life and Faith After the Digital Explosion” by Tim Challies
Do we own tech or does it own us? A cliche perhaps, but Challies’ book, The Next Story, does a great job of helping the reader have technological discernment. Technology is not inherently bad nor is it neutral. Challies argues that technology is inherently good. In fact, technology is a result of the God given mandate to “be fruitful and multiply,” it is, according to Challies, “the creative activity of using tools to shape God’s creation for practical purposes.” What goes wrong is the human application of technology. And that is because technology is subject to the fall, the curse and sin. Challies writes in order to bring technology into…
-
Why Theological Method Matters in Youth Ministry
In a recent conference for youth ministry I noticed the presence of a theological method called “theological reflection.” I am familiar with Theological Reflection (TR) from my years in youth ministry in the UK, but was surprised to see its prominence among evangelicals in the US. TR is a relatively recent development in theological method. Its roots are in theologies that stress a particular cultural context as the starting point for theology. They usually contain the name of the context in their titles, such as “black” theology or “feminist” theology. Sometimes they are grouped together under the term “liberation” theology and are theologies often seen as belonging to people groups…
-
Dogma, Disagreement and Doubt
If I believe p and someone who is equally rational, has access to the same evidence and spends a similar time as me looking at it believes not p, should I doubt p? This is the question of disagreement and there are two ways to respond to it. The conciliation view is that disagreement with an “epistemic peer” (someone who has approximately equal intelligence, expertise and exposure to the evidence as oneself) obliges one to lower confidence in p. The steadfast view, on the other hand, is that there is no obligation to lower one’s confidence in p. Conciliation is motivated by the thought that if someone else comes to the opposite conclusion…
-
Inerrancy – It’s Not That Complicated
The recent Evangelical Theological Society conference was about biblical inerancy. Some are for it, some are against. What strikes me is that the doctrine, while raising all sorts of questions, is not that complicated. So let me have a shot at a simple defense. The first thing to realize is that we know God because God reveals himself to us. Revelation is “God’s disclosure of His nature and His will to mankind.” There are two kinds of revelation, general and special. General revelation is general information about God – he exists, he is powerful that is generally available to all human beings. In Scripture we learn that all Creation reveals…