“The End of Apologetics: Christian Witness in a Postmodern Context” by Myron B. Penner

[Kendel]

This is another “Round Up” post, rather than publishing a bunch separately.

Emailed Articles From the Author Himself:
Myron Penner emailed me two of his articles that comprise part of a dialogue between him and Brad Seeman regarding The End of Apologetics. Because Penner mentioned me sharing the articles with people, I believe that is tacit permission to share them. I have saved them to my Google Drive and would be glad to send the link to anyone who PMs me, asking for them. I don’t have Seeman’s articles, but they would something one could acquire through an interlibrary loan request. Penner mentions the citations in his articles.

Edification and Richard Twiss
Throughout this book, Penner mentions sources of edification broadly, and particularly in relation to the local church and the universal Church.

@Kendel

"This point needs to be understood carefully in light of my earlier insistence on viewing Christian belief as occurring within a hermeneu­tical tradition-a set of texts that are part of the ongoing conversation of a diverse and ever-widening community of people. "(P.122)

Because of this, Richard Twiss has been on my mind often. He was a Lakota follower of Jesus and talked without reservation about the problem of our enculturated views of Christianity. Here is a link to a video interview with him, where he talks about what it was like for him to be a new Christian and a Native American. His wisdom is profound and convicting. The link will start you where he talks about it. (another time stamp of note is 21:20, where he talks about Colonial Christianity):

Richard Twiss Interview with Shane Claiborne and Tony Campolo

Terry: Tamer Reformed Calvinists and the Atheist Tutor

@Terry_Sampson

Curious to see what a “ tamer ” Reformed Calvinist might have to say about Penner’s book, I looked around and came across pastor, professor, and author Timothy Paul Jones’ paper presented at the 2021 Evangelical Theological Society Annual Meeting, in Fort Worth, Texas .

Title: The End of Apologetics?
“Something Divine Mingled Among Them”: Care for the Parentless and the Poor as Ecclesial Apologetic in the Second Century.

@terry_sampson, I just want to make sure I understand the significance of the quotes you pulled from this article? It seems like you are pointing out the similarity between Penner’s call for a lived out faith, and the early church’s practice of living out their faith as well.
Do you see differences between the practices and/or the thought behind the practices? How do/would the ROWDY, hard-core calvinist types you mentioned earlier see this kind of practice, do you think? Lots of questions. Please tell more about your thoughts on the quotes from Timothy Paul Jones.

I’ll try to get to your many other shares soon, but time!I did glance over the piece on “knowledge.” [quote=“Terry_Sampson, post:751, topic:49565”]
At this time, I continue to appreciate my previous tutor’s introduction to secular (agnostic atheist) views regarding “knowledge”.
[/quote]
These last few sentences are eminently quotable:

Within the realm of attempts to describe the physical universe, not much attention has been applied to the issue of the difference between a statement and a proposition. A statement is just a grammatically well-formed formula that has no free variables. A proposition is a statement that has meaningful content. Unless one is merely playing some formalist game, it makes no sense to say of a statement that it is true or that it is false unless the statement of which one is thus speaking is a proposition. It is my opinion that twentieth century science consists almost entirely of word salads that could not possibly be true propositions because they are not propositions at all.

Looking into Chapter 5

@T_aquaticus

The binary choice between Christian morality and nihilism mentioned in previous posts is also an important one,

I started my “preparatory reading” of Chapter 5 (abstract of the chapter from the book intro, and then conclusion of the chapter). He will be addressing this binary choice directly, in case you are interested in continuing with the book and dicussion.

Tangents: Library Research on Apologetics
Since starting this book, I have been interested in looking into longitudinal studies regarding the effects and/or effectiveness of the modern apologetics movement, if such data is even being collected, much less scrutinized. I reached out earlier this week to about 10 seminary libraries and so far have heard back from 6 with research suggestions, resources to hunt down and a few articles, and a 7th asking for clarification of my question. So far, no one has said, “here it is.” I now have many things to follow up on—after we are done with this book. It’s interesting that every answer I received was very different. I’ll be visiting a few campus libraries in the near future, I think. Research Road Trip!

Chapter 5
Starts Monday. It’s good to be through the really heavy theory. I think I will end this book with one of my enduring questions: How? But having the underpinnings for a different way to view What? and Why? is a good start.