Penner rings that bell (primacy of love - even over faith and hope - courtesy of 1 Cor. 13) - and I ring it with him. I think he gets that right. As to how similar apologetics since modernism have been as compared to “pre-modern” precedents such as we find in scriptures - that seems to be an area of negotiable disagreement.
I found this podcast interview (“Unbelievable” with Justin Brierley) where he interviews Sean McDowell and Myron Penner both. It’s a good listen, and while they don’t agree on everything, they certainly were amiable and deferrent to each other in gracious ways. It’s a good listen for those who want to hear Myron address questions such as many of us raise here.
A question I have is how prevalent and strong is the impetus toward apologetics in Christian denominations? Do any eschew it all together?
Warning rant ahead:
Sometimes I think the energy this activity attracts is related to specks and beams in other people’s eyes vs my own. Nearly -but does this even need to be qualified- everyone has issues to work on that would make them better neighbors but why do so many prefer to improve others instead of themselves? This goes to one of my beefs with Christianity: I think it drives its adherents too much toward moral exceptionalism. Fearing they can never rack up a high enough worthiness score on their own progress they hope to earn extra credit by accumulating converts and/or improving others. This isn’t good. The quest to be exceptional should not be accepted at any price, especially when the cost is put onto others. If we never learn to accept our own best efforts how can we ever learn to love or forgive others? Apologetics isn’t an adequate substitute.
So many questions, or should I say, holes in my knowledge. You guys are so much better read than I on this, so forgive my ignorance and treat me as a child if I should comment.
I identify strongly with modernism, and while thinking myself conservative, must agree that my beliefs fall into the liberal apologetic group, while at the same time finding his statements regarding apologetics in both conservative and liberal views ignoring the importance of the Christian life lived out and expressed is a major failing. I suppose one question is whether you can accept science without being a liberal apologist?
Mark, I know in my church’s practice, apologetic teaching is very entrenched and highly regarded. Our Sunday School class is going to be going through Josh McDowell’s book, and are enthusiastic about it. I have attended a weekend conference led by Lee Strobel, the Case for Christ guy. It was actually pretty good in some respects, though heavily pushing ID, fine tuning and such. I went to one of the breakout sessions, which was interesting as the old earth leaning moderator was harassed and beat into submission by a couple of young earth attendees who sent a barrage of the usual statement we hear here.
Craig on the other hand is considered too liberal to be openly discussed or followed at our church! I bet most of the attendees have never even heard of him.
Chapter one starts off with a close look at Craig’s origins and methods which as already mentioned above were described as leading down Alice’s rabbit hole to a world turned upside down.
Don’t ever rule yourself out Phil. Your insight is so often ahead of the curve. I think I’m probably struggling the most because I’m not really the intended audience; I continually feel I’m missing context even though he doesn’t constantly quote scripture. I’m the one who needs to get the kid’s level explanations.
While on the childhood theme, I ran across these blogs on enchantment, discussed In passing by Penner in this chapter on page 36, and encouraging me to understand further:
I’d be surprised to find that there’s a Christian denomination, as a whole, that “eschews it all together”. My first exposure and initial training in apologetics was in my Junior year at a now defunct Lutheran-Missouri Synod High School in Oakland,CA, primarily for students planning to enter the ministry or parochial school teaching. For better or worse, I graduated at the end of my Senior year and decided that I was not ministerial material. I “floundered” for a year before joining the Navy.
During “boot camp”, I had an experience which confirmed, for me, the wisdom of not continuing ministerial training. A trivial obligation upon joining the military was identifying one’s “religion”, which was then stamped on our “dog tags” for future reference. It so happened that one of my “new” buddies had self-identified as an atheist; and our company commander decided to assign me the task of convincing the independent thinker to pick a religion. Why me? Because my file showed that I was a preacher’s kid, had a religion, and had attended a religious school. For some weird reason, our commander figured that I would be the ideal person to “persuade” my buddy to pick a religion.
Let the record show that that was not an assignment that I accepted with eagerness. Quite the opposite, and I have a fading, unhappy memory of my failure to fulfil 2 Cor. 10:5 and my disappointed commander’s “command”. I no longer remember what my buddy decided to do about his “dog tag” but, since that day, I’ve avoided any temptation “to save” an involuntary and disinterested convert.
…the twentieth century saw the Islamic ethos of proselytization powered by an unexpected fuel: modern science. Even more surprising, this vogue came at the hands of a secular Frenchman.
Maurice Bucaille, gastroenterologist and personal physician to a king of Saudi Arabia, fertilized a budding field of Islamic apologetics when he wrote his 1976 work, The Bible, The Qur’an, and Science. This seminal work argues that the Bible is rife with scientific errors, while the Quran stands in contradistinction as miraculously precocious and flawless. He concludes that the Quran is so scientifically advanced that it must be the work of God.
“Epochal” only approximates the book’s impact on Muslim proselytism. Much like the Martin Lings phenomenon, a Western intellectual siding with Islam after critically scrutinizing evidence served as a war cry for dawah-oriented Muslims. This scenario was all the more gratifying because Bucaille roundly denounced the Bible in the process.
The technique of referring to the Quran for miraculously advanced scientific truths soon became so commonplace that a term for the method was coined: Bucailleism.
Bucailleism: The technique of referring to the Quran for miraculously advanced scientific truths in order to defend its divine origin
So here is yet another question for people to chew on - a specifically chapter 1 question (p. 22-23).
Which view do you most identify with and why?
Craig’s Christian college professor, who had declared that if truth and reason led away from Christianity, then his professor would abandon Christianity. (ultimate commitment to truth)
…or…
Craig himself, who reactionarily informs his professor that even if Craig’s own faculties of reason tried to lead another way, Craig would let go of reason, and stick with Christ. (ultimate commitment to Christ.)
…or…
The later Craig who saw himself as “rescued” from what he identifies as the Kierkegaardian ‘fideism’ of option #2 - thus ostensibly inaugurating the apologetic track his life takes. I.e. - we could call this the ‘there is a successfully Christian - (or at least theistic) apologetic, and I have found it’ option. (ultimate commitment to the proposition that Christ is not separable from truth)
…or…
Something akin to Penner’s reaction to all the above. (Ultimate commitment to living in discipleship to Christ by loving neighbor and enemy … propositional truth is in God’s hands and may or may not be accessible to you or neighbor to varying degrees for each of us.)
…or…
Your own reaction to all of it as distinct from what you see as Penner’s or the others above.
I’m about to read chapter 1, and a question just came to my mind. In Penner’s view, did the ontological and cosmological arguments work in pre-modernity?
“My entire identity is fixed by its coordinates in socioreligious reality and cannot be understood without reference to my place in society and to God (or the gods) and God’s purposes.”
What it must have been like to be part of the crowds listening to Jesus with an electric shaver in your backpack.
Brief note regarding Penner vs. Craig.
Two days ago, I came across the following audio exchange: Should Christians Abandon Apologetics?. Myron Penner and William Lane Craig debate, April 2016.
Believers have considered apologetics essential to defending the Christian faith in a scientific and pluralistic society. But, as society has become increasingly post-modern, some say apologetics has become outdated…and even harmful. In April 2016, Up For Debate with Julie Roys explored the current controversy over apologetics with author Myron Penner, who says apologetics may be the “single biggest threat to genuine Christian faith” today. Challenging his perspective is eminent apologist and author, William Lane Craig, who believes apologetics are as relevant today as ever! Listen and discern this important issue, on this episode of Up For Debate on Moody Radio!
Phil, thanks for these—good orientation to the idea of enchantment. How did you get to them?
I most definitely have experiences of enchantment, most vividly when I’m Up North (in northern Michigan) IN a Great Lake, among the trees, investigating a waterfall, lying on a slab of rock in the sunshine in the middle of a river. I don’t imagine myself in the Shire or old world magical forests, but I can’t but feel the presence of God or contain the urge to worship Him in hymns.
I do find, however, that most of my life appears quite unenchanted. Living in that space of enchantment requires an effort from me that perhaps the premods did not need to exercise (but also couldn’t escape).
Very interesting! I enjoyed the book, too. I hope you do, as well.
I don’t want to divert too much, but Answeringislam.org has quite a bit on Bucaille. Interestingly, he became disillusioned with Christianity when he heard his priest talking about Moses’ authorship to his parishioners, but being critical of it with colleagues. He himself said he never converted to Islam, but I think he worked in Saudi Arabia for a while. Thanks.
I find myself comfortable with Penner and trusting that what he is sharing is, to the best of his ability, the truth as he has found it. With Craig I always feel he is sharing strategically to achieve an effect. He doesn’t level with us as fellow searchers for the truth. Rather he seeks to enlist us as fellow conspirators or as cogs in a great mechanistic apologetics force serving God. I don’t trust him. He shares none of my doubts.
In terms of the enchantment of the Tolkien stories that @Phil shared I’d say Penner strikes me more like the character Strider seeking to protect the innocence of hobbits. Craig makes me think more of Saruman, eager to meet force with force. Ostensibly both stand against evil but only one thinks he can beat evil at his own game.
I think your characterization beautifully captures the contrast between Penner and the Modernism as he has characterized it: “fellow searchers” vs. “fellow conspirators” - with you either joining the conspirators or else being their target. And the comparison with Strider vs. Saruman is also a brilliant illumination of the same contrast.
The former embodies a humility - and (if they truly are searchers) may also include that bits and pieces can be found and are appropriate to share (always in humility and respecting the decisions of others to accept or provisionally accept or reject what you share.) The latter being the dark side of apologetics (as Penner has characterized the modernistic version of it) where the missional target is an objectified receptical for propositional truth and needs rational compulsion to assimilate them - resistance is futile.
That’s putting it in stark, over-the-top terms. And any of today’s apologists worth their salt would not fit that latter dark characterization. Penner seems to have room for them (the more humble-spirited sort, who still maintain an interest in using rationality to remove stumbling blocks that do impede many), the harsher words of Penner’s text notwithstanding.
Thank you for the link. 10 minutes in and the discussion is riveting. Penner just agreed with Craig that we are living in a modernist world. Penner adds, “we’re becoming hyper-modernist… we should be, as Christians, post-modernist…” Needless to say Penner is using post-modernist as a term in such a specific way, that it’s unhelpful as a term.
“They [modernist apologists] attempt to understand postmodernism as something primarily conceptual—and therefore
without a lived context—rather than in terms of its overall ethos.” - from a paragraph that spans pp37,38
In other words they treat as something neutrally proposed as a hypothesis something that really arises directly in our lived experience. It is exactly like atheists who treat the God proposal as bad science, a primitive attempt at explaining natural phenomena. Both the apprehension that the truth is not something simple and the same for everyone and the apprehension that God is ever present in the world as we experience it are inescapable for those who experience them. A person can experience both at once as well. We just need to accept that not all or even necessarily the best of our private truths will be esteemed as highly (or even at all) by everyone. That doesn’t mean no truth can be universally held by all but generally, the more deeply held and personally significant the truth, the more variety we will find. Science is or should be a much appreciated refuge where no controversy or entrenched disagreement can be found.