Everybody on all sides of this has always seemed very much in agreement that we are definitely all breathing modernist air - and have been for quite some time. I see the main difference in camps being found in the question of how we should respond to this modernism. The two camps of responses being…
Traditional apologists: grab onto this new grasp of reality (a gift!) and run with it for Christ.
Penner & Co.: hold modernism at arm’s length and examine what mischief it inserted into Christian witness. And by holding up modenism itself for examination, we are being ‘postmodern’ (by Penner’s use of the term), and hopefully then re-situating our faith more back on experiential relationship with Christ rather than on human intellect and rationality.
I don’t find Penner’s appropriation of the term ‘postmodern’ problematic - especially since he went to the trouble to tell us his (and not just his - but serious postmodern scholarship) definition / usage; and how it may be the popular public that is misappropriating the term and ironically pulling it back into a modernist context by trying to treat it as “just the next” worldly philosophy to come along, and trying to critique it as such (and with modernist apologetic agendas driving that critique, no less.)
I find myself sympathetic to Penner’s usage of that now.
Thank you Mervin, I just added an extended edit to my comment to which you replied and then removed it seeing your reply. I’ll add it here.
I find it problematic that Penner easily agrees with Craig that we are in a modern context, given the subtitle of Penner’s book.
The following was what I added to my previous comment:
I finished the conversation and it is well worth the time for anyone thinking about Penner’s thesis.
The highlight comes half way at the 26:40 min mark when Julie Roys asks Penner about the rhetorical violence the apologist commits. Penner explains his position and Craig responds to which Penner says he has never accused Craig of commiting this violence. Penner goes on “(inaudible) second type of apologetic violence we can talk about it you want to.”
Roys says Penner seems to concede apologetics can work when done rightly after she details a debate she witnessed first hand with Nabeel Qureshi.
The rest of the conversation wasn’t bad, but Penner felt incapable or unable to discuss this second type of apologetic violence he alluded to.
I haven’t listened (yet) to the clip you speak of, but intend to. Just based on your appraisal (and my own observations of Penner elsewhere too - speaking with McDowell), I think it may be safe to say that Penner is guilty of coming on much more strongly in his written work, and backing off considerably when ‘face-to-face’ with particular people he has critiqued. I don’t know how Craig could fail to take offense at what Penner wrote of his practice; and I can imagine Penner trying - to the point of disingenousness even, to try to unruffle ruffled feathers when speaking directly with Craig. I might be projecting here onto Penner a strong tendency of my own - or perhaps I’m recognizing myself in Penner in this regard. With that admission out there, I may be too quick to offer him grace and not hold it against him overmuch. I do think he and I wouldn’t be the only ones in the world who find it much easier to cut loose with “take-no-prisoners” written arguments (an ironic accusation against Penner here, given the whole thesis we are discussing) than we do to verbalize such aggression against somebody actually present to us. I guess the one defense I would still put up for Penner’s apparent written aggression is that it isn’t directed at vulnerable people, but against power-brokers and highly recognized players at the table representing Penner’s own side (Christianity). And McDowell at least (I don’t know about Craig), seems to recognize some validity in and need for attention to Penner’s critique.
[I’ll add here that I’m not specifically accusing Penner of being disingenuous - at least I’m not prepared to get into the games of playing “gotcha” with his specific written words as opposed to his later spoken words, as much as other people might be prepared to do - and it’s fair game to be done. I’m only saying that incongruities won’t at all surprise me if and when found.]
I find myself “violating” my own intention to sit back quietly and watch the principals discuss Penner’s book.
I may be stepping out on a limb here, but the first “visual images” that popped into my mind were of “soap-box orators” in public areas commonly filled with folks who begin to gather to hear the speaker declaim their views on “secular topics”. Then, my focus shifts to the few memories I have of "campus or street-corner or soap-box preachers haranguing a growing crowd over their sins and the need for repentance.
The latter have always sent shivers down my spine and raised the hair on the back of my neck. So much so, twice, I even engaged two–years apart and on opposite sides of the U.S. I connect those images and imagine that I readily see what Penner was talking about: i.e. when the apologist passionately (or just strongly) reaches out and “grabs” the crowd by the scruff of the neck violently, as it were, and asks: “Are you ready to meet your Maker?”
Segue:
I remember, In my childhood, the image of John the Baptist bored into me so strongly that, at the age of 10 or so, I told my mother that I was never going to cut my hair again. She had to appeal to our Pastor [who eventually became my father by adoption], and his wife took on the task of gently talking me back into 20th century, assuring me: “Long hair is not required and is no longer ‘fashionable’”. [The year was about 1959.]
Then, in 1971, after discharge from the Navy, I found myself (with a couple of friends) in New Delhi, India. And one day, in the midst of an LSD trip, I became convinced that I had to give away my possession and go to “the holy city of Benares, on the Ganges River” and take up my calling. Now, in the waning years of my life, I look back, get down on my knees, and thank my Maker that I’m still alive, married, and “off the streets”.
That’s quite a storied history! And not to rub age in or anything, but about when you were coming down off LSD highs and contemplating holy offerings, I might have been busy soiling a diaper.
Above, beyond, and in spite of my memories gone by, … and more importantly, I ask: Did my brief comparison of “secular soap-box orators” and “soap-box apologists” make any sense, or was I just trippin’ through flashbacks?
Oh … yeah - sorry! I guess I didn’t react to any of the real content of your post.
Yes, I can appreciate your reaction from what you describe. I’m not sure I’ve ever encountered a real “soap box” preacher in my life time except vicariously through hearing about them like right here and now. That’s either a reflection on how “sheltered” my life has been in some interesting ways, or more likely just my memory failing me, because surely …!
[what I was less clear on was how that all fed into your conclusive praise that you are still here … in what way do you see such soapbox orators contributing to or detracting from your history to bring you to this point?]
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Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
303
Dang! Chapter 1. Perfect. I didn’t want to go there at all because it starts with my bête noir Craig. Believe it or not I actually paused for thought on Craig’s orthodoxy - because it’s not just Thomist, it’s apostolic - that we know God, that faith is, by the Spirit. Still pausing, without hope! But the rest of the chapter swept on demonstrating the modernism of apologetics despite that.
To be fair, as I am quite aware of how much better I do in a written discussion, Penner also may have done better with Craig in a written exchange like this one.
It’s the second type of rhetorical violence that he must defend for his thesis to be valid, and at present I don’t think he’s able to do it if there was not a fundamental rift with the Enlightenment. I heard Sproul once touch on the problem of transcendence without the immanence of God, or immanence without transcendence. This explanation of Sproul’s keeps ringing in the background of my thoughts as I think through Penner’s position. It may be worth returning to it and summarizing it here.
In a way, I think Craig ably defended his position as being pre-modern with his understanding of the self-evident testimony of the Spirit. I’m interested to look more closely to see if Penner’s understanding of it in this chapter is accurate.
Ahh! I think what happened was that the memories of the soap-box preachers carried me “downstream” too far; to where the other creek joined the first, bringing in other memories: the memories of things that leave me grateful to my Maker. I should have stopped further upstream, after my second paragraph.
The Lord put some really wonderful and wise people in your life, Terry. Your adoptive parents give us a beautiful model of living in obedience to Christ’s commands.
I think the comparison is fair. Like Charles Finney, for example, these preachers use utterly worldly means to “evangelize.”
Once in a while there’d be a street preacher on campus at Wayne State U in Detroit. While I was there as an undergrad it was the inner city campus was the safest state university campus in Michigan. But at the same time, you could never be sure, when someone was on the mall raving, if they were a lunatic, or religious fanatic, or political revolutionary. The guy hollering, carrying the heavy, wooden cross and a ragged Bible, probably was a preacher, but I had no intention of finding out he wasn’t. I don’t know, if he was even an apologist, though. I really had no intention to get close enough to find out. Stranger danger. Maybe not the best apologetic tool.
Terry, your example reminds me of a Ray Comfort video I have seen. Fast talking, impersonal, logic traps with no intention of getting to know the person he’s condemning, no understanding of their life or background or experience with or without Christianity, etc. Just “Here’s some stuff you had better believe, or your going to hell.” How does one even evaluate that? How does one experience an entire shift in paradigm just because some guy tells you stuff.
Welcome back. Glad you’re here.
Sorry for the triggers.
Yep, it did. Anything you think was noteworthy in Penner’s demonstration?
On my at least 3rd reading of the chapter, I’m seeing better how Penner is weaving both his description of modern features of apologetics together with his contrast of the premodern and modern. I want to work out some notes on this but won’t have time for a few days. I’m frustrated that it’s there in front of my face, and it takes me so long to see it.
I’ve asked myself before. I’ll pick the fifth, because nothing else seems to fit, or reflects what I’ve already been doing.
Kendel’s #5 includes a commitment to wait and see, return periodically to the stuff that I haven’t been able to settle, do the best I can with what I think I know, talk to people, follow Jesus as faithfully as I know how to do, stand corrected, and keep working on it. All the while I continue to scavenge for information that helps me figure things out, which other people often seem to find irrelevant.
Part of what I find so intolerable about apologetics and street preachers is this demand to act now or be damned for all eternity. Sorry. I just don’t move that quickly. And I really dislike arguing, particularly with strangers, who are in it to win it.
I am also averse to accepting “answers” that don’t work for the questions I have, or that I believe to be false. So, my two main survival strategies have been “patience” and skepticism in the process of evaluating truth, while living a limping faith and faithfulness that I now understand asks too many questions, whose answers don’t seem to be so readily available any more.
I’m half way through the chapter. As Penner describes the pre-modern condition, which is sometimes by way of the modern condition, I’m wondering if a comparison holds to a dispensationalist who can’t see grace in the OT.
There was a definite shift in emphasis upon an individual’s justification for belief with the Enlightenment, but I can’t help but think of Augustine’s own journey to faith. And too much of the language in the NT, must be… violated to hold Penner’s view of rationality or the lack of individual discernment in a pre-modern world.
I finally got a chance to hear that 2016 exchange between Penner and Craig. Thanks, @Terry_Sampson, for finding that!
For that particular debate (and that is what it was staged as), I think I concur with you that Craig gave good answers, and that Penner seemed on the defensive, or wanting/needing to backpedal more than not. That said, my cynical (and maybe a bit jealous as an outsider of the smart debate-club highschool classmates) self even yet today tends to think of debate as the staged “professional wrestling” activity of the academic world - which isn’t fair to Julie Roys who ran this exchange pretty well, I thought (and didn’t hesitate to take Craig’s side at the end.) But I thought she gave a fair shake to both - to the extent that these matters can be adjudicated on in minutes-long conversatoinal exchanges.
So Craig insists that he is really being Pre-modern in the sense that ought to satisfy Penner, but apparently didn’t (or at least not completely). While I thought Craig came off sounding better and more confident there, I still have the nagging feeling that Penner’s concerns still were not really defended or delved into as well as they could and should have been here. While I’m not sure I have any sound rebuttal for Craig’s claim that he does not run afoul of Penner’s concerns (and Penner was at pains to agree with him about that mostly) - I also don’t feel like I’m coming away from this exchange with any good answers or rebuttals for Penner’s thesis either. As in they spent all the time in Craig’s court (him defending the attacked apologetics), and little-to-no time in Penner’s court addressing his concerns. So in that sense, I don’t feel much resolution on the Penner challenge here - but I did come away from this glad to have heard Craig defend himself, and to also then address the question of “is Craig’s approach sufficiently ‘pre-modern’ as to dodge Penner’s criticisms?”
@Mervin_Bitikofer and @heymike3
I wonder how Penner’s description of the premodern contrasts with Craig’s understanding of himself being premodern. I find it hard to imagine that anyone alive today, especially in the first and second world could be described as premodern in our thinking.
Premodernism was not devoid of reasoning. That difference is too simple. I think it would be helpful to glean from Chapter 1 specifically what Penner says in his rolling contrast between the premodern and modern. (But I am currently out of time.) As I mentioned to Mike, That’s one of my projects in the next few days.
I wanted to note George Mueller’s experience of God’s providence, which must have made for an enchanted view of the world.
As for Craig, I think his view of the Spirit’s work is what would keep him from being labeled a modern epistemologist. Craig knows because God has made it clear to him, and Craig shows it by way of reason with gentleness and respect. Also, Craig must see in 1 Peter, what brings the question from unbelievers in this passage, is our witness to Christ by suffering for righteousness sake.
One other thing that I’m curious if you noticed. There was a moment where Penner explained that God is known through Word and sacrament. Which is interesting in that if knowledge of God is restricted to that, premodern or not, it is actually unbiblical.
Sorry, Mike. There is no way I have time to add more content about Penner ot Craig to this book right now. If I get to the video, it will be later. So, I can’t engage in discussion of the video, as others may also be unable to do. I just don’t have time.
You’re definitely not the only one. I felt Penner just acquiesced when he recognized the violence in his book toward Craig once, as you say, he is actually present. I think we sometimes need to loose the reigns. give the horse his head and see how fast and far he’ll take you. In the process he may trample a few flower beds but better to make apologies and restitution later than to never see where you can get to. I’m thinking I’ll go ahead and do that here now myself as beginning the second chapter has led to an epiphany. I’m not sure how well it may be received but it works for me and I’m curious if it can for anyone else. But before I forget thanks for requesting pp 51 and 52 from @Kendel. I went back and forth convinced I’d gotten lost in a footnote for a while before I remembered you asking for and getting help with this. So thank both.
The difference between an apostle and a genius is pretty brilliant. Of course I don’t actually have conceptual reach for apostolic knowledge, at least not literally. And then I realized that what I cannot reason my way toward in a methodical way I can still inspect imaginatively. It happens all the time in literature. I’ll digress to share an idea I got from the American Jungian, James Hillman.
In his book Re-Visioning Psychology, Hillman described the power of simply encasing observations of the subjective contents of our psyche in the phrase “it is as if”; it allows you to describe dreams, moods and other non deliberative subjective states without getting bogged down in being being more explicit and objective than you have any means to. So I can imagine what it would be like to have in my experience the living belief that an all knowing, lovingly generous Being wanted to share some knowledge with us. Not empirical knowledge that we might eventually work our way toward in the methodical way of science. That belief could function culturally to provide us with an as-if way of framing received knowledge. The scope of our reason is limited by the bandwidth of our waking minds. It is like trying to handle big ideas with a tiny set of forceps. We feel more in control when we can do it all ourselves with our very focused, tiny little forceps but, you know … it is as if that’s what God has to work with given what and how we are. We are limited but we can imagine a being who is not so limited because in fact there is more to us than we can directly know.
Mark, what you describe is different from faith, but I think, this formulation gives you a glimpse into what a life of/with faith in Jesus is like for us with it. Keeping this view in mind will probably help you see some of the “subtle” differences Penner is pointing to that make modern apologetics “secular”, as he sees them.
Seems like a valuable epiphany.
I will still be in Ch, 1 this week, though.
