By letting them experience Christ’s love and care for them through you. I.e. - they should see it and receive blessing from you, probably before actually hearing anything from you about it. And even then, it would be better for them to hear of you orienting your life toward Christ and that being a fount of blessing to those around you - rather than you preaching directly to or at them. That way you aren’t putting pressure on them, but letting them just observe and draw their own conclusions. It probably doesn’t even qualify as “apologetics” at all, but is merely scriptural instead. That’s what I aspire toward, and I think it stays above most of the dangers Penner associates with modernism.
Even this practice has its dangers, though. If it just takes an existing ‘contest’ and raises it to a new level of ‘contest’ for you: now you are tediously going out of your way to do “good deeds” for people as a way of “checkmarking even better boxes” now, and hoping that somebody (especially God - and of course your neighbor too) will notice and respond / reward you accordingly, then you are still just engaging in the same sort of aggressive apologetics and all you did was just step up your game a bit. But it’s still your game, and still doesn’t come from a place of love. I think that’s key. Do you actually love your neighbor, and therefore want to do right by them - and even more when you get the chance? That’s the key here I think. And when your love falls short, as it inevitably does - that’s what you can pray to God for - to help increase and grow that in you.
First comment: My current dissatisfaction with Penner is his use of the “Apostle” & “Genius” labels, in which “Apostle” gets to keep its meaning as one who receives a revelation and is sent by the source of that revelation to share it, come hell-or-high-water, but “Genius” loses its connection to a Roman tutelary/guardian spirit believed to have been assigned to a person at birth. That difference is not, IMO, Penner’s “fault”, it’s Kierkegaard’s, whether Kierkegaard came up with the “definition” of “Genius” or inherited it.
I have encountered (on-line) one person that I would consider a genius and that encounter moves me to object to the characterization of a “genius” as an “expert witness”, although I concede that is the more common characterization.
Second comment: I note that “Apostles”–i.e. those in the New Testament, never lept out of a chair, after a revelation and found a soap box in the park from which draw a crowd. Correct me if I’m wrong, but the apostles spent roughly three years under the tutelage of someone [Jesus, in the case of the original apostles; the unnamed, in Paul’s case). A “Genius” is born AND needs a tutor/mentor, for a couple of years, to hone his/her skills.
Third comment: Apostle or Genius, both would get nowhere without “the ability to articulate” whatever it is that each has to share, and the passion to share moves each forward. I’m inclined to believe that that “ability to articulate” a message to ANY one is “a gift”.
You are one ahead of me. But I wonder what elicited that designation. Did she dazzle and impress in topics of her choosing? Or was it that she so understand your question and fit her response to your needs so well?
The person to whom I referred impressed me with their ability to understand my question regardless how confused I [or literally anyone else] was about what it was that was being asked. What others perceived as and called bold, arrogant, and erroneous opinion, I personally always believed was reasoned confidence in what he believed was worth saying and repeating.
“However much human reason might be necessary to understand the apostolic proclamation (insofar as it qualifies as revelation), reason has no role to play whatsoever in grounding the apostle’s claims.”
How is qualifying and grounding to be distinguished?
There was a meme of Douglas Wilson where he was pictured shoving a stick in the front fork of the bicycle he was riding.
For some reason this image comes to mind as I read this.
If reason is taken to mean pure reason, then I would agree, even though it is not entirely useless in epistemology, but if reason is taken to mean evidentiary apologetics, then I am concerned and must give the benefit of the doubt at how unreal the words seem.
Terry, I need Penner to explain a lot more about apostles, too. I will be looking for that in future chapters. I think without it, it would be hard for him to have completed his mission for this book.
Ha! In science, specifically: the venue was a now-defunct Physics Forum that I wandered into in hopes of figuring out what Einstein’s theory of Special Relativity was about. [The year was 2002, three years before the centennial of Einstein’s first article on his theory.]
So far I’m connecting with this chapter more than with any before, and agreed with that, and then agreed with this, and then… say what!
“However much human reason might be necessary to understand the apostolic proclamation (insofar as it qualifies as revelation), reason has no role to play whatsoever in grounding the apostle’s claims.”
“The fact that revelation cannot be derived from any human capacities, especially human reason, means it is unable to ground the truths it discovers in any absolute or final way.”
A better view of reason, a non-genius understanding, is what I’ve understood as long as I can remember thinking about these things.
Human reason, cognition, or discernment allows one to know they are hearing the voice of God, and faith is believing what God tells you even though it goes beyond what you can understand, reason, or discern.
A friend of mine just shared with me this N.T. Wright / Tom Holland interview on Justin Brierley’s “Unbelievable”. And at the end of their hour long discussion I found myself resenting the clock because I just wanted them to just keep going. While their discussion is not about Penner or post modernism, they certainly have a lot to say about the historical situations involved. I highly recommend listening.
Now I also want to go and find those other discussions that got peripherally mentioned … on of Wright’s former students … Paula Gooder speaking about Paul with Fransesca Stavrakopoulou, who is apparently less than enthusiastic about Paul. That sounded interesting too. Looks like that one might be behind a registration wall for “Unbelievable”.
Precis, please. I’ve been at work all day, oversaw KP, still need to wash some pans, check for important email I need information from and then look over my daughter’s suit case for camp, before I get a little time to work on reviewing the chapter tonight, which won’t be enough. I may (or may not)have time to work on review and notes in the car tomorrow, while my husband drives, but no guarantees.
Well he seems to fall back on “expert” I guess when he gets tired of leaning on “genius”. So the question is how key is the Roman origins to his use of the word? I doubt that connection factors in at all. The point is that the genius/expert has objectively or analytically verifiable knowledge that the average person (let alone, believer) cannot readily verify for himself. The “apostle” in Penner’s use also has special knowledge but it lacks mundane modes of verification. The claim is that the apostle has knowledge directly from God which will be compelling if you share the same Christian background or somehow resonate with the authority with which she speaks. But there is no neutral, objective access to that knowledge universally accessible to all. I don’t think the derivation of the terms is all that crucial.
Wow from me too! Wright’s talking about Paul’s ‘conversion’ was powerful (and Holland was in effect agreeing with him). Wright is in no way “unhitching” the Old Testament from the New, citing Ezekiel and Isaiah with respect to Paul’s thinking, and that Jesus being God was taken for granted first thing and not something that was figured out by the church a century or two later was impressive too.
