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

Faith & Science Conversation
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As Arte Johnson said. Verrry interesting. Kicked an anthill there didn’t I? Yeah, I’m fundamentally biased with nothingbut rationality. It takes you a lonnnnngg parsimonious way until nature gets impenetrably, over the event horizon complex. What’s to understand about what motivates perspective? What do you objectively know that I don’t? Dim but dogged, I bet a dime, Martini rationalism is not for everyone. But it is a thing. And that’s not my fault. It’s independent of me. Your being offended, threatened by my instantiation of it is… distinctive. Would you be if it was a Wiki entry? The mere fact that rationalism precludes superfluous Jungian entities.

There are infinite possible perspectives, coming up to eight billion at any one instant. All of which are weightless. My arrogance is humble. Utterly insignificant. As is the idea itself.

…

This is all very unsatisfying isn’t it?

You tell me how I should instantiate it.

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I doubt Penner is accurately reading Craig on this. Looking up the 3rd edition of Reasonable Faith, there is no mention of “dominance” and with regard to “culture” a cursory glance shows Craig talking about shaping culture. For some “shaping” equals “violence” and “domination”:

“whereas early modern philosophers tended to criticize violence as inconsistent with authentic religious faith, the contemporary (or “postmodern”) critique suggests that determinate religious faith necessarily entails violence.”

“The Nicene Option: An Incarnational Phenomenology” by James K. A. Smith.

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There’s a great reading of this that takes the passage from the next chapter into account.

This side of heaven, I’d bet a whole bunch of money we don’t ever sort out some of the big issues that divide our churches, even to the point of breaking fellowship. Yet, we can still be respectful to one another as neighbors. And those whom are blessed by God should most certainly evidence it by their love for one another.

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Well sure - it’s a descriptive word used from the outside. Craig is too busy doing it (or not doing it) to be much bothered about discussing it. Just as we wouldn’t say somebody wasn’t violent just because they have never uttered or written the word “violence”. In fact, the sorts of peope for whom that is a regularly used piece of vocabulary are probably the sorts that tend to be conscientious about avoiding it. Where as the violent man himself is too busy living out that violence - and so probably not at all as likely to be found having discussions about it.

I suppose if I want to shape and conform a culture to what I deem to be the proper pattern, then others might consider that violent of me, even if a pen rather than a gun is my only weapon. All of us are trying to be culture shapers, and participants too. So let’s navigate them waters!

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If Penner’s charge of “dominance” rests solely on Craig telling other people they are wrong, then that’s utter non-sense.

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Trust me, no offense taken at all. Just trying to keep up in the great and wonderful presentation mode you do so well. I enjoy your iron to iron bravado as an online persona. I’m just trying to let a little air out to keep it real.

This is fun. Is there a recommended number of martinis?

Yeah it breaks down when you get to the boundaries of self. Beneath that event horizon is the quantum level of psyche where neuronal entanglement meets non-stop observer effect.

Whether anything is superfluous depends on the use you intend to make of it. Of course Jungian entities don’t merely ‘exist’. Jung realized Freud’s schema was crippled by being too dogmatically rendered explicit. Allusions to psychic ‘realities’ can take many forms and that was Jung’s advance over Freud. But Jung’s admirers followed Freud in interpreting Jung’s symbolism too rigidly. So Jung’s successor as head of the Jungian Institute in elaborating his own made it an axiom that any such psychological system must be recognized first and foremost as confessional. He also described the archetypes - Freud’s, Jung’s or anyone else’s - as having as-if quality. In other words, they are expressly of metaphorical value only and not literal descriptions in any sense. They are not objects but rather vehicles for portraying dynamic psychic realities. So if you have no interest in that sort of thing of course for you they will be superfluous. But they don’t fail at being useful in the right context. The same goes for religion. Out of context it can seem absurd and useless but if it describes a personal reality and enables a fulfilling way of life with a depth of meaning and purpose entirely perplexing to the nihilist, does that sound superfluous?

Cheers Klax, you’re a lot of fun and stretch my understanding with your hard steel challenges. I’m afraid my metaphoric jabs will never do the same for you.

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Both Jesus and Paul were rhetorically violent, but in neither case is that the whole story. I don’t think we want to dispense with NT Wright’s apologia either.

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You bounder Sir! You blighter. ■■■■ your eyes. How can one answer grace?

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So here’s where I’m at, at this time.

  • There’s Aologetics and there’s Apologetics.
  • There are Geniuses and there are Geniuses.
  • There are Apostles and there are Apostles.
  • And there are different audiences.

I was forced, IMO, to open the categories of Apologetics, Geniuses, and Apostles, in my own thinking, by

  • my recently expressed objection to “campus, street, and soap-box” apologists, and
  • my almost simultaneous favorable discovery of Gary Habermas, an apologist, and
  • almost immediately thereafter being [gently] questioned about the apparent inconsistency by another forum member.
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Well I finally have an answer as I sail on into chapter three but it turns out the importance Penner attaches to “edification”, though it appears in this paragraph near the end of chapter two, serves more to foreshadow where he is going next. I’ve bolded the edification reference. From the end of chapter two:

So, and this will be my take now in anticipation of how he’ll finish elaborating in chapter three. To approach apologetics epistemologically is to seek to sell Christianity on the basis of its neutrally objective and universal superior explanatory power. There is nothing particularly Christian in that rationale. It is as if the point of modernist apologetics was to promote Christianity on the basis of its ability to make your POV more fully modern. But to emphasize edifying people as we find them by looking for shared values and perhaps showing how Bible stories impart insight to those values, one would be:

  1. Building a connection that acknowledges something positive you have in common; this is in stark contrast to painting contrasts between the depravity assumed to be inherent in a Godless POV with the transformational powers of Christian doctrinal beliefs to cure what ails you.

  2. Giving the apologist an opportunity to demonstrate genuine neighborly goodwill and kindness which is not part of a sales pitch. Rather than emphasizing the ‘afterlife benefits’ of belief, why not embody a real interest in connecting with others for their own improvement. If they like the way you roll and are interested in what you’re running on there will be time for sharing how your belief supports your outlook and actions. If the nature of the transaction is instead transparently to prevent their blood from being on you, then you will instead have demonstrate how your Christian beliefs move you serve your self interests, but your audience will be perplexed.

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I’ve been trying for days to sit down while I have the brain power to work on a thoughtful reply to this chapter. Here’s related to the first half. I’ve tried to incorporate ideas I’ve also seen in the thread but can’t address everything separately right now. Real life.

I find Penner’s definition of Ideology on page 55 a helpful organizer for thinking about the first half of this chapter.

"Here I use “ideology” in reference to the nonra­tional (and oppressive) way the belief and value commitments of the dominant group of people in a society function to create a certain view of reality that is implicitly accepted as correct or true and ex­plicitly enforced by instruments of social control. The insidious and oppressive dimension of ideology is located in its tendency to treat individuals en masse, indifferent to their individual personhood (subjectivity). Genius cannot ground its claims in any way that is final or absolute outside of the rational consensus of “the power-craving crowd,” which functions at the ideological level both to make truth claims legitimate and to produce them.

This definition shows the mechanism by which Christian belief and practice can be (has been) used as a means of social control, rather than a matter of sincere faith in and worship of the God of Christianity. And how our very use of the modern apologetic paradigm can be complicit in this. In this system, the authority of Jesus Christ is irrelevent. Authority is vested in the dominant group (“that believes the truth about Christian faith has been demonstrated by creating a wider culture of belief than of disbelief” p. 65), which enforces its version of christianity to achieve the goals of the group. (One of those goals is, of course, to maintain dominance.)
Horrifyingly, Penner connects the modern apologetic paradigm, and its well-intended geniuses to this empty version of christianity. I have no doubt that Craig and most of his fellow apologists sincerely want to spread the Gospel of Jesus and the God of Christianity loved and joyously worshiped everywhere. But Penner is claiming that their well-intended strategies are precisely part of the problem – reliance on afirmation from the ever changing values of the “crowd” (rather than the target group) and assent to the “standard” by which the oposition
demands the “debates” take place.
Taking these thoughts a bit farther, I think there is a connection to the way of thinking that Penner identifies here and the palpable fear among christians in the U.S. that we are losing political and social ground. As we see the culture wars at code red all the time, there is a ubiquitous feeling of panic that pervades evangelicalism. "If we give up one inch of cultural or political ground, we lose “the war”. Penner and I are asking, “Are we fighting the right war? Do we understand what the war is? Have we evaluated what the proper strategies and tools and locations are for the war we are supposed to be “fighting?””

Additionally, I think this question I asked earlier is related. I don’t believe was taken up in this thread, or that Penner has (yet?) addressed. In light of Penner’s description of genius and the entire culture of modern apologetics that revolves around the genius, what place is there for the “weak things of this world?”

1 Corinthians 1:26-30
New International Version
26 Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. 27 But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. 28 God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, 29 so that no one may boast before him. 30 It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption.

Has the church so bought into worldly models that we no longer see a functioning pupose for the lowly, dispised, invisible, fools we all are, or trust Jesus to use us pathetic things “to shame the strong”, and “nullify the things that are” (such as the nihilism of modernity)? The model presented here does not work from a place of the power of the genius granted by the power hungry crowd. This is a pathetic witness that would need very different tools and abilities. [And which brings my mind back to the theological concept of Two Kingdoms.]
Additionally, even within the church (as I know it), I see preference given to the “dominant group”, families of heterosexual couples with children. Everyone else is seen as “marked” (linguistic term) or a special class: married couples with no children, single adults with children, single adults with no children, people with any diability of any kind, etc. So, even within the church we practice the values of “the crowd.” How could we but do it in the lives we live the rest of the week without painful self-reflection?

I understand that Penner’s connection between apologetics, nihilism and social domination are not going to be popular claims among those who have more of themselves than I do invested in what is known as apologetics today. I’ve already dealt with some of my own revulsion against different yet personal confrontation from Postmodernism (and elsewhere), and I will continue to through my life.
I encourage you, if you feel revulsion at Penner’s suggestions, to deal with the revulsion and eventually come back to Penner as many times as it takes to be able to accurately, dispassionately articulate to your cat, what his claims are, and then to carefully look at those claims and compare them to the apologetics scene. Even just a bit. Penner is not only arguing a set of views, he is showing contemporary Christians that we might be doing something very, very dangerous in spite of enormous efforts and money and time. If he is right, we are undermining the Gospel itself and altering the very faith we belief we are promoting.

If I had more time…
There is so much more to discuss…

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This is the issue, isn’t it? Classical apologetics seeks to ground the existence of God within the field of pure reason.

Penner can claim it cannot be done, and the one he disagrees with certainly has the epistemic right to ask why.

To confound the wisdom of the world.

It is a contradiction to treat other people like they don’t exist, when you believe other people exist.

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FYI, I’m not quite finished with the chapter, but I’m still in the convo.

Gonna finish tonight, and, if my thoughts are clear, I’ll post something later on. If not, I’ll certainly have a good response by tomorrow.

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Indeed, so much more that–at the risk of being taken seriously :grin:–as the Prime Mover of this thread, someone needs to step in and tell Real Life to give you a break! You’re wanted elsewhere far more important.

Tread carefully here, Terry, tread carefully!

  • Here’s where my proposal that “there is more than one kind of Genius” comes into play.
    • There is a set of Geniuses1, all the elements of which are bona fide Geniuses, i.e. they are born, not self-made; true diamonds in a pile of cubic zirconium knock-offs. Then there is the set of Geniuses2, the elements of which are man-made.
    • The first set can and indeed does “ground its claims in a final and absolute way outside of rational consensus”. But what that first set of Geniuses1 never does is make a positive claim about God, in general, and about the Kerygma, in particular.
    • You don’t have to believe in the crucified and resurrected Jesus to be a Genius, and you certainly don’t have to be a Genius to believe in the crucified and resurrected Jesus. And, guess what? You don’t have to be especially smart to be a Christian or an atheist, either. [Note: That’s why I was dumbfounded to hear Craig say “Paul was a genius” in the verbal exchange between Craig and Penner that I shared earlier in this thread. I’ve never thought of Paul as a Genius and have difficulty believing that he was. Knowledgeable, well-trained, intelligent? Yes, … but a Genius? I don’t see it. Paul’s motivation didn’t come from “reason”; it came from faith: initially, faith in the One God; later, faith in the crucified and resurrected Jesus.]
    • Here’s a spontaneous thought: You don’t even have to be highly motivated to be a Christian or a Genius. Motivation comes naturally: with the territory.
    • As for the second set of Geniuses, the man-made set, once again: you don’t have be a Christian to be a member of that set, and you don’t have to be a member of that second set to be a Christian. It’s that set that seeks and thrives in a crowd.
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Would you like to get an AMEN for that? I can at least second your proposal.

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Comes now the Apostle, … Who is this “babbler” and what is he babbling about?

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Yet for all your work to explain this, and I agree that there are different kinds of geniuses, Penner has a very specific definition in mind and sticks to that throughout the book.
In order to understand Penner rightly and engage with his arguments accurately, we have to stick with his definition. This is a normal, perhaps frustrating, aspect of this type of discussion which takes place over centuries and continents. Within the confines of that discussion we are constrained to work with the terms as laid out by whatever author has set the table. A lot like a contract. I promise never to call you “the party of the first part” outside of a contract we may be developing. But within the confines of the written document the participants are constrained to stick to the established language.
Sorry.
Thanks for the good word to RL. I need a break!

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A good question. If we consider reason as the way to faith, what place is there for those who struggle to understand due to diminished ability or mental incapacity. It essentially makes them less than human, and leads to the horrors of slavery, genocide, and discrimination. Does modernism breed these things as a result of valuing reason and mechanistic precision? It seems the church tends to criticize the problems of post-modernism while ignoring the horror that modernism brought.

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Right! And that’s why I realize that I am neither “a Penner-ian” or a “Craig-ian”.
Neither has my view of Geniuses or Apostles.

  • From where I sit, I see even more kinds of Apostles than of Geniuses. And one thing is clear to me: there are no Apostles of any kind without the Kerygma … none. Apostles bear witness to the crucified and resurrected Jesus or they are not Apostles. [Note: A victim who hasn’t been or isn’t proclaiming the Kerygma is not an Apostle.]
  • N.T. Wright and Tom Holland’s Youtube conversation, shared by Merv, brought home to me the role of the Kerygma in "turning the pre-modern world upside down.
  • Why, then, Apologetics? IMO, to defend the Kerygma against attack. If you’re not attacking the Kerygma, then you’re not going get any apologetics from me. But attack the Kerygma, and I’m going to holler.
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A plea for help from you all!
I keep forgetting to ask, and some discussions have demonstrated I had better finally get to it:
I need a “Klutz Level” (Logic for Dummies) explanation of the difference between “Reason” and “Rationality” (and any other form of the word that’s important but that I don’t know to ask about, because I don’t always know what I don’t know.). Everything I’m finding that probably has meaning is over my head. Sorry. But Thank You.

Absolutely, Phil!
I was actually thinking even more broadly, however. You all notice how many women are involved in the God Debates and wider apologetics movement, for example? It’s a Man’s World, Baby. (Yeah. That was sexist. I know. It was intentional.) The arena of modern apologetics is not for me, not only for all the reasons I think Penner gets right, but because I want nothing to do with the format. It’s not for lack of things to say. It’s not for lack of understanding or theology or faith in Jesus. I won’t be “manning up” any time soon. And to think a girlfriend of mine confessed a while back she found me intimidating. I was crushed.

I’m looking forward to Penner explaining more about “apostles”. I hope he does. I feel his book would be seriously incomplete without more. I wonder to what degree you and he would agree.
(And thanks for a new word. I learn stuff from you guys all the time!)

Absolutely, one has that right! How would you critique Penner’s argument regarding the genius/crowd dynamic?

I’m sorry, Mike. I don’t understand what you mean by this.

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