No. It’s my own home-spun analogy inspired by Lewis’ use of the “large house” in Mere Christianity.
Now that you’ve already looked it up for yourself … I’ll give you my own impressions of what natural theology is generally taken to be. And you’ve already caught most of it … a rational exercise (therefore intended to be universal in its scope) to appeal to what is seen by everyone in nature, and on that basis, build up an argument to lead one at least as far as “theism” (not Christianity, mind you … just “theism”). I think Romans 1:19-21… is often taken to refer to this general sort of general theism.
The reason modern (all Christian?) apologists love to start there is because they see atheism as their main target audience, and therefore - would find the ostensible universal appeal of this natural theology to be the best starting point. After all, …if we can just get all you atheists to even just believe there is a Creator God at all - that would seem to be the largest hurdle for so many these days, and accomplishing that, we can always then try to get you to take the next step toward Christianity and Christ then perhaps on other grounds.
There is a certain logic to all that. In the apologist’s mind you can’t get to the gospels without going through Genesis first. And it throws them all out of sorts (seems to fly in the face of that kind of rationality) to suggest that one might start with Christ, and through Christ be introduced to God (and by definition then, a very Christian-situated theism - not just any theism that requires subseqent steps to get itself realized.)
I’m very much on board with the latter approach, and if I’m not mistaken, that’s very much Penner’s program too.
Dale, I think you should just get and read the book or go to the Internet Archive copy I linked in the OP. You’re getting bits and pieces of the intro out of context.
The ontological and cosmological arguments are of a deductive nature and don’t readily depend on observations about nature, other than there is a world with things that contingently exist.
I understand not buying the ticket, even though it’s free for admission, and I can appreciate the bias not to enter given how Hitchens, Harris, and Dawkins all allege to have proven the arguments to be invalid.
To add to what I said earlier… that (for the modern Christian apologist) you can’t get to the gospels without going through Genesis …
I can hear Penner adding: and you can’t get to Genesis (on the apologist’s terms) without going through the conditioned human intellect. Specifically - the intellect conditioned into a modernist view of the world and of the human mind.
So in the end (still me attempting to ‘channel’ Penner here) - not only is the foundation not Christ; it isn’t even the Bible. The foundation for it all is the enlightenment-conditioned human intellect.
Oh, super! Thank you for taking the book on. I thought you were only working from the conversation here. I think you will start to see something perhaps resembling what you are getting at starting about chapter 3. However, I won’t pretend that Penner is going to meet all of your (or any of our) criteria. So far, though, he is critiquing and dismantling modern apologetic methods, which also don’t meet your criteria. I hope you’ll stick with it, and find something of value. But to each reader his book and to each reader its book.
That is one reason that I’m not buying into Penner yet, because the mandate to remember God’s activity in his people’s lives rather predates that, and those activities are communicable still.
The only thing I’m not entering is any debate about what tautologies allegedly tell us about the non natural basis for nature. I’m no more interested in hearing from the four horse-■■■■ men of the atheist apocalypse than I am in hearing from Craig. I think a respect is due for a mystery’s modesty. Nothing shows it is or isn’t true. If that makes you want to join rank’s with Hitchins’ lot you go right ahead. They are all baloney salesmen on both sides of the debate.
Talk of how there couldn’t be nothing unless some completely formed very powerful creator was actually hiding out in that nothing all along puts me to sleep. I already think there is something more but I don’t think it was there even before the nothing and of course there never was nothing. What I think it is is a mystery. “I am that which I am” says it all. Christianity can be true and transformative and life affirming. But that kind is hard to find. Being human is not easy or trivial and signing on to an off the rack belief system won’t in itself change that. What you believe is not as important as how or why, and if it’s your rational mind assenting to these truths then they won’t have the power get you there.
It’possible for the arguments to be valid and not necessarily prove God’s existence. Some ideas may be disproved and some ideas may be supported. There’s a real irony and that’s all part of the grand mystery.
There can still be plenty of mystery whilst still knowing what’s knowable. And mysteries don’t need to be modest, just inscrutable, but that’s probably redundant. With plenty of mystery, Truth humbled himself with incomparable modesty and allowed himself to be crucified.
Well I think I’ll set that aside to get back to this interesting book. I will endeavor to ignore further tangents.
Regarding the discussion questions I’d just like to say I experimented with answering for myself just what might come of it. As a former math teacher I haven’t used anything like this to promote learning. I think it actually does help to clarify what one thinks. These were the questions Kendal suggested if anyone else wants to try it.
What can End mean in the book title?
What point does Penner make, using MacIntyre’s fable?
What does Penner claim is the problem with Modern (not “contemporary”) apologetics? Why does he claim this?
What connection does Penner make between postmodernism and Christian apologetics?
Based on Penner’s description of the rest of the chapters of the book, what are you most looking forward to reading about?
What questions do you hope the book will address and/or answer?
What, in any of that makes you averse toward Penner? Because what you just said there sounds exactly like the sort of witness that Penner will be promoting. As long as you’re speaking of simple personal witness and testimony that doesn’t dispose of modesty and attempt to inflate itself into a universal compulsion for everybody else.
This is a subject (explicit or not) in the book, if not the subject.
Labeling it a tangent and one that you will ignore confuses me when you brought up the arguments in reply to a comment on natural theology from a different user.
I’d forgotten what the distinction was that Penner may have made between ‘contemporary’ and ‘modern’. But in any case, my summary of the fault he finds with modern apologetics is that it turns our witness to each other into an intellectual exercise (the province then of geniuses) and requires the rest of us who may lack the requisite genius to trust and follow those geniuses; trusting that the arguments so constructed then are going to be worthy foundations for our faith. Our faith then has a founding on human rationality - privileging those of us if we happen to have greater access into that.
I hear him saying that postmodernism is what we are engaging in whenever we turn our critical self-reflective gaze on modernism itself - which is a necessary thing to do if we are to clear away some modernist baggage that has become affixed to us almost to the point to where we consider it as having always been a part of us. Penner alleges that some or much of this baggage will actually make a life of genuine faith and relationship with Christ much more difficult, and has indeed brought us to a point where the default positions for enlightenment minds is skepticism, and belief is considered an aberration. Penner lays this situation at the feet of modernism and our Christian complicity in that with modern apologetics.
I would say that sort of “simple witness” is part of apologetics, modern or otherwise, and I guess having read only through Chapter 1, that isn’t far enough yet to see that he allows for it, much less Kierkegaard. And I don’t know why it would be construed as a universal compulsion any more inflated than Psalm 19:1-2, but just as reality complementary to it.
I have some familiarity with Kierkegaard’s ideas. He’s a very interesting thinker. When I tried to study some of his works, I found him incredibly difficult to read. So I eventually gave up. I’ve accumulated most of what I know about him from third parties.
I like his distinction between “Christianity” and “Christendom.” As if these are two seperate enterprises… worthy of differentiation. (They may even work counter to one another.) One of the intriguing things about Kierkegaard (to me) is that he isn’t an apologist. He resorts to a very basic way of professing Christianity that does not involve evangelism or apologetics.
I never noticed that distinction. I would have thought they’d be synonymous. But really it’s “modern” and “enlightenment” he has been using interchangeably. Presumably someone could currently/contemporaneously engage in apologetics as a Christian from a premodern, modern or postmodern POV.
I want to think about this some more but tonight I have a zoom meeting with my Hort group, the one I decided not to attend live with the new Omicron variants running rampant locally.
I think the way scientism distorts thinking about science with an over confident excessive reliance on rational approaches could also distort the way we look at ultimate truths. For @vulcanlogician’s benefit I should say I’m using “ultimate truths” to refer to bedrock beliefs we realize we hold which influence how we prioritize where we focus our attention and energy in life. So more about operational personal truths than generalized descriptive truths.
I don’t want to ignore this post but exploring or reacting to our personal differences in philosophy isn’t what I want to do in this thread. So this will be all I have to say in that direction on this thread.