RAPID RESPONSE REPORT

 

DEFENDING HISTORIC CHRISTIANITY IN A POSTMODERN WORLD

 

4/9/2001 #12

 

Editor:  Bill Crouse

 

DEFENDING THE FAITH:  In the First Century Part Four

 

Consider the following scenario:  You are living in Ephesus (western Turkey).  You were converted from paganism (essentially polytheism, or animism) two years ago.  You are under the authority of the Roman empire; Nero is in power; the date is about 65 A.D.  You have a growing number of believers coming to your house each week to worship Jesus.  Your neighbor, whom you've known for many years, has heard that Christians were blamed for the burning of Rome, and he knows that Rome is cracking down on this new cult which worships another "Lord" other than Caesar.  He sees you sitting under your grape arbor one sunny day and he comes over to talk.  He gets right to the point; he wants to know why you have decided to worship a Jew from the far-off province of Palestine.

 

Your neighbor is asking you to justify your faith in Christ.  How would you answer?  Here's how I believe a Biblical defense would proceed:  You would start with a testimony of your own conversion, how you heard the evangelist (possibly Paul himself), how you were convicted deep in your soul that idols were nothing more than images made by men, and that indeed you became convinced that all that exists is the result of one God and that you were responsible to this God. You then tell your neighbor that you became aware that you had offended this God by worshiping the creature rather than the Creator.  Through the evangelist you were informed that this God revealed Himself in his son, Jesus Christ, born as a man, and that He died on a Roman cross as a sacrifice for your sins.  You knew this to be true because God raised Him from the dead.  You then adjure your neighbor that he too is culpable to this one true God, and that he and his family should repent now because God will one day judge the world with justice.

 

Ok, some comments about the major points above:  First, be aware that a testimony in itself is not a defense; it's a testimony!  Of course a testimony can and should be a part of  your defense.  Secondly, the starting point is declaring the invisible uncreated God who is the creator of all that is.  If this God created everything, then everything is His, and the meaning of all that is, is the meaning He attaches to it.  It is not insignificant that the Bible begins with this declaration (Gen 1:1) as well as John's Gospel (John 1:1-4).  I believe we also have a model in approaching pagans in Acts 17, where Paul in Athens answers the exact inquiry that we noted above in our witness scenario.  Paul uses something he notes in their culture (a monument to the unknown god) to begin his defense.  He says (vs.23) "what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you."  In vss. 24-31, Paul makes the following points:  (1) God, the Supreme Sovereign Creator of all things in general is the Creator of mankind in particular, (2) All men are created in God's image, i.e., "we are his offspring, (3) In the light of the above, Paul declares the need for repentance, (4) Lastly, he mentions the resurrection.

 

If you have ever studied philosophy, even just an introductory course, you might recall that the number one problem is the fact of existence, that something is here rather than nothing (Sartre has written extensively about this).  If it is the number one problem, and I believe it is, then it only makes sense to begin there.  Paul openly declares that he has the answer.  In his letter to the Romans  (Chapter 1) Paul gives us more details as to why the Creator-creature distinction is so important.  Vss. 18-23 are of utmost importance to apologists.  A mastery of the content of this passage should be priority for all apologists and evangelists.  Paul is basically saying here that all men already know of the existence of God, and that they suppress this truth and worship the creature rather than the Creator.  They know about God innately and from the infallible witness of nature ("God has made it plain").  The Scripture says men know this so well that they are "without excuse."  I know of no commentary on this passage that I believe so eloquently captures Paul's thought than the following quote from Cornelius Van Til.  Read it carefully:

"I take what the Bible says about God and his relation to the universe as unquestionably true on its own authority.  The Bible requires men to believe that he exists apart from and above the world and that he by plan controls whatever takes place in the world. Everything in the created universe therefore displays the fact that it is controlled by God, that it is what it is by virtue of the place it occupies in the plan of God.  The objective evidence for the existence of God and of the comprehensive governance of the world by God is therefore so plain that he who runs may read.  Men cannot get away from this evidence.  They see it round about them.  They see it within them.  Their own constitution so clearly evinces the facts of God's creation of them and control over them that there is no man who can possibly escape observing it.  If he is self-conscious at all he is also God-conscious.  No matter how men may try they cannot hide from themselves the fact of their own createdness.  Whether men engage in inductive study with respect to the facts of nature about them or engage in analysis of their own self-consciousness they are always face to face with God their maker."   (The Defense of The Faith, by C. Van Til. p. 195.)

The doctrine of creationism was important in making a defense of the faith in the First Century.  It is no less in our PM world, or even if taking the Gospel to an unreached tribe.

 

(To be continued)  ("But Crouse, the First Century pagans at least believed in God, how do you start with the Creator\Creature distinction if they are atheists?"  Good question for next time.)

 

SOCIOBIOLOGY, I.E., EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY

 

Sociobiology began in the late sixties with Harvard entomologist (bug man), Edward O. Wilson.  It became a movement of sorts with the publication of Wilson's Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (1975).  Most critics back then wouldn't have predicted much of a future for sociobiology; it seemed too easy to refute.  It still does, but it still endures, and has achieved new popularity under a different moniker: evolutionary psychology.  The airwaves abound with new EP discoveries that would fall in the category of junk science except that they get a lot of momentary publicity, and more and more academics are buying into these extreme Darwinian assumptions.  Here's an example of the latest EP pronouncement from last week:  "Men Can Smell Fertility, Study Says." 

 

Evolutionary psychology, formerly known as sociobiology, is an extreme form of behaviorism.  It believes all behavior originates at the level of DNA.  For old behaviorism the dictator was the environment; with EP, the DNA.  Our bodies are only instruments for the transmission of our DNA.  The goal is to leave as large a gene pool in future generations as possible.  All behavior is explained as some sort of act of survival (See again the above article on smell).  Sociobiology, i.e., EP, reminds me of Freudian psychology, a lot of speculation, but little science.  In fact, many critics openly refer to it as a new religion.  E.O. Wilson's book, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge certainly does nothing to dispel that charge.  In fact, you won't find a better work of metaphysics outside of the Himalayas!   Like most reductionist theories there is no room for falsification.  There is literally nothing, potentially or otherwise, which could falsify their conclusions.  For the PM all actions are political.  For EP, all acts are acts of survival and all life reduces to biology and physics.  My question then, is why survive?  Why is this the highest value?  Why does DNA want to survive?  It not only reminds me of Freudian psychology for its lack of science, but as Bethell points out in the article below, it is the new astrology.  The ancients believed that heavenly bodies shaped character "so today mysterious emanations from molecular objects are thought to do the same."  There are two current articles on the subject of EP that we recommend to bring  you up-to-date on the movement and its critics.  The first is written by Andrew Ferguson in The Weekly Standard.  "Evolutionary Psychology and Its True Believers."  I can't say enough good things about this article.

 

The second article is by science writer, Tom Bethell, in First Things.  "Against Sociobiology."  This article is in the same class as Ferguson's. http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0101/articles/bethell.html

 

 

The Achilles heel of EP, like most false worldviews is ethical.  Remember, the outrage last year when the book The Natural History of Rape: Biological Bases of Sexual Coercion was published?  Given the worldview of EP rape could never be punished!  There was a devastating review of this book by Jerry Coyne, "Of Vice and Men," in The New Republic.  It's not available on the web so you will have to find a hard copy (4/3/00).  However, here are two other articles that review the reviews:  http://www.fair.org/extra/0005/thornhill.html

 

Here's some typical C.S. Lewis logic that I think applies to this sort of materialism:   "If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain, I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true...hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms."(Miracles, p.22).  

 

 

OTHER SOURCES AND ARTICLES

 

One of the reasons for RRR is to alert busy people like yourself to significant articles and literature that enhance your understanding of contemporary culture and its trends.  When we choose articles we do so from a stack that ranges anywhere from 6 to 12 inches thick.  We read and go through a lot of paper to give you what we hope is the cream.  Needless to say, we are about 5 years behind in our filing.  If you read in the newspaper someday that "man drowns in paper in his own office" it's probably me!  All that aside, I'm excited to recommend the above and the following unusually good articles:

 

Do you work with college students?  Teach them? Have college aged kids? You may be interested in the four-part article by David Brooks in The Atlantic Monthly (April issue).  Brooks says he " went to Princeton University to see what the young people who are going to be running our country in a few decades are like."  His observations and conclusions are not unique to Princeton.  In Part one of The Organization Kid, Brooks gives his a general survey of the daily routine of several students.  In Part two he writes about the way this generation of young people were raised.  His observations here, in my opinion, are well worth your time.  He believes they were raised on the three pillars of science, safety and achievement.  I predict that most of you will break into smiles as you read this!  Part three is about the moral life of today's college student, and here I thought his observations were much too optimistic and weak.  In Part four his observations are poignant to say the least.  I was a little put out again by the optimism;  I got the impression he thinks the next century will duplicate the optimism of the19th Century, however, his ending expresses some doubts.  If I were the head of a school, or a pastoral staff, I would make this fine article required reading.  Atlantic Monthly comes through again.

 

 

We've all read in the papers that the Human Genome has been mapped.  Right?  Well, more and more scientists are saying the project was an example of bad science.  The project concluded that there are only about 30,000 human genes, about twice that of a worm.  Some scientists claim as much as two-thirds were missed.  See the provocative article by the same Tom Bethell as above, in The American Spectator.  "A Map to Nowhere: The Genome isn't a Code and We Can't Read it."  Unfortunately, this article is not online.  You will have to get the magazine at a news stand, or find it in a library.

 

 

For Christ and His Kingdom