What Makes Something 'Christian'?

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In a previous post I argued that it’s not always “lame” (to quote Gregory Thornbury, President of The Kings College) to use 'Christian' as an adjective. While I did provide an example of at least one case where it could be helpful (e.g., “Christian philosophy”), I didn’t say much about what makes something Christian. To fix that shortcoming it might be helpful to consider a comment attributed to the President of my own school, Gary Nelson. During a forum this past January, President Nelson spoke about what makes, and what doesn’t make, for a “Christian Seminary.”1 The Tyndale Seminary Student Association relayed part of his talk at the forum in the tweet below.

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Comparing Donald Trump to Hitler Isn't Helpful

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Let me state this right from the start: I think Donald Trump is a racist, a sexist, and is firmly committed to a misguided nationalism. I think it's a mistake for Christians to go out of their way to vote for a person like Donald Trump. But, given the alternative, I also understand why some feel forced to do just that. However, I think it's wrong — and not just a mistake — for Christians to publicly support a morally abhorrent person like Donald Trump (and to encourage others to do the same).

As soon as it became clear that Trump was not just a side-show, but a real contender for the nomination, I have been firmly committed to the Never Trump cause. Today I am only more firmly committed to it.

With all of that said, trying to sway people away from Trump by comparing his rise to Hitler's is not at all helpful. Donald Trump is not Hitler and could not govern as Hitler did. He cannot wreck America like Hitler wrecked Germany.

Finish reading this entry at the Christian Post ->

Wayne Grudem’s Deplorable Argument for Trump

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Wayne Grudem is a very well known and highly respected theologian who has been at the center of attention for his support of Trump (July 28), then for his rejection of Trump (Oct. 9), and now for again supporting “Trump’s policies”(Oct. 19). Now, to begin, this is not a good look for Grudem. Did the tapes that led to his rejection of Trump really reveal anything new about Trump? Of course not. They simply confirmed what we already knew about him—his moral character is, let’s just say, not what we would hope for in a President. What new information came out about Trump between when the tapes were released and now? As far as I can tell, not much. So maybe writing this post is a waste of time since Grudem may very well write another post next week again retracting his support for “Trump’s policies.”Flip-flopping aside, what do we make of Grudem’s new stance that if we don’t like either candidate then we should simply vote for Trump’s policies? Well, unfortunately for the American voter, Grudem’s case is a complete failure for anyone who doesn’t accept consequentialist-based reasoning. Grudem considers twelve reasons one might refrain from voting for Trump, but I’m only going to focus on the two that are most closely connected to my decision to not vote for Trump.

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A Few Thoughts on 'Kitchener: Hero and Anti-Hero'

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A few weeks ago Tyndale University College held a book launch for three of my colleagues: Elizabeth Davey (A Persevering Witness), Natasha Duquette (Veiled Intent), and Brad Faught (Kitchener: Hero and Anti-Hero). I was asked by Professor Faught to say a few words about his new book at the launch and since I so thoroughly enjoyed reading it, I thought I’d share my (lightly edited) comments from the book launch here.

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Christian Philosophy and "Lame" Adjectives

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Is that true? Is ‘Christian’ a lame adjective? Well, according to Gregory Thornbury, President of The Kings College, it is. Is that right? Is it always a “lame” adjective?

President Thornbury is almost certainly right that ‘Christian’ can be a lame adjective. For example, labeling an artist “Christian” can sometimes serve as code for “it’s not very good, but cut him some slack because he’s one of us.” Here there are some striking parallels to how many in Canada use ‘Canadian’ to label their fellow actors, musicians, comedians, etc.

Nearly every day I listen to the Toronto broadcast of CBC Radio on the drive home and they regularly feature an “Artist of the Week.” Though this isn’t always the case, more often than not these artists are quite bad. The lyrics tend to be corny and the performances uninspired. Why put up with this mediocrity? Because, well, they’re Canadian performers. They're not very good, but they're Canadian. The same goes with Canadian shows you find on TV. They’re almost always really bad (which is why the federal government has to mandate that each channel broadcast a certain percentage of Canadian shows— If they were good, the broadcasters would want to show them and not have to be forced to do so). Why would anyone ever watch them? Because, well, they're Canadian shows.

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Geisler's Gap

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In the last twenty to thirty years there has been an enormous increase in the number of people engaged in various apologetics-focused ministries. Though it would be hard to trace this increase to any one single person, if you were to make a list of the four or five most influential apologists during that time, Norman Geisler would certainly have to be included on it. For me personally, his co-authored (with Paul Feinberg) book Introduction to Philosophy: A Christian Perspective was the first book in philosophy I ever read and I found it quite helpful. In general, I think today’s aspiring apologists would be well served to model their careers after Geisler.

Overall, I think this rise in apologetics is a good thing. The Christian worldview is being attacked from all sides and the Church needs people who are equipped and able to respond to these attacks. Unfortunately, the quality of some of the arguments by Christian apologists simply doesn’t pass muster. This puts us in an interesting position because we now need to not only respond to those attacking the Christian worldview, but we also need to carefully evaluate the specific arguments of our fellow apologists. Because we agree with their conclusions it’s tempting to ignore fellow Christians’ bad arguments for the existence of God or bad responses to non-believers’ arguments against the existence of God. However, it’s important that we evaluate these arguments too so as to not bring reproach on those arguments that are actually pretty good.Norman Geisler is not typically one whose arguments stand in need of critique. However, even the best of philosophers can make mistakes from time to time and so, in the spirit of trying to ensure all our defenses of Christianity are the very best, I offer a small critique of an argument Geisler presents in his book If God, Why Evil?

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A More Serious Approach to Integration

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At any Christian university you’ll hear a lot about the “integration of faith and learning” (and if you don’t, transfer elsewhere as quickly as possible), but unfortunately there may not be much said about what that actually looks like. Because I’m a graduate of two Christian universities, have taught at one since 2008, and have met scores of Christian academics at various conferences over the years, I’ve had the opportunity to both talk about integration and see the various ways people practice it. In my experience, it seems that many people are operating with a deficient view of integration. What they’re doing is good and right, but it’s not all they could be doing.

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Always Be Careful When Arguing with Idealists

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I just finished reading Thomas Bartlett's Memoirs of the Life, Character, and Writings of Joseph Butler (published in 1830 and, so, available for free via Google Books) and ran into an interesting account of Malebranche and Berkeley.

According to Bartlett, sometime during the fall of 1715 Bishop Berkeley went to meet Malebranche in Paris and that "Malebranche had the pleasure of beholding the idea of Berkeley in the Divinity, and Berkeley was presented by the Divinity with the idea of Malebranche" (original emphasis that, if you're familiar with their respective philosophies, makes the phrasing quite clever). Unfortunately, the wide-ranging differences between their systems had quite the negative impact on Malebranche.

Bartlett recounts the exchange between the two famous philosophers as follows:

[Berkeley] found [Malebranche] in his cell, cooking, in a small pipkin, a medicine for a disorder with which he was then troubled, an inflammation of the lungs. The conversation naturally turned on [Berkeley's] system, of which the other had received some knowledge, from a translation just published. But the issue of this debate proved tragical to poor Malebranche. In the heat of disputation, he raised his voice so high, and gave way so freely to the natural impetuosity of a man of parts, and a Frenchmen, that he brought on himself a violent increase of his disorder, which carried him off a few days after (Bartlett, 257–258).

I guess one could say that, according to Bartlett, Berkeley's idealism is what killed Malebranche! So, what does that the tell you and me? Always be careful when arguing with idealists.

The Perils of 'Pop' Philosophy

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More than once I've heard (or read) people complain that too many popular writings/talks by Christian apologists lack the care and precision their topics require. While it's important to address difficult issues in ways that non-specialists can understand, one must take care to ensure that simplification does not end up as distortion. (It's rarely helpful to present ideas that are easy to refute, but not actually believed by anyone.) Unfortunately, I have to agree that this happens far too regularly within apologetics circles. However, this is not simply a problem that arises among ill-equipped Christian apologists. In what follows I aim to show that this is also a problem among those critiquing Christianity (or just critiquing arguments in its favor) and I hope to use a prominent atheistic philosopher as an example of what we Christian philosophers should be doing more regularly.

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On Moser's Rejection of Natural Theology

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Not too long ago I read Paul Moser’s recent book, The Evidence for God: Religious Knowledge Reexamined (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010) and overall I think it’s a fabulous book that is worth reading carefully. He provides an insightful critique of both “nontheistic naturalism” and fideism (chapters two and three, respectively) that should be helpful to anyone interested in the philosophy of religion (his critique of Kierkegaard’s “leap of faith” is devastating). His rejection of fideism should not, however, lead one to think he’s a supporter of natural theology. He rejects that too (chapter four), and quite forcefully.1 This rejection of natural theology is what I’d like to briefly address in the remainder of this post.To be clear, this shouldn’t be read as a full evaluation of Moser’s rejection of natural theology. He’s simply written far too much on the subject for me to tackle in a blog post. In what follows I want to address what seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding, at least as expressed in The Evidence for God, of 1) the aim of natural theology and 2) its scope.

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Enns's Invalid Inference

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We philosophers at Tyndale University College try to regularly point out to students that taking basic courses in critical reasoning and logic can be immensely valuable—even for non-philosophers. In particular, students that plan to enter some type of vocational ministry or plan to pursue an academic career in biblical studies or theology really should become well versed in basic elements of reasoning. We stress this point because, unfortunately, we too often come across eminent scholars that have committed rudimentary errors in reasoning. Take, for example, Paul Enns. In his book The Moody Handbook of Theology, Paul Enns writes the following about covenant theology.

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Dualism and the Goodness of Heaven

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One of the courses I teach at Tyndale University College is Philosophy of Mind. We spend all semester talking about the common options one might take when it comes to the mind's relationship to the body (assuming there is such a thing as a 'mind'). Given that Tyndale is a Christian university, I like to conclude the term with a discussion of how one's account of mind and body makes sense of the resurrection. To that end, I have my students read Trenton Merricks's, "The Resurrection of the Body and the Life Everlasting."[1] I think he does a good job of setting up the various issues, the downside is that in it he also makes his case for physicalism (I say it's a downside because I think physicalism is false—other physicalists will obviously see this as a benefit!).One way the Christian physicalists might argue for their view is to try and show that physicalism is consistent with Christianity. That is, there is nothing in the Christian worldview that logically precludes one from being a physicalist. Merricks, however, does much more than that. He also argues that physicalism makes more sense of certain Christian ideas than does dualism. I think this attempt is admirable since holding views that are merely logically compatible with Christianity is a pretty low bar.[2] Ideally, our philosophical views will also enable us to have a better understanding of our Christian beliefs. In what follows I'd like to examine one of Merricks's arguments for this contention and state why I think it fails.[3]

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Peter Enns Doesn't Believe in God Anymore?

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Even though my last post was also a critique of Peter Enns, I promise that this blog will be more than just an avenue through which I can critique Enns. However, I would like to say a few words about a post he wrote earlier this month, "Why I Don't Believe in God Anymore." I should start by saying that we shouldn't be worried about the title of that post. Even though Enns says he doesn't believe in God anymore, it's clear that he does. He just doesn't recognize that his trust in God requires believing in God. But we're getting slightly ahead of ourselves. Before we get to what's wrong with the ideas he expresses, let's take a look at them first.

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Peter Enns, Adam, and an Overcommitment to Science

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Last week I had the opportunity to read a paper at the Northeast Region meeting of the Evangelical Theological/Philosophical Society. I got a lot of helpful comments on my paper and that alone would've made the trip worthwhile. However, the conference also featured two plenary sessions with very prominent scholars on a controversial topic and these sessions were very interesting. For now, I want to reflect a bit on the first session by Peter Enns in which he outlined why he no longer believes in a literal Adam.

According to Enns, discussions of whether there was a literal Adam must account for both the reality of evolution and the whole of biblical scholarship. Now in many respects one shouldn't be surprised at Enns's conclusion There was no literal Adam given his stated starting point for the discussion Evolution is true. Throughout his talk Enns regularly referred to the need for dialogue between biblical scholarship and various other disciplines. In this context, of course, that discipline is science, but one could pretty easily see how the point could be extended to psychology, sociology, history, etc. For what it's worth, I think Enns is right about this. In formulating one's worldview one ought to take into account all truths about this world, no matter the discipline from which they are acquired. However, what we'll see is that Enns appears to be committed to a problematic way in which that dialogue is supposed to proceed. Before we get to that, it may be helpful to consider a major concern that was raised at the conference.

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