Book Write-Up: Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview

J.P. Moreland and William Lane Craig.  Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview.  IVP Academic, 2003.  See here to purchase the book.

J.P. Moreland and William Lane Craig are reputable philosophers and apologists.  This book, Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview, covers a variety of philosophical issues and views and discusses how they can relate to a Christian worldview.

The book is 626 pages and has 31 chapters, along with “Suggestions for Further Reading” concerning each chapter.  I will not comment on all 31 chapters, but I will say something about each “Part,” as the book is organized into six Parts.  Then, I will offer some general impressions about the book.

Part I defines philosophy, justifies it from a Christian perspective, and sets forth rules of logic (in which you use letters and symbols to represent arguments).  My favorite passage in this Part is when Moreland and Craig respond to a Christian argument that human reason is corrupt as a result of the Fall, and thus philosophy is useless.  Moreland and Craig note that the Bible employs reason and logic, even when speaking to the sinful and unregenerate.

Part II concerns epistemology: can we know anything, and how do we know what we know?  It critiques skepticism and postmodernism, while also discussing Alvin Plantinga’s view that naturalism should logically lead to skepticism.  It discusses justification: are internal criteria (i.e., our senses, our minds) sufficient for us to say that we know something (i.e., that the ball is red), or are criteria external to us (i.e., we see a red ball because red light bounces off of the ball) essential?  This Part also explores religious epistemology: do we know that certain religious claims are true, and, if so, how?  The exploration of religious epistemology largely covers Alvin Plantinga’s work.

Some things stood out to me in this Part.  First, the authors said that skepticism and postmodernism are self-refuting because they make the truth claim that accurate truth claims are impossible.  I rolled my eyes at this, expecting that to be their sole attempt to refute skepticism and postmodernism, but I was wrong.  They justify this argument, addressing the counterargument that we should make an exception for the skeptical truth claim.  They also interacted with arguments for skepticism.  Second, the authors quoted a passage in which Charles Darwin expressed a fear that evolutionary naturalism challenges epistemology.  In a July 3, 1881 letter to William Graham Down, Darwin stated: “With me the horrid doubt always arises whether the conviction of man’s mind, which has been developed from the mind of lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy.  Would anyone trust in the convictions of a monkey’s mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?”  Third, in discussing Plantinga’s argument that naturalism can lead to skepticism about evolutionary theory, I saw that Plantinga employed a few bizarre hypotheticals (i.e., suppose you have an animal that feels pleasure when it is attacked).  Craig and Moreland themselves occasionally use bizarre hypotheticals.  It’s probably something that philosophers do.  It still strikes me as bizarre.

Part III is about metaphysics.  One chapter spent a lot of time on the different kinds of nominalism as they relate to the color red: can we say that there is a general category of red, or should we reject the concept of general categories because each object is unique?  In reading this, I wanted to throw up my hands and say, “Look, there are objects that have different shades of red!  Why does this have to be so difficult?”  This Part also discussed the mind-body problem: the question of whether humans have souls or just physical brains.  On page 300, Moreland and Craig state: “Just because computers can imitate intelligence, or because we continue to learn more about the brain and its interaction with the soul, it does not follow that there is no soul and no enduring self.”  I think these things should be taken very seriously, though, since they relate to the question of whether the mind can be attributed to the brain, and whether the brain can produce free thoughts (contrary to determinism, which Moreland and Craig believe materialism entails).  Another topic that this Part covered was “Free Will and Determinism.”  My understanding is that Moreland and Craig support libertarianism, the idea that humans have free will and are the authors of their choices.  Yet, they are fair to compatibilism (the idea that choices are caused) and wrestle with its arguments.  Do they present a libertarianism that acknowledges that certain factors influence our choices?  Maybe, but I do not clearly recall their presentation of it.

Part IV concerns philosophy of science.  I would like to make five points about this Part.  First, Moreland and Craig provide an effective section about the different conceptualizations of “laws” and “theories.”  As Moreland and Craig point out, most scientists reject the idea that theories are mere guesses, which become laws after being proven.  This section was informative.  Second, there were places in which I thought that Moreland and Craig were flirting with creationism, anti-evolutionism, and Flood Geology, but I could be wrong on this.  They may have just been using examples of arguments that they deemed relevant to the discussion: they also cited as relevant the view that nature has flawed design and thus probably was not designed.  Third, Moreland and Craig showed how empiricism and realism can run contrary to each other.  This can initially appear counter-intuitive, since do not both acknowledge the existence of an outside world and hold that we can arrive at fairly accurate knowledge about it?  Actually, because empiricism focuses solely on what we can see, that leaves out a lot of knowledge!  Fourth, I appreciated the authors’ engagement of anti-realist arguments.  On page 334, for example, Moreland and Craig refer to an anti-realist observation that “In the history of science, many theories have explained phenomena, generated fruitful research and accurate predictions, yet were later abandoned as false.”  Fifth, the authors discuss the role of Newton’s theology in some of his scientific conclusions, and how Einstein would later disagree with Newton.  That actually came out in the first episode of the National Geographic TV series, Genius!

Part V was about ethics.  Is there an objective foundation for ethics?  Are ethics relative or absolute?  Here, I think that the authors made a special effort to convey how the other side (from their standpoint) would respond to criticisms.  There were times in reading this book when I wondered if the authors’ presentation of a perspective was complete, if an actual adherent to the perspective would accept the authors’ conceptualization of their viewpoint, or if an adherent would be able to respond to the authors’ easy knock-down punch of their ideas.  In short, would the adherents say “Wait a minute!” after reading the authors’ presentation of their position?  There was a little more back and forth in the section on utilitarianism (though, of course, Moreland and Craig are the ones summarizing the different perspectives).

I am ambivalent about some of the authors’ arguments in this Part.  Against utilitarianism’s claim that we should do what maximizes our pleasure and minimizes our pain, Moreland and Craig ask about those who find immoral acts pleasurable.  Moreland and Craig also robustly argue that egoism by itself cannot be a foundation for ethics: it can be part of the equation, but it cannot uphold ethics on its own.  Maybe they have a point here, but I wonder: Is it too much of a stretch for me to go from saying that I want good things for myself, to saying that I should want good things for others, too, since the other is just as valuable as I am?  Moreland and Craig dispute utilitarianism’s claim that we should define ethics according to what is the greatest good for the greatest number by saying that we do not always know the long-term effects of certain actions, and whether those effects are good or bad.  Perhaps, but should consequences be considered irrelevant in defining an action as moral or immoral?  If we see that an action consistently makes people miserable, should we hold out hope that eventually it might have a positive effect, or can we arrive at a fairly safe conclusion that there may be something wrong with the action?  Moreland and Craig appeal a couple of times to the value of moral intuition, and yet, in arguing against relativism, they note cultures that have a different morality.  If we all have a reliable moral intuition, then how do we account for the cultures that have practices that are morally offensive, from a number of people’s standpoints?  Finally, Moreland and Craig are trying to argue that God needs to exist for there to be a foundation for objective morality.  I question how much the existence of God actually solves.  Granted, you have God, and God enforces morality, which comes from God’s character.  But we still have to figure out what God wants.  We have our own conceptions of God.  And there are passages in the Bible that many today find morally offensive.  Moreland and Craig undoubtedly would have their responses to these concerns: they believe that there is apologetic evidence for the biblical God, and they would have their explanations for the morally offensive passages of Scripture.  Still, I wonder: does believing in God result in an understanding of objective moral values, when there is still a lot of subjectivity in the world?  In areas, perhaps.

Part VI covers such topics as arguments for the existence of God, God’s attributes, the problem of evil, the Trinity, the relationship between Jesus’ divine and human natures at the incarnation, and Christian exclusivism.  I have some points.  First, the coverage of the cosmological and teleological arguments for the existence of God was effective.  Moreland and Craig argued that some of the models upheld by critics of these arguments themselves presume that the universe does not go back infinitely, or have some assumption of fine-tuning.  Moreland and Craig seem to consider the ontological argument to be a good argument, even though I still look at it and think, “What the heck?”  Second, Moreland and Craig were unafraid to think outside the box, and that is commendable.  They believe that God has existed in time ever since creating the universe, as opposed to being outside of time.  They also offer a rehabilitation of Apollinaris (whom has been considered a heretic) that they believe remains within orthodoxy: that Jesus can still be fully human when his mind is the divine logos, since humans are made in God’s image.  This is brilliant, but they did not offer a robust answer to the question of how Jesus’ mind can be the divine logos, and yet Jesus can still be tempted to sin, or can be afraid.  They tried to address this question, but they failed, in my opinion.  Third, I liked their argument in their discussion of the problem of evil that there are many good things in the world, that many of us, notwithstanding our suffering, consider life to be worth living.  Fourth, I did not care for their defense of Christian exclusivism.  They say that God loves everyone and wants everyone to be saved, and yet that God put those whom he knew would not believe in contexts in which they would never hear the Gospel.  Couldn’t God at least offer them an actual opportunity, if God loved them so much?

In terms of general assessments, this book is helpful in terms of the background information that it provides.  The back cover calls it an “introduction” to philosophy.  I am not sure if I would have understood it as well as I did had I not had previous exposure to the philosophical concepts in the book.  And, even then, there were parts that were over my head.  For me, the book put pieces of what I knew in context, while also exposing me to additional nuances and shades of thought.  The authors try to be lucid and in many cases succeed: I could understand the broad thrust of what they were saying, even if some of the details escaped me.  They also used examples and illustrations, which could be helpful.  Maybe a person with no exposure to philosophy could get something out of this book: he or she may have to read it slowly, though!

That said, I give the book five stars because it was informative and wrestled with different positions.

I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher.  My review is honest!

Book Write-Up: Rendering the Word in Theological Hermeneutics

Mark Alan Bowald.  Rendering the Word in Theological Hermeneutics: Mapping Divine and Human Agency.  Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2015.  See here to purchase the book.

The summary on the back cover of the book was a lot clearer than the book itself.  The summary on the back cover also seemed to have a different focus from that of the book itself.

The summary on the back cover focused on the nature of Scripture, specifically the question of whether Scripture is human or divine in its properties.  It said that Mark Alan Bowald’s answer is both.  To quote from the back cover: “When the divine inspiration of Scripture is overemphasized, the varied roles of human authors tend to become muted in our approach to the text.  Conversely, when we think of the Bible almost entirely in terms of the human authorship, Scripture’s character as the Word of God tends to play little role in our theological reasoning.”  Excellent observation!  A question one could then ask is how God inspired Scripture—-how is Scripture divine, and how is it human?

The book itself focused on something different: the reading and interpretation of Scripture.  Rather than extensively discussing the nature, properties, or inspiration of Scripture, its focus was on the way that readers approach the Bible.  Should people bracket their religious convictions in reading Scripture in an attempt to be “objective”?  Or should theology play a role in how one (or a community) interprets Scripture?  Does God play a role in how a Christian community reads and interprets Scripture, guiding the interpretive process and leading the community?  Is there authority in how a religious community, as a religious community, reads Scripture?  Is what the text actually says relevant, or does that become lost in a sea of interpretive subjectivity?

Triangles occur often in this book.  Bowald interacts with the thought of George Lindbeck, Hans Frei, Kevin Vanhoozer, Francis Watson, Stephen Fowl, David Kelsey, Werner Jeanrond, Karl Barth, James K.A. Smith, and Nicholas Wolterstorff.  Bowald plots their thought onto a triangle.

The triangles’ three points correspond to three approaches to the text.  One point is the text itself.  This point relates to trying to determine what the text itself says and means, objectively-speaking.  This can include the historical-critical or the grammatical-historical method of reading the Bible, or it can include simply looking at the text itself (new criticism).

The second point relates to readers’ reading and interpretation of the text.  This point coincides with questions about whether there really is an objective reading of the text.  Readers bring themselves into their reading, and they can take the text in directions that its author may not have intended.  This second point focuses on religious communities’ interpretation of the text, as religious communities.

The third point relates to God’s role in the interpretive process.  Does God play a role in guiding how religious communities interpret and apply the Bible?  If so, how?  This point can pertain to the question of how the Bible is inspired, but, as I said, Bowald often focused on reading rather than the properties of Scripture itself.

Some of the thinkers Bowald profiles lean more towards the first point in their emphasis.  Some lean more towards the second point.  Some interact more with the third point.  After describing and assessing their thought, Bowald himself says that all three points are important.  Regarding the first point, we should be trying to understand what Scripture means.  Bowald does not support bracketing off theology in attempting to do this, for he believes that proper theology can place Scriptural passages in context: as Aristotle said, understanding the character of the author can help readers understand the text.  But the second point is also significant: how Christians and their communities approach and read the text.  For Bowald, they should be reading the text devotionally, prayerfully, and with receptivity to God.  And, of course, point three is significant because God guides the interpretive process.

The book’s asset is that it discusses the views of various thinkers, who are significant in discussions about theology and biblical hermeneutics.  Bowald’s contribution could be that he challenges prevalent interpretations of these thinkers.  According to Bowald, some believe that Hans Frei initially leaned towards point one of the triangle (the text’s meaning) and later moved towards point two (reader response to the text).  Bowald, by contrast, maintains that Frei did not completely abandon point one, even after moving towards point two.  The standard characterization of Karl Barth’s thought is that Barth said that Jesus, not the Bible, was the Word of God, and that God uses the Bible to instruct people, apart from any divine properties that Scripture itself has.  While Bowald acknowledges that there are passages in Barth’s writing that point in that direction, he raises the possibility that Barth may have believed that Scripture was the Word of God, in some sense.  Then there is the question of whether Nicholas Wolterstorff believes that the Bible itself is inspired (and if so, how?), or thinks that humans wrote the Bible and God appropriated the text for God’s purposes.

There were things that Bowald said that made me curious, even if I did not understand them entirely.  There is the question of how Christianity can affect hermeneutics, not only of the Bible, but of texts in general.  Can Christianity make people better readers, in the sense of making them more charitable?  One thinker believed so, and his emphasis was on what Christ did on the cross.  At some point, Kevin Vanhoozer, seemed to relate hermeneutics of texts in general, and texts themselves, to God’s order of creation.  I was unclear as to whether Vanhoozer was saying that hermeneutics manifest the orderliness that God intends, or that texts themselves are divinely-inspired or reflect God, in some manner.  More reading of Vanhoozer may be in order, on my part!

In my opinion, Bowald did not adequately wrestle with the question of why biblical scholars believe interpreters should bracket their religious convictions in an attempt to read the Bible objectively.  Bowald went into reasons for Kant’s support for such an approach: Kant believed that Scripture should be evaluated according to whether it agreed with reason, and Kant preferred for interpreters to focus on what was in front of them rather than bringing larger theological issues into the picture (since there is so much that we do not know).  But there is another reason that biblical scholars believe in bracketing religious convictions in an attempt to be objective: because reading the text with a bias can get in the way of seeing what the text itself is saying!  I have seen evangelical Christians project their evangelical Christianity onto the Bible, and this can easily lead to ignoring what the text itself is saying, or trying to force the text to say something that is not apparent in the text itself.  Bowald says that he is writing a sequel, so perhaps he will address such issues in that.

The book is very abstract.  I did not follow everything, and I sometimes wondered if I would have followed it as well as I did had I not learned about literary theory in school!  It was not the clearest book in the world, and yet I could still learn from it.

I apologize for any misunderstandings or mischaracterizations of the book on my part.

I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher, in exchange for an honest review.

Book Write-Up: Common Sense, by Noah Lemos

Noah Lemos.  Common Sense: A Contemporary Defense.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

Noah Lemos is a professor of philosophy who teaches at the College of William and Mary.  I had him for a class back when I was a student at DePauw University, which was where he was teaching at the time, and which was also where he was teaching when he wrote Common Sense: A Contemporary Defense.  Come to think of it, he may have mentioned this project to the class of his that I was taking.  The class was about good and evil, and it was there that I learned about the thoughts of Plato and Aristotle.  We also read some Dante and Augustine.

Common Sense: A Contemporary Defense is a defense of the common sense tradition within philosophy.  Essentially, the common sense tradition affirms that certain common sense propositions count as knowledge, and that one can just assume them when one is doing philosophy.  These propositions include: that there is an external world outside of us, that there are other people, that our senses and our memories are rather reliable in helping us to know things, and that we should not deliberately harm another human being.  Contrary to the common sense tradition is the belief that these propositions need to be justified before one can appeal to them in philosophy, or skepticism about genuine knowledge of an external world or morality.

Dr. Lemos interacts with the thoughts of various philosophers, but the three main ones in this book are Thomas Reid, G.E. Moore, and Roderick Chisholm, who are prominent proponents of the common sense tradition.  Reid was an eighteenth-century Scottish philosopher and critic of David Hume, and his version of the common sense tradition was critiqued by Immanuel Kant.  In Common Sense: A Contemporary Defense, Dr. Lemos explores the thoughts of these three common sense philosophers and responds to their critics.  In some cases, Dr. Lemos disagrees with how Reid, Moore, and Chisholm formulate certain issues, even though he agrees with the common sense tradition itself.  Moreover, there are cases in which a common sense philosopher may support common sense on one issue, but not on another: Moore, for example, was pro-common sense when it came to epistemology (i.e., knowing that there is an external world), but not so much in the area of morality (i.e., whether we can know that certain actions are right or wrong).

Dr. Lemos’ book is quite lucid, and yet it is a book with a number of philosophical arguments, where propositions are laid out and letters can stand for certain propositions.  Consequently, there are places in the book that require extra discipline and focus for one to understand where Dr. Lemos is going.  To be honest, I did not follow all of the arguments in Common Sense, so my analysis will be limited.  But I will offer a few thoughts, from my limited perspective.

First of all, Dr. Lemos says more than once in Common Sense that, if people need to justify the knowledge that they gain from their senses, that means that children and animals do not know things, for they are not sophisticated enough to come up with an epistemological justification for what they “know” from their senses.  In one place in the book, Dr. Lemos notes that different philosophers have different epistemological justifications for their ability to know things, and Dr. Lemos seems to think that this undermines the very need for epistemological justifications for trusting our senses as means to knowledge.  Are we truly supposed to believe, after all, that children and animals do not “know” things, or that a philosopher may not legitimately know something because he happens to have the wrong epistemological justification for what he considers knowledge?  There is a part of me that can sympathize with these arguments, and there is a part of me that is not entirely convinced by them.  Just because children or animals do not know why they can trust their senses, that, in my opinion, does not necessarily mean that philosophers should not try to explain why sensory perception is reliable.  And, just because philosophers may have different (even contradictory) explanations, that does not necessarily mean that searching for a decent explanation is wrong-headed.  A significant part of academia is seeking justifications that may not occur to everyone outside of academia, of trying to discover the “why?” behind the “what?”  Scholars may disagree about the “why?”, but that does not mean that searching for the “why?” is unimportant.  As I will explain later in this post, I sympathize with the common sense tradition, as Dr. Lemos has explained it, but I was not fully satisfied with these particular arguments (which may be due to my incomplete understanding of them).

Second, Dr. Lemos appears to confront the extremist tendencies of skeptics and critics of the common sense tradition.  Granted, not every belief that is commonly held is true, Dr. Lemos contends, but that does not mean that we cannot trust our senses or our memories.  Granted, different cultures have different moral codes, but that does not mean that we cannot say that murdering someone is wrong.  In these cases, Dr. Lemos’ arguments resembled what I have heard from professors of mine who have critiqued postmodernism: yes, there is ambiguity and subjectivity, but that does not mean that everything is ambiguous or subjective.

I found myself in sympathy with the common sense tradition, for two reasons.  First of all, Dr. Lemos quoted David Hume’s reference to an argument that the physical world is irresistible.  I do not know if David Hume himself believed this, or, if so, how that would square with Hume’s alleged skepticism (if he truly was a skeptic).  But that sort of argument makes sense to me.  I assume that the physical world exists because I cannot resist it.  I remember one guy telling a story about his first experience in a philosophy class, and the professor was saying that he did not know if a chair was truly there.  “Let me smash the chair over you, and then you can tell me whether it’s there or not!”, the student replied.  To be honest, I do not know what exactly to do with philosophical skepticism, the notion that I cannot trust that there is an external world.  I feel a need to learn about Kant’s thought primarily because it appears to be important in the world of academia (at least the humanities part of it), and that is where I am, but what am I supposed to do with his alleged belief that there is no time or space (or so Kant’s thoughts have been presented to me)?  I am all for epistemological humility, but I do not plan to live my life as if there is no external world.  Moreover, I wonder how exactly such a belief contributes to the furtherance of knowledge.  What yields, if any, does skepticism offer?  I tend to agree with the common sense tradition that I should just assume that there is an external world.  Even if my brain is in a vat somewhere, from my perspective, I still need to live in the world.  And, even if an evil genius is deluding me into thinking that the external world is real, I have found that trusting my faculties has worked for me, overall.

Second, Dr. Lemos referred in a couple of places to the argument that we have to start somewhere.  Okay, let us assume that I cannot trust my faculties without offering an epistemological justification for trusting my faculties.  To what will my epistemological arguments appeal?  To people’s faculties!  How can one escape that?  How can one justify using reason in a non-circular fashion, when one has to use reason to do so?

I did not understand everything in Common Sense, but I still profited from it, in that I learned more about philosophical schools of thought.

Book Write-Up: Biblical Hermeneutics, Five Views

Stanley E. Porter and Beth Stovell, ed.  Biblical Hermeneutics: Five Views.  Downers Grove, Illinois: IVP Academic, 2012.

I would like to thank Intervarsity Press for my review copy of this book.

As the title indicates, this view contains five views on biblical hermeneutics, which pertains to how one should interpret the Bible.

Craig L. Blomberg defends a Historical-Critical/Grammatical approach, which seeks to understand what the authors of biblical documents were saying to their audience within their original historical context.  F. Scott Spencer advocates for a Literary/Postmodern view, one that looks more at the final form of the text rather than the  stages preceding the text’s final form.  This approach highlights such issues as the portrayal of characters, plot, and the ways that a certain biblical text could be read in dialogue with another biblical text.  Merold Westphal’s contribution to the book is an explanation of his Philosophical/Theological view.  Westphal discusses how we all have different perspectives when reading a text, and he also stresses the importance of uncovering, not just what the biblical texts meant within their original historical contexts, but what they mean today.  Echoing Nicholas Wolterstorff, Westphal contends that God can use the biblical texts to instruct the church, even if that instruction may depart from the texts’ original meaning.  Richard B. Gaffin, Jr. presents a Redemptive/Historical View, which affirms that the entire Bible is about redemption through Christ.  And Robert W. Wall explains his Canonical View, which highlights the importance of Christian community in interpreting and applying biblical texts, while also stressing the significance of the canon.  Wall sees significance in the order of the New Testament books, for example, and he believes that this, not only the texts’ original meaning, can instruct Christians.

With the exception of Merold Westphal, these contributors employ their approach to interpret Matthew 2:7-15, which contains a story about Herod and the Magi, as well as Matthew’s seemingly odd interpretation of Hosea 11:1.  Matthew applies a passage about Israel’s Exodus from Egypt to the child Jesus’ departure from Egypt after Mary and Joseph took him there to escape from King Herod’s wrath.  Craig L. Blomberg, using his Historical-Critical/Grammatical method, states that Mary and Joseph most likely fled to a Diaspora Jewish community in Egypt.  Blomberg also sees typology in Matthew’s use of Hosea 11:1: that, just as Israel’s departure from Egypt preceded the Old Covenant at Mount Sinai, so does Jesus’ departure from Egypt precede the New Covenant.  F. Scott Spencer, using his Literary/Postmodern approach, reads Matthew’s story alongside the Exodus, noting that, whereas in the Exodus the Israelites were leaving an oppressive regime in Egypt to go to Israel, in Matthew 2 two Israelites are fleeing to Egypt to escape from an oppressive ruler in Israel.  Spencer also makes fun of the Magis’ supposed wisdom, contending that they should not have been so quick to trust King Herod, since they should have known that Herod would have opposed any new Messiah as a competitor for his throne.  Spencer later in the book says that Christians can critically dialogue with this aspect of the plot to ask themselves to what extent their own devotion to Jesus “resists and/or reinforces the powers that exist in our world” (page 159).  Richard B. Gaffin, Jr. attempts to argue that Matthew’s interpretation of Hosea 11:1 is consistent with Hosea 11:1′s original meaning, since the Book of Hosea was about Israel’s departure from exile, to which Jesus’ Messiahship would be pertinent.  And Robert W. Wall uses typology to explain Matthew’s interpretation of Hosea 11:1, contending that Jesus in Matthew was a liberator from sin, as the Exodus was a liberation of the ancient Israelites from bondage.  Wall also addresses the possible significance of the Gospel of Matthew coming before Mark’s Gospel, saying that Matthew connects the New Testament with the Old Testament’s story and hopes.

On some level, there is overlap among the five approaches.  Blomberg seems to use a literary approach in his explanation of Matthew’s use of Hosea 11:1.  Spencer’s literary/postmodern method does not dismiss the importance of authorial intent, plus Spencer’s interpretations of Matthew 2:7-15 are arguably relevant to the history of first century Palestine.  And Westphal, Gaffin, and Wall do not say that the history behind the text or the text’s original meaning is unimportant.  One might think that we do not have to choose just one approach to interpreting the Bible, for all complement each other and yield valuable insights.
It is in the second part of the book that the fissures among the approaches are more apparent, however.  In this part, the contributors respond to one another.  Blomberg questions Spencer’s claim that Matthew and Hosea are in dialogue, saying that, while Matthew may be interpreting Hosea, Hosea is not engaging in any dialogue with Matthew, for the Book of Hosea and its concerns preceded the Gospel of Matthew chronologically.  Blomberg also disagrees with Wall’s implication that the shape of the canon is somehow authoritative for Christians, contending that we should look at each biblical book in itself (rather than its place in the canon) to see what it means for Christians authoritatively.  Spencer highlights the limitations of the historical-critical method, and Westphal questions whether Blomberg’s Historical-Critical/Grammatical approach sufficiently demonstrates how the biblical writings can be applied to Christians today, not just to their original historical settings.  Gaffin criticizes many historical-critical approaches to the biblical texts because he believes that they privilege human reasoning above God, and he disagrees with Wall’s canonical approach because he thinks that it exalts the church’s canon above Scripture itself.

A prominent concern in this book is how we can interpret the biblical text without allowing it to mean anything we desire.  Are there any boundaries or limitations that should guide our interpretation of biblical texts?  Blomberg seems to think that we should stick with the historical-critical method (or at least prioritize it) because otherwise we have anarchy.  Spencer tries to argue that the text itself can set limits on what our interpretations can be.  Unfortunately, while Westphal makes interesting points about how something said to one group may mean something different to another group, he did not appear to offer firm criteria for how Christians are to apply the biblical writings beyond their original contexts.  And Wall emphasized the importance of Christian community, but communities can interpret the Bible in damaging ways, so I think that there should be standards of biblical interpretation to which communities are subject.

In terms of my own impressions, I tend to side with Blomberg’s approach, for I believe in trying to read the writings of the Hebrew Bible on their own terms, rather than in light of later Christian beliefs.  I am not sure if I would go so far as to say that we’re in complete interpretive anarchy if we depart from looking for the text’s original, historical meaning, for I agree with Spencer that the text itself can set limits, and that we can get useful things out of the text, even if we are not entirely able to recover everything that the author originally meant.  And yet, I sympathize with Blomberg’s approach because I am tired of how a number of conservative Christians act as if their Westernized, Christocentric ways of reading the Hebrew Bible are so obvious and authoritative.  Do I believe that there is a way to be faithful to the biblical writings’ historical, contextual meanings, while also allowing the biblical writings to speak to subsequent contexts, even to us today?  That is a challenging question, but I do not think that it is impossible to get insight, application, and relevance from texts speaking to a different historical contexts.  There are some overlaps between people now and people then, and we can be inspired by the moral deeds of people in the past, or we can learn from their misdeeds.

While my sympathy is largely with Blomberg, I tend to believe that it would make more sense for evangelicals to hold Gaffin’s Redemptive/Historical view, since that presents the Bible as having a unified Christian message, and also there are passages in the New Testament about people in Old Testament times knowing something about God’s plan.  As Blomberg astutely notes in his response to Gaffin, however, we are never told in the New Testament what or how much the Old Testament figures knew about the coming Christ, nor are we told in the New Testament that all of the Old Testament writings were about Christ.

I have to admit, though, that Spencer’s contribution to this book was definitely my favorite.  He showed how people can read the Bible in rich ways.  Spencer also seemed to be saying that the Gospel of Matthew has political implications, that it is not just about Jesus rescuing people from sin, but that it relates to societal issues as well.  Overall, I wish that all of the contributors went into more detail about this particular topic.  Gaffin, for example, argued that Matthew was echoing Hosea’s theme of Israel being liberated from exile, but I wish that he had gone into more detail about what liberation from exile meant for Matthew.

Good book!

Book Write-Up: Unapologetic Theology, by William Placher

William Placher.  Unapologetic Theology: A Christian Voice in a Pluralistic Conversation.  Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1989.

Can Christians say something of value to non-Christians in a pluralistic world, where some doubt that there is even evidence that Christianity is true?  That appears to be the question that Placher tries to tackle in this book.  Placher addresses such issues as foundationalism, the Enlightenment, relativism, postmodernism, religious dialogue, and how Christians can find religious value in the Bible, notwithstanding its historical inaccuracies.

The book is an excellent resource for those who want to read a crisp, lucid summary of significant thinkers, such as Wittgenstein, Gadamer, Rawls, and the list goes on.  I did not understand Placher's discussion of Bertrand Russell's paradox, but Placher explained everything else in a clear and accessible manner.  Plus, I can't find anything that explains Russell's paradox in a way that makes sense to me, so I probably can't blame Placher here!

Placher seeks a middle-ground between relativist postmodernism and a belief in objective truth.  Like postmodernists, Placher doubts that there is a stable foundation of evidence for much of anything, and this includes science.  Placher argues that even science contains interpretation, and that scientists stick with theories that are not entirely consistent with all of the data (and yet Placher notes that science has made progress based on theories that were later supplanted).  Placher is also critical of past attempts to find some objective standard of justice, for he believes that some of them have marginalized traditional voices while privileging Western thought.

At the same time, Placher does believe that Christians can offer something of value to non-Christian cultures, and vice-versa.  At least once, Placher mentions that humans are made in God's image, and he seems to think that this means that there is enough common ground among diverse human beings that they can talk with one another, notwithstanding their different conceptualizations of the world.  And yet, relativism remains a backdrop to Placher's discussion of dialogue.  Placher does not think that Christians can appeal to some alleged objective moral standard in speaking to people from other cultures, for those other cultures do not necessarily believe in that standard (at least not entirely).  But, according to Placher, Christians can critique practices of non-Christian cultures on the basis of the non-Christian cultures' standards, looking at places where conclusions don't follow from their premises.  And Christians can find common ground with non-Christians on such issues as social justice.  Can Christians benefit from religious dialogue, according to Placher?  Placher thinks so, for he refers to someone who argued that religious dialogue can highlight what Christians believe, as well as help Christians to correct what may be wrong or deficient in their own tradition.
Placher also discusses how Christians can find value in the Bible, notwithstanding its historical inaccuracies.  Essentially, he seems to think that Christians can appreciate the Bible as a source that presents how God and the world are, even if not all of its details are historically-accurate.

Here are some of my thoughts:

1.  I am not a hard relativist or postmodernist, for I believe that there is truth out there, and that there are times when human beings can approximate what that truth is.  Don't get me wrong: I seriously doubt that our conceptualizations of reality correspond perfectly with that reality, for there are factors such as human interpretation, human limitation in trying to describe reality, human selectivity on what facts deserve to be considered, and the vast amount of things that we just do not know.  But my impression (which is subject to correction) is that relativists and postmodernists go too far.  I believe that there are some facts, and that we can know what they are.

2.  Placher does not seem to believe in foundationalism, whereas I don't go that far.  Still, I find Placher's critiques of attempts to find an objective standard of justice or truth to be valuable.  One person may believe that he has the truth and that there is a reliable foundation for that truth, and yet how would he convince someone who does not share his truth, or even acknowledge the criteria that allegedly support his truth?  In light of that, attempts to find some "objective" standard may prove to be useless because they marginalize non-Western voices and contain a Western bias----useless, not because they are false necessarily, but because they may not be convincing to people within other cultural frameworks.  I can have a truth, and my truth can help me and maybe influence me to help others; but what good is my truth in the world of public discourse if others are not convinced by it?

3.  And yet, I have to be careful here.  While there are different cultures, I don't think that there is some brick wall of language and different conceptualizations inhibiting one culture from influencing the other, for better or for worse.  Obviously, cultures do influence one another.  Christian missionaries have had their influence, which has sometimes resulted in humanitarian reforms.  Capitalism has had its impact on the world, for good and for bad.  Admittedly, some of the influence that the West has had on other cultures has been due to force, imperialism, and gross insensitivity to the cultures.  And yet, some of these cultures have been persuaded by Western values.  And, conversely, people in the West have been influenced by Eastern cultures----consider the attraction that some Americans have towards Buddhism!

Why is this?  I think that it's because many people want certain things, and they believe that elements of other cultures can help them to get those things.  Moreover, encounter with another culture may convince them that what they are experiencing within their own culture is not the only way to do things----that there are other ways of doing things that may treat them with more dignity or give them more opportunities.  

4.  On Placher's argument regarding the Bible and history, yes, there may be something to it, but I think that more work needs to be done.  I have problems saying that, say, the non-historicity of the Exodus is no big deal theologically, when so many voices in the Bible do believe that it's a big deal, appealing to it as an example of God concretely intervening in history on behalf of the oppressed Israelites.  If we erase what were believed to be concrete examples of God's intervention in history, do we have much of a theology?  Are we just left with some general belief that God is just?  Without belief that God concretely demonstrated that justice in history, we're rather impoverished, in my opinion.  I'm not saying that my faith personally rests on the Bible being historically accurate, but I don't think that the importance of the Bible's history to theology should be casually dismissed, but should be wrestled with more.

Overall, Placher's book is good.  Like Van Harvey's The Historian and the Believer, it does an effective job dismantling other approaches, yet its own approach leaves me with questions.  As Placher and (I think) Van Harvey acknowledge, it's easier to critique other positions than it is to construct an alternative.  I have to give them credit for trying to be constructive, however, even if their approaches (as I understand them) do not entirely convince me.  

Life of Pi (the Movie)

I watched Life of Pi last night, and I rewatched parts of it this morning.  Life of Pi was a reward-winning movie that was released in 2012, and it is based on a 2001 book by Yann Martel.  It is about Pi, an Indian (from India) whose dad owns a zoo.  Pi as a child explores different religions----the gods of India, Christianity, and Islam.  Pi admires the heroism of Indian gods, along with Vishnu's cosmic significance, but he is also drawn to the love of the Christian God (though he says that the doctrine of Jesus taking the punishment for people's sins initially did not make sense to him), and the sense of holy space within Islam.  Pi's father is a rationalist who is skeptical about religion, yet he is okay with Pi adopting a belief system that he (the father) does not share, just so long as Pi chooses one belief system rather than adhering to multiple religions.  Pi's mother was disowned by her parents for marring someone of whom they disapproved, and Pi narrates that her devotion to Hinduism was a way for her to remain attached to her Indian heritage.  When the mother speaks for herself in the movie, however, she says that science is about what's "out there," whereas religion is about what's "in here" (the heart).  The main reason that I liked this movie was that it was about religious exploration.  I'm interested in stories that explore what people believe and why, and what draws people to certain belief systems. 

Pi and his family have to leave India, and they're taking the zoo animals with them.  The ship has a serious accident, which takes the lives of Pi's family, and the outcome is that Pi is on a little boat in the middle of the sea, with a ferocious tiger named Richard Parker.  Pi is trying to survive with the tiger on board, and he eventually develops compassion for the tiger and saves him from drowning.  Pi finds that the tiger is keeping him alive by making him afraid, and also by giving him someone to care for.  Pi is sad when the tiger leaves him without looking back, or giving some indication of saying "good bye." When Pi saved the tiger from drowning, I had some compassion for the tiger, since the tiger reminded me of my own cats.  At the same time, I said when I was watching that scene that I would have let the tiger drown, since the tiger was threatening Pi's life and peace of mind.  My statement was not well received by my Mom and her husband, and even one of our cats, Figaro, had something to say about my remark!  In any case, I came to respect Pi's relationship with the tiger, and the scene in which Pi was petting the tiger's head while the tiger was sick was sweet (see the trailer for a snippet of that scene). 

At the end of the movie, we're left in doubt about whether Pi's story about the tiger is true, or if instead something else happened.  The movie seemed to be going in a postmodern direction (if it hadn't already), and my Mom is better at understanding postmodernism than I am.  I was scratching my head, wondering if the tiger story actually happened (within the narrative of the movie, of course).  But the movie appeared to be asking which story the hearer wants to accept, the more fantastic one, or the less fantastic one.  Was the tiger story an allegory?  I don't know.  While postmodern movies make me scratch my head, at times, their postmodernism does gives the movies a certain degree of depth, which I happen to like.

Ambrose's Nixon: Ruin and Recovery 10

For my blog post today on Stephen Ambrose's Nixon: Ruin and Recovery, 1973-1990, I'll talk about a statement that President Richard Nixon made in a March 21, 1973 meeting, which was recorded on tape.  Nixon was discussing the option of clemency for the Watergate defendants, and he concluded by saying, "No, it's wrong, that's for sure."

Nixon would appeal to that line to argue that he did not support clemency for the Watergate defendants.  But there are different interpretations about what Nixon meant by "wrong".  Nixon insisted that he meant that offering clemency would be morally wrong.  But Ambrose's impression after listening to the tape over two dozen times is that it's ambiguous what exactly Nixon meant.  Did Nixon mean that it would be politically wrong to grant clemency to the defendants?  That it would be wrong to grant the clemency prior to the 1974 elections----since Nixon right before his statement that granting clemency would be "wrong" said that he could not deliver on clemency until the 1974 elections were over, and maybe not even at that time?  Was Nixon saying that granting clemency was wrong because he recalled that he was being taped, and he wanted a record that he had said clemency for the defendants was wrong to save his own skin?

Nixon acknowledged that one could interpret the conversation in different ways, but he said that "I know what I meant, and I know also what I did" (page 307 of Ambrose).

I think of the concept of "deconstructionism", which says that language is ambiguous.  Indeed, it can be, for words can have different meanings, but also the manner in which they are used can be subject to interpretation.  Moreover, it can be a challenge at the outset to come up with the right words to describe reality accurately.  There are lawyers who take advantage of that.  Remember when Bill Clinton talked about the meaning of the word "is"?

I wouldn't say that language is always ambiguous, though.  Some things on the Nixon tapes were subject to interpretation.  But my understanding is that there were parts that were particularly incriminating.  That tells me that there are times when there are right and wrong interpretations.

Incidentally, Ambrose goes on to say what Nixon did, as opposed to what Nixon said: "he ordered [John] Dean to get the money to [Watergate conspirator E. Howard] Hunt; he did not grant clemency."

Is Stephen aka Q a Postmodernist? Am I?

After a long hiatus, Stephen aka Q has returned to posting on his biblioblog, Emerging from Babel. Unbeknownst to me, he's been active on another of his sites, [A]mazed and [Be]mused, which gets a lot of responses.

Stephen wrote a post entitled Whose Christianity?, in which he says that he is now a postmodernist Christian. He has arrived at these convictions because of divisions among Christians over crucial issues, such as torture, annihilationism, and pacificism. As many of you may know, Stephen has been active in these debates on the blogosphere.

My impression of what's going on is this: Old Stephen believed that God is obviously against torture and war. The things that told him God's will (e.g., Scripture) indicated this, and so that's what he accepted as true, in typical modernist Christian fashion. More than that, he hoped that the Christian church would take a united stand on these issues, acting as a conscience to society. But he has encountered well-intentioned, reasonable Christians (such as John Hobbins of Ancient Hebrew Poetry) who see a different message when they read the Bible, one that views torture and war as necessary in certain cases.

And so Stephen now seems to be more skeptical about our ability to arrive at an objective definition of Christianity. He states, "A postmodernist will not be shocked to learn that 'Christianity' is an empty basket that people fill with their own prior convictions. Those all-important prior convictions are local and contingent — not to say self-serving." What he means is that there are all sorts of Christianities, some that promote liberation, and some that promote the status quo. And, since Jesus is not here to tell us which one is right, we're basically here, interpreting Scripture according to our own subjective preferences.

But I wonder if Stephen is totally a postmodernist. Even now, he seems to believe that torture and war are wrong. He says, "I would prefer near-unanimity among Christians: against torture; against the doctrine of hell as a place of eternal torment; against abortion; in support of pacifism; in support of a substantial redistribution of wealth[.]" So he believes in the existence of right and wrong, right? Don't postmodernists believe that right and wrong are relative, meaning that there are no absolutes?

Of course, I'm just speaking from my own understanding of postmodernism. I don't know for sure if they're complete relativists, who deny the existence of objective truth. That's how they've been presented to me in Christian books. Even a Harvard scholar such as Jon Levenson has framed postmodernism in such a way before arguing against it. I have read postmodernists in the past, but I don't understand what the heck they're saying. (Clarity is not one of their strong points, though Stephen writes clearly.)

If postmodernists deny that we can accurately describe reality, then what's that do to their truth claim that we can't accurately describe reality? I mean, postmodernists themselves make truth claims, right? I can argue this and pat myself on the back, but, seriously, postmodernists are intelligent, educated people. They have to be, to use the big words that they use! Surely they have some way to respond to this!

I once heard a professor discuss a book that features a debate between Richard Rorty and Umberto Eco. My impression from my professor's discussion was that Rorty was the postmodernist, whereas Eco was more of a modernist. Eco said (and I paraphrase), "Of course there's objective truth! Drop a ball! What goes up, must come down." My professor said that Rorty didn't have much of a problem with that, and that he was also open to the existence of better and worse interpretations. But Rorty thought that, in many cases, reality is ambiguous and open to multiple outlooks.

I've not read the book, but that's somewhat where I am. I think there are things that are obviously true and false, but much is open to interpretation. You can place all sorts of spins on history. I've done that myself in debating numerous people. Not everything is subjective, but there's a lot of subjectivity out there.

I think that all sorts of beliefs have a reason for their existence. I read Christian debates on Calvinism, preterism, hell, and a host of other issues, and I see "My view is right, and your view is wrong, so you're stupid." I don't think so. Calvinists can find scriptures that coincide with their view on salvation (predestination), and Arminians can cite verses that support free will. The fact that people disagree shows that the truth is vague. The Bible is open to all sorts of interpretations.

But I'm not ready to say that the Bible can't serve as a conscience. There are still many things that Christians agree on. On the basis of the Bible, we believe in honesty and love for neighbor. We can evaluate (say) the Iraq War according to certain standards: Is it rooted in justice and concern for humanity, or in greed? If the former is true, then it is good. If the latter is the case, then it is bad.

I realize things are not that simple, but I'm just saying that we don't totally lack a moral compass as we evaluate issues.