If you’ve ever struggled to explain what went wrong with evangelicalism, or if you’ve ever been embarrassed to be around conservative, doctrinal Christians, here’s several popular villains to make sense of your angst. Once you find a way to include all of them into your narrative, you’ll have a cool book in the making.
5. Rene Descartes – He introduced linear thinking into the church for the first time ever. Before he came along Christians didn’t try to be logical or talk about propositions. Thanks to Descartes, we waste our time on information instead of formation.
4. Charles Hodge – He pretty much invented inerrancy. Before he came along people knew that the Bible is full of mistakes. He also talked about the Scriptures like it had facts and truths in it. Boy does that sound silly.
3. Plato – Besides coming up with the dubious idea of platonic guy-girl relationships, he also taught that the body is the prison house for the soul. Dualist! Now everyone thinks heaven is a place for disembodied spirits and sex and sexy movies are bad.
2. Anselm – No one thought of Christ’s death as a substionary sacrifice before him. The cross had nothing to do with justice and wrath until Cur Deus Homo? duped us all.
1. Constantine – Where do we begin with this guy? He single-handedly invented Christendom, fake conversions, military conquest, political-religious entanglements, and church buildings. Plus he started the confusion: “it’s Istanabul, it’s Constantinople, it’s Istanbul, it’s Constantinople…”
October 26th, 2009 | 1:50 am | #1
dispensationalists are obviously a close #6.
October 26th, 2009 | 3:27 am | #2
I can’t improve on this. Just make sure there’s blame left for:
Calvin: Romans only had 15 chapters before he managed to get chapter 9 smuggled in there. Now, totally out of the blue, it’s “election” this and “predestination” that.
Wesley: Invented the idea of a personal relationship with Jesus. Obviously the original “God is my girlfriend” kind of guy.
October 26th, 2009 | 6:26 am | #3
On the Istanbul/Constantinople thing: that’s nobody’s business but the Turks’.
October 26th, 2009 | 9:47 am | #4
That’s great!
Who knew that the Bible really contains no verifiable and accurate truth?
October 26th, 2009 | 10:37 am | #5
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Michele McGinty, What's On Istanbul?. What's On Istanbul? said: http://bit.ly/1axFJU What’s Wrong With Us?: …heaven is a place for disembodied spirits an.. http://bit.ly/1cxjIg [...]
October 26th, 2009 | 11:23 am | #6
Van Til-If you want reasons for this selection, I have serious doubts about your worldview.
October 26th, 2009 | 11:55 am | #7
Let’s not forget the popular heroes such as:
Jesus Christ — Crucified for encouraging Jews to have conversations in community.
October 26th, 2009 | 12:37 pm | #8
A friend of mine missed the point of some of the satire–’cause Christianity becoming the official religion really did have some bad effects in the areas of fake conversion, political entanglement, etc. He missed the “single-handedly” part.
So, as an interpretation key:
1.) Some of the satire means, “This really is a silly claim.”
2.) Some of the satire means, “Where you are talking about real problems, don’t pretend that they sprang into existence with that guy.”
October 26th, 2009 | 3:37 pm | #9
*chuckles* Cute. And yet… It is important to recognize that certain people have massive influence, for good or bad, or more likely both. Basil the Great was complaining already about the pagan philosophers and their preoccupation with propositions in On the Spirit (fourth century) – in this case it was the Arians using Aristotle.
Speaking of which, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle really are all extremely important, and it really is amazing that Aquinas uses Aristotle’s ideas in much the same way as the writings of the Apostle Paul and Augustine – and that there’s an entire order of Friars who’s main duty is to explain Thomist theology. (speaking of which, Augustine belings with Anslem)
October 26th, 2009 | 5:29 pm | #10
You forgot to mention that Descartes also gave us the view that to know something requires certainty, and that all foundationalists believe this as well. Since we can’t know much with absolute certainty, especially in religion and ethics, we should abandon all claims to knowledge in these 2 realms.
October 26th, 2009 | 5:40 pm | #11
Mike,
Perhaps we shouldn’t–I’m not certain that’s what Descartes gave us.
October 26th, 2009 | 6:42 pm | #12
Note to Fred Sanders – I’d love to see you do a post elaborating on the “personal relationship with Jesus,” “God is my girlfriend” thing.
October 27th, 2009 | 1:27 am | #13
This was great. Thank you for using humor.
October 27th, 2009 | 1:43 am | #14
Good stuff.
October 27th, 2009 | 2:57 am | #15
What’s wrong with us is that we’re a bunch of navel-gazers. Time to get the focus back on Jesus.
October 27th, 2009 | 8:47 am | #16
Jugulum,
Good point, it is certainly true that we aren’t certain about what we’ve received from Descartes. Or are we? Or is an evil demon deceiving me right now?
October 27th, 2009 | 10:16 am | #17
I don’t think it’s true that Aquinas uses Aristotle the way he uses biblical authors. It’s important to keep in mind the structure of Aquinas’ work, at least in the Summa.
That work clearly divides into two components, the philosophical and the theological. In the latter, he uses biblical arguments for things he doesn’t think general revelation tells us about, such as the Trinity or the details of how salvation operates. He doesn’t rely on any authority but scripture in those discussions.
In the former, he uses philosophical arguments and accepts nothing from authority as arguments. He does cite authorities, including both scripture and previous philosophers, but he doesn’t rely on those authorities. He just lists them and then gives philosophical arguments to support the claims he’s making.
It’s also worth noting that he lists authorities for the views he’s responding to. Again, sometimes he lists scripture, and sometimes he lists philosophical or theological figures before his time. Sometimes he explains how what the figure said or what scripture said doesn’t imply the view he’s arguing against, and sometimes he just gives arguments against the view, but he never argues against scripture, only explains a better interpretation. He regularly argues against a philosophical figure, perhaps less often but certainly sometimes doing so with Aristotle.
October 27th, 2009 | 10:24 am | #18
Mike, I couldn’t tell if you were continuing the sarcasm or speaking seriously when you said that all foundationalists think knowledge requires absolute certainty. That’s so far from the truth that it was hard for me to resist pointing that out. Hardly any epistemologist today thinks knowledge requires absolute certainty, but quite a few remain foundationalists, e.g. Alvin Plantinga.
October 29th, 2009 | 11:22 pm | #19
I’m not emergent, but I appreciate some of the points they’ve made. I’m not completely in th evangelical camp, because I see some of the flaws we’ve fallen into. I’m all for debate, but when certain factions in Christendom start crapping on each other, as you are doing here — sniggering over how clever you are — then you don’t look like a scholar or a pastor your by-line says you are; you look like an ass hat.
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