Not long ago I ran across a modern translation of Hamlet’s famous soliloquy on death. Shakespeare’s original is on the page above it, providing a most instructive comparison.

The translation does a fine job of capturing the passage’s propositional content. I can imagine how much it might help a student reading Shakespeare for the first time. What’s a fardel? or a bare bodkin? The modern rendition clarifies such things nicely. It is, one might say, perfectly not wrong.

It is a good thing to be not wrong. If this page had translated “fardels” as long and burdensome journeys, or “contumely” as fancy, foppish fashion, it would have been misleading, useless, even dangerous in a way.

Still it is possible to be not wrong and at the same time be perfectly dry and colorless, practically dead. This translation page illustrates the point magnificently. Read the translation; then read the original. On one level they mean quite the same thing, yet they could hardly be more different. There is a rightness to Shakespeare’s original that far transcends the not-wrongness of its propositional content as conveyed in the translation.

I think many Christians work hard at translating the Gospel’s propositional content into modern language. We can recognize error a mile away, and we’re quick to correct it. We make it our business, one might say, to be perfectly not wrong.

It is important that we be true in this way. To be wrong is, well, wrong.

Still there is a rightness that transcends not-wrongness. It is the artistry of living a full-color life: a life of creativity, a life of exploration rather than of self-protection, a life of abandonment to God and to others. It is not only not wrong: it is right.

There is a school of thought that says physics is the ultimate reality; that everything reduces to subatomic particles mindlessly subject to natural law.

The story is told—I don’t remember where I heard it—of two young women sitting in the front row of a concert hall, holding the score for the music the orchestra was about to play. The conductor saw them and stepped off the podium. He leaned over and whispered to them, “You will not find it in there.”

I was a professional musician earlier in my career, and in the course of my studies I learned enough music theory to be able to describe music mathematically. I’ve studied some acoustics, and I understand how to describe music in terms of pressure oscillations in the air. But there is something to music—the “it” of which that conductor was speaking—that is not to be found in vibrations, in mathematics, or even in the score.

Listen to Chopin. Listen to Coltrane. Listen to Crosby, Stills & Nash. In it you will hear reductionism’s rebuttal.

He was an ardent opponent of Christianity, but I will miss him.

I sat in the front row for his debate with Dinesh D’Souza in Charlotte, NC last year (or was it in 2009?). Hitchens spoke first. It may have been the only time he had D’Souza completely flat-footed and unable to disagree with him. The reason was the debate topic: Is radical Islam a threat to America? It wasn’t a point they held in dispute.

D’Souza began his first speech essentially by saying, “I agree with Christopher, and since that doesn’t make for much of a debate, and since he already expressed my own opinion so well, I’m just going to go ahead and change the subject.”

Hitchens smiled and rolled with it. He was always quick on his feet that way. I don’t know of anyone who was more effective with the use of rhetoric. It was in many ways his undoing, I’m afraid, at least as far as most of the world could see.

In debate he relied heavily on rhetoric in the form of emotionally loaded language. Religion bothered him. God bothered him. I don’t know how well he was able to separate one from the other.

I can understand his feelings, at least to some extent. Religion bothers me: too much of it is shallow, sterile, and false, even within Christianity. Religion outside of Christianity is just wrong and (I am convinced) deadly.

God bothers me, too, though in a different way altogether. God places demands on me. The worst demands are not the moral ones, as you might think. The hardest demand he places on me is that I accept his love while acknowledging it is entirely his own initiative. I want to be the kind of person who can earn his love, but God loves me even though I am not. His love is very good—and it is also thoroughly humbling.

Though I’ve read Hitchens’ book God Is Not Great, I have no way of knowing what bothered him more: God or religion. He regarded God as religion’s invention, but from the way I understand reality to be, he had encounters with God, whether he accepted or rejected the reality of the experience. God was present in all the Christians he interacted with, including the believers he debated, and his own believing brother, Peter.

Tragically, he chose against God.

I will miss his brilliant repartee. I will miss the strong challenge he kept raising against religion, for we who believe need corrective criticism. I will miss his sense of humor. I grieve for the life he has lost.

Why study the Bible on computer? I’ve written previously about significant negatives associated with electronic study, especially Bible study. I don’t find it especially conducive to prayer and worship; it doesn’t draw me quickly into a sense of fellowship with God. Now I’m about to turn around and explain why that’s not so true after all.

Here’s the short version: deep study is a matter of focusing, expanding, meditating, and ultimately applying and/or presenting, and all of them are entirely wrapped in and around prayer and worship.

I’ll come back to that later, after I spend some time on focusing, expanding, meditating, and presenting. This is where great resources can be a great help. I’ve spent time lately with two top Bible applications, Logos (available for Windows and Mac) and Accordance for Mac. In what follows I’ll be assuming the position of a layman, although one who is serious about studying Scripture. Those who have a more extensive background in Bible or biblical languages will have no trouble seeing how this would apply at their level.

Let’s focus first on focusing.

To study the Bible requires, well, study. I’m sure it hasn’t escaped your attention that God’s primary revelation to us is in the form of a book. My pastor tells me the difference between reading the Bible and studying the Bible is a pencil: writing what you see, think, wonder about, conclude, apply, and so on.

Well, that might work for him. For me there’s a problem. A pencil is no good without paper. Once I write something on a piece of paper, I have to decide where to keep it, so I can find it when I need it. I’m not very good at that dauntingly difficult, nay, oppressive life skill. I don’t get along well with paper, and paper doesn’t get along well with me. As I’m writing today I can turn my head and glance around the office, and I see seven stacks of paper. (I’ll organize it all someday, I promise.)

So the first time I downloaded an open-source Bible study application years ago, I had one question: can I make notes on a passage of Scripture, and can I tie those notes to that passage so I can find them next time?

It seems so simple, and in fact there are free software packages have made this possible now. Howard Hendricks, the great discipler/teacher from Dallas Theological Seminary, has a line for that, though: “Don’t let the simplicity fool you.” To me this is the most basic and most crucial service required of any Bible study system. If you’re like me—if keeping track of your study notes is a major life challenge, or even a minor one—then get yourself a good Bible study application and make good use of it. (I mentioned some free applications last time, and a reader suggested I add Olive Tree software to that list.)

After a pencil, or the on-screen equivalent, the next great difference between reading and studying the Bible is the resources you call on as aids. Top-tier software packages allow you to dig underneath the English, without requiring years of Greek or Hebrew study. You could find the following on Ephesians 4:15, for example: the Greek word translated “speaking the truth,” according to multiple sources,“has the widest sense of being true.… It it almost impossible to express it satisfactorily in English.” It is “holding the truth”; “following the truth”; opposed to “error” or “deceit” (Ephesians 4:14); it is “truthing it;” or being “followers of truth,” though not in the sense of searching for it; “lit., ‘truthing in love,’ which has the idea of maintaining truth in love in both speech and life”

That insight came out out of perhaps half a dozen sources—dictionaries, commentaries, alternate translations—but just one computer screen. Not incidentally, it also corrected my erroneous understanding of what that verse was about. I thought it was really about speaking, but I was wrong; it’s much more than that.

This Electronic Student series is for those who, like me, are not trained in the original languages of the Bible. Those who do know Greek and/or Hebrew will find much more to like in commercial Bible software’s Greek and Hebrew tools: parsing, diagramming, explaining, analyzing.

Also of Interest: Accordance or Logos?

The proposal:

Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., an outspoken pro-life advocate, is preparing to do battle again on Capitol Hill.

On Tuesday, he’ll chair a House hearing in support of his latest legislative effort, the Prenatal NonDiscrimination Act (PreNDA). The measure would ban abortions done on the basis of gender or race.

“It would simply say that you cannot discriminate against the unborn by subjecting them to an abortion based on their race or sex,” Franks says.

The response from Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights:

“This bill is a cynical and offensive attempt to evoke race and sex discrimination when actually it’s about taking women’s rights away,” said Northup.

She says that protecting young girls from sex-selection abortions is “about taking women’s rights away.” We don’t know whether she has a position on racial discrimination. I suppose she probably does. I’ve done a web search on her name and on the name of the House bill, though, and I can’t find anything on that.

Anyway, I find her response patently absurd. I could even consider it comical in a way, if I could get past its injustice, its coldly hypocritical cynicism, its rhetorical manipulativeness, and its deadly background and intentions. She’s claiming to defend the rights of women, but she’s willing to throw baby girls under the bus for them.

Clearly she’s not supporting females’ rights. She has a particular and exclusive interest in the rights of “women,” meaning, females old enough to bear children. Of course that’s why we protect individuals’ rights, isn’t it—so that we can take care of the physically mature and able, at the expense of the weak? No. That’s as upside-down, legally and historically, as any view of rights could possibly be.

I can’t imagine what she thinks about girls’ rights. I’m thinking about, say, nine-year-olds.

Something seems unseemly and inappropriate about that question, as if it really shouldn’t be asked. I’m trying to track down why it feels that way. Maybe the question is sexist. I can’t imagine what would be wrong with that, though, when the rhetoric is already sexist (“women’s rights”). Is it age-ist, then? But Northup approves of age-ism—it’s only those who are of childbearing age who have “women’s rights”—so that ought to be okay, too. Sexism is fine. Age-ism is fine. Killing babies is fine. What’s not fine anymore?

The abortion rights lobby has always been about the powerful trampling on the defenseless. Formerly its members could play it the other way around, as if it were about protecting women, as the historically politically underprivileged sex. How do they think they can maintain the pretense now?

If Christianity were my religion, I wouldn’t thank God for the Cross. But it’s not my religion, and on Thanksgiving Day here in the U.S. tomorrow, I will be giving God all the thanks I can for the Cross of Jesus Christ.

I know I need to explain that, and I will. First I’ll need to clarify what I mean about “my religion.”

Choosing Our Religions
We live in a world of religious pluralism. A recent Gallup poll says that 70% of North Americans believe that many religious could lead you to God. The Pew Forum surveyed Americans who belong to various religions in 2008. They found that 57% of Americans who attend Bible-believing churches (evangelical or black churches, in their study) believe that many religions can lead to God.

I take it that those 57% believe their choice of Christianity is an expression of their personal preference. Maybe it has to do with their culture, upbringing, friends in church, or what they’re comfortable with. As far as spiritual life goes, though, they think they have a choice, and the choice they’ve made is evangelical Christianity. They picked it out, and it’s their religion.

For my part, I follow Jesus Christ and his teachings, to the best of my capacity in Christ. I am a Christian. I do not, however, consider Christianity my chosen religion. I didn’t choose it off some religious clothes rack; I didn’t say, “I don’t really feel like a Buddhist or a Muslim for this life; I’m a traditional American, so the Christian thing just seems to fit me better.”

No, I didn’t buy it and I’m not trying to make it my own. Christianity is too big, too grand, too filled with God for that. I am a Christian because the one God has called me to relate to him in that unique way.

So as you see, my opening statement hinges on what i mean by “my religion.” If Christianity were my choice from a list of options, if it were my religion in that sense, I wouldn’t thank God for the cross.

History’s Most Despicable Act of Injustice?
How could I? Remember how at Gethsemane Jesus prayed that this cup could pass from him? He was asking the Father (though he knew the answer already), “Couldn’t there be some other way?!” He was arrested in humiliation and betrayal. Couldn’t that have been avoided? He was humiliated in trials before the Jewish court, Pilate, and Herod. Did he really have to go through that? He was mocked, beaten, tortured. Was that really necessary? He was hung on the Cross until he screamed the agony of forsakenness; and he died. Why, God? WHY?

Why? Because he loved us and wanted to bring us to God, and because there was no other way.

What if there had been another way? What if these 57% believe correctly that Christianity is one of many true ways to God? Then it should never have happened. The cup should have passed from the hand of the Son of God. There would have been no need for his brutal passion experience. Far from being something to thank God for, the Cross would have to been the worst of all needless atrocities in history.

Do not, I repeat, do not say, “All religions lead to God, but since I’ve grown up a Christian, I’ll follow that path for myself.” Do not make Christianity your religion that way. If you do, it is as if you are glorifying history’s most despicable act of cosmic cruelty. If you think there are multiple paths to God, then for Christ’s sake (I mean that reverently and literally), don’t choose Christianity! Don’t choose the religion that includes his torture and execution!

Or History’s Most Astonishing Declaration of Love and Justice
The question hinges on whether Jesus really did die on the cross for our sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God. If he did, then we can be sure he did it because it was the only way to God. He said so himself in John 14:6. I am convinced that he did; that the God who created us entered human history in the form of a child who grew to be a man; who taught, healed, and demonstrated a life given wholly to God; and who died on the Cross, was raised from the dead, and was glorified into heaven.

I am convinced he did it because it was the only way we could come to God. He did it for love; for the joy set before him, knowing the life it bring to us whom he loves. He was willing to endure it because it was necessary in order to reconcile humans to God. The Cross was good, but it was only good because it was the only good way to bring us to God.

I do not follow Christ because Christianity is my religion of choice. I have chosen to follow Christ, yes; but that doesn’t make Christianity my religion. It’s God’s. It’s his initiative, it’s his action, it’s his grace, it’s his revelation, it’s his plan; and I’m thankful he has given me grace to enter into the relationship he has called me to.

For that reason, tomorrow on Thanksgiving, as an every other day, I will humbly and heartily thank God for the Cross of Christ, where I was rescued from death. I thank God, too, that the story did not end in death, but in resurrection, glory, and a mission for us to pursue until Christ returns.

Finally: If like me you are thanking God for the Cross, but at the same time you’re trying to hold on to the impossible belief that other religions can lead to God, it’s time to make your choice.

Also at Thinking Christian

If learning is the key to human flourishing, then the age of electronics ought to be our long-awaited golden age of social renewal; for when in history have we had so much knowledge right at our fingertips?

You’re not buying that, I can tell. Here I am kicking off a multi-part series on learning in the electronic age, and I’ve lost you already in the first sentence.

Never mind that human flourishing encompasses far, far more than intellectual advancement (though the deepest and most lasting spiritual awakenings in history have been accompanied by some of Christianity’s wisest, most thoughtful writings). We all know that the Internet has not turned out to be our golden key to knowledge and wisdom. Information, yes, the Internet has that in abundance. This really is an unprecedented golden age for data on just about everything. There are facts galore, in every description. New facts, old facts, true facts, false facts. (Please don’t ping me on that contradiction; I’m aware of it.) Does anybody remember having to (gasp!) go to the library to look something up?

Over the next several weeks I plan to post a series on what I’ve learned about being a student in this electronic age: What’s helpful? What’s not? What are some of the best resources to call on? What are the some of the most serious obstacles?

I won’t try to make this anything like a grand unifying perspective. I’m 55 years old, I use a Macintosh computer, and I have a couple other electronic gizmos (a wifi-only Nook ebook reader and an iPhone) that I’ll bring into the discussion. I’ll be talking about various software options, and I’ll have reviews of two of the top Bible study software packages. That’s what I’m qualified to speak on.

I won’t be able to talk about the Kindle or the iPad (not unless someone wants to send me one :)). Most importantly, I won’t be able to convey the perspective of today’s “digital natives,” those who were born a couple decades later than me; though I’m not exactly a stranger to these cyber-neighborhoods myself.

Focus Or Not
I got my Nook as a birthday gift about six weeks ago. I had a Sony reader before that, one that had also been gifted to me, which my daughter is using now. A friend saw me using my Nook, and he asked me why I hadn’t gone for an iPad or one of the other Internet-enabled readers. I said, “That’s exactly the point.” He looked puzzled, so I explained it to him, as I’ll do again now.

The Internet is the best and the worst thing that ever could have happened to serious study. The really good thing about it is all that you can find there, and all thjat you can do. The really bad thing about it is all that you can find there, and all that you can do. I’m not even talking about the seamy side of the web (that’s bad in ways that extend far beyond our topic today). I’m talking about good material that becomes distracting.

My favorite two features in my Nook are that it holds a lot of books, and that it can’t surf the web or check email. I thank God that it can’t surf the web or check email! Would you believe that right in the middle of writing the paragraph before this one, I checked my email, found out that there’s an update available for one of my Mac’s applications, went to the web, and started the download process? Do you know how dumb I feel, known that I did that right while I was writing about distractions on the Internet?

The Web is a fascinating playground, sometimes too fascinating. I’m expecting two or three very important email replies sometime today or tomorrow. I thought I’d take a quick peek over there and see if one of them had come in. What I found instead in my inbox was a nice bright shiny object: an application upgrade with some cool new features. It’s not the application I’m using to write this, and it’s not one I’m planning to use in the next few days, but the upgrade was bright and shiny and distracting nonetheless.

Maybe you’re not subject to that kind of distraction; maybe you’re more naturally disciplined and focused than I am. But for me, distraction is by far the top issue to overcome as an electronic student.

Oops—I just checked again for new emails. I really am eager to get those replies I mentioned earlier. This is not just a matter of shifting attention. The eagerness itself, the sense that something interesting might pop up right here at any second and I had better be on the lookout for it! has me slightly on edge. It’s not conducive to good thinking or good study.

Freedom, Blessed Freedom
I have two defenses against this. One is the shareware application Freedom. Its developer (who has not paid me to say any of this) describes Freedom as

a simple productivity application that locks you away from the internet on Mac or Windows computers for up to eight hours at a time. Freedom frees you from distractions, allowing you time to write, analyze, code, or create. At the end of your offline period, Freedom allows you back on the internet.

I describe it as my sigh-of-relief, now-I-can-think software program. I run it frequently through the day, typically for 45 minutes at a time. I can’t get on the Internet while it’s running, and thank God for that! When it lets me back on the network, typically I check my email, respond to blog comments, and so on; and then I’ll start Freedom back up again. I don’t always do that: some days, for example, I stay connected and engaged in comment discussions for a large part of the day. But if I have serious reading or original writing to do, I do far better at it with the Internet out of reach.

For me, this is essential background for everything else that has to do with being an electronic student.

I’ll come back to this series in a few days, when I’ll share some surprising ways you may never have known to use an e-book reader for serious study. There will be much more to come after that.

This series is also running at Thinking Christian.

Joe Paterno has been fired as football coach at Penn State. It happened at about 10 pm yesterday. News reports say he was notified of his dismissal by phone. The situation evokes grief over all that has been lost, astonishment over the absurd disproportionality of it all, and of course outrage over crimes reportedly committed and condoned. Meanwhile, as you’ll see below, there are serious questions about the context in which this has all occurred.

Paterno is the winningest coach in major college football history, and had been a shining fixture at Penn State since he began there as assistant coach in 1950, six years before I was born. Angry students rioted for hours.

I can’t ignore the football side of the story, which has been so great a part of Paterno’s life. Penn State’s team is on track to win the Big Ten Leaders Division. Michigan State, my alma mater, is in good position to win the Legends Division. The thought of my school playing for the Big Ten championship against a team in such deep turmoil ought to be encouraging, from a fan’s point of view. Penn State was looking pretty tough, up until this week. But if you’re not playing against Joe Paterno, you’re not playing against Penn State. From today’s perspective, if that championship game happens, it will be the emptiest, most meaningless contest in college football history.

But that’s only a game. It doesn’t begin to touch the depth of the tragedy.

Let’s get the obvious out on the table. What Jerry Sandusky allegedly did was wrong, horrible, and incalculably harmful to many. The university’s response appears to have been criminally lacking. If reports are true, the victims were harmed in ways most of us could never grasp—especially since such a powerful institution was (again, allegedly) backing the perpetrator. From what we’ve been told, Joe Paterno seems to have done what was required of him legally, but he fell far short of doing the right thing morally.

What strikes me about this whole sad mess is the disproportionality I see everywhere I look. College football is out of proportion; everyone knows that, including fans out of proportion like myself. Assuming the accounts are true as alleged, Paterno’s initial action and his follow-through were disproportionately weak. His bosses’ response to his report was nonexistent, as far as I know. Really, now, though: did Joe Paterno have a boss? When Tim Curley, Paterno’s last athletic director, was hired, did he sit Paterno down in his office and tell him, “Look, Joe, you’ve gotta understand one thing: you work for me now!”? No, Joe Paterno was (and remains) a legend. Legends don’t really have bosses. Legends are people out of proportion.

Paterno had handled his legendary status well. His reputation was beyond superb. He graduated more athletes than any other AP top 25 football coach. He gave millions of dollars away. He was known for the caring side of his character. Penn State loved him, other schools’ fans (like me) respected him mightily—and now he has taken a disproportionately tragic fall from that height.

The board’s dismissing such a man by phone seems terribly, carelessly out of proportion. Students’ rioting was horribly out of proportion.

I do not think it is out of proportion to discipline and/or prosecute those who are responsible for sex crimes.

There’s one question of proportionality I’m having trouble with, though. Penn State’s student newspaper added a sex columnist almost exactly a month before this scandal came to light. It may be the most disproportionately proportionate fact in the whole debacle. (That’s oxymoronic, I know, but maybe as you read on you’ll understand what I mean.) In her inaugural column on October 6, Kristina Helfer wrote this and more:

Often, sex is taboo. We can’t discuss what goes on behind the closed doors of the bedroom, or in my case, under a crabapple tree once.

…

At Penn State, it’s more than in the bedroom — it’s a lofted bed, a walk-in closet at a fraternity or the Nittany Lion Shrine.

…

It’s time to break society’s chains (or not), and look at sex from a different perspective. Losing control draws me toward all of this.

…

There is no better time to have a little fun and explore than in college. We have few responsibilities, and there will never be as many willing people around to experience the same things with.

…

Let’s get our minds — and … [deleted] … — moving, and really delve into what’s important.

…

Kristina Helfer is a junior majoring in English and Spanish. She is The Daily Collegian’s Thursday columnist for the Collegian’s sex column….

Believe it or not, I edited out more than one especially offensive portion from that set of quotations from her column, including an unsubtle reference to sexual thoughts about “cute kids.” I could not include the last line in particular, a carelessly composed sentence (as I take it to be) whose author certainly did not intend it to be interpreted literally. If she had, its implications could be criminal. Since I’m sure she did not mean it that way, I’m willing to regard it as merely horrendous. (The source is here. Click with caution.)

This came (I remind you) from a weekly columnist in the Penn State Daily Collegian. Hypocrisy is only considered a sin when it’s committed by conservatives.

Sexual sin is wrong. When it involves minors, it’s a crime, and it needs to be treated that way. An out-of-proportion culture struggles with knowing what to do about it, though; especially when that culture gives a platform to a woman who thinks college means “few responsibilities,” and that sex is “what’s important.”

“Losing control draws me toward all of this,” she wrote in October, oblivious to what that would soon mean to Penn State. “Breaking society’s chains” and losing control were what Sandusky did (if the crimes took place as alleged) while multiple victims never had any control to start with. Joe Paterno and his bosses took no control over the situation, we’re told. When the board finally did take control last night, students really lost control. Losing control drew Penn State toward all of this.

I have wept over this—without much control, I am unashamed to say.

God help Penn State. God help us all.

Also posted at Thinking Christian

Artist and self-styled experimental philosopher Jonathon Keats is hoping to persuade the art world to join scientists in the Copernican Revolution—nearly 5 centuries late. In 1543, Nicolaus Copernicus made the humbling observation that the Earth revolves around the sun. Modern physicists often cite the “Copernican principle” that, as nature’s rules are the same everywhere, the human viewpoint isn’t unique.

But the art world, Keats says, is still stubbornly Ptolemaic, in that it emphasizes the “exceptionalism” of humans and centers on stories about ourselves. So, in “The First Copernican Art Manifesto,” an exhibit that opened Thursday at the Modernism gallery in San Francisco, California, Keats will feature art that reflects banal, average truths about the universe.

[From The Story Is Dead. Long Live the Story. - Lucas Laursen. See also here.]

So, the Copernican Revolution showed that “nature’s rules are the same everywhere, the human viewpoint isn’t unique;” art ought to catch up with science; and all of that leads to the conclusion that there is something unseemly about promoting “human exceptionalism” in art. Rarely does one see the effects of worldview so neatly encapsulated in so short a snippet.

Let’s dispense quickly with the obvious errors. The Copernican Revolution was not the “humbling observation” we make of it today. The center of the universe was, in those days, the humble position, and Copernicus lifted that stigma from us. The “Copernican principle,” scientifically speaking, says that the human vantage point (the physical location from which we observe the universe) is not unique; but that is not the same as saying the human viewpoint is not unique. That is a philosophical conclusion, one that is fed not only by science but by many streams of thought; and the science contributing to it is at least as much Darwin as Copernicus.

Beyond that, there is something deeply troubling about the implication that art needs to get in step with science. Science is very good at what science is good at, while art is (or can be) very good at other things. Science knows how to deal with impersonal, law-governed regularities. Art is for personality, for freedom, and for surprise. Science per se knows nothing of beauty. Scientists do; and they often experience it in their investigations, their discoveries, even their equations. But this is a human experience, accessible only from a human viewpoint. It is not a laboratory finding.

To say that art should follow science is to say that personality, freedom, surprise, and beauty must decrease, while that which is statistical, predictable, and banal must increase. At least Keats seems to recognize this:

One canvas is painted a bland tan, the average color of the starlight of all stars measured by astronomers. Hydrogen gas released from glassware suspended above otherwise empty pedestals assumes a form invisible to human eyes. A quarter of the notes in a once-orderly Bach composition are rearranged—reflecting the increasing entropy of the universe since its tidy, pre–big bang singularity.

Though I haven’t seen it, I can easily imagine that his art feels dead, or at least deadening.

His personal style (see the Google images), ironically enough, appears sharp, personal, individual. He looks just as he is: really alive, and fully human. He has a viewpoint, a unique one, a personal one. He decries human exceptionalism, but in the very act of persuading others to adopt his opinions, he practices Jonathon Keats exceptionalism.

It is not only Copernicus that he gets wrong. He contradicts himself, as anyone must do who would deny what it is to be human.

Hat Tip to Uncommon Descent

On video: Richard Dawkins with Bill O’Reilly.

There is much that could be said about this, but I will stick with one thing, based on discussion at about the 2 minute mark:

When atheists insist that atheism does not drive behavior, and then then campaign on behalf of atheism, ridicule religion and religious believers in the name of atheism, seek to change laws in favor of their atheistic positions, recommend the extermination of religion, and practice falsehoods like Dawkins’s in support of atheism, they prove that their atheism drives their behavior and that their premise is false, disingenuous, and (as far as I can tell) useless for anything but giving atheism rhetorical cover from being implicated in atheists’ atrocities.

Sam Harris devotes eleven pages or so in The Moral Landscape to denying that human free will exists, because physical determinism governs every event.

Sam Harris says he is pro-choice.

I was wondering if anyone could explain that for me.

Michael Licona is a highly respected Christian apologist, and the author of the massively researched The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach. He has come under intense fire from two other estimable scholars, Norman Geisler and Albert Mohler, for what they consider to be dangerous compromise in his interpretation of Matthew 27:52-53. It is a minor theme in a very long book, but they have brought it under major public scrutiny. Dr. Licona has interpreted the events in that Matthew passage as probably belonging to a figurative and eschatological genre: apocalyptic, in other words, as he clarified later in his response to Dr. Geisler. Apocalyptic literature is often intended not to be taken literally.* Drs. Geisler and Mohler say that in this context, such an interpretation represents a denial of biblical inerrancy.

I have high respect for all three men. Full disclosure: I am somewhat personally acquainted with Dr. Licona through mutual friends and a couple of passing conversations we’ve had at conferences. He has responded to both challenges. The first of those responses is undersigned by an impressive list of Christian scholars who support him in terms of the inerrancy question.

Though I cannot rehearse all the issues here, I need to note that The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy recognizes that figurative and non-literal apocalyptic interpretations are valid where they reflect the intent and genre of the text. I will also point out that Dr. Licona stated his view tentatively, using the language, “it seems to me that [this interpretation] is most plausible.” In his response to Dr. Geisler, he moderated his view to make it even more tentative. He is treating it as a question to be pursued, in other words.

It is question that is outside of my expertise: I don’t know whether Dr. Licona’s interpretation is more likely to be correct than Dr. Mohler’s and Dr. Geisler’s or not. I have questions of my own, though, about the process by which this is playing out:

1. Is the apocalyptic interpretation entirely impossible under the standard of biblical inerrancy, is it known to be entirely impossible under the standard of inerrancy, and is there reasonably strong consensus among trustworthy, inerrancy-affirming scholars that it is known to be entirely impossible under that standard?

Dr. Licona’s list of supporting academics would seem to demonstrate that such a consensus among Bible-believing scholars does not exist.

2. If the answer to any of the above is either no or we’re not sure, doesn’t that imply that there is at least some possibility that the apocalyptic interpretation might be better than the historic, non-apocalyptic interpretation?

3. If there is a possibility that the apocalyptic interpretation is better than the literal-historic interpretation, doesn’t it follow that there is an open question here that can be legitimately pursued?

That brings me to my questions about process.

4. If Bible-believing, inerrancy-affirming scholars can be subjected to such intense public pressure for raising issues that can legitimately be regarded as open for discussion, where does that leave biblical scholarship? Is it okay to pursue such questions or not? If not, why not?

5. Where does that leave the biblical scholars themselves who raise questions that should be open questions? Is this kind of public pressure helpful or fair to them and their families? Is it good for the church at large?

6. Given that a certain amount of disagreement is inevitable among students of the Bible, isn’t there a better way to approach it?

I close with a note regarding the discussion that might follow this blog post. We could talk about whether Dr. Licona’s interpretation is correct or not, and that’s certainly a good question, but it’s not the one I’ve raised. What I’ve brought up here, and what I hope we discuss, is whether or not it’s okay for scholars to raise interpretive questions like this one.

*The Bible is literally true in all that it affirms, but in the case of figurative language, what it affirms is to be understood figuratively rather than literally. The Psalms tell us that our God is a rock, and there is definite meaning being affirmed there that is really true, but it is not that God is primarily composed of silicates.

The other day at Thinking Christian I put forth the question,

Can you identify the context of this passage?

To have a persona [to be a person] was to have a face before the law—which is to say, to be recognized as one possessing rights and privileges before a court, or as being able to give testimony upon the strength of one’s own word, or simply as owning a respectable social identity. For [your turn--fill in the blanks here], legal personality did not exist, or existed in only the most tenuous of forms…. [Fill in the blank again] was [someone]… “not having a persona,” or even, “not having a face.” Before the law, he or she was not a person in the fullest and most proper sense.

Of whom might this author might be speaking? Does this represent an injustice? If so, on what basis, and what could be (or might have been, if this was in the past) be done about it?

Someone guessed slavery. Someone else thought it was quite believable that it had to do with unborn babies.

There’s one author here at First Things, David Bentley Hart, who will have no trouble answering the question. Here is the (nearly) entire quote, from his highly-recommended historical survey, Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies. (I trust he will not mind my using it here.)

Even Christianity’s most implacable modern critics should be willing to acknowledge that, in these texts and others like them, we see something beginning to emerge from darkness into full visibility, arguably for the first time in our history: the human person as such, invested with an intrinsic and inviolable dignity, and possessed of an infinite value. It would not even be implausible to argue that our very ability to speak of “persons” as we do is a consequence of the revolution in moral sensibility that Christianity brought about. We, after all, emply this word with a splendidly indiscriminate generosity, applying it without hesitation to everyone, regardless of social station, race, or sex; but originally, at least in some of the most cricuial contexts, it had a much more limited application. Specifically, in Roman legal usage, one’s person was one’s status before the law, which was certainly not something invariable from one individual to the next. The original and primary meaning of the Latin word persona was “mask”….

To have a persona was to have a face before the law—which is to say, to be recognized as one possessing rights and privileges before a court, or as being able to give testimony upon the strength of one’s own word, or simply as owning a respectable social identity. For those of the lowest stations, however—slaves, base-born non-citizens and criminals, the utterly destitute, and criminals—legal personality did not exist, or existed in only the most tenuous of forms…. A slave was so entirely devoid of any “personal” dignity that, when called to testify before a duly appointed court, torture might be applied as a matter of course. For the slave was a man or woman not habens personam: literally, “not having a persona,” or even, “not having a face.” Before the law, he or she was not a person in the fullest and most proper sense.

Today, as Hart reminds us in the surrounding context, such a thing is unthinkable, outrageous. This change in Western attitudes toward human persons is directly traceable to New Testament Christianity, the “texts” he referred to in the first sentence of the above quote.

Isn’t it fascinating how well this language concerning slaves in ancient times fits abortion-supporters’ view of unborn babies today? Someday, maybe, our culture will wake up and recognize that human beings are persons, whether they have been enslaved, live in poverty, lack citizenship—or haven’t quite been born yet.

A Liberal Idea of Civility
A commenter who goes by “Remember Rollen” had this to say in the discussion on Hunter Baker’s article on dominionism:

If a “gay rights” law touching basic matters of justice cannot be justified in terms we can reasonably expect others to accept, then we violate a liberal ideal of civility when we restrict the freedoms of others through that law.

But I don’t quite see this with respect to [the overturning of] Prop. 8. (But you are surely here in in a better position to point out something I don’t see.) Maybe you can point to something in the court transcripts that contains the sort of violation you have in mind.

There is an attractive sort of ideal expressed there, one that I could really appreciate, if only it could work. Yes, let’s let our policies be guided by what we can reasonably expect others to accept. Since this came up in the context of dominionism, I take it that for Remember Rollen, this is one of the best ways to head off dangers of the sort represented by dominionism. (Whether there’s anything there that needs heading off is a different question. I do not know where Remember Rollen stands on that question, but it seems he is at least concerned about dangers of the sort that dominionism is supposed to present. I will refer to him as “RR” here, and I’ll accept the risk that I might be wrong in using the masculine pronoun.)

His point in that passage is this: if we can find a way to limit our public policy decisions to principles that can “be justified in terms we can reasonably expect others to accept,” then we can be assured no one’s freedom will ever be limited, except in ways they could reasonably be expected to agree with. That certainly sounds consistent with Western democratic principles. Unfortunately, working out that ideal presents problems that may be insurmountable. (more…)

A good friend of mine wrote today of John Stott’s profound impact on her life:

A good friend [not me--Tom] introduced me to his book, “The Cross of Christ”. I read it, begrudgingly. I didn’t want the things that Stott wrote about, to be truth. For if things that Stott taught—the centrality of the cross, the necessity of the cross, the authenticity of the cross–were truth, then who Jesus was and the reason He died on the cross would be truth also, a hard thing for my agnostic-leaning, atheistic-embracing soul to bear. That God would send His Son—would SACRIFICE–His Son out of love for me was overwhelming.

And yet, read I did. Page after page. I devoured “The Cross of Christ”, digging deeper into each and every page, marking it up with highlighters and notes in the margins—”Is this true?” ”What if this is truth?” ”Why would Stott write this very logical paragraph?”. And So Forth. And So On.

Until I came to the last chapter, and one of the last sections, titled “The Pain of God”. My soul. Could it be truth that God could know pain? Could it be truth that He could see and know the pain my soul was in? For I had settled that there could not possibly be a God. Because if there was a God, than the forsaken nature of the pain I felt was for nothing. And yet…..and yet I learned through Stott’s writings and through the Biblical story of the Garden of Gethsemane and the Cross itself, that God not only sees my pain–He knows it. He knows it. …

[From Cerebration » Blog Archive » John Stott Goes Home]

I’m a long-term staff member with Campus Crusade for Christ who has believed that it was time for a change in our movement’s name. Last Monday the announcement was made that our U.S. ministries would become “Cru.”

For me the change was welcome. Not everyone is likewise convinced it’s a good thing. Some observers in the blogosphere have taken a cautious stance—Touchstone, for example—but a few members of the press and some bloggers have been sharply critical of Campus Crusade’s dropping “Christ” from our movement’s name. I’ve seen headlines like, “The Beginning of the End.” I’ve seen dire warnings that we are falling away from Christ. I’ve seen pastors writing that their churches could no longer support us in our apparent apostasy.

No Place for Pride
We recognize that anything is possible: there is no guarantee that God will keep his hand of blessing on our ministry, and those who think they stand must take heed lest they fall. When Bill Bright left Campus Crusade’s presidency, I wrote up a study for leaders on how prior movements had come and gone, and I learned there were more than a few that had slipped away from their founding vision in Christ. Possibly the greatest missions sending movement of all time is one that’s all but lost to memory today: the Student Volunteer Movement. For decades around the turn of the 20th century it had been vibrant, world-changing, sending thousands around the globe;, but theological liberalism led to its downfall around 1920. The Y (its official name now) was originally the Young Men’s Christian Association. Its Christian roots are all but invisible now.

We’re Holding Close to Christ
Still, as I wrote elsewhere yesterday, I wish everyone could have experienced what we staff members did on the days this name change was announced. It was above all a time of worship, repentance from sin, exalting the name of Christ, re-affirming our commitment to our mission, and learning new ways to advance the glory and knowledge of Christ. We spent hours on that. Included in that mix was about 60 or so minutes spent on the new name, but even that was positioned in context of our continuing mission to reach the world for Christ.

For that reason, even though I know anything is possible, I remain convinced Campus Crusade for Christ (Cru) will stay focused on knowing Jesus Christ and making him known, for at least as long as we are led by the current generation of leaders. And because of their leadership and the biblical reverence and worship expressed among our staff members, I believe we’ll continue on track with Christ for years beyond that.

A Biblical Perspective
What does the Bible say about our name, though? Much of the debate I’ve seen centers around one question: should we bring the Name of Christ with us as a banner everywhere we go, or can it stay in the background for a while sometimes? As “Campus Crusade for Christ,” we see the banner effect all the time: people see our written material or signs, and they form impressions of us right from the start, based on whatever impression they might have of Christ or of other Christians. The same thing happens to us when someone asks us who we work for.

Is there a problem with that? Some bloggers think we’re “backing away” from the Name of Christ because of shame. Not by any means! It’s no accident that one of our leaders focused on Romans 1:16 at our staff conference this week. And there was nothing extraordinary about him doing so: it’s engraved on all of our hearts. Still the question remains, is it necessary or even helpful, though, to present the name of Christ at the beginning of a conversation with a non-believer? Let’s look at the New Testament witness. (more…)

In this series’ first three posts I tried to show that Christian teachers apologists must take seriously the moral question, and not just the truth question, of Christian exclusivism. Otherwise when we ask people to believe Christ is the one way, many will take it that we’re asking them to accept something they consider morally unworthy to believe. The key message to emphasize is that it’s not our private truth: we don’t hold the truth, the Truth holds us. Our exclusivist stance is not exclusively ours, at any rate; we are not the only ones who say, “Your belief is wrong!” Anyone who understands what the Christian message says must hold that if it is not exclusively true, it is entirely wrong—on account of the cross of Christ.

Meanwhile Sarah Flashing has written on a related subject, emphasizing that truth is not some wishy-washy feel-good thing to adapt to our own preferences; truth is what it is on God’s terms. This struck me as especially brilliant:

Some try to reimage the gospel in the name of Christianity, holding that a truly loving God demonstrates love, not through the sacrifice of his Son but through the sacrifice of truth.  This is expressed by God through intellectual generosity in the form of tolerance for religious and moral diversity…. Sadly, this Jesus does not call anyone to repentance and makes a mockery of the cross. This is a reimaged Jesus not found in the pages of scripture.

Christian exclusivism is true because it is true. It is moral because it is true; and because God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself (2 Corinthians 5:19). Jesus Christ is the one way God provided.

There was someone close to me who was antagonistic toward Christ and Christianity for most of his adult life. He and his wife chose to be non-exclusive in their religious approach, raising their children “in all the traditions,” as he put it. He finally came to faith in Christ in his mid-40s. He told me then that he had always wondered why God would put up Christ as a barrier to coming to God, as if believing in Jesus was one more hoop everyone had to jump through. Then he realized that Christ came to remove all the barriers. The fences and walls were already up, and it was we who put them there. It was Christ’s work that took them out of the way.

I have been asked, (more…)

In the first part of this series I suggested that Christians who want to convince others that Christ is the one way to the one God need to talk about more than whether that belief is true; we also need to give attention to the common belief that it is immoral to think so. I followed that by contrasting an arrogant belief that we Christians “hold the truth” with “The Truth holds us;” that we receive the truth given by God in grace, and we submit to it in humility. In this third part I want to show that Christians are not the only exclusivists anyway. More than that, though I want to direct our attention toward one key teaching at the heart of Christianity’s exclusivist beliefs—Jesus Christ and the Cross—and show how it makes all other beliefs exclusivist. (more…)

I wrote recently about an under-recognized shift in the way many people object to Christianity: that it is immorally arrogant in its exclusivism. Historic orthodox Christianity claims that there is one God uniquely revealed in Jesus Christ, who is the one way, truth, and life for all people everywhere in all times. This means that other paths to God are excluded. Once the principal objection to Christian exclusivism was that it was false. Now, at least in my experience, the main problem have with it is that it seems immoral.

To Understand, So As To Be Able To Translate
Missionaries to distant lands know that their first task is to understand their host country’s language and culture. Many are the stories of messages that have backfired for lack of doing that deep cultural study. Christians in Western culture can make the same mistake of delivering a message that makes sense coming out of our mouths, but get completely garbled going in our listeners’ ears. We need to understand so as to be able to translate.

And so at the high risk of over-simplifying, I offer some ways to understand our culture’s view of truth, so as to suggest some ways to translate our message. (more…)

The world has a big problem with Christian exclusivism—the belief that there is one God uniquely revealed in Jesus Christ, who is the one way, truth, and life for all people at all times. Theologians and apologists have defended exclusivism’s truth since time out of mind, but never so much as in these pluralistic and relativistic times. Recently I’ve come to wonder, though, whether we’re addressing the wrong question; for I am hearing less and less that exclusivism is false, and much more often that it is immoral. The difference is crucial.

I would never dispute the importance of the truth side of the question. I am convinced that Christ is indeed the one way to God. I am equally sure that the truth of this exclusive claim can be defended, and that when someone questions its truth, that’s exactly what we ought to focus on.

It’s just that this is not always the question; in fact in my (limited) experience, it’s no longer frontmost  on many people’s minds. It used to be they said, “You believe that Jesus is the one way, but that’s not true.” Now more often they say, “You believe that Jesus is the one way, and there’s something wrong about you—evil, even—for thinking that.”

Or to put it another way: nowadays when people ask themselves, “Should I believe in Christianity?” it’s no longer primarily, “should I believe it on account of evidence or reasons that may support it?” (an epistemic should). Instead it is an ethical “should,” as in, “wouldn’t it be morally irresponsible for me to accept this belief?” (more…)

Arguably the second oldest and most persistent Christian heresy is gnosticism (the first is legalism). Early forms of it were condemned in Colossians and possibly other Pauline letters, and also in 1 John. Gnosticism splits the “spiritual” world from the visible material world, saying that what really counts is not what we can see, but only what happens in the invisible realms. It seriously undermines God’s work in creation and especially in the Incarnation and Resurrection. It violates clear biblical teaching about the end times, the future state we call “heaven.”

Gnosticism is not Christianity.

Harold Camping says Judgment Day actually did happen last Saturday—in a “spiritual” sense. Can his teachings still be called Christian? Some of them, yes. But his most public ones are infected with deadly error.

I don’t want to draw the Gnostic connection more closely than it deserves, but it comes to mind that Gnosticism tends to promote spiritual pride, and vice-versa. One wonders if some humility might have helped Camping admit he made a mistake.

The great thing about horror movies is that no matter how awful things look, no matter how terrified we feel, we know with absolute 100% certainty that everything will be perfectly fine in the end. I’m not talking about the movie plot: there’s no guarantee on that. I’m talking about ourselves as the viewers. We know that after about two hours of movie time or so, the credits will roll, the lights will come up, and we’ll get in our cars, go get coffee, and laugh at ourselves for letting it get to us the way it did.

The terrible thing about Harold Camping’s prediction that Christ will return today* is that it turns God’s Judgment Day into the same sort of thing. There are some among us who take nothing seriously about the Lord, and I’m sure they’ll laugh at anyone who wonders about a day like today. Let them. For doubters and seekers there might be instead an entertaining thrill, a delicious frisson of fear to the thought, “What if this is The Day? What if they’re right, and this is Really It for us all?”

I’m picturing someone in my mind who doesn’t know if God is for real, but doubts he’s ready to meet him if he is. The prospect is unsettling, even fearful. And then the thought: what if Camping is right? But he knows that’s just dumb. At worst, it’s a kind of horror-movie fear. No one really believes this is The Day—not even Camping’s own staff. However frightening the thought of meeting God this very day might be, it’s a thrill no more dangerous and only slightly less entertaining than in a movie. He knows in a few hours he’ll be past it. At the end of the day he’ll have his coffee and laugh at himself for letting that “what if…?” creep into his mind: “Silly me, to let myself even wonder about that!”

Silly indeed. Or maybe not. Yesterday morning I was driving on a narrow, shoulder-less two-lane road near our home, where some very foolish driver ahead of me decided to pass the car in front of him. He pulled his pickup truck out and came alongside the other car, so they were fully side by side going southwest. Did I mention this foolish driver was coming toward me? I was only about a hundred yards from both of those vehicles, going northeast at 35 mph. I mashed my brakes, and thank God, the other guy did too, and he pulled back into his lane.

My heart was pounding for a good while after that. This was no cinema scare. There’s no guarantee things will come out right when a driver pulls a stunt like that. Yesterday could have been The Day for me.

It could have been The Day for any of us. Some day certainly will be.

Like other would-be prophets before him, Camping has trivialized the Day of the Lord. This is Camping’s crime: he has turned it into an entertainment piece. He gives the atheists something else to laugh about in Christianity. That’s bad, but it’s not the worst thing. He gives the doubters and seekers reason to laugh at themselves: “Silly me, to wonder about that! I’ll be more careful not to let those kinds of thoughts bother me from now on.”

*The linked page is specific to today, May 21. I have no idea how it will look tomorrow. Today, however, it’s further trivializing–especially the trumpets. The last trumpet will not have flags of the nations hanging from it.

On April 7 at Notre Dame University, William Lane Craig and Sam Harris debated whether morality requires God. Dr. Glenn Peoples posted a detailed play-by-play of the debate on his blog, including links to the audio. There are several other reviews listed here.

I have a reflection rather than a review to offer here. At least two of Craig’s arguments could be described as “knock-down” disproofs of Harris’s position. Craig himself used that term for one of them, noting as he did so that such strong proofs are hard to come by in philosophy, but that this one, based on the logic of identity relationships, was certainly one of them. The other had to do with the impossibility of moral realism if determinism in the strictest sense is true, as Harris believes it to be.

Harris’s response to these two logical arguments was to ignore them completely. His rebuttal was essentially a series of word pictures depicting moral outrages for which he held religion responsible. It was an appeal to the gut, not to the head. Now, I would be first to admit that morality has an emotional component, and emotionally-based arguments like Harris’s deserve answers. Craig did respond to them briefly, for example making reference to Paul Copan’s recent work on Old Testament morality.

And yet there is something strange in this. Harris is the founder of Project Reason (“Spreading Science and Secular Values”). In that role he illustrates and represents the New Atheists’ oft-sounded claim that they represent reason in the face of the irrationality of faith. Yet his response to Craig’s logical arguments was mostly in the form of emotional appeals.

There was definite power in Harris’s approach. My guess is that for those who are not oriented toward logical reasoning as a guide to knowledge, he scored more debate points than Craig. But he essentially forfeited the logical argument: the argument based on reason and rationality.

Doesn’t that seem odd for the man who leads Project Reason?

Also posted at The Point