As much as I hate to say it, Driscoll needs to step down or be pushed out

I spent many long days in the rodent-housing floor of the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center trying to figure out the best way to tuck my earbuds through the protective scrubs so I could be entertained by Mark Driscoll. Here was a Pastor that I could listen to all day -- smart, charismatic as any other modern-day Pastor, and man, funny. Really funny. At 43, Mark built a church from 30 to over 6,000 with over 15 campuses. The dude could preach.

But, there was a reputation there. He clearly though the Church was emasculated. Referring to the Jesus of the modern Church as "a neutered and limp-wristed popular Sky Fairy of pop culture" whom turned Jesus into "a Richard Simmons, hippie, queer Christ." One he couldn't worship at all. He clearly has some issues with the Feminist movement as well. He went as far to defend Ted Haggard (well, not so much defend him as blame his wife) for his affair(s?). If he worked for ESPN, he would have been suspended. Instead, Mars Hill, which should be a little more in tune with moral precepts, looked the other way.  Heck, I looked the other way. You kidding? Do church-going men need to be a little tougher, a little more Joey Porter and less Cole Porter? I mean, probably, right? And what great followers of Christ weren't mired in controversy? I mean, a lot of them were killed because they were different and offensive. As one Priest once told me, if you are popular you better be worried about whom you are actually following.

But then there were things like this from Driscoll: "Proverbs talks about certain women—they're like a dripping faucet. You ever tried to sleep with a dripping faucet? Plunk, plunk, plunk, plunk, plunk. It's what we use to torture people who are prisoners of war. A wife is like that." 

Then there was this: First, masturbation can be a form of homosexuality because it is a sexual act that does not involve a woman. If a man were to masturbate while engaged in other forms of sexual intimacy with his wife then he would not be doing so in a homosexual way. However, any man who does so without his wife in the room is bordering on homosexuality activity, particularly if he's watching himself in a mirror and being turned on by his own male body.

Ok. um. ok.

 So this guy is pretty rough around the edges. So am I. He makes a living of talking, so, sometimes, says things that he probably regrets nor believes. But, all that hand-waving came crashing down when some comments he made on a Mars Hill related blog (using a pseudo name) recently came to life.... I read the whole thing. Two comments: 1) It definitely sounds like him and 2) he needs to go.  I'm not gonna put the quote on this site. But, honestly, it's pretty disgusting and ignorant. And seems strangely really, really angry. 

This isn't about forgiveness or casting the first stone. It's about a guy who is 43, has one of the larger churches in America, and, even more so, has a significant young following.  You can't come across (or worse) as a chauvinist as a Pastor. And that is exactly what he comes across as. It, for me, is as simple as that. And, also, its the grace thing. My ears perk up whenever I see someone supposedly touched by the grace of Jesus, yet not dishing it out, wholly and exhaustively. As converted, we should know better than anyone how much of a walking, sleeping, xxxing disasters we all are. Mired in mediocrity, unyielding selfishness and desperate affronts. We should know we aren't better than anyone. In fact,  we should wholeheartedly  believe we are worse. 

So, the dude has to go. I hope Mars Hill figures that out. Dude has to go. 

Owning Mahowny

Anselm's ontological argument is one of the most bizarre, yet almost cultishly followed. The greatest thing your mind can think of? Strange. Oh, and  there are some terrible ones; whatever is convincing Thomas Nagel of a god (er, supernatural existence) is not particularly convincing to me. For instance, the "Goldilocks" phenomenon, where this universe is "just right" for life, seems better explained, in by itself, Atheist viewpoints than Theist ones. The whole irreducible complexity thing, for me, is vacuous if not egregiously incorrect (although in fairness, Behe in no way claims a proof of God here and in fact seems only interested in the Science).

What I am writing about are of course the so-called proofs of God.

There are some compelling proofs. Godel has a proof. He's arguably the greatest logician to live, so it isn't a terrible idea to take it a bit seriously. The first cause proof is also compelling.   Roger Scruton's views drawn out of aesthetics are compelling.  Plantinga's evolutionary argument against naturalism (EAAN), if you're not careful, is actual proof. For me, they serve as evidence for the theist's unique claims on reason and logic, since it provides ontological grounding and, by the way, explains why evolution can lead to true beliefs. Can fiction prove God's existence? Some think Robinson's Gilead does. But I digress. And, most importantly, these are just really arguments. And while Paul argues that we are all Theistic presuppositionalists, Theist and Atheist alike (c.f. Romans 1:20), there is little room for conversation if by definition the Atheist denies God's existence (so for the sake of proof talk, that must be ignored, even though starting with the understanding of God existing and working our ways out instead of in, is the way we were designed to know God). Such that, any sort of self-evident or natural theology proof has to go out the window, despite their intimate relationship with the believer. One can as simply argue from the Atheist side, that only things that can be tested by understood scientific experimentation can be considered true (or false). Thus, in order to dialogue we need to move from both these positions --  and,  furthermore, there are some compelling arguments on the Atheist side of the fence as well, and not just the problem of hiddenness (evil).

Arguments can serve as signposts, but they are not proofs. The Crucifixion occurred in a time where history was recorded, but not in the way that proves anything. The Ascension was even more obscure. You get the sense that Christianity, if not for some courageous few at the beginning, could have died out way before Constantine capitalized on the movement.

But what can Christianity provide that other faith systems, like Atheism or Hinduism,  cannot? And why has it survived like it has, and furthermore, flourished? I've  previously argued that Rene Girard's ideas of how Christianity serves as the terminal myth, the culmination of early human civilization providing the ultimate Scapegoat, Christ on the Cross, is part of the answer.

But Christianity provides even more, uniquely. It is not the end of suffering, but it helps us hope there is one, if, as the recently deceased Diogenes Allen writes in Theology for a Troubled Believer,  the cross means that "Christ endures the Father's complete absence", and that "this is to endure the effect of evil; for evil destroys communion, and the full effect of evil is to destroy all communion". Here, we begin to see it, how Christianity confronts a much more visceral part of the human being than our capacity to compute and critically think.  Or, as the brilliant Simone Weil puts it in The Need for Roots, "the fact that a human being possesses an eternal destiny imposes only one obligation: respect". Interestingly, these are very anti-Darwinian ideals, or, at the very least, very non-instinctual responses. Whatever they are, these principals were borne out of Calvary, and for the converted Christian, steer their ships. And it is these ideals that have largely given Christianity, in its purest and most upright form, it's identity.

But, I'm convinced these ideals,  despite their unique poignancy, do not explain the success of Christianity. Nor does simply the veracity of Christianity, since that can be and is easily disputed. Although a communal movement through and through, Christianity is also deeply personal. And, for me, this is where the answer is. This is where Christianity really sets itself apart from every other philosophy. Precisely, because it is not simply a philosophy, but, as I've argued before, a testable hypothesis.

Recently, Phillip Seymour Hoffmann passed away. My favorite Hoffmann flick was Owning Mahowny. Based on a true story, Hoffmann plays a bank employee who embezzles money to finance his increasingly out-of-control gambling problem. After getting caught, Hoffmann is eventually let off relatively easy and is speaking with presumably a court-appointed counselor, when he is asked on a scale of 1-100, what was gambling to him, and, what was the next greatest feeling of joy he felt in his life. His answer: gambling:100. The rest: 20.

Weil lists "order" as the first essential need of the human. Scientists in particular are tempted to a subconscious level of worship of the universe by its breathtaking (well, and breath-producing) order. There are ten trillion things going on in the universe, yet everything somehow coalesces on infinite levels and somehow just "works" to create a macrostable reality -- and even more amazingly, one we can perceive (or at least perceive that we perceive). Weil goes on: responsibility, hierarchy, equality, honor, punishment. Freedom. etc.

Hoffmann's character was deeply deficient because he mistook his needs for his desires. Always fleeting, these are always red herrings. And they end up one way (jail, depression, an anxiety-ridden waltz through life) or another (death) a disaster.

The Convert's answer is one to human need. And, as part of the whole picture of Theism, doesn't serve as a "crutch" for people as some would contend, but much more like a "walking stick", that guides them out of the cave of anxious animal life, to a voyage where humans were always meant to go.

And with understanding of that conversion, she can answer a slightly different question posed to Hoffmann's character -- one that serves as the only real test of God, and as such, the positive answer as the only real proof of God that I know of.

What is the question and answer?

What is Jesus to you on a scale of 1-100?  Answer: 100. The next best thing? 20.

Uh-oh. If it wasn't such an insult to him, I would say I might be channeling my inner-Anselm.



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Hurtado on N.T. Wright's latest installment

There is an interesting series on Larry Hurtado's blog here http://larryhurtado.wordpress.com about Wright's latest quick read (1700 pages) in his Christian Origins and the Question of God series, titled "Paul and the Faithfulness of God."

1) I have made the obvious point several times that N.T. Wright has made many important contributions to Christian thought during his career.

2) I have also made the point that, despite his substantial credentials, and my substantial lack of credentials, I cannot reconcile some of his Pauline viewpoints.

3) Luckily, others with credentials cannot either.

Hurtado here http://larryhurtado.wordpress.com/2014/03/18/paul-and-the-faithfulness-of-god-2nd-posting/ has something quite significant to say underlying a fundamental difference in Wright's understanding and his (mine). Wright contends that it was the Jewish expectation at the time that YHWH would appear in person, forming the lens that Jews at the time would identify Jesus. Contrast with Hurtado, who maintains with other scholars that Jesus was placed by 1st century Jews within the "divine identity".

Clearly, during this time, there was a very hard turn from classic understanding of God to one that began to include Jesus in it's composition. How this, as Hurtado puts it, "mutation" in Jewish monotheism occurred is an interesting question. Surely part of the problem is the tension even within single authors, such as Paul, as to what exactly Jesus' place in the Jewish tradition was, and where that place intersected with gentiles. One thing is for certain, if Paul got it wrong, then we were set very early on a strange and muddled trajectory, one that was crystallized in the idea of the Trinity. It seems to me, that, Wright continues to put a lot of confidence in Paul and his theology, as if he was acting in isolation, able to take early Jewish/disciple understanding of whom Jesus was, and in some ways, reshape that to the "triadic shape" that has become the idea of the Trinity.

I'm not sure if that makes a lot of sense. Taking his letters in whole, it seems to paint the picture of a very bright Pharisee whom was reliable on early disciple instructions on what exactly was going on with the Jesus he met on the road to Damascus, and not one that was in position to re-interpret early Jewish consensus on what exactly the person of Jesus meant to traditional Jewish monotheism. Through his re-interpreations of Paul, it also seems to be that Wright is forever giving Paul too much credit in forming early Christian thought, and not enough credit to Peter and those that spent several years with Jesus during his ministry. Morover, to use an analogy, he is setting Paul up as a mutagen, and not the natural development of religion in Mesopotamia. It again seems to me that this is the much more well-traveled road with God, a God that is, at least on some levels, okay with allowing nature to run its course through evolution to bring us to a point of emerging awareness of His Creation and Presence. As humans fail over and over, nature priming the brain and conscience is always the better route to bring God into our field of vision, in this case aided by Jesus' words, stories and actions.  Why God needed Paul at all is not so abundantly clear to me and will remain a mystery. Why N.T. Wright insists Paul restructured the way Jews thought about Jesus, remains just as much a mystery.

Top 50 list of contemporary Theistic thinkers

Here is an interesting list from the best school folks of their 50 leading Theist intellectuals in 2013. While DBH was surprisingly on that list, who I think is still a bit of a hidden jewel, conspicuously missing is six other thinkers I would round off my top 10 with, never mind top 50 (Rene Girard, Rosalind Picard, Tim Keller, Hilary Putnam, John Behr and John D. Barrow). It's also interesting that they have physicists like Chris Isham, Don Page and Michael Heller on the list, but not Nobel laureates like William Phillips, Charles Townes (who is almost 100 by the way), Arno Penzias and Tony Hewish (all very outspoken Christian physicists). At any rate, I love that they took the time to create this list, and hope it becomes an annual thing.  You can follow the link here:

http://www.thebestschools.org/blog/2013/01/06/50-smartest-people-faith/


Just for posterity, and b/c there is not much funner than making top 10 lists of anything, my top 10, would, not in order, go:

1) WLC -- if you needed one guy to defend the Theist worldview, it would have to be this guy.

2) Girard. I think he has a chance to change how a lot of fields think about themselves, not just the anthropology of religion.

3) Plantinga. He probably would be the guy you would want to fill in for Craig if Craig was too busy working on that upper body or embarrassing Sam Harris or Peter Atkins

Atkins debacle ->->  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIuua7HZRxw

4) Putnam and 5) DBH. Other notable philosophers that would just be outside my list: Bas van Fraasen, who is on their list, Edward Feser, who is a rising star, and Peter van Inwagen, who can tackle the problem of evil, the most credible challenge to Theism, better than anyone I have read.

6) Tim Keller and 7) John Behr would be my theologians/pastors on the list. These guys, because of their trade, are probably grossly underrated as pure thinkers. They both can talk and write about things in ways most people cannot, and, most importantly, take the human tapestry and how it relates to the Sacred in ways that make us understand how Sacred the Sacred is, yet how near it is and can be. I don't always agree with him, but N.T. Wright would have to be a honorable mention. A great, great speaker, and "The Resurrection of the Son of God" is the most important Christian apologetics book written in the last 100 years.

8), 9), and 10) You could pick a lot of scientists. I would add Rosalind Picard, not just because she is obviously brilliant, but because there are so many vocal Christian scientists from MIT today (Hutchinson, Van Vooris, come to mind) that someone from MIT should be on the list. I love John D. Barrow, so he is in. He is also the funniest guy on this list. I would round off with Jennifer Wiseman, an astrophysicist who is at NASA and is in charge at AAAS to better bridge science and religion. Honorable mention to all the nobel laureate scientists that could be on my list and all the other obvious choices like Knuth and Francis Collins. Also, I really think Polkinghorne will go down as one of the best critical thinkers of our time, mostly because he is highly visible and because he has the respect of both honest theologians and honest scientists.

So what's your top 10?