Tim Nichols recently posted concerning whether Christians should participate in martial arts that have a pagan background.[1] I suggested that postmillennialism naturally sees what can be salvaged from pagan cultures and “redeemed”, rather than writing it all off as corrupt, as many Christians do. His response was worth repeating:
Michael Jensen had a great column published on ABC Unleashed, critical of the religious programme Compass:
Imagine No Religion
If you ever tune in to the ABC’s flagship religious affairs programme Compass after the bonnet drama of a Sunday night, then you could be forgiven for thinking that the group of people labelled ‘the religious’ are those who wear funny hats.
As the opening title sequence of the show scrolls by, viewers are treated to a veritable facebook of curious millinery - along with some impressive facial hair.
To the average ABC viewer, watching as they iron their work clothes, the message is clear: these people are not ‘us’. They are definitely ‘the other’: a group or groups of people to be observed, categorised, wondered at - and sometimes even frightened of.
But is there such a category as the ‘religious’? Does ‘religion’ even exist?
A Doug Wilson quote from the recent Auburn Avenue Pastors’ Conference:
“The Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene Creed, are statements of faith that separate Christian from non-Christian. Did you see good old [anti-theist] Christopher Hitchens witnessing to that lady this last week? I’ve gotten to know Christopher pretty well and have really appreciated him. He was interviewed by a Unitarian lady minister. She was complaining in the interview,
In the movie Collision, Christopher Hitchens relies a lot on the idea of a moral consensus, the idea that humanity has an innate sense of what’s right and what’s wrong and that we all agree on the basics. Is there any merit in this assumption? Or is Hitchens assuming that the benefits of Christianity are the result of human reason? Peter Leithart argues that Calvin, as an heir of 1200 years of Christendom, made exactly this mistake.
(I present below just the head and tail of Dr Leithart’s argument. I highly recommend getting a hold of the essay and reading his full argument and evidences.)
Peter Leithart on Middle Grace and Moral Consensus
The Bible presents a bleak view of the moral potential of the natural man. In this respect it seems to fly in the face of the facts. What are we to make of the empirical phenomenon of the “good pagan”?
These modern atheists are totally blind. Besides the fact that they give all the credit for the cultural achievements of Christianity to “human reason” (aren’t Muslims human, too?), they believe that social anarchy is freedom. After all, we are just pondscum, blindly—antinomiously— finding its full potential.
My friend Matt has been blogging about how postmodernism, with its openness to narrative, is a great opportunity for the gospel. But evangelicals need to sort themselves out first. Otherwise, to the world, they are just a bunch of Patsys. Patsy Biscoes that is.
…but slack on Creation.
“What’s so great about Christianity? D’Souza gives this question a book-length answer, exploring Christianity’s effect on government, science, philosophy and morality, while answering the objections of atheists along the way. He also gives a warning: most of the West is living on the inheritance of the Christian culture handed down to it by previous generations, but the secular worldview is slowly eating away at the best things Western culture offers. Continue reading
or Typology: Deadly Weapon or game of Scattergories?
“Chiastic literary analysis has completely destroyed liberal literary criticism. Liberalism is in tatters, bleeding and dying. Liberalism cannot survive Dorsey’s chiastic proof of the total unity of Isaiah, for instance. Dorsey finds loads of 7-fold chiasms in the Bible. I’ve found scores more, quite independently. What Dorsey does not see is that these are recaps of the chiasm of the 7 days in Genesis 1. And that’s good, because it means he did not go through the Bible forcing passages into heptamerous chiasms. He just found them there, and others can see that these track Genesis 1 as ‘new creation’ passages.”
—James B. Jordan, A Reply on the Nature of the Psalter, Biblical Horizons blog, biblicalhorizons.wordpress.com, referring to David A. Dorsey, The Literary Structure of the Old Testament.
If chiastic literary analysis (along with typology as I posted recently) is such a powerful weapon against a modernist interpretation of the Bible, why are these methods of study shunned by those who oppose liberal theology? Why are theologians hauled over the coals for using it if it leaves the enemy in shreds?
It is impossible to impose any foreign worldview, modern or otherwise, onto the Bible. It will never be accommodated to the current ephemera. It comes in like a sword and violates our thinking until we think the way God does. Then it has dambusting consequences in every area of life.
It is a weapon to crush the head, to bring death and resurrection in us, and in the world. It carves up nations like a sacrifice and makes them a pleasing aroma to God. It rebuilds cultures from the inside out, and is the fount of all western society, art, literature (and literacy), music, government and charity.
And western atheism is in reality a black leech hanging off this grandeur, a little horn with a big mouth, totally dependent on the longsuffering and mercy of Christ the ascended King.
Secular humanism is but a perversion of Christianity. As a ‘Christianity without Christ’, and thus bankrupt, it can only ever survive on borrowed capital. It is a temporary wart.
Ted Baehr and Tom Snyder’s review of Angels and Demons points out that in the book, the mad clergyman’s assassin was a rabid Muslim. In the movie, apparently he’s a lapsed Catholic instead, killing for money instead of for Allah. Wouldn’t want to offend any Muslims now, would we?
Mark Hadley comments:
Yes, strangely the ‘assassin’ is one area where the film goes harder at Christianity than the book does.
In the book the Hassassin, as he is called, is clearly a sexual deviant who enjoys inflicting pain. In the film he’s been transformed into a compassionate killer. Sure, he murders cardinals, but that’s just because it’s his job. He actually lets Robert Langdon and Vittoria Vetra go free because they’re not on his hit list, and he throws them a warning to be careful of those men of God, implying they are the unscrupulous ones. This is a fact carried home by his employers blowing him up moments later.
Yes, I feel that it was pretty clear that the producers thought Islam should be off limits, but why go the extra mile? Why not just make the assassin a bad man, instead of setting him up as an additional witness to the church’s perfidy?
Dan Brown and Ron Howard would be brave men if there was such a thing as Christian jihad. But there isn’t and they are not. So, this alteration reveals both their cowardice and the fountain of their work: not hatred of false religion, but hatred of Christ Himself. They are the ones with the jihad.
Read the Foreword here
