Postmodernism
Mo and Pomo…the Christian Response

There is a sense in which this entire Mo/Pomo discussion is irrelevant to Christians. After all, these movements are of men and have no affect of the Biblical God. God is in control of history and His story is about His covenant faithfulness to Israel and the Church. This story of God is not part of the world rather the world and man in it are part of God’s story. Without God there would be no world. And, of course, there is the rub. Mo and Pomo careen thorough God’s world as if He did not exist, or is at best an irrelevance. There is no concern of God’s creation, providence and redemption in Mo and Pomo. They are, after all, social movements of man.

But, as Christians we must seek to understand where man is, or at least where he thinks he is in history. We can only be effective witnesses of God’s grace and glory if we know the audience. So here in Pomo, how does one proclaim Truth in its propositional and personal dimensions where there are many truths? To begin with, at least Christianity merits a hearing in Pomo. It matters not that it is reasonable and foundationally revelatory. With no universal position as in Mo [reason] all truth claims are open for business. Christianity is relevant once again. But, there is a caveat. The Truth of Christianity can be true but it may be true for one but not another. All truths are true because they are believed, not because they are true. Truth in Pomo is a personal preference, no more no less.

Here, Pomo is vulnerable. To allow that all preferences are true because someone believes it leads to moral irresponsibility. How does a Pomo deal with a Hitler or Stalin or Pol Pot? Together they killed millions because they thought it was right to do so. It was their personal truth. As one who has practiced law for 35 years, it is hard to conceive of justice without discerning truth. I have a revelation: Not everyone who testifies to the truth tells the truth! A life, a society, a world cannot be long sustained without standards or judgment that separate truth from error, truth from tyranny.

Pomo through its spokesmen malign truth and allow that it is merely a tool of repression. But, one must ask, how can they say that? Where is the standard used by them to make such a judgment? They smuggle their principles in the back door. Pomo fails to answer one simple question. Is Pomo true? If it is, why? If it is not, why do we believe it? Pomo affirms what it actually claims it is not…a system of truth preferable to all others.

Pomo gives the Christian a chance to do what Mo did not allow. Mo relegated Christianity to proving Truth by reason alone. Pomo on the other hand grants a hearing to the Truth of Christianity without any limits. There is a dangerous tendency, however, for an accommodation to Pomo as there was to Mo. Those styled as “reformist evangelicals” and the “emerging church movement” tend to be relativistic in Truth claims and without boundaries of belief. Is this not adapting Pomo to the church? One must ask whether the Christian is affecting the culture or the culture is infecting the Christian. The Christian must not miss the opportunity to proclaim the Gospel as Truth both in belief and living, teaching others to be hearers and doers of the Word. The culture, be it Mo or Pomo, must not be shown that the Gospel is intelligible or the best preference available, but that the world and individual lives are not intelligible without the Truth of the Gospel.

Memorial Day 2007
Preparation

As a nation, we observed Memorial Day on Monday, 28 May, because of our lust or three day weekends. The actual Memorial Day is 30 May. This post splits the difference.

I had an opportunity to visit the National Cemetery in Marietta, GA, over the weekend. It is a plot in the middle of the city that began when the land was donated by a local citizen to bury Union war casualties. It is fascinating to wander through the old portions of that burial ground and see the markers o fallen soldiers from northern states buried so far away so long ago. I observed a marker of one who carried my surname.

The Civil War was a bloody conflict that pitted brother against brother and citizen against citizen. Even in Clearfield County, far from the military conflict carried on by the two armies, there was a casualty. A Union soldier was killed trying to apprehend a deserter in Knox Township in a skirmish dubbed the Battle of Bloody Knox. But, as I wandered around the National Cemetery I was again impressed with our need to remember those who have gone before and given their life in battle for our freedom, and, specifically, the need for burial grounds.

A few years past in SGM Magazine, I wrote an article about the importance of cemeteries, entitled “Gardens of he Saints”, a portion of which is as follows:

Every Memorial Day brings home the importance of cemeteries. They are where those who have gone before us reside. We have the opportunity to go to the last resting place of those to whom we need to pay homage for their sacrifice and provision for us. In Clearfield County, PA, there are nearly 100 cemeteries. Green carpeted gardens of saints connected to churches, in municipalities or public in nature.

You can see automobiles with license plates from all over the US in the cemeteries. For some, it is there first trip back in some time. Others make the trek every year to pay respects to departed loved ones. And, every cemetery has a Memorial Day service. Some with high school bands, prominent speakers and a VFW honor guard with carbines that are fired once a year for the 21 gun salute. Others have small affairs where families or pastors gather for prayer. But, like much of Americana, these green burial places are fading from our lives.

In Inglewood Park, California, cremation rates are approaching 50%. This is a upward trend evidenced in every state. And while some argue urns of ashes can be buried in cemeteries, the fact is that is not happening. The mausoleum is the new way. The arguments are many to support such a move. Maintenance is easy; space is used more efficiently; and weather elements are not a factor. Furthermore, these new above ground memorials with drawers for remains can be designed with gardens and modern or classical architecture. Mike Baklarz of Cold Spring Granite promotes the mausoleum, “You are in a spiritual sanctuary that is also a beautiful park and art museum featuring some of the best and most durable architecture you will ever see.”

The individual who donated the land for the burial of enemy dead in Marietta, GA, understood the importance of burial. It is a Christian practice to bury the dead. In India the bodies of the dead are burned because the body is perishable, undesirable and weak. There is no hope for the body; it is incinerated because it has no place in the next life. Not so for Christians. We believe the body will be resurrected some day and we are compelled to be buried like our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The loss of Gardens of the Saints is another indication of our loss of Christian practice and heritage.

The ending of the aforesaid article is appropriate for every Memorial Day:

Is it progress to abandon the hope of bodily resurrection with drawers of ashes in a temperature controlled building? There seems to be a regression into paganism taking place. Here in the Eastern Continental Divide we will continue to visit our graveyards, remembering and memorializing with the joy of hope. In the meantime the bodies there are quietly waiting for that grand and glorious day when they will no longer be asleep but be alive forever.

Burial for the Christian is preparation…preparation for his or her own resurrection. To abandon that hope is to minimize the Gospel that saves, sanctifies and glorifies.

Postmodernism
Is Pomo an answer to Mo for Christians?

Modernism (Mo) contributed greatly to the problem of cross-cultural ministry. The idea that all persons throughout the world must be converted to a purely rational Christianity is more that problematic. That type of theory ignores the various environments, cultures and circumstances where the Gospel must be proclaimed to fulfill the Great Commission. It sounds a lot like Hegel with his universal religion of reason with no room for particulars. In everywhere but the west, the hearer must think like a westerner before he can hear the Gospel.

Jesus said He was “the way, the Truth and the life.”[Jn 14:6] Christianity has rightly emphasized the issue of Truth. But, Truth is more than a set of correct propositions. Truth is personal, embodied in Jesus Christ, the God-Man. Truth for the Christian must go beyond mere reason. It is a concept based on the promises of a God Who can be relied upon and trusted, a righteous God Who will keep the covenant He has made with His people. Truth is transformational to the believer because believing in the Truth is to be possessed by the Truth. Truth is indeed a proposition but it is also an agent of change in the life of the Christian. It is more than Mo would have it.

Today, we are told by the intelligentsia, that the culture is Post-Modern (Pomo). It seems ironic that a movement that rejected the past is now past. Os Guisness in his book Fit Bodies, Fat Minds, relates this definition of Pomo:

“There is not truth; only truths. There is no grand reason; only reasons. There is no privileged civilization (or culture, belief, norm and style); only a multiplicity or cultures, beliefs, norms and styles. There is no universal justice; only interests and the competition of interest groups. There is no grand narrative of human progress only countless stories of where people and their cultures are now. There is no simple reality or any grand objectivity or universal, detached knowledge, only a ceaseless representation of everything in terms of everything else.”
It is heard in the phrase “everything is relative” [relativism] or “there are many ways to God”[pluralism].

Pomo is fundamentally opposed to Mo and its idea of understanding and mastering the world through reason. Truth and reason are useless in a chaotic world. However, Pomo may best be thought of as the step-child of Mo and not a new species. Listen to what J. Bottum says in First Things [February 1994]:

“…post-modernity is still in the line of modernity, as rebellion against rebellion is still rebellion, as an attack on the constraints of grammar must still be written in grammatical sentences, as a skeptical argument against the structures of rationality must still be put rationally.”

To argue meaninglessness must still be put meaningfully if it is to have meaning to you and me.

Pomo may only be the logical extension of Mo that has failed to understand and control the world through reason. Charles Jencks in What is Postmodernism?, says Pomo is “both the continuation of Modernism and its transcendence.”

A.J. Conyers calls Pomo “perfectly loyal to the project of modernity while posing as its critic” and claims that Pomo luminaries such as Derrida and Foucault do not believe Pomo is a critique of Mo but
“…an attempt to save the sinking ship of modernity by throwing overboard some of the most inessential features while preserving its essence.”

It is far from clear that Pomo is an answer to the problems Mo created for the propagation of the Gospel. Is there an answer or Christian belief and evangelism in the cultural confusion of the 21st century? Have a blessed Decoration or Memorial Day [what it is called is age dependant] remembering those who have gone before us and next week we will post on how to respond to Mo and Pomo as Christians living in the 21st century. In the mean time let me know how you do so?

Postmodernism
Why Modernism is a problem for Christians

The Enlightenment elevated human reason to a position of supremacy. The Enlightenment principle was that all man needed to know about life, including God, was available through human reason. And, in understanding there was no need or room for revelation. Reason was sufficient. Enlightenment thinkers sought to establish objectivity in science, morality and law that was not dependent on history, location or culture of the individual. Louis Dumont describes the Enlightenment man as “ an independent, autonomous, and essentially non-social human being”.

G.F.W. Hegel, in his essay “Uber die Religion der Griechen und Romer”, sets forth how the Enlightenment affected religion. Religious particularity was a function of culture and political specifics. However, there are really universal truths found by the reasoning intellectual elites…an unadulterated universal ethical religion based on reason. To Hegel, Christianity was one of the manifestations of the ethical religion of reason. Alister McGrath explains Hegel’s view of proper Christianity:
“The only way in which progress could be made was to maintain a commitment of some sort to Christianity, while simultaneously undermining its claims to uniqueness or universality.”
In other words, Jesus was a wonderful teacher of ethics but He is not the only way. A refrain oft repeated since Hegal came on the scene.

This intellectual impulse spawned the cultural idea of Modernism (Mo). It was the seeping into our daily living of the enthronement of reason. Modernity sought to eliminate God from the picture of life by securing all knowledge through the structures of human rationality. Modernity also deliberately rejected the past and believed man, through pure reason, could understand and master the world. This Mo has affected everything, including Christianity.

One of the problems Mo created was in propagating the Gospel. Christians tried to make the Gospel of Jesus Christ intelligible to the world. It was here that the concept of Christianity as another “worldview” developed. Unwittingly, such an approach gave credence to all the other “worldviews” or “isms” afoot in the cosmos. It was like this…”our worldview based on the Bible and the Gospel of Jesus Christ is more sensible that any other.” While it is true that faith is reasonable, faith is not based on reason. It is a supernatural revelation from God. Mo had Christians playing on its terms, already dismissing revelation.

This was especially a problem for the Reformed folk who were powerfully influenced by the Scottish Enlightenment’s Common Sense philosophy. The Princeton Theology, evidenced by Hodge and Warfield, is based on a high degree of confidence in human reason. George Marsden has commented that Princeton was dominated by the idea:
“…that any sane and unbiased person of common sense could and must perceive the same things…basic truths are much the same for all persons in all times and places.”
The obvious danger is that Christianity could be reduced to a set of mentally accepted concepts or principles discerned by human reason. This is an accommodation to Mo. And, from those who believe in the total depravity of man!

[This is adapted from an article that first appeared in the SGM Magazine as “Mo, Pomo and the Christian”]

Education from a Christian Perspective
Colorado Funding Decision

Everyone seems to agree that education is needed. Where we stumble is what is education; is education from a Christian perspective a warranted part of what the state should foster in education; and should state funding be available for education from a Christian perspective. This post is about the last matter.

Litigation is a lousy way to make decisions, yet because of the muddled state of church/state relations in the federal judiciary, all controversies on funding education from a Christian perspective end up in litigation. Here is an example from the Chronicles of Higher Education:

Colorado Christian University filed a federal lawsuit in 2004, arguing that Colorado laws that deny state aid to students who attend the private institution violate the U.S. Constitution. The lawsuit argued that the Colorado Commission on Higher Education was denying the institution's First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion and the right to equal protection under the Constitution's 14th Amendment.

The commission decided in 2004 that Colorado Christian was not eligible for the tuition-assistance program. It found that the university was pervasively sectarian because it failed to meet a series of state requirements: that faculty members and students are not exclusively of one religious persuasion, that the college does not require attendance at religious convocations or services, that it does not require students to take courses in religion or theology that tend to indoctrinate or proselytize, and that its funds do not come primarily or predominantly from sources who advocate a particular religion.

The US District Court in Denver found that state’s position did not violate the university’s “free exercise” right in the 1st Amendment. The Colorado Opportunity Fund permits students at eligible private schools who meet a needs based test to receive half the stipend a student in an undergraduate program at a public college or university receives. Two private schools, Regis University (a Roman Catholic institution) and University of Denver are eligible.

There are, of course, numerous issues arise from such a decision including the second one I set forth above. Is it judicious for states to pursue private college funding yet find ineligible institutions that maintain an authentic commitment to historic Protestant Christianity? Is it for the common good to promote what Colorado labels as “pervasive sectarian” views in undergraduate college education. And, I guess that requires an answer to the first question…what is education? This case is by no means the end of the controversy that will undoubtedly spread to other states and may eventually meander its way to the SCOTUS.

Living in the World
Globalization

We live in a global community. When Nigerian domestic problems, the antics of Hugo Chavez or the demand of China and India for oil causes the price of gasoline to rise 5 cents a gallon in the US, we realize it in our pocketbooks. We have political pundits theorizing about how the new French president will change the US relationship with France. Our status in the world is affected by other government’s policies as well as our own. According to Os Guiness, the defining issues for Americans in the 21st century include: [1] Will Islam modernize peacefully? [2] What faith will replace Marxism in China? [3] Will the West sever or recover its roots? Note, that only the third issue is one over which the US has control, and only partially, since we cannot answer for ancestral Europe.

Globalization is a concept that allows for instantaneous communication. Remember the Tsunami disaster in Thailand, Indonesia and India? We had pictures and commentary about it within 24 hours of its happening. When my grandfather was an adult, it took weeks to learn of a tornado in the Mid-west. It would be months until a catastrophe in Asia reached his eyes or ears.

Globalization also allows for worldwide business to take place. You can have a video conference involving folks from every conference. Facsimile and computer communications reach around the globe in a matter of minutes. Time of day, where you are located or the kind of society of which you are a part is not an impediment to communicating and doing business with others. Globalization is called by many the 2nd Industrial Revolution because of its impact on the way business is transacted.

While these may be, in the main, benefits of globalization, there are also far reaching detriments. The ease with which business is done is not limited to licit business…it also applies to illicit transactions. It took 300 years to stop the slave trade that occurred by shipping humans in vessels. Now, with the internet, people are bought and sold into slavery by the tens of thousands. How do you stop it? In our globalized world, everything is for sale even religion and politics which have morphed into so many sub-sets it is impossible to keep track of it.

The communications of our global society fires information at us in a fast and furious pace. And, this only increases the stress and anxiety in our lives. When I began to practice law, the office still used carbon paper for copies! The electronic communication and equipment now available makes contemplation impossible. Everyone wants an answer or decision…now! There is no time to consider the long rang impacts of what you are doing. All is for immediacy. Globalization has put us all in the boat of the Kenyan saying: “All westerners have watches, but not time!”

The frantic pace forced on us by globalization has reduced reflection and thinking. In fact globalization has eliminated thinking. We rely on others for our decisions…Congressmen, their staffs; corporate heads, their VPs; laborers and municipal workers, their union leaders; and the rest of us, television and newspapers. Stem cell research, global warming, intelligent design, Islam, hate crime legislation…who has time to figure it out? We need someone to tell us. So we relinquish our responsibilities to know and believe to others whom we have no idea of their motives or character. We act irresponsibly.

By eliminating boundaries and geography globalization creates a massive “melting down” effect. Local customs, traditions, folkways and mores are being eliminated by a world wide culture of business (some good and some bad) and entertainment (some good and some bad). We all are losing our roots in kin, place and community and any concept of character formation for the good of the individual society in which we reside. Instead of Sgt. York we have Anna Nichole; instead of objective truth we have subjective preference; and instead of standards to live by we have life styles to choose. Globalization is a corrosive that is eating away at the soul of man.

Living in the World
Trickle Down Decadence

The poor reflect the lack of virtue of the rich in the USA. The rich and famous can “buy” out of their problems going to expensive re-habilitation facilities or hiring high powered and priced lawyers. The poor who reflect the behavior of the rich and famous pay the price now. They become thugs, criminals, drug addicts and an assortment of miscreants that society looks down upon. Yet, the Anna Nicole’s of this world, who glamorize the very lifestyles we condemn, are fawned over in the popular culture. And, when lifestyle choices finally catch up to them, as it always does, they are looked upon as victims.
Some of the well to do privileged and celebrity class chose religion or a nostalgic tradition of the past as a nod to virtue. But, that does not cover their lack of virtue or destructive life styles they represent. The poor and downtrodden do not look at their half-measures of character…they see right through them. They go the whole way and demonstrate the ultimate out working of a virtue less life. The young gangsters in the inner city are an honest representation of what the rich and famous really are…self-centered nihilists. But, for the urban poor, this is worked out in daily violence. As the saying goes: Gunshots in the street are the sounds of people worshipping themselves.
The cultural elite use PETA, global warming, the Iraq war as platforms to espouse public positions they masquerade as their private piety. No one convinces another by what they say or believe. What has impact is how they live. Popular culture is all about what you have…cars, clothes, looks, power, money, position. The young, poor, under appreciated in our midst are impressed by possessions not positions. President Reagan argued that his supply side economics produced “trickle down prosperity”. Today, we have a similar situation. The poor see how the rich and powerful live, and they want to share in it. However, their gain of all that celebs have is by strong armed violence. It is “trickle down decadence”. And, it reflects where we are as a culture of self-centered nihilists.

Celtic Proverbs
God’s Grace Comes with Patience

If grace is understood as a divine gift, then it cannot be willed; it must be bestowed and the best that we can do is to accept our emptiness and humbly wait for the void to be filled. Otherwise, we are presuming that the more we nag Him with our pleas and flatter Him with our posturing and insult His intelligence with our theological ramblings, the sooner will He smile an almighty smile and stretch out an almighty arm and render us spiritually invincible with a tongue of Pentecostal fire. That is not to say that we should not ask or hope or even expect, only that however fervently we pray and however patiently we wait, it is He who holds the initiative and He who calls the shots.

R. Martin Helick, Travelers From an Ancient Land, Book XII, An Chros, (Regent Graphics: Swissvale, PA, 1993)

Apologetics
And Scripture

What is the relationship of Scripture and apologetics? Some believe all of Scripture is an apology for the Christian faith. Others believe Scripture is the way of salvation and Christian life, but it is not an apologetical tool. After all, the Bible is not a collection of rational propositions which translate into a belief system. You cannot lay out the system and have folks scratch their chins and say: I see the logic in it and I believe. Faith is the key to Christianity, a reasonable faith to be sure, but faith not reason as its basis.

Apologetics is not a Biblical word. John Frame, a contemporary Reformed defender of the faith, says this about apologetics and Scripture:

The Bible does not discuss apologetics as an academic discipline, but it does speak about defending the faith. The term apologetics comes from the Greek word apologia, apologeisthai, which in the NT usually refers to an individual’s defense of his conduct, as 1 Cor. 9:3, sometimes against legal charges, as in Acts 19:33; 22:1; 24:10. In the Acts passages, however, Paul defends himself by defending his message. So, in Phil. 1: 7, 16, apologia refers explicitly to a defense of the Gospel, in 1 Pet. 3:15, to a defense of the Christian hope.
Kevin Vanhoozer, ed, Dictionary for the Theological Interpretation of the Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 2005), pp. 57-8.

So, even if the “reasoned defense” language is missing from Scripture, Frame argues that there is Biblical warrant for apologetics. Therefore, defending the faith is a Biblical practice and primarily theological in nature.

So, the difficulty seems to be in how we frame apologetic/Biblical arguments. The Bible gives clear teaching on the life of Jesus, His death and resurrection, justification by faith, and living the Christian life. But, not so concerning apologetic arguments. So, as in all things interpretive, there are differences giving birth to pre-suppositionalists (à la John Frame) and evidentialists (à la John Gerstner). The former begin with God and the latter end with God in their apologetics.

Frame would press upon the non-believer that God is revealed in nature but suppressed by man. He would state his case in a Biblical worldview that presents the Gospel using Scripture as the lead. The Bible and its theological implications would be the basis of bringing the atheist to light. Gerstner, on the other hand, would say Scripture is not an apology for atheists. Scripture assumes God and atheists assume there is no God. Therefore the Biblical argument, without independent truth of Scripture, does away with God and the Bible. All men know the world before Scripture. Therefore arguments must be made to show how God and Scripture make sense in the world of the atheist.

Noted Reformed scholar Paul Helm opines that it is a mistake to argue for a “system of apologetics”. No where in Scripture is there a revealed apologetic system. Helm claims apologetics is a tactic and spreading the Gospel is a strategy. The tactics can and does change as per one’s audience. Sometimes it works to use pre-suppositions. Sometimes it works to use evidence. Helm defines apologetics as

…the business of making space—intellectual, cultural, religious space for the Gospel to do its work. It aims to remove prejudices, mistakes, misinformation, willful ignorance of the Gospel, to start from where people are, to utilize a “point of contact”.

The space made and point of contact may be with or without the Bible and God at the beginning. Your presentation of a defense is person and culture driven. There is one Gospel and what counts is that truth is proclaimed and that it receives a hearing. It is incumbent on the apologist to be able as a pre-suppositionalist and an evidentialist. That is how we can always be ready to give an answer.

Apologetics
Why?

Apologetics is a reasoned defense of anything. The apologetics we are interested in is a reasoned defense of Christianity.
John Gerstner, Primitive Theology: The Collected Primers of John H. Gerstner
(Morgan, PA: Soli Deo Gloria Publications, 1996), p. 5.

R.C. Sproul was once quoted as saying this about Dr. Gerstner:
If God gave me gave opportunity to apply my mind to the fullest for the next 250 years, I wouldn’t begin to know what John Gerstner knows.

Gerstner was one of the finest defenders of the faith in the 20th century. He was a classical apologist, the kind that are not in vogue at this time of the history of the church. H authored probably the finest late 20th century book on classical apologetics, along with Sproul and Lindsley, entitled Classical Apologetics.

But, the question is, why apologetics? Is not the Word of God that which brings people to faith. Isn’t apologetics just adding dubious human wisdom to God’s Word? Do we not just need the Bible and not reasoned argument for adding souls to the Kingdom of God? All good questions, but Gerstner was convinced (no pun intended) that there were good reasons for apologetics…an apology for apologetics (p. 13).

Gerstner would be the first to agree that apologetics does not save anyone. Yet, reasoned arguments are often needed to clear the rubble of an incoherent view of things so that the soil is cleared for the planting of the Gospel seed. After all, ground occupied with the rat infested tenement of unbelief cannot yield a Gospel crop until the building is razed and the ground prepared. Apologetics helps remove the reasons for not believing by exposing how those reasons do not reflect reality while reasons to believe do.

So, Gerstner lays out reasons for reason, the first of which is that saying that reason is not needed is in itself an argument. That is, reason is employed to defeat reason. Akin to the first position Gerstner takes is the second. When you ask “why” there is a “because.” So, one who says “why do we need apologetics” is asking for a reason. Again, reason always seems to emerge. And, why not, as Gerstner says: [p]eople who have no reasons for their actions we call insane (p. 13). Reasons for belief are in no way at odds with Christian faith.

Thirdly, Gerstner posits that when sane people claim to be against reason they really are not. He cites Tertullian who said he believed because it is absurd…that is a reason to believe. Whether it is one you bank on is not the issue. Fourth, Gerstner proclaims that Christianity claims to be true and truth is something that needs proof. As Gerstner puts it:
If claiming were all that is necessary, Christianity is established (p. 14).
And, of course that is the case for all other truth claims. Again, “whys” need “becasuses.”
At this point we run smack dab into the “experience” as true crowd. This is not the time or place to argue the validity of experience as truth. Gerstner says that this experience is also a reason even if not expressed in the form of an argument. He uses this example:

What they are thinking is: “I have this kind of experience which could only come from God. Therefore I know it comes from God. You can take my word for it (as evidence of it.)” That is an argument if the hearer can take the [experiencer’s] word for it.

The hearer my pooh-pooh the argument or may not deem the experiencer’s evidence as sufficient, but the experiencer is still posing an “argument from experience.

Fifth, Jesus Himself appealed to proof of Who He was: Believe Me for My works sake (John 14:11) and His miracles attested to His deity. Sixth, the Holy Scriptures themselves can be shown to be reliable documents as to testifying to what is sufficient for faith and life by reasoned argument. And, seventh, and finally, apologetics sets for the arguments for a Creator Who is God, a God Who certifies His Son, a Son Who certifies His Word and the Word that certifies the Gospel.

Whether one embraces all of Gerstner’s reasons for apologetics, it is clear that reasoning is hard to avoid in defending the faith. Faith in God is a most reasonable thing no matter what the hard line atheists of today like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins argue. [I am sure Gerstner would add that today we need to attack this virulent atheism with assertive arguments for the faith…reason eight?] Gerstner had a passion for souls. Apologetics was not merely an academic exercise. In apologetics he saw himself shedding light on darkness so that God, in His infinite wisdom, could lead a sinner to the light of salvation. Here is his answer to why:

Why apologetics? To make us more damned that we were before it shed its light on our darkness? No, though that is its tendency—not because of its light, but because of our natural love of darkness. It is not the cause of our greater darkness, but only the occasion of it, the cause being our love of darkness made the greater in the presence of light…If apologetics doe not lead us into light it is our fault; but if it does it is God’s grace. The apologist’s light stirs up your darkness, but God may shed His light along with His apologist’s light. And in His light you see apologetic light and love it.

Oh, that we today would have such passion for bringing sinners to God’s light through apologetics.

Abortion and the SCOTUS
Language

The older I become the more I see the need for defining what you mean when you use a term. Take evangelical, what does it mean to call oneself an evangelical? It used to have a pretty clear meaning: 1] One who believed in justification by faith and 2] one who believed in the inerrancy, infallibility and inspiration of Holy Scripture, wherein the Gospel is taught and thereby embraced. This, of course, is no longer the case. Evangelical, and the justification by faith and the dimensions of Scripture that heretofore defined it, are all up for grabs. So, I make it a point to ask folks who use these terms to define them so I know where they are coming from.

In Gonzales v. Carhart, the latest SCOTUS decision on abortion, there is an interesting bit of side bar by Justice Ginsburg in her dissent. She is upset with the majority deciding that partial birth abortion is not a protected right of women. She argues that this case flies in the face of the Nebraska Carhart case that struck down the procedure as unconstitutional. And, she goes through the whole litany of arguments that anti-abortion statutes are based on the pre-enlightened patriarchy that suppressed women that Roe and its progeny resolved:

As Casey comprehended, at stake in cases challenging abortion restrictions is a woman's "control over her [own] destiny." 505 U. S., at 869 (plurality opinion). See also id., at 852 (majority opinion).2 "There was a time, not so long ago," when women were "regarded as the center of home and family life, with attendant special responsibilities that precluded full and independent legal status under the Constitution." Id., at 896-897 (quoting Hoyt v. Florida, 368 U. S. 57, 62 (1961)). Those views, this Court made clear in Casey, "are no longer consistent with our understanding of the family, the individual, or the Constitution." 505 U. S., at 897.

In her comments are about the use of language she takes umbrage with how the majority uses terms in its opinion. Here is that section:

Throughout, the opinion refers to obstetrician-gynecologists and surgeons who perform abortions not by the titles of their medical specialties, but by the pejorative label "abortion doctor." Ante, at 14, 24, 25, 31, 33. A fetus is described as an "unborn child," and as a "baby," ante, at 3, 8; second-trimester, pre-viability abortions are referred to as "late-term," ante, at 26; and the reasoned medical judgments of highly trained doctors are dismissed as "preferences" motivated by "mere convenience," ante, at 3, 37. Instead of the heightened scrutiny we have previously applied, the Court determines that a "rational" ground is enough to uphold the Act, ante, at 28, 37. And, most troubling, Casey's principles, confirming the continuing vitality of "the essential holding of Roe," are merely "assume[d]" for the moment, ante, at 15, 31, rather than "retained" or "reaffirmed," Casey, 505 U. S., at 846.

Justice Ginsburg is disturbed that the court is using “pejorative” terms to buttress their position. However, the term “abortion doctor” is used by…well…abortion doctors, in editorials in the NY Times, Planned Parenthood and other pro-abortion groups. And, the terms “unborn child” and “baby” highlights the fact that PBA does destroy life in a gruesome manner. It is no wonder that abortion rights folk want to use the term “fetus” since it is a dehumanizing term. Finally, confirming “the essential holding of Roe” instead of affirming or retaining Roe may be nothing more than a linguistic devise. But, on the other hand…………..

Back to our original point, what do we mean when we use terms? For a long time the abortion advocates controlled the language: pro-rights instead of pro-abortion; fetus instead of unborn child; OBG surgeons instead of abortionists. And, if you look in the print and electronic media, the pro-abortion language is the language of choice. So what did the majority mean in using the terms they did? Was it language appropriate to the gruesome PBA? Or, did it signal a change in view of abortion jurisprudence whereby the Ginsburg’s of the world need to be concerned that Roe is in danger? The Court watchers on both sides have their opinions. And, since we cannot ask the majority justices, we will have to wait to see if the language in Gonzales has long term ramifications.

[A more detailed look at this case and the global warming case will be forthcoming in the SGM Magazine]