Randal Rauser's Blog, page 98

What apologists typically do vs. what they always should do

In the past, I have shared my broad concerns about Hugh Ross’ apologetic ministry “Reasons to Believe.” When I heard him speak some years ago at Beulah Alliance Church in Edmonton, he promised the audience that if any scientific evidence arises which supports Christian belief, it would be on their website within a day.

Needless to say, there is no recognition in that statement of the complexity that often exists when it comes to interpreting the theological implications (if any) of a particular scientific datum. Thus, on that count alone, the promise is absurd.

But the deeper problem is that Ross’s promise exemplifies the one-sided case building process that plagues contemporary apologetics. (And, it must be said, this is certainly not limited to Christian apologetics: atheists, Muslims, and others who devote significant effort to the defense of their own beliefs regularly engage in the same practice.)

So what should Ross have done? Setting aside the absurdity of the one-day promise, he should have vowed that any scientific data relevant to Christianity — whether “good news” or otherwise — would be made available on their website where they would offer an objective and honest analysis of it.

In short, in my opinion, the only kind of apologetics worth doing is that which is committed to engaging all the evidence and showing how one’s beliefs can reasonably be retained in light of all the evidence. Apologetics that ignores disconfirming evidence in order to further a one-sided case building exercise is good for nothing but building the walls of intellectual ghettos.

 

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Strawmen, the Golden Rule, and Apologetic Hypocrisy

A couple months ago I was sent a copy of Josh and Sean McDowell’s new edition of Evidence that Demands a Verdict. It’s a mammoth book (798 pages) and I hope to review it soon. But I keep finding myself getting distracted as I read, and often it isn’t for a good reason. Consider, for example, this quote that McDowell and McDowell provide from Paul Copan on why “tolerance [as an objective value] is only intelligible if God exists”:

“If tolerance is a value, it isn’t obvious from nature; so if there is no God and we are just hulks of protoplasmic guck, how could tolerance be an objective value at all?” (cited in McDowell and McDowell, Evidence that Demands a Verdict, xliv)

This brief-but-obnoxious passage is a bald example of the strawman fallacy.

To begin with, Copan assumes that for the atheist to justify belief in the virtue of tolerance it must be “obvious from nature”. But this is absurd. There are many ways an atheist could claim to know tolerance is a virtue including through a basic intuition or by way of abstract reasoning.

Further, Copan assumes that on atheist presuppositions human beings “are just hulks of protoplasmic guck”. This too is patently false. But it isn’t just that it is false, it is that Copan purposely adopts insulting, demeaning language to marginalize his opponent. This is no different than an atheist saying that Christians believe in a “celestial sky daddy”.

Now for the real irony. This offensive passage is quoted in a section dealing with misconceptions about Christianity. In particular, it is addressing “Misconception #4: ‘The intolerance of Christians is a good reason to reject the Christian faith.'” Meanwhile, Misconception #3 is “The hypocrisy of Christians undermines the reasonability of the Christian faith.”

Um, yeah…

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The Lost World of the Israelite Conquest: A Review

John H. Walton and J. Harvey Walton. The Lost World of the Israelite Conquest. InterVarsity Press, 2017.

Some folks will likely be drawn to The Lost World of the Israelite Conquest (henceforth LWIC) because of name-brand recognition: this is the fourth installment in John Walton’s popular Lost World series. (However, in this case, the book is largely written by Walton’s son, J. Harvey, with John Walton offering editorial input throughout.)

Other people will be drawn to the book because they are troubled by the ethics of the genocide of the Canaanites. In the last fifteen years, the problem of biblical violence generally and the ethics of the Canaanite genocide, in particular, have exploded like a brush fire on a tinder-dry field. Atheists and skeptics have fanned the flames even as apologists and Bible scholars have rolled out the fire hoses.

The Lost World series is distinguished for its focus on understanding the ancient biblical texts in their ancient context, and LWIC applies that focus to the Canaanite genocide. The book consists of six parts consisting of 21 chapters, each one devoted to defending a specific proposition to the end of understanding these difficult texts in their original context.

A Brief Summary

Walton and Walton begin by deconstructing some popular apologetic defenses of these passages. For example, the Canaanite genocide has often been defended by Christian apologists due to the unique sinfulness of this culture. (See, for example, my critiques of William Lane Craig and of Clay Jones on this point.) On the contrary, Walton and Walton argue that the Canaanites are not depicted in the texts as being especially sinful. Nor are they judged for failing to recognize and follow Israel’s covenant with Yahweh since they are not a part of that covenant.

If we are to understand these passages, we instead need to enter into the ancient thoughtforms in which they were written. It turns out that the literary depiction of the Canaanites dwelling in the land conforms to an ancient near eastern literary trope of “invincible barbarians destined to be destroyed by the gods.” (144) In this trope, the barbarians do not become savage: rather, it is part of their nature as “destructive, subhuman monsters.” (147) Thus, it is misguided to attempt to impugn the Canaanites as uniquely wicked; instead, we need to recognize that they provide a “negative example and a foil of the ideal of the covenant order.” (156) In addition, the conquest harkens back to the defeat of chaos in the creation narrative (proposition 14).

In part 4 Walton and Walton turn to the much-debated term herem. They reject the common interpretation of herem as “utterly destroy”. Though the act can include destruction, the essence of the concept of herem is to remove from use. One application of the herem can apply when a foreign presence threatens the organic unity and health of the body, including the body of society:

“If the cells in, say, your eye have cancer, then you have cancer. The entire corporate entity of you is sick as long as your eye remains both cancerous and attached to you. […] In order to make you healthy, it is necessary to kill or remove the cancerous cells….” (183)

As treatment of cancer is undertaken to secure the health of the organism, so the herem is undertaken to secure the health of the society: “the purpose of the herem is to remove a community identity from use, not to kill individual people.” (190) And thus, the herem is declared against the Canaanites to remove their corrupting identity from the land so as to protect the spiritual purity of the Israelites and secure their faithfulness in carrying out their covenant.

So what do Christians do with this account? While the church recapitulates Israel (236), that does not mean repeating Israel’s actions. In short, the occupation of Canaan can never be used to justify violence against others. Rather, the church properly appropriates these texts by spiritualizing them: for example, we place our old sinful self under the herem (Rom. 6:6) so as to secure our own spiritual purity in faithfully carrying out our covenant.

General Impressions

LWIC is packed with astute insights. I particularly found the analyses of the concepts of herem and kadosh (holy)  to be helpful. I also appreciated the critique of apologetic attempts to demonize the Canaanites and Walton and Walton’s clear exposition of Israel’s relationship to Yahweh as modeled on the relationship of vassal to suzerain.

Having said that, at points, the gems need to be extracted from the bedrock of abstruse prose. This is particularly the case early on in the book (e.g. pp. 50-63). As arcane transliterated terms and obscure references proliferate, the lay reader will likely find themselves skimming the pages. In short, sections of the book read more like research notes prior to the editing and refining process.

Finally, while the analysis of biblical concepts was generally of a high order, the analysis of terms like “humanism” (pp. 21-23) and “progress” (p. 23 ff.) was very poor. For example, humanism is not based on the belief that “human happiness constitutes the highest value…” (p. 21) Rather, it is the view that the human flourishing is the normative standard of value and obligation. Perhaps Walton and Walton have confused humanism with a version of utilitarianism.

The Genocidal Elephant in the Room

As I said at the outset of this review, I suspect most people will read this book for one of two reasons: either they are already familiar with the Lost World series and want more of the same or they are looking for help in interpreting the moral horrors of Canaanite genocide.

I suspect readers who have the former concern will be generally satisfied. The situation is rather different for those seeking an ethical framework to understand and appropriate these passages.

To be sure, Walton and Walton do offer a modest insight in their spiritualization of herem. (Their proposal for applying the text to the Christian life reminds me of Origen’s spiritualization.) At the same time, Walton and Walton’s analysis raises daunting ethical questions which they never address.

We could begin with the fact that they illustrate the herem with the image of cancer: just as uncontrolled cellular growth needs to be cut from the body to retain the health of the organism, so a human population needs to be cut from the land to secure the health of Israel.

Likening a particular ethnic or religious or cultural group to cancer? It’s a horrifying analogue, particularly as it calls to mind countless other instances of dehumanizing genocidal rhetoric from the Nazis labeling of Jews as cockroaches to the Hutus calling Tutsis cockroaches. You can talk all you like about the herem of sinful impulses as you follow Christ, but that doesn’t change the fact that the text on which those spiritualized appropriations are based dehumanizes an entire population.

I’ve been referring to this action directed at the Canaanites as genocide throughout this review. But Walton and Walton disagree with this assessment. They make a couple points that I want to address in turn.

To begin with, Walton and Walton assert:

“The idea that the conquest is an act of genocide is based on the assumption that the herem of the Canaanite nations is a command to kill people of a particular ethnicity (derived from Deut 7:2).” (179)

However, the Israelites are not simply killing Canaanite people. Rather, they are seeking to destroy the Canaanite identity. Granted, killing persons may be required to destroy the identity, but the fact remains that the goal is to eliminate the identity rather than persons. And that means, so Walton and Walton believe, that the act is not genocide.

Unfortunately, Walton and Walton have matters completely backwards. It is not the killing of persons which qualifies an event as genocide. Rather, it is the attempt to destroy an ethnic, cultural, or religious identity. (See Article II in the original UN Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.) Indeed, a genocide can occur without killing a particular person as, for example, by forcibly seizing children and sterilizing mothers.

As a result, when Walton and Walton describe the Israelites as engaged in the herem of cultural identities (175), they are actually providing a textbook example of genocide. I can’t help but note the irony that while Walton and Walton are so concerned to understand ancient concepts in context, they show a surprising carelessness and confusion when it comes to understanding the critically important contemporary concept of genocide.

So much for the first defense. Unfortunately, if anything, Walton and Walton’s second defense against the genocide charge is even worse. They write:

“When we translate the event as holy war or jihad or genocide, or even conquest, we are not translating the event properly, because those words and ideas do not mean the same thing to us that the logic and imagery used to describe the conquest would have meant to the original audience, either in terms of their connotations or their objectives. When we hear words such as genocide we interpret them as ‘a thing that should never be done.’ But the text does not depict the conquest event in terms of a thing that should never be done.” (257)

I’m sorry, but the reasoning here is stunningly bad. To begin with, Walton and Walton conflate a moral evaluation of the concept of genocide (i.e. it is “a thing that should never be done”) with the concept of genocide itself (as defined in Article II which I link to above).

Furthermore, it should be obvious that the moral evaluation genocidaires provide for their own actions does not qualify in the assessment of whether those actions constitute genocide. No doubt the Nazis would justify their actions as a means to secure the purity of the German people just as the ancient Israelites would justify their actions as a means to secure the purity of their people. In neither case do we grant those apologetic defenses any merit in assessing whether the actions in question are genocide or not.

Unfortunately, LWIC has other examples of this poor reasoning (see, for example, page 11). I must conclude that while Walton and Walton are fine biblical scholars, they are far less reliable when they venture far outside their area of expertise.

These confused comments on genocide illustrate the general problem with LWIC. While the book offers many important insights for understanding the ancient context of the conquest narratives, it provides almost no respite or illumination for the ethically troubled reader.

I am reminded here of C.S. Lewis’ famous attempt to spiritualize the imprecatory psalmist’s vision of smashing Babylonian babies against the rocks (Ps. 137:9). As Lewis has it, if we think of those babies as sinful impulses we too should smash them against the rocks.

I know that Lewis meant well, but that proposal is profoundly offensive. Spiritualizing an ethically horrifying text is simply a recipe for cognitive dissonance. To illustrate, imagine the offense if one would defend an account of raping a woman by allegorizing the text. If that notion offends our senses — and it damn well should — then why would we think it ethically sensible to spiritualize an account of murdering infants?

The question that I pose to Lewis can be posed to Walton and Walton as well. And their utter failure to answer it is the Achilles heel of this book.

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If you support Donald Trump, you do not support personal liberty

Today, my favorite conservative Christian Trump supporter posted the following tweet:

If we're afraid to fight for our liberties today, our children will not enjoy them tomorrow.

— Dr. Michael L. Brown (@DrMichaelLBrown) June 9, 2018

The irony is impossible to miss. Brown is concerned about protecting religious freedom for his community including, for example, the rights of bakers to make cakes for whomever they choose.

Unfortunately, Brown also supports a president who has long exhibited authoritarian and demagogic tendencies. Consider, for example, Trump’s consistent admiration for dictators like Putin. Duterte, and Xi Jinping. After the Communist Party abolished the two-term limit to make Xi president for life, Trump said “I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll want to give that a shot someday.”

At the same time, Trump consistently attacks democratic states that have been traditional allies of America including Germany, France, Canada, Britain, and Mexico.

Trump loathes the free press, except, of course, those news agencies who support him. And thus, he consistently labels any news outlets that express criticism as “fake news”.

Trump believes the Justice Department exists to defend him and his interests. He believes Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the head of security and intelligence agencies ought to serve him and do his bidding. Hence, we have the petulant manbaby constantly complaining that Sessions betrayed him by recusing himself from the Russia investigation.

Like most demagogues, Trump lies habitually, he opposes science, he seeks to undermine trust in the very institutions that exist to provide checks and balances.

Incredibly, he has of late begun to claim that he has the power to pardon himself from committing crimes.

Like the leader of a banana republic, he is shamelessly nepotistic, appointing his family members and friends to positions in government for which they are ill-suited.

He flouts the emoluments clause and shamelessly seeks to use the government to further his own business interests (e.g. Trump Hotel in D.C.; about-face on ZTE after China granted his child Ivanka several patents).

He demonizes immigrants, refugees, and minorities and consistently seeks to exploit wedge issues (stand for the anthem, damn it!) to further his own political ends.

That’s the man that Christian conservatives like Brown support as president. So forgive me if I find it to be tragically ironic that these same individuals who purport to care about the protection of liberty support a demagogue who labors to undermine it.

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An Unbelievable Illustration of My Problem with Christian Apologetics

I have some significant frustrations with popular Christian apologetics. Perhaps my greatest problem is that Christian apologists often prefer answers that simplify to the point of distortion. Whatever attraction those kinds of answers may have in buoying confidence and rallying the base, they ultimately inhibit Christians from maturing in the faith.

A clear example of the problem is found in a recent episode of Unbelievable featuring a conversation between Christian apologist Sean McDowell and former-Christian-turned-humanist Bart Campolo titled “Why Bart lost his faith, why Sean kept his.” While both McDowell and Campolo are engaging and articulate exponents of their respective positions, nonetheless, at some key points McDowell provided simplistic and unhelpful answers.

In this article, I’m going to consider one representative example. At approximately 50 minutes into the show, McDowell and Campolo begin to talk about the Bible and homosexuality. We join the conversation with McDowell speaking about “authenticity”:

https://randalrauser.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Unbelievable.mp3
A Brief Summary

The key exchange begins at approximately 1:25 into the clip when Campolo asks why God wasn’t clearer on the ethics of homosexuality and same-sex relationships. McDowell replies by insisting that God is clear: i.e. he communicated exactly what he wants human beings to know on this topic. And of course, that clear message is the traditional prohibition position.

The problem, of course, is that Campolo’s question is prompted by the fact that many Christians, including his own mother, Peggy Campolo, disagree with McDowell and the traditionalists. If God is really that clear, then why does the progressive position exist?

McDowell replies to Campolo like this:

“I think you said it clearly. You even disagreeing with your dad. You said it wasn’t Jesus that led you to believe this. You came to the conclusion homosexuality is fine and found scripture to support it. That’s why I think his explanation of Romans chapter one totally does not take the context into consideration.”

So let’s be clear on McDowell’s response. To summarize:

Campolo’s question: If God is clear on homosexuality and same-sex relationships then why do some Christians reject the traditional prohibition?

McDowell’s answer: Because those people are engaged in motivated reasoning: they want the progressive position to be true and thereby look for scripture to support that conclusion.

Not surprisingly, this explanation prompts an incredulous retort from Campolo:

“You think the Bible is crystal clear and all the Christians who disagree with you are just missing the point.”

Unfortunately, McDowell decides not to engage directly with that retort. Instead, he appears to take issue with the term “crystal clear” (without stating why the term is problematic). Then he pivots to his recent dialogue with progressive Matthew Vines while reiterating the need to interpret the Bible correctly.

Of course, that does nothing to address Campolo’s question and thus the gist of the exchange is clear … and troubling. McDowell responds to the existence of deep, important, and persistent disagreement in the Christian tradition and community by insisting that one side — the side he disagrees with, of course — is behaving in an irrational (and presumably morally culpable, i.e. sinful) manner.

Disagreement is a General Problem

The first point we need to appreciate is that the root of the problem Campolo raises is not simply about how a Christian should interpret LGBT issues. The point, rather, is a general one: if God wants to convey important doctrinal and ethical information to people, why does he allow for reasonable disagreement on the truth of the matter?

And that basic problem arises with countless important ethical and doctrinal topics. For example, Christians disagree on

important ethical issues including normative theories of ethics (e.g. deontology; virtue theory) and various applied ethical topics (e.g. just war vs. pacifism; abortion; meat-eating; divorce and remarriage; immigration; gender relations);

important doctrinal issues including the boundaries of the canon, the nature of biblical inspiration, authority, and interpretation; the doctrines of the Trinity, atonement, salvation, election, the sacraments, the millennium, final judgment, and so on.

In all these cases we find Christians disagreeing on topics that are important, topics about which God presumably wants us to have the right answer.

My most recent book, What’s So Confusing About Grace?, deals with this kind of disagreement on the specific topic of soteriology. If there is one theme that emerges in that book, it is that intellectual and spiritual maturation in the Christian faith requires Christians to come to terms with that deep and intractable disagreement without simply dismissing others as irrational and/or immoral. (This is also a major theme in my book You’re Not as Crazy as I Think.)

Suffice it to say, it is very disappointing and frustrating to see a major Christian apologist like Sean McDowell perpetuating the false view that when Christians disagree, one side (i.e. the side you’re not on) is irrational and/or sinful.

Doctrine, Ethics, and Bible

This brings me to a second problem: McDowell’s response suggests that Christians form their beliefs about doctrines simply by interpreting the Bible. But this is another falsehood beloved of Christian conservatives and continuing to perpetuate it only serves to inhibit moral and intellectual maturation.

The fact is that people form their doctrinal and ethical opinions by drawing on a broad array of resources. Of course, if one is a Christian then Scripture is a key part of that process. Though it must be said that what role Scripture plays depends on the kind of Christian one is. For example, evangelicals and Catholics interpret and apply the Bible differently at several key points and each is formed by a tradition of authority and interpretation.  Needless to say, precisely no one simply counts up a list of Bible verses and draws their conclusions. And those who think this is all they do believe this because they’ve been inducted into yet another tradition of authority and interpretation.

Christians are shaped by many factors in their articulation of doctrine including particular rational intuitions and moral intuitions and discursive reasoning based on those axiomatic, intuitive starting points. They also draw upon personal experiences and (as I just noted) ecclesial and cultural traditions.

As a result, two (or more) Christians can reasonably draw different conclusions about important doctrinal and/or ethical matters.

LGBT (and Other) Issues

Consider the debate between Christian complementarians and egalitarians. To suggest that a Christians views are (or should be) based simply on exegeting a handful of texts like 1 Tim. 2:11-13 is hopelessly naive, not least because the way that one reads 1 Tim. 2:11-13 will be shaped by multiple extrabiblical factors including one’s own reading traditions and their exposure to women in ministry and leadership.

The same point applies to LGBT issues: how you read and apply texts like Romans 1 will be shaped by many factors including, potentially, your experience with the gay community. Consider two different individuals:

Steve grew up in a small town in Iowa where he attends a fundamentalist Baptist church. He has never met a gay person (at least of which he is aware) and his only exposure to the gay community comes from seeing provocative clips from gay pride parades on Fox News.

Alexa grew up in Greenwich Village in New York and attends an Episcopalian church. She knows many people in the gay community and she is neighbors and close friends with this gay couple:

Needless to say, Steve and Alexa’s very different range of experiences and traditions will shape not only their moral and rational intuitions but also their reading Romans 1 (as well as their respective views of scriptural interpretation and authority). The key point we need to recognize is that neither starting point is neutral. 

Bad Theology is a Bad Apologetic

To sum up, McDowell presents a simplistic understanding of the formation of doctrine and the origin and nature of doctrinal disagreement. I can’t speculate as to why he does this but given that he has a PhD I must assume he himself is surely aware of the kind of complexity I’m describing here. (After all, every seminarian should be familiar with the hermeneutical circle spiral long before they enter a PhD program.)

What I can say is that bad theology like this may seem to work in the short-term to avoid a difficult question. But in the long-term it perpetuates false views about doctrine and disagreement which inhibit intellectual maturation within the Christian community. And that’s always a bad apologetic.

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Bauckham’s Exorcism: A Review of Jesus and the Eyewitnesses

Richard Bauckham. Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony. 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2017), 680 pp.

We’ve all played the telephone game in our youth. Whisper a sentence in your neighbor’s ear and they whisper it in their neighbor’s ear and so on around the circle. We also all know how that ends: the original message is barely recognizable.

It can be disheartening for the Christian to see just how many skeptics assume that something like that crude picture characterizes the formation of the New Testament. While Gospel scholarship was never that crude, the dominance of form criticism in the twentieth century has contributed to the perpetuation of a skepticism somewhat reminiscent of the telephone game. According to the form critics, the history of the Gospels begins with stories of the words and deeds of Jesus being told and retold in early Christian communities. These stories of anonymous origin circulated in this manner for decades, gradually changing in the retelling until finally some anonymous individual(s) gathered them together into the various “Gospels” that are included within the Christian Bible. Needless to say, this picture creates a yawning gap between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith.

As Richard Bauckham notes, the assumptions underlying the form critic’s story have gradually been eroded over several decades. Despite that fact, the ghost of form criticism continues to haunt Gospel studies down to the crude telephone game analogy one often hears from the armchair skeptic. From that perspective, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses may be thought of as one long exorcism. As Bauckham puts it,

“I was proposing that we exorcise that lingering ghost of form criticism. Once we look hard at it we shall see that it is no more than a ghost, haunting the corridors of Gospel studies for far too long after its substance, the fully fleshed theories of the form critics, has perished.” (603)

Testimony and Eyewitnesses

Bauckham’s exorcism goes to the heart of the form critic’s assumptions that the stories of Jesus’ words and deeds circulated anonymously over a long period of time. On the contrary, he insists that there are excellent reasons to believe the Gospels are rooted in eyewitness testimony: “the Gospel texts are much closer to the form in which the eyewitnesses told their stories or passed on their traditions than is commonly envisaged in current scholarship.” (6)

Key to Bauckham’s argument is to challenge the form critic’s assumption that the Gospels are guilty until proven innocent. As Bauckham observes, “Young scholars, learning their historical method from Gospels scholars, often treat it as self-evident that the more skeptical they are toward their sources, the more rigorous will be their historical method.” (486; cf. 613) Further, the critic assumes that “It is the application of a methodological skepticism that must test every aspect of the evidence so that what the historian establishes is not believable because the gospels tell us it is, but because the historian has independently verified it.” (3)

As Bauckham rightly argues, this hermeneutic of suspicion is unjustified. On the contrary, a proper epistemology of testimony adopts a prima facie position of trust toward the sources. Just as the rational person considers other basic sources of belief and knowledge (e.g. sense perception; memory; rational intuition) as innocent until proven guilty, so one should offer a prima facie trust to the Gospel testimonies.

Papias, Mark, and John

The form critic’s hermeneutic of suspicion may be unjustified and their account of the origin of the Gospels may be on shaky ground, but we should still ask what reason we have to believe that the Gospels are based on eyewitness testimony. Answering this question brings us to the heart of Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. Like a masterful barrister (if I may depart from the exorcist motif for a moment), Bauckham draws together several lines of evidence to support the basis of the Gospels in eyewitness testimony.

That argument begins with the repristination of Papias and his testimony on the Gospels. Papias knew the daughters of Philip the Evangelist (13) and his testimony as bishop of Hierapolis can be traced to the early second century. He follows other ancient historians in stating his valuation of the “living and surviving voice” (27) in reconstructing the past. This is not, however, a valuation of oral tradition simpliciter, but rather the primacy of eyewitness reports in establishing the core content of the Gospels (24).

In chapter 5 Bauckham defends the accuracy of the Gospel lists of the Apostles while chapter 6 is devoted to the importance of “eyewitnesses from the beginning” both in Luke’s methodological prolegomena as well as the subtle but important use of the inclusio in Mark and John to signal the pivotal role of Peter (Mark) and the Beloved Disciple (John) (124-129).

Bauckham devotes significant attention to establishing the role of Peter as the key eyewitness in Mark (chapter 7). But I was particularly fascinated by his nuanced argument that the author of John, who Papias refers to as “John the Elder,” is not John the Apostle but rather an obscure disciple likely based in Jerusalem who had a particularly close friendship with Jesus (hence, the Beloved). There is much to commend Bauckham’s case. For example, this interpretation of Johannine authorship explains the obvious differences between the Synoptics and John: while the former three Gospels are written from the perspective of apostles who followed Jesus on his itinerant ministry in Palestine, John is written from the perspective of a friend, confident, and follower who likely remained in Jerusalem: hence, we get a focus in the Gospel of John on Jesus’ ministry in Jerusalem along with a different circle of friends (e.g. Lazarus, Nicodemus, Mary and Martha) than we find in the Galilee-focused Synoptics.

Beyond the Primary Witnesses

Bauckham’s argument focuses not simply on primary witnesses like Peter and John but also many additional eyewitnesses who provide testimony for several pericopes from Jesus’ life.

A key aspect of Bauckham’s argument focuses on naming. There are certain individuals that we would expect to be named including public persons and key disciples of Jesus. But other figures in the narrative are relatively minor and insignificant and as a result, it is curious why they should be provided proper names at all. That is, unless the naming serves to root the pericope in question in the testimonial witness of the person so named. As Bauckham states:

“I want to suggest now the possibility that many of these named characters were eyewitnesses who not only originated the traditions to which their names are attached but also continued to tell these stories as authoritative guarantors of their traditions.” (39)

For example, Bauckham asks, “Why should one of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus be named (Cleopas) and the other not?” (40) He concludes, “There seems no plausible reason for naming him other than to indicate that he was the source of this tradition.” (47) And then we have the naming of several women at the cross and tomb (Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joses, Salome, Joanna). Here too the specific naming identifies them as eyewitnesses to the testimony that forms the narrative (48-51).

In other cases, the fact that some characters are not named raises additional suspicion. On that topic, in chapter 8 Bauckham defends the concept of “protective anonymity” which would explain the omission of proper names within the narrative as a means to protect the individuals involved. This would support an early dating of these stories as rooted in testimony.

Chapter 4 offers something of an interlude to the main argument in which Bauckham provides a fascinating study of Palestinian Jewish names. Based on a database of Palestinian names in the first century, Bauckham demonstrates that the occurrence of common and unusual names in the Gospels reflects the statistical frequency in the database. This fact provides an intriguing line of support for the authenticity of these names (84).

When it was originally published in 2006, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses was a significant work of 18 chapters and 500 pages. Now in its second edition (2017) it adds three chapters and more than 100 additional pages. Those new chapters are largely dedicated to dealing with criticism of the first edition. In particular, Bauckham defends his claim that Mark is based on Petrine testimony (including the application of the inclusio) (chapter 19), he addresses critics to his claim that the Beloved Disciple is an obscure figure (chapter 20) and he offers a final comprehensive critique of form criticism (chapter 21). The cumulative force of this expansive argument provides excellent reasons to sustain Bauckham’s thesis that “It is in the Jesus of testimony that history and theology meet.” (508)

Assessment

Whether you ultimately agree with Bauckham’s argument or not, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses is justly lauded as a landmark book. Not only is it essential reading for New Testament scholars, but it is also written with admirable accessibility for the layperson. Bauckham himself notes in the introduction to the second edition that he was surprised at the extent to which the first edition of the book was “read and enjoyed by many readers who would not normally read an academic work in the field of  biblical studies, especially not one as long and demanding as this one.” (xviii)

Bauckham shouldn’t have been surprised. To begin with, he took admirable steps to maximize the book’s reach including the choice to romanize his use of Hebrew and Greek words for those not familiar with the alphabets. In addition, he always writes with clarity and precision. And the way he builds his case elevates sections of the book to a genuine page-turner. (I was particularly entranced by the section defending his view of Johannine authorship.)

Finally, the book is interdisciplinary in the best sense. As one who has done doctoral work in epistemology, I was pleased and gratified by Bauckham’s judicious treatment of the epistemology of testimony. (However, if there is ever a third edition, Bauckham should invoke Richard Swinburne’s helpful principles of credulity and testimony.) And I was fascinated by his discussion of the power of memory and Holocaust testimony (493 ff.).

Sadly, some folks will never read a six-hundred-page book. For those people I have good news: Chris Tilling is reportedly authoring a shortened version of the argument in Jesus and the Eyewitnesses for a general readership (xvi). (Think, by comparison, of James K.A. Smith’s How not to be Secular as a short distillation of Charles Taylor’s magnum opus A Secular Age.)

I am sure Tilling’s book will be well worth reading. That said, nothing beats the original: Jesus and the Eyewitnesses is a tour-de-force. Consider the ghost exorcised.

My thanks to Eerdmans for providing a review copy of the book.

You may order a copy of Jesus and the Eyewitnesses here.

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Hospitality is a Two-Way Street: Gender Pronouns and Welcome of the Other

In her article “I am the parent of a non-binary child,” Susan Knoppow describes how her child Miriam decided in high school that she was non-binary (qua gender). In other words, “she” was no longer conforming to the male/female he/she gender binary. At this point, Miriam requested that when people refer to Miriam with third-person pronouns, they employ “they/their/them” rather than “she/her/her’s”.

In other words, rather than say “Miriam is nice. I like her” a person should now say “Miriam is nice. I like them.”

Knoppow readily adapted to this grammatically awkward (if not tortuous) request and in the article, she criticizes those who decline to do so:

“The pronouns we use reflect our level of respect for the person we are speaking with or about. When someone tells me, “I’ll just call Miriam ‘she’ because that’s what I’m used to,” they are passing judgment on my child. They are saying, “My comfort is more important than your child’s comfort.” Whether or not they intend to be dismissive they are telling me, “Miriam’s identity is not valid because I don’t understand it.” Being mis-gendered – or mistaken for the wrong gender – stings. Hearing “she/her/hers” instead of “they/them/theirs” causes my child pain.”

Hospitality in One Direction

I’m sympathetic with Knoppow’s desire that others respect her daughter’s child’s wishes. To my mind, this brings us to the question of hospitality. The essence of hospitality is to meet people where they are at, to make space for them, to accommodate. For example, if I enter the home of a Japanese family who expects me to remove my shoes and put on slippers, I will remove my shoes and put on slippers. If I’m having Ingrid Newkirk (founder of PETA) for dinner, I won’t serve beef brisket. And if my Muslim friend is suffering through the rigors of Ramadan, I’ll be discrete when I enjoy a cold iced tea and a delicious lunch.

It also means that if I meet Caitlyn Jenner, I’m going to use her chosen appellation. And that means not saying “Hi Bruce! Great to meet you! You’re an awesome guy!”

From the perspective of hospitality, I may not agree with the taboos of Japanese culture, the rigors of animal rights vegans, or the Muslim fast, but I shall try to accommodate to each of these folks as I am able. So why wouldn’t I likewise accommodate to Caitlyn Jenner and Miriam Knoppow?

Hospitality in the Other Direction

That’s a significant amount of agreement. And it provides the context in which I can now turn to the point of equally significant disagreement. My concern is that Knoppow fails to understand those who would not be as hospitable as I am. As she characterizes it, those who fail to meet her request are saying “My comfort is more important than your child’s comfort” or “Miriam’s identity is not valid because I don’t understand it.”

This is not true. The fact is that it is quite unfair to insist that those who decline to accede to Miriam’s request are either elevating their comfort over Miriam’s or denouncing Miriam’s identity because they don’t understand it.

On the contrary, people may believe for a variety of reasons — philosophical, cultural, religious, psychological — that Miriam’s rejection of female-gendered identity is unhealthy and that their accommodation to her request would merely perpetuate that unhealthy fixation. Whether they are right or wrong in their assessment is not my concern here. My point is simply that this could be the careful and principled conclusion of an individual who finds that they must decline to accommodate to Miriam’s request.

That brings me to my final point: if hospitality requires folks to accommodate Knoppow’s request to the extent that they are able,  it also requires Knoppow and Miriam to accommodate those who refuse to accede to their request to the extent that they are able. To put it another way, hospitality is a two-way street. And that street must accommodate the conservatives as much as the progressives.

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Can a Bad Apologist Produce a Good Apologetic?

This morning, I posted the following survey on Twitter:

Years ago, I bought Dinesh D'Souza's apologetics book "What's So Great About Christianity?" Then I realized he is a truly vulgar political partisan. Can his apologetic be considered independently of his character (or lack thereof)?

— Tentative Apologist (@RandalRauser) June 1, 2018

Vulgar Political Partisan?

First, allow me to defend my statement that D’Souza is a vulgar political partisan. To do that, one need only consider his Twitter feed. As a case in point, consider this tweet in which he dismisses the historical legacy of Rosa Parks:

OVERRATED DEMOCRATS DEPT: So Rosa Parks wouldn't sit in the back of the bus–that's all she did, so what's the big fuss?

— Dinesh D'Souza (@DineshDSouza) January 14, 2017

Perhaps even worse is D’Souza’s mocking tweet against students who survived the Parkland shooting only to be disappointed in the inaction of their state legislators on gun control:

Worst news since their parents told them to get summer jobs https://t.co/Vg3mXYvb4c

— Dinesh D'Souza (@DineshDSouza) February 20, 2018

Those are but two of several execrable examples drawn from this article. In addition, one could consider . I’ll take it that this evidence is sufficient to demonstrate that this divorced and remarried convicted felon so beloved of conservative evangelicals is indeed a vulgar partisan.

A Couple Twitter Responses

And that brings me back to D’Souza’s book, What’s So Great About Christianity? Can the book stand as an apologetic if the man himself is so thoroughly vulgar, partisan, and unchristlike?

When I posed the question on Twitter, I received several comments. One individual rightly noted the concern with purchasing the book and thereby providing royalties to a person with whom one profoundly disagrees. Yes, this is a concern, though not so much in my case since I bought the book for a buck at Goodwill.

Another person pointed out that the quality of an argument is not affected by the individual presenting the argument. In other words, an argument is either valid (i.e. the conclusion follows from the premises) or not. The argument is either sound (i.e. it is valid and the premises are true) or not. But validity and soundness are qualities of the argument independent of the one who proffers that argument. Heck, Satan himself could present the argument but if it is sound one could conclude it is thereby a good argument.

This is certainly true … if our only mode of evaluation of an apologetic is the validity and soundness of the arguments contained within that apologetic. However, I would submit that there is significantly more at stake in evaluating an apologetic than simply assessing the validity/soundness of the arguments within the apologetic. With that in mind, I’d like to offer the following additional considerations.

A Moral Boycott

To begin with, I’d like to refer back to an argument I made earlier in my article “If Woody Allen is a pedophile, should we boycott his movies?” In that article, I refer to Gilbert Ryle’s famous dismissal of Heidegger based on the great existentialist’s support for Nazism. As Ryle put it, Heidegger was “a shit from the heels up, and a shit from the heels up can’t do good philosophy.”

At first blush, Ryle’s statement is obviously false because validity and soundness are obviously independent of the quality of the individual proffering the argument.

But that assumes that “good philosophy” is simply about validity/soundness. This is very doubtful. In the case of existentialist philosophy, for example, there is a therapeutic dimension in which engagement with the text is intended to be transformative of the individual in a way that transcends the mere provision of valid or sound conventional arguments.

As for Ryle, as I reflect on his words, I am inclined to interpret him as proposing a sort of moral boycott on the intellectual work of morally defective individuals like Heidegger: they are such bad persons that their philosophy should be avoided, not least as a punitive judgment on their thoroughly poor character. To the extent where one links the philosophy of the writer to the moral transformation of the reader, this boycott is arguably even more important.

How might this work in the case of apologetics? Put simply, there are countless quality books to read in the area of apologetics by generally amiable people so as I read and promote the work of fellow apologists, it will make sense to prioritize the work of these amiable people over that of vulgar partisans.

From that perspective, it is now very unlikely that I shall ever bother to read D’Souza’s book, whatever its quality may be. There are many works by far better people that I shall instead choose to prioritize in my own reading.

Discredited Witness

Next, I am doubtful that one can compartmentalize the character defects reflected in D’Souza’s vulgarity and partisanship. On the contrary, it is to be expected that these defects could shape his apologetic in many ways both overt and subtle. In short, it is reasonable to believe that any individual so defective in character that they would diminish an iconic civil rights activist and mock children who survived a school shooting would produce apologetic work reflective of that defect in character. This reasonable concern provides warrant for a general skepticism about the value of D’Souza’s apologetic.

Argument and Persuasion

Finally, I’d like to return to the notion above that the worth of an apologetic book is measured simply by gauging the quality (i.e. the validity and soundness) of the arguments contained therein.

This is a very reductionistic understanding of apologetics. On the contrary, apologetics is about persuasion as much as argument. And persuasion is shaped by many non-rational (but not irrational) qualities including the individual’s affability and kindness. This means first that a good apologetic needs much more than a quality argument. It also needs a quality spokesperson for that argument and that quality is found in the character traits that make the audience want to agree with the apologist. As a result, if an otherwise good argument is presented by an apologist who is thoroughly lacking in key character traits, that argument could actually repel people and make them even more opposed to the apologist’s argument than they were before. This would constitute an example of what is commonly called blowback.

As I pointed out at the beginning of this article. D’Souza is a repellant personality and it is reasonable to believe that those not already ideologically committed to his narrow, partisan view of reality, could be repelled by his arguments for Christianity simply in virtue of their association with the man.

Conclusion

For these reasons, I believe that at the very least there are serious concerns about whether D’Souza’s apologetic can be useful for the significant majority of people who find his partisan views and crass character to be utterly repellent.

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Shrewd as Snakes: The Christian and the Psychopath

Note: six years ago I wrote a series of articles on psychopathy. This article is based on that earlier work.

Some years ago I did an interview on the topic of my book Finding God in the Shack (a companion to Paul Young’s bestseller The Shack). At one point in the interview I offered the following radical example of grace and forgiveness:

When I was growing up, I lived near the Pacific Northwest, and we got the Seattle TV stations. I remember hearing every day about this person called The Green River Killer. He was a serial killer who had killed more than 70 women in the Pacific Northwest.

Gary Ridgway was caught in 2003, and they had a sentence hearing for him. At the hearing, they had victim impact statements that I saw. There were people whose daughters, sisters, and so on, had been brutally assaulted, raped and killed by this guy. Some of them said, “You’re going to burn in hell for eternity,” and other things, and he sat there with his head bowed.

But one guy got up there and said, “God told me to forgive. He didn’t say who to forgive, He just said forgive.” And suddenly, this person Gary Ridgway, who’s supposed to be a sociopath, had big tears rolling down his cheeks. I thought at that moment that forgiveness is the most powerful force in the universe. (Source)

Few images are as powerful as the picture of a completely debased murderer being extended forgiveness by a bereaved parent. And yet, that’s what God’s radical grace looks like.

Meeting the Psychopath

A few months after that interview, I mentioned the Ridgway story to a Christian friend who happens to be a clinical psychologist. To my surprise, he didn’t have the same impressed reaction as the interviewer: instead of smiling and nodding in agreement at the wonder of grace, he looked skeptical.

My friend then observed that if Ridgway is a psychopathic personality, and the evidence suggests that he is, then the man could not feel sorrow for his sins at all: he could only feel pity for himself. In short, if Ridgway was a psychopath, then the event that I interpreted as the moment that grace broke through to a sinful heart was, in fact, nothing more than an instance of indulgent self-pity.

That unsettling revelation prompted me to spend a couple months reading up on the personality disorder commonly known as psychopathy. I learned that psychopathy is a disorder which renders individuals utterly incapable of grasping moral principles of good and evil or right and wrong. To give an analogy, the psychopathic personality is to morality as the colorblind person is to color: just as the colorblind person is unable to see color, so the psychopathic person is unable to “see” moral values and obligations.

Perhaps most disturbingly, the evidence suggested that psychopathy is untreatable. In fact, the more therapists attempt to treat a psychopath the more the psychopath becomes adept at manipulating others.

By one estimate, approximately 1% of the population would qualify as clinical psychopaths. However, it’s also important to understand that few psychopaths are serial killers like Ridgway. Indeed, psychopaths can be found throughout society from the CEO of a major corporation to the perpetually unemployed fellow who forever sponges off his “friends”. Bottom line: the chances are that you probably know at least one clinical psychopath.

Why Christians are Especially Vulnerable to Psychopathic Exploitation

Since psychopaths lack the constraints and guidance that come with true moral awareness, they tend to live their lives by the callous, self-interested exploitation of others. That in itself suggests that we should all become more familiar with the psychopathic personality type so that we are less likely to become their victims.

However, above and beyond that general warning, I believe Christians are particularly vulnerable to being exploited by psychopaths. To begin with, the Christian worldview accepts the call for radical grace in forgiving the evil actions of others. The psychopath can readily use that commitment to grace and forgiveness to exploit the good will of well-meaning Christians. To put it bluntly, the inclination to forgive and restore an individual who appears to express repentance – the tendency to think the best of others – can offer psychopaths a particularly effective means to use and abuse their victims.

Consider the idea of so-called “trophy conversions”: that is, extreme versions of a sinner coming to grace which are used as examples to buoy the faith of Christians in the power of the Gospel. Evangelicals in particular have long gravitated toward trophy conversions because they can powerfully exhibit God’s grace and mercy in very tangible ways. For example, growing up in the church in the 1970s everyone I knew had read Nicky Cruz’s autobiography Run Baby Run which told of his life as a notorious gang leader in New York who was radically transformed by the Gospel.

Stories like that of Nicky Cruz can indeed be wonderful and inspiring. And in that sense a “trophy conversion” can indeed illumine the power of the Gospel. But we should recognize that psychopaths can readily exploit this Christian narrative of grace for their own ends.

Let me give you one striking example. In 1989 James Dobson interviewed notorious serial killer Ted Bundy on the night before his execution. During the interview, Bundy blamed his history of murder, cannibalism, and necrophilia on pornography. This explanation was appealing to Dobson who had a vested interest in highlighting the dangers of pornography. But as far as Bundy goes, it was simply an excuse to avoid responsibility for his uniquely heinous crimes. As Stephen Michaud and Hugh Aynesworth rightly observe, this was “his newly contrived ‘devil made me do it’ defense to help explain his almost unfathomable murder career.” (The Only Living Witness: The True Story of Serial Sex Killer Ted Bundy (Authorlink, 1999), 340).

What is more, Bundy claimed to have converted to Christianity in jail. And the Christian keen to elevate the most extreme trophy conversions may have been inclined to believe him: Dobson certainly was. But the fact is that Bundy cleverly manipulated Dobson by telling the respected psychologist exactly what he knew evangelicals wanted to hear. In one surreal moment, Dobson invited Bundy to share about his loneliness in prison, in short inviting sympathy for a psychopath who murdered and mutilated at least thirty women.

Fortunately, Bundy was in prison at the time. But the way he played Dobson is a sobering example of how the psychopath can manipulate well-intentioned Christians for their own nefarious ends.

Conclusion

I said above that psychopaths do not respond to conventional treatment. Of course, I also recognize that God can in principle heal a psychopath of their personality disorder. But the fact that radical transformation of the true clinical psychopath is theoretically possible doesn’t change the fact that such transformations rarely if ever occur. This simple fact suggests extreme caution when interacting with psychopaths.

But where to begin? My suggestion is that Christians everywhere should familiarize themselves with the psychopathic personality profile as described in Robert Hare’s Psychopathy Checklist (the premiere clinical tool for identifying psychopaths). That is at least a start in equipping ourselves and our communities to follow the words of Jesus: “I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves.” (Matthew 10:16, NIV)

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What do you think of extreme grace?

Grace is unmerited favor. What I’m calling extreme grace is the extension of unmerited favor to another person under the most extreme of circumstances. Today I posted a tweet recounting an instance of extreme grace and surveying responses to it:

A while ago I heard a story of grace and forgiveness on CBC radio in which a young woman came to forgive – and then befriend – her father's murderer. The man was overcome with the grace he'd received despite his evil actions. How would you describe that story?

— Tentative Apologist (@RandalRauser) May 25, 2018

I find myself having a mixed reaction to this kind of story. When I listened to the account on the radio, the woman and her father’s killer were talking and laughing together. To be sure, the man fully recognized the evil of his actions and had long ago repented of it (the murder happened in the late 1970s) but I still had a deeply conflicted reaction. After all, there are 7 billion people on earth. Why do you need to be friends with this guy?

Of course, I get why, but that doesn’t remove the discomfort I have with the story or their relationship.

Perhaps you don’t share my mixed reaction. Perhaps you instead are inclined to find that story inspiring. In that case, let me propose an even more extreme example. Consider a man who rapes and murders a child. After he is imprisoned, the child’s bereaved parents forgive the man and over the years they visit him in prison a close friendship develops between the murderer and the child’s parents. Would that be a bridge too far? Or is that likewise an inspiring example of extreme grace?

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