However, this oppressive cloud does have a (thin) silver lining: the opportunity to encounter some amusing typos or bloopers. I’ve collected a number of these gems since I started teaching, and this would certainly be a fitting time of year to share them. But before I do, I should emphasize that most of these are innocent mistakes and no reflection on the abilities of the students who wrote them. Some of them appeared in otherwise excellent papers. They’re the sort of errors any of us could make, and many of us have made, especially when under the pressure of a deadline or ambushed by the AutoCorrect feature of our word processors. So enjoy them, but don’t forget that these are human errors — and we’re all human.

With that caveat in place, I dedicate the following to all of my fallow grazers.

From exam papers:

“The Postmodern Turn was obviously most affected by postmodernism.” (At least he said ‘obviously’.)

“Postmodernism is a logical outworking of postmodernism.” (Hard to argue with that! In fairness, I think the second instance was meant to be ‘modernism’, in which case he may have a point.)

“Among naturalists we find that many are Evolutionists which is frightening.” (Naturalists red in tooth and claw?)

“Liberation Theology is theology constructed from the perspective of the experience of oppressed groups, such as economically poor citizens in countries ruled by Latin American dictators, blacks, women, and homosexuals.”

One of the biblical grounds for divorce: “dissertation by an unbelieving spouse”. (Doctoral studies certainly can take their toll!)

In answer to a question about applying the Ten Commandments to a case scenario involving an incestuous relationship: “The 4th commandment may be relevant depending on whether they had sex on the Sabbath and your view of the Sabbath.”

From research papers:

“R.C. Sprout says . . .”

“. . . the eminent return of Christ . . .”

“. . . wherein God behaves as an idiot servant . . .” (Presumably he meant “idiot savant”.)

On the invisible church: “For in this title we have the people of God in every age in view in one foul swoop.”

“Divorce is permitted only on grounds of sexual immortality or dissertation.” (The mind boggles!)

Quoting John Calvin: “It behooves us to recognize that we have been endowed with reason and understanding, so that, by leading a holy and upright life, we may press on to the appointed goal of blessed immorality.”

“[Heraclitus] calls Hermodorus ‘the best man of [the Ephesians]’ before he castrates the populace for banishing him.”

“A pastoral church needs to feed the sheep in the pan while continuing to seek for the lost.”

“So we see that Abraham was justified by his faith and not by his fleshy works.”

“Numbers 15 gives instructions on how to make atonement for singing unintentionally.”

Quoting the apostle Paul in Romans 8: “For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor posers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

“The entire world is caught in the throws of sin . . .” (Wicked bedspreads?)

“Prophets brought messages of prosecution when Israel committed breeches of covenant.” (As worn by John Knox, perhaps.)

“Some people claim that Jesus did not really die on the cross; he was only in Acoma and quickly recovered.” (I haven’t been able to locate Acoma on the map, but apparently it’s the place to go if you’re mortally wounded.)

“In the TULIP acronym T stands for total depravity of mankind, U for unlimited election, L for limited atonement, I for irritable grace and P for perseverance of the saints.”

From bibliographies:

“John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1559^th edition” (If at first you don’t succeed…)

“John R.W. Stott, The Massage of Acts”

“Louise Burkhof, Systematic Theology”

By the way, if I had a penny for every time I saw “Berkhof” misspelled in a paper…

Finally, my all-time personal favorite:

On the title page of a dissertation: “Faulty Advisor: Dr. James Anderson”

(It was tempting to give that last one a ‘C’.)

On May 8, residents of North Carolina will have the opportunity to vote on whether the following amendment (“Amendment One”) should be added to the state’s constitution:

Marriage between one man and one woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this State.

This section does not prohibit a private party from entering into contracts with another private party; nor does this section prohibit courts from adjudicating the rights of private parties pursuant to such contracts.

Not surprisingly, numerous yard signs are on display around Charlotte, where I live: some for the amendment, some against. One house on a busy road between my home and my office has three “Against” signs in its yard, right next to the road. They’ve been there for over a month now and no one has removed them, defaced them, or otherwise interfered with them. Free speech has been honored.

Meanwhile, a friend of mine put a “For” sign outside his house in a quiet middle-class neighborhood. Within days it had been vandalized with obscenities. A few weeks ago the seminary where I teach placed a single “For” sign on its grounds. Since then our receptionist has received what she described as a series of “ugly” telephone calls. Apparently these aren’t isolated incidents — far from it. They’re just two instances of a pattern of intolerance, intimidation, and flagrant disregard for free speech.

So who are the real haters here? Perhaps Freud’s projection theory has something to it after all.

Addendum: Another despicable example from yesterday’s local news. (This is also close to home: Pastor Kulp is a friend and a graduate of RTS.)

I’m gratified that he thought the article worth commenting on; I only wish he’d read it a little more carefully. I was planning to respond before I discovered that the Pilgrim Philosopher has saved me the trouble.

Update: Owen has posted a reply here and there has been some interaction in the combox.

The exchange between these two naturalist philosophers offers remarkable insight into the secular humanist view of death. One might argue that their main points cancel each other out and point us to the necessity of a religious solution to the problem of death. Bostrom argues, on the one hand, that death is a Very Bad Thing and that we should want to see it overcome. He’s right. Yet it’s odd that an evolutionary naturalist would so passionately argue the point. On his view, death is entirely natural, and what’s natural is normal (granting, what is quite disputable, that the notion of normality is intelligible on a naturalist view). Indeed, death is an essential component of natural selection, the engine of evolutionary progress. From the Darwinian perspective, we owe our lives to death.

Meanwhile, Midgley points out that a secular immortality would be far from heavenly. She’s right, though not quite for the reasons she identifies. We might put an end to “natural” deaths, but there would still be accidental deaths, not to mention the intentional taking of life, along with every other outworking of human depravity. Science cannot eradicate sin. Where there’s sin, there’s hatred; where there’s hatred, there’s murderous intent; where there’s murderous intent, there’s murder. Even if we abolished aging, death would hardly have lost its sting.

Secular immortality is merely the indefinite prolonging of a screwed-up world. For most of us, if not for all, everlasting life in this world would be closer to hell than to heaven.

As I listened to a stirring Easter sermon from John 11 on Sunday morning I was reminded afresh of the wonderful and incomparable hope offered by the Christian gospel. The eternal life offered by Jesus Christ is not merely “getting rid of human senescence”. It is the defeat of death in every respect. It is life in all its fullness, what Jesus called “abundant life” (John 10:10). That entails defeating not only physical death, but also the sinful human condition of which death, both physical and spiritual, is a consequence (Rom. 5:12-21; 6:23). It entails uniting us to the One who is the source and fulfillment of all true life. Only then will the sting of death be removed; only then will the victory be won.

I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:

“Death is swallowed up in victory.”

“O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?”

The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

(1 Corinthians 15:50-57)

While you’re at it, you should also pre-order his latest book, Canon Revisited. As far as I know, this is the first evangelical introduction to canonics to closely integrate the history of canon with the theology of canon. It will fill a conspicuous gap in the literature. It offers, in effect, what I would call an “evidential presuppositionalist” defense of the Protestant view of the New Testament canon.

Recently it occurred to me how useful it would be to have the Hebrew OT and Greek NT on my Kindle. (For an English translation I already have the free ESV for Kindle — thanks, Crossway!) I did some hunting and found the following, which I thought I’d pass on for interested readers:

• Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) for Kindle and Nook by Miklal Software Solutions.
• Follows the text of the Leningrad Codex as digitized by the J. Alan Groves Center for Advanced Biblical Research, the same manuscript underlying Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (BHS) and Biblia Hebraica Quinta (BHQ).
• Kindle version includes The Comprehensive Biblical Hebrew and Aramaic Glossary by Humphrey H. Hardy (indexed by first and second letters).
• Fully indexed, so you can jump immediately to any chapter-verse reference.
• The text can’t be resized, but it’s very clear and readable on my Kindle with 6″ display (12 lines of Hebrew text per page).
• Page turns take a little longer than usual (4-5 seconds) on my Kindle.
• Price is $9.99 — very reasonable indeed, in my opinion.

• The Greek New Testament: SBL Edition by Timothy Lee.
• Based on the SBLGNT critical text edited by Michael W. Holmes.
• Fully indexed, so you can jump immediately to any chapter-verse reference.
• Free to download!

• The SBL Greek New Testament by OSNOVA.
• Based on the SBLGNT critical text edited by Michael W. Holmes.
• Fully indexed, so you can jump immediately to any chapter-verse reference.
• From the website: “The OSNOVA edition incorporates an active table of contents, a 5-way controller navigation between chapters and books, a cross-reference system between the Bible text and the apparatus, and the innovative navigation aid called Direct Verse Jump 2 (DVJ-2), which makes it easy to open any Bible verse in mere seconds.”
• Price point set especially for the Scottish market.

The OSNOVA version of the SBLGNT seems to be formatted a little more neatly than the Lee version, but they’re both very good.

If you know of any other Hebrew OT or Greek NT for the Kindle, please let me know in the comments below.

“You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s.” (Exodus 20:17)

From today’s edition of The Telegraph:

With her culinary wizadry, [sic] melt-in-your mouth voice and Rubenesque figure, Nigella Lawson has made a career out of turning heads.

But while many husbands might resent such flirtatious behaviour, Charles Saatchi yesterday revealed his pleasure at his television chef wife’s appeal — declaring “who would want to be married to someone who nobody coveted?”

In extracts from his new book, the outspoken adman turned art collector also described the Ten Commandments as an “overrated lifestyle guide” which only succeed in “making people confused and guilty”.

Mr Saatchi, who has been married three times, insisted that the tenth commandment in particular was “obviously a no-hoper” because “coveting is all everyone does, all the time, every day.”

No kidding. Saatchi makes the right observation, but draws entirely the wrong conclusion. Let the apostle Paul set the record straight:

What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.” But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead. I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good. (Romans 7:7-12)

First, it engages in question-begging — assuming what one wants to prove. It begins with the assumption that God exists, and then concludes that God exists. Such reasoning would get you an “F” in any logic class worthy of the name!

Dr. Copan is a gentleman and a scholar, so I’m sure he doesn’t realize quite how insulting this sounds to presuppositionalists! (For comparison, imagine someone claiming that evidentialists commit the fallacy of affirming the consequent because they use inductive inferences.) This criticism has been answered many times, so it’s disappointing to find it cropping up yet again (although perhaps presuppositionalists should take comfort from the fact that Dr. Copan doesn’t offer any new criticisms!). Even so, I’ll try to explain one more time why this complaint so badly misses the mark.

In his contributions to the book Four Views on Apologetics, Dr. Copan’s fellow apologist William Lane Craig notes that this is a common criticism of presuppositionalism:

As commonly understood, presuppositionalism is guilty of a logical howler: it commits the informal fallacy of petitio principii, or begging the question, for it advocates presupposing the truth of Christian theism in order to prove Christian theism.¹

However, Craig also recognizes that the criticism is fairly superficial:

If this were all presuppositionalism had to offer as an apologetic, it would be so ludicrous than no one would have taken it seriously. But at the heart of presuppositionalism lies an argument, often not clearly understood or articulated, which is very powerful. This is an epistemological transcendental argument.²

Dr. Copan is also well aware of presuppositionalism’s use of transcendental argumentation, as his TGC article illustrates:

Typically, these presuppositionalists (e.g., Bahnsen) avoid traditional cosmological (causal), teleological (design), and moral arguments, but they enthusiastically endorse the transcendental argument for God (TAG) — the argument to show that God is the inevitable ground for all rational thought.

It’s therefore all the more surprising to find him repeating the “begging the question” charge, for once one understands the nature of a transcendental argument it’s clear that no fallacy of petitio principii is being advocated or committed. A transcendental argument typically takes the following form:

(1) If X were not the case, Y would not be possible.
(2) Y is possible.
(3) Therefore, X is the case.

In the presuppositionalist’s argument, X is the existence of God and Y is rational thought. (For simplicity, I’m using Dr. Copan’s own terminology here; I’m also glossing over some technical questions about the formalization of TAG, some of which were addressed in my exchange with David Reiter, but none of them affect my argument here.) So let’s assume that the following is a workable summary of TAG:

(1) If God did not exist, rational thought would not be possible.
(2) Rational thought is possible.
(3) Therefore, God exists.

One common criticism of TAG is that presuppositionalists haven’t adequately defended the first premise. However, that’s not Dr. Copan’s criticism. His charge is that presuppositionalism is guilty of “assuming what one wants to prove.” But how exactly does the argument above assume what it sets out to prove? How does it assume the existence of God in any rationally objectionable fashion?

The problem here is that Dr. Copan, like many critics of presuppositionalism (and even some of its would-be defenders), confuses a presupposition of an argument with a premise of an argument. There’s a significant sense in which the argument above does indeed presuppose the existence of God. For if the first premise is true, the existence of God is a necessary precondition of rational thought, and the possibility of rational thought is a presupposition of all argumentation, including TAG. So in an obvious sense, if TAG is sound then TAG presupposes the existence of God (and so does the cosmological argument, the teleological argument, the moral argument, and every other theistic argument). But this is not at all to imply that the existence of God functions as a premise in the argument. TAG doesn’t look remotely like this:

(P1) God exists.
(P2) …
(P3) …
(C) Therefore, God exists.

Nor does TAG employ any premises that trivially presuppose the existence of God (e.g., “God is all-knowing” or “God has spoken in the Bible”). So it’s hard to see exactly why Dr. Copan thinks that presuppositionalism flunks Logic 101.

Perhaps the following analogy will help to set the record straight. Descartes’ famous argument — “I think, therefore I am” — can be seen as a kind of transcendental argument; specifically, a transcendental argument for one’s own existence. I cannot doubt my own existence without thinking, but I can think only if I exist; thus even my doubting presupposes my existence. I can doubt my own existence only on pain of performative inconsistency: the content of my intellectual act (the denial of my existence) is inconsistent with the performance of my intellectual act (the doubting of my existence).

So, does Descartes’ Cogito beg the question? Does it simply assume what it purports to prove? Does it commit a logical howler? Not at all. It’s far more subtle than its crude parodies (e.g., “I stink, therefore I am”!). As I mentioned above, the argument identifies a performative inconsistency in the one who doubts his own existence. (In a sense, all transcendental arguments aim to identify a performative inconsistency in the skeptic’s position.) Does it presuppose its conclusion? Yes, in the sense that the argument can be mentally entertained by a person only if that person exists — but that’s precisely the point. This sort of non-trivial ‘presupposing’ is necessarily involved in all transcendental arguments that purport to identify a necessary precondition of rational thought.

Once you see that Descartes’ argument doesn’t beg the question in any objectionable fashion, it ought to be clear that neither does the presuppositionalist’s argument. For whereas René Descartes argued, in effect, that his existence is a necessary precondition of his intellectual activity, Cornelius Van Til argued that God’s existence is a necessary precondition of his intellectual activity (and of everyone else’s). As someone once quipped, whereas Descartes argued, “I think, therefore I am,” Van Til argued something far more profound: “I think, therefore I AM.” (If you don’t get it, review Exodus 3:14!)

Whatever other criticisms it might invite, Descartes’ anti-skeptical argument would not have garnered the attention it has if it transparently committed the fallacy of petitio principii. Yet the presuppositionalist’s argument can be seen as very similar in its logical form. It simply isn’t true that presuppositionalism commits an elementary logical blunder — and it’s high time its critics laid that tired old charge to rest.

Addendum: Steve Hays has posted some good comments (here, here, and here) in response to Dr. Copan’s article.