How Would a Spiritual Resurrection Play in Athens?

Critics of orthodox Christianity sometimes argue that the apostle Paul (perhaps with many other early Christians) didn’t believe in a physical, bodily resurrection of Jesus, but held instead to a “spiritual” resurrection. (Richard Carrier and Antony Flew would be two prominent examples of such critics.) This “spiritual” resurrection would have been understood not as a disembodied persistence of Jesus’ immaterial soul, but rather as the post-crucifixion Jesus receiving a brand new, ethereal, super-powered body that transcended physical limitations. Whatever this view involves, at a minimum it has to be compatible with the suggestion that Jesus’ corpse remained buried and eventually decomposed. The cash-value of such a claim is obvious enough: if one of the most significant figures in the early Church didn’t believe that Jesus was raised bodily from the grave, then modern believers in a physical resurrection are barking up the wrong tree entirely. Furthermore, one of the central planks in the traditional evidentialist case for orthodox Christianity is undermined.

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Pride and Prejudice

There’s no doubt that the election of a biracial man to the US presidency is a historic event. Insofar as it symbolises the success of the civil rights movement against racial injustice, it should be celebrated (and I join with my American friends on that count).

Still, I have to confess that I’m left somewhat confused by the countless expressions of pride I’ve witnessed over the last two days. “Today, I’m proud of America!” “Americans can take pride in this historic election result!” And so on.

But what exactly is there to be proud about, I ask?

Should Americans be proud that a biracial man has been elected US president? Surely that’s no reason to be proud. A man’s ethnicity or skin colour ought to be strictly irrelevant to whether he’s the right man to serve as president. Wasn’t that the point all along? So to take pride in his election on that basis is just another form of racism.

Should Americans be proud that a biracial man could be elected US president? Well, we all knew that months ago. How did the events of Tuesday add anything to that?

In any case, how would that give grounds for pride? Race should never have been an issue in the first place — not now, not in the 60s, not at any time. At best, the election result illustrates that a past injustice is no longer present. Suggesting that the election (or electability) of a non-white president is praiseworthy or prideworthy is to confuse the obligatory with the supererogatory. There should never have been any barrier in the first place. There’s no basis for pride in finally doing (or allowing) one what always ought to have done (or allowed).

Imagine if for 40 years my church had forced women to sit on the floor during its worship services. Should I feel pride on the day that the first woman is allowed to sit in a pew? Gladness, yes. Relief, yes. But pride?

America is a truly great country and Americans have much to feel justly proud about. Yet in all honesty, I fail to see that the election of a biracial president should be one of them. Gladness, yes. Relief, yes. But pride?

Perhaps I’m still bitter about the historic event of July 4th, 1776. :)

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The Collected Works of John M. Frame, Volume 1

“The Collected Works of John M. Frame, Volume 1: Theology” is as descriptive and accurate a title as one could want for an electronic library. The first of three volumes to be released, it contains all six of Frame’s books on theological topics:

  • The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God is the first book in Frame’s ‘Theology of Lordship’ series. It’s essentially a detailed exploration of what Scripture has to say on the subject of epistemology: what knowledge is, what we can and do know, and how we know it.
  • The Doctrine of God, the second in the ‘Lordship’ series, is an exposition of the attributes and character of the God of Scripture, centred on His self-designation as ‘Lord’ (Yahweh). Among other things, it contains lengthy discussions of the problem of evil and the relationship between divine sovereignty and human responsibility.
  • Salvation Belongs to the Lord is an introductory systematic theology, based on a survey course Frame was invited to teach in 2004. As modern evangelical STs go, it isn’t a competitor to the weighty volumes by, e.g., Wayne Grudem and Robert Reymond, but neither is it intended to be. In keeping with Frame’s other writings, it’s clear, concise, reliable, readable, and edifying.
  • No Other God is Frame’s critique of Open Theism, the revisionist view of God promoted by Clark Pinnock, John Sanders, Greg Boyd, and others. One of the features that distinguishes it from other classical theist responses to openness theology is that it is explicitly and unashamedly Reformed. A large part of the book is devoted to refuting one of the driving presuppositions of Open Theism, namely, libertarian human freedom.
  • The Amsterdam Philosophy is one of Frame’s earliest publications: a short but penetrating critical assessment of the philosophy of Herman Dooyeweerd and his followers. It isn’t as relevant today as it was in 1972, but it remains instructive as a critique of an influential movement that tended to put philosophy rather than Scripture in the driving seat.
  • Perspectives on the Word of God contains the text of three lectures delivered at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in 1988, applying (with relative brevity) Frame’s triperspectivalism to the subjects of divine revelation and ethics. As such, it offers a preview of the final two volumes in the ‘Lordship’ series: The Doctrine of the Word of God and The Doctrine of the Christian Life.

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Holy Hyperlinks

The hyperlink has to be one of the great inventions of the 20th century. Like most great inventions, we now take it almost completely for granted — a paradoxical consequence of its success. Apparently the word ‘hyperlink’ was coined in 1965, but the now-familiar sight of blue underlined text didn’t become ubiquitous until the advent of the World Wide Web in the early 1990s. In essence, the hyperlink is a labelled wormhole from one point in the information universe to another. One of its greatest benefits is its time-saving potential (just as one of its greatest drawbacks is its time-wasting potential, as anyone who has been sucked into a Wikipedia rabbit hole will know).

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Logic 101

A friend who read the Fallacy Files posts asked me to recommend an introductory logic textbook. The classic textbook is Introduction to Logic by Copi and Cohen. The fact that it’s now in its 13th edition is an indicator of its popularity and success. One of its best features is its extensive use of real-life illustrations of arguments and fallacies. It’s on the expensive side, admittedly, but it’s worth the investment if you’re serious about learning logic. You can probably pick up a second-hand copy for a tolerable price. It’s not crucial to have the latest edition unless you’ll be using it alongside others in a logic class.

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Fallacy Files #2: Dawkins on Religion and Evil

Logicians routinely distinguish between necessary and sufficient conditions. If X is a necessary condition for Y, then wherever there is Y there is also X; but the reverse may not be true (there may be X without Y). If X is a sufficient condition for Y, then wherever there is X there is also Y; but the reverse may not be true (there may be Y without X). Clearly it’s important to distinguish necessary conditions and sufficient conditions, since the one does not imply the other, and failure to distinguish them leads to fallacious inferences.

In a previous post, I remarked that Richard Dawkins’ book The God Delusion is a rich source of examples of logical fallacies. I pointed out a rather blatant instance of petitio principii (begging the question) in chapter 3. It seems to me, however, that the prolific professor doesn’t even make it past the first page of the book without committing an error in reasoning.

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Fallacy Files #1: Dawkins on “The Argument From Beauty”

The God Delusion was one of my favourite reads in 2006. It’s a fantastic book, although not for the reasons the author intended. For not only does it illustrate in glorious technicolour the intellectual superficiality of modern atheistic apologetics, it’s also a treasure trove of fallacies for anyone seeking case studies for a course in logic. Abusive ad hominem, argumentum ad populum, ignoratio elenchi, equivocation — the attentive reader can find all these and more.

Here’s a particularly blatant example of petitio principii — that is, begging the question — from chapter 3. Dawkins is attempting to knock down one by one what he takes to be the most influential or popular arguments for the existence of God (understood in the classical theistic sense). What follows is his pocket-sized refutation of “the argument from beauty”:

I have given up counting the number of times I receive the more or less truculent challenge: ‘How do you account for Shakespeare, then?’ (Substitute Shubert, Michelangelo, etc. to taste.) The argument will be so familiar, I needn’t document it further. But the logic behind it is never spelled out, and the more you think about it the more vacuous you realize it to be. Obviously Beethoven’s late quartets are sublime. So are Shakespeare’s sonnets. They are sublime if God is there and they are sublime if he isn’t. They do not prove the existence of God; they prove the existence of Beethoven and of Shakespeare. (p. 86)

Now, leave aside the fact that Dawkins’ only source for this argument is anecdotal. It’s reasonably clear that the argument he has in mind runs along these lines:

  1. Beethoven’s quartets, Shakespeare’s sonnets, etc., are beautiful.
  2. If there were no God, then there would be no beauty (and thus no beautiful things).
  3. Therefore, there is a God.

Clearly the premise enlisted to do the heavy lifting in this argument is the conditional (2). One might explore why anyone would believe (2) to be true; indeed, that would be the most obvious route to discrediting the argument. A few promising lines of support for (2) spring to mind (for example, one might reason that metaphysical naturalism is the most consistent alternative to classical theism, but also conclude that there is no place for abstract entities, or objective aesthetic norms, or mental states such as perception, within a strictly naturalistic ontology). In any case, surely a responsible evaluation of “the argument from beauty” ought to probe a little deeper; it ought to ask why the argument is so common (if indeed it is) and what sort of reasoning typically lies behind it. At a minimum, it ought to try to present the most credible version of the argument. (If there’s no credible version of the argument, why waste ink on it?)

But the world’s leading public intellectual of 2004 has a far more streamlined refutation up his sleeve. Here, in essence, is his counter to the Beethoven/Shakespeare argument:

“They are sublime if God is there and they are sublime if he isn’t.”

Yes, that’s it, folks. Dawkins’ refutation of the notion that beauty point us to God is merely to assert, without any argument, that beauty doesn’t depend on God. In other words, to beg the question entirely.

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Faith’s Reasons for Believing

The following is the unexpurgated version of a review of Robert L. Reymond’s Faith’s Reasons for Believing (Mentor/Christian Focus, 2008) published in Themelios 33:2 (September 2008). (The published version had to be trimmed to around 1000 words.)


Question: What do you get if you cross Gordon Clark’s apologetic with Cornelius Van Til’s apologetic and sprinkle it liberally (so to speak) with J. Gresham Machen’s historical evidences? Answer: Something like the case for the Christian faith recommended by Robert Reymond in Faith’s Reasons for Believing.

The subtitle gives a fair impression of its purpose and tone: “An Apologetic Antidote to Mindless Christianity (and to Thoughtless Atheism)”. Reymond’s goal is to counter not only the attacks of “militant atheists” like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, but also the “mindless Christianity” of believers who are unable or unwilling to offer any reasons for the faith they profess.

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The Works of Cornelius Van Til

According to one leading Reformed theologian, Cornelius Van Til is “the most important Christian thinker of the twentieth century.” If that’s an overstatement, it’s a forgivable one. Van Til’s thought was profound, innovative, and provocative. He wrote voluminously, and his most prominent publications have been variously engaged, praised, and condemned by Christian scholars from practically every point on the theological spectrum. His ‘presuppositionalist’ Christian philosophy with its sharp distinction between analogical thought (“man thinking God’s thoughts after Him”) and autonomous thought (“man is the measure of all things”) has wide-ranging implications for many other disciplines: apologetics, education, systematic theology, biblical hermeneutics, scientific inquiry, counselling — indeed, for any area of human study and endeavour one cares to mention.

In 1997 Logos published The Works of Cornelius Van Til on CD-ROM in their Logos Library System format. For those of us with a more than passing interest in Van Til’s thought, this was a gift from the heavenlies. A labour of love by Eric Sigward (who must have spent hundreds of hours assembling, editing, and formatting its content) the CD-ROM contained 29 of Van Til’s books (including both editions of The Defense of the Faith) and over 200 other articles, pamphlets, reviews, and unpublished manuscripts. It also boasted over 50 hours of audio recordings. In addition to this wealth of content, the Logos Library System provided a fully indexed search facility that enabled complex searches for words and phrases (e.g., display every paragraph in which Van Til used the phrase ‘natural theology’ near the word ‘Arminian’).

At this point, I have to make a shameful confession. The Works of Cornelius Van Til has been utterly indispensable in helping me to sustain a wholly undeserved reputation. By serving as the moderator for the Van Til email discussion list for 8 years, and the maintainer of www.vantil.info for 6 years, it seems I’ve inadvertently given people the impression that I’m an ‘expert’ on all things Van Tilian. (Sadly, this is far from true, but I’ve been reluctant to come clean on the matter until now.) As a consequence, with some regularity I get emails asking me what Van Til thought or wrote on such-and-such a matter. Without the Van Til CD-ROM, my ignorance would be manifest; but with its help, I’m invariably only minutes away from an answer that makes me look like the world’s greatest living authority on the Dutch Calvinist philosopher.

“Can you tell me what Van Til had to say about the New Testament canon?”

“What’s Van Til’s take on the Sermon on the Mount?”

“Did Van Til ever interact with Dietrich Bonhoeffer?”

No problem! (Click, click, tappety-tap, click.) You want citations with that?

Imagine then my delight on learning that Logos have issued an ‘enhanced edition’ of The Works of Cornelius Van Til. All the original content has been preserved, but also updated to take full advantage of the Libronix Digital Library System (the successor to the Logos Library System). The material has been arranged into 40 volumes to facilitate navigation and searching. Furthermore, the new edition includes thousands of indexed hyperlinks to other Libronix resources, such as Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion and Barth’s Church Dogmatics. By means of the same technology, it is now possible to find out — in a matter of minutes — in which of his writings Van Til interacts with, for example, Calvin’s discussion of the sensus divinitatis or Barth’s treatment of the doctrine of Scripture. Provided that no one reads this review, I’m confident that my ill-deserved reputation as a Van Til scholar will be secure for many years to come.

Whatever one thinks of Van Til’s work, there’s no denying that The Works of Cornelius Van Til is a fantastic resource. At the time of writing, Logos are offering it on sale at a substantial discount, but I’ve been told that if readers of this review use the magic coupon code ‘VANTIL’ they’ll receive a further 25% discount when they order the product before 31st July 2008. And those who own the original Logos version of the CD-ROM are entitled to a free upgrade.* What more could one ask for? (Did someone say, “The Collected Works of John M. Frame”? Volume 1 is already available; 2 and 3 are the pipeline.)


*As Phil Gons of Logos explained to me: “It is true that owners of the old Logos version of the Works of Van Til get the new version for free. We’ve actually already activated the new version in the Libronix accounts of everyone who owned the old version; however, if someone never made the switch to Libronix, this automatic upgrade wouldn’t have worked for them. They will have to call our customer service (800-875-6467) and have it manually unlocked. There is a qualification, though. The individual must have owned the old version prior to the release of the new version or at least not purchased the old version as a way to get the new version at a significantly reduced rate.”

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