As I read Plantinga’s chapter I often thought that Cornelius Van Til would have loved this, for he basically proves Van Til’s point that belief in God is necessary to know anything. Van Til tried, unsuccessfully I think, to demonstrate that belief in the Christian God is necessary for knowledge. He relied on the unity and diversity in the Trinity, saying this solved the one and the many problem that beguiles philosophers, and he argued the idealist notion that comprehensive knowledge is necessary for all knowledge (we don’t know anything unless we know everything, and such comprehensive knowledge is found in God, who reveals some of it to us).

While interesting, Plantinga’s arguments are better. He argues that we only have warrant for our epistemic faculties if we believe they are functioning properly, but what would this even mean in a naturalistic universe? (Plantinga rightly asserts that naturalism is the dominant form of atheism). Proper functioning assumes a designer who intended his creation to function a certain way. If there is no God then the universe lacks intention, and so it would be impossible to say whether or not something is functioning properly. Even the concept of malfunctioning loses meaning. Plantinga says the problem is not merely that a naturalist can’t tell whether or not something is functioning properly, it’s that the concept itself lacks meaning in a naturalistic worldview (p. 21).

Furthermore, we only have warrant if we believe our epistemic faculties are successfully aimed at truth. But the best a naturalist can say is that they are aimed at survival advantage. For example, someone who is stricken with terminal cancer may choose to optimistically insist they will beat it. Their optimism may increase the time they have left, and so contribute to their survival, but no one would claim their beliefs are successfully aimed at truth (p. 11).

Finally, Plantinga argues that a naturalist can’t even account for the concept of belief. Naturalistic materialism (materialism is the dominant form of naturalism) can account for the “electro-chemical or neurophysiological” firings in our brains, but it cannot explain how these “neuronal events” are able to produce beliefs that have content. It’s not simply that naturalists don’t know how it happens but that they can’t see how it could. The content of beliefs is an immaterial thing. How could the material events in a physical brain come to hold immaterial content? The question itself makes little sense in a naturalistic world (p. 34-35).

Plantinga concludes that committed naturalists must give up the right to hold beliefs, including the belief that naturalism is true. And so naturalism is self-defeating, and no rational person could rationally hold it (p. 68-69).

This chapter should earn Plantinga an honorary doctorate from Westminster Seminary—not that either side needs this but wouldn’t it be nice to see?—and should become a staple of apologetics for years to come. If you’re into Christian philosophy, you need to read this.

“now that the trial is over, reporters should ask if President Obama still opposes laws that protect infants that survive abortions. After the school massacre in Newtown, President Obama suggested reforms to the country’s gun laws, saying, ‘If there is even one step we can take to save another child . . . then surely we have an obligation to try.’ So let’s find out the specifics of his proposed abortion reforms post-Gosnell.”

I would stop whatever I’m doing to hear the answer to that one.

 Osborne wisely and pastorally explains how we’re never free from the temptation to legalism. In fact, the more zeal we have for God the more we’ll be tempted to look down on those who don’t measure up (p. 46). And so we become “accidental Pharisees.” But is there any other kind? No one becomes a legalist on purpose.

Osborne cites five kinds of Christians who can easily become Pharisaical about what they care about most (p. 92-94):

1. Radical Christians:  these people think generosity is most important, and while they are careful not to give out a list, they are suspicious of Christians who live in large houses and drive expensive cars. Their parents’ generation worried about beer in the refrigerator; they worry about BMWs in the driveway.

2. Crazy Christians:  these earnest believers think that you’re only committed to God if you’re taking wild leaps of faith, getting yourself in trouble to see if God won’t bail you out. They suppose that normal Christians who punch a time clock and pay their mortgage on time probably aren’t as committed to Christ as they should be. What these “crazy Christians” forget is that they’re only free to take their risks because of the normal jobholders who have saved enough money to help them should they fall (p. 188).

3. Missional Christians:  these counter-cultural Christians think the badge of discipleship is earned by volunteering in a soup kitchen, tutoring at risk children, or moving from the suburbs to the inner city. They are suspicious of anyone whose life is too comfortable (there seems to be some overlap among these first three categories).

4. Gospel-Centered Christians:  these Christians are my favorites, because we care about right doctrine and everything written by John Calvin. However, if we’re not careful we can look down our noses at those believers, usually Arminians, who haven’t quite figured out the right way to think about God.

5. Revolutionary and Organic Christians:  these people are disillusioned with the traditional church and think that the most committed Christians are those who attend house churches. As with the missional and gospel-centered Christians, they are often suspicious of those who attend large “seeker” churches.

Osborne is not against each of these priorities per se, but simply warns us against turning a good thing into our god. We may have good reasons for our good thing (after all, it’s good for a reason), but we must avoid the trap of thinking that everyone has to live like us.

Osborne’s book is full of many helpful and liberating ideas. Here are a couple:

1. “Evangelists, pastors, teachers, ministry leaders, church planters, and missionaries have a public platform that makes it easy for them to present a model of discipleship that looks an awful lot like them. Their self-congratulatory stories and natural built-in bias toward God has called them to do can leave the rest of us wondering what’s wrong with us” (p. 173).

2. Osborne thinks that zealous Christians should balance their use of the Gospels with an equal emphasis on Paul’s epistles. While it’s true that Jesus told the rich young ruler to sell everything to follow him, it’s equally true that Paul encouraged Christians to lead a normal life, quietly working with their hands so they wouldn’t be a burden to others (1 Thess. 4:11-12). We need a Christian faith that makes sense of both kinds of passages.

I intend to try. In the Fall I have a book on faith and doubt coming out that will address a portion of this (I will argue against the radical and crazy guys—the Steve Martins of evangelicalism?—that faith is committing to what you know, not to what you don’t), and this summer and fall I will be researching and writing a book that takes the question straight on—can we serve Jesus and still enjoy our lives? How do we integrate the redemptive purpose of heaven with the earthly pleasures of creation? Until then, and perhaps even after then, I heartily commend Larry Osborne’s provocative and liberating book, Accidental Pharisees.

Update:  I just sold the old one to a fellow who lived in my hometown in Ohio, so that makes me happy. I don’t know the right way to say this, but now my wife is the person/thing I have lived with the longest.

Todd began his inaugural lecture by having the audience recite Question 1 of the Heidelberg, and then he compared this to the creed of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism, which essentially says that the central goal of life is to be happy and feel good about yourself. God won’t interfere in your life unless you ask him to, and only then to resolve some problem and restore your happiness.

Todd argued that the Heidelberg begins with displacement—we are not our own—whereas the creed of MTD focuses entirely upon us and our felt needs. Todd noted that MTD comes out in theology today when leaders assert that their felt problems are the ones that Jesus had in mind, and then they leap over 2,000 years of tradition to discover “the real meaning of Jesus” that the church had buried all this time. Todd gave examples of Brian McLaren’s The Secret Message of Jesus on the left, the Patriot’s Bible on the right (what does Jesus tell us about the founding of America?), and N.T. Wright in the middle, whose 2013 Calvin January series lecture was entitled, “How we’ve all misunderstood the gospels.”

Rather than start with our own questions and then try to find some correlation in Scripture—which usually amounts to finding that Jesus was some misunderstood revolutionary whose dreams didn’t catch on until us—Todd said we must drill deeply into our own theological traditions until we hit the water table of the catholicity of the church. We must find those universal truths that Scripture and tradition have always taught us, for not only are they what is most important but also they are what will unite us together.

Jamie Smith gave a response that echoed these themes, which made it a very good night. Join me in prayer that God will heal Todd, for the sake of his wife and two toddlers but also for the sake of his church. God bless Todd Billings, and may he continue to bless the church through his ministry.

With that throat clearing out of the way, Matt Westerholm sent me this link to an insightful piece written by Andrew Sullivan on attending his friend’s evangelical megachurch funeral. It’s interesting to hear an outsider’s perspective, and Matt suggested it had intriguing connections to my most recent book, The Last Enemy, which will soon be out in French and a large print edition (see how subtly I promote my wares?).

I found two items of interest in Sullivan’s piece:

1. He incorrectly thinks that we will get our new bodies in heaven, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he picked that up at the funeral. Our favorite funeral songs certainly leave that impression–”touching a hand, and finding it God’s!; breathing new air, and finding it celestial!” But think about it, if we already have our new bodies in the intermediate state in heaven, then what’s the resurrection for?

2. Sullivan noted that the funeral intentionally chose to be a celebration, where the widow wore white and the audience joyfully clapped along with Disneyesque praise choruses. I don’t want to judge how anyone grieves, as if there is a wrong way to do it, but if there is a wrong, or at least incomplete way to do it, then this is it. In fact, the joyful exultations would have meant more if the people had also permitted themselves to mourn and lament. The deeper we allow ourselves to feel the agony of death the greater we’ll appreciate the victory of Christ’s resurrection. A Christian funeral should have equal parts lament and hope, and in that order.

To quote from an interesting and helpful book on this subject, “We grieve, but not as those without hope. We hope, but not as those who do not grieve.”

Update:  Eric Strattan sent me this link which is the exact right way to grieve. I am so proud of this wife, who obviously was taught well. Fair warning:  you won’t finish this piece without crying. She wrote this last month, and her husband died on Monday. God have mercy.

1. Rick Pitino (don’t Google Pitino and Applebee’s)

2. It’s not football.

3. Speaking of football, it might be a long time until Michigan will be able to compete with Ohio State, so in the name of competitive balance I’d like to see them win something.

During the drive I listened to “On Being,” an NPR show that featured an interesting conversation on gay marriage between Jonathan Rauch of the Brookings Institute and David Blankenhorn. They both now support gay marriage, the former only recently and the latter because he is gay.

Two parts of the conversation stood out to me:

1. When they opened the floor for questions, David was asked how a gay couple could consummate their marriage, given that the sexual equipment of the two partners doesn’t exactly fit. David seemed irritated by the question and gave an extremely weak answer. He said that their marriage would be consummated through gay sex and the fact that the gay partners really do love each other.

I think there is an opening here to explain how it can be loving to gay people to oppose gay marriage. If sex is a reflection of the perichoresis of our Triune God (John 17:21-23), then gay sex will always frustrate both partners because it stops short of the oneness of the perichoretic God who made us in his image. Regardless how much a gay person yearns for his partner, he can never become one with him. This matters, both to God and to the gay person.

2. David said that he doesn’t think he will succeed, but he is warning gay people not to press their advantage and force everyone else to agree with them. He noted that it’s tempting for oppressed minorities to oppress their oppressors once they win their freedom. He said this will probably happen but he hopes not, for America is a big country with lots of diverse people and no one should be made a prisoner of conscience.

I appreciate David for seeing this problem and for having the courage to speak up to his side about it, but he is probably right about the oppression that is coming our way. It may not be long until pastors, photographers, florists, tuxedo and bridal shops will have a choice to make:  either serve both traditional and gay weddings or get out of the wedding industry altogether.

In Concerning Idolatry, Tertullian argued that Christians should not serve in any occupation that is in any way tainted with idolatry. This category included astrologers, officers of the state, mathematicians, schoolmasters, professors of literature, gladiators, frankincense sellers, enchanters, magicians, and all forms of painting, modeling, and sculpture. Tertullian said that if this command prevented a Christian from earning a living, well, there are worse things than dying.

We might disagree about some of the items that Tertullian excluded from Christians (he held an extreme Christ vs. culture view), but it’s interesting that there have always been tasks that Christians thought they shouldn’t do. Until the imminent future, that didn’t include weddings.

To fix the problem the envelope contained a signature page for me, my wife, and two witnesses to sign and send back, either by mail or by fax. The letter warned, “Be advised your faxed signature(s) will become a permanent part of your filing.”

So someone at the IRS had this thought, shared it with others and they all decided it was a good idea:  “We must have original signatures. Please fax them to us.”

I’m not taking any chances with an organization this dumb that is holding my refund. I mailed it in.

The letter also encouraged me to efile next time, which I would happily do if the IRS program permitted Word attachments. Seems like an easy thing to fix, if they weren’t so consumed with screening which photocopied signatures they will accept.

But it’s not just liberals who miss the point. Consider what you may have heard in church yesterday. How many of us talked about resurrection as if it was a concept, an inspiring promise that overcomes our fears, failures, and broken dreams? The resurrection of Jesus does promise all this, but only because this is not the point.

We must never talk about resurrection without the definite article “the.” We don’t believe in resurrection as a concept but only as the historical resurrection of Jesus. The empty tomb is a hard fact, not a soft platitude that things will get better if only we hang on until spring.

The specific resurrection of Jesus does inspire us with hope that a better day is coming, but only because his leaving the tomb defeated the indomitable powers of sin and death. These forces are so overwhelming that, to borrow a phrase from the NCAA tournament, Jesus could only defeat them by “going small.” Jesus became vulnerable to their destructive power. He did not withstand their onslaught but buckled before it. He allowed them to take him down so that he could take them out.

This is the triumph of Easter. If sin and death are not defeated in the victory of the resurrection, then it matters little that you feel inspired today. What good is it to have a spring in your step if your journey ends in death? But if the resurrection has defeated death, now we’ve got something to talk about.

Dropping the “the” may make it easier to reach non-Christians, but it will also guarantee that we have nothing to reach them with. The world loves to encourage itself with thoughts of resurrection, but it stumbles over the hard fact of the empty tomb. But this is all we’ve got. You may gain a large audience if you drop the “the,” but you’ll send them all to hell. Don’t be a fool.