I Had A Session with Freud

Last week my wife and I were in New York City with good friends. We had a session with Sigmund Freud and C. S. Lewis. If you either get to New York City in the near future or "Freud's Last Session" comes to a city within driving distance from where you live, do yourself a favor and go see this wonderful play. I assure you, you will not regret it at all.

It is a wonderful play that features an imagined meeting of the renowned psychiatrist Dr. Sigmund Freud of Vienna, at 83, who welcomes the young, rising Oxford professor, C.S Lewis, at 41, to his home in London. Lewis anticipates that he will be chided for his satirizing Sigmund Freud, under the name Sigismund, in his recently published book, The Pilgrim's Regress: An Allegorical Apology for Christianity, Reason, and Romanticism. However, Lewis soon recognizes that Freud has a far greater objective.

The conversation occurs on September 3, 1939, the very day England finally enters the war with Germany. Sigmund Freud and C. S. Lewis engage their own conflict concerning God's existence, love's joy, sex's purpose, and life's meaning just a few weeks before Freud eventually ends his own life. Certainly this play features the clash between two antithetical worldviews. But it is more than a debate. It highlights character development of Freud and of Lewis, showing how their respective worldviews shape them as men. Given the setting with the tension of anticipated war, Lewis' survival on the battlefields of the Great War, Freud's painful suffering the effects of cancer, and the clash of opposing worldviews, the play bears a profundity wrapped with humanity, with Freud's well dramatized suffering and Lewis' equally well performed empathetic touch, all while two men who have left their deep imprints on the history of ideas articulately engage the greatest of all questions humans ask. In the end, the play features the God of Christianity over against the god of Freud's own design, which is no god at all and certainly no god of comfort, of hope, and of life everlasting.

Freud's Last Session

See Marvin Olansky's brief review in World.

See "Freud's Last Session" at the Marjorie S. Deane Little Theater, 10 West 64th Street, a block from Lincoln Center and next door to 2 West 64th Street, where Redeemer Presbyterian Church meets on the Upper West Side.

See here for another longer review.

The play is based upon The Question of God: C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud Debate God, Love, Sex, and the Meaning of Life by Armand M. Nicholi.

Superfical Scholarship

Our superficial scholarsBy Heather Wilson

For most of the past 20 years I have served on selection committees for the Rhodes Scholarship. In general, the experience is an annual reminder of the tremendous promise of America's next generation. We interview the best graduates of U.S. universities for one of the most prestigious honors that can be bestowed on young scholars.

I have, however, become increasingly concerned in recent years - not about the talent of the applicants but about the education American universities are providing. Even from America's great liberal arts colleges, transcripts reflect an undergraduate specialization that would have been unthinkably narrow just a generation ago.

As a result, high-achieving students seem less able to grapple with issues that require them to think across disciplines or reflect on difficult questions about what matters and why.

Read the whole article.

HT: MH

NAS President, Peter Wood, Speaks at NWC

It was truly refreshing to have Peter Wood, President of the National Association of Scholars (of which I have been a member for several years), speak at Northwestern College, Saint Paul, Minnesota as a guest lecturer in the Faith & Thought Lecture Series  this past Tuesday evening, November 9, 2010 in Nazareth Chapel.

Peter Wood, formerly Provost of King's College (NYC), is author of highly acclaimed Diversity: The Invention of a Concept, which was reflected well in his lecture.

His lecture was titled, "What's Wrong with Diversity? The Reckless Career of a Mistaken Ideal." This is the issue captured and expressed so well in his first book and which is an issue frequently addressed by Peter Wood and the NAS staff with here.

Here is just a token quote from his lecture:

Since I am on sabbatical I have virtually no opportunity to get any sense of how Peter Wood's lecture was received. My only sense derives from two sessions I attended, the Tuesday evening lecture and a Wednesday morning Q&A session. Both sessions should have been attended far better. Among those who were present, I sensed a mixed response. I was glad to see that the campus diversiphiles or diversicrats were present for both sessions. Of course, their work is implicitly under assault by virtually everything that Peter Wood had to say, so, it would be surprising if they had any response other than rather critical. They posed questions, and their questions, though kindly expressed, reflected their commitments, as one might expect.

Diversity authorizes double standards in admissions and hiring, breeds a campus culture of hypocrisy, mismatches students to educational opportunities, fosters ethnic resentments, elevates group identity over individual achievement, and trivializes the curriculum. Of course, those punishments were something that had to be accepted in the spirit of atoning for the original sin of racism.

You may want to read Peter Wood's recent article, "From Diversity to Sustainability: How Campus Ideology is Born."

Word Annoyances

It warms my heart when I find that others get annoyed with abuses of language. Take a look at the short list of Pet Peeves by Chris Heard, longer list of Pet Peeves by Kevin Wilson, and additional Pet Peeves by Mark Goodacre.

Below, I add some of my own, but in the form of prose. I posted the following on November 23, 2005, on another blog.

---

There are numerous annoyances in the way people so readily adopt grammatical misspeaking. One very annoying and ubiquitous misuse of an expression is to hear people say, "I could care less" instead of "I couldn't care less." Abuse of the expression reached a very low point for my ears a few years ago when an English professor used the incorrect version and did not realize the error even when I gently offered a corrective.

Another annoying error that one hears and reads with increasing frequency is brought to mind by the seasonal song with the incorrectly represented first line as shown on one web page: You Better Watch Out. What happened to the auxiliary verb? You ask, "What is an auxiliary verb?" It's the verb that is needed to make any sense out of saying, "You better watch out." "Better," as a transitive verb means to "make better" or to "improve," as in, "Try to better your situation in life." However, when "better" is used as an exhortation, such as in warning children that Santa Claus is coming, one had better use the expression correctly. In such a case, "better" needs some help. In such a use, "better" needs a helping verb, an auxiliary verb. So, if you plan to sing the song, "Santa Claus is Coming to Town," please be grammatically correct and use the auxiliary verb. "You'd better watch out!" It is actually quite rare that I hear anyone use an auxiliary verb with "better" when using the word in an exhortation these days. This includes preachers, teachers, news writers and correspondents, politicians, and a whole lot of people. Preachers and teachers are the greater source of annoyance for me, since they ought to know better. (What you just read was a correct use of better.) You teachers and preachers had better watch out because your students may read this blog entry and embarrass you by correcting your bad grammar.

Here is a double whammy of errors. "You better of done your homework!" Imagine such a statement! Yet I read statements like this regularly in college papers. Worse than failing to use an auxiliary verb (you had better . . .) is the use of the preposition of as though it were the auxiliary verb have. I don't remember exactly when people starting using of for have, but I seem to remember my first written example of it around sixteen or seventeen years ago in a song. Such an error emerges among people who do not read. The error arises among people who are almost exclusively dependent upon hearing. So, contractions using the auxiliary verb have, get mistakenly heard as of. Among non-readers, then, "You'd better've done your homework" becomes "You better of done your homework."

Oh! Here is one more grammatical annoyance. If you use the past tense of "go," namely "went," please do not insert an auxiliary verb as I frequently hear these days, as in an interview on the news yesterday. A woman said, "I had went. . . ." The auxiliary verb belongs with the past participle of "go," namely "gone." The expressions are "I went" and "I had gone."

Oh the pain to one's ears caused by grammatical annoyances! You had better speak correctly, or else. . . .

Good for Middlebury College History Department

Vermont college says history students may not cite Wikipedia as a source

MIDDLEBURY, Vt. (AP) - Middlebury College history students are no longer allowed to use Wikipedia in preparing class papers.

The school's history department recently adopted a policy that says it's OK to consult the popular online encyclopedia, but that it can't be cited as an authoritative source by students.

The policy says, in part, "Wikipedia is not an acceptable citation, even though it may lead one to a citable source."

History professor Neil Waters says Wikipedia is an ideal place to start research but an unacceptable way to end it.

A Brilliant Essay

This is a busy time of the academic term, given that we are now into the last weeks of the semester. Consequently, attention to my blog has flagged. In absence of my less than stellar blog entries, I commend a brilliant essay by Victor Davis Hanson, “Losing the Enlightenment: A Civilization that has lost confidence in itself cannot confront Islamists,” WSJ (November 29, 2006).

Here is one of of several favorite quotes from his splendid essay: "Nothing is worse than an elite that demands egalitarianism for others but ensures privilege for itself."

The End of Evangelicalism as We Know It? If so, it would be a good thing.

Gordon McDonald, a man who knows too well the destructive impact of scandal, writes for Leadership Journal.net an article titled "When Leaders Implode--Ted Haggard, self-destruction, and the consequences we all suffer." His article is pertinent to the situation incited by Ted Haggard's conduct but also pertinent to my last two blog entries: here and here. In the latter of these two entries I speak of being an "evangelical" but not a "cultural evangelical." McDonald's essay touches nicely upon this crucial distinction.

I have a fairly poor batting average when it comes to predicting the future. But my own sense is that the NAE (as we know it) will probably not recover from this awful moment. Should it? Leaders of various NAE constituencies are likely to believe that their fortunes are better served by new and fresher alliances.

Ever since the beginning of the Bush administration, I have worried over the tendency of certain Evangelical personalities to go public every time they visited the White House or had a phone conference with an administration official. I know it has wonderful fund-raising capabilities. And I know the temptation to ego-expansion when one feels that he has the ear of the President. But the result is that we are now part of an evangelical movement that is greatly compromised—identified in the eyes of the public as deep in the hip pockets of the Republican party and administration. My own belief? Our movement has been used.

There are hints that the movement—once cobbled together by Billy Graham and Harold Ockenga—is beginning to fragment because it is more identified by a political agenda that seems to be failing and less identified by a commitment to Jesus and his kingdom. Like it or not, we are pictured as those who support war, torture, and a go-it-alone (bullying) posture in international relationships. Any of us who travel internationally have tasted the global hostility toward our government and the suspicion that our President's policies reflect the real tenants of Evangelical faith.

And I might add that there is considerable disillusionment on the part of many of our Christian brothers/sisters in other countries who are mystified as to where American evangelicals are in all of this. Our movement may have its Supreme Court appointments, but it may also have compromised its historic center of Biblical faith. Is it time to let the larger public know that some larger-than-life evangelical personalities with radio and TV shows do not speak for all of us?

God's Politics vs. Label No Political View as "Christian"

Here is an interesting article to follow my previous entry--"Wallis vs. Boyd: A friendly evangelical smackdown."

Evangelical but Not a Cultural Evangelical

Here is a brief commentary that captures well my own heartbeat. Yes, I am an evangelical without shame, but I am not a "cultural evangelical." Cultural evangelicals are individuals whose evangelicalism is culturally oriented and linked, much like that of Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, on one end of the spectrum, or much like that of Jim Wallis and Randall Balmer, on the other end of the spectrum. Both Fundamentalism and Liberalism are culturally originated and linked worldviews. For both, their worldiews too uncritically merge Christian beliefs and cultural mores into a unitary whole that is more American than Christian. Could anything be more vividly clear, given the title God's Politics? Compare the uncritical use of Scripture for political advantage here and here. The same can be said of Fundamentalists and many of their forays into politics as I showed numerous times in my cultural commentary that formerly existed here.

The following is found in Kairos Journal.

---

Evangelical and Unashamed

Os Guinness is an internationally renowned speaker and the author of numerous books, including Time for Truth, The Gravedigger File, and Long Journey Home. An Englishman, he was born in China and holds degrees from the universities of London and Oxford.

“Do you mind my asking?” The speaker hesitated and dropped his voice as if about to say something embarrassingly personal.

“Forgive me for putting it so bluntly.” And he hesitated again, finally coming to the point with a kid-gloved delicacy, “But are you . . . an EE-VAN-gelical?”

“Absolutely,” I said, “I’m an evangelical. But probably not in the sense you mean. I have no interest in cultural evangelicalism. I am an evangelical in the tradition of John Stott, William Wilberforce, John Wesley, Martin Luther, or further back still, of St. Francis of Assisi.”

That little exchange earlier this year with one of the world’s most famous journalists illustrates a major obstacle to any attempt to win back our culture for Christ. In the English speaking world, the term evangelical has become so distorted that it hangs like a millstone around the necks of those who accept it and rises up like a stumbling block for those on the outside.

Indeed, evangelicalism today is a prime blockage to evangelism and the cause of the gospel itself, and not surprisingly, the number of ex-evangelicals, post-evangelicals, former evangelicals, and disgruntled evangelicals is growing by the day, especially among the younger generation.

Should we then abandon the term? Not at all. Words that are not essential should be discarded when encrusted with alien meanings over time, but words that are essential should be restored and brought back to their original power and freshness—and to do that with the word evangelical is close to the essence of the term itself.

What does it mean to be evangelical? Put simply, to be evangelical means to define ourselves and our lives by the first things of the good news (the evangel) of Jesus Christ.

Needless to say, this needs to be spelled out more sharply and, more importantly, to be lived out more clearly.

First, to be evangelical has nothing to do with cultural and political identifications. It is neither the Republican Party nor the Democratic Party at prayer. All such lesser badges and trademarks come and go, but to be evangelical is an allegiance to Jesus Christ that transcends all other loyalties in life.

Second, to be evangelical is not to be fundamentalist. Unquestionably there is truth to the current comment that “a fundamentalist is an evangelical with guts.” But whereas fundamentalism is an essentially modern reaction to the modern world, evangelicalism is as old as the first response to the gospel itself.

Third, to be evangelical is more than being a subscriber to a list of doctrines, such as the authority of Scripture and the importance of new birth. It is a radical commitment of heart, mind, and will, to the truths and the way of life opened up by the good news of Jesus. Such a commitment entails firm convictions such as the authority of God’s Word and the necessity of new birth. But it is the decisive response to the announcement of the good news, rather than formal acceptance of a short or long list of doctrines that constitutes what it is to be evangelical.

Expressed more positively, to be evangelical is to be part of one of the three great traditions in the Christian faith: Orthodoxy, Catholicism, and Evangelicalism. But while each tradition carries and sustains an element that is vital to faith—“right belief and right worship” for Orthodoxy, “universality” for Catholicism—neither of the other two are as early and as central as the defining feature of Evangelicalism: the passion to be as close and as faithful to the first things of the gospel as it is possible to be.

This means, on the one hand, that to be evangelical is not to be exclusive or contradictory to the other traditions in the Church. St. Francis, for example, was deliberately “evangelical,” and widely described so in his day, because he tried to live as close as possible to the way of life of Jesus, including His poverty.

On the other hand, to be evangelical also means to be committed determinedly to the principle of ongoing reformation. The presence of sin and the passing of time mean that spiritual life declines, error and heresy overgrow truth, and the need for reformation and revival is constant. But the answer for the Church is never to go forward, seduced by the fallacy of “the newer the truer” or “the latest is greatest.” As both St. Francis and Martin Luther demonstrate clearly, the Church always goes forward by first going back—which is the heartbeat of what it means to be evangelical.

At a time when the term evangelical has become so empty and distorted that many are turning away from it in disgust, we have to raise the question: Is there something wrong with the gospel, or is there something wrong with us? Our problem today is that evangelicalism has become more cultural than evangelical. It is time to go back once again to the first things of the Good News that is the best news ever—and so to be evangelical and unashamed.

For a related story, read this.

Another Case of Abusing Scripture for Political Purposes

One time Democrat U.S. Congressman from Pennsylvania and current General Secretary of the National Council of Churches, Rev. Bob Edgar, decries the United States government for preventing him from obeying the Lord’s commandment to visit Taliban and al Qaeda detainees at Guantánamo Bay. Edgar says,

“I was in prison and you visited me,” Jesus says in Matthew 25:36. But the detainees at Guantánamo are not permitted visitors. I know this from personal experience.

The National Council of Churches requested to visit these children of God simply to see how they were being treated. The request was denied permission by our government. We did not wish to make a statement; we did not want to intervene on their behalf. We simply wanted to visit these prisoners as our Lord commands in Matthew 25:40.

'When did we see thee sick or in prison and visit thee?' And the King will answer them, 'Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.'

Edgar appeals to Scripture again, when he says,

My heart cries out at these words of our Commander in Chief. How can the United States condemn other countries for torture when it pretends not to know the meaning of human suffering and degradation? Jesus teaches in Matthew 7:5:

You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye.

It is hardly necessary to offer any critique of Bob Edgar's misuse of Scripture. Is it? Is not Bob Edgar's abuse of the Scripture passage plainly evident to all who have eyes to see? Edgar has more than specks in his eyes for him to abuse Scripture these ways. Is it not obvious that Jesus' Parable of the Sheep and the Goats represents "the least of these my brethren" as his followers and not humans in general and especially not Muslim terrorists? How, in the name of all things reasonable, can an ordained United Methodist minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ turn Jesus' words to render Muslim's among the Taliban and among al Qaeda to be regarded as among the sheep, Jesus' followers, called "the least of these my brethren", and not among the goats? The operative words are all things reasonable.

For further commentary on this look here and here.

We should always be concerned that humans, including terrorists, be treated as human beings, creatures made in the image and likeness of God. This, however, does not preclude interrogation, prosecution, and punishment, even death (cf. Genesis 9:1-6). There is a proper use of Scripture that Christians are obliged to embrace. Regrettably, Bob Edgar's approach abuses both Jesus and Scripture.

Update (11/13/06): Mark Tooley has written an insightful piece called "The 'God is on Our Side' Lie" as a post-election follow-up on false allegations made by Left-leaning church leaders, National Council of Churches Director Bob Edgar and Bishop Felton May.

On the Flattened Use of the Old Testament for Christian Ethics

Shaun Casey, Associate Professor of Christian Ethics at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C., published "Jesus was an Illegal Immigrant" on the blog feature Faithful Democrats web page.

Casey argues,

Sunday School for preschoolers in the Churches of Christ in the 60s was pretty cool. In between the Kool-Aid and the cookies our teachers told us the basic stories of the Bible aided either by handouts with pictures of dramatic biblical scenes painted in romantic nineteenth century style or by "flannel graph" technology. . . . One of the most powerful images from that era was the story from Matthew's gospel about Joseph being told in a dream by an angel to flee with Mary and Jesus to Egypt to escape the death sentence issued by King Herod. Later, of course, Joseph was told he could safely return to Palestine, but all of this was illegal since it violated Herod's decree.

Fast forward about forty years and I found myself teaching an adult Sunday School class and the topic of illegal immigration came up as we were considering one of the multitude of passages calling for God's people to love aliens and sojourners because God had taken mercy on us when our ancestors were such themselves. ("And you are to love those who are aliens, for you yourselves were aliens in Egypt." Deuteronomy 10:18-19). A class member declared that all undocumented immigrants in this country should be sent home since they were lawbreakers. No biblical argument to the contrary would move this person off this thesis.

It struck me as very ironic that this class member would affirm the orthodox Christian belief of Jesus as the Son of God, yet the logic of the political credo would have demanded that Joseph, as a law breaker, should have surrendered Jesus to Herod for execution as an infant. No cross, no teaching, no ministry, just infanticide should have been Jesus' fate on earth.

I am convinced Matthew included the flight to Egypt by Jesus and his family to show that Jesus' own story was part of the ancient story of Israel. They, too, fled to Egypt, suffered persecution, were redeemed by God, and then were empowered to live lives in solidarity with sojourners and aliens wherever they encountered them. Likewise disciples of Jesus throughout history pick up the same ministry of solidarity with displaced people. Jesus was an illegal alien and that ought to shape how we enter the current debate. But too often political ideology clouds good theology. In the current debate over immigration policy it distresses me to no end that so many of my fellow church goers ignore this fundamental tenet that should be central to our identity. Instead as theological amnesiacs we insist on a secular law and order ideology over a biblical mandate.

The passage to which Shaun Casey refers, of course, is Matthew 2:13-15.

When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. "Get up," he said, "take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him." So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: "Out of Egypt I called my son."

On FrontPageMagazine.com, Mark Tooley comments on Casey's use of Scripture in his article, "Jesus Christ: Illegal Immigrant?" For the purpose of demonstrating Casey's misuse of the passage to argue his case concerning giving haven to "illegal immigrants" (read "illegal aliens"), Tooley correctly points out,

If Casey’s facile examination of immigration is what passes for high theological analysis on Faithfuldemocrats.com, then the Democratic Party’s website may only be successful among Christians who do not own or at least do not read their Bibles. Joseph, Mary and their infant Son were refugees fleeing for their lives, not illegal immigrants searching for higher wages. The Scriptures do not speak of any Egyptian laws they violated by their flight to Egypt. Of course, unlike most of today’s illegal immigrants to whom Casey is straining to compare the Holy Family, Joseph and Mary took their Child back to Nazareth after King Herod died. Their “sojourn” in Egypt was always intended to be a brief one. So far as we know, Joseph and Mary did not demand any special privileges from Egypt or claim to be persecuted by Egyptians.

There is more, much more, that could be said concerning Shaun Casey's misuse if not abuse of Matthew 2:13-15. There are several layers at which one might address Casey's commentary. I will comment on one of Casey's major failures with implications.

Ironically, Shaun Casey, the political and theological liberal abuses Matthew 2:13-15 in virtually the same way that Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and many other political and theological conservatives abuse Genesis 12:1-3, the Lord's promise to Abraham, as the foundational premise upon which every nation must base its international policy concerning Israel. Both Shaun Casey and his political & theological conservative counterparts are guilty of reading the Bible flatly.

Casey's misuse of the Bible reminds me of a lengthy response to a commenter that I offered on another of my blogs that you will find here. That commenter responded to my posting of an article last spring on the building agitation and animosity by supporters of illegal aliens. That commenter used Leviticus 19:9-10, Leviticus 19:33-34, and 1 Timothy 5:8 to support the idea that Christians are obliged to break U.S. laws concerning "illegal aliens" in order that they might obey God's laws. Following is the bulk of my response, a response that also addresses Shaun Casey's misuse of the Bible to advance his agenda concerning "illegal aliens."

Now, I do not raise the issue of how we are to use the Old Testament in order to escape moral obligation. I raise the issue of how we are to use the Old Testament as Christians in order that I may know what my proper moral obligation is in a vastly different setting and under a very different covenant than the one under which the Israelites were bound to live before God when the Lord commanded,

When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the alien. I am the LORD your God (Leviticus 19:9-10).

When an alien lives with you in your land, do not mistreat him. The alien living with you must be treated as one of your native-born. Love him as yourself, for you were aliens in Egypt. I am the LORD your God (Leviticus 19:33-34).

You simply assert a matter-of-fact use of Leviticus 19:9-10 and Leviticus 19:33-34 directly and immediately to our present situation in the United States with reference to the enormous influx of illegal aliens. You did this with particular reference to those who cross this nation's border on the south, and you do so without offering any warranted rationale for your use, other than that it is God's command.

Thus, you simply assert, "I'm sure you could try to skirt these verses by saying they do not apply - since they entered the country illegally , but - Is a scriptural command to believers ever contingent on other persons past behavior?"

Indeed, we all who read and love God's Word readily recognize that Leviticus 19:9-10 and Leviticus 19:33-34 are both commands from the Lord God. But, as a Christian reader of Scripture, are we not obligated to read and to use Scripture with much greater care for it than you have exhibited in your simplistic use of these Scriptures?

When you enter the land and plant any kind of fruit tree, regard its fruit as forbidden. For three years you are to consider it forbidden; it must not be eaten. In the fourth year all its fruit will be holy, an offering of praise to the LORD. But in the fifth year you may eat its fruit. In this way your harvest will be increased. I am the LORD your God.

Do not eat any meat with the blood still in it. Do not practice divination or sorcery. Do not cut the hair at the sides of your head or clip off the edges of your beard. Do not cut your bodies for the dead or put tattoo marks on yourselves. I am the LORD (Leviticus 19:23-28).

So, when you plant any kind of fruit tree, do you regard its fruit as forbidden so that you do not eat it or allow others to eat it for the first three years? In the fourth year, do you regard all of its fruit to be holy so that you offer it solely to the Lord God as an offering of praise? Then, only in the fifth year, do you eat any of the fruit from the tree? Given your reading of Leviticus 19:9-10 and Leviticus 19:33-34, portions that bound Leviticus 19:23-28, are you not obligated to obey this command from the Lord?

Do you eat only kosher butchered meats that have no blood remaining? Do you restrain your barber from cutting the hair at the sides of your head? Do you keep from clipping off the edges of your beard? Do you also preach that no one should ever cut their bodies or put tattoo markings on their bodies? Do you preach against these things as sins that Christians need to make sure they avoid? If not, why not? On what warranted rationale do you not?

Again, consider Leviticus 9:11-19.

Do not steal. Do not lie. Do not deceive one another.

Do not swear falsely by my name and so profane the name of your God. I am the LORD.

Do not defraud your neighbor or rob him. Do not hold back the wages of a hired man overnight.

Do not curse the deaf or put a stumbling block in front of the blind, but fear your God. I am the LORD.

Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neighbor fairly.

Do not go about spreading slander among your people. Do not do anything that endangers your neighbor's life. I am the LORD.

Do not hate your brother in your heart. Rebuke your neighbor frankly so you will not share in his guilt.

Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD.

Keep my decrees. Do not mate different kinds of animals. Do not plant your field with two kinds of seed. Do not wear clothing woven of two kinds of material.

Do you obey the Lord with regard to every one of these commandments? Do you make sure that your employer pays you your wages at the close of each working day? Do you preach against mating different kinds of animals, such as the donkey and the horse? Do you preach against planting a field with two kinds of seed? Do you preach against wearing clothing that is made of blended fabrics, such as cotton and wool or linen and cotton? On what basis do you not obey these if you obey other elements within the above portion of Scripture? On what basis do you not preach all of the above as obligatory on Christians, if you preach that some are obligatory?

In other words, is not your reading and use of the Old Testament in need of considerably more careful thought than what you exhibited in your response? (For the commenter's non-response response, find it here.)

As for the use of Hosea 11:1 in Matthew 2:13-15, a topic that Shaun Casey does not even touch upon in his blog entry, I will leave that for another time. As for this entry, my principal concern has been to show that Casey and others, including evangelicals, misuse the Bible when they use the Old Testament in their matter-of-fact, flattened, or straightforward manner without accounting for the dramatic change of covenants with the inauguration of the new by Jesus Christ when he fulfilled and ended the old covenant. Indeed, the Old Testament remains as Christian Scripture, but as such, this hardly renders us Christians under the jurisdiction of the old covenant. Thus, our reading and use of passages such as Leviticus 19:9-10, 33-34 or Deuteronomy 10:18-19 must not fail to account for the Christian's dwelling under the new covenant and not the old.

We are not citizens of a nation that is in covenant with God, as were the Israelites of old. If we are Christians, we are stand together with believers from every tongue and tribe and nation in covenant relationship with God. We stand in covenant union with peoples from all around the globe without ethnic or racial distinction. Yet, we also dwell under "the powers that be." We all live under God's authority as depicted in Romans 13:1-7, which requires us to live lawfully within the nations where God's providence has placed us as citizens (cf. Acts 17:26-28). Thus, if Christian brothers or sisters from any country, including Mexico, illegally enter the United States, are not we American Christians obliged by Scripture to admonish them to become law-abiding citizens and submit to the laws of both their country of origin and the United States for conscience's sake? Indeed, we are.

Does Belief Have Any Function in Scholarship?

Here is a rather crucial debate for many of us who endeavor to do scholarship within the framework of religious institutions.

In the SBL Forum Michael V. Fox has posted "Bible Scholarship and Faith-Based Study: My View." Here are the opening salvos of his piece.

Recently, claims have been made for the legitimacy of faith-based scholarship in the forum of academic scholarship (on a related issue, see the recent FORUM article by Mary Bader and the responses to it). In my view, faith-based study has no place in academic scholarship, whether the object of study is the Bible, the Book of Mormon, or Homer. Faith-based study is a different realm of intellectual activity that can dip into Bible scholarship for its own purposes, but cannot contribute to it. I distinguish faith-based Bible study from the scholarship of persons who hold a personal faith. In our field, there are many religious individuals whose scholarship is secular and who introduce their faith only in distinctly religious forums.

Faith-based study of the Bible certainly has its place — in synagogues, churches, and religious schools, where the Bible (and whatever other religious material one gives allegiance to) serves as a normative basis of moral inspiration or spiritual guidance. This kind of study is certainly important, but it is not scholarship — by which I mean Wissenschaft, a term lacking in English that can apply to the humanities as well as the hard sciences, even if the modes and possibilities of verification in each are very different. (It would be strange, I think, to speak of a "faith-based Wissenschaft.")

Any discipline that deliberately imports extraneous, inviolable axioms into its work belongs to the realm of homiletics or spiritual enlightenment or moral guidance or whatnot, but not scholarship, whatever academic degrees its practitioners may hold. Scholarship rests on evidence. Faith, by definition, is belief when evidence is absent.

---

Al Mohler, Jr., President of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, challenges Michael Fox in "Can Believers Be Bible Scholars? A Strange Debate in the Academy." Here is a portion of Mohler's response.

The naïveté of Fox's approach is self-evident, but he apparently fails to see that even an atheist brings a certain "faith" to the work of scholarship. As he sees it, Jewish scholars who would wish to publish academic research on the Old Testament are simply to be discounted because they may well believe in the existence of deity and may see the Old Testament writings as sacred. Beyond this, Christians are to be discounted wholesale, and Christians who engage in biblical scholarship are to be denied the status of scholars, regardless of which testament is their focus of study.

"Faith-based study of the Bible certainly has its place," Fox concedes--but those places are "synagogues, churches, and religious schools, where the Bible (and whatever other religious material one gives allegiance to) serves as a normative basis of moral inspiration or spiritual guidance." His next statement serves as the theme for his entire essay: "This kind of study is certainly important, but it is not scholarship--by which I mean Wissenschaft, a term lacking in English that can apply to the humanities as well as the hard sciences, even if the modes and possibilities of verification in each are very different."

Look carefully at Fox's next sentence: "Any discipline that deliberately imports extraneous, inviolable axioms into its work belongs to the realm of homiletics or spiritual enlightenment or moral guidance or whatnot, but not scholarship, whatever academic degrees its practitioners may hold."

This is where Fox's own lack of intellectual honesty brings his argument to a standstill. Does he really believe that he, or anyone else for that matter, comes to the task of scholarship with absolutely no "extraneous" presuppositions? No, Fox concedes that "everyone has presuppositions and premises," but he insists that, for scholars such as himself, "these are not inviolable." He continues, "Indeed, it is the role of education to teach students how to recognize and rest their premises and, when necessary, to reject them."

Of course, this simply begs the question. Why is the presumption of atheism any less inviolable than belief in Jesus Christ as Lord? In its own way, the same argument holds true for assertions of agnosticism, since the true agnostic argues that the question of God's existence simply cannot be answered. That is about as inviolable an axiom as one is likely to encounter.