Unapologetic Apologetics
From Neoredemptive
| Unapologetic Apologetics: Meeting the Challenge of Theological Studies | |
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William A. Dembski (ed) and Jay Wesley Richards (ed)
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Synopsis
Based upon essays presented at meetings of the Charles Hodge Society at Princeton Theological Seminary, this collection of essays constitutes an intellectually rigorous yet warm-hearted defense of the "Old Princeton" lines of the theological inquiry and discourse. The essays are unapologetically combative in their treatment of the philosophical zeitgeist dominating most secular and theological higher education -- naturalism (and its pragmatic corollary, methodological naturalism) suffers the most withering and prolonged critiques (see also other works by Dembski and by Phillip E. Johnson which flesh these criticisms out further), but the theologies of Friedrich Schleiermacher and Karl Barth are also frequently targeted (and reasonably so, given the prominence of theological liberalism and neo-orthodoxy, respectively, at Princeton and other seminaries).
Doc's Take
First, it bears saying that this book is not for everyone. If you have no knowledge of words like "ontology" and "methodological naturalism" and if names like "Schleiermacher" and "Barth" and "Pannenberg" mean nothing to you, and if you like it that way, then you will almost certainly not enjoy this book. It was written by scholars at a seminary which drinks heavily from the wells of scholastic liberal theology, so their vocabulary is not that of popular feel-good devotional booklets. If, however, you are comfortable talking about both the Christological and Soteriological implications of doctrines of Scripture, if you are comfortable asking whether the popular definition of science isn't itself begging the question when it comes to God's place (or lack thereof) in and above the universe, if you're willing to look beyond trumped-up popular outrage over an "overly masculine God" and ask how revelation and human consciousness interplay through the media of experience, language, context, and relationship, then this book will be a refreshing read for you.
While all of the essays deserve comment on their own, on reflection these stand out to me:
- Naturalism in Theology & Biblical Studies (Jay Wesley Richards) -- An assumption of Naturalism (whether methodological, metaphysical, or ontological) has profound implications for how one understands the existence, content, and teachings of the Bible and our approach to developing a Christian theology based upon it. Richards rightly points out that this assumption is itself unfounded and that it, by definition, leads to research paradigms and preferred questions that will tend to point the scholar away from the orthodox Christian faith.
- Old Princeton & The Doctrine of Scripture (Raymond Cannata) -- It has become popular in liberal, neo-liberal, and left-emergent circles, to criticize, lampoon, and caricature the doctrines of scripture's infallibility and inerrancy in the original autographs with respect to all matters it addresses as an unsustainable novelty of theological scholasticism. Cannata does an admirable job not only illustrating the subtlety and nuance of Old Princeton on the subject of Scripture (thoroughly refuting most caricatures, and even most textbooks' treatments of the subject), but pointing to the origins of the systematized Hodge doctrine being in continuity with the tradition of the Church, extending to the Puritans, Calvin, Gregory of Nyssa, Augustine, and others.
- Christianity or Feminism? (Leslie Zeigler) -- A rejection of much of feminist theology as "not the Christian faith but a quite different religion" based upon the methodological flaw of treating "God" as synonymous with something open to our definition, interpretation, or projection instead of He Who Is Who He Is and who graciously reveals Himself to us on His own terms.
- Jesus' Paradigm for Relating Human Experience & Language About God (Gary W. Deddo) -- A compassionate rejection of the "gender-neutral language" controversy in which Deddo makes a compelling case that it is far less compassionate of us to squelch God's dangerous use of words about Himself because in doing so we "protect" ourselves from opportunities for the in-breaking of His grace. As an alternative, Deddo proposes (based upon Matthew 23:9) that we understand ourselves as misappropriating words like "father", "master", or "teacher" and that we abuse and misrepresent the Imago Dei by taking these names unworthily. (Deddo's thoughts are certainly helping to refine my own on issues such as the Fatherhood of God.)
- Reinstating Design Within Science (William A. Dembski) -- Dembski winsomely and convincingly points out that Bacon's reduction of science from Aristotle's four causes (material, efficient, formal, final) to exploring only the first two (material and efficient), while useful for focusing scientists' attentions upon rightly discerning truly natural phenomena, does not hold in all areas of science (e.g., forensics and archaeology require an exploration of at least formal causes), and that the biological sciences could in fact benefit from allowing the scientific exploration of hypothesis which include formal causation (e.g., the intelligent design hypothesis, properly understood).
