May, 29
2019
Apologetics

Worldviews: What are they, and can they change?

One of the great living theological and philosophical writers today is Dr. James N. Anderson. He is the associate professor of theology and philosophy at Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte, North Carolina, and a minister in the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church. Dr. Anderson holds two earned PhDs—one in philosophical theology and the other in computer science. His books include Why Should I Believe Christianity? (Scotland: Christian Focus, 2016) and What’s Your Worldview: An Interactive Approach to Life’s Big Questions (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2014), both of which are excellent additions to a Christian apologetics library. He was also a featured guest on an episode of Hank Unplugged. Here is a snippet from Hank Hanegraaff’s discussion with James Anderson on worldviews and whether or not we can get others to change their respective worldview.

HANK HANEGRAAFF: One of the things that I want to talk to you about is the whole issue of worldview. You have What’s Your Worldview: An Interactive Approach to Life’s Big Questions, it is one of your books, and the question is this: what are worldviews, and why do worldviews actually matter?

JAMES ANDERSON: I define a worldview as a basic perspective on the world. The word itself gives you a clue — worldviews, or a view of the world. It is not a physical view like you might get from the International Space Station. It is not a view of planet Earth. It is a philosophical outlook on all of life and experience.

Everyone has, I think, a worldview. They may not be aware of it. It is rather like the atmosphere around you or the air that you breathe, you just take it for granted but in fact you could not live without it. People have a worldview, a set of basic assumptions, or presuppositions about what exist, what is rational, what is probable, and what is normal. They can pick up their worldview in a number of ways. They might inherit it from their parents or community. They might change their worldview over time. But it is a framework that they are bringing to interpret the world. That means no one really comes to the world in a neutral way. That is not to say we cannot obtain some level of objectivity, but everybody has a bias. It is a built-in bias. It is the worldview that we have.

So, I think when we are considering Christian apologetics or anything else for that matter, one of the most important questions we have to ask is “What is the worldview that people are bringing to this issue?” Another question is going to be “Is it the right worldview?”

HANK: One of the things that I loved about your book — I am talking about What’s Your Worldview: An Interactive Approach to Life’s Big Questions, and the operative word for me is “interactive” — you have a heuristic interactive series of questions and answers. There is an algorithm to the book. It is fun and interactive. The design of the book: why not just write in a stuffy style? Why make this fun?

JAMES: I wanted to write a book that would help people to become more aware of their worldview and to think more critically about their worldview. One way to do it would be to just write a straight book that goes through major worldviews. Something like James Sire’s book The Universe Next Door, which is an excellent book. It goes through six or seven major worldviews. But, I wanted something that was going to be a little snappier and perhaps a little novel — have a sort of gimmick to draw people in. I drew partly on my computer science background because….

HANK: I knew it, I knew it; that is why!

JAMES: So, in computer science, one of the things you do as a programmer is you have “if-then” statements. If such and such condition is true, then this, otherwise that. You just work on sort of the basis of binary conditionals and tree structure. This was part and parcel of the work I was doing in computer science. For better or for worse, I brought that into my philosophy and my apologetics. I was thinking, “Well, if you took the full range of worldviews and arranged them as a tree structure (you first distinguish between theistic and nontheistic worldviews, and then each of those breaks down into different categories), what would be the best way to do it? How would you divide up the landscape of worldviews?” That was one thing I was bringing to it.

The other thing was — I do not know about you, but when I was growing up, there was a very popular series of books known as Choose Your Own Adventure books, and they were interactive; instead of just reading from start to finish and getting the same story every time, you got to make choices. You got to decide whether you are going to go through the left door or through the right door, then you go to a different page depending upon what decision you made, and there are different outcomes. The fun of the book was that you could change your decisions. So, if you decided you made a bad choice, you could just turn back the page and make a different choice and follow the story through a different ending — I thought, “Well, that would be an interesting model to put into this book.” Instead of a Choose Your Own Adventure,it would be choose your own worldview, except you are not actually choosing it. You already have one, and it is just a matter of identifying what that worldview is. In the same way as Choose Your Own Adventure,some outcomes are better than others. You make the wrong decision with the green goblin you encounter, and then you end up dead. So, you made a bad choice. Likewise, when it comes to worldviews, if you have a worldview that denies the existence of truth or denies the existence of objective morality or implies we cannot actually know anything about the world, then there are various kinds of worldviews that are dead ends in the sense that they lead to skepticism, futility, nihilism, and other problems. That was the basic idea behind the book. I do not know if I was fully successful in pulling it off, but I was reasonably happy with the outcome.

HANK: I will give you an A+. You mentioned a couple of times the word “change.” That brings up the operative question: can we really change the worldview of the other person?

JAMES: That is a good question. I think we can challenge the worldview of a person, but human beings are not logic machines, much as some of us would like them to be. You know, they would just perfectly process the logic of a worldview and follow through its consequences. Human beings are a mess of not only thoughts and logical ideas but also emotions and desires. People are very psychologically and emotionally invested in their worldviews. For them, the primary consideration is not “Is my worldview true or rational?” but rather “Is my worldview one that is popular, one that makes me happy, or one that allows me to live with this community that I have always associated with?”

When you challenge a person’s worldview, certainly you can challenge it on a rational basis, but there is always going to be resistance. I sometimes liken worldviews to houses. You live in a house, you get used to it, you get comfortable with it, you might decorate it, you might make minor changes, move the furniture around, but to ask someone to leave their home, relocate, and live somewhere else — that is a big deal. They are going to have a lot of motivation to do that. It is kind of like that with worldviews. There is this natural inertia or resistance to change, and we can do our best to challenge people’s worldviews, “to put a pebble in their shoe,” as we sometimes say, but when we are talking about the kind of worldview change that a conversion to Christ involves, that is not just intellectual; rather, that is spiritual, that is a change in the very soul and heart of a person, and we cannot do that. We can be agents of the Holy Spirit, but ultimately it is a work of the Holy Spirit that is going to bring about that change.

To listen to the full interview, click here.

Articles from James E. Anderson posted on equip.org:

“The Inescapability of God”

“The Internal Testimony of the Holy Spirit: How Do You Know the Bible Is God’s Word?”

“The Philosophical Package Deal of Atheism” (Review of The Atheist’s Guide to Reality: Enjoying Life without Illusions by Alex Rosenberg)

To receive Why Should I Believe Christianity? and/or What’s Your Worldview as our thanks for your gift in support of the ongoing work of the Christian Research Institute, click here.

May 29th, 2019 by Christian Research Institute | Type: Standard
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Mar, 15
2018
Apologetics

How to Have Hope in Spite of the Wilting Flower of Christianity in the West?

 

Earlier this year, Hank Hanegraaff had an illuminating conversation with best-selling author and social critic Os Guinness, which was released as an episode of the Hank Unplugged podcast. The following is a portion adapted from the conversation wherein they talked about remaining hopeful in spite of the reality of “wilting flower Christianity” in the West.

Hank Hanegraaff: In what many consider is your magnum opus, Fool’s Talk: Recovering the Art of Christian Persuasion, you talk about our age as quite simply the greatest opportunity for Christian witness since the time of Jesus and the Apostles. There is a wide door that Saint Paul wrote about, and it has now been reopened for the gospel, yet that seems so counterintuitive. I think about the world today, and I say, “Wow, we are in desperate need of renaissance, but I do not see any signs of it.” You’re saying that the age in which we live is the most open door for the gospel ever.

Os Guinness: We are the first global faith in the world. Globalization, you could put it that way, is almost in the DNA of the Christian faith, going right back to the promise of the Lord to Abraham in Genesis 12. Today, we are the first truly global faith. We are not doing well in America, and in much of the West, but as we look toward the future with the unprecedented challenges of artificial intelligence, singularity, and things like that, only the Christian faith has answers to some of these titanic questions. I say this is the grand age of apologetics, and we need to get out there persuasively so that people can really hear the good news, and not in some simplistic way but in a way that genuinely answers the challenges that are being raised to humanity.

Hank: You talk about the power of creative persuasion in making a case for the gospel to people who seemingly couldn’t care less.

Os: Yes, you are right. In this country, we’ve got more bitter opposition and hostility than ever in American history, and of course many people are just apathetic. But I think it is a great moment because, as you know well, the alternative answers are visibly failing and many of them are profoundly dangerous. I am just in the middle of another book on the topic of freedom. If you think, “America is the land of the free,” Saint Augustine says you understand a nation by what it loves supremely, and it is no question that America’s supreme love is freedom. But how do you ground it? You cannot go to the Eastern religions. They talk about freedom, but it is a way of renouncing this world. When you look at atheism and agnosticism, they look at naturalistic science, whether it is B. F. Skinner, J. B. Watson, or Sam Harris; for them freedom is an illusion. The fact is, our atheist friends, who form a huge number of people in the intelligentsia in this country, cannot ground freedom, and you cannot apart from the Scriptures — the Jewish and Christian understanding.

Hank: It seems to me that we are at a tipping point. I was in Singapore a couple of times last year and I thought about Lee Kuan Yew, the father of Singapore, who talked about how all civilization is essentially fragile. You have written about this in a number of your books: this tipping point in history where we think that we are invincible. But if we look back at the bleached bones of those who have gone before us, like the Roman Empire and many other civilizations, we recognize afresh that our civilization can fade if we do not ultimately become salt and light in this world. You pointed out that there are a number of threats. There is the threat of an illiberal liberalism, on the one hand; and you have the encroaching threat of Islam, on the other hand. But you think that there is a far greater threat, and perhaps that threat is that while pagans are exercising their job description, Christians are not.

Os: That is right. One way of putting it would be looking at this third threat as the scandal of the American church. The church is not strong anywhere in the West, except the United States and Poland are numerically strong. In most of the other countries, the church is a tiny minority. But the scandal of the American church is that we are a huge majority of the American people, and yet tiny groups like Jews or gays and lesbians — they are less than 2 percent of America — each of them has far more influence — they punch above their weight — than Christians do. The American church is simply not the salt and light. The simple fact is the American church is weak culturally because it is profoundly worldly. It has been effectively assimilated.

Hank: We are no longer cultural change agents; we have become conformed to the culture itself.

Os: Exactly, to put it mildly. This is a real tragedy, and that is why we need reformation and revival. Almost weekly you see sad examples of the ineffectual character of the church compared with other groups. As a culture at large, I call it a cut flower civilization.

If you look at many of the great features of our Western Civilization — human dignity, freedom, justice, equality, and all sorts of things like this — they are actually rooted, most of them, not in Greek ideas (some of them are), certainly not in Latin or Roman ideas, they are rooted in the gospel and the Scriptures at large. Yet, for two-hundred years since the Enlightenment, the West has decisively cut those roots, and now the flower is fast fading.

Hank: One of the reasons I love your books is that there is an optimism in them. On the one hand, you are very candid about the issues you just talked about: cut flower Christianity. That metaphor itself seems to indicate that Christianity in the West cannot last. Yet you do believe in the power of one. You do believe in the fact that twelve men changed the world. Therefore, Christianity not only can survive but thrive. But you also point out the problems in the Global South, which are very, very real. I have spent a lot of time in myriad places in the Global South, and there you see tumbleweed Christianity — Christianity without root. I think in one of your books you wrote about the fact that many people in the Global South are just one unanswered prayer away from reverting to animism, Buddhism, or ancestor worship and the like. When you look at the big scope of things, it seems like a problem that cannot be fixed. Yet, in all of your books, there is a resounding optimism.

Os: That is right. I hope that is so. You can put it two ways. The sort of way to put it in the public discussion is that while many of the generalizations about culture or about the church are rather negative and discouraging, it is the exceptions that are really inspiring. Generalizations are often rather gloomy, but thank God for individuals, and thank God for new initiatives. Something wonderful in the last twenty years is the International Justice Mission, one of the premiere human rights groups in the world today. It grew under Gary Haugen. Examples like this are magnificently encouraging.

On the theological and spiritual level, I believe that we should be as realistic as we can be. Look at the facts in the white of the eye and at the same time always respond with Christian hope, never with fear. Fear is the predominant world emotion. The whole globalized world is interconnected, nobody is really in charge, and people are very afraid, but the refrain of the gospel is Have no fear. With the Lord’s sovereignty, we should never be afraid and however dark the times, we move out with hope. I think this is an imperative for all Christians.

Listen to the full Hank Unplugged interview here (scroll through the list to “Living in a Post-Truth World with Os Guinness”).

Recommended books by Os Guinness:

Fool’s Talk: Recovering the Art of Christian Persuasion

Renaissance: The Power of the Gospel However Dark the Times (B2002)

Prophetic Untimeliness: A Challenge to the Idol of Relevance (B720)

Unspeakable: Facing Up to Evil in an Age of Genocide and Terror (B823)

The Call: Finding and Fulfilling the Central Purpose of Your Life (B638)

Impossible People: Christian Courage and the Struggle for the Soul of Civilization (B2028)

 

March 15th, 2018 by Christian Research Institute | Type: Standard
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Mar, 09
2018
Apologetics

Does Christianity Offer a Higher or Lower View of the Body?

Hank Hanegraaff: Paradigms allow us to see only what our paradigms allow us to see. We don’t think so much about our paradigms as we think with our paradigms. As Christians, we have unwittingly adopted bad paradigms. It is not just the culture that needs to be liberated; it is Christianity that needs to be liberated from its own cultural captivity.

Nancy Pearcey: That’s right. When we talk about these issues that I address in Love Thy Body, we’re looking at moral issues like abortion, assisted suicide, homosexuality, and transgenderism. In the book, I am very concerned to help people understand the secular paradigms because so many Christians are adopting or absorbing those paradigms without even knowing it. In particular, I talk about the view of the body, as you might guess from the title. I show that the secular view of the body is a very low view of the dignity, value, and purpose of the body; that Christians have absorbed that as well; and that it is not biblical.

The response I am getting from a lot of readers is, “I picked up this book because I thought I’d get some handy arguments against the secular view, and instead it’s transforming me and my understanding of the body and how it relates to these moral issues?” You’re right. It really hits both sides. It helps people be equipped to understand our secular culture and respond more effectively, but to do that it requires also a transformation of our own thinking.

HH: It is critical for Christians to learn to think Christianly and to develop a Christian worldview. Oftentimes, we embrace other worldviews without recognizing that we have embraced the very water in which we swim. The culture in which we love. Expand on that.

NP: Yes. Let’s take maybe the most hot button issue for Christians — homosexuality. Even conservative churches are dividing over this issue. Young people are having a hard time saying what’s wrong with it.

What I help people to see is that homosexuality assumes a very low view of the body. People say, “We should accept homosexuals because we want to be loving.” If you want to be loving, you want to help them to see that the view itself is very dehumanizing and very negative. For example, here is how I would unpack that: no one really denies that biologically, physiologically, anatomically, males and females are counterparts to one another. That’s just how the human sexual and reproductive system is designed. What happens when you embrace a same-sex identity, then? Well, implicitly you’re contradicting that design. Implicitly you are saying, “Why should the structure of my body inform my identity? Why should my sexed body have any say in my moral choices?” Well, that’s a profoundly disrespectful view of the body. The implication is, what counts is, not whether I’m biologically male or female but just my feelings, my desires, my mind, that nonphysical part of me. As a result, it has a very fragmenting impact on a human personality. It’s self-alienating. It’s alienating people from their own bodies.

Those who defend a biblical view of sexuality are not relying on a few scattered Bible verses. What we are promoting is a teleological worldview. Teleology means it has a purpose. We are saying that the structure of your body has a purpose and that it reflects a divine purpose. As a result, it encourages people to live in harmony with their biological sex and leads to a holistic integration of personality.

This gives us a chance to prove the biblical ethic not simply in negative terms — “it’s a sin,” “don’t do it,” “thou shalt not” — which is true, but it is not complete. It gives us a chance to communicate in a positive way. We have a higher view of the body. We have a high view of the dignity and value of the body. We are encouraging people to have a much more positive view of their body instead of the negative one implied by the homosexual narrative.

HH: What is interesting about what you said is that, in reality, so many people in the secular culture presuppose Christianity itself has a low view of the body.

NP: Yes. In fact, I’m getting that pushback from some of my critics. They say, “Wait a minute, it’s Christianity that has a low view of the body that focuses on the next world.”

The problem is that many Christians are out of touch with their own heritage. If you look back to when Christianity started, the early church was surrounded by world-denying philosophies, like Platonism and Gnosticism. They treated the material world as a place of death, decay, and destruction. In fact, in Gnosticism, which taught that there were many levels of deities, the world was created by a very low-level deity, even an evil deity, because, after all, no self-respecting god would get his hands dirty mucking about with matter.

In this context, Christianity was revolutionary. It taught that, no, it was the highest God, the supreme deity, who created this material world, and — what’s more — He pronounced it “very good” (Gen. 1:31). An even greater scandal was the Incarnation. The very idea that God Himself would enter the material world and take on a human body that was totally rejected by Gnosticism. The incarnation is the ultimate affirmation of the dignity of the human body.

Finally, at the end of time, is God going to scrap the material world as if He made a mistake the first time? No! The Bible teaches He is going to renew and restore this world. He is going to create a new heaven and a new earth, which is why the Apostles’ Creed affirms the resurrection of the body. This is an astonishingly high view of the physical world. There’s nothing else like it in any other philosophy or religion.

Love Thy Body, my book, gives people the tools to go beyond the negative message and to deploy positive arguments, showing that a biblical ethic is more appealing, more attractive, and more compelling than any secular ethic.

This blog is adapted from the February 10, 2018, Bible Answer Man broadcast in which Hank Hanegraaff interviewed Nancy Pearcey. Listen to the entire interview on the Hank Unplugged podcast (scroll through the list of episodes to the title “Love Thy Body with Nancy Pearcey”).

March 9th, 2018 by Christian Research Institute | Type: Standard
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Aug, 24
2017
Apologetics

On Racism, Protest, and Civil Destruction

There is something that is rattling around in my mind. I have been thinking about this since about 5:00 a.m. You have no doubt seen the images yourself. They have been played and replayed a thousand times. Maybe a million times. The image of Takiyah Thompson as she climbs a ladder in Durham, North Carolina, puts a noose around the neck of the Confederate soldier statue — by the way, a soldier who symbolized service at the pleasure of the Democratic Party — the statue was toppled, and then spitting and stomping egged on by Takiyah commenced.

I was wondering, Who is this Takiyah Thompson? I did a little research. She is a member of the Workers World Party, a Marxist-Leninist group formed in 1959. She is a supporter of the North Korean totalitarian regime. She is an anti-authority agitator fond of equating the police with the Ku Klux Klan. She is anti-Christian. She is pro-Muslim. I think more than that, she is emblematic of a radical leftist movement that rightly regales in the condemnation of white supremacists but utters nary a word against Islamic supremacists — Islamic supremacists who consider non-Muslims to be but dhimmis.

To those who may wonder why the fragile fabric of our democratic republic is fraying, I think a short review of history can be very, very helpful. An apropos place to start is Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778). He sowed the seeds of what eventually blossomed into the French Revolution. In his view, secure property rights were to be abolished at all cost. He was the father of the very communist thought espoused today in America by people like Takiyah.

Rousseau, of course, left his mark on Karl Marx (1818–1883). Karl Marx believed that “the history of all existing society is the history of class struggle.” In his view, with the proletariat in charge and the bourgeoisie vanquished, we would have a godless heaven that would magically appear on Earth, sort of like John Lennon’s song, “Imagine there’s no heaven….” Well, a hundred million or more deaths later, people like Takiyah should know better, but that is precisely the problem with people who are ignorant of history.

You know, Rosseau marked Marx, but Marx marked Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924). Like Marx, Lenin was not constrained by morality. His dictum was revolution. Revolution after revolution history moves closer and closer toward the utopian paradise of communism and farther and farther away from the moral constraints of Christian capitalism, i.e., the idea of responsibility associated with wealth.

I have personally witnessed the skulls and bones of those murdered by socialist experiments just last year in Cambodia. Similar happenings occurred in places like China, in Cuba, with Communist fascism all over Eastern Europe and now exacting unspeakable horrors daily in North Korea. Think about Mao Zedong’s Little Red Book along with the Little Red Book of Pol Pot; they are both enduring reminders that ideas spell consequences. In this case, consequences in the red blood of tortured masses.

For Takiyah, Marxist mayhem must become part and parcel of a great American revolution. One thing you will not find in her protesting, her pillaging, or her pulling down is the bust of Charles Darwin (1809–1882) or, for that matter, the bust of the Greek philosopher Epicurus (341–270 BC), who was the real evolutionist, the first evolutionist. Why? Because Takiyah believes in evolution and in those like Margaret Sanger (1879–1966) who took Darwin’s eugenic epic and enshrined it an idea as American as apple pie. Eugenic engineering was not tacked onto Darwin by the Gestapo; it was a core value of his evolutionary premise. One wonders why Takiyah is not outraged at Planned Parenthood, which is in full neo-Nazi neo-eugenic frenzy today? Eugenics has been all over the news with the elimination of Down syndrome babies, which is now considered to be enlightened.

Darwin’s emphasis, of course, was on survival of the fittest and the struggle for existence, but Fredrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) went beyond survival. He championed the will to power of the fittest. He was fully committed to the destruction of Christianity because the Christ of Christianity cared for the poor and the downtrodden, and of course evolution is all about survival of the fittest and the struggle for existence. Again, ideas have consequences. One only needs to think of how Nietzsche died. A mad man repeating, like a hideous drum, “I am dead because I am stupid, I am stupid because I am dead, I am dead because I am stupid, I am stupid because I am dead,” over and over again, as he embraced his insanity.

As the apostle of atheism, Nietzsche heralded the darkest century the world has ever known. That is, until perhaps the twenty-first century, a century in which people have forgotten history and applaud Takiyah Thompson and people like her. She is now the quintessential poster girl of a robust neo-Marxist-Leninist revival and that in America.

White supremacy is self-evidently evil, but what of the liberal liberals who destroy Down syndrome babies made in the image and likeness of God? By the way, I think we ought to remember that Dr. John Langdon Down (1828–1896) labeled Down syndrome as Mongoloid idiocy. Why? Because he thought it represented a throwback to the Mongolian stage in human evolution, and that is the evolutionary idea.

You know, Darwin was very, very clear. People often times talk about The Origin of Species, but Darwin was most clear in The Descent of Man. People ought to read that. These books should not be banned. Read it. Then you will see evolution in its stark racist perspective. Darwin said it was the Caucasian that would beat the Turkish hollow in the struggle for existence. Then he said at no very distant date, an endless number of lower races will have been eliminated by higher civilized races throughout the world. He was very, very clear when he talked about the races themselves. In Darwin’s perspective, the whites were on top, the Australians were somewhere in the middle, but blacks were on the bottom, and in his eugenic fervor, he believed that Jews and blacks were feeble minded. Evolution is an idea with distinct consequences. Again, white supremacy is self-evidently evil, but what of the liberal liberals who are now using the evolutionary paradigm? They contend Down syndrome babies are unfit; they affect the gene pool and thus affect the process of evolution.

What of global Islamic Jihadism? Just to show how wacky things can get, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer wondered yesterday on television if perhaps the crimes in Barcelona were a copycat of the white supremacist murder in Charlottesville, Virginia. After all, in both cases, the weapon of choice was automotive.

What agitators like Takiyah are really after is the destruction of the nuclear family, the elimination of borders and boundaries, the subversion of states committed to the rule of law, or whatever utilitarian means produce results. It does not matter if it is liberal liberalism, fabricated news, or Islamic terror. Barcelona and Brussels are just a prelude to what is to come.

We are reaping the results of our own settled choices. Only a Christian community willing to do for the truth what Takiyah and those like her are willing to do for a lie can stem the tide of a civilization in chaos. Make no mistake, we are fracturing from within. A liberal liberalism at the root. (An oxymoron, by the way.) We are being pounded from without. Terror being only the wave the undertow being far more insidious. Perhaps the greatest problem is Christians who are not salt and light. If Christians were doing for the truth what Islam is doing for a lie, we could as yet redeem our culture.

— Hank Hanegraaff

For further related reading, please access the following:

The Original “Fight Club:” Understanding the Philosophy of Karl Marx (C. Wayne Mayhall)

You Say You Want a Revolution (Bob Perry)

Margaret Sanger: “No Gods, No Masters” (Bob Perry)

Identity: A “Christian” Religion for White Racists (Viola Larson)

Was Ayn Rand Right? Capitalism and Greed (Jay Richards)

The Myths Christians Believe about Wealth and Poverty (Jay Richards)

Jihad, Jizya, and Just War (David Wood)

Ideas Have Consequences (C. Wayne Mayhall)

This blog is adapted from the August 18, 2017, Bible Answer Man broadcast. Information on Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, Charles Darwin, Margaret Sanger, and Fredrich Nietzsche drawn from Benjamin Wiker, 10 Books that Screwed Up the World: And 5 Others that Didn’t Help (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2008).

August 24th, 2017 by Christian Research Institute | Type: Standard
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Dec, 06
2016
Apologetics

Truth & Post-Truth

cri-blog-hanegraaff-hank-post-truthIt is quite stunning. The editors of the Oxford Dictionaries have selected their word of the year for 2016. It is hard to imagine what it might be. Even harder to imagine that this is the word for the year when you actually hear the word. Their choice could not be more apropos as a sign of the times. It is an authentic reflection of the state of our culture. The word of the year? Well, here it is—post-truth.

Post-truth is an adjective defined as “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.”

Think about that for a moment. Objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief. The Oxford editors actually explain that:

The concept of post-truth has been in existence for the past decade, but Oxford Dictionaries has seen a spike in frequency this year in the context of the EU referendum in the United Kingdom [Brexit] and the presidential election in the United States. It has also become associated with a particular noun, in the phrase ‘post-truth politics’.

The OUPblog indicates,

Post-truth has gone from being a peripheral term to being a mainstay in political commentary, now often being used by major publications without the need for clarification or definition in their headlines.

The bottom line here is that post-truth in the year 2016 stands in stark opposition to plain truth in the past. One is based on subjectivism, the other on objective facts.

All of this of course begs a simple question: What is truth? Or maybe more importantly: Why is truth important? To answer that question, it might be significant to go back a time when Jesus Christ stood before Pontius Pilate. “What is truth?” was the very question that Pontius Pilate posed to Jesus Christ (John 18:38). Here the Roman prefect of Judah was standing toe to toe with the personification of truth and yet he missed its reality.

I would say that postmodern people who hold that emotion trumps fact, that feelings trump biology, that there is no such thing as objective truth, very much like Pilate, miss truth’s very essence. They stare at truth but they fail to recognize its identity. What is that identity? Well, truth is an aspect of the very nature of God Himself; therefore, to put on truth is to put on Christ, for Christ is truth (John 14:6; Eph, 4:24; 6:14). Christians are to be the bearers of truth.

I love what Os Guinness said when he articulated that Christianity is not true because it works, that would be not truth but pragmatism. It is not true because it feels right that is subjectivism. It is not true because it is my truth that is relativism. Christianity is true because it is anchored in the person of Jesus Christ the one who spoke and the universe leaped into existence. Truth, therefore, we must say, clearly and correctly is anything that corresponds to reality. As such, truth should never yield to the size and the strength of the latest lobby group. Nor is truth really a matter of preference or opinion; rather, truth is true even when everyone denies it and a lie is a lie even if everyone affirms it including the editors of the Oxford Dictionaries. Truth properly understood is essential for you and I to have a realistic worldview.

It is sad to say that sophistry, sensationalism, Scriptorture, superstition, and post-truth subjectivity has sabotaged truth in our epic of time. Our view of reality is seriously skewed when that happens. The death of truth spells—this is pretty serious—the death of truth spells the death of civilization. As such, the redefinition of truth in post-Christian America is no small thing. I think we ought to stand with Alexander Solzhenitsyn who initiated the Velvet Revolution and he did so because he understood that one word of truth properly defined outweighs the entire world.

—Hank Hanegraaff

This blog adapted from the November 21, 2016 Bible Answer Man broadcast.

December 6th, 2016 by Christian Research Institute | Type: Standard
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Mar, 30
2012
In the News

A MONUMENTAL CONNECTION BETWEEN KIRK CAMERON AND CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTION?

March 27, 2012 marked the debut of actor Kirk Cameron’s latest movie Monumental: In Search of America’s National Treasure, which is a documentary on “the people, places, and principles that made America the freest, most prosperous and generous nation the world has ever known.” Julie Ingersoll, Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Florida, in an op-ed piece for Religious Dispatches believes viewers shall find “new, more extreme Cameron,” whose views have been influenced by Rousas John Rushdoony and David Barton. In essence she finds in Cameron a “shift from the larger premillennialist evangelical world that he depicted in Left Behind to the postmillennialist dominion theology of the Reconstructionists.” Cameron, however, has not made any formal statement on whether or not his eschatology changed. Nevertheless, Postmillennial Reconstruction is well within the pale of theological orthodoxy.

Postmillennialists anticipate that the advancement of the Gospel will bring forth a semi-golden age before the Second Coming of Christ. Christian Reconstruction is a movement within the postmillennial tradition, which holds to a particular view on the Old Testament Law called theonomy. Kenneth Gentry explains, “The theonomic postmillennialist sees the gradual return to biblical norms of civil justice as a consequence of widespread gospel success through preaching, evangelism, missions, and Christian education. The judicial–political outlook of Reconstructionism includes the application of those justice-defining directives contained in the Old Testament legislation, when properly interpreted, adapted to new covenant conditions, and relevantly applied” (italics in original). [1]

Postmillennialism in all its varieties stands in contrast to premillennialism, the belief that Jesus Christ shall return to establish a future Millennial Kingdom. The most popular form of premillennialism is of the dispensational variety, which affirms two peoples of God (i.e. the sharp distinction between Israel and the Church), and two phases of the Second Coming (i.e. a secret Rapture of the Church, a seven year Great Tribulation brought on by the Antichrist, and a visible return of Christ, which begins the 1000 year reign). Many within the dispensational tradition have become drunk with millennial madness, using newspaper eschatology to make false predictions concerning the time of the Rapture. Some but not all dispensationalists even advocate a type of Christian Zionism which has monumental socio-political implications on the sensitive relations between modern Israel, Palestine, and other nations in the Middle East. John Hagee is an influential teacher advocating Christian Zionism.

Postmillennialism also stands distinct from amillennialism, the belief that the millennium is a present reality for believers between the two advents of Jesus Christ.

Hank Hanegraaff, in The Apocalypse Code, briefly discusses the “thousand years” of Revelation 20 as a type of vindication language, wherein God vindicates those having suffered  for Christ during a short period (i.e. “ten days”) in that they reign with Christ forever (i.e. “a thousand years”). He writes, “though mistaken by many as a semi-golden age of Christian history—leading to much debate over whether the return of Christ will happen before (premillennialism) or after (postmillennialism) the millennium, or whether the millennium is symbolic of the period of time between Christ’s first and second advents (amillennialism)—the thousand years of Revelation are symbolic of the unique and ultimate vindication (qualitative) that awaits the martyrs who died under the first century persecution of the Beast.” [2] Moreover, Hank holds that the proper grammatical principle of biblical interpretation reveals that the great tribulation, spoken of by Jesus Christ in the Olivet Discourse and depicted in apocalyptic images by John in the Book of Revelation, concerns mainly the events surrounding the fall of Jerusalem and destruction of the temple in AD 70—albeit the Apocalypse also points forward towards the final future to the new heaven and new earth.

Hank and CRI also recognize that the millennium is a secondary issue of eschatology that Christians can debate but not divide over. Nevertheless, ideas have consequences, and what one believes about the end time, whether Left Behind eschatology or Christian Reconstruction, determines how they live, and these are more than just harmless theological concepts relegated to the mind. Moreover, we encourage Christians to study the various positions and, using sound principles of hermeneutics come to a conclusion deemed most biblical (See “Practical Hermeneutics: How To Interpret Your Bible Correctly Part 1,” and “Practical Hermeneutics: How To Interpret Your Bible Correctly Part 2”).

The Christian Research Journal has also addressed R.J. Rushdoony’s views on the Christian family and Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis.

Christians should think deeply about the most pressing social issues of the day. When one does examine the source of all the great innovations of the West (i.e. monogamy, women’s liberation, hospitals, public education, capitalism, etc.), one finds it was the result of minds deeply influenced by the Word of God. Whether or not one adopts all the tenets of Christian Reconstruction, all Christians still must come to grips with thinking christianly about every aspect of life.

— Warren Nozaki

We also recommend the following bookstore resources:

How Christianity Changed the World (B758)
by Alvin J/ Schmidt

Must the Sun Set on the West Audio CD Set (CD955)
by Vishal Mangalwadi

The Meaning of the Millennium: Four Views (B115)
edited by Robert G. Clouse

Three Views on the Millennium and Beyond (B580)
edited by Darrell Bock

Four Views on the Book of Revelation (B581)
edited by C. Marvin Pate

Revelation: Four Views : A Parallel Commentary (B793)
by Steve Gregg

Notes:

  1. Kenneth Gentry, Three Views on the Millennium and Beyond, ed. Darrell Bock (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1999), 19.
  2. Hank Hanegraaff, The Apocalypse Code (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2007), 274-275, cf. also ibid, 256-257n.
March 30th, 2012 by EquipBlog | Type: Standard
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Aug, 04
2011
Apologetics, Journal Topics

Sex, Lies, and Secularism

A collegiate website advises young women how to have a “happy hook-up.” Get “clear consent and mutual agreement to engage in sexual acts,” the article recommends. Then “the whole hookup experience will be more positive for everyone involved.”

Glancing at the author’s bio, I was surprised to learn that she is a student at a conservative Christian college.

When even Christian young people are buying into the hook-up culture, it’s clear that traditional ways of teaching biblical morality are no longer effective. Young people don’t only need rules; they need reasons. They need to learn the worldview rationale that makes sense of biblical morality.

Young people today are caught between two contradictory views of sexuality. A modernist view reduces humans to sheer biological organisms driven by impulse and instinct. By contrast, a postmodern view disconnects gender identity from biology, treating it as a social construction, fluid and changing.

As an example, a few years ago California passed a law requiring schools to permit transgender students to use the restroom or locker room of their preferred gender, regardless of their anatomical sex. The new law defined sex as “gender related appearance and behavior whether or not stereotypically associated with the person’s assigned sex at birth.” Notice the assumption that a person’s sex is “assigned,” as though it were purely arbitrary instead of an anatomical fact.

In short, postmodernism treats physical anatomy as insignificant, inconsequential, and completely irrelevant to gender identity. This is a devastatingly disrespectful view of the physical body.

Christians must make the case that a biblical worldview affirms a much higher view of the body than any secular view. It offers the radically positive teaching of a Creator who actually likes matter because he created it—a God who affirms our material, biological, sexual nature. Whereas secular views are inevitably dehumanizing, Christianity supports a high and holistic view of the human person.

Nancy Pearcey’s latest book is Saving Leonardo, on which this article is based. She is also the author of the best-selling, award-winning Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from its Cultural Captivity. Pearcey currently teaches at Rivendell Sanctuary. Her feature article, “Sex, Lies, and Secularism” on which this post is based appears in the Volume 34, No. 4 issue of the Christian Research Journal (a 6-issue subscription is $39.50). To read the full article, please subscribe or renew your subscription or give a gift subscription

Nancy Pearcy will be joining Hank Hanegraaff on the Bible Answer Man broadcast on August 9, 2011! Tune in at 6PM ET at our website, www.equip.org!

August 4th, 2011 by EquipBlog | Type: Standard
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Jul, 15
2011
In the News, Reviews

Atheism Will Doom Britain, but Does It Have to Be this Way?

In an op-ed piece for The Jerusalem Post, Shmuley Boteach laments “Godlessness has doomed Britain,” since “Atheism equals nihilism, neither of which are fertile ground for a national resurgence.” The logic of this is impeccable. Boteach points out that Britain’s greatest exports on the subject of religion are from thinkers who despise religion, such as Richard Dawkins who “compared religion to child abuse,” and Christopher Hitchens, who “titled his 2007 book God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.” He also observes that whereas 92 percent of Americans believe in God, according to Britain’s National Center for Social Research, only 35 percent in Britain, and 43 percent declare no religion.

One can also point out that the militant approach of New Atheists like Dawkins and Hitchens carries a strong rhetorical sway, and their arguments on the surface appear convincing. It is only when one examines them closely under the light of truth that one realizes none of them hold any water. (See “Village Atheists with Vengeance.”)

Boteach finds that there is nothing comparable in Britain to American megachurch pastors like Rick Warren and Joel Osteen, and reasons that in the latter there is no official state church with religion being entrepreneurial, in the sense that “religion lives and dies in America like a commercial enterprise.” Pastors who “excite” with “uplifting and relevant” messages will fill pews, and those who do not will have empty pews. He also attributes “religious fervor” to the growth of America, “from pioneering backwoodsmen to the most powerful and innovative nation on earth,” whereas British influence has waned in the past century with “militant atheism” being “a key reason.” His explanation is that “atheism is a philosophy of nihilism in which nothing is sacred and all is accidental.”

The endgame of belief in a purely material universe that came about by random chance through the Darwinian Evolutionary process with its survival of the fittest and extinction of the inferior is nihilism. Boteach is certainly on target.

Whie it is generally true that “religious fervor” is a contributing factor to the growth and expansion of the United States, it is not “relevant” preaching that forms foundations of innovation and progress. One can argue that an attempt to be relevant makes for irrelevance (see “How Relevant Is Relevance?”). While Joel Osteen does have mass appeal, his overall message can be considered a “Gospel of Self-Esteem” or “Gospel-Light.” Whether or not his name-it-and-claim-it prosperity gospel can provide spiritual foundations for lasting social transformation is doubtful.

To be more precise, one can make the case that the Bible has been the spiritual source underlying progress in Western Civilization. Vishal Mangalwadi, in his lecture series entitled “Must the Sun Set on the West,” makes a compelling case that the sun is setting on the West because the West has severed itself from the source of its greatness, the Bible; however, the sun need not set on the West, because people can still return to the source of their greatness. Ultimately, it is from minds deeply influenced by the truth of Scripture that have gone on to make innovations that ultimately transformed the West. How Christianity Changed the World also explores the way Christianity inspired the highest achievements in Western civilization from its humble beginnings.

— Warren Nozaki

For further related study, please access the following:

“Christopher Hitchens’s Sledgehammer Rhetoric” (Douglas Groothuis reviews God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything by Christopher Hitchens)

“The Cook’s Tale: A Naturalist’s Quest for the Ingredients of Life” (Angus Menuge reviews The Ancestor’s Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution by Richard Dawkins)

“Darwin’s Rottweiler: Fierce Barks, Feeble Bites” (Doug Groothuis reviews The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins)

“Dawkin’s and Darwin’s Three-Ring Circus” (Jonathan Wells reviews The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins)

“Can Morality Be Based in Our ‘Selfish’ Evolutionary Past?”

Please also consider the following bookstore resources:

AGAINST ALL GODS/CONFRONTING THE NEW VILLAGE ATHEISTS Package PK974/$14.99

The Book that Made Your World B1044/$22.99

July 15th, 2011 by EquipBlog | Type: Standard
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