A Great Starter Reading List for Aspiring Apologists

Camden Bucey at Historia Salutis has produced a fine reading list for those who are “aspiring apologists,” especially those with Van Tilian aspirations. The list is the result of an interview with Jared Oliphint and Jonathan Brack on the topic. Each book is hyperlinked to WTS’s online bookstore for ease of purchase. Their prices are great, and the shipping is unbeatable! For anyone wanting to grow in their understanding of the “Copernican revolution” in apologetics, this list is a very good place to start. Check it out.

MOTHERS, YOU GOTTA LOVE ‘EM

Bless her heart; today Mom was so proud to tell me on the phone that she had finally visited the blog and even made several comments. When I told her that they never appeared, she was surprised and gave that pause which indicated that her next comment would be something about blaming the computer she was on, or my computer, or some Internet conspiracy for the interruption in the transmission—anything but her computer savvy. I was not disappointed in my expectations.

“I hit ‘enter’ after typing in the little comment box! It must have been something else!”

I was disappointed that we lost her contributions until, that is, I discovered that the one she felt was most important was her attempt at an editorial criticism. She, in her mothering instinct, wanted to publicly announce that I had miss spelled “Biography” in my sidebar. Her reference was to my “Blogography” above my blogroll!

When I figured this out, I found some relief in the loss of this and the other comments ;) However, that her typo-critical remarks were limited to my sidebar was sufficient reason to believe she didn’t actually read anything else.

Aren’t Moms awesome!

THE EVOLUTIONISTS’ DILEMMA

The transition from modernity and postmodernity has involved a radical shift in epistemology. However, within both paradigms, philosophical naturalism is the dominate metaphysical assumption. Therefore, the Christian’s need to be able to aptly confront and destroy the stronghold of the evolutionary hypothesis is always a fore issue.

In my experience, a frustration would often arise. This frustration was rooted in the nonbeliever's semantic sliding between two meanings of the term evolution. One the one hand, they will try in vain to argue for evolution in its etiological sense: Evolution explains the origins and sustention of everything. On the other hand, when this premise is being battered, they will quickly invoke some observational variations in a genus or the like, and then attempt to transfer the Christian’s concession of that point back into their argument for evolution in the etiological sense, what I call meta-evolution. They then want to point out that the Christian is anti-science in their rejection of meta-evolution.

Moreover, I’ve found that it is not always the case that this is overtly intentional on the part of the nonbeliever. That is, the nonbeliever is not equivocating the concepts self-consciously. A scanting look through any public science textbook will reveal the same method of persuasion; which, on the part of the textbook contributors, we must conclude however that the use of the equivocation is programmatic. Granting the natural man’s general enmity against God’s truth, the student takes the propaganda in as a fish does water. This argument can help in educating the nonbeliever of just how futile their underlying assumptions are.

Often, then, nonbelievers who have not engaged in the tough-mindedness required to see through the smoke of the intelligentsia are simply parroting what a minimum of 12 years of direct indoctrination has given them.

The only answer to bad reasoning is truth. I’ve found that the use of the dilemma--a valid form of argument--helpful in defusing this type of rhetoric.

Formally, the dilemma has the following pattern:

1. Either P or R

2. If P, then Q

3. If R, then S

4. Therefore, either Q or S

From here, one simply demonstrates from the conclusion (4) that Q and S are either irrelevant, unhappy, or absurd.

This is exactly what I attempt to do with the argument below. In short, microevolution is irrelevant since it is empirically demonstrable and perfectly consistent with biblical teaching; meta-evolution, however, is both a philosophical assumption and philosophically absurd. Therefore, neither concept presents a threat to the biblical doctrine of creation.

The next paragraph is a general framework for how I present my challenge to the evolutionist, though each dialogue must allow for vast personal variability. The more formal argument after it is incorporates an example of a redutio ad absurdum for deconstructing the meta-evolutionary premise. But again, this also requires some flexibility for viability. I hope you find it helpful.

The Thesis:

The evolutionary exponents are either unconsciously trading on ambiguity or are guilty of intentionally equivocating the term “evolution” in order to beguile their audience. Either way, it matters very little, for whether the evolutionary exponent prefixes the term “evolution” with “micro/macro” or “meta,”[1]and their respective connotations, neither concept threatens, much less circumvents the integrity of the basic biblical doctrine of creation ex nihilo.

The Argument:

P1. When evolutionists use the term “evolution,” they are either denoting micro/macro-evolution or meta-evolution.

P2. If micro/macro-evolution is what is meant; that is, either minor or radical changes occurring within the constraints of the law of biogenesis, then surely no one is arguing, biblical creationist or otherwise.

P3. If meta-evolution is being assumed, however, then their argument is self-referentially incoherent, self-refuting; if they’re right, then they’re wrong. This premise is not only intuitively true,[2] but objectively so, for two major reasons:

If (A) “All that Is” is merely a random, impersonal, unconscious collision of atoms and their chaotic chemical interactions, then our brains are simply one minor part in this disorderly, irrational cosmic dance.

Nevertheless, if our brains are ultimately thus, then what we imagine to be “thoughts” and/or “reasoning” are only a façade, since the electro-chemical reactions occurring in our brains couldn’t have any more truth value and/or rational meaning than any other of our physiological happenings.[3]

Furthermore, if (B) matter is all that “Is,” then the fundamental laws that govern our thought—the laws of logic—could not exist. For such laws (i.e., logic, mathematics, morality, etc.) are immaterial and abstract (hence, contradicting “Matter is all there Is”); moreover they are absolute and invariable. (Thus, also contradicting the proposition the physical universe is all that exists, because the only absolute and unchanging feature of the physical universe is that it’s ever- changing, thus, never absolute!)

C1. If, therefore, meta-evolution is taken to be the case, then we have absolutely no reason for believing that it is true, since true thoughts and logical inferences would be impossible.

C2. When arguing for evolution, therefore, the proponents mean either micro/macro evolution, which no reasonable biblical creationist is arguing against; or they are promoting meta-evolution, which means that no proposition or state of affairs can honestly be called “true,” not least the proposition “Evolution is true”!

C3. Hence, the evolutionary case against biblical creationism is that a logical, reasoned case for or against anything is impossible, which is absurd.

________________________________________________

[1] By “meta”-evolution I am speaking of the Darwinian/neo-Darwinian garden variety etiology (i.e., founding myth), which is generally: something creating itself from nothing (or is eternal stuffs); then, all that “Is” must be understood and explained in terms of an eternal intercourse of matter, energy, and time, from which everything in human experience owes its origin, substance, and sustention.

[2] Numerous studies have demonstrated that even in the face of heavy indoctrination in Darwinian evolution by teachers and even parents, and apart from being exposed to the doctrine of biblical creation, children are bent toward understanding the universe to be designed and created with an ultimate telos intended by its Creator, God. That is to say, people are creationists by birth (via God’s general Self-revelation) and made to be evolutionists, as counterintuitive as that is.

[3] Note: we never stand up from the toilet and turn, point, and proclaim, “That is true!” If, then, evolutionary mythology is the case, neither should we point to any proposition about reality or any given state of affairs or concept and have the audacity to state, “That is true!”

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Faith Seeking Understanding--Tertullian

Merry Christmas! I pray that you are experiencing the joy and satisfaction of knowing Christ Jesus, God’s supreme Gift.

This week I have been reading some from Tertullian. In On Prescription Against Heretics, I read the famous (or infamous, depending on how one understands it) line, “What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What concord is there between the Academy and the Church?” (Ch. VII).

Regrettably, this statement and a couple others have earned this great Church Father the modern anathema of a fideist. As D.A. Carson says, “A text without a context is a pretext for a proof text.” Reading these remarks within their literary context, and especially in the flow of Tertullian’s rhetorical purposes is sufficient to demonstrate that he was not a fideist. A fuller study of Tertullian gives the distinct portrait of a disciple who, through faith, had taken his reason captive to the obedience of Christ, and made that reason work as a slave of Christ and his Kingdom.

I believe that the real problem that most have with Tertullian’s apologetic is that he was not a rationalist (which is a fideism in its own right). We have much to learn from this great Father, who could rightly be considered the first presuppositionalist apologete.

Read this article for a relatively technical treatment of the issue.

More Snow, More on Snow

Well, the snow began at about 3:30p Friday and has only become heavier since! I honestly scoffed some at the Weather Channel’s dire prediction of 28 inches yesterday, but if this doesn’t let up soon, I’ll be eating crow by suppertime. The upshot is that both Fanny and I have the day off, and letting the two Chihuahuas out to do their business is quite a hoot. (We had to shovel a path from the door to the trampoline, which still has some earth exposed beneath it...they’ve appreciated that!)

We concluded yesterday with how the snow, as a result of God’s speech, provided a simile for the efficacy of God’s inspired speech in his Word—neither returns empty handed, but accomplishes all their divine appointments. However, snow, in its whiteness, occupies both extreme poles of the moral/spiritual continuum in Scripture. Snow-whiteness is as much a symbol for the impurity, contamination and ceremonial uncleanness of sin as it is a symbol for God’s transcendent holiness and purity. This can seem strange to us.

Figuratively, snow is used as an image of relation-destroying uncleanness. Snow-like whiteness is a property associated with the various dermal maladies, all of which fall under the term “leprosy” in the Bible. Descriptively, a kind of snow-whiteness depicted the leprosy of Moses (Ex 4:6), Miriam (Num 12:10) and Naaman (2 Kings 5:27).

Leprosy, signified by its snow-whiteness, made one unfit for worshipping God; it severed a person from the covenant community, “He shall live alone. His dwelling shall be outside the camp” (Lev 13:46). Nothing and no one were safe from the inflicted; house and wares were ever in danger of the infectious spread (14:37ff). The effects of leprosy were totalizing; it destroyed one’s relationship with God and his fellow man, and contaminated every thing that came in contact with it. In addition to the priests’ declaration of a person’s uncleanness, the infected one was commanded to make the self-pronouncement, confessing, “Unclean, unclean!” for all to hear (13:45).

As snow-whiteness is a signifier for leprosy, leprosy is a signifier for something even more odious, human sin and depravity. The tedious attention to leprosy in the Bible points beyond the ritual to a reality. That the effect of leprosy is illuminative for sin can be seen by simply surrogating leprosy with sin in the above paragraph. Sin alienates us from God and others, leaving us with the sense of the inhuman solitude, like standing alone in a silent, snow covered prairie with no interruption in the ghastly trance of its whiteness.

In striking contrast to the snow-whiteness of our defilement and corruption, we also read of the blazing holiness of the Ancient of Days, as he takes his seat for judgment: “His clothing was white as snow, and his head like pure wool” (Dan 7:9). Likewise, Jesus, at his transfiguration, “And his raiment became shining, exceeding white as snow; so as no fuller on earth can whiten them” (Mk 9:3 KJV). The angels at the empty tomb also wore “raiment white as snow” (Matt 28:3). And Christ the Lord, again, standing as the priestly King amidst the seven golden lampstands. “The hairs of his head were white as wool, as white as snow” (Rev 1:14).

We find God’s snow-like whiteness most often in apocalyptic literature, especially Revelation. In terms of biblical geography, the mystique and almost transcendent quality of snow and its whiteness is not difficult to understand. The idea of snow’s purity and “cleanness” is reflected in Job’s words, “If I wash myself with snow water, and make my hands never so clean...” (9:30).

This afternoon, Beaner came in from playing for hours in the snow with her friends. After about an hour of being back inside, she started to get a headache. The cause was obvious, those hours of looking at the blazing whiteness of the snow were more than her eyes could handle. Thanks to God, the headache is easing.

In this, we can start to begin to understand the biblical writers’ use of snow-like whiteness in reference to God’s ineffable glory and holiness. Although for some of us, the snow is a more commonplace thing, for the biblical writers is provided an elevated (literally, since it generally only capped surrounding mountaintops, such as in Lebanon) word-picture for the holiness of God, upon which no man could gaze and live.

In chapter 42 of Moby Dick, Melville digresses to discuss the “Whiteness of the Whale.” Melville makes a panoramic survey of objects that possess the property of great whiteness; from the various idols of worship among the heathen to the fiercest of wild beasts, all of which are enhanced and intensified in either their honor or terror by the agency of their whiteness. Melville wrestled the same question that is before us: How can snow-like whiteness be a symbol for both the abominable corruption of leprosy/sin, yet at the same time God’s daunting holiness and purity? Melville adds, “But not yet have we solved the incantation of this whiteness, and learned why it appeals with such power to the soul; and more strange and far more portentous—why, as we have seen, it is at once the most meaning symbol of spiritual things, nay, the very veil of the Christian’s Deity; and yet should be as it is, the intensifying agent in things most appalling to mankind.”

What are we to make of this paradox and what does it teach us?

Fanny believes that the commonality in the snow-like whiteness metaphor, with its strikingly polar objects (our defilement over against God’s holiness) lies in the primary biblical denotation of “sanctification.” The image provokes and illustrates a stern “set-apartness.” On the one hand, we, in our leprous sin, are set apart as “Unclean, unclean!” On the other, the snow-whiteness of God’s holiness sets him infinitely apart from his sin-cursed creation. This makes sense.

And I think there is a practical application in this. For Melville’s Captain Ahab, it was, in part, the Whale’s whiteness that antagonized the seaman’s irrational hatred for the great Albino. Is this not an applicable indictment for us as well? Consider Calvin’s words, asking, “For what man is not disposed to rest in himself?” He continues.

“[I]t is evident that man never attains to a true self-knowledge until we have previously contemplated the face of God, and come down after such contemplation to look into himself. For (such is our innate pride) we always seem to ourselves just, and upright, and wise, and holy, until we are convinced, by clear evidence, of our injustice, vileness, folly, and impurity. Convinced, however, we are not, if we look to ourselves only, and not to the Lord also—He being the only standard by the application of which this conviction can be produced. And since nothing appears within us or around us that is not tainted with very great impurity, so long as we keep our mind within the confines of human pollution, anything which is in some small degree less defiled, delights us as it were most pure: just as an eye, to which nothing but black had been previously presented, deems an object whitish, or even of a brownish hue, to be perfectly white...Thus, too, it happens in estimating our spiritual qualities” (Institutes, I:1, 2, emphasis mine).

So long as we are content with the folly of measuring ourselves among ourselves. Using the rule of corruption (2 Cor 10:12), we shall always find satisfaction in ourselves. As the snow that covers my spotty brown lawn gives the pretense that, what lies beneath it equals the quality of my neighbor’s lawn, so too the deceitfulness covering of my snow-like uncleanness, my sin, often fools me into believing that my character is reflecting the snow-likeness of God’s own holiness. Moreover, just as Ahab found the Whale’s whiteness a source of great anxiety and agitation, we are naturally antagonized by the dazzling splendor of God’s own holiness, his Whiteness.

How pathetic then is our condition. We would strain to bring order and peace to a chaotic home, yet we want nothing of Perfection. We spend millions each year on bottled water, in order to avoid impurities, yet we despise the Pure. We ironically love to “put the bitter for sweet and the sweet for bitter” (Is 5:20).

Next time, we’ll look for the biblical answer for how this dilemma is ultimately and relationally resolved, how our—however paradoxically is sounds to us—our snow-like corruption can be made “White as snow.”

From Deep Exegesis to Deep Snow!

As I type this, a blanket of white snow is being spread over us here in the mountains of Virginia like a line-dried sheet cast over a bed. This afternoon the thoughts of so much snow evoked in my mind what snow teaches us, as an image in biblical literature and theology.

Snow is to teach us of God’s faithfulness in both creation and redemption. For instance, Isaiah reads: “For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it” (55:10—11). The purposeful and providential care God gives and reveals through his general revelation in creation, namely through the all-wise function of the snow, is a vivacious, yet soothing picture of his sovereign design and its incontrovertible fulfillment. In fact, Job 37:6 and Ps 147:15—16 picture the snow as a result of God’s speech. The universe was created and is governed by the Self-same, omnipotent Word of God (Heb 1:3); the Bible knows nothing of the "Laws of Nature," only nature's Lawgiver and nature's strikingly immediate obedience to his Word. In like manner, Ps 148:7—8 sees the snow as a "fulfillment of God’s spoken word." So also here in Isaiah. The snow is an illustration of God’s omni-accomplishing Word; its effect is governed by nothing more or less than his own good pleasure.

In addition to the surety and faithfulness of God to his own purposes, taught us in the regularity and fruitfulness of snow, snow is an image that predominately carries moral connotations in Scripture. Paradoxically, as a word-picture, snow occupies both polar extremes of the Bible’s ethical continuum. We’ll consider this and more tomorrow.

Until then, please remember the poor, the young and old, the EMS volunteers, and even the animals that are affected by this fantastic snowfall in your supplications to Christ. Mom tells us that the Weather Channel has Roanoke set for 28 inches before it’s over!

Blessings!

A bit of Deep Exegesis, reading Leithart's newest book

I’m currently working through a great book! Peter Leithart, in his excitingly insightful new book, Deep Exegesis: The Mystery of Reading Scripture, makes a strong case for a typological interpretation of Scripture. He wants us to allow the Bible to not only interpret itself, but also teach us how to read in general. More than that, he believes that this approach reflects how Jesus, Paul and the rest of the OT readers/NT writers read and understood the Scriptures. The book is good medicine for a generation of students that have been steeped in a literalistic hermeneutic. On page 111, Leithart includes a spectacular citation from Dale Allison’s The New Moses: A Matthean Typology (pp. 221—22).

“The interpretation of this line can be nothing other than the unfolding of what is not stated,” says Allison. As a case in point, Matt 1:1 is taken up, and Leithart asks, “What is not there?” Answering, “Lots.” He then includes this block quote from Allison’s book.

“[A]ll the words in 1:1 derive from tradition, and to understand them aright we must know their itinerary. Biblos geneseos occurs in LXX Gen 2:4 and 5:1 while “Genesis” came to be, in the Greek-speaking world, the title for the first book of Moses. As for Christos, it was firmly associated with Jewish eschatological expectation. So too huios David. And huios Abraam, likewise a fixed expression, also had its own special connotations. Now all this, which was undoubtedly known to Matthew’s Jewish-Christian audience, is fundamental for interpretation. But Matt. 1:1 directly conveys none of this information. Rather it assumes that the requisite sensibility will pass from the explicit to the implicit, that it will go beyond what the words directly denote to what they connote—which is why the more Matt. 1:1 is engaged, the more it evokes. Words and phrases...are not simple things; nor is language ever born anew: it is always old. A combination of words is like a moving trawler, whose dragnet, below the surface and out of sight, has taken catch and now pulls along so much more. Just as it would be erroneous to equate the function of the fishing vessel with what goes on in plain sight, so similarly can focus on what is explicit in a literary text lead one right past much meaning—above all in a book such as Matthew, beneath whose literary surface is the Jewish Bible, which is alluded to far more that expressly cited...The truth is, our evangelist had no need to trumpet the manifest, and allusions to Moses were...manifest enough to those who lived and moved and had their being in the Jewish tradition.”

Lex Talion and Theodicy in Job 34

Few people are ever very impressed with the role of Elihu in the book of Job. Some have argued that his diatribe is a redactor’s gloss, added by a later scribe who sought to do what Job’s other three friends could not do: justify God’s dealings with poor Job. Summing up the thoughts of R. H. Pfieiffer and M. H. Pope, Derek Kidner puts it thus, “[Pfieiffer and Pope] regards the Elihu speeches as the well-meaning intervention of a reader who was shocked at Job’s audacity and disappointed by the failure of his friends to silence him” (An Introduction To Wisdom Literature, 1985. 82).

Others have thought that Elihu’s place in the story is simply a ‘too little, too late’ type situation; Elihu actually adds nothing to the long-waxed prose of Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar. Nevertheless, whatever Elihu’s place is in the plot, we can find little to complain about the gist of his theology.

Having said that, lets look at Job 34 in particular. Here, I believe, is a fine example of applying the lex talionic principle of God’s judgments to the problem of theodicy (i.e., justifying God’s actions).

Elihu begins with an invitation for the “wise men” to give his argument an ear (v. 2, 10). Elihu then invokes the same sensory figure—“ear tests words” just as the “palate tastes food”—that Job had earlier in his pleas (cf. 12:11; Ps 119:103, etc).

Elihu, in keeping with Near Eastern etiquette, refrained from offering his verdict too soon, because of his relative youthfulness (32:4. Note: That Elihu’s remarks would be dismissed due to his youthful impropriety is not uncommon, granting the cultural context of ‘many years = wisdom.’ However, this mustn’t be made too absolute of a criterion. The elevated piety of the psalmist reflects a parallel attitude, Ps 119:97—104. Also, if we were to take this too absolutely, what are we to make of Jesus’ conflicts with the "elders of Israel," and that as a thirty-something?!?). After all, “Is it not the old who are wise...?” (32:9; cf. 12:12). Though Elihu is “young in years” and his company is “aged” (32:6), he can finally stand it no longer. With hints of prophetic unction (v. 8), he is now prepared to vent the frothing, fermenting speech that threatens to burst him asunder (vv. 17—20). The utter incompetence of his elder fellows in substantiating their charges against Job, thus failing to rebut his complaints, was a driving force for Elihu (v. 3, 11—16). But the main concern for Elihu, that which caused him to “burn with anger at Job” was “because [Job] justified himself rather than God” (v. 2). Theodicy is therefore Elihu’s top priority.

That theodicy is primary is further supported by Elihu’s choice of Job’s complaints in chapter 34. In v. 5, Elihu quotes Job’s earlier remark: “I am in the right, and God has taken away my right” (cf. 27:2—6). Similarly, in v. 9, Elihu cites Job again, this time recalling his statement, “It profits a man nothing that he should delight in God” (cf. 21:15). Elihu’s thesis, the centre of his argument, is the lex talionic principle of God’s justice incased by a brief introversion of couplets, following the A-X-A’ pattern. This is vv. 10—12.

"Therefore, hear me, you men of understanding:

(A. 1) far be it from God that he should do wickedness,
(A. 2) and from the Almighty that he should do wrong.
(X. 1) For according to the work of a man he will repay him,
(X. 2) and according to his ways he will make it befall him.
(A’. 1) Of a truth, God will not do wickedly,
(A’. 2) and the Almighty will not pervert justice. "

What was at stake was God being charged with injustice and wickedness (!). These charges have become very popular in the propaganda of the New Atheists today (antitheists, better; e.g., Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, et cetera). In the pair of A lines, Elihu implicitly draws and denies the necessary conclusion of Job’s reasoning; in the A’ set, he states his denial with emphatic negatives. Between the couplets is the grounds for Elihu’s denial, the lex talionis principle. Regardless of one’s appraisal of Elihu’s role in the story, I believe that his comments here can be pedagogical for us.

Granted, with respect to Job’s story, we modern readers have the back of the book answer, so to speak; we were made privy to the heavenly levels disclosed in the first two chapters, and we know the end, we have “seen the purpose of the Lord, how the Lord is compassionate and merciful” (Jas 5:11). This vantage allows us to evaluate not only Job’s circumstances better than his four friends, but also lets us treat them a bit unfairly. In much of the popular moralistic type of preaching today, a sermon from this book will usually have for its take-home point something to the effect that “In Suffering, listen, don’t speak...Don’t be like Job’s non-comforters.”

Of course, there are times when people have questions and even accusations against God that are borne in genuine suffering. In these cases, they are not in need of philosophical dialectics, but empathy. However, this is stressed to the point that I fear that it has emasculated further the already weak apologetical posture and abilities of the Church at large. Because there are often times when the ‘problem of evil’ is thrust upon believers as a formidable objection to the omnibenevolent, omnipotent and omniscient God portrayed in Scripture, we cannot suspend judgment indiscriminately in every case.

In other words, when the philosophical objection is made by someone, parroting either Richard Dawkins or his junior college philosophy professor, we must be ready always to give a defense to any one who asks us a reason for the hope that is in us (1 Pet 3:15). And I believe that the lex talionic principle can often be helpful in that defense.

When the texts appropriate it, we’ll look further in this direction and its various applications. For a more thorough examination and one answer to the ‘problem of evil’ from a Christian perspective, you might want to check this out.


Blessings in the thrice holy God!

Lex Talionis in Leviticus

The Chiastic Form of Lev. 24:10—23: The Universality of Lex Talionic Judgment
A. vv. 10—12b, Needing the revelation: in the case of the sojourner/native blasphemer

B. v. 13, Revelation disclosed: “The LORD spoke to Moses...”
Bp. vv. 14—16b, Judicial actions prescribed
Bp1. v. 14a, proceedings to occur “outside the camp...”
Bp2. v. 14b, c, Corporate involvement: “all...shall stone him”

C. v. 16c, Universal application*: “the sojourner as well as the native...”
Cp. v. 16c, Based on “the NAME” (YHWH)

D. v. 17, Human: life for life

E. v. 18, Animal: life for life

F. v. 19, Injury for injury

G. v. 20a, Lex Talionis proper: “...eye for eye, tooth for tooth...”

F′. v. 20b, Injury for injury

E′. v. 21a, Animal: life for life

D′. v. 21b, Human: life for life

C′. v. 22a, Universal application: “...same rule for sojourner and for the native...”
Cp′. v. 22b, based on “YHWH” (the Name)

B′. v. 23a, Revelation disclosed: “So Moses spoke to the people of Israel...”
Bp′. v. 23b, Judicial actions described
Bp2′. v. 23b, Corporate involvement: “they...brought...stoned him”
Bp1′. v. 23b, proceedings occurred “outside the camp...”

A′. v. 23c, Heeding the revelation in the case of the sojourner/native blasphemer

* Universal Application theme further emphasis in v. 16
a. The blasphemy: “Whoever blasphemes the name of YHWH...put to death...”
b. Universal involvement: “all the congregation...shall stone him...”
b’. Universal application: “sojourner as well as native...” (all)
a’. The blasphemy: “when he blasphemes the Name...put to death.”

The Lex Talion

There is in Scripture a principle of justice know by the old Latin term lex talionis. Roughly, this means a law or principle of retribution; that the punishment is commensurate to the crime committed. More specifically, it is associated with the five occurrences of the variously stated “eye for eye, tooth for tooth,” et cetera. Far from the modern critic’s appraisal that this law is indicative of our primitive, barbarous past, the lex talion insured that the penalty did not exceed that which the injurious act warranted.

This principle, I argue, is that which underlies all of God’s judgment on the children of men. It is not some mere, impersonal law knitted into the fabric of nature or the like, such as assumed in Eastern Mystic philosophies. Contrarily, the lex talion is part and parcel of the living God’s attribute of justice—perfect justice. And as one aspect of his holy nature, the lex talion is a reflection of his perfection.

We should not fail to look beyond the specificity of “eye for eye, tooth for tooth” to the rounded nature of the law in principled instances. For example, Paul’s warning, which has been engrafted into common English parlance, “Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap” (Gal 6:7), is based upon this same principle of God’s justice and judgment. Likewise, from beginning to end, there is the cautioning all throughout Scripture that God has, does and will judge and recompense every one according to their deeds or works.

This means, on the one hand, that God sees to it that the punishment will correspond qualitatively to the crime; that is, the degree of punishment will meet the offence. But it also means, on the other hand, that the kind of punishment one (individually or collectively) receives corresponds in similitude and likeness to the offence. As Paul said, “what” one sows is precisely also “that” which he reaps. Perhaps a couple of examples from Scripture would be helpful to elucidate this latter sense of the principle, the similitude or likeness of the punishment to the crime.

Think of the exodus story, Pharaoh’s war against Yahweh and his Seed, for instance. It opens with allusive statements of Israel, according to Yahweh’s promise (Gen 17:1f), as a corporate Adam, fulfilling Gen 1:28. “But the people of Israel were fruitful and increased greatly; they multiplied and grew exceedingly strong, so that the land was filled with them” (Ex 1:7). In response, Pharaoh and Egypt were terrified of Israel’s growing strength, and so Pharaoh tried first to “afflict them with heavy burdens.’ This foil, however, failed his purposes; Israel grew all the stronger under his oppressive hand (vv. 9—12). This is all too true to Israel’s surrogate name, Ephraim, meaning, “God has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction” (Gen 41:52). Just another felix culpa, a fortunate fall in Israel’s history.

Having seen that plan-A had not met the growing challenge, Pharaoh attempted to thwart the purposes of Yahweh with a plan-B—kill the firstborn of Israel (1:15ff). From here follows the terrors and horrors that Yahweh brought upon Pharaoh and Egypt with the first nine plagues. (Many understand each of the plagues to be a direct battle between the God of Israel and one of the many gods of the Egyptian pantheon, thus making each plague-judgment lex talionic in character: “You desire to worship and serve idols, then you’ll have more of them [through means of their imaged representatives, e.g., frogs] than you can handle.”). Each of these nine judgments, and the subsequent hardening of Pharaoh, is foreshadowing and anticipating one climactic judgment; one that would finally break Pharaoh’s relentless grip.

And what is that 10th and final judgment? Exactly what Pharaoh had decreed, only in recompense. Pharaoh’s evil plot was turned on his own head; he was clothed with his own devises as with a garment, to put it in psalteric terms. And so, the Destroyer came a snuffed the life of the firstborn of Egypt, just as Pharaoh had struggled to destroy the firstborn of Israel.

The section ends similar to how it began. The Egyptians are again in fear and dread of the people of Israel (12:33; cf. 1:12). Also again, the Egyptians burden the Israelites under heavy loads. This time, however, it was silver and gold jewelry and clothing, “Thus they spoiled the Egyptians” (12:35—36). God gave to Pharaoh just what he wanted, a dead son; the punishment was commensurate to the crime— in both quality and likeness.

Another case in point, in connection with the exodus, is that which lead to it. The patriarchs’ dealing treacherously with Joseph; and rather than kill him outright, they sell him into slavery in Egypt, “the land of his affliction.” We know how the rest goes.

Finally, we’ll look at a more experimental example of the lex talionis. There are numerous instances in Scripture were we find what one has called sensory organ malfunction language. This is usually, if not always, associated with idolatry. Perhaps this is nowhere more clearly stated than in Ps 115:4—8 (ESV), which reads,

Their idols are silver and gold,
the work of human hands.
They have mouths, but do not speak;
eyes, but they do not see.
They have ears, but do not hear;
noses, but do not smell.
They have hands, but do not feel;
feet, but do not walk;
and they do not make a sound in their throats.
Those who make them become like them;
so do all who trust them.

Anyone interested in witnessing this theme fleshed out would do well to consult Dr. Gregory Beale’s recent work We Become What We Worship. Beale does a biblical theology of idolatry in Scripture, especially the lex talionic nature of becoming like the idol so cherished by the worshipper; they, like the idol, become deaf, mute, lifeless and “worthless.”

We’ll stop here for today, but I wanted to share this much now so as to provide a paradigm for future posts that will rest upon and assume the general observations above. There are literally hundreds of demonstrations of this principle in Scripture (believe me, I’ve been accumulating a list for about two years now). Thus, if 1) the lex talion is a reflection of God moral character and his justice, and 2) the principle underlies so many of God’s dealings with men and nations in Scripture, then we’d do well to understand this theme as much as possible, and make applications in our interpretation and experience.

Blessings to you on this glorious Lord’s Day!

Randy Alcorn on the doctrine of the impassability of God

Randy Alcorn has written a nice piece on his blog about the doctrine of God’s impassability (that God doesn’t have emotions). Admittedly, this is also my strongest point of contention with the Confession. Check out Randy’s remarks here.

WORLDVIEW 103

In the last post on worldview, we set forth several solid definitions of worldview, appropriately concluding with Abraham Kuyper’s, which is our starting point today. Kuyper said:

“As truly as every plant has a root, so truly does a principle hide under every manifestation of life. These principles are interconnected, and have their common root in a fundamental principle; and from the latter is developed logically and systematically the whole complex of ruling ideas and conceptions that go to make up [a] life and world-view” (Christianity: A Total World & Life System, 113—14).

Transparently, Kuyper’s term “principles” is synonymous with the more common term “presuppositions,” which last time we defined as: “one’s deepest heart commitments and attitudes about how things really are. Presuppositions are first principles; the foundation stones upon which the entire edifice of one’s other beliefs are built.”

However, Kuyper insists that these various principles or presuppositions all “have their common root in a [single] fundamental principle.” This means that within every worldview there is a single, controlling first principle or presupposition. Intuitively, this makes sense.

William Halverson explains.

“At the center of every world-view is what might be called the ‘touchstone proposition’ of that world-view, a proposition that is held to be the fundamental truth about reality and serves as a criterion to determine which other propositions may or may not count as candidates for belief. If a given proposition P is seen to be inconsistent with the touchstone proposition of one’s world-view, then so long as one holds that world-view, proposition P must be regarded as false” (A Concise Introduction to Philosophy, Random House, 1976. 384; emphasis original).

So, to borrow again from Kuyper, that fundamental principle (or presupposition, proposition) serves as the “root” of every other belief that goes on to make up the rest of one’s worldview. It is from, through and unto this “touchstone proposition” that, however consistently, one will answer the deepest questions of metaphysics, epistemology, ethics and eschatology; the “root” informs every answer to James Sire’s list of questions.

But does not Scripture teach us the same? Proverbs directly warns us, “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life” (4:23). Jesus asks the rhetorical question, “Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles?” (Matt 7:16). Why is it that this question so jostles us; why is it silly to ask? Because the branch and fruit are determined by what is their root.

These observations bring us full circle to an underlying point in the first post, WORLDVIEW 101 (which can be found here). And that point is that, though our discussions of worldview tend toward philosophical analysis and academic parlance, it is a phenomenon of personality. Worldview, as a reality, is realized in and permeates one’s whole personality. Thus, Kuyper’s categorizing of the domains of worldview in personal and relational, rather than abstract philosophical, terms as: 1) our relation to God, 2) our relation to man, and 3) our relation to the world (Christianity, 6).

Also for Kuyper, this is a hierarchical ordering, made obvious by the enumeration. The “root” or “touchstone proposition” of every worldview is, according to Kuyper, one or another attitude and expression of # 1, our relation to God. Kuyper clarifies this, saying,

“Hence the first claim demands that such a life system shall have its starting-point in a special interpretation of our relation to God. This is not accidental, but imperative...Here alone we find the common source from which the different streams of our human life spring and separate themselves” (Ibid.).

Every worldview is therefore intensely personal, beginning with an attitude, a “touchstone” presupposition. Moreover, that presupposition is relational in nature; it is a manifestation of one’s relation to God, with every other of one’s beliefs growing from this root relationship. From this, then, it follows that there are essentially only two worldviews available. As Jesus said, “He that is not with me is against me” (Matt 12:30). In the nature of the case, our fundamental relation to God forces the dilemma of antithesis upon us; there are only two ways before us. (For a straightforward demonstration of this, click here.)

In the next post on the topic of worldview, then, we’ll examine further this principle of antithesis. And why it is that Kuyper can conclude, “Two life systems are wrestling with one another, in mortal combat” (Christianity, 2).

The Flight of the Gadfly

Here’s a letter that I wrote to the Editor of the Roanoke Times this evening. Recently, there has been an onslaught of ad hominem mud slinging in the Roanoke paper. A Christian letter writer did a piece on how indefensible Islam is in light of Jihad. Then, of course, the scorching responses came, day after day, evoking Christendom’s spotty past (the Romish Crusades, Spanish Inquisition, et cetera). However, no one was addressing the real issue, Whose position is consistent with violence?

Neither was anyone mentioning the most fanatical class of all, atheistic humanists. So, being the local editorial gadfly that I am, I offered the following observations. Sadly, the pithy 200 word limit restrained my most formidable weapon—verbosity and sheer volume; I was truly out of my element!

For Sake of Fair Disclosure

In the firestorm of recent letters, regarding the violence associated with Christianity and Islam, some fair disclosure seems in order.

It appears that none has raised the most fundamental question: When violence and pogrom are means of progress, which group is acting consistently with their touchstone principles?

Additionally, the field of consideration needs broadening. Arguably, no ideology has a bloodier history than atheistic humanism, which is rooted in Darwinism. Consider Darwin’s words:

“With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination...Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man...Excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed” (The Descent of Man, 1871. 168).

“Christian violence” is self-condemning. The violence of the atheistic regimes of the 20th century is self-supporting; it’s consistent Darwinism—the stronger eliminating the weaker, “in the struggle for life.”

Serving Through Surveillance

The Harris brothers at Rebelution are sharing the righteous espionage of Live Action and their work to expose the wickedness of Planned Parenthood. Check it out here.

WORLDVIEW 102

Whether one uses the colloquial term ‘worldview,’ or Kant’s weltanschauung, ‘noetic structure’ (Alvin Plantinga), ‘plausibility structure’ (J.P. Moreland), ‘paradigm,’ or simply ‘outlook,’ all of these terms speak of a general form and structure, a framework. This is true in spite of the multiformity of the personal worldviews expressed in the culture at large.

Despite how abstract and airy fairy they may first appear, most students find the basic categories of philosophical speculation helpful for generalizing the details of a worldview’s content. These are (at least) four:

* Metaphysics (or ontology)
* Epistemology
* Ethics (or morality, axiology)
* Eschatology

There is little, if anything, in human experience that cannot be brought under one of these four headings. Metaphysics is the study of what is ultimately real, what has real existence, the nature of existent things, etc. Epistemology is the study and theory of knowledge; it attempts to examine the nature, extent and methods of knowledge and knowing. Ethics considers morals, values, duty, right and wrong. Finally, eschatology narrowly looks toward the end of history as we know it. Broadly speaking, however, eschatology actually touches all of history, including the present. Eschatology includes what postmoderns scornfully refer to as “metanarrative,” that overarching story that gives significance to every other event in that occurs within that story.

Some have sought to put things in pedestrian terms, using more concrete language and questions that beg to be filled with content. Here is a list of such questions that James Sire offers.

1. What is prime reality—the really real?
2. What is the nature of external reality?
3. What is a human being?
4. What happens to a person at death?
5. Why is it possible to know anything at all?
6. How do we know what is right and wrong?
7. What is the meaning of human history?

James Sire, The Universe Next Door, (Intervarsity Press, 1988), 18.

This is an indirect way of defining a worldview, especially helpful for discovering the content of a particular worldview, one held by some individual. In another post, we’ll look at how questions and categories like these are helpful with raising one’s self-consciousness about the content of one’s own worldview and for engaging contrary ones.

At this point, it behooves us to look at some solid positive definitions of worldview. Notice that these definitions are merely a direct statement of the questions above. Both are indispensable for roundly understanding the issue.

“[Worldview is] a network of presuppositions, which are not verified by the procedures of natural science, regarding reality (metaphysics), knowing (epistemology), and conduct (ethics), in terms of which every element of human experience is related and interpreted.”

Greg Bahnsen, per various lectures. Cf. Pushing the Antithesis, (American Vision, 2007), 244.

“In its simplest terms, a worldview is a set of beliefs about the most important issues in life...[It] is a conceptual scheme by which we consciously or unconsciously place or fit everything we believe and by which we interpret and judge reality.”

Ronald Nash, Worldviews in Conflict, (Zondervan, 1992), 16.

“A worldview is composed of a number of basic presuppositions, more or less consistent with each other, more or less consciously held, more or less true.”

James Sire, The Universe Next Door (Intervarsity Press, 1988), 17.

For some, the term “presupposition” may be new. Essentially, the term is paralleled in Nash’s definition: “beliefs about the most important issues in life.” When Nash says, “most important issues,” even this needs clarification. For so many, “the most important issues” stop short; people generally think of things such as, “Who will I marry?” “What career do I choose?” “Should I live in Chicago or Lynchburg?” (Really, that one too easy;). Presuppositions are the answers to Sire’s questions above. Thus, instead of asking “What career will I choose?” first we must ask, “Are humans active moral agents that can make meaningful choices at all or is everything pre-determined by antecedent causes?” You can sense the difference in quality and profundity.

Basically, all of our suppositions have pre-suppositions. Presuppositions are pre-theoretical and non-inferential. That is to say, presuppositions function like axioms or postulates in algebra. These provide the starting point for deduction, but they themselves cannot be proven or justified by mathematical procedure; axioms must be assumed valid and taken for granted to prove every other proposition within the system. So also presuppositions: We do not reason to them but from them. They are one’s deepest heart commitments and attitudes about how things really are. Presuppositions are first principles; the foundation stones upon which the entire edifice of one’s other beliefs are built.

Now these presuppositions do not exist independent of one another in the vacuum of our minds. Instead, they must be brought into a more or less consistent (Sire) connection with each other. Together they form a “network” (Bahnsen) or “conceptual scheme” (Nash). Collectively, then, they take on a web-like form. Presuppositions are therefore the composite properties that inevitably result in a worldview.

No one figure, since Calvin, has had a greater effect on the centrality and awareness of worldview in Christian thought than the neo-Calvinist Netherlander Abraham Kuyper (1837 – 1920). Every man cited in this post (and scores more) is, more or less directly, an heir of Kuyperian thought. And frankly, I don’t think anyone can improve on Kuyper’s definition of a worldview, from his 1898 Stone Lectures, with it’s elevated prose and organic simile.

“As truly as every plant has a root, so truly does a principle hide under every manifestation of life. These principles are interconnected, and have their common root in a fundamental principle; and from the latter is developed logically and systematically the whole complex of ruling ideas and conceptions that go to make up our life and world-view.”

Christianity: A Total World and Life System, Plymouth Rock Foundation. 1996. 113—14.

Kuyper’s is here describing the Christian worldview, but it is a fitting definition for the concept in general, and will provide a good point of departure for the next post on the subject.

WORLDVIEW 101

I hope that it will become obvious by the end of this post that everyone has a worldview. If that is the case, you have one and so does every other person you come in contact with, however remote that contact may be.

Consider the implications. Every personal correspondence you encounter is shaped by a worldview. Every movie, book, email, whisper, physiological or psychological diagnosis, sign, cliché, symbol, oration, polity, painting, and any other token of meaning and personality you can conjure, finds its intention obdurately stationed in some nexus of beliefs, some paradigm—someone’s or some group’s worldview.

What’s more is that all of the inbound data that you're saturated with in your experience is in turn sifted by you through the grid of your own worldview. Granting this, then, few things could be as crucial in life as understanding precisely what a worldview is and how it functions, in both its whole and its parts. Let us therefore contemplate a little of the concept’s development, various attempts of definition and the implications these have for Christians and culture. In this post, we look only at the concept’s development, and that only in part.

Conceptually speaking, the modern religio-philosophical consciousness of worldview harkens back to Immanuel Kant’s (1724—1804) work, Critique of Pure Reason. Therein, Kant coined the term, weltanschauung, which roughly means in German, one’s view of the world and things.

At the risk of getting ahead of myself, I can’t help point out the fact that two centuries prior to Kant, a Frenchman had already preempted this idea. Two of the greatest figures of the Protestant Reformation were undoubtedly Kant’s Frankish fellow, Martin Luther, and the Frenchman, John Calvin. The former was first in augmenting the breadth of biblical Christianity, but God, in his manifold grace, ordained the plumbing of the infinite depths and highest heights of biblical religion to fall on the heart and mind of the latter, John Calvin.

Calvin’s anticipation of Kant’s concept of weltanschauung was more prescriptive than descriptive, more a matter of dogma than philosophical speculation. In tight keeping with the Reformational battle cry, Sola Scriptura (i.e., ‘Scripture Alone’ has final authority over the life and practice of the Church), Calvin spoke analogously of the Scriptures as the “lenses” through which the Christian, individually and corporately, was to view the world and all of life, whether in the natural or supernatural spheres (I use this last distinction with some reluctance).

Calvin’s “lenses” motif became, for himself, the controlling axiom for the rest of his monumental work, Institutes of the Christian Religion. Consequently, due to the undaunted force of influence his systematic appraisal had over all of life, that volume shaped modern Western societies and culture. John Calvin, however consciously, set before the world a self-contained, full-orbed system, lenses if you will, for viewing all of human experience. Protestantism, and more particularly, Calvinism, pressed onto the world profound schemata of contours for understanding Creator, creation, and everything between the two.

This attention on Calvin is not to steal Kant’s thunder, however. Rather, it is to point out that an acute recognition of a thing is not the origin of the thing itself; the thunder doesn’t belong to either of these men. Neither Calvin nor Kant can claim responsibility for creating the reality of the concept of worldview any more than Aristotle can for creating logical laws. Receptive discovery and creative originality are often confused in the mind of man. Where there is mind, there is logic; so also, where there is personality, there is worldview.

The primeval quality of worldview is evident in the scantiest antiquarian glance. Whether one looks to the Pagan world, with its Democritus (c. 460 – 370 B.C.), for instance, and his totalizing atomistic schema, The Little World-System, or one looks to ancient Israel and her conceptual apparatuses, such as the tripartite prophet, priest and king, the tabernacle/temple and its cultus, and the absolute demarcations between the clean and unclean, etc., the conceptual framework of what we understand as worldview is there.

We’ve went backwards in this short survey, haven’t we? However, that’s the point. An individual’s worldview may morph and even radically shift perspectives, such as when the Holy Spirit through the gospel regenerates a person. However, the reality of worldview has not changed.

Man is incorrigibly a conceptualizing and theorizing creature, we are unique among the rest of creation. Hence, even at this point, we inevitably find ourselves knee deep in worldview-esque inquiry: What is man? And why is he that way? This is a bit premature, but unavoidable, since the reality and formation of worldview is inextricably tied to personality and the human condition, as we said.

So, not only does the fact that every person, including oneself, has a worldview grant this topic pride of place in our overall thinking, but that worldview, in principle, seems unavoidably essential to human personality makes our careful reflection on the issue supremely significant for Christians. This, because whatever is essential to human rationality is a consequent or attributive part of being created imago dei, being made in the image and likeness of the triune God. If then, our conceptualizing capacity is rooted in our being reflective image bearers of God, it follows that God himself has a worldview, so to speak.

Cautious delineations in the analogy must be borne in mind—variances that are qualitative and ontological in nature—that is to say, man’s and God’s worldviews cannot have one to one correspondence, due to the nature of the case; but in so far as there is correspondence, especially in and through the Person of Christ, few things are as important for Christian meditation, devotion and prayer. Thus, Augustine’s dictum, that we must strive to “think God’s thoughts after him,” has become axiomatic in discussions of worldview within the Protestant community, both past and present.

Having worked our way back to the Terminus, God’s mind, in the next post we’ll start where we began today and move from there into history future, and particularly look at how various modern thinkers have attempted to give a concise, systematic form to the concept.
If we’ve learned anything from these thoughts, it should be transparent that all that I’ve written here finds its meaning from within my worldview and all that you’ve read was taken in through the grid of yours, and at very least, that everyone has a worldview.

One Problem with Popular Apologetics

“Today we are going to enter the courtroom of your mind, and on trial is the Bible. In the next twenty minutes, I’d like to present a case for the authenticity of the Scriptures. And at the end, I’ll ask you for a verdict: ‘Is it worth trusting?’ ‘Is it believable?’ Well, court is now is session...”

These were Chip Ingram’s opening remarks Monday morning on his hugely popular radio program, Living on the Edge.

This is part of an apologetic series that Ingram’s doing on the program. Ingram’s comments immediately evoked a particular passage of Scripture when I heard them. That was Gen 3:1, “Hath God said...?”

Should the very question that brought about humanity’s rebellion against God be the means through which people are saved from their rebellion?!?

I understand the well-meant crux of the Ingram’s evidentialist’s reasoning. He fears the charge of circular reason or question begging if he were to, in keeping with the tone and message of the Bible itself, simply appeal to the Self-attesting and absolute nature of God’s Word.

But Ingram has not saved himself at this point. He cannot avoid appealing to some authority in making his case. If one were to ask him what might suffice as a proper criterion for judging the truth claims of the Bible, he would suggest logic. However, the next question is, of course, “Why do you believe logic is the proper means of evaluation?” What could be his response? “Well, it’s only logical to do so.”

In making this move, though, Ingram has fallen prey to the very logical problem he was hoping to elude. Once the chaff is winnowed from the arguments, all appeals to other criteria a reducible to the intellectually anathemized, “The Bible is true, because it’s God word; it’s God’s word because it says so.” For a succinct statement of this problem check out Steve’s summary here. Or you can see the same point in a larger context here.

Here are some other questions that Ingram’s evidential method begs:

Does human reason function properly independent of an attitude of submission to God?

Is unregenerate man’s problem with God’s Word intellectual or moral in nature?

Is human reason unscathed by sin?

This is to name only a few.

The Bible’s answer to these is an emphatic NO!

“Let God be true though every one were a liar!” (Rom 3:4).

Any thoughts?

PAUL’S AREOPAGITICA (ACTS 17:16—32): Complimentary or Confrontational?

INTRODUCTION

Every duly attentive student of the scriptures who has sought to understand Paul’s critical address to the Athenians, as recorded in Acts 17:22—31, will acknowledge the truth of F. F. Bruce’s statement, saying, “probably no ten verses in the New Testament have supplied the text for a greater abundance of commentary than that which has grown up around Paul’s Areopagitica.”[1] Bruce’s remark here does include the perennial challenges and answers regarding the historical authenticity of this speech; being spoken by Paul himself rather than an editorial injection of the author; nevertheless, the broader context in which Bruce makes this statement points beyond the text critical questions to the more variegated issue of how exegetes, theologians, and apologists have attempted to interpret this passage for the purposes of understanding, constructing, and even justifying a particular approach to proclaiming and defending the gospel in the social context of modern secularism.

What will follow is yet further contribution to the “great abundance of commentary” already existing on this passage. For at no other time in the history of the church has the Western cultural context been more parallel to that of the early church.[2] Thus, Paul addressing pagans in the highly pluralistic context of Athens is the biblical model for a faithful gospel proclamation into the rampant biblical illiteracy of our own culture.


Thesis and method

Henceforth, it shall be argued that Paul’s speech before the Areopagus was fundamentally confrontational in nature; not complimentary, always challenging, either directly or indirectly, the very philosophies through which his teaching was being examined. In order to accomplish this task, three steps will be taken. First, the view that contends Paul sought to persuade his audience through an extended and complimentary exordium in which he appropriated the common ground of human reason and natural theology will be heard. This perhaps is the most common understanding of the speech and shall be revisited in latter portions of this composition. Second, a reconstruction of the philosophies represented at the Areopagus is necessary in order to better grasp the fundamental assumptions and pre-commitments of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophical systems Paul faced. Third, the contrastive nature of Paul’s framework will be introduced, with particular attention given to the crucial elements of the resurrection and Paul’s point(s) of contact. Finally concluding that Paul’s method in Athens was more antithetical than it was accommodating; more confrontational than complimentary, and as such, his furlough in Athens was a complete success.


The historical reading of the text

Since the rise of Thomism’s natural theology and its immensely popular approach to answering secular skepticism, the general consensus has understood Paul, here, to be complimentary toward his auditors, exercising epistemological neutrality in his choice of language and his quotation(s) of secular sources rather than biblical revelation. Moreover, Paul is generally understood to be seeking common ground within the pagan philosophies upon which he might build a natural theology of sorts; thus, moving the Athenians from their quasi-correct starting point to true worship, through the resurrected Christ. Throughout much of church history this has been the paradigmatic lens by which this text has been viewed. The axiomatic strength of the complimentary understanding of the text is evident in the following two examples.

Dr. Marvin Vincent, or instance, in his Word Studies in the New Testament, finds at least two words in the Authorized Version (A.V. hereafter) too strong for Paul’s meaning, or perhaps better, Dr. Vincent’s fore drawn conclusions. His first objection is made with regard to the A.V. rendering of δεισιδαιμονεστέρους as “too superstitious” in v.22. “Paul,” Vincent argues, “would have been very unlikely to begin his address with a charge which would have awakened the anger of his audience. What he means to say is, you are more divinity-fearing than the rest of the Greeks.”[3] This exposes a disregard for the strictures facing Paul in his historical context. The council of the Areopagus strictly forbade the use of flattery and blandishment in the oration of those being scrutinized.[4]

Equally troubling for Vincent is the use of “ignorantly” in v.23, maintaining that “ignorantly conveys more rebuke than Paul intended.”[5] In order for this to be convincing, however, the word’s emphatic position in the Greek construction of the sentence must be explained. It is “ignorance,” not “worship,” that is emphatic in v.23c.[6] Moreover, Paul employs the noun form of this verb again in v.30, as indicative of the idolatrous paganism he was speaking into. So, Vincent, and others with him, must ignore the pejorative emphasis in Paul’s vocal assessment of the philosopher’s systems; both in the original construction and the word’s repetition in order to maintain a complimentary view. Irregardless of the word choice of the receptor language, the function of αγνοεω (“ignorantly”) and its noun form, αγνοια (“ignorance”), is best understood as confrontational, not complimentary.

If, however, Vincent’s observations stand, then Paul is best understood as first complimenting his Pagan contemporaries for their piety and religiosity, however incomplete its content may be, and then using a sort of natural theology to guide them to the fullness of right worship from where they had begun. There are a great number of scholars still arguing this position today.[7]

Others have tried to understand the inherent tension in the passage through a rhetorical critical reading.[8] This approach allows for a two fold interpretation of the speech. Interpreting through a dual lens, it is argued, allows one “to see the subtle interplay between Paul’s rhetorical presentation for the benefit of his hearers and Luke’s narrative presentation for the benefit of his readers.” In this, the Athenian “hearers” are to understand Paul’s use of ambiguous language in a positive or complementary light while Luke’s Christian readers would perceive the irony and tension of the event being conveyed in the narrative. Hence, the complimentary nature of Paul’s defense remains, being tethered in the historical event. The confrontational overtones of the narrative are accredited to Luke’s rhetorical purposes, for the benefit of his readers. Although this interpretation rightly recognizes the confrontational nature of the speech, to remove Paul’s intention in the historical event so far from Luke’s authorial purpose in his narration of the event is hardly satisfactory.

Nevertheless, the rhetorical critical reading does acknowledge the presence of confrontation in the text. The following survey of the philosophical backgrounds of Paul’s opponents will further elucidate these confrontational connotations and provide a context in which they may remain comfortably situated in Paul’s historical situation.


A SURVEY OF THE REPRESETATIVE PHILOSOPHIES

Philosophers and philosophies in the first century

Something wanting in the view that understands Paul as complimenting his audience is an adequate treatment of the fundamental intellectual presuppositions represented at the Areopagus. Before seeking to establish a sufficient summary of these philosophies a few prefatory observations are in order. First, to read the modern stigma often associated with modern philosophy into the text, that is, as some sort of esoteric department of a large university with a concentrated focus upon impractical abstract concepts, is highly anachronistic. On the contrary, philosophy, in Paul’s first century context, “referred to an entire way of life, based on a rigorous and self-consistent intellectual system—close to what we would mean by worldview.”[9] On the basis of such a system, these competing schools of philosophy would then set out to offer society an all encompassing world and life view. As such, Paul was viewed as a present threat within the already contradictive atmosphere of Athenian academia; a threat that warranted closer inspection by the venerable council of the Areopagus. Granting this definition of philosophy or better, worldview, Paul himself certainly qualified as a philosopher; and as will be seen, a very formidable one.

In order to create a catalogued appraisal of the two worldviews opposing Paul in this text, four traditional philosophical categories will be used. As comprehensive worldviews, each must offer a substantial accounting of the following areas of inquiry: (1) Metaphysics answers the question of the nature and extent of reality, including God (god, gods), the world, man, man’s place in the world, etc. (2) Epistemology is the theory of knowledge. What can we know and how do we come to know it? (3) Ethics is concerned with how man ought to conduct himself in his relationships to God (god, gods), the world, his fellow man, and himself. Finally, (4) Eschatology. Is there a purpose or meaning to history? What is the bigger picture or the meta-narrative which gives meaning to the particulars of history?

These four categories form the conception framework upon which every other belief within a system, despite its strength or weakness, hangs and comports. The content of these four areas are ultimately a priori; they are assumed, and the entire super structure of the philosophy rests upon them. They are presupposed and non-negotiable. The respective content posited by each worldview will be offered in the following section in order to better understand the fundamentals of each group and the relevance of these in the confrontational nature of the speech.


The Epicurean worldview

The Epicureans were an intellectual elitist group founded by Epicurus of Samos (342—271 B.C.). His disciples went on to develop and maintain a school in Athens known as The Garden.[10]

(1) Metaphysic: The Epicureans embraced a thoroughgoing pluralistic cosmology, based on the atomistic theory of Democritus,[11] teaching that “the universe consisted of eternal atoms of matter; ever falling through space; the changing combinations and configurations of these falling atoms were explained by reference to chance (i.e. an irrational “swerve” in the fall of certain atoms).”[12] Thus, they were crass materialists.[13] It should not be surprising then that Epicureans were also “constructive atheists” who advanced “arguments against the traditional Greek gods.”[14] Not least of which was Epicurus’ original formulation of the argument against immanent deity from the so-called problem of evil. Nevertheless, the Epicureans did not deny the possibility that gods may exist; but the gods too were composed of atoms, existing between the worlds far removed from human experience, “making no difference to men and their affairs.”[15] Hence, they allowed for what we today might mean by “deism” and denied any chance of revelation from such gods. [16]


In spite of their doctrine of atomistic pluralism and chance, they were not deterministic; but, posited free-will in their anthropology. This exception is made by a precarious appeal to the “swerve in the falling atoms of matter,” yet remains inexplicable.[17] Man’s origin sprouts from chance, and upon death man’s whole person is dissolved and dispersed back into space so, consequently, they denied ardently the possibility of immortality. This is reflected in the words of one of their own poets. Philodemus wrote, “There is nothing to fear in god. There is nothing to fear in death.”[18]

(2) Epistemology: The Epicurean theory of knowledge was thoroughly consistent with their metaphysic; purely naturalistic. They contended that man was born tabula rasa, a blank slate if you will. Any and all knowledge is to be gained through sense perception alone; what is today called empiricism. Apart from constructing arguments against the gods of the superstitious Greek religions, Epicureans had little interest in logic.[19]

(3) Ethics: The summum bonum of the Epicurean ethic was an undisturbed life. Again, in tow of their view of reality, human desires should remain focused only upon temporal life and to be as free as possible from any disturbing passions, pains (physical and emotional), and fears—as seen above—of both god and death.[20] This concept is known as hedonism. The supreme good in life is happiness or pleasure. Epicurus himself was not a sensualist. His hedonism focused on qualitative pleasure; good food, wine, and friends; not quantitative pleasure, such as excess.[21] Nevertheless, by Paul’s time the group’s higher hedonism had waned to mere sensualism and indulgence.[22]

(4) Eschatology: Epicureans generally held to the Greek default in regards to the nature of history, a cyclical view of history. Conflagration, that is, destruction by fire, was the basis of their view that history went round and round in cycles, repeating itself without any reasoned aim.[23]

In summary, the Epicurean worldview that Paul faced was fundamentally pluralistic, finding absolutely no unity in the nature of the world. Everything was explicable through natural causes against any recourse to divine intervention or revelation. Moreover, if deity exists, man could not know one iota about it, for all knowledge comes through the senses and the gods are too far removed from man’s physical experience in the world. Thus, they urge that man’s highest end is his own pleasure. This pleasure is in large measure gained by casting off emotional anxiety often experienced by the fear of immortality and the gods’ judgment in the next life. Such point of judgment is diametrically opposed to Epicurean eschatology; the eternality and aimless chance of atomistic matter is endlessly being recapitulated.


The Stoic worldview

Stoicism was a worldview developed by Zeno of Citium (c. 336—c.264 B.C.). They derived their name from the painted stoa or portico, where Zeno habitually met with and taught his students.[24]

(1) Metaphysic: The Stoics’ axiom of reality was monistic.[25] This monism disallowed all possibility of plurality in the cosmos, similar to the Eastern view that “all is One.” This involved two entailments. One, like the Epicureans, they were materialist. Unlike the Epicureans, however, they embraced determinism, something that radically affected their ethic, as will be seen in due course. Second is another necessary consequence of monistic materialism; a theology of pantheism. They thought of god as a refined material substance, impersonal and all pervasive.[26] In Stoicism, “God was variously described as ‘fire,’ ‘reason,’ (logos) or ‘spirit’ (pneuma). He shaped Fate and all reality according to divine reason.”[27] This divine reason and its bearing on reality was allowed through an ironically immaterial concept they called “tension,” but like the Epicurean’s talk about “a swerve in the atoms” to explain their version of free will, the notion of “tension” too causes difficultly in the Stoic’s self-contained system. Both of these points reveal a gross internal contradiction in the worldviews.

(2) Epistemology: As with all worldviews, the Stoic epistemology is inextricably tied to its metaphysic. The reason/god principle or “world-soul” that pervades the entire cosmos, which brings about order and rationality to matter, was thought to be tapped into through human reason.[28] The Stoic’s contribution in epistemology was the postulate “’cognitive impression,’ the essential feature of which was: it could not have come from anything other than that of which it did in fact come.”[29] From this, one could deduce propositions of certainty, for instance “god exists;” something bearing a degree of similarity to Anselm’s ontological argument.[30] If the Epicureans epitomized today’s empiricist, the Stoics helped to pioneer the rationalism of the medieval and modern eras.

(3) Ethics: In spite of the Stoics interest in logic, by the first century A.D. ethics dominated the schools focus.[31] Stoicism was known for “its high sense of moral duty.”[32] Because of the Stoic’s metaphysic of determinism, life’s greatest question was: “how can the wise man live in accordance with nature?” Their answer to this question lead the schoolmen to conclude with the doctrine of imperturbability; the acceptance of and cooperation with one’s own fate. Striving for concord with the inevitable was thought to be the virtuous life, and virtue was the only absolute good that the Stoics recognized. All else, including health, wealth, even life and death was viewed with “indifference.” These Stoic ideals produced a proud, individualistic, self-centered life that avoided any external supports.[33]

Eschatology: Stoics also retained the typical Greek eschatology. History was ultimately a cyclical continuum.[34] From time to time all matter, the entire cosmos was reabsorbed into god or the world-soul. Thus,[35] the Stoics denied the possibility of individual immortality.

In summary, it is not difficult to see how Stoicism’s monistic view of reality shaped every other facet of their thought and life. Due to their unifying principle of monism, plurality was denied and materialism presupposed. This of course forced a pantheistic theology, making god to be an impersonal principle of reason existing as highly refined matter. The relationship between this impersonal “world-soul” and human experience is at best ambiguous, finding recourse in an immaterial principle of “tension.” Man could use his own reason and the assistance of logical reflection as a way into the divine reason that determines man’s fatalistic destiny. In so doing, man could find virtue and happiness by learning to live his life in concord with the nature of things and paying no attention to the things that he cannot change. While the pursuit of said virtue is highly individualistic, this individualism has little ultimate meaning. History is a pattern of cycles in which all reality, including the individual persons, are reabsorbed back into the world-soul, thus making individual immortality and meaning impossible.


THE FUNDAMENTAL FRICTION

Striving for common ground?

If the fundamental axioms of the Stoic and Epicurean worldviews set forth above are valid, it appears impossible to determine where Paul could find any fundamental connection with these contradicting philosophies. In the area of metaphysics, Paul’s worldview rests upon an ontology that begins with the absolute-personal God of the scriptures. Against the Greeks’ crass materialism, Paul’s God is absolutely transcendent and immanently personal with his creation. Far from God being correlative to or even “one with” the world, as the Greeks presupposed; Paul contrasts God’s aseity and sovereignty over against man’s utter contingency and dependency on God for his being, knowledge, and right conduct.[36] Moreover, Paul, against the fatalistic, cyclical Greek understanding of history, claims, with authority, that “history is teleological; it is pressing on in one direction, to the day of final judgment.”[37] No common ground appears to exist between the biblical worldview of Paul and that of the Epicureans and Stoics.

The complimentary view of Paul’s Areopagitica, as earlier exemplified by Vincent and other scholars, is also expressed by postulating that Paul was, in fact, “seeking” a common ground with the Greeks. Longnecker’s comments on the exordium (Acts 17:22-23) and Paul’s use of Greek literature are telling, he states:

“Luke gives us another illustration of how Paul began on common ground with his hearers and sought to lead them from it to accept the work and person of Jesus as the apex of God’s redemptive work for humanity...In his search for a measure of common ground with his hearers, he is, so to speak, disinfecting and rebaptizing the poets’ words for his own purposes.”[38]

It is agreed, of course, that Paul’s goal was to move his hearers to the person and work of Jesus. Moreover, he was certainly using the words of the poets’ “for his own purposes.” What remains contestable in Longnecker’s remarks is the idea that Paul employed some mutually agreed upon “common ground” with the Pagans as a means to his desired end.

In stark contrast to Longnecker’s observations, others have recognized a sharp epistemological disjunction; not commonality, between Paul and his audience. They understand Paul to be stating his own self-contained system in opposition to that of the philosophers. Bruce summarizes this point well, saying:

Paul “does not argue from the sort of “first principles” which form the basis of the various schools of philosophy; his exposition and defense of his message are founded on the biblical revelation itself, his speech begins with God the Creator of all, continues with God as Sustainer of all, and ends with God as Judge of all.”[39]

In this, Bruce identifies Paul’s revelational framework which stands against the Greek’s autonomous, philosophical speculation.

Although Paul does not directly reference Old Testament (OT hereafter) citations for the Greeks in order to validate his claims about the resurrection of Christ, as he does else where (for example: Pisidian Antioch, Acts 13:13ff); the speech, nevertheless, teems with OT revelation. The NA 27th edition of the Greek text marginally notes over 20 direct or indirect allusions to OT revelation in these ten verses (see: appendix I for some of these). This leaves little question as to the basis of Paul’s epistemology—the words of the Self disclosing God—divine revelation.
There was then no categorical “common ground” which exists between Paul’s worldview and that of the idolatrous pagans he addressed at Athens. The foundational commitments of each worldview, namely in the areas of metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and eschatology, were sharply at odds with one another. Thus, there was inherent at the level of assumptions and axioms, philosophical confrontation and discontinuity. This conclusion is further founded on the primary focus of the pericope—the very issue which frames it—the resurrection.


The heart of the issue: the resurrection

The whole of Paul’s recorded encounter with the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers began (17:18c) and ended (vv.31—32) with a “dispute” (v.18 NIV) over the possibility of the resurrection. Paul’s proclamation of the resurrection incited name calling from his opponents in the agora (“idle babbler” v. 18b NASB) and “mockery” at the close of the council (v.32). Therefore, the topic of the resurrection was the turbulent undercurrent and aimed for end of the entire discourse. More specifically, for Paul the resurrection was not the conclusion of his argument; but the central premise upon which all else would stand or fall!

Rather than seeking common ground with his hearers, vv.24—30 give us a succinct structure of the positive, biblical theological framework Paul viewed as necessary for making sense of the resurrection. The passage reveals nothing of Paul attempting to find a starting point within the Pagan framework from which he may build out; for, there was no hook, so to speak, on which to hang the resurrection within the plausibility structure of either philosophy Paul faced.

Because Stoics and Epicureans were materialists, they denied a personal God and individual immortality. Thus, beginning from some agreed premise and arriving at even the mere fact of the resurrection would have been impossible for Paul. In the worldviews Paul faced, “without the proper theological context, the resurrection would simply be a monstrosity or freak of nature, a surd resuscitation of a corpse.”[40] In fact, at the inauguration of the court of the Areopagus, the following words were ascribed to the Greek god Apollo: “Once a man dies and the earth drinks up his blood, there is no resurrection.”[41] Therefore, there was no common ground in the Greek’s system on which the resurrection, the central issue for both Paul and his auditors, to rest.

The systematic and diachronical theology in which Paul expounds before the Areopagus serves to expose the error of the philosopher’s worldview, as well as create the positive theological framework to make sense of God’s climactic, redemptive event of raising and exalting his crucified Son, Christ Jesus.


A point on a point of contact

One final distinction that must be made is that which is between the perceived complimentary nature of the exordium, Paul’s search for common ground and Paul finding and using points of contact. Often, it appears, the reality of the latter is assumed to imply the former; but, this is simply not the case. Lest the thesis of confrontation be taken to mean that the biblical worldview propounded by Paul and the scriptures is utterly insulated and cut off from any hope of trans-cultural communication, a couple of words about Paul’s point(s) of contact are in order.


The exordium and the altar

Perhaps the most notable points of contact in the text are the exordium (vv.22—23) and Paul’s citation of Greek literature (v.28). These “points” are what offered Paul his inroads into the Greek’s worldviews, yet even these are taken up and used by Paul in a less than flattering way, with respect to his audience. First, for Paul to have chosen any altar or idol from the plethora offered in the city and identified it with his intellectually sophisticated audience would have been reprehensible from their perspective; not least of which was the altar professing their own ignorance in matters of metaphysics and theology.


Paul’s practical purpose in this chosen point of contact is the second point. Paul used the altar, in part, as a foil and an exhibit A in the defense of his teaching. The charge laid against Paul in v.18 (“He seems to be a proclaimer of unknown gods” AT)[42] would echo the charges laid against Socrates; a charge that brought about the philosopher’s death.[43] Given then the seriousness of the charge, the altar “TO AN UNKOWN GOD” became, in Paul’s mind, both a weapon of defense in regard to himself, and one of offense in regard to his opponents.

The case laid against Paul in v.18 was reversed as an indictment against his prosecutors in v.23. In v.18 Paul is scorned by these intellectual elitists as an ignorant “babbler” “proclaiming unknown gods.” In v.23 Paul evidenced that his opponents were guilty of special pleading—hypocrisy—for their ignorant babbling, as it were, about the nature of deity is etched in stone! The essence of this verse is captured in a paraphrase by Gempf, which reads: “What I proclaim to you is only what you yourselves, while openly admitting your ignorance, claim to reverence.”[44] In so far as the altar being a point of contact, indeed it is, but as for its purpose in Paul’s opening remarks being a point of mutual agreement or commendation, it is not. The essence of the exordium is itself confrontational. Far from “seeking common ground” with reference to the altar, Paul had succeeded in leveling the pseudo-intellectual high ground of his opponents in order to “proclaim” the truth of the resurrection, with nothing less than the full authority of God (v.23c).


Paul’s purpose with Greek literature

Many fumble with what to do with Paul’s adoption of the line from Aratus’ song to Zeus; “For we also are his offspring” (v.28). It is not difficult to understand why Paul chose a work of Aratus, for he too was a Cilician, from Tarsus.[45] Therefore, as a patron Stoic of Paul’s home town, there is little doubt that the Apostle was quite familiar with his writing. The real question lies in Paul’s purpose in using the quote. Did Paul desire to identify Yahweh with Zeus?!? Was he merely sanitizing this line of the quatrain in an effort to Christianize, it as Longnecker suggests?[46]

In light of Paul’s overall argument, his purpose appears obvious. The clause did perhaps have a ring of truth in the ears of his audience; however, it is this basic truth that Paul evoked for sake of argument, namely, the life of humanity is derivative from the deity and dependant upon him. From this premise Paul employed a reductio ad absurdum, having reduced his opponent’s position to absurdity. This was accentuated by the (ουν) “therefore” connecting v.28 and v.29.[47] In effect what Paul said was this: you Athenians rightly recognize the undeniable fact that man’s being is dependant upon divine being and that deity is greater than humanity (v.28). You, therefore, betray your ignorance in the attempt to create images and domesticate deity into mere shrines (v.29). God, in times past “overlooked” such culpable ignorance; however, since the dawn of the Gospel, God demands repentance from all of such ignorance (v.30). To refuse repentance will result in divine judgment—the resurrection providing full proof thereof (v.31)!

Paul’s use of the Greek poets, therefore, was neither commendatory nor complimentary. It also was, in principle and purpose, confrontational in nature. Even then, when Paul would find a point of contact; any spot of truth the Greeks had received from general revelation; he did not allow the philosophers any claim to it. Instead, with it, Paul would critique his opponents’ claims, reduce their conclusions to intellectual absurdity, and then authoritatively demonstrate that the biblical worldview which rested upon the resurrected Messiah, which he proclaimed, was alone that which provided the intellectual basis for whatever truth the philosophers may have sought for and claimed as their own!


CONCLUSION

Through a careful examination of the underlying philosophical assumptions of the Epicurean and Stoic worldviews, it has been shown that Paul had no philosophical or theological area of agreement with the philosophers scrutinizing him. For the resurrection of Jesus has no place in the conceptual framework of the pagan philosophies. Thus, Paul sought to confront, rather than compliment, such idolatry with a distinctly biblical view of God, the world, man, history, and of course, the real solution to man’s problem, redemption through God’s risen Son. Because Paul had no common ground with his hearers, he carefully chose his points of contact. He assumed the perspicuity of general revelation and through careful argumentation proved that the Greeks had absolutely no intellectual ground on which to stand in culpable, impenitent ignorance. To continue to reject the Gospel after having its light shone upon them would be to reject the only source of true knowledge and wisdom, something so beloved by the Greek philosophers (I Cor 1:18—25; Col 2:3). With unflinching certitude, Paul’s confrontational approach was a complete success, being proven by having exhausted his opponents arguments, leaving them only to “mock” him (v.32); and by grace, walking away with the spiritual spoils of the battle, for “some men joined him and believed” (v.34)! Thus, Paul’s Areopagitica was confrontational, and was a success.

Given the biblical illiteracy and idolatrous nature of Western society today, with its rising tide of religious and philosophical pluralism, these final words from F. F. Bruce have an imperative force for every member of the contemporary church:

“Paul’s speech at Athens strikes one as an admirable introductory lesson in Christianity for cultured pagans...The twentieth-century apologist, in confronting contemporary paganism, especially in the western world, will find it necessary to expose erroneous ideas for what they are...(and) remove obstacles which lie in the way of people’s accepting the truth.”[48]







[1] F. F Bruce, The Defence of the Gospel in the New Testament, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Co. 1968). 27.
[2] Donald A. Carson, The Gagging of God: Christianity Confronts Pluralism, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan. 1996), 496—505.
[3] Marvin R. Vincent, Vincent’s Word Studies in the New Testament, vol. I, (Peabody, MA: Hindrickson Publisherss. 1887), 541—42, emphasis original.
[4] Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, (Downers Grove, Ill: Intervarsity Press. 1993), 373.
[5] Ibid. 543.
[6] C. Gempf, “Athens, Paul at,” pp. 51—54 in The Dictionary of Paul and His Letters, Gerald F. Hawthorn, Ralph P. Martin, Daniel G. Reid, editors, (Downers Grove IL: Intervarsity Press. 1993), 52.
[7] James Barr, Biblical Faith and Natural Theology, Gifford Lectures for 1991, (Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1993), esp. 27—28. As cited in: Donald A. Carson, The Gagging of God, 498. See also: in-text notes of Dr. Leland Ryken in The Literary Study Bible, (Wheaton IL: Crossway Bibles. 2007), 1651—52. , Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, 372—74.
[8] Ron Vince, At the Areopagus (Acts 17:22—31): Pauline Apologetics and Lucan Rhetoric, (an essay available online at: http://www.mcmaster.ca/mjtm/4-5.htm).
[9] Donald A. Carson, “Athens Revisited,” pp. 384—98 in Telling the Truth: Evangelizing Postmoderns, D. A. Carson, general editor, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan. 2000), 389.
[10] A. R. Lacey, A Dictionary of Philosophy, 3rd edition, (New York: Routledge. 2000), 89.
[11] John Frame, Apologetics to the Glory of God, (Phillipsburg—New Jersey: Presbyterian & Reformed Publishing Co. 1994), 49n.
[12] Bahnsen, Always Ready: Directions for Defending the Faith, (Nacogdoches, TX: Covenant Media Press. 1996), 242—43.
[13] A. R. Lacey, A Dictionary of Philosophy, 89.
[14] J. M. Dillon, “Philosophy”, pp. 793—796 in, Dictionary of New Testament Background, Craig A.Evans, Stanley E. Porter, editors, (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press. 2000), 795. See also:
[15] Bahnsen, Always Ready, 242
[16] Ibid.; Carson, The Gagging of God, 499.
[17] A. R. Lacey, A Dictionary of Philosophy, 90.
[18] Bahnsen, Always Ready, 242.
[19] A. R. Lacey, A Dictionary of Philosophy, 90; J. M. Dillon, Philosophy, pp. 793—796 in, DNTB, 795.
[20] Bahnsen, Always Ready, 242.
[21] Charles Pfeiffer F., Howard F. Vos, John Rea, editors, Wycliffe Bible Encyclopedia: vol. I, (Chicago: Moody Press. 1975), 538.
[22] T. Paige, “Philosophy”, pp. 713—18 in Dictionary of Paul and His Letters, Gerald F. Hawthorn, Ralph P. Martin, Daniel G. Reid, editors (Downers Grove IL: Intervarsity Press. 1993).
[23] J. J. Collins, Eschatologies of Late Antiquity, pp. 330—337 in DNTB, 333.
[24] A. R. Lacey, A Dictionary of Philosophy, 332. See also: F. F. Bruce, The Book of the Acts, The New International Commentary on the New Testament, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing. 1976), 349.
[25] John Frame, Apologetics to the Glory of God, 49.
[26] Carson, The Gagging of God, 499.
[27] T. Paige, “Philosophy,” pp. 713—18 in Dictionary of Paul and His Letters, 715.
[28] Carson, “Athens Revisited,” pp. 384—98 in Telling the Truth, 390.
[29] . M. Dillon, “Philosophy”, pp. 793—796 in, Dictionary of New Testament Background, 796.
[30] Ibid.
[31] T. Paige, “Philosophy”, pp. 713—18 in Dictionary of Paul and His Letters, 715.
[32] Carson, The Gagging of God, 499.
[33] T. Paige, “Philosophy”, pp. 713—18 in Dictionary of Paul and His Letters, 715.
[34] A. R. Lacey, A Dictionary of Philosophy, 332.
[35] Charles F. Pfeiffer, Howard F. Vos, John Rea, editors, Wycliffe Bible Encyclopedia: vols. I & II, (Chicago: Moody Press. 1975) 2:1625.
[36] Carson, “Athens Revisited,” pp. 384—98 in Telling the Truth, 392.
[37] Carson, The Gagging of God, 500.
[38] Richard N. Longnecker, “The Acts of the Apostles,” pp. 376—517 in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary—Abridged Edition: New Testament, Barker Kenneth L., John R. Kohlenberger III, editors, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing Co. 1994), 477 emphasis mine.
[39] F. F Bruce, The Defence of the Gospel in the New Testament, 38.
[40] Bahnsen, Always Ready, 251.
[41] F. F Bruce, The Defence of the Gospel in the New Testament, 47.
[42] Author’s translation. The Greek words xenon diamonion usually translated “strange, foreign deities, etc.” could as easily be rendered “unknown gods.” See: Thayer’s lexicon.
[43] Plato’s Apology, pp. 3—30 in, Ten Great Works of Philosophy, Robert Paul Wolff, editor, (New York: Penguin Group. 2002), 10.
[44] C. Gempf, “Athens, Paul at,” pp. 51—54 in The Dictionary of Paul and His Letters, 52.
[45] F. F. Bruce, Acts of the Apostles, 360.
[46] See fn. 36.
[47] C. Gempf, “Athens, Paul at,” pp. 51—54 in The Dictionary of Paul and His Letters, 53.
[48] F. F Bruce, The Defence of the Gospel in the New Testament, 46—7, emphasis mine.