Posted by Anthony on April 25, 2008
Beginning on April 30th, 2008, Athanatos Online Academy’s course “Studies in Atheism” will begin. This three week course will give a brief history of atheism through the centuries and then leap to a discussion of more modern atheists such as Bertrand Russell, Antony Flew, and the so-called ‘New’ atheists: Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and so on.
Why should anyone care? Why should Christians care? Trends in atheism are as discernible as trends in anything else and many agree (even ‘moderate’ atheists will sometimes agree) that the current trends are ominous. Moreover, if Christians want to reach out to their atheistic or agnostic friends, they will need to know what their friends are reading.
The “Studies in Atheism” course allows atheists to speak for themselves. Some response is given but it is primarily about understanding the forces and influences driving the ‘New Atheists’ along with systematically describing the views which atheists tend to have in common.
Beginning two days before the Atheism course, AOA will be offering courses on “Basic Christianity,” the “Reliability of the New Testament Documents,” and the “Formation of the New Testament.” These courses begin on April 28th.
If “Studies in Atheism” let’s atheists speak for themselves, Basic Christianity is offers an objective presentation on ‘mere Christianity,’ allowing Christians through the centuries to speak for themselves. What do the billions of Christians have in common in their beliefs? Why do they believe what they believe? How are those beliefs derived? This three week course is a broad overview and introduction to the foundations of the Christian faith and will help anyone who aims to understand what Christianity really is, rather than a caricature.
The “Reliability of the New Testament Documents” and “Formation of the New Testament” course make use of the books by the high powered Biblical scholar FF Bruce. For those who do not have the books, as much information from the Internet that can be used will be made available, as well. (this is true for all the courses). Anyone who wants to go beyond Sunday School explanations for why Christians worth their salt trust the Bible and the New Testament in particular will find these courses useful.
Many of the courses make use of Youtube presentations of important voices in Christian scholarship and in some cases video lessons by yours truly are used, as well.
To participate in the courses,
Then get ready to learn!
Posted by Anthony on January 12, 2008
One of the main lines of attacks that skeptics have employed is along the lines of language. For example, ‘Intelligent Design’ should be a redundancy, but today evolutionists talk all the time about organisms being ‘designed’ but insist that design was done by natural processes. This gives them the advantage of being able to admit that the evidence of design is undeniable while simultaneously denying the obvious implication. They call this Science. This is but one example of how atheists equivocate on the meanings of words. Few words have been bastardized like the term ‘Christian.’
Cults like the Mormons and the Jehovah Witnesses desperately try to appropriate the term and this despite the fact that in both cases their teachings are dramatically contradictory to the historic understanding of the term. Atheists let them get away with it: if someone self-identifies as a ‘Christian’ who is anyone else to stop them. For this reason I have often called myself a Christian atheist in order to lampoon such silly reasoning, often receiving the rebuke that that is a contradiction in terms. Oh, now they care about contradictions of terms!
Ironically, atheists will bend over backwards in their dogmatic assertions of just what an atheist is while they themselves dismiss any attempt to clarify just what is meant by the term ‘Christian.’ You can make the Scriptures say anything, they say. Well, at least with Christianity there is some sort of standard at all that could be treated as objective. There is no such transcending standard by which authoritative assertions of what constitutes an ‘atheist’ could be measured against. An ‘atheist’ is whatever the individual atheist asserts it to be and no other atheist can say otherwise.
Such conversations have driven me to defend the proposition that there is a historic understanding of the term. I think it would be helpful to post material from such a defense on my blog. The truth is that as atheist Bertrand Russell acknowledged there really was a time when saying one was a ‘Christian’ meant something and one knew what it meant. But it is also true that despite the constant perversions of the term, there are literally hundreds of millions of people who abide by the very same doctrines that Russell and most modern atheists believe are largely ancient history asserting basically that today there is a free-for-all, prompting smug atheists to say: “You want me to believe in God? Which one?” As though the variations were limitless.
While it is true that it took some time for the Christian community to clarify itself against a series of opponents, they did succeed in doing so. The creeds are the result of that process, and were completed no later than about 400 AD. After that, there was very little change in the meaning of the term until the Protestant reformation- more than a thousand years later- and even then the core teachings enshrined in the creeds are still upheld… to this very day.
That’s right. More than a billion Christians today uphold the same doctrines upheld in explicit terms since 400 AD and less codified terms since 50 AD. More than a billion. I don’t mean to minimize the fact that there are often wide and important divergences, but those who wish to escape the claims of Christianity by disputing that there are any have no legs to stand on. Below I have gone through and cataloged where and referenced where numerous groups who ‘self-identify’ as Christian stand in relation to the core orthodox doctrines. There is much more commonality than skeptics would have us believe. It is culled from the thread already linked to above. Read the rest of the entry… »
Posted by Anthony on October 11, 2007
C.S. Lewis wrote,
There is no need to be worried by facetious people who try to make the Christian hope of heaven ridiculous by saying they do not want to spend eternity playing harps. The answer to such people is that if they cannot understand books written for grown-ups, they should not talk about them. All the scriptural imagery (harps, crowns, gold, etc.) is, of course, a merely symbolic attempt to express the inexpressible. Musical instruments are mentioned because for many people (not all) music is the thing known in the present life which most strongly suggests ecstasy and infinity. Crowns are mentioned to suggest the fact that those who are united with God in eternity share His splendour and power and joy. Gold is mentioned to suggest the timelessness of Heaven (gold does not rust) and the preciousness of it. People who take these symbols literally might as well think that when Christ told us to be like doves, He meant that we were to lay eggs. (Mere Christianity)
There is much scorn for Christian conceptions of heaven in the secular community. Much of it is, I’m afraid, people talking about things that they don’t understand. Very often this is the fault of the skeptic, but very often we can blame it on the Church, too.
I was watching the television show “House” the other night where Dr. House tells a person who is near death but refusing a procedure that there is no afterlife and mocks the man for wanting to escape his shell of a body. A comrade of Dr. House’s points out that Dr. House had never been to the afterlife, so how would he know with such certainty? House apparently sees the logic in this because later he electrocutes himself. While he is unconscious, his patient dies. Going to look at the body later on, we have Dr. House saying to the corpse, “See, I told you so.” Never mind the obvious fact that Dr. House did not die, or that given his character as we know it he’d be an unlikely candidate for ‘heaven.’ Instead I want to think about the expectations common about the afterlife.
I said that we can blame much misconception on the church itself. We can start with the word ‘heaven.’ You will have much difficulty finding any passages that talk about us dying and going to heaven. Jesus says that he goes to prepare a place for us, but does not say it is ‘heaven.’ We are told there will be a resurrection, for both the saved and the unsaved. The closest we read of anything heavenly is referenced in the CS Lewis quote, but in fact it is not heaven, but the New Earth in Revelation 21. And just what happens in a new earth?
Do we eat? Do we drink? Do we play? When it says there are no tears, does that mean there are no tears of joy, as well? No pain? But I argue along with many that a certain amount and kind of pain is helpful and theologically good. For example, when you put your hand too close to the fire, you want to feel some pain so that you withdraw the hand before you are burned. So, no pain? What about the pain you get from a good work out? What about values like ‘courage’? I among others argue that courage without genuine danger and risk is not courage at all. If there is no genuine danger and risk in ‘heaven’ how can there be courage? If ‘courage’ is an eternal value, but there can be no danger in ‘heaven,’ does going to ‘heaven’ actually diminish certain values, or even make them impossible to experience?
We could think of a number of scenarios along those lines, and I think the problem goes back to failing to recognize that there is symbolism involved in discussions of ‘heaven’ and ‘heaven’ itself is a symbol standing in for whatever fantastic reality awaits some of us. But the problem is that ‘heaven’ as portrayed in many circles is just not very interesting to many people. For the purposes of this entry, I suggest that it is not very interesting for men.
Dr. House was under the impression that the afterlife was a release from the body. In the Christian conception, the reality is that the body is transformed, in the twinkling of an eye. The body is not diminished, it is changed. The body is not weakened, it is strengthened. (1 Cor 15 is your friend here). In other words, the noble values that we perceive on earth are gutted shadows of their realities. The willingness to die for someone so that they might live is something we all consider to be noble, but such accounts are rare. For most of us, we’ll settle for seeing such things in the movies, but I dare say that many if not most men wishes that they would be willing to do just that.
But if that is a noble value we perceive in our weakened and fallen bodies it is all the more one we’d perceive as resurrected and transformed entities. But where can we find a conception of ‘heaven’ where such sacrifice can happen and the doing of it considered valiant? In our popular accounts of ‘heaven’ I fear that ‘heaven’ sounds more like Dr. House’s morphine then it does a New Earth- valuing everything we value on the old earth but even more.
Men seem to be unimpressed by a ‘heaven’ that is a mere release from this day’s agonies. Some skeptics I’ve read foolishly see little difference between heaven and hell: sitting all day in church and singing songs about God is pretty hellish from their point of view. They say that not really understanding ‘hell’ either, or else they wouldn’t speak that way, but the point is worth dwelling on. If you were to try to frame the ‘inexpressible in the expressible,’ are you really moved by the notion of spending eternity on a church pew, singing?
I think the time has passed where we can rely on the traditional symbols, if only because the level of ignorance in interpreting them is immense. Men thrive on competition, danger, courage, etc, and even if we factor in that some of this represents inflamed values, it still holds that there are kernels within them that are timeless values. Perhaps more men would be willing to investigate Christianity if they didn’t think that if it were true, it would emasculate them, either this side of the veil, or the other. We need a more robust understanding of what life is like in the New Earth, and it is our job as Christians to develop it.
Posted by Anthony on October 4, 2007
Faithful, Faithful, Faithful.
‘Faithful’ sums up my review of the Narnia Movie.
There have been many reviews of the movie already, by wiser heads. I’ve read only one of them, myself, so what follows is primarily from my own reflection. I should note that while I’ve read the Chronicles of Narnia, and TLWW a dozen or more times, I’ve only seen the movie once. I suspect this review would be more robust if I’d see the movie a couple more times. With that said, let’s get on with it.NarniaBox
The first thing that told me I was in for a satisfying experience was when I saw that Douglas Gresham, Lewis’ stepson, was the co-producer. This information was provided before the movie really got started, and I knew that Mr. Gresham would not have allowed Hollywood to stray too far. I hoped that he’d be able to do more than merely restrain, but also dictate. I think that seems to be the case. There are two ways we can contemplate the movie’s faithfulness to the book- which nearly all desire. One is accuracy of detail, and the other is accuracy of message. We will examine each, briefly, in turn.
On ‘accuracy of detail’ let me submit just two examples that I think well describe the faithfulness of the movie to the book. The first has to do with the opening scene. I can imagine thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of viewers saw the scene unfold into a fleet of German bombers over England with some surprise. “I thought this was some sort of children’s fantasy book?” you might hear them think. I can imagine even children would have been initially perplexed. But the book is clear that the reason why the children went out to the country in the first place was because of ‘the war,’ but because of the sorry state of education these days, we could well doubt any of them would know what war was meant or even what is meant by war. The idea of the world of Narnia being related to our own world- not our fantasy world, but our real, live, brutal, beautiful, tragic ‘real’ world- is a critical component of the Narnia books and its appeal. The inclusion of this scene was necessary, in my opinion, on a number of levels. Nonetheless, I thought in my own head that they would simply have started with the children out in the country, with simply a verbal exchange between the children about why they were there. That was my expectation, and I’m glad it was dashed.
The second thing that I would submit on ‘accuracy of detail’ is incredibly minor. It is because it is so minor that I mention it at all! The depths to which the movie makers went to be faithful to the book is illustrated by this example. If anyone is disappointed in other areas where the film makers had to deviate, I think that this example is evidence to show that if the film makers could have been more accurate on a particular item (but weren’t), they certainly would have, and probably have good reasons why they weren’t. The example concerns the discovery of the Wardrobe Room for the first time.
The book says that the room was empty, except for ‘a dead blue-bottle on the window sill.’ I had never noticed this before, but noticed it while reading the LWW one more time prior to going to the movie. I pondered the significance, if any, of this ‘blue bottle,’ in the Wardrobe Room, and looked forward to seeing if the movie called any attention to it. At that point in the movie, the only thing to be seen in the Wardrobe Room was the wardrobe itself, and a silly blue fly that fluttered in the window and fell dead as Lucy watched. The reader probably sees my ignorance about species of flies right off: a ‘blue-bottle’ is a type of fly. A dead fly on a window sill seems to me to be a pretty minor detail, but the movie makers not only included it, but took steps to make sure that the viewer saw a fly that was dead. With such attention to detail evident, I think we can be generous as more and more little things surface that are not so exact.
I should point out, though, that I thought that these two examples are representative. The movie was faithful to the book all over the place. I only wanted to show just how faithful it really was.
Now, we turn to the question of ‘accuracy of message.’
It’s on a matter like this where we have seen movie makers get a little arrogant. Obviously, it can be difficult from the start to translate a narrative of any kind into a film. It’s even worse when the book is so famous, popular, and loved. Film makers often decide to try to convey the ‘message,’ as they understand it, in a way that they hope (so they say) that they will be faithful to the author’s intent and message, but comes out of the mind of the directors. It’s like thinking that the ‘message’ is a destination to be reached on a map, and the author had laid out one way to get to that place, but the directors can see another way to get to that very same place. Let’s imagine that it really is the same destination, indeed.
The problem is, keeping the analogy, if the author provides you directions to the destination that is more scenic, or otherwise filled with certain adventures, your arrival to the destination will find you in a certain frame of mind. A certain attitude will be constructed in your head. A certain ‘mental fatigue’ from your journey. It would be the difference between coming upon a beautiful city at sunset, with the amber light spread out over it, and emerging from a canyon in order to first see it. Your whole being is orientated towards the destination far differently then, say, if the movie director had you merely fly into the city during the noon day hour. You’ve arrived at the same place, but you haven’t really arrived at the ‘same’ place. Given the obvious Christian narrative that permeated the book, it was important to me that the movie really take people to the same ‘destination’ that Lewis brought people. As well as can be expected, that was the case.
Any deviances from that ‘destination’ are understandable, and in that sense, I approve of these new ‘places’ the movie had us traverse in order to arrive where Lewis had wanted, or at anyrate, achieved.
To illustrate this, allow me two more examples. These, again, are representative. I choose two that I think make the best case. In the first place, when Lucy finds her brothers and sister unbelieving about her first trip into Narnia, I wondered if we might see, as we did in the book, a discussion between the children and the Professor, about Lucy’s honesty. Is Lucy normally a liar? the professor wants to know. Is Lucy crazy, as far as they know? he wonders. Peter and Susan know that she is not normally a liar and really a person of good sense, normally. The professor concludes for them that she’s probably telling the truth. This is the famous Lewis ‘Trilemma,’ which of course he got from someone else, about Jesus and his claims to be God and Christ. It’s in Mere Christianity: Jesus was either Liar, Lunatic, or Lord.
This was an important area of faithfulness that the movie had. Another area of faithfulness is, ironically, a deviation from the book! After Aslan has risen from the dead, and the White Witch defeated by him, Aslan declares “It is finished.” This is not in the book as far as I recall. Obviously, this is what Jesus said on the cross, indicating his defeat of death, and presumably, the devil. For those learned secularists who began, with alarm, to suspect that this whole tale was some sort of Christian allegory, “It is finished” would have helped them really come to their conclusion that they’d been had: They’d had a taste of the Christian myth, and darn it, they liked it!
Of course, there were other indications that Lewis had some specific designs in mind in his portrayal of Aslan and the events in LWW which would have been clear enough without this statement. Given the mass audience, including not only hardened learned secularists, but even children who may not have yet thought about these things, the statement ‘It is finished’ will be heard again by them likely the next time they go to church- Easter- and they will find it familiar. Hopefully they will find it welcome.
There were other aspects of the movie that were faithful to the message of the books that are not so implicitly or explicitly concerning its Christian overtones. Some of the grand philosophy buried into the entirety of the Chronicles of Narnia were also expressed in the movie. A good example of this comes at the very end of the movie, when the Professor says something to the effect of, ‘You won’t be able to go back that way, again…’ For the most part, then, the movie does a pretty good job of being accurate to the message of Narnia- both in abstraction as well as mode.
In conclusion, I have hopes that movies are made after the other books as well, provided that they are done with the same quality and attention to both detail and message that was given to LWW. I’m not quite sure how they can pull that off with “The Horse and His Boy” but I hope they find a way. I also hope that Hollywood begins to get the message that the mass of the American public aches for content that does not offend their sensibilities. I feel compelled to point out to them- I trust even THEY can follow conclusions derived from the bottom line, though- that there was no gratuitous sex scene in the LWW.
Nor was there any in the Harry Potter books, or movies. Or Star Wars. Or ET. Or Mel Gibson’s ‘Passion,’ the all time grossing rated ‘R’ movie. There were few ‘F’ bombs (that one goes out to you, Mr. Tarantino) in these movies, as well. Violence there certainly is: but it is of a different sort, isn’t it? An exploration of what makes it different in these cases (a similar case: ‘Saving Private Ryan’) may help Hollywood make heads and tail of the true nature of the human condition. Such a realization would mean good money for them, so its obviously in their best interest to do so. We long for Good Food and Good Drink in our media, and are often disappointed. It’s sad that, in general, our media choices for so long have really been nothing but Fast Food. Is that changing? I think it is.
Aslan is on the move.
