a'Brakel on Scripture's Authority

Roman Catholicism answers that we must believe it because the church says that it is so. We do affirm that the true church, which believes and declares that the Holy Scriptures are the Word of God, is a means whereby the Holy Spirit brings man to the Word, and thereby persuades man to believe it. The church is neither the foundation upon which rests the faith that Scripture is the Word of God rests, and whereby man is assured of the same. Rather, the Holy Scriptures, by virtue of the inwrought evidences of their divinity and the Holy Spirit speaking in that Word, are themselves the foundation and basis whereby we believe them to be divine. The authority of the Word is derived from the Word itself...These and similar matters are rays of the divinity of the Word which illuminate and convince man of this divinity by its inherent light. However, the task of fully persuading someone, especially a person who uses his corrupt intellect to judge in this matter, is the work of God's Spirit who is the Spirit of faith (2 Cor 4:13). He gives faith (1 Cor 12:9), and bears witness that the Spirit speaking by means of the Word, is truth (1 John 5:6); 'No man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost' (1 Cor 12:3).

-Wilhelmus a'Brakel; The Christian's Reasonable Service

The great dutch Calvinist, Wilhelmus a'Brakel's greatest and most influential work, The Christian's Reasonable Service is available in English for free in PDF format. I have begun reading a'Brakel's work, and have benefited profoundly. I'm currently in the process of taking the 1800 pages of this tremendous Systematic Theology and putting it into Amazon Kindle format. What strikes me most about a'Brakel's work is that it goes against the stereotypical grain of the Dutch Reformers. Published in 1700, the Dutch Calvinists are often pictured as sheer academics, interested primarily in being divine scientists. However, a'Brakel shows himself in these four volumes to be primarily concerned with promoting the glory of God and the happiness of the Saints. Some have called his four-volume work an "Experiential Systematic Theology" because a'Brakel considered this massive work to be more for the benefit of the laity than of theologians. If you haven't heard of this great figure from the Dutch Second Reformation or simply haven't tried reading him yet, let me encourage you to do so.

A few years ago, Derek Thomas interviewed the translator of these volumes which have only recently been translated into English. It is a great service to the church that these translations are even available for free, as we're still paying out the ears for the newly translated editions of Bavinck.

Westminster Bookstore is selling the 4 volume hardbound translations of a'Brakel right now for 36% off, which isn't too bad, especially since these really deserve to be on your shelf next to Bavinck, Hodge, and Calvin.

Chesterton! You Read Like a Blogger!

That's right; I said it. G.K. Chesterton reads like a blogger. He is the most brilliant meanderer in the history of literature. He's great to quote, and he's fun as can be, but here's how he reads in a cut-down, butchered, un-witty form:

Hey, all. I'm going to talk to you today about Saint Francis. Boy, those Greeks sure were ignorant. Speaking of ignorant, historians today seem to write more like journalists. And did I tell you about my nephew? He's five, and he loves eggplant! And so you see, nobody gives St. Francis a fair shake because they don't understand the world he comes from, and that's why I wrote this book.

Now, just pretend that was well-written, flowery, and that every sentence was worth posting to your facebook profile, and BAM! you have G.K. Chesterton.

I love you, Chesterton; even if you are a Roman Catholic and think that the war against the Albigenses was justified and that the crusades weren't half as bad as the rest of us believe them to be. In case you can't tell, I'm reading Chesterton's Saint Francis of Assisi which I found at a used book store for $2. If you want, you can read almost everything he's written for free on the web.

Valedictorians Without Chests

This speech is now infamous, I do believe. It has made the rounds on the internet, and everyone has an opinion on it. Don't believe me, look at the endless string of comments on the blog where it has been posted.

In case you don't know what I'm talking about, a young lady named Erica Goldson used her valedictorian speech at her high school graduation to - for lack of a better word - deconstruct the idea of education and higher learning.

I have no clue about what I want to do with my life; I have no interests because I saw every subject of study as work, and I excelled at every subject just for the purpose of excelling, not learning. And quite frankly, now I’m scared.

I wouldn't dare tell this girl she's wrong, for my part. This moment where we find ourselves in American educational history is a pretty terrifying one because in my estimation, it is the culmination of the warnings made by C.S. Lewis in his book The Abolition of Man. If you will remember, Lewis claims in Abolition that an educational system which refuses to acknowledge the possibility of values judgments will have dire long-term consequences. Specifially, he says that it will create synthetic men - men without chests. Whoever wrote the article on Abolition on Wikipedia did such a brilliant job that I will let them explain in summary, Lewis' prediction of what this would lead to.

a distant future in which the values and morals of the majority are controlled by a small group who rule by a perfect understanding of psychology, and who in turn, being able to "see through" any system of morality that might induce them to act in a certain way, are ruled only by their own unreflected whims. The controllers will no longer be recognizably human, the controlled will be robot-like, and the Abolition of Man will have been completed.

What this young lady says in her valedictorian speech is a full expression of someone who has seen through, in my opinion, an educational system with no telos. Secularized education has made it a goal to distance itself from any system of ideals, and therefore cannot tell us why it educates. We have in the American educational system the perfect example of Sisyphus, pushing the boulder up the hill only to see it roll down on the other, repeating the task ad nauseum. By stripping itself of any ultimate purpose, modern education has simply become education for its own sake, and this girl can see it.

Why was she being educated? To make her into a good citizen? Well, that leads to a problem, because who can tell anyone what a "good" citizen is? They cannot even account for goodness, let alone the imperative of conformity to that goodness. This girl admittedly lived a purposeless existence and was trained for nothing, ultimately.

I excelled at every subject just for the purpose of excelling, not learning. And quite frankly, now I'm scared.

So she thinks learning should have been her goal, but that still would have left her in the same situation. Her nihilistic outlook is consistent with the worldview which lay behind her training. When we divorce ourselves from our purposes, we end up chasing our own tails.

In the end, she chooses to believe with H.L. Menken that the telos of the American educational system is "to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality." That is why I actually still consider this girl somewhat optimistic. At least she is willing to genuflect a bit to her educators paying the backhanded compliment of assigning purpose to what they have been doing - even if it is a malevolent purpose. I consider this erroneous, because the truth is much more devious. Education long ago eschewed any possibility of a purpose beyond simply "education" itself. Students today are like the dog who catches the truck because it's parked, and now it has no idea what's next.

As I said, and as Lewis predicted, this is only the beginning of the Men Without Chests. They are on the march; they just don't know where they're marching. But I can tell you that based on my knowledge of human nature, the destination looks like something of a cross between Hollywood, Rome, and Las Vegas.

Coherentism Reduces to Relativism and Skepticism

Christianity is not inconsistent with agnosticism, so it's not as if pointing out that agnosticism leads to skepticism will lead agnostics to convert to Christianity unless they simply do not fully understand both Christianity and agnosticism. It is only useful in pointing out internal inconsistencies.

Thus read a message from one of my former nemeses (he has posted here in the past under the name 'The Heretic') reacting to my previous post on agnosticism. One of my biggest flaws is that even though I have a B.A. in Philosophy, I am not a philosopher. I'm just a plebe who knows how to form syllogisms. Apparently, my friend/nemesis holds to a theory of truth known as "coherentism" which says that a belief is true if and only if it is coherent with all or most of his or her other beliefs.

As a layperson who has only a rudimentary knowledge of coherentism, I have a few problems with thinking this way about truth:

For starters, this strikes me as easily reducing to relativism. For example, Mr. Brown may say, "God has revealed Himself in the person of Christ" while maintaining an overall coherent worldview. However, Mrs. Grundy may say, "God has not revealed Himself in the person of Christ" while also having a coherent overall worldview. Each statement may (let us grant) cohere with that person's whole system of belief, but that means that both of these persons possesses the truth given the coherentist schema.

This reduces to skepticism, subjectivism, and relativism, as I said, because if two different people can believe mutually contradictory propositions and yet they can both be said to be "true" by any schema - coherentist or otherwise, then truth shows itself to be different for every system. Presumably, one who is a coherentist could consistently show that a belief system is flawed by identifying inconsistencies within it. Which brings us to The Heretic's statement at the beginning of this post.

I only assert that no living human person has knowledge. On the other hand GOD has knowledge because he is omniscient and it takes omniscience to have knowledge because only by omniscience can one have any knowledge in a coherantist system.

Isn't that the point of God's communicating truth to His creation? We do not have exhaustive knowledge of Creation, but we have been spoken to by One Who does have exhaustive knowledge of creation.

Now the odd part is that The Heretic does claim to be a skeptic. In reality, most debates are an effort to reduce the opponent to skepticism and subjectivism. Given a skeptical approach, nothing I say will be able to satisfy the demands by a skeptic, because even his own worldview is saddled with skepticism and unmet intellectual demands.

The Unprofessional Book Review: H.G. Wells' When the Sleeper Wakes

I just finished reading a novel by H.G. Wells titled When the Sleeper Wakes. It is a tale about a man named Graham who in 1897 is walking around London, despondent over his inability to fall asleep. He reveals to a new friend that he hasn't slept in nearly a week and is in utter despair. His friend takes pity on him in his near-zombie state and brings him back to his home where Graham falls unexpectedly asleep.

When Graham wakes up, he finds himself in a display case in some sort of museum. He is quite disoriented, but eventually finds out the shocking truth: he has been sleeping for 203 years, and that means that he has woken up in the year 2100. Graham had a modest savings when he fell asleep, but apparently Graham's wealth has been cared for in a trust since he fell asleep, and now he appears to be king over half of the earth because of the size of his fabulous wealth. Also, his status as "the sleeper" has become somewhat iconic. Watching a 22nd Century television show, Graham discovers that "when the sleeper wakes" has become an expression for things which are never going to happen.

2100 is a time of political unrest, however, and there are many in society who want to claim Graham's wealth for themselves. Apparently, there is a council which rules over most of the earth, and they rule in Graham's name. Having never expected Graham to actually wake up (some of them thought he might actually be dead) they find themselves in the odd position of needing to hand Graham his power, even though he understands nothing of the 2100 political world.

Apparently, Graham discovers that the council is plotting to kill him and he is rescued by the resistance fighters who gather around a man named Ostrog. The council is eventually overthrown and Graham becomes the owner of nearly half the world. He immediately makes Ostrog his steward, and Ostrog takes care of the day-to-day affairs of Graham's empire.

One of the more interesting changes - to my mind - is Wells' interesting prediction that in a hundred years all numbers will be calculated in dozens, and that there will be a new single digit for the number '11'. Another prediction by Wells that is a bit more spot on was his depiction of television. Considering that he wrote this book in 1899, the fact that he foresaw small cylindrical portable devices which you could watch 'shows' on is pretty imaginative. I've got to give Wells credit there.

I did find an oh-so-generous passing reference to Christianity in one part of the book. Graham is flying over England and he sees a "Pleasure City" filled with games and all sorts of distractions...

saloons, baseball and football circuses, wild beast rings and the innumerable temples of the Christian and quasi-Christian sects, the Mahomedans, Buddhists, Gnostics, Spook Worshippers, the Incubus Worshippers, the Furniture Worshippers, and so forth...

In Wells' future, religion is just another distraction.

A little later in the book, Graham is walking down the street in a disguise so as not to attract attention to himself. He sees bright signs designed by the Christians to draw the attention of passersby.

these inscriptions arrested him, being to his sense for the most part almost incredible blasphemy. Among the less offensive were "Salvation on the First Floor and turn to the Right." "Put your Money on your Maker." "The Sharpest Conversion in London, Expert Operators! Look Slippy!" "What Christ would say to the Sleeper;—Join the Up-to-date Saints!" "Be a Christian—without hindrance to your present Occupation." "All the Brightest Bishops on the Bench to-night and Prices as Usual." "Brisk Blessings for Busy Business Men."

He remarks with alarm that this seems like a dreadfully irreverent type of Christianity, but his companion replies,

I suppose it would, of course. I had forgotten. Nowadays the competition for attention is so keen, and people simply haven't the leisure to attend to their souls, you know, as they used to do...In the old days you had quiet Sabbaths and the countryside. Though somewhere I've read of Sunday afternoons that—

Here is the sad part. H.G. Wells was right about what would happen to the popular forms of Christianity and its ugly fate. The only difference is, it didn't take 200 years for Christianity to become a mere form of amusement and an irreverent novelty; it took something more like 90 years, though the seeds of its fate were planted long before that. But I'll leave further analysis of this sort to experts like George Marsden.

The book predicts airplanes, but Wells could not have imagined that they would exist within 30 years of writing this novel. He thought it would take much longer. Also, his airplanes in the year 2100 are still a bit amateurish, as he pictures them having cloth wings and being open to the air. He imagines that people will have to drink elixers in order to counteract the low air pressure from being up so high. So ironically, he still has more faith in Christianity to last 200 years than he does in science to make a workable Sopwith Camel.

In the end, Graham does become the master of the human race. He uses his power to dissolve his ownership of the world and give his property back to the human race, but Ostrog, his steward he left in charge rises against him, and the book ends with a climactic air battle between Graham and Ostrog. In the end, we are left uncertain as to Graham's survival as his plane plummets to the earth.

H.G. Wells is clearly a socialist and displays his Union card quite prominently in this book. His portrayal of the labor class is saddening and at the same time realistic. However, Wells very clearly does not present a solution to their situation except to "give the world" to the people.

My interpretation of the religious themes - though few - are that Wells has a great reverential respect for Christ, but does not believe that Christianity has the durability to survive 200 years of cultural shifts while still emerging in some recognizable form. In many respects, he over-estimated the survival of Christianity in popular culture, because his predictions for Christianity a hundred years from now are already here. In many churches, leadership have such little estimation of their people that they teach them nothing more than slogans and catchphrases to build their understanding of the Christian life upon. There is still a remnant of true faith, however, and Wells obviously is taking something of a naturalistic or sociological understanding of Christianity into account. However, in Wells' future, there are no books, so I could see that in a world without the Bible, how could any meaningful Christian faith endure?

Dystopian novels like this are awesome. I love them. But they tell us more about the author than they do about the actual future. Clearly, it is hard to tell if this is the future that Wells predicts, that he would wish for, or if it is just a fictional city fitting the need of the story. However, many off-handed comments demonstrate that Wells has a soft-spot for eugenics and that he still predicts racial divisions to exist in society in 2100 (the invading army led by Ostrog are "fearsome negros." He also uses other racist phraseology (at one point he has the referring to Graham as "boss massa") to refer to the Africans. So Wells was a racist, and he believed in eugenics. He still wrote one gripping and fascinating novel, especially for its time. The whole time I was quite impressed that this book had been written in the 1800s, because it took a great deal of thought and imagination, and for that we can appreciate the creative genius of the man even while rejecting his evil views on race and eugenics.

Spiritualizing Absurdity

Agnosticism regarding almost anything is quite in vogue, today. This is especially true of the postmodern sort where supposed Christians will argue that nobody can know anything, that nobody can really read the Bible, and that knowledge is totally elusive. This is especially relevant today, since Christian writers and leaders - especially the Emergent sort - assert repeatedly that we really can't know anything about the Bible. One factor in the rise of this sort of thinking is the mistaken notion that it is "humble" to think this way. Perhaps a sociologist or student of modern theology can trace this thinking for us at some point.

For example, Donald Miller, in his uber-popular book Blue Like Jazz talks about what a waste of time discussions about God's existence are, and he rhetorically asks, "Who knows anything anyway?" He later says that if he walks away from God, "I will walk away for social reasons, identity reasons, deep emotional reasons, the same reasons that any of us do anything." But not because of truth claims since nobody can get to the bottom of these questions. He appears to be somewhat of a Kierkegaardian fideist in his identity as a Christian. Apparently blindly leaping into truth claims is in his gut. Another friend of mine on Facebook, regarding yesterday's post about agnosticism said somewhat wryly, "I'm a Christian and I still don't believe I know anything."

All that to say that the preceding discussion of agnosticism and its destruction of knowledge is also relevant within Christian (defined broadly) circles. This deserves some attention because it is becoming more and more common to meet Christians who claim to follow Christ and yet eschew any possibility of real knowledge.

While I am reticent to actually label this Emergent-style agnosticism, I will do it for my own convenience. I am almost tempted to call it something like post-emergent, but I will probably address my proposal for that term at a later date. If you will, allow me set forth an argument against this popular modern Christian Agnosticism (hereafter "CA") with Christian Agnosticism being defined as the belief that while one can be a Christian and also reject the possibility of attaining a basic understanding of truth:

1. If CA is true, then no one has knowledge.
2. CA is true.
So 3. No one has knowledge.

This is meant as a reductio ad absurdum against this Emergent sort of "lazy Christianity" for whom Christianity is simply a conveniently adopted lifestyle with no basis in truth. While I would argue we should affirm (1), let me suggest that (2) ought to be rejected since (3) following from it would lead to absurdity.

In order to substantiate this conclusion, let me state my argument positively:

1. If CA is true, then no one has knowledge.
2. Someone has knowledge.
So 3. Therefore, CA is not true.

Now, let me substantiate (1). As Plantinga showed in yesterday's post, skepticism regarding our origins means that we cannot know that we are right or wrong about anything. This cuts the CA position just as well, because if possibility of knowledge is really impossible, then so is the proposition that "possibility of knowledge is really possible." If one cannot even state one's doubts without having doubts about one's doubts, then the CA must simply sit on their hands and admit that they're fideists and have as much ground for being Christians as they do for converting to Islam.

Agnosticism Makes Knowledge Impossible

In chapter seven of Warranted Christian Belief, Alvin Plantinga discusses the epistemological implications of agnosticism - specifically David Hume's formulation of it.

I shall argue that one who displays a certain kind of agnosticism with respect to his origin and place in the universe, and also grasps a certain cogent argument, will not, in fact, know anything at all; nothing he believes will have warrant sufficient for knowledge (218).

Plantinga then reminds us that a skeptical position does not know where we have gotten our faculties from. He reminds us that when it comes to where the universe came from, Hume declares, "A total suspense of judgment is here our only reasonable resource." Not only does the agnostic not know where our faculties came from, but he does not know the exact purpose which they were designed to serve.

Given agnosticism, our cognitive faculties could have come from any number of logically possible sources:

• We might have been created by God.
• We might have arisen from vegetative principle.
• We might have arise from copulation on the part of animals we know not of.
• The list of possibilities goes on and on.

In some of these possibilities, we would have warrant for believing our faculties to be reliable, but not in all of them. Given agnosticism, we do not have epistemological grounds for discerning which possibility is legitimate and which is not. As such, Plantinga says that the probability of our faculties actually being reliable is inscrutable - or unknowable. Here is how he expresses it:

R = The Proposition that our cognitive faculties are reliable
F = The relevant facts about our faculties' origin, purpose, and provenance
P = Probability

P(R/F) is unknowable. "Another way to put it: the probability of R given Hume's agnosticism is inscrutable." Plantinga uses a story to illustrate. He suggests a scenario where our space ship lands on a distant planet and upon cracking upon the door of the spaceship we find a radio that is telling us things that we have no knowledge of (what the weather in Beijing is, whether Caesar had eggs on toast on the morning he crossed the Rubicon, whether the first human to cross the Bering Strait into North America was right or left handed, and so on). Plantinga reminds us that although this device is spitting out information, we have no grounds for believing its statements to be factual because we do not know what its purpose is, or whether it has a purpose. "You see that the probability of its being reliable, given what you know about it, is for you inscrutable."

The fact that we do not know what the device's purpose is, or whether it has a purpose is the defeater for the proposition that the device speaks the truth. We are not warranted in believing what the device is telling us, given this defeater. Plantinga then applies this to agnosticism.

Because B is just any belief I hold - because I have a defeater for just any belief I hold - I also have a defeater for my belief that I have a defeater for B. This universal, all-purpose defeater provided by my agnosticism is also a defeater for itself, a self-defeating defeater...Thus the true skeptic will be skeptical all the way down; he "will be diffident of his philosophical doubts, as well as his philosophical conviction" (226)

Skepticism is self-defeating. It is the undefeatable defeater. "That is because any doubt about our cognitive faculties generally is a doubt about the specific faculty that produces this conviction."

Even if our apologetic methodology differs from Plantinga's, even if we disagree with his arguments in God Freedom and Evil, this is a very strong argument, and one which we Van Tillians should be quick to utilize. This argument is very similar to Plantinga's argument that naturalism is self-defeating, and I plan on taking up that argument as well at some point in the future.

"Who Could Fulfill It But a God?"

Jesus, whose blood so freely streamed
To satisfy the law's demand
By thee from guilt and wrath redeemed,
Before the Father's face I stand.

To reconcile offending man,
Make Justice drop her angry rod;
What creature could have formed the plan,
Or who fulfil it but a God?

No drop remains of all the curse;
For wretches who deserve the whole;
No arrows dipped in wrath to pierce
The guilty, but returning soul.

Peace by such means so dearly bought,
What rebel could have hoped to see?
Peace, by his injured sovereign wrought,
His Sovereign fastened to the tree.

Now, LORD, thy feeble worm prepare!
For strife with earth and hell begins;
Confirm and gird me for the war,
They hate the soul that hates his sins.

Let them in horrid league agree!
They may assault, they may distress;
But cannot quench thy love to me,
Nor rob me of the LORD my peace.

-William Cowper
Olney Hymnal, Hymn 22; "JEHOVAM-SHALEM"

My Brief Thoughts on Inception

Having seen Inception, let me join the chorus of praises this movie has been getting. I have a few brief thoughts on the film.

• The Director, Christopher Nolan is to be lauded for taking one of the most complex storylines I have ever seen and translating it very effectively into a very entertaining, deep, and mind-boggling film.
• I appreciated the emphasis on the importance of ideas, and the destructiveness of basing your life on a deception.
• I liked the emphasis that the one who is dreaming is in control. I related this to the idea that all the universe is an outworking of the will of God, and that there is a certain sense in which we are all the dream of the Dreamer, God.
• I think that after this film and Shutter Island it's time for Lenardo DiCaprio to something less cerebral, even though I loved both films.
• [*Spoiler*] I loved how the very last shot of the film was meant to be, itself, a form of inception.
• The movie had lots of cool stunts, and all of a sudden I finally think that Joseph Gordon-Levitt is a pretty cool guy.
• I've never had to work so hard to keep four different simultaneous dreams straight in a movie before. Because I've never seen a movie with four simultaneous dreams within each other before.
• I praise God for the gifts he gives to people - both pagan and Christian alike. This film demonstrated the greatest of skill in its execution.
• [*Spoiler*] While I can relate with those who think that the top keeps spinning at the end of the movie, I choose to believe that the entire movie took place within the real world and that it was not all happening within one big dream. My wife differs with me and is certain that the top was not about to fall over. I could clearly see the wobble. It was about to happen right before the cut!
• It's interesting to see a film where the main character is his own antagonist. There are no real external villains in this movie.
  
• This page has pretty in-depth answers to questions which might be puzzling some about the movie.

Alvin Plantinga

I was looking through my copy of Plantinga's Warranted Christian Belief from Dr. Reiter's Epistemology class. We were fortunate enough to have a Philosophy professor in college who was not only a Calvinist, but whose doctoral thesis was on epistemology. At the time, I didn't appreciate our discussions of epistemology, Cornelius Van Til or Alvin Plantinga nearly enough, but now years later I am intensely grateful to have gained my Philosophy degree from an orthodox, believing Westminster man who loved Jesus Christ and studying epistemology.

Our initial encounter with Alvin Plantinga in class was in our "Atheistic Argument from Evil" class where we specifically discussed the so-called "problem of evil." In the class, we encountered Plantinga's answer to the problem from his book God Freedom and Evil, the infamous free-will defense where he discusses transworld depravity and other notions which I barely grasped (and still don't understand). All I knew was that if Plantinga used the free-will defense, then he was no bueno in my book.

All that to say, my first impressions of Alvin Plantinga weren't all that great. Even now, I don't feel like I understand Transworld Depravity (maybe some plainspoken genius can put it into English for me). However, piggybacking somewhat off of the Van Til post from yesterday, it occurred to me that Plantinga does a great deal of footwork which we Van Tillians can make use of in our apologetics - especially against agnosticism and naturalism.

Plantinga has a chapter in Warranted Christian Belief where he discusses the dual enemies of the Christian philosopher: agnosticism and naturalism. What I want to do in tomorrow's post is take a cursory glance at Plantinga's argument against Hume's brand of agnosticism. In a later post we'll look at Plantinga's (not entirely original - and yet devastating) argument that naturalism is self-defeating.

Free Tim Keller Book!

"Why would someone risk his safety, destroy his schedule, and become dirty and bloody to help a needy person of another race and social class? And why would Jesus tell us "Go and do likewise"? Like the wounded man on the Jericho road, there are needy people in our path- the widow next door, the family strapped with medical bills, the homeless man outside our place of worship. God call us to be ministers of mercy to people in need of shelter, assistance, medical care, or just friendship."

Christian Audio's free audiobook of the month is Tim Keller's Ministries of Mercy.

Westminster Books is selling the physical book at 50% off right now for $6.50, which is hard to beat unless you're buying it beat up and written all over at my yard sale.

The questions Keller deals with in the book:

• Is everyone called to mercy, or only those who are gifted for it?
• Should I show mercy to my neighbor even if I don’t feel like it?
• Didn’t the poor just get themselves into the mess they’re in? Do they really deserve my help?
• Is it ever merciful to withhold giving from someone?
• How do you balance sharing the gospel verbally and living out the Christian life in a visible way?

Van Tillian Syllogisms

Dr. Reiter, our Philosophy professor, summarized several of Cornelius Van Til's epistemological arguments. Here I present them in syllogistic form, for those who think logically:

The One-and-Many Argument:

1. If knowledge is possible, then unity and plurality must be co-ultimate.
2. Knowledge is possible.
So 3. Unity and plurality are co-ultimate.
4. If unity and plurality are co-ultimate, then Christian theism is true.
So 5. Christian theism is true.

Argument from the Unity of Knowledge:

1. If no one has comprehensive knowledge of the universe, then no one has any knowledge.
2. Someone does have some knowledge.
So 3. Someone has comprehensive knowledge (and thus, God exists).

Argument from the Uniformity of Nature:

1. If one cannot account for the uniformity of nature, then beliefs based on inductive reasoning are not warranted (ala Hume's critique of induction).
2. Beliefs based on inductive reasoning are warranted.
So 3. One can account for the uniformity of nature
4. If one can account for the uniformity of nature, then theism is true.
So 5. Theism is true.

Argument from Conceptual Schemes:

1. If theism is not true, then there are no grounds for believing that human knowledge and communication are possible.
2. There are grounds for believing that human knowledge and communication are possible.
So 3. Theism is true.

Music for Theologians: Hammock

Back in the 90s, one of my favorite bands was Common Children. I still love Common Children, and I listen to their music with unavoidable nostalgia. With their last album, they took a decidedly dream-pop turn, and all their fans got a glorious taste of Marc Byrd's beautiful guitar work. Since then, Byrd has written songs such as "God of Wonders" and acted as producer for bands like The Glorious Unseen and even produced a tremendous album with his wife, Christine Glass.

In 2004, Byrd partnered with Andrew Thompson and began releasing albums of glorious ambient-shoegaze music under the name Hammock. Now, I mention this band in the context of doing theology because it is perfect music to listen to while working your way through a meaty text or struggling to finish Vos' Biblical Theology. It is at once gorgeous and emotive and yet unobtrusive.

I am a big time advocate of post-rock music because rather than entertain, it is music which enriches our immediate experiences. I am constantly in a worshipful mindset when I listen to Hammock. As I drive to the store, I turn this music on and am reminded that life is more than a series of material experiences; there is a transcendent element to Hammock's music which makes studying theology feel like the most important thing in the universe - which it is. Almost.

Like all music which is without lyrics, listeners of post-rock music can insert their own ideas or notions into the music, but lyric-less music can be redeemed by Christians just as much as it can ruined by pagans. Also, knowing that Byrd and Co. do approach the music they do with a Christian perspective in mind, for me, makes me feel somewhat justified in delighting in God while listening to the gorgeousness of it all.

If someone was to pick an album by Hammock to start with, I would suggest Raising Your Voice...Trying to Stop an Echo. It is the most guitar-heavy (very ethereal guitar; not at all a U2 album by any stretch), shoegazerish album from them so far. Also, Amazon is selling the MP3 version of the album for $6.99 which is a great deal. However, their album Kenotic is a close second. I also would not shy away from recommending their newest album, which is also epically beautiful; it is called Chasing After Shadows...Living With the Ghosts. My favorite song off of the new album is called "Little Fly/Mouchette" which reminds me a great deal of Brian Eno's greatest piece of ambient work ever, "An Ending: Ascent." In fact, as of this moment as I write this, if you go to Amazon's Hammock page, you can see that the first song off of Chasing After Shadows... is available for free download.

French Mother Murders Her 8 Babies; Naturalism Cannot Condemn This

An article in the UK Telegraph is reporting that a woman spent many years killing her babies and burying them in her back yard. The woman, a 45 year old nurse, is accused of "systematically killing her babies since 1988... It appears she had been hiding her pregnancies from her husband." Most people react to this story with shock; I know I do. One of the woman's neighbors said, "We all knew this couple. What has happened is unthinkable. No one knows how to react. We are in shock...They never did anything to suggest that they might be capable of abnormal behaviour. The husband was even elected to the town council."

Here is my question (and it is rhetorical, unless an atheist really wants to rise to the occasion): On what basis should we be morally outraged that this woman has chosen to eliminate her offspring?

Given a darwinian outlook, the worst charge that can be leveled is that this woman is simply defective (but by what standards?) - or "abnormal" as the neighbor said. Buy why? Because she has not effectively preserved her genetic fingerprint? But even more dreadfully, in a darwinian universe, this one creature spawned more creatures and then showed that she was the fittest by elimination of said new competition from the gene pool. Many atheist ethicists theorize that motherly instincts exist so that genes can be preserved. They theorize this to explain situations where parents give their lives to save their children, for example. Surely there is a darwinian motive for altruistic behavior towards one's offspring.

So what are we to make of this woman, then? They might argue that she is simply broken, but if that is the worst moral outrage that can be leveled at this evil woman, then that may hardly be regarded as a condemnation at all.

What cannot be explained, however, on the atheistic formula, is whether it was truly objectively wrong that this woman was murdering babies year after year. If her murder of these babies was merely conventionally wrong, then upon what basis do we condemn her? The Christian understanding of human beings tells us that these children were made in God's image and that this mother was made in God's image, as well. As a moral being with God's law within, she is guilty of suppressing the moral law and murdering at least eight times. This crime can be understood in Christian terms, but the naturalist understanding of these events only has some creatures eliminating other creatures. I will leave it to the reader to decide if such an analysis is sufficient.

He Thinks His Wife's a Calvinist