Undeception

I’m going to review an atrocious article I just read, and I think you’ll agree that deconstructing it will be like child’s play. And not just because it appeared in my daughter’s latest issue of Clubhouse Jr.

Featured in Focus on the Family’s magazine aimed at children aged 4 to 8, “From Goo to You?” is a two-page article authored by Barbara Owens. And boy, do those two pages pack a wallop: they’re positively jam-packed with inaccurate information, ranging from ostensibly genuine misunderstandings to obvious, indefensible misrepresentations. In the process, Owens (on behalf of Focus on the Family) throws key fellow evolution critics under the bus even while borrowing their terminology — but more on that later.

From the outset let me assure you that my comments about “creationists” and the boneheadedness (at best — dishonesty at worst) of the people behind this article are not meant to be applied to parents and kids who believe in creationism. As a former creationist, born of creationist parents, I understand how hard it is to reject the deafening roar of the evangelical Christian community, which has been lockstep in sync on the subject of how ridiculous and wicked evolution is. I read that there are 88,000 subscribers to this magazine, and if you consider multiple children in the household, you begin to see how wide a reach this article will get. I can’t help but be of the old fashioned opinion that people should know better before they set about trying to propagandize the whole evangelical population of children.

The article begins,

“Humans evolved from apes.”

You may have read those words in a science textbook or heard them spoken by a teacher as a fact. But the real fact is that scientists don’t know how life began.

And thus begins a common motif of this article. This is one of those instances in which no benefit of the doubt can be granted: no one who has the temerity to write or publish an article denying the scientific consensus on evolution may claim ignorance of the simple, foundational truth that the theory of evolution is an explanation for the diversity of life, not the origin of life. One might believe wholeheartedly both that God placed the first cell on earth Himself and that the theory of evolution is solid, root and branch — and maintain no cognitive dissonance in doing so. Evolution is a description of how things already living are related.

To the contrary, Owen claims, “Basically, evolution says the universe once consisted of a few disorganized chemicals floating around in space. Those chemicals somehow combined to form living creatures.” So “evolution” says that, huh? Oh, my aching head.

But it doesn’t let up. At least half of the article is devoted to pushing this idea. The subsection entitled “Puzzle Problem” is organized around the following premise:

One of the major problems behind evolution is the spontaneous generation of life. Evolutionists say life formed from primordial goo.

Disjointedly, it continues, “After numerous mutational changes and billions of years, life became more complex.” From here an analogy unfolds: the chance of mutations creating complexity like we have now is akin to the chance that shaking a box of puzzle pieces and throwing them on the floor will assemble the puzzle correctly. This section ends with the snide remark that one would have to be at it for billions of years for it to happen. I’m sure multiple of my readers will see the problems with that analogy. Any takers?

The most dangerous and one of the least accurate presuppositions underlying this article is summed up in the first sentence of the second paragraph: “At its foundation, the theory of evolution starts with one basic premise: There is no God.” Despite numerous high profile counterexamples, creationist indoctrinators like FoF keep repeating the mantra that evolution is just a shroud thinly veiling atheism. “But by excluding God, evolution ultimately boils down to the religion of self-worship.”

“The religion of self-worship.” Yes, and the “evolution is a religion” argument continues. The final subsection is entitled “Faith of Evolution”, which contains the typical gem, “In reality, because of the holes and questions in evolution, it takes more faith to believe in that theory than it does to believe in a creator God.” Elsewhere, “And ultimately because both evolution and creation take faith to believe in, couldn’t the world really have been formed just like the Bible says?”

So evolution is an atheistic faith system locked up with a sign that informs passersby that “Evolution doesn’t allow for an intelligent Designer. It relies on chance mutation and the power of time to explain life.” So now even key Intelligent Design advocates such as Michael Behe who accept even human evolution are off their rocker, because foolish Creator-denying is the only reason anyone would accept common descent. Has anyone been kind enough to inform Behe of his apostasy?

One section attempts to address what school kids are to do when their teacher “says evolution is fact”. After encouraging them not to be too confrontational, it lists a few not-as-confrontational questions to be raised:

1. If all animals and humans evolved from other creatures, why don’t we find any fossils of transitional forms that are halfway between two creatures?

Oh, but we do. Far too many for someone purporting to be instructing children about science to ignore.

2. If the universe began as a bunch of disorganized elements, where did those elements come from?

Good question for atheists. But as I explained above, it has exactly bupkis to do with evolution.

3. Why aren’t fossils of the smallest organisms found in the “oldest,” deepest layers of the earth and more complex organisms found near the top?

A leading question that’s built on an out-and-out lie. Even if there weren’t enough evidence of this being the case (and it’s not even close), the question is posed in such a way as to deny that it happens at all! That’s a bald-faced misrepresentation of clear facts not denied even by serious creationist organizations (they even have to come up with crackpot theories to explain why complex organisms are on top and less complex ones are lower). Worse, what is Johnny going to say when teacher replies, showing the fossil record in the geological column?

4. Because fossils don’t hold little signs that say, “Hello, I am a fossil. I have been sitting here for ___ years. Have a nice day,” don’t scientists have to “date” fossils based on their beliefs?

This is a poorly phrased version of the circularity argument. Andrew McRae explains in the Talk Origins FAQ on Radiometric Dating and the Geological Time Scale, “When a geologist collects a rock sample for radiometric age dating, or collects a fossil, there are independent constraints on the relative and numerical age of the resulting data. Stratigraphic position is an obvious one, but there are many others. There is no way for a geologist to choose what numerical value a radiometric date will yield, or what position a fossil will be found at in a stratigraphic section. Every piece of data collected like this is an independent check of what has been previously studied. The data are determined by the rocks, not by preconceived notions about what will be found. Every time a rock is picked up it is a test of the predictions made by the current understanding of the geological time scale. The time scale is refined to reflect the relatively few and progressively smaller inconsistencies that are found. This is not circularity, it is the normal scientific process of refining one’s understanding with new data. It happens in all sciences.”

In another little section set off from the main text are listed a few of creationists’ favorite criticisms under the heading “Miracles of Darwinism“. The first is the rehashed “spontaneous generation of life” criticism of abiogenesis cloaked as criticism of evolutionary theory (yes, again). Next is the common argument that evolution depends too much on time; yes, an ancient universe as measured by astronomy, geology, and other independent disciplines is a necessary component of evolution, but time itself isn’t enough — mutations are an essential part. They must have realized this — the next cited “miracle” is the “persistence of the improbable”, which maintains that mutations are overwhelmingly harmful. Last is an obligatory dig at punctuated equilibrium.

The pervasiveness and unanimity of the anti-evolution teaching to Christian children is why I thought I’d even bother responding to this article. All my kids’ peers, especially in the homeschooling community we’re a part of, are firm YEC’s and their families probably welcomed this article as warmly as my sainted parents would have. However, my perceptive science geek young daughter will soon begin to notice how much at variance this article’s claims are with the information in the many science books she devours. So now I have to figure out how to explain to my daughter (before I am honestly ready to) why most of her Christian peers would consider her father an atheist in sheep’s clothing.

Maybe they’re just trying to force me to focus on my family. Gee, thanks!

A funny thing happened on my way through Paul’s epistles.

I read through all of Paul’s letters over the last couple days, trying to take note of the commonalities rather than the issues specific to the churches, such as the Judaizer conflict in the Galatian church, the disorder in the Corinthian church, etc. I wanted to identify his consistent baseline concerns for those he was writing to. I even read the lot in presumed chronological order, just in case there was a shift in his emphasis throughout time; I made note of no dramatic changes (this certainly isn’t to say that I disbelieve there are such), or even any indisputable nuances or drifts. But I did see more than I expected.

It felt like I rediscovered first century Christianity. You know, the first century Christianity most modern evangelical churches claim to be trying to “get back to”. And I must say, I was startled. A bit unnerved, even.

If you listen to the modernized version of Christianity so prevalent in America, you’ll come away thinking that Christianity was and still is to be lived out primarily by holding fast to good theology, witnessing to the lost to bring them into the fold, and, almost incidentally, attempting to be a better person. Quite recently I’ve made the argument that those who claim that Christianity was originally supposed to be about believing the right things were wrong; I’ve contended that our faith was always supposed to be about doing good, spreading the Kingdom of God. It turns out that even in my criticism I was only half-right. I want to show you what I heard Paul saying about two of our modern assumptions about how Christians are supposed to live.

• Who is saved and who does not depends on whether one believes (some particular number of right things), not whether one acts a certain way.

If you ignore what’s in the air among Protestants today and listen directly to Paul, you’ll come away with the startlingly clear observation that only two simple and related beliefs were explicitly demanded: that Jesus was raised from the dead, and that this as opposed to following the Jewish law is what justifies us.

Things get muddy here: what is justification, and how is it different from sanctification, which throughout the Pauline epistles were asserted to be based upon putting away bad behavior and putting on righteous behavior? The popular, non-Holiness Movement response is that justification gets you “saved”, while personal holiness is our expected response. After all, Paul certainly said, “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” The problem is, personal holiness is also unequivocally — in several of Paul’s letters – listed to be the determining factor upon which ultimate salvation the outcome of our judgement as believers on the imminent “day of Christ” depends. [Edited: I was prompted to change my position on this last based upon two responses (one below and one in private correspondence) that made me go back and look at the epistles yet again; I concluded that I overstated this point. Paul did seem to teach consistently that our identification with Christ through faith is the determining factor of our salvation, although there are a couple passages that suggest he wasn't quite sure how God was going to react if Jesus came back to find believers acting debaucherously. Thanks, Dan and Joe!]

For Paul, faith in practice was to consist almost entirely of what most modern Christians denominations and sects have dismissed as the “holiness” tradition. Yet how many sermons have we heard that insist that what believers actually do doesn’t affect God’s opinion of us (only that doing bad things makes Him sad); that “nothing we can do can make God love us more, and nothing we can do can make God love us less”; that Paul’s entire theology could be summed up as “works-based religion is bad, religion based only on believing is good”? These may or may not be true, but we should not gloss over his other clear teachings.

Not too long ago, I told someone that Jesus was certainly more interested in personal holiness and good works than you’d surmise from the impression given by the epistles. I was wrong about the epistles. I implore you to go back to Paul’s epistles and look for specific instructions for the congregations and the rationale given.

There are all kinds of convoluted theological constructs that try to ignore Paul’s emphasis on personal holiness or downplay Paul’s warning of the consequences, but if you read the words of Paul rather than the words of Paul through Luther, the conclusion is glaringly obvious. I even wrote down a lot of references when I was reading through the epistles, but I don’t want to proof-text anything or leave any question about whether there are other verses that I conveniently left out that support the other view; I’d rather just encourage your to empty your mind of presuppositions and read Paul’s epistles for yourself.

On the bright side, this puts the kibosh on the conclusion I’d reached that Paul’s and James’ view of soteriology were essentially different, if not contradictory. [Edit again: well, thanks to Dan and Joe, this tension resurfaces. ]

• Personal evangelism is an essential part of every believer’s Christian life.

The observation about the importance Paul placed on sanctification surprised me, but this positively startled me: I could not find one solitary instance in which Paul told the people of the churches to evangelize.

A couple times Paul exhorted believers to behave well toward outsiders, and to do their best not to offend them; he certainly told Timothy as a pastor to evangelize; he wrote a fair amount about evangelism — his, anyway. When discussing the proclamation of the gospel to unbelievers, he consistently wrote of it being done by an “us” group that always remained distinct from the recipient congregation. He besought the churches for prayer that he and others engaged in evangelism might be bold and the like. In the end, all of this is distinctly different from the common marching order given to Christians to actively evangelize everywhere we go. If it is truly a supreme duty of every Christian to bring others into the faith, we certainly do not know this because of anything Paul said; in fact, it is far likelier that an egocentric interpretive emphasis (“The Bible was written to me!”) and a de-emphasis on the crucial audience-relevance hermeneutic have influenced modern evangelicals (in both senses) to misappropriate Paul’s talk of gospel proclamation, the “thousands more were added” emphasis of the book of Acts, and Jesus’ Great Commission as being intended for every believer singly.

It will be argued from “just plain common sense” and from passages outside Paul that witnessing is a good thing. I am not trying to deny this. My point stands: it’s absolutely startling that Paul, the great evangelist so sure the return of Christ was right around the corner, never even once in passing expresses urgency about evangelism. If anything, he taught the church to be wary of interaction with unbelievers (the “unequally yoked” passage in 2 Cor 6 is about all relationships, not just marriage). And once again, this doesn’t itself mean the NT doesn’t teach personal evangelism, but as I’m sure you’ll find, it’s not in Paul. Don’t get me wrong — Paul was undoubtedly a passionate missionary and evangelist who fervently desired that more people hear the gospel, but it seems he really took his categorization of the duties of Christians seriously: he wasn’t going to tell everyone to do something that apostles and evangelists were supposed to be doing. (Here we have implied yet another thing my own evangelical tradition has denied, namely that the NT teaches a fairly sharp distinction between clergy and laity.)

I can’t underscore the significance of this omission enough. Not once in thirteen epistles amongst the myriad imperatives and exhortations to live in a way that would please the returning Christ did he so much as mention witnessing in passing. The closest he came was a couple scant references to watching how you deal with outsiders. For Paul, it certainly appears that evangelism was meant for “clergy” evangelists. Christians were to keep their heads down, being notable only in their humility and righteous living, by which they would be seen as worthy on the Day of Judgment when Christ was to return.

What are you saying?! девушку жестоко выпороли

Well, despite what it might sound like, I’m not concluding that both points above are incorrect, or even that Paul would necessarily have disagreed with them. I merely wanted to share my observation that what the majority of Christians believe about these topics nowadays is not Pauline, in the very important sense that we have a number of instances in which the necessity of sanctification for ultimate salvation was explicitly claimed and that we have no Scriptural record of him advocating active evangelism for all believers indiscriminately. Right or wrong, our church does not look like Paul’s, and if we’re to take his epistles and the book of Acts seriously, that means that the first century Church in general differed from ours in some striking ways.

This has gotten quite lengthy, so I’ll save another intriguing insight I had for another post. But this is quite enough for now, isn’t it?

What are you still reading this for? Go read Paul’s epistles!

A recent study in Nature News that I just read about is of interest to my field of graduate study, Indo-European linguistics. Of special interest to me, it ties in historical linguistics, the theory of evolution, and the nature of scientific inquiry in an interesting way.

Historical linguists have long supposed a link between most of the languages of Europe and India’s Sanskrit, an ancient forerunner of modern Hindi and a few other Indian languages. This link is now universally accepted to be common descent: they all shared a proto-language, spoken by a single population before splitting up and “evolving” into many of today’s languages.

The “common ancestor” of this family of languages is referred to as Proto-Indo-European (PIE). As with biological evolution, we can reconstruct its path and make suppositions about interrelationships based upon shared similarities and/or differences. Our suppositions cannot be confirmed: no one’s going to find a cassette recording or a written document in PIE, so our reconstructions will never be confirmed that way, although various stages before that proto-form have been captured and fleshed out our understanding better. Similarly, evolution, while corroborated by ancient evidence all the time, never stands a chance of finding a fossil of the first single-celled life. A fossil or a document of more “transitional forms” would be nice, but they’re not necessary to make a reasonable extrapolation that the ones we have found share ancestry.

Another similarity is how interdisciplinary the corroboration is; not only does linguistic evidence come into play, but literary and mythological data from the different daughter languages of support it as well. The Mahabharata is an ancient Sanskrit text that resonates with the cultural memory of India’s invasion by horsed foreigners during a time antecedent to the text by hundreds of years. Those horsed invaders were logically assumed to be an offshoot of eastbound Indo-Europeans (known as “Aryans”, a name that was misappropriated to mean white Europeans in general) whose language mostly displaced the indigenous language of those they conquered. Examination of commonalities among the earliest attested Indo-European cultures shows that the Indo-Europeans were indeed masters of horses, quite possibly having a hand in their original domestication; ancient rituals as far flung as Ireland, Rome, and India that involve certain very bizarre equine antics are unique enough that they bear all the marks of a common source. The other major language family in India is Dravidian, including over 70 distinct languages in use today, which is assumed to have been the language family indigenous to India before the Indo-Europeans.

Evolution has support from multiple disciplines also, and by far the most impressive branch so far has been in genetics. Comparing genomes and finding shared differences has overwhelmingly confirmed the picture evolutionary taxonomy posited by comparative anatomy. Well, on this point the study I mentioned comes in: genetic analysis now corroborates the picture given by comparative linguistics of the two-fold nature of Indian prehistory as composed of indigenous (Dravidian) and one particular non-indigenous people.

The researchers showed that most Indian populations are genetic admixtures of two ancient, genetically divergent groups, which each contributed around 40-60% of the DNA to most present-day populations. One ancestral lineage — which is genetically similar to Middle Eastern, Central Asian and European populations — was higher in upper-caste individuals and speakers of Indo-European languages such as Hindi, the researchers found. The other lineage was not close to any group outside the subcontinent, and was most common in people indigenous to the Andaman Islands, a remote archipelago in the Bay of Bengal.

via Nature News

Please note that the original homeland and precise ethnic heritage of the Indo-Europeans themselves are still unresolved; archaeology suggests that perhaps they were from the area north of the Black Sea. Speakers of Indo-European languages settled throughout the Middle East (the Hittites and Persians were Indo-European), Turkmenistan, and of course Europe. It isn’t surprising then that the “Middle Eastern, Central Asian and European populations” would be “genetically similar” to the Indians who speak Indo-European Indian languages.

But of course, this just indicates common design, not common descent…right???

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Update: New Scientist has an article about some of the interesting implications of the above linked study.

Three unmistakeable signs of someone no one has any business taking even half-seriously:

1) They imply or state outright that the beginning of the universe, the earth, or life itself have something to do with evolution (completely separate fields of scientific inquiry).

2) They play the Hitler card.

3) They use Kirk Cameron as their spokesperson.

Watch the below-linked video advertising a new version of Darwin’s Origin of Species published by Ray Comfort, who left Darwin’s book intact but added a large introduction “refuting” evolution as only a non-scientist religious whacko could do it. Unbelievable: the first two contentions Cameron makes in the opening seconds of this video are as preposterously false as they are alarmist — not to mention irrelevant to the creation/evolution debate (just like the Hitler issue). Cameron says fervently, “Our kids can no longer pray in public. They can no longer freely open a Bible in school.” What bald-faced lies (I’ll not soften it by calling them mere misrepresentations)!

It doesn’t get any better from there.

http://www.youtube.com/v/oM0oBuhTLRI

I couldn’t watch it all.

I suppose it goes without saying that approaching the Bible as contextually bound literature leaves you asking different questions and giving different answers.

In the comments of one my posts awhile back, someone expressed bemusement about why God protected Cain after he killed Abel. Not striking him down is easily answerable as an early expression of divine mercy — but did He have to go and make sure nobody killed him? Would it not have been more in line with God’s general practice (especially the OT God) to respond to Cain’s plea for clemency, “Yes, they probably will kill you. He who lives by the sword dies by the sword.” Think of the cataclysmic consequence of the wickedness of Cain’s line (the Flood) that God could have nipped in the bud by simply allowing vengeance to be taken on Cain. One might make an argument from within a certain theological system that this was an example of God essentially ordaining evil for His own sovereign purposes. The pernicious hermeneutical principle referred to as analogia fidei (the analogy of faith; “letting Scripture interpret Scripture”) goes about interpreting passages like these by ignoring relevant context and stringing unrelated Scriptures together along the flimsy string of theology the interpreter started with and insists upon reading into every nook and cranny.

This question is indeed puzzling so long as one approaches the Cain and Abel narrative as history. But I wouldn’t expect to learn much about Cain as an historical figure, since Genesis is not eyewitness history, and probably not sourced by written documents, either. Of course, I doubt there is much in Genesis that wasn’t based in the cultural memory of the Israelites or their neighboring cultures. However, the remnants of actual oral history in Genesis (more legendary than mythological) don’t seem to kick in until Abraham in chapter 12 where the style markedly changes. This material, while based on relatively recent oral history compared to the antiquity of the material in the first chapters, has been stylized and edited by the writer(s) in a fashion similar to what we refer to as saga in Icelandic literature: stories of family history, idealizing the exploits of revered ancestors and cultural heroes, at times reveling even in their mistakes.

What we read in Genesis should not be interpreted outside of a recognition of its original value and purpose: in the Old Testament, in which the heritage and history of the Hebrews’ interaction with YHWH is the main attraction, the cultural background of the Hebrews is the stage upon which it plays out. The historicity of these events does not matter in terms of redemptive history; what is important is that Israel began and maintained a covenant relationship with YHWH, and so a precise play by play of the events in historiographic fashion was not so important to them as it would be to us.

To date, I’ve seen no compelling reason to doubt that there were indeed important individuals in the anterior tribal history who correspond to the patriarchs and the children of Jacob (although I don’t know that we should bank on the precise familial relationship between them). However, the actual names of many individuals credited with being the single progenitor of people groups were probably based upon the supposition that tribal names continued patronyms — a reasonable, if not particularly reliable, extrapolation. This ancient crosscultural practice of depositing eponyms as characters in stories of the ancient past resulted in stories of individuals who, like the fabled founder of Rome, Romulus, may have never existed; in Scripture, the historicity of Ammon and Moab, whose parentage was perhaps not coincidentally as scandalous as their descendants the Ammonites and Moabites were problematic from the viewpoint of Israel. It seems likely that the name variation between Abraham/Abram and Jacob/Israel was an etiological explanation unifying the differences between multiple cultural traditions. The stories about how God changed their names are obviously just as instructive of God’s character and illustrative of the unfolding relationship between Him and Israel as if the stories were historical.

When we look at the Cain story within its literary context, we notice that Cain’s survival has an important place within the overall narrative of Genesis. God’s forbearance and even protection was a necessary plot device – how could there be ungodly descendants of Cain (an important story line in Genesis that probably came from an older tradition) inversely paralleling the godly descendants of Seth if Cain got struck down before he begat someone who would make his line a contender with Seth’s? Another consideration is that perhaps “the mark of Cain” was something already a part of their cultural lexicon and that this story was a way of situating that well-known idea within a context that made it relevant and helped along the story line.

However, given the moralistic intent of the Pentateuch, it seems likely to me that these stories also served as morality tales, which suggests that the story of God’s protection of Cain was included for other reasons than showing why he lived long enough to have offspring. This story ostensibly had a place within the larger redemptive context like the rest of Genesis (and the Bible, for that matter). Along those lines, one lesson from this story that I think was quite likely to be in the minds of the redactors was that the wicked can only live and prosper because God allows it; He has a special path for His followers, but allows the wicked a place in His economy, or they wouldn’t be here.

And so I end this little exercise with a lesson not so different from what I might have (and others probably have) drawn out without even considering the literary and cultural context. But I certainly don’t mean to imply that we needn’t bother reconstructing literary and cultural background. In fact, the opposite is true. My proposition of what the authors may have meant may not be correct after all, and I’ll gladly listen to other options. But my point is that:

1. We should focus our efforts on extracting the theological intent(s) of the authors of Scripture based upon reading them in their context (cultural and literary) rather than fooling ourselves into expecting that every conceivable inference we might make a good sermon out of was actually intended by the authors and by God (this all too popular hermeneutic philosophy is sometimes called interpretive maximalism).
2. While sometimes interpreting obscure Scripture based upon our pre-determined theological constructs may end up pointing roughly in the right direction (and indeed may corroborate the validity of the construct), this is precisely the reverse order of what it should be. We can be confident in our coordinating systems only as long as the interpretations composing them are sound contextual readings.

In short, we don’t use our heirloom china to feed the dog or to prop open a window; likewise, we show more respect for the sacred text when we are doing our best to use it in the precise manner in which it was intended to be used.

Any other thoughts on Cain?

I have read summaries of the incarnational model of Scripture as developed by Peter Enns, late of Westminster Theological Seminary, but too little of Enns himself. I think this recent post clarifying his model is quite useful.

The incarnation is essentially and inextricably a divine/human phenomenon. This means that, in speaking of the nature of the Bible, one cannot table the “human dimension” and prioritize the divine any more than one can do that of Christ and still speak of Jesus of Nazareth.

This is a very practical point, as it happens far too often that explanations of why, for example, the Bible contains very significant tensions on both the historical and theological levels, is explained in view of the ultimate “perfection” of the Bible that is deemed necessary on the basis of “priority of the divine.”

The problem here is that what “divine” means is divorced from the incarnation, as if we can apprehend the former apart from the latter. But incarnation, be it Christ or the Bible, is the means God himself chose to reveal himself to his people. In other words, one cannot get “behind” the incarnation to what God is really like and then judge the Bible (and those who read it differently) accordingly—as if God said, “Listen, I have this divine essence I want you to grab a hold of and be sure to maintain its priority, but the best I can do is to give you a divine/human expression of that essence. Your job is to use the incarnation to move beyond it, to see whether you can discern what is ‘really’ going on beyond this unfortunate divine/human mess I have had to deal with.”

A slight caricature, perhaps, but my experience is that such a view is not too far below a more sophisticated veneer. I do not think I am the only one to sense the Platonic, even Gnostic, overtones of such thinking.

Although he adds a bit more divine into the mix than I’ve grown accustomed to attributing to Scripture (I tend to view the divine as the catalyst and the response as thoroughly human), I do respect it. I really like his point about the error of the “priority of the divine” and his observation that such an emphasis betrays certain affinities to the theology of the Gnostics. I suspect, however, that Professor Enns might not appreciate my tendency to go the opposite direction and downplay the divine “nature” of Scripture.

I want to correct some misconceptions about what I was trying to say in my post, My love affair with theology, and what I didn’t say but which may be (and has already been) incorrectly inferred by people who aren’t familiar enough with me to catch my drift or by others who are too concerned about defending their own system to represent other beliefs accurately.

• I did say that I am sick of endless theology debates over nothing.
• I didn’t say that I am leaving all theological beliefs behind. Heck, my belief that orthopraxy is more important than orthodoxy is based on a theological belief.

• I did say that I don’t think we can be 100% sure of anything in theology.
• I didn’t say that all of our thoughts and understandings about God are inaccurate.

• I did say that the Bible presents sometimes contradictory statements on theological matters.
• I didn’t say that the Bible is useless for our pursuit of the truth about God — in fact, I also did say that I believe the Bible is a reasonably reliable testimony to the works of God by eyewitnesses who understood Him better than I do.

• I did say that I have come to reject rigid theological constructs, especially when they’re used as shibboleths of spirituality, reason, or eligibility for fellowship.
• I didn’t say that theological systems are innately evil and that no one should use them.

• I did say that the tendency for Protestants in particular is to create complex theological systems that gloss over problems or unnaturally cram in more data than the system can hold up.
• I didn’t say that there aren’t intellectually honest systems that are useful to help manage and make sense of data, as long as the conflicting evidence is honestly managed as well. By all means, if it helps you through the dark room, please do — just don’t try to convince yourself and others that the brick walls you bump into aren’t there.

• I did say that my love affair with theology, by which I meant spending an inordinate amount of time gathering the right things to believe in rather than acting on the right things I do believe in, is over. And I meant it.
• I didn’t say that I’m now an agnostic or an atheist. I will continue to look for good theology along the roadside, and take with me only the beliefs about God that I believe are helpful in making sense of His plan for me and for carrying out His will. 

Of course, all these caveats nonetheless leave me open to criticism from the theology crusaders. As if I needed any more proof that I’m going the right direction.