Schaeffer and Trinity

 In He is There and He Is Not Silent, Schaeffer makes the remark:

Every once in a while in my discussions someone asks how I can believe in the Trinity. My answer is always the same. I would still be an agnostic if there was no Trinity, because there would be no answers. Without the high order of personal unity and diversity as given in the Trinity,  there are no answers. (p. 288 Crossway compilation)

I have puzzled over this. Why would there be no answers?

I asked a friend who knew Schaeffer well, who answered:

You are not the first to scratch your head about this claim, and I myself find it quite strange and do not claim to be able to interpret it for you, or to believe it myself.

     I have asked him to explain it and heard others do the same. I think the main thing in his mind was that he saw in the trinity that neither unity nor diversity, neither the One or the Many, was ultimate and so would obliterate the other. They were both anchored in the transcendent God. He saw secular philosophy as unable to resist getting pulled into one or the other of these dead ends -- of only unity (Parmenides) or only particularity (Heraclitus). I certainly see his point here because neither of these dead ends allows any serious understanding of the complexity and wonder of the human condition. But I can't help wondering if there was no trinity, whether I might be more likely to be a Jewish theist than an agnostic, but that question would be in practicality, so highly subjective as a counter-factual puzzle.

     It all seems a tricky question to say what part of Xn truth, if removed, would make me abandon my faith, maybe not always helpful  -- although Paul said it about the resurrection of Jesus. I heard Schaeffer also say that he could not be a Christian if God had not himself shut the door finally on the ark at the start of the flood. He felt that to ask Noah to do it would have been too cruel and inappropriate, given what would happen to everyone else who was not in the ark. On the other hand I asked him once if he were to ever have macro-evolution demonstrated to have been true beyond any doubt, would he leave his faith as a result? He said, "No, but I would have to rethink a great deal."

     To get back to the trinity, but leave Schaeffer's discussion, I found Tim Keller's insight intriguing when he said that only if God is trinity can love be part of his character, i.e. who he is intrinsically. If God was only One, there would have been no one for him to love unless it was someone whom God had created. If God was only One, his main attribute of character would have been power -- who might have chosen to do loving things, but they would be arbitrary and not grounded in his being and he might have easily done the opposite.

There are few useful thoughts here, and I think he's spotted the nub of it: Who God Is is immovably basic to what is independently (and self-existentially) that is, necessarily, real.

 

What then is the Triune God?

• He is demonstrably personal
• He communicates: the three persons of the trinity are in constant communication for the other: communication and relationship are basic. It is also real, significant and true.
  
• There is inherent diversity and unity, inescapably, as per my friend's observation.
• God's acts flow directly from who he is, with no other reference.

 Solo gods, Monist gods and Monist non-gods have none of this, and leave man's 'mannishness' ungrounded, arbitrary and finally insignificant.

What about Yahweh in the OT? Is he not a 'solo-god'? After all, he says he is one and there is no other.

 

I think not for a couple of reasons.

 

He interacts with the creation, in relationship: Genesis 3:8, for example; Genesis 1 itself hints at Trinity: God who speaks, the Word which (who?) creates, the Spirit who 'hovers'. Even if I am wrong, this doesn't seem like a 'solo-god'.

The theophanies throughout the OT suggest God in some form, often human, in his creation. Again, not triune per se, but not 'solo' in our terms here either.

What the Trinity does bring is grounding of communication, of community, of fellowship, of love, in what is basically so. Everything, including our existential questions and dilemmas is resolved, finally, in this.

So our echo of these acts of love and fellowship as beings in his image are real, and join us to him in sharing this reality. Our love is significant and not derivative: of 'nature', of material, of an arbitrary and not essential act of God. Our decisions, communications, community are real and a basic part of us. The only real questions as to our 'meaning' our significance and the moment of our communication have answers. What is life about? It is about love in fellowship with our Creator. But it is also about doing real things in the real creation which itself has substance as the field of our fellowship with God.

And our creator does not 'need' us, because he had these characteristics  prior to creation and did not need a creation to exhibit, generate or reify them.

Monists (whether impersonal spiritists, materialists or solo-god-ists) have none of this, because, everything finally is the same. There is no real connection or movement of mind. There is no final significance possible and any personal solo-god depends on the creation for realization of anything inter-personal (that is, if person-hood in this landscape is really real). Against this, our creator God is utterly independent of creation; it was made not for him, existentially, but for our Lord in which we are to enjoy him forever.

The real three-in-one God is not thus bound.

By the way, my link to Schaeffer's book, is not a blanket endorsement of the Gospel Coalition. I reject a number of points of their theology.

Another article on Schaeffer's philosophy.

 

Memories of Minnesota

Greg Koukl recently did a podcast on his experience with Francis Schaeffer.

I sent him this note:

Dear Greg,
I loved your podcast on Schaeffer. At the time you met FS, I was reading him. In fact, I was reading him at the same time I was reading Jaspers and Heidegger. I dismissed FS as a 'populariser'. It took me but a short time to learn that I was the dummy and he was the smartie (if nothing else a dummy for wasting my time on J and H). I came into the orbit of L'Abri here in Australia and met my wife there. Prior to our wedding, she spent some time at Heumoz.

Later we visited L'Abri in Rochester Minnesota. I have a memento from that visit. As you know, we all do some work at L'Abri. One of my jobs was to mow Mrs Schaeffer's lawns. Doing that I picked up an old keyring from the 1992 Superbowl, lying in the grass on the sidewalk. Nice memories. And ironically I have no interest in sport whatsoever!

I'm part way through your Youtube video on the problem of evil: the 'problem of no-love'.

One of the things I've puzzled about is why God chose to make us morally significant. The reason is of course to enable true relationships.

But why? I think the reason is for our enjoyment of him...for OUR enjoyment!! Nothing is better than to truly know God, and it is a far better thing for even a few of us to know him than no one knowing him at all.

All religions are basically the same!

You may have often come across this claim, or indeed, even made it yourself.

Firstly, no they are not. But there's a more important point of departure: all religions seek to make sense of the world, or our human life in the world. In the terms of that 'making sense' they all seek to deal with the same thing. This they have in common.

What is this 'same thing'? It is what I (after Francis Schaeffer) call 'the dilemma of man'. In Schaeffer's terms this is the fact that mankind shows both grandeur and degradation. He is noble and cruel, selfish and selfless, proud and humble. A mix of opposites, one in denial of the other.

How so?

How so also man seeks community but lives in alienation, is material, but personal, is personal but finite, contingent, yet hopes for what is beyond the present.

How do religions seek to resolve these tensions, if not conflicts?

They do it through their concept of the independent ground of our being, or of reality: personal or impersonal, material or spiritual, contingent (and then, what truly constitutes the ground) or necessary (self existent), and how does this resolve the dilemma: confrontation, ignoring, neglect, negation, or dissolving, or a true resolution that takes the arms of the dilemma and brings them into a final cohesion?

Then, what is the locus, or domain, of the resolution? Is it within or beyond the life-world or the cosmos that is our denominating constraint? Does it conceive the 'system' that hosts the dilemma can also host its resolution, or does is see the resolution coming only from outside or beyond the system that hosts it?

These questions, give us a means of dimensioning the means of resolution that a religion proposes.

Does man contain the means of resolution; which on the face of it seems absurd as the illness cannot contain the cure (homeopathy aside), or must it come from outside man? And who or what is 'outside man, and the system which hosts, contains and embraces him at every existential point? Or is Sartre and crew right in their despair of resolution, leading to resolution only in the work of power over others, while there is no real power over self?

Finally: the results of any proposed religion need to be considered against its proposals. Do they work? do they seem to work? Can they work? 

Do they even deal with the real reality, or deny it, reduce it, or set it to one side?

All worthy points of discussion.

As Schaeffer in his famous trilogy argues: only the 'religion' of the incarnate creator: Yeshua the Nazarene, the Christ, brings this resolution.

It takes seriously the world, it structures the personal, it knows the dignity and  degradation of man and confronts it head on with the need for and gift of new life, Not a thing of us alone and by our own efforts, but be the gift of fellowship with God in Christ, his Spirit come within to grow us into new creatures to live in a renewed creation and so to enjoy him forever.

It comes from outside our Life-world, from the personal-infinite self-existent creator who knows us intimately and takes our significance, dignity and degeneration from being like him seriously.

See the Anglican Catechism or, for a much better statement of our purpose, the Westminster Catechism, in its beautiful opening: 

Q. 1. What is the chief end of man?

A. Man’s chief end is to glorify God, [a] and to enjoy him for ever. [b]

[a]. Ps. 86:9; Isa. 60:21; Rom. 11:36; 1 Cor. 6:20; 10:31; Rev.
4:11

[b]. Ps. 16:5-11; 144:15; Isa. 12:2; Luke 2:10; Phil. 4:4; Rev.
21:3-4

(apart from that I'd be wary of its Calvinism).

Schaeffer's ontology and Genesis days

From  The God Who is There  - end of chapter 2

God has created a real, external world. It is not an extension of His (sic) essence. That real, external world exists. God has also created man as a real, personal being, and he possesses a "mannishness" from which he can never escape. On the basis of their own world-view often these experience-seekers are neither sure the external world is there, nor that man as man is there. But I have come to the conclusion that despite their intellectual doubts, many of them *have had* a true experience of the reality of the external world that exists, and/or the "mannishness" that exists. They can do this precisely because this is how God has made man, in His own image, able to experience the real world and man's "mannishness." Thus they have hit upon something which exists, and it is neither nothing, nor is it God. We might sum up this third alternative by saying that when they experience the "redness" of the rose, they are having the experience of the external world, as is the farmer who plows (sic) his field. They are both touching the world that is.

My comment

The days of Genesis 1 (which Schaeffer claims in his Genesis in Time and Space, are unimportant) underscore the external objective reality of the cosmos and our experience of it and within it.

God speaks and rationally related events follow that are congruent with the propositional word. Each event, and the events as a set are separate from God, but also real.

We can experience the reality as it is mediated in the 'days' -- the space-time -- of our normal experience of life in the objective world. The days of action overlap with our days of experience of the results of the communicative action by God and place our experience in the same domain as which God is active in creating.

Yet our experience is also subjectively but genuinely substantiated as we are real persons with objective existence in the objective created world separate from God: it is a world in which we can really know real things and represent them in meaningful propositions (created by word on God's part, understood by word on our part: this provides the basis for empirical inquiry of the created world).

We are linked to the external world and its objectivity by God's communication to us of 'imageness' which gives us genuine 'mannishness', to use Schaeffer's term, and real experience of the real external world. The link is grounded by the days of genesian action that place it objectively in the same days our history is denominated by, and separate it from God, while showing God is active, present and communicative in that domain by which his domain overlaps our domain he thus created by his word.

Basic Books for Christians

If I was to suggest 12 (or so) basic books for Christians?

In no particular order:

C. S. Lewis: Mere Christianity

G. K. Chesterton: Orthodoxy

F. A. Schaeffer: The God Who Is There, He Is There and He Is Not Silent, Escape From Reason

J. McDowell: The New Evidence that Demands a Vertict

Gerstner, Lindsley, Sproul: Classical Apologetics

Strobel: The Case for Christ

Sire: Scripture Twisting

Campbell: The Koran and the Bible

Moreland and Craig: Philosophical Foundations for a Christian World View

Blanchard: Does God Believe in Atheists?

Olson: Mosaic of Christian Beliefs

Oden: Classic Christianity

Wilson: A Primer for Christian Doctrine

N. T. Wright: Following Jesus, Simply Christian

F. A. Schaeffer: Genesis in Space and Time

Broughton Knox: The Everlasting God (generally great, but at the end a little too Calvanist)

Now, that's a lot of books.

My suggestion: read 1 per quarter, so there's three years or so worth of reading. Read them a few times, but at least twice: once quickly, to get a grasp of the ideas. Once slowly, to ponder, make notes, and reflect upon as you go.

And, an addendum, which could end up running into pages, but a few that might also be helpful and easy reads:

Stott: Basic Christianity
Plantinga: Beyond Doubt

I'd suggest that before reading the larger books one reads a couple of reviews of them to get the flavour before plunging in.

Also note, that like all good reading, these books reflect some divergent theological views. So, read them in the light of the Bible, and reflect on their differences.

Other religions: let's be practical!

All religions are basically the same?

Bob Ackroyd at Brunsfield Evangelical Church explores the practicalities of this and I've discussed an approach a little while ago.

All religions are the same in that they all ask four basic questions:

1. How does your belief inform where you come from (the origin of man)
2. Where you are going (post death?)
3. Why you are here (existential definition)?
4. What's right, what's wrong? Why (meta-ethical epistemology)?
   

A great basis for a conversation: you listen to them, maybe they will ask you your views. See where it goes.

Two questions I would either add or substitute are:

1. Who are we? (aiming to get to Schaeffer's point about the 'mannishness' of man: i.e., in God's image)
2. Why do we suffer? (On the premise that ALL religions are about the problem of man's suffering and pain.)
   

Look out for putative resolutions of these questions that deny obvious reality, the reality of the human dilemma: man is both great and cruel, has joy and suffers, or seek the resolution in man either individually or collectively, on a 'try harder' basis, or an 'it doesn't matter' basis...and how would either help when they are within the very system that is the product and source of the dilemma!

The resolution has to come from without and has to be final: it cannot be part of an infinite regress of causes.

It cannot be contained in the uniformity of natural causes in a closed system, but can only be in a system that is open to resolution from without, from not where the dilemma and its discontents arose and are hosted.

Indeed, as Schaeffer tells us: there are only two religions (and our discussion with the 'omni-religious' should have this back of mind}: paganism: the uniformity (or not) of natural causes in a closed system, and Christianity: the uniformity of natural causes in a fallen but open system: open to the creator, the eternal, self-existing, communicating person.

Raphael and the Philosophers

Francis Schaeffer referred to Raphael's painting "The School of Athens" in the detail of the gestures of Plato and Aristotle. Detail below.

 The Split Between Nature and Grace

 Schaeffer highlights the separation between the "universal" (represented by Plato pointing up) and the "particular" (represented by Aristotle pointing down). This split represents a failure to keep God as the creator of both, leading to an increasing separation between humanity and the Divine.

A friend put it to me that this was possibly not the references being made, rather, Plato is pointing up to "the good" and Aristotle is gesturing to the world as it is, founded on the "unmoved mover".

Together they are depicting a world in its base reality as impersonal, One that makes of personhood and thus man a final nullity.

The rest of philosophy seeks to deal with this nullity...culminating in Nagel's "The View from Nowhere" p. 225:

One of the difficulties is that the appropriate form of a subjective attitude toward my own future is expectation, but in this case there is nothing to expect.  How can I expect nothing as such? It seems that the best I can do is to expect its complement, a finite but indeterminate amount of something—or a determinate amount, if I am under definite sentence of death. Now a good deal could be said about the consequences of the finiteness of my future, but that is relatively banal and something most of us automatically allow for, particularly after reaching the age of forty. I am concerned with the adequate recognition of my eventual annihilation itself. There will be a last day, a last hour, a last minute of consciousness, and that will be it. Off the edge.

But the view of life and its base ontology from the Creation in Genesis 1, re-pictured by Paul in Romans 8:18ff: is Love, and the 'mission' of the Creator is to bring us into that realm of his Love through Christ.

 

This makes life and love meaningful because its reality is basic, unlike Plato and Aristotle in their bleak finally impersonal static base reality which admits no love, no passion and no fellowship.

 

7 Big Questions Seminar References and Resources

This page is devoted to supplementary material for attendees of a '7 Big Questions' seminar. This is a full day seminar for churches (generally, it can also be given in two half-day sessions) to encourage and assist members in being able to think through answers to the seven most commonly asked questions of Christians.

If you have not attended a seminar, naturally, you are nevertheless welcome to use this page.

If you want to organize a seminar or inquire about hosting one, please send an e-mail to 7BQ_Seminars@email.com, with the subject line "I want to organize a seminar" otherwise it will be filtered out.

If you attended a seminar you have access to a moderated discussion group (provided through your registration e-mail address).

Thanks to 'Watcher' for allowing this page to be hosted on his blog.

12 essentail reads

 A friend crafted a list of books to give to a contact he'd made with a book store assistant. The assistant had not before encountered a Christian who could make his faith dynamic, inviting, and interesting. She wanted to know what to read.

The Bible of course: gospel of John. But also some books to help build the context (the 12th is my suggestion...only because I wanted 12 books; a good dozen, or maybe 13: a baker's dozen):

1. The Screwtape Letters: Lewis

2. The Great Divorce: Lewis

3. Schaeffer's Trilogy: Schaeffer -- Three books that set Western cultural history in a Biblical context: The God Who is There, Escape from Reason, He Is There and Is Not Silent.

4. Degenerate Moderns: Jones

5. The Devil's Delusion: Berlinski

6. Does God Exist?: Miethe/Flew

7. Darwin on Trial: Johnson

8. Sick Societies: Edgerton

9. In Defence of History: Evans

10. Fools, Frauds and Firebrands: Scruton

11. A Fatal Conjunction: Kimm

12. The End of History: Windschuttle

13. Destructive Generation: Collier and Horowitz

Beware the deist 'god'.

A recent comment on an NT Wright video on his new book The Heart of Romans:

NT talks in many lectures about us having 'platonized' our eschatology, and I guess he's on the money in some areas of church practice; I'm happy to say that I remember from my teenage years a vague belief in the new creation. I think the Apostles creed might have had a part to play in that.

 

But where we have as a church madly platonized is in the creation doctrine. When NT talked about the ease with which the deist caricature of God had headway, it occurs to me that the description of creation in Genesis 1 is from the get go the antidote to deism.

 

Tom talks about God's domain (heaven) and our domain (earth) coming together, but he seems to slip over the fact that the great initial conjunction of heaven and earth is in the creation. Not a platonic or figurative creation, but a real concrete creation. This itself underlines and honours God's creation of a material cosmos with earth in it. In fact, we seem to have an almost Gnostic fear of a concrete creation located in history in connection with our history by the work being done by the Word at a tempo marked by the days which mark our lives.

 

This is perhaps the first move of communion: God shows that he is present and active directly in the world he has made for his creature as the place of communion of they with him and in the concrete terms of the world that he made concretely for that very purpose (concrete as opposed to figurative or conceptual or idealist).

 

The glory of communion of creature and creator comes to its apogee and tragic nadir in Genesis 3:8: God seeking to join communion with his creatures in his image (and thus enabled to commune with propositional content) and finds the opportunity dashed by their rejection of the opportunity.

 

I think this approach to Genesis 1 is not fundamentalist, but the most exciting; spine tinglingly full of joy and the portent of much greater to come. It is consistent with the God who made the material creation to take joy in it and celebrate that by creating in the terms of the creation and by his direct word. Thus, while not fundamentalist, the creation should bear the marks of this creation...as against a deist 'creation' where 'god' is remote, or an evolutionary 'creation' where 'god' is merged into the creation, panentheistically and almost 'paneverytingistly' to use Schaeffer's aptly coined word.

 

Being in his image, we also create by word. Only, as material creatures we use our hands to deliver the idea we have: our word made material while God's word made flesh!

 

Thus the 'days' constitute the frame-of-reference for our concrete congress with God, and his direct (by Christ) participation in his creation. They contextualize all subsequent contact between God and man: the theophanies, the prophets, 'miracles' and the incarnation, in our world marked by a uniformity of natural causes in an **open** system, to again borrow Schaeffer's term.

Now, just who did make God?

In a video shown at church this morning, promoting children's camps, we saw one boy enthuse that he was able to ask interesting questions such as 'who made God'.

Firstly, it's good that he could ask that question in confidence of being taken seriously, perhaps not so good that maybe he didn't think he could ask it at his church.

When one is asked this question, the reflexive reply might be 'No one 'made' God, he has always existed.' or 'Only entities that had a beginning need a cause, God does not have a beginning'.

But a better way would be to ask questions. This demonstrates that you want to engage with the person, and gives you more information about their thinking behind their question.

On the surface the question seems to contain an assumption or two: that god is contingent, first off. That is, he depends upon something/one else for his being. This would imply that he is a denizen of the world, the cosmos, that we know. This is the mistake made by the Russian cosmonaut who reported that he didn't find God when in orbit around  Earth. The other possible assumption is that the very idea of 'god' is made-up, a human invention. This produces the typical unbeliever's view that we made God in our own image.

Now, the ancient Greeks and Romans certainly fell for that error; their gods are very human like. But the God who speaks is very much not so. Just check the demands in the beatitudes!

So our questions can explore the questioner's understanding of God.

Questions you might ask could be:

What would be able to make god?

When you say 'god' what do you mean?

How would you characterize 'god': i.e., what is 'god' like, in your estimation?

If someone made god, then who made that someone?

Why would you think that God needed to be 'made'?

The strategy is to find out if they think 'god' is an invention, a entirely contained by the  cosmos, that he is a type of creature...and is thus the result of an infinite regress, or an epiphenomenon of material.

For most people, consider that the questioner is, at least, an unconscious modern materialist, and probably evolutionist, or perhaps, again unconsciously, a 'paneverythingist' (as per Schaeffer in He is There and He is Not Silent). That is, with a vague belief that the universe is 'god', or 'god' is an undefined and probably impersonal spirit, such as would represent the 'karma' belief of Hindus.

Most people, and I think, even some Christians, hold that (material) reality is characterized by a uniformity of natural causes in a closed system. However this fails to explain man, the universe and its form (and intelligibility). It fails as a basis for real knowledge of any kind.

Christian faith invites us to the world created by the creator: God who is love. Here we have the uniformity of natural causes in an open system in a limited time span.

The God who is there made the universe, with things together, in relationships. Indeed, the whole area of science turns upon the fact that He has made a world in which things are made to stand together, that there are relationships between things. So God made the external universe which makes true science possible, but he also made man and made him to live in that universe. He did not make man to live somewhere else. So we have three things coming together: God, the infinite-personal God, who made the  universe, and man, whom he made to live in that universe, and the Bible, which he has given us to tell us about that universe. There is a unity between them.

(Schaeffer, He is There and He is Not Silent, p, 329 in the Crossway compilation, vol. 1)

Schaeffer and Sartre?

Francis Schaeffer claims that Sartre asserted (words to the effect) that without an infinite reference point man has no true meaning.

Now, I've not found that specific remark, or anything that directly echoes it in what I've read of Sartre...and life is too short to wade through Being and Nothingness without a PhD at the end, but I have read allusions to that in Existentialism is a Humanism and Nausea.

The idea is also consistent with what I recall of what Jaspers had to say in Philosophy of Existence. One only finds definition in some ultimate act of definition...and that is undefined. And, I would say undefinable when the self-experience is the locus of definition. It is a definition based on nothing which has a grounded basis. It floats arbitrarily unattached and truly undefined. So it has no 'meaning' (whatever that word now means) to even the one seeking definitive meaning.

So, lets clarify the conundrum to "without an infinite reference point there is no real self-knowledge."

We can only know ourselves in relation to others, in interpersonal relationships. There are no possible relationships in the non-personal world and any fake or imagined relations ships are in fact mute.

But if true significance ("meaning") comes only through relationships then there must always be a 'reference' relationship, let's say its one's parents. But this is not final. This reference relationship also needs a 'reference' relationship.

In a cosmos that is finally material, the final 'significance' has to be founded or grounded in some mute material thing or process. But it is inter-personally and therefore finally meaningless. It does not communicate, it reflects or responds to nothing of who one is and the only quality of the "relationship" is blank indifference. A nullity.

Yet we still have an inner quest for significance and live and relate as though this is a real thing.

An infinite regress explains nothing as it never ends in a final ground. It vanishes into the indefinably remote and unconnected other which results in the same abject indifference that the material cosmos characterizes.

True self-knowledge, significance or referentially secure "meaning" must remain the product of relationship. To be true and truly significant there must be a viable relational ground in which it terminates and gives a resolution or definition. A self-existent ground, an independent ontology.

Thus we need the Creator God who is person who sustains and anchors all relationship through being the ground and source of personhood and the final 'relater'.

Now the flip-side for the one who denies a Creator-God, who demands we applaud their faux independence and nonchalant self-applauding bravery.

The atheist's dilemma.

We all seek meaning, and often has it in life yet there can be no real axiological pay-off in a material cosmos, Whence the drive for, often achievement of 'meaning' or true significance? Each relies on an implicit teleology which is denied by the meaningless (literally) atheistic conception of termination.

Yet atheists typically act as though their teleological impulse is real while denying a real basis for the 'meaning' quest. So, what is it? The existentialist's self-defining grand act? But to what point? It all ends in dust and in the end no-one cares!

There is really no point, so an atheists has to explain to him/her-self why they even go to the doctor when feeling ill. That too is finally dust and a pointless way-post on the way to a pointless end.

Some provisional thoughts.

Couses of course

One can attend endless of those ceremonial speeches that are given at church gatherings -- you may know them as that performative art-piece 'the sermon'. You know, the 20-40 minutes of words you most likely forget as soon as you leave the auditorium in which it was given.

Well, the church I am part of has stepped past this massive error in Christian discipling ('education' or training or equipping) by conducting courses for those interested in upping their skills and/or knowledge in living the Christian live.

Here are the three courses on offer this term:

1. Telling your story: how to 'give one's  testimony'.

2. Reading through John's gospel with a friend using a specific app for shared reading, and

3. Running a 'Beyond Hope' session/s for your friends or neighbours.

All good starting points.

BUT

I'm more than a little concerned at (1), not having attended it yet. I may do a report on it in a few weeks time after I have.

Most 'testimonies' are boring, unless spectacular, like Paul's, or David Wood's, inevitably self-centred if not self-serving and irrelevant.

As one apologist points out, the 'testimony' the old-time mainstay of 'witnessing' is that it is personal, and in being personal, largely sending an inherent subjective message. What we do need to be able to do is give a reason for the hope within us. 1 Peter 3:15. Peter didn't say 'give a tesimony', now, did he?

So, far better if we 'workshopped' 1 Peter 3:15 the way we would give an account for the hope we have in Christ to our friends.

Like I've written before, one needs a set of three formats for this:

1. the 'elevator' pitch. A short, punchy couple of sentences.

2. the 'coffee chat'. A longer duration set of ideas that you can weave in to a chat, and

3. the 'dinner discussion'. Here you  prepare the sort of road map for a longer discussion, with a few of the obvious by-ways, shortcuts and diversions that might spring up.

All in 'everyman' language of course. Not a theological word amongst them.

My basic approach to "Why are you (a) Christian?" is to adopt Greg Koukl's approach crossed with Francis Schaeffer's.

Christianity gives the best explanation for the 'way things are' and for the resolution of the human dilemma.

This invites two questions:

1. "What do you mean/what is 'the way things are?' ", and,

A: we all have a sense that things are not the way they should be: they are 'broken' in some way...nothing is not only perfect, but most things are not at all good.

[This relates directly to the suffering we all see and experience, the frustrations of life and its misdirections ( 'fate' as some may call it). That it is not 'natural' to us as if it was, we would not detect it, it 'just is'. If someone takes this view, they are looking at life's dilemmas and disasters with blank, impassive non-comprehension, lying to themselves that it is of no matter.]

2. "What is/do you mean by 'the human dilemma?" Schaeffer calls it the manishness of man: that man is both noble, and cruel and life is both of great sadness and great joy.

A We all know that there's something wrong, we have shortcomings and endlessly do things we don't want to do, or wish we hadn't done, and the inverse, we don't do things we want to do. We live in a world of frustration, of evil, of suffering that we deeply rebel against. Why? 

Christianity also deals with this realistically, in terms of the real world we know in two ways: our humanity is real, and our despair is real.

Christianity is direct about our personhood, its significance and its reality: it is really real!

Every other construction of the world fails to do this. Maybe not overtly, but always at least implicitly. 

1. They regard the world, and/or the dilemma as illusory, or can only be resolved by denying our nature with final anonymous absorption into the impersonal divine (or in half-baked nostrums such as Buddha's). (Westphal's 'exilic' religions, e.g. Hinduism.)
2. They regard mankind as subservient to the world, continuous with it, it being a impersonal 'force' of some sort. (Westphal's 'mimetic' religions, e.g. Paganism, in modern and ancient forms.)
3. We are integrally continuous with the material world and can only truly be described materially; our human-ness being an abstracted, if not illusory subservient phenomenon on and derivative of the material reality. Modern doctrinaire and informal atheism and agnosticism of convenience rely on this, as does hedonism. Again, reality is at base impersonal.

None of these give humanity a true grounding that is consistent with our life-world and our being in this world. None can ground personhood as a basic constituent of reality and as true: we have true and valid experiences of the world which is truly there, we can make decisions that have real and substantial consequences for both us and (usually) others, and the world is truly there and is intelligible to us. We can produce knowledge that is true knowledge and can communicate it to others with congruent effect.

The grounding of personhood, and of our real reality is only in the description of creation in Genesis 1-3:8a. Personhood is significant, enduring and personal...as is our Creator.

All other conceptions of reality fail to grant the person 'connection' with reality. The person is either ultimately absorbed into 'the one' and de-personalized, ground into dust (materialism/evolution) or a pawn of fates/destiny (most pagan and neo-pagan vague conceptions).

It is only the Genesis description of Creation that gives mankind robust and enduring identity that is directly connected to and an echo of (in the image of) the self-existing creator. 

Adventure in America

A couple of years after we were married, my wife and I took off to the US (again, for both of us). We spent time in Los Angeles, toured around New England which we both enjoyed immensely, and took the opportunity to spend time at L'Abri. Most of that was at Southboro in Mass., but we also caught up with the organiser in Rochester Minn. Larry Snyder, whom my wife knew. It was nice being in Garrison Keillor country!
Once out of the major centres in the US, I find it is a 'home town' kind of country; perhaps because of the diet of American TV in my youth.

 At Southboro I read Pannenberg, which was really stimulating, and along with the Friday evening lectures and other students, had probably the best 'away' time of my Christian experience. Rochester was a lighter touch in my reading; I think I worked over the basic apologetic of God. Can't remember! I do remember trips into St Paul for theatre, and the airport, and it was nice to see O'Hare in Chicago again, where we changed planes. I know its not the biggest in the US, but it is nevertheless a mighty big airport.

It was fabulous to relax and talk with other Christians from such a wide range of backgrounds, and to be able to talk over one's reading with people who could not only assist, but lead one to reflect on one's response to the ideas that were discussed.

In Rochester we met Mrs Schaeffer and joined a celebration at her home for her birthday. As one does practical work when at L'Abri, I took the job of mowing Mrs Schaeffer's lawn! Nice to be involved. I found a brass key ring for the Rose Bowl that I keep. Oddly no one has asked why a non-sports follower such as I has such a sports fan memento!

The US experience differed from the local L'Abri branch (where incidentally, my wife and I met... because of a shared interest in opera), in that while there was a diversity of opinion on occasion, there tended to be a greater uniformity in the groups that assembled for weekend seminars. Reflective of a smaller catchment, I suppose. Still, Frank and Heather were always gracious hosts for our weekend stays.

Do you integrate?

The French philosopher Sartre is reputed to have claimed that with out an infinite reference point, man is doomed to absurdity, or words to similar effect.

Absurdity comes from both the grandeur and wretchedness of man being equally terminally inconsequential and without any final significance.

For Sartre, Camus and the rest of the existentialist cheer squad, even the 'integration' that might come from some decisive existential gesture was hollow, because one would never know if any particular act or experience would be that consummating event. Ironically, the individual, in this scheme, is left to 'faith' in the ultimate event being an obtainable experience to (self) actualize one's life. Futile!

Francis Schaeffer* resolves man's humanity in the word 'mannishness': his being god-like in a material cosmos as having personhood, of being able to communicate and come to personal encounter with another, with the ability to understand himself and his setting in rational propositional terms, at least to some degree.

The dilemma of man (not his absurdity), comes in his failure to live fully as a human, a person in the image of his maker, the creator God, but to have features of this in his grandeur: however marred, his creativity, his joy in others, his loves, compassion, and humility, disrupted at every point by the inversion of his humanity: his cruelty, selfishness, conceits of wisdom and understanding that alienate man from man and man from maker.

Why cannot we be our own 'integration' point? Is this not the mature, wise man at ease in his own being?

In a world conceived in purely material terms, no integration point is available, because all reality is finally materially determined and oblivious to personhood. It is contingent and reality and our place in it can only be framed as dependent on a prior cause...and prior causes go all the way to a meaningless  actual infinite chain of causes, with no identifiable actual cause, or to an explosion of what amounts to dust. All that sits beneath a stream of contingencies is more contingency; nothing that is necessary, or independently real.

A disintegration point that is illustrated in this conception in every man whose life is a brief tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing between two piles of worm dung (Shakespeare: Macbeth).

In a world conceived as an impersonal (spiritual) monist illusion, the infinite regress disappears into a nullifying absorption into the 'great' one of what amounts to a nothing machine.

So the soul can find no base, no connection with what is truly real in either.

As Sartre said, the integration point must be infinite, perhaps meaning self-existent or it is nothing but more of the same; it must also have a personal basis, or our personhood is reduced and Shakespeare again sees the pointlessness. In Othello: "it is a silliness to live when to live is torment; and then have we a prescription to die when death is our physician."

Our creator is our integration point, or rather we integrate properly in our human calling in Christ, enlivened by his in-dwelling Spirit to grow into life in companionship with our creator.

*Schaeffer, The Trilogy; The God Who is There, Escape from Reason, He is There and is not Silent.

How to Talk About Jesus by Sam Chan: a review

Chan has hit the spot in his title. No one talks about how to 'talk about Jesus'!

Koukl's books: Tactics, Street Smarts and The Story of Reality are useful resources in this field, but I've encountered little effort in the 'down and dirty' of actual conversations. Chan steps into this field with a welcome contribution, albeit a few years ago.

Let's move through the chapters.

Merge your Universes

Useful information about 'plausibility structure' and making friends of your neigbours: harder in high-rise than on suburban blocks of cottages, but there must be ways.

We have to learn to 'gossip the gospel' as the ancients used to do...reputedly. That is being able to weave tendrils of conversational openings that a listener might grab so you can take the conversation to where you want, for however long...sometimes just a word, a congruent phrase, and that's it. But if we all do it...there's a cumulative effect. 

Go to Their Things

Very useful chapter. Be part of the non-churched community (without being swallowed by it). Ensure your church as 'contact' events where people can enter the premises without being 'sand-bagged' by a preacher. If there is any form of address or presentation, it has to use common language and link to common perspectives and challenges.

I took a couple of friends to a 'coffee shop' run by my church. Coffee, some live music, then a 'sand-bag' of some theological student giving a 'clear presentation of the gospel'. It must have been a college assignment because it was as clear as mud to my friends, and touched not one aspect of any shared experience or common perceptions of life...my friends asked me to never invite them to a similar thing AGAIN. 

Coffee, Dinner, Gospel

The idea of ordinary social get-togethers is helpful, but 'trapping' people into a dinner party where they get preached at is not. I'd suggest you prepare a few 'fire-cracker' issues to raise that you can give a Christian/biblical tinge to and leave it there. Let others enlarge if they want to, or throw out a challenge...give them comfort to disagree, they might love that!

"Here's something I want you to disagree with; see how you go..." Something like that perhaps. 

Listen

Of course. Conversations are about listening: the better conversation is marked by you listening more! 

Chan's taxonomy of questions was OK, for the book, but I think Scharmer's has a better grasp of the range in what I'd call 'positive' conversations.

The four types of listening reflect the underlying principles of the opening of the mind, heart and will are:

1. Dowloading: This type of listening is limited to reconfirming what we already know. Nothing new penetrates our bubble.
2. Factual listening: We let the data talk to us and notice dis-confirming information. Doing this requires opening the mind—that is, the capacity to suspend our habits of judgment.
3. Empathic listening: We see the situation through the eyes of another. Doing this requires opening the heart: using our feelings and our heart as an organ of tuning in to another person’s view.
4. Generative listening: We listen for the highest future possibility to show up while holding a space for something new to be born.

 (from Medium 2019)

Tell a Better Story

Good idea, but it slips at one point into 'worship' language. No one want's to 'worship'. By this they think of ceremonies, rituals, incense perhaps, peculiar music, strange lyrics and cloud-cuckoo sentiments, bowing, kneeling...That's not Christian worship: its a life transformed into wholeness as we follow the man who brought God to earth.

Apart form that, the idea of the 'better story' is a useful one. We all use 'stories' to shape our lives. Christ is the better story, but it can require a long introduction. 

Tell them Stories about Jesus

Plenty of scope here that has to be used judiciously...'who is this Jesus character' could be the response in most cases. It also sounds a bit cute for my taste. I think I'd say something like "that reminds me of an episode from the career of Jesus of Nazareth...or Yeshua the Nazarene." He was a Jewish prophet of 2000 years ago...that might spin out into a conversation about who he was/is.

The you can go on to I like what he had to say a lot because I think it resolved the very human dilemma we are all caught up in.

Here I like to use Schaeffer's definition: mankind/humanity is noble yet cruel. We can make meaningful decisions that have real effect...how does a pile of cells do that?

Become their De Facto Chaplain

This can be very good, and his examples are great. I'll not spoil them here: read the book.

But it is about being alongside of someone who is reaching out for some real human contact and understanding: listening, form a posture of some personal adversity. 

It is about being kind and 'non-judgemental'.The types of questions that might work are of the "How did that come about?", "How does that make you feel" No solutions unless you are asked and are competent to give them, but avoid them, is my thinking. Let the person talk.

Lean into Disagreement

Of course, we Christians are happy with disagreement because we stand on solid ground! Disagreement shows engagement, interest, unless it is mere show and braggadocio. If the latter 'call it out', and ask to have a real conversation.

As Chan suggests, take them to the logical implicatons of their world view and its use in the present. 

Looking for Black Swan Moments.

Wife and I  took a cruise on a local bay. Leaning on the rail of the boat I was standing next to an older woman. I made a 'throw-away' remark about the 'wonderful' creation, or nature, if you like. Her response was 'I wonder why god bothered' (Her 'god' was a small 'g').

I asked "What do you mean?"   What she meant was her older husband had early dementia. Their lives were changing. She was grieving. I commiserated with her. 'But there's hope.  We weren't made for this world, we were made for a better place...we chatted briefly, and the she moved off.

For all its qualities the book has some deficiencies.

1. Unlike Koukl's idea of 'putting a stone in their shoe' as the 'gardening' aspect of evangelism, Chan sets the bar too high for most people. That is, he sees the main game not as representing Christ as an ambassador (ambassadors rarely seek to change their host nation's policies), but as a 'closer' in sales talk.

The main game is certainly to end with leading others to awareness of the real content of Christian faith, but the more frequent game is to actively sow the seeds.

While Chan doesn't 'close' too quickly, he spends most of his time on contact approaches, rather than connections. Now this is OK: getting involved with community (school) groups, hanging off your children's activities in the earlier years (say, up to 15 or 16). Connections flow, in some chapters, but the preparatory work is not emphasized.

There is little about 'testing' (in a nice way) the other's world view or picture of reality. Koukl talks about questioning tactics: prompting someone for their basic beliefs from some trivial thing: a ring they wear, a bumper sticker they display, etc. and asking about that..."What does that mean?" "Why do you say that?" "How does that work out?" 

This invites conversation, but doesn't necessarily want to get to a 'conversion' conversation. Indeed today we seem to want to race people to that, rather than help the questions they have develop and come into the open.

2. He spends little time on the huge task of de-theologizing language. These days, few people might really know who this Jesus chap is. Muslims think they know, so fruitful conversations can easily be had, if you have done some general research into Islam. So called 'New-Agers' (although that terms is passe now: almost everyone is a 'New-Ager' by default) might also have a better grip on Jesus, or 'the Christ' than the average person, or think they do. People from the sub-continent are also ahead of the game and can be open to discussion more directly. But not the 'average Joe'.

For the average person we need to use simple communicative language. Churches need to teach, practice and train their members for this, and encourage discussing with each other their attempts and outcomes for joint learning and skill-building. This is the hardest skill for most older Christians to master; older in the faith, I mean. Not necessarily in years.

Being adept with common language would also assist people develop conversation pathways that can get 'spiritual' or proto-spiritual without being inappropriate to the conversational topic or tone and so come across as impolite or gauche.

Alongside that, we need to learn to understand what a 'world-view' is and how it plays a role in evangelism at whichever level. I've never heard a sermon about this. I've never heard Schaeffer's discussion of this issue introduced to a congregation. Not that a sermon is a useful means of growing people of course. It's not. Adults learn by grafting in the new to their current stock of ideas and they do this by discussing, asking questions and having issues teased out. We don't do that in church, at our 'services' do we? 

3. The third is equipping. The previous weakness is an aspect of that. Another is the development of skills by local churches.

Christians need to be practiced in putting the Christian message, and 'pre-message' into everyday language, and to deal confidently, if not adroitly with the most common questions that people have, and discussion points that people raise that have Christian implications. Chan touches on this in principle, which is helpful, but I think churches need to up their game and also deal with such issues in discussion groups, not in that one-man, usually, performance known as the 'sermon show'.

Moreover the format of most church gatherings implicitly tells people that a) they have nothing to say, and if they did b) its not worth saying. Against this, the NT church was a place of community communion (as in talking to each other). Many contributed, questions were asked (a little to volubly in some cases, attracting Paul's rebuke to some noisy women), and people grew. The church grew. Except some of the addressees of the letter to the Hebrews seemed to have missed that memo: Hebrews 5:12. 

Some specifics 

Christians need to be able to easily deal with a few common issues:

The Bible: what and why it is, its textual reliability (Bible publishers can help by providing true tables of contents to the major stories or episodes in the books of the Bible, and short orienting intros to each book).

Church: why do you attend/be part of;

Jesus: who is he, why do you/should I follow him? Why is he the only way/

God: does he really exist...and who is he?

Christian: why you are one?

Science: hasn't it disproved the Bible?

Evil/suffering: how can a God of love and mercy allow such?

Training in dealing with these topics is not for the sermon-lecture. It is for focused workshops where people can discuss, simulate encounters, and develop skill in crafting their own approaches. 

The hard part about swinging a conversation to Christian matters is: can I answer the objection (let's make that a 'yes') and the segue from talking about the stock market to talking about values, then talking about how we value...I mean what value does life have if we are a bunch of molecules?  You can usually do it in a few steps to change the 'tone' to what we want to be effective and not 'that guy'.

 

 

 

Chance based on chance

I came across an old debate of WL Craig's on science and Christian faith.

In the debate Rosenberg completely misunderstands Christian faith, confusing it with animism at best, rather than giving the basis for a rational world view deriving from the direct rational source of creation in propositional information: God thinks of it, speaks it and it happens. What happens is directly related to the words spoken opening up the creation to propositional access.

As an intended creation, propositionally exposed to us, it is accessible to propositional inquiry: we can keep asking and exploring to find out what it is with no limits.

Schaeffer in The God Who Is There in the section on Musique Concrete reports an example of such:

"...The voice is first built up out of chance sounds, reflecting modern man's view that man who verbalizes arose by chance in a chance universe with only a future of chance ahead of him."

Chance here means irrationally, without reason, and so inexplorable and unfathomable. Finally without coherence and epistemologically void.

This is the world, finally ungrounded, the world that Rosenberg unwittingly seeks to build science upon. But his world, the world of mere material with random and informationless interactions, is only the basis for non-science, for the animism that he ironically thinks represents Christianity. Why would science want to explore anything...it's all chance; there is no rhyme or reason! 

But the Genesis creation account shows us that the creation, the cosmos is full of reason and knowledge..there to be found for man-in-God's-image. Not a stranger in the world, not an alien, but its vicegerent.

Incidentally, Rosenberg's dilemma lies at the heart of the fatal contradiction of theistic evolution: that the God who speaks, didn't in fact speak, but somehow worked into a non-speaking cosmos that denies on its own nature any system of information and 'just happens', undermining any basis for a rational epistemology.

Talking to young people

Letter to a friend who is a SRE teacher.

A couple of turns of phrase, possibly unconscious on your part, caught my eye.

Now, please don’t think I’m being overly critical, but words betray meaning, at least to the sceptical listener, so I’d like to make some observations, if I may.

You wrote as many Christians would, “As a Christian I…”

This usage runs the risk of being heard as perspectival. That is, ‘as a…whatever’ a certain view flows. The view’s attachment to reality ceases to become an issue, the ‘view’ being perspectival is merely subjective in the perception of the listener and in the final analysis runs the risk of being regarded as an uninteresting piece of the speaker's fantasy life (at worst).

The Bible teaches us what is truly real. As Schaeffer puts it ‘true truth’. That is objective truth. We know things about reality because God has spoken. His logos being the initial engine of creation, and thereafter the consistent revealer of what is true about the world, himself, and us.

In answer to the question, “is there any hope for the world” the answer is, the only hope is that we turn to Christ in repentance because the world is the scene of humanities' rejection of him and all goodness. Naturally, it’s a mess. By the grace of God, Christians’ influence and thinking has lead to great improvements in the lot of humanity, and day to day many people do great things for others because we all have the imprint of being in God’s image: morally aware souls that make real choices of significance; but this world as it stands has no hope in itself.

‘Jesus is in control’, being part of ‘speaking as a Christian’ becomes a perspectival triviality. Of course, all things are worked together for good for those who love God, but not all do. Jesus will sew up history, which he will bring to a climax in the judgment of evil and re-creation of the world and all that is, as the setting for us to enjoy him and his creation forever.

Embedding our discourse in the flow of biblical history: God (creator), Humanity (the fallen ones), Jesus (the creator’s taking human form), Cross (his triumph over death and sin), New Creation (all things made new), enables descriptive and coherent answers to questions. This is far better than quips which for the non-believer are deluded, and the young believer meaningless because they are often left contextualized by a world given its core definition by humanist-materialism, or the self-centred subjectivism of post-modernism.

Your first lesson, ‘what is the Bible’ would be a wonderful one to participate in. Most people these days regard it as a collection of disconnected ‘verses’ and rules, much as the Koran is. It must be quite a challenge to dislodge this and profile the Bible as a vast collection of literature written over many centuries that have given us a grounded realist way of thinking about the world. A collection so profoundly influential that it was the foundation of modern science, and concepts of justice and charity, gaining expression in the generosity of Christian-influenced nations in seeking to benefit others, as fraught with corruption as this project was with the fallenness of humanity. It did this through great stories and texts written by some of the towering geniuses of all time: Moses, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Solomon, Paul, John, Luke with Moses, and Paul as the high peaks of these intellectual mountains.

Apart from this, it's a great read that people have found endlessly fascinating to study for the past 2000 years.

Blessings as you continue this year’s work.

Dawkins Proof

My comments on this book.

Excellent book. Marred by using AV quotations. Modern translations would be far better (NASB, Phillips for the NT, e.g.). It leans a little heavily on a Calvinistic legalism whereas the 'law' is not like a human conception of law, that is, made by man, rather when he refers to 'God's law', etc. he means what flows from and is congruent with God's nature and therefore reality, deeply set in the ontology of the creation. These aside, the book would be an excellent gift for any younger (in years or faith) Christian. We need books in similar accessible style and length dealing with the doctrine of creation and introductory of the works of both Francis Schaeffer and C. S. Lewis for younger readers.

CBS: really?

In both my undergrad degree and masters degree at UNSW I sought and attended the campus Christian groups.

I was invariably disappointed.

I sought depth, challenge and training in 'telling the Truth'. That is, the gospel. I got none.

The campus groups were either self-indulgent shelters from the world of action-evangelism, or cossetted 'safe spaces' for foppish, wide-eyed Christians with no knowledge of their faith.

But, I can't blame CBS

One would expect that Christians would come into Uni as Christians, just like they come into Uni as scholars: having some basic education in the tools, language and expectations of scholarship.

13 years of schooling does it for most people. After 13 years of school most people have encountered the pivotal ideas and practices of science, literature, maths, history, geography, engineering, and had time in forming, leading and/or participating in extra-mural groups, whether it be the Chess club or the stamp collectors.

After a similar time in most Church education/participation programs (what used to be called 'Sunday school' and in some snappily named youth group) there is not a similar level of competence in the Bible, Christian faith and practice, church history, apologetics and evangelism. Zip, nada, nuthin' You come out of these programs entertained, cossetted with some knowledge of disconnected Bible stories, meaningless songs and an ability to pray like everyone else in your denomination. Badly.

CBS and other groups I've encountered don't improve on this. I couldn't even have decent adult/intellectual discussions with the paid workers. I didn't continue.

CBS seems to be more of the same. A sermon club. A producer of T-shirt slogans that are obscure to all but the purveyors.

Maybe its just an in-group club.

You've got 'em for four years.

Here's what you should be onto, CBS fellers:

Year 1

Read the entire Bible, or at least the first 8 books, and the New Testament. The latter in two translations.

Read Mere Christianity and Tactics by Koukl.

Know the structure and historical flow of the Bible and the overarching picture of reality it provides.

Start basic training: Koukl's book and program is a great start.

Be introduced to the basic belief structures of modern paganism (western Hinduism), Islam, Mormonism and Jehovah's Witnesses, with reference to their similarity to early heresies.

Have had inquiring conversations with the 'belief' purveyors that have proselyting tables around the campus.

Have no sermons. Have training seminars and tutorial groups on the reading you've been doing.

Year 2

Read the entire Bible again

Read Schaeffer's trilogy (old in illustrations and references, but cracking like a whip in today's market of old ideas).

Work through the theology of creation, redemption, with the spotlight on the existential failure of man-made belief systems to deal with the issues that the Bible shows God dealing with, in us.

Train and practice stand-up enquiry based conversations with atheists, pagans, Muslims, JWs and Mormons. The deal here is, head into problems, go away and research what you find you don't know, and go again.

For paganism, Peter Jones' series on Ligonier or truthexchange is great.

Years 3 and 4.

Read some historical theology (Paul Tillich, A History of Christian Thought or better, Jarolav Pelikan’s The Christian Tradition).

Read the Bible more slowly, particularly the major prophets spiced up with the epistles. Read the Gospels every Advent (from now on).

Have deeply informed conversations (enquiry based) with every campus barrow pushing group: socialists, conservatives, enviro-gaiaists, vegans, Muslims, and so on. Make friends, but never compromise. Be less with Christians, except for training and refreshing and mostly talking to pagans, etc. Learn and keep improving your practice. Become knowledgeable in typical objections to Christian faith and analysis of the world and responses to them.

Be able to oppose materialism, paganism and the popular 'religion of me' from the Scriptures (I mean, not quoting the Scriptures aimlessly, but intellectually informed by them) without compromise and lead people to question their own understanding or assumptions about themselves and the world.

Know that social justice is tyranny for all. Nothing to do with the justice, mercy and love of God.

Hard work? No, CBS has support workers to make it easy and exciting.

You will come out of uni able to teach in the average suburban/town church.

Go get 'em.