Jiddu Krishnamurti

Jiddu Krishnamurti

This morning, a friend of mine inadvertently tipped-me-off to an Eastern philosopher, Jiddu Krishnamurti.  I had encountered his theosophical writings when I was in bible college in 1996.  In particular, I was launched into many years of socio-cultural reflection by this one quote: "It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society."

Having been reminded of this sage this morning, I sifted through some other material I could find on the net, and came across this quote.  I hope you enjoy it, and feel free to comment on it.

"Truth is a pathless land." Man cannot come to it through any organization, through any creed, through any dogma, priest or ritual, nor through any philosophical knowledge or psychological technique. He has to find it through the mirror of relationship, through the understanding of the contents of his own mind, through observation, and not through intellectual analysis or introspective dissection. Man has built in himself images as a sense of security – religious, political, personal. These manifest as symbols, ideas, beliefs. The burden of these dominates man's thinking, relationships and his daily life. These are the causes of our problems for they divide man from man in every relationship.

Gregory W. Lester: Bad Beliefs

Gregory W. Lester, Ph.D

The abovementioned (pictured left) is a Ph.D in Psychology at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas.  He has written an article hosted on The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI) called, "Why Bad Beliefs Don't Die."  I found the excerpt quoted below at John Loftus's site, Debunking Christianity, and thought it was very thought-provoking.

Because senses and beliefs are both tools for survival and have evolved to augment one another, our brain considers them to be separate but equally important purveyors of survival information....This means that beliefs are designed to operate independent of sensory data. In fact, the whole survival value of beliefs is based on their ability to persist in the face of contradictory evidence. Beliefs are not supposed to change easily or simply in response to disconfirming evidence. If they did, they would be virtually useless as tools for survival....Skeptical thinkers must realize that because of the survival value of beliefs, disconfirming evidence will rarely, if ever, be sufficient to change beliefs, even in “otherwise intelligent” people....[S]keptics must always appreciate how hard it is for people to have their beliefs challenged. It is, quite literally, a threat to their brain’s sense of survival. It is entirely normal for people to be defensive in such situations. The brain feels it is fighting for its life....it should be comforting to all skeptics to remember that the truly amazing part of all of this is not that so few beliefs change or that people can be so irrational, but that anyone’s beliefs ever change at all. Skeptics’ ability to alter their own beliefs in response to data is a true gift; a unique, powerful, and precious ability. It is genuinely a “higher brain function” in that it goes against some of the most natural and fundamental biological urges.

What are your thoughts?

A History of God: Reflections & Review P. II

In Part 1 of this series, I provided a brief overview of the purpose behind Armstrong's book: to examine the evolution of the idea of God within the three major monotheistic religions of the world: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.  I also noted that Armstrong's historical scrutiny of the monotheistic conceptions of God comes by way of the documentary hypothesis, a source theory of biblical interpretation that seeks to arrange chronologically the inconsistent and independently authored texts of the earliest books of the bible.  Given the seemingly independent perspectives within the books of the Torah--and subsequent Old Testament books--the documentary hypothesis suggests that a series of redactors (editors) prepared the disparate documents into the forms we've come to know as the Pentateuch.

Citing Armstrong's interpretive tools goes a long way in helping to understand why she comes to some of the conclusions she does.  If it is true that the Pentateuch is a patchwork of originally independent narratives that have endured (who knows how many) redactions, then the traditional Christian perspective that the bible is wholly reliable can reasonably be questioned: reliable in its original, unedited form?  Reliable because of its redactions?  And how do we know that those who undertook to edit the original manuscripts were reliable people?  What constitutes 'reliability' in a religious context when dealing with scripture? At what point does having 'faith' that the scriptures are reliable cease to be an acceptable premise?  And further to those questions, if the writings of the major world religions can be questioned as to their reliability, can those religions themselves be questioned as to their reliability on the whole?  That is, if the religions of the book are questionable on a literary level, what aspects of that religion are reliable at all?

I won't be pursuing answers to those questions in this series, but suffice it to say that they are reasonably important questions, and the content of Armstrong's book certainly gives me pause to consider searching out reasonable answers.

But enough of my preamble!  On to the reflections and review.

Introduction (pp. xvii - xxiii)
I have read Armstrong's introduction to A History of God a few times before reading the actual book.  There are several instances within those (roughly) 7 pages that resonated very deeply with me.  For example, Armstrong, right out of the gates, admits to her childhood belief in God as an implicit or "unquestioned" assumption, but because of the arid pomposity of the religious definitions that surround the notion of 'God' she cannot meaningfully state she had faith in God:

"There is a distinction between belief in a set of propositions and a faith which enables us to put our trust in them.  I believed implicitly in the existence of God; I also believed in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the efficacy of the sacraments, the prospect of eternal damnation and the objective reality of Purgatory... God, on the other hand, was a somewhat shadowy figure, defined in intellectual abstractions rather than images."

 Like Armstrong, I had my own implicit belief in God when I was a child.  I recall demanding I be brought to church when I was eight.  At the same age, I was baptised, though I know I had no real understanding of the religious significance of that event.  A few years later, I sat in the back of my dad's car reading my bible while he and his girlfriend ran errands at a local plaza.  When they returned to the car, I plucked up my courage and asked my dad what he would think if I became a priest and taught people about God.  His response was disheartening to a child of 12: "Do what you want.  Just don't talk to me about it."  This was the same response I received from him when I was 16 and told him that I had become a "born again" Christian.

All this is to say that, like Armstrong,

"As I grew up... I began to be moved by the beauty of the liturgy and, though God remained distant, I felt that it was possible to break through to him and that the vision would transfigure the whole of created reality."

Disappointment is germane to most people's lives, however, and Armstrong did not experience that transfigured reality.  "Eventually, with regret," Armstrong writes, "I left the religious life..."  As did I, and with many, bitter, emotional struggles.  But having pursued her religious studies as much as she did, Armstrong was unwilling to put away her passion to understand religious reality:

"My interest in religion continued... and I made a number of television programs about the early history of Christianity and the nature of the religious experience."

And having scoured the depths of religious history, Armstrong came to an unoriginal, yet beautifully expressed conclusion about the nature of religious experience and activity:

"Like art, religion has been an attempt to find meaning and value in life, despite the suffering that flesh is heir to.  Like any other human activity, religion can be abused, but it seems to have been something that we have always done.  It was not tacked on to a primordially secular nature by manipulative kings and priests but was natural to humanity... Throughout history, men and women have experienced a dimension of the spirit that seems to transcend the mundane world.  Indeed it is an arresting characteristic of the human mind to be able to conceive concepts that go beyond it in this way."

It must be said, however, that although religion has been, and probably will continue to be an activity integral to human participation in the world, the rise of scientific savvy is a formidable challenge to the religious-minded.  For if "meaning and value in life" can come from ancestral liturgies and ancient doctrines, then the continual increase in understanding and factual comprehension science continuously provides may overtake religious devotion.  Certainly knowing the factual details of reality does not detract from life's meaning and value, but should reinforce it if those meanings and values are true.  Certainly deriving one's meaning and value from what is actual and demonstrable will grip people's minds with at least as much fervour as the meaning and value in life that non-demonstrable, non-natural claims have traditionally held.

Whatever the case may end up being, there is no historical precedent that even remotely recommends a religionless future.

"...religion is highly pragmatic... it is far more important for a particular idea of God to work than for it to be logically or scientifically sound. As soon as it ceases to be effective it will be changed--sometimes for something radically different."

Thus notions of God are entirely provisional: they evolve just as much as people and their cultures do.  The success of monotheisms such as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam has not been in having precise knowledge of the divine so much as it has been that the monotheistic religions have been able to adapt culture to their creeds.  Previous to monotheism religious motifs were subject to the suasions of culture.  And indeed, so-called "pagan" religions continue to develop along the lines of the cultures and people-groups practicing them.  Monotheism, however, dictates culture by enforcement of creeds: you cannot be a 21st century Christian without holding dear certain creeds.  You can, however, be a raging pagan, polytheist, or religious pluralist in the 21st century even while brushing-off ancient dictates.

This, of course, makes me wonder why people prefer to be directed in their beliefs, rather than choosing what to believe.  The cafeteria Catholic (pejorative, but apt term that that is) is still beholden to certain essentials, or he isn't a Catholic.  Period.  The smorgasbord pagan is really only expected to choose what he will.  And both the Catholic monotheist and the pagan pluralist enjoy an absolutist sense of reality: they both believe that they are wonderfully right, and that others are woefully wrong.

Be that as it may, such concerns are somewhat allayed by Armstrong's right observation that

"Whatever conclusions we reach about the reality of God, the history of this idea must tell us something important about the human mind and the nature of our aspiration."

The import derived from conversations about God seems to be purely personal.  Given that, it really doesn't surprise me that somewhere along the historical line, the concomitant notion of a "personal God" was recognised in the fact that people conclude their notions of God wholly subjectively: no two people have the same experience of the same idea.  'God', the abstract, is concretized differently in each person.  Thus God-talk is strained at best, and tests credulity not only at worst, but inevitably.

As is proper, Armstrong should have the last word here:

"All talk about God staggers under impossible difficulties.  Yet monotheists have all been very positive about language at the same time as they have denied its capacity to express the transcendent reality.  The God of Jews, Christians and Muslims is a God who--in some sense--speaks.  His Word is crucial in all three faiths.  The Word of God has shaped the history of our culture.  We have to decide whether the word "God" has any meaning for us today."

Omnipotence and Omniscience

Stefan Molyneux

From an essay entitled, "Against the Gods", by Stefen Molyneux we have the following quote:

...omniscience cannot coexist with omnipotence, since if a god knows what will happen tomorrow, said god will be unable to change it without invalidating its knowledge. If this god retains the power to change what will happen tomorrow, then it cannot know with exact certainty what will happen tomorrow.

What are your thoughts?

A History of God: Reflections & Review P. I

I've taken the plunge into Karen Armstrong's magnum opus A History of God (Knopf, 1993).  It is a book that any serious reader of religion and history would be well-advised to read.  The book aims to give an account of the development of the three major monotheistic traditions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) and their respective evolving ideas about God (e.g., who and what God is, how God has acted in history, and how God has -- interestingly -- taken on competing perspectives despite the same Abrahamic roots).  Finally, Armstrong examines some modern philosophies concerning God, such as the 'death of God movement' and post-modern conceptions of God.

Armstrong is no friend to ignorance, so anyone investigating the perrenial question of 'God' had better come to this volume with an open mind to learn, or an already firm grasp of the issues attending the monotheistic religions and their notions of God.  This is not to say that Armstrong has written a compendium of arcana, or some arid piece of abstracted academia.  It does mean, however, that she has taken an angle not popular to the usual considerations of religious history.

More specifically, Armstrong's work on the Judeo-Christian heritage draws from a particular source theory called the Wellhausen Hypothesis, or the Documentary Hypothesis.  Such a theory of biblical origins is minority opinion, absolutely, when contrasted with the classic circles of literal-historical method.  Though it isn't without merit, the literal-historical method takes too much advantage of the willingness and (sometimes) unintentional ignorance of the well-meaning believer. 

For example, it is clearly the case that there are two different creation accounts in Genesis, but the literal-historical method, while it may recognise this, eventually relies on the willingness of the believer to accept on faith the discrepancies in the biblical narrative.  The documentary hypothesis, while not unsympathetic to the demands of faith to believe the claims of the biblical narrative charts, dates, rearranges and makes a fair-minded attempt at explaining oddities in scripture by examining the historical-cultural events attendant to Christian holy writ.  Once that is done, the reader has a more thorough working knowledge of what the biblical authors were writing, and how they were communicating age-old stories in new symbols.  Granted, literal-historical method includes some of the same rigorous examinations of history and culture, but the difference is usually split between which hermeneutic is going to source evidence to support an already established outcome (literal-historical) and which explanation will review the evidence with an eye to assembling a scientific and irrespective account (documentary hypothesis).

Because Armstrong's account draws on the documentary hypothesis, she is bound to be discarded as 'confused' or 'godless' or what-have-you by the vast majority of Christians.  Despite this automatic anethema in the majority Christian world, Armstrong has still managed to pen one of the most dramatically successful historical theology texts in the Western world.  And the reason for this is not hard to see.

Certainly the boldly ambitious title A History of God claims people's attention right away.  But more, the gentle eloquence in Armstrong's recounting of the details of otherwise dead, dusty, and dilapidated eras gives the reader a personal sense of the events she relays.  Such an ability to suffuse historical academics with life, light, and occasional nostalgia enlivens the mind to the subject matter, and that is what I personally think owes to the massive success of Armstrong's book.

Alongside Armstrong's easy but penetrating academics, she is not afraid to call a spade a spade.  So while she examines the topics at hand, she sees the relevance of addressing contemporary issues that arise out of the mindsets of the religious history being examined.  For example, there are very few people in the televised Western world unfamiliar with the cultural tactic of claiming God for partisan motives.  Presidents and Primeministers in times of war, call God out as if he were a super-soldier destined to ordain the victory of whoever has enough public pious pomp.  Or, as bequeathed to Jews and Christians everywhere, God has culled certain people to himself as a preferred group: the elect.  Such notions of holier-than-others, or pre-ordained preferential peoples wins no sympathy from Armstrong.  In a memorable quote, she highlights the dangers of such ugly and banal concepts as 'election theology':

The dangers of such theologies of election, which were not qualified by the transcendent perspective of an Isaiah, are clearly shown in the holy wars that have scarred the history of monotheism.  Instead of making God a symbol to challenge our prejudice and force us to contemplate our own shortcomings, it can be used to endorse our egotistic hatred and make it absolute.  It makes God behave exactly like us, as though he were simply another human being (p. 54-55).

Whose side is God on?

Believing yourself more special than everybody else certainly runs one adrift of reality and sets one up to be a potential danger.  Being unafraid to reach out for a moment of sagacity, Armstrong drives home a practical and helpful point to highlight the difference in thinking of some of the ancient peoples and a more morally advanced perspective on the inherent equality of all people.

Still, Armstrong is not preachy, even if she does drop a pearl of wisdom here-and-there throughout her book.  It befits someone of her unusual erudition to address some of the more troubling aspects of humanity's sickly dogmas.  And carefully coddled as those admontions are in a lucid recounting of historical religion, nothing is lost in Armstrong's collisions with cheap theologies.

Today's Thought

“The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.”

~ George Bernard Shaw.

The List

Please forgive my lack of posting lately. I haven't been at the computer much at all in the past month.

In any case, one reader, J., was curious about what I was reading. Before I get to that, I have to confess that my last article "Where I'm At #2" was, on reflection, a muddle of guck. I proposed that truth is non-relational all the while relating that point as if it were possibly true -- which would make it false. In short, my conclusion was a contradiction. And if any of you took anything from the article -- whether a sense of irritation at my jejune philosophizing, or an impetus to question the nature of truth further -- something was related to you from my writing. If that's the case, then I am batting a good average in the stupidity game.

Forgive me, please.

As for what I'm reading lately, I've got a few titles I'm charging through. Here they are in no particular priority.

A.N. Wilson is a tremendous biographer, to my estimation. I've read a couple of his earlier works and enjoyed them very much. This latest read fits into my continuing research into doubt, skepticism, agnosticism, and atheism. It's quite a fascinating piece, and well worth the purchase, if you don't mind a challenge.


More from the Documentary Hypothesis front. Crisp, lucid prose, but not meant for anyone looking for an introduction to the origins of Judeo-Christian scripture. Certainly not a hit with Catholics because it challenges their self-assurance that they've got it all sussed out anyway. But coming from a former nun, I'm not too concerned that Karen Armstrong really wants to kowtow to the usual theological prattle concerning the genesis of holy writ. And to that end, I am happy to be educated.

I don't think I'm going to read the whole way through this handy (un)little volume. To be honest, I'm just not that interested in what some of the essays have to say. However, there is a gold-mine of intelligent, witty, and engaging prose in this companion, and anyone interested in the thought-life of Freethinkers would sate their curiosity with this book. Which brings up the next book...

Although I'm not American, I couldn't resist Ms. Jacoby's well-written essay. I'm only a few pages in, but I know I've encountered a keen, incisive mind.

So, J., those are the things I'm reading these days. Since my mind is set to 'Whirlwind Mode' of late, I can't offer you any substantial thoughts on what I've been reading. Hopefully I will be able to soon, however.

Take care.

A Look at Literature

I'm still plugging away at Karen Armstrong's volume "A History of God". The material is dense, and I'm learning quite a bit. I appreciate her acumen, her narrative style, and her sidelong humour. But after finishing Bart Ehrman's relevant but, sadly, anticlimactic book "God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question -- Why We Suffer", I needed a change of pace.

Truth-seeking can be a dogged business. And what with the swath of contrarian, and anti-religious literature I've been slogging through this past year, I thought it might be apropos to turn my obstinance toward some new, not necessarily 'Christian' apologetics for religious faith. To start, I have these two gems:

I'm not that far into this little volume, but so far, Timothy Keller seems to be an astute, articulate, and compassionate writer. He has an easy writing style, he's a logic-hound, and he pulls from a wide base of sources: literature, philosophy, movies, etc. What's not to like? I suppose I may find that out.

Then there's this one:

David Berlinski is not a favourite amongst the celebrities of the scientific communities. People like PZ Myers have a spartan hate on for Berlinski. Richard Dawkins considers Berlinski a 'flea'; but anyone reading Dawkins will understand that even yippy chihuahua's are not immune from being bitten. And that is just what Berlinski proposes to do in his crafty little volume: take a bite out of Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens, and Harris (a.k.a., The Four Horsemen). I'm sure that if I can mark out the margins of my books with the gross, and indecent errors of these four quixotic heroes of atheism, a world-renowned raconteur like Berlinski should be able to cripple them, and the horses they rode in on.

In Pursuit of Understanding

Following up on my post of August 23rd, "What If I'm Wrong?" it would be remiss if I were to simply adhere to the proposition that I might be wrong every time I'm faced with a possible conclusion. In all honesty, it would be a bit of lugubrious position to truly consider all answers as questions marked by a period. Radical skepticism is, in the end, radically untenable.

That does not remove the necessity to research, learn, and reassess what I've held this long to be true. To that end, these are the books I am presently devouring, and enjoying quite thoroughly.


Quite honestly, Ehrman's book, far from being polemic or argumentative, is heartfelt and personal. At the same time, he is not short on insights surrounding the issue of theodicy. Ehrman examines not only the philosophical issues surrounding theodicy, but also examines the answers proffered in scripture, and the historical context those answers were couched in. I have learned quite a lot from this pleasant little volume, and will re-visit it in the not-to-distant future.

Karen Armstrong is, quite literally, a phenomenal researcher and writer. Her clarity, wit, and depth of understanding, combined with her report-style narrative is refreshing in a history book. Armstrong is not without her biases (no-one really is), but her attention to detail and ability to synthesize vast domains of religious and philosophical understanding into a historical context is, as far as I'm concerned, almost without parallel (J.N.D. Kelly, Henry Chadwick, and Horace Hummel being other notable exceptions).

I'm almost finished Ehrman's book, and am part way through Armstrong's account of God. To be honest, the more I'm learning from these people, the more I'm enjoying the necessary challenges they bring to my beliefs, and the changes those challenges imply. Refusing to challenge my beliefs, to face the doubts and accusations levelled at a set of beliefs, renders me insincere. I'm not willing to believe dishonestly, or ignorantly. And if the propositional, historical, and physical evidence invalidates my beliefs, then I will have a decision to make: continue to believe despite evidence to the contrary, or, in pursuit of understanding, admit that something other than what I presently believe must be true.

Small Review And An Update On My Reading List

I posted my current reading list not too long ago, but I fear I've changed my trajectory.  I put Dostoevsky down, and G.K. Chesterton will most certainly come later.  I did, however, finish reading Michel Onfray's book "In Defense of Atheism", and I must say that it was a very good read.  

In particular, I enjoyed the fact that he didn't simply jump on the bandwagon with other popular atheists of the day: Harris, Hitchens, Dawkins, and Dennett.  His approach was more philosophical, and less reliant on the myopia of modern science.  In fact, Onfray goes so far as to criticize today's popular atheists for pedaling science as if it is the contemporary Oracle at Delphi.  

Now while he doesn't specifically mention the authors I've noted above, anyone who has been keeping track of the spate of atheist literature streaming forth in popular culture today would know exactly who Onfray is referring to.  So by looking past other popular atheists, Onfray has also managed to avoid the shibboleths of their particular brand of elitism: materialism, naturalism, and Darwinianism.  And while he may very well hold to these understandings/philosophies, his book is premised more forcefully on rationalism, hedonism, modern textual criticism, and a good deal of incisive logic.  The result? An incindiary read sure to explode the understandings of anyone interested in challenging their presuppositions and faith.

Now that I've finished that book, however, I'm not sure it's the right time to read Dostoevsky or Chesterton.  Call it what you will, but I go by feel when I'm on a reading splurge -- and this jump into atheist literature these past 8 months has been just that: a splurge.  Not a frivolous one, mind you.  I do have an objective: to write a reasoned response to the issues the New Atheists have been raising.  I find their perspectives refreshing, insightful, and well worth consideration.  Having said that though, there is a fair deal of obliqueness to their criticisms, and it will be a harrowing challenge to reason out a response to not only some of their more insular perspectives, but also arguments they've delineated that assume wrong-headed information about religious issues that are readily available if they'd only look past their chosen enemies: Catholicism, and Evangelicalism.

All that being said, now I turn to what my actual reading list currently is.  Here we go...

Ehrman's book is extremely challenging, and definitely not recommended for anyone unprepared to have their understandings of inerrancy, and preservation challenged.  His style is engaging for the academically-minded, but for most people he would seem quite dry.  Kind of like licking melba-toast.

Next up, however, is a challenge to Christians from a Christian.  The author is David F. Wells, professor of theology at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.  I've only read the introduction to this book at this point, so I can't say much about it since it consists largely of anecdotes that display a regular occurrence amongst Christians: a regrettable lack of understanding in theology; and thus, in what Christians profess to believe.

This last book was recommended by my former co-author here at St. Cynic, Suneal. I'm looking forward to reading this citing Suneal's usual taste in reading material is quite challenging, and often rewarding.

Current Reads

It seems I've been a little shy on posting lately. After such an insightful article (Default to Real Life) from my wife, I thought it would be better to lay low and hand over centre stage. Admittedly, I did throw in a couple of small articles, but only because they were not likely to divert the attention away from my wife's writing.

In any case, I think I will start placing new material on the board again. Unfortunately, this time 'round I have nothing of the usual calibre I place on St. Cynic. So if you'll bear with me while I place another of my current reads on, I'll get to something meatier in a couple of days -- or less, hopefully.

Here is what I'm working on at the moment:

I like Onfrey's writing style -- somewhat postmodern and anecdotal, but eloquent and heady, too -- but his overall 'defense' is weak, so far.

One word: incredibly brilliant! Haha! Okay. Bad joke. Seriously, if you haven't turned your head to this book before, you are missing out on one of the truly classic novels of all time. Whatever good I can say about this book would never suffice for actually reading the novel itself. You simply must read this book.

There's no excuse for not reading this book. You have to, and that's all there is to it. Chesterton is sheer genius.

On Women In Ministry

Gregory Boyd. He's a man of great learning, insight, and dedication. A former atheist, he became a Christian in 1974, and eventually gratuated from Princeton Theological Seminary with a Ph. D. He's a formidable philosopher, a top-notch theologian, author of many scholarly and popular books, a former professor of theology, and currently a pastor at Woodland Hills Church in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Lately, I've been reading through some of the material on his site, Christus Victor Ministries, and came across a very important article I think every Christian should read. It concerns women in ministry. It's a hot-topic, to say the least, and has been for quite some time.

Now, given my background in conservative Lutheranism, I was once a staunch supporter of the 'men only' policy toward ministry positions. Women, I believed, were wonderful, beautiful, and spiritually gifted individuals who -- for reasons that were suspicious to me then -- were disallowed any ecclesial teaching office. Since I was ordained a Rev. Deacon, and was training in seminary to become a pastor, I wasn't prepared at the time to challenge the status quo. Most especially because it would mean expulsion from seminary, and a definite case for church discipline where I was serving.

On a more personal note, I am married to a tremendously erudite, and sagacious woman (Sarah, co-author on this blog) who, despite her many and profound giftings, was prevented from using those giftings (which extend beyond her natural ability to nurture our children, and cook food) because of her status as a woman. To Sarah's credit, I probably wouldn't have done as well as I did at seminary were it not for her incisiveness, natural knack for making theology practical, and her superior ability to converge disparate, abstract pieces of information. In many ways, any success I have ever had as a teacher, church servant, and communicator is due to Sarah's ministrations to me, and our family.

Given what I've just written -- that I was always suspicious of the 'men only' dogma, and that Sarah has many extra-domestic talents and giftings -- it became a matter not just of curiosity, but of necessity for me to start asking important questions like: why shouldn't my wife, who is a more capable teacher than me, have the opportunity to teach? What biblical warrant is there for Sarah to have to suppress her God-given abilities? And wouldn't that be contradictory? Or, as Sarah once put it, "why would God give me these gifts and then make it so that I'm disallowed using them?" These kinds of questions apply across the board, really: why would God create women to have the same spiritual and intellectual gifts as men, declare their total equality to men (Gal. 3:28), and then proscribe their use of those gifts? Is God capricious? Is He fixed on torturing women's psyches? What's the deal here?

As I said earlier, it became a matter of necessity to have these questions answered. And the answers didn't come fast, or easy. In fact, I agonized over this issue for many years. I was torn between wanting to keep my loyalties to those men of God that I loved (Rev. R.A. Ballenthin, and Dr. William Mundt), the Scriptural declarations that seemed so precise and clear (esp. 1 Tim. 2:11-15, and 1 Cor. 14:34-35), and the fantastically gifted woman I married. All of this came to a head when I took two years away from church (a wonderful catharsis for my wife and I, but not something I would necessarily prescribe as a common course of action).

During those two years in absentia, I grew more sensitive to the arguments proposed by my wife, and other scholars that certain passages of Scripture were more culturally relevant, or contextually skewed due to lack of appropriate cultural references in our present day. I didn't want to bite this bullet, as it were, because it seemed so hackneyed, so oft-parrotted that I didn't want to re-visit the philosophical implications it presented; I had already dismissed such ideas in my seminary days. God's Word was God's Word, and it contains no errors. And in this case, I still believe that God's Word contains no errors: it says what it means about women in ministry. The problem was that I wasn't understanding what Scripture meant by what it said. So, because of that, I was forced to chew back my (then) cynicism on the issue of 'cultural relevance', and re-visit the issue.

Fortunately, my wife and I came into contact with a house-church couple who invited us to participate with them in worship from the home. Eager to have fellowship, we accepted the invitation. But it quickly became apparent to us that this couple was living out to a much greater, and to a much more shameful level, the same 'men only' policy that I was struggling with. As I observed them and asked some questions, their understanding of Scriptural warrant for silencing women reflected the extreme logical end of the same understanding I had ruefully carried about for years: women were out-of-place teaching in church. For them, however, the extreme expressed itself in complete and utter disallowance of women to speak at all during times of worship. In fact, the one time I witnessed this couple's teenage daughter speak, both her mother and father quickly turned on her and launched Scriptural condemnations at her as if they were taking target practice with a handgun. She was shamed, the father was red-faced with anger, and her lively eyes dimmed into sadness.

So how was that experience 'fortunate'? Simple: it put a bold-faced stamp on the absurdity of over-extending ancient cultural imperatives into present-day scenarios. To put it differently, I learned that day that it is of paramount importance to re-examine our cultural differences now that we're 2000 years removed from the ancient biblical world. Sometimes there will be consonance. Sometimes there will be startling, and important differences. Seems like a simple, even obvious fact, doesn't it? But try learning that from the position of a pastor-in-training, who wants nothing more than to do God's will, and take care of his family. It isn't easy. And it took a total break from the pursuit of that vocation, that lifestyle, to even begin to have the opportunity to freely explore such an issue.

But I did. And here is where I now stand: I find it absurd that women are excluded from ministry positions. Not only that, I find the notion of religious 'authority' to be so illusory, and filled with shoddy, unbiblical reasoning that I can no longer justify the typical dyed-in-the-wool treatment of "no woman should have authority over a man" (1 Tim. 2:11). That pericope was an imperative leveled by Paul to a particular church, in a particular locale, at a particular time experiencing difficulties with certain rebellious tendencies. Paul, being the educated, and highly intelligent man that he was, I am quite certain of it, would have made a universal statement to all believers if it truly were God's will that no woman at any point in time, anywhere, and for any reason was to have a voice in the assemblies of God. It would be the height of imbecility and insanity to suggest that Paul intended a universal application of the 'men-only' policy when he quite consistently breaks his own policy in several other places in Scripture! It would also be egregious to state that Paul attempted a universal silencing of women when he wrote such passages as 1 Tim. 2:11 and 1 Cor. 14:34-35 when he was intimately aware of the ministry of women to Christ, Christ's elevation of women, and other Scriptural writings that showcase the importance of women in ministering capacities.

No. Paul intended to be particular in his application of the passages I've noted. To say otherwise, would be to misrepresent one of Christianity's greatest figures, and declare God a liar. Are you willing to go that distance? I'm not. I'm also not willing to make arbitrary, unbiblical distinctions the likes of which allow for women to minister in churches but only in nursaries, or to female 'tweens'. If you've agreed with me so far -- that women are equally ministers with men -- then such a cockeyed distinction is just another way to subvert the potential capacities of women in the church.

For some extra, more clearly explained material on this subject, let me refer you to Gregory Boyd's article "The Case for Women in Ministry". It's an excellent read with a lot of fantastic points, and straight-up exegesis.

How Hitchens Poisons Logic

Christopher Hitchens's international bestseller god is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything is a poignant but embittered look at the effects and influence of religion in history, and the modern world.  I commented briefly about the book a while ago in an article called "The Muppets and Christopher Hitchens".  Still, I think Eric Reitan gives voice to one of the major flaws of Hitchens's work in the following quote:

But to say these things requires an account of what I mean by "religion." Instead of offering his own account, Hitchens' strategy seems to be this: if it is good, noble, or tends to inspire compassion, then it isn't "religion." It is "humanism" or something of the sort. With no clear definition to guide him, Hitchens is free to locate only what is cruel, callous, insipid, or banal in the camp of religion, while excluding anything that could reliably motivate the heroic moral action exemplified by Bonhoeffer and King. When "religion" is never defined, but in practice is treated so that only what is poisonous qualifies, it becomes trivially easy to conclude that "religion poisons everything."

IS GOD A DELUSION? A REPLY TO RELIGION'S CULTURED DESPISERS (WILEY-BLACKWELL: DEC. 3, 2008), P. 19.

Essentially, if you set out to state a thing is bad, and then remove all the good from it, you're left with the bad.  Hitchens's logic on this count is rancorous and amounts to nothing more than affirming the consequent; that is, if religion poisons everything then religion is bad; religion poisons everything, therefore religion is bad.  Hitchens does nothing to either define religion, or allow for any of the good that religion provides (that fellow atheists like Dennett and Dawkins freely admit) to be part of his definition of 'religion'.  He simply removes everything that stands in the way of his assumed conclusion that 'religion is poisonous' and works from there.  A very disingenuous move to say the least.

Thanks to Afterall.net for this one.

Farewell, Suneal

Suneal has decided to retire from authorship at St. Cynic.  We wish him the best in everything he does in the future.  We will miss you, Suneal.

Go With God, Solzhenitsyn

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Noble-prize winning author, and critic has died at 89. Today, I feel sad.