This episode is a brief protestant apologetic on why Christians argue for monogomous heterosexual marriage, what it means to approach sex as an integrated and multi-faceted reciprocal element of a healthy monogomous marriage, and a few glancing blows at alternative viewpoints.   

As such, this episode does contain some adult themes. 

Topics include: 

Monogomy

Heterosexuality

Reasons for sex

Types of Intimacy 

Singleness

Divorce

Birth Control 

Infertility / Pregnancy / Abortion 

Homosexuality 

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THE FEAR AND TREMBLING LETTER

 

 

THE PURPOSE OF PAUL

Let’s start with Paul’s words: Philippians 2:12

“Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, 13 for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.”

 

OTHER TOPICS IN THIS LETTER...

OF MENTORS AND MANITEES (:3)

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS #3: 

Should we discover an alien race on another planet, would the incarnation, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ provide full salvation to these aliens? 

Which motif is most essential for understanding the atonement: satisfaction or victory?

How necessary is it for orthodox Christians to affirm the virgin birth?

Could Jesus have simply died of old age, and still have effectively atoned for our sin?

If God foreknew that Judas would betray Jesus, and that the passion of Christ depended on Judas's betrayal, did God 'will' Judas to sin?

Could God ever lie? If so, is He perfectly good? If not, is He perfectly powerful?

What theological idea you have learned in this course do you think is least understood in contemporary, Western Christian culture?

What do you think is the most pressing area of apologetic need trained theologians ought to respond to?

This letter centers on something deep and very important here that I only learned a few years ago. So, I’ll start this time with a related structural idea, one that I got from CS Lewis. Moreover, it was the model used for my most recent grad-work in apologetics, and the framework for the entire program. It’s a simple idea: “The rational and the imaginative need each other.” That’s it. To go deeper there is no better place to start than Lewis himself. In his essay “Bluspels and Flanasferes” (crazy title using made-up words to make his point!) Lewis makes the distinction between meaning and truth. He writes:

“Meaning... is the antecedent condition both of truth and falsehood whose antithesis is not error but nonsense. I am a rationalist. For me reason is the natural organ of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning. Imagination, producing new metaphors or revivifying old, is not the cause of truth but its condition.”

What he means by this has been the subject of much study, but very little debate. It is clear what he means by meaning, and that he believed that imagination is the key to understanding “full” truth. In my first letter I used the terms “Newtonian” and “Darwinist” to mean a similar thing. We have talked much about material vs. functional ontology (thanks to Walton) and Jordon Peterson’s key framework is “order versus chaos” which if you think about it is another version of the same thing. The act of doing anything is the act of bringing order to chaos, but simultaneously using our chaotic capacity to imagine and then actualize reality to sort-of bring about what we want. This goes for our spiritual lives too. The very act of saying “God I can’t do it alone…” is by definition a choice which has been acted upon. Worth meditating on. You will see it everywhere if you pay attention.

Topics in this letter: 

RATIONAL AND IMAGINATIVE APPROACHES

TRANSLATION WORD CHOICES

CAPITALIZING HE/HIS/HIM

GREAT SEA CREATURES

A GENOCIDAL GOD?

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I LOVE Science fiction! 

CS Lewis did not shy away from smuggled theology, and neither should we. He once wrote of his third entry in the Ransom Trilogy that:

“This is a ‘tall story’ about devilry, though it has behind it a serious ‘point’ which I have tried to make in my Abolition of Man.” 

An extremely popular form of speculative fiction is science fiction. It is a broad genre, deserving of its own distinctness beyond fantasy or other forms, mostly because it has the potential to grapple with apologetic themes in not only a more compelling way, but also by striking directly to the heart of the matters at hand. Let’s look at why this is true.

Science fiction is a complex “what if” statement.

All speculative fiction has apologetic value

Finally, apologetic value is easy to spot because faith ITSELF is often a MAJOR theme in sci-fi.

Science fiction challenges us scientifically, socially, and yes, also spiritually. And that is a very good thing!    

SO HOW DOES STAR WARS STAND UP TO THIS? Unfortunately, not very well from a Christian perspective, but it's a great way to start a conversation! Here's why...

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Letters to Prison #3: The Scripture and Translation Letter

This was my third letter to my friend in prison who has been asking such wonderful questions. This letter is all about scripture and translation and how we can know we have an accurate bible, and why we should believe it at all.  

Consider this quote from a second century man named Lucian who wrote the ancient text *How to Write History* saying in it:

“Let it be adorned […] by the interweaving of the matter.”

They didn’t have cameras or tape recorders. It was all based on eye-witness testimony of hundreds and in a few cases “the multitudes.” Guys who didn’t know each other wrote corroborating accounts based on oral eye-witnesses. They were a culture of oral story-tellers, and they were a lot more flexible with the details than we are today and a lot better at preserving the really important stuff. It’s the differences that make the Gospels believable.

More "Letters to Prison" episodes coming soon! 

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Natural theology, (once also termed physico-theology,) is a type of theology that provides arguments for the existence of God based on reason and ordinary experience of nature. This distinguishes it from revealed theology, which is based on scripture and/or religious experiences, and also from transcendental theology, which is based on a priori reasoning.

JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings  novel is a modern epic. Many have wondered how one man managed to encapsulate the culture and history of an entire fantasy world and its people. In a number of ways, his success in this regard is due to his deep understanding of the process of sub-creation, and his deep love for the creation of "fairy stories" as he called them, not as a surface metaphor for things in our world, but as existing within a rich context of sub-created reality, consistent unto itself. Knowing this, itis easy to see why the land of "Middle Earth" is a consistent and believable monotheistic world of Natural Theology demonstrated by its setting, races, and the plot of The Lord of the Rings.

In this episode, I explore why. 

  

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Letters to Prison #1: Functional Ontology and Genesis

For a while now I have been writing a friend in prison. Recently, I found out that he has been sharing these letters with some of the other prisoners he lives with.

This is incredibly humbling and brings new meaning to the phrase "there but by the grace of God go I..." so, I thought that perhaps there would be value to share those letters here too. 

This is letter number one, the "Functional Ontology and Genesis" letter. I'm respecting my friend's identity by not sharing his identity, nor his letters specifically. These are my words, but you can infer his questions regardless. 

 

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Medieval man was smarter than we give him credit for. He knew full well the earth was round, respected the hierarchical nature of the universe and social structure, and saw creation as a wonderful and precise mechanism powered (literally) by the sustaining love of - and for - God.

But even the heliocentric model isn't really "right." Just because a model works, doesn't mean it's the most accurate. Something can be functional, even "right" and still not be completely right.  We westerners don't really like not being completely right, so we sometimes defend our positions to the exclusion of new data or theories just because we don't want to add to  or change our set ideas.

John H. Walton argues that the Genesis chapter one is a functional description of creation as opposed to a material one. This was a major shift in my thinking, yet it ties in perfectly with everything I've been writing about for years now. Functional creation is everywhere.  

If God were to express himself from within the universe, how would it look? For my money, exactly like a Father God whose Holy Spirit lives within and among us, and Human Son who walked, taught, died, and rose again to kick the door to death off for us to follow into life. Join me for a look at one possible way of thinking about the non-linear God.   

 

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John writes in Revelation about the end of the age. As fun as it would be to talk about that too, I'm actually interested in the secondary and often overlooked point he makes about the saved. It's interesting, often translated dangerously and differently, and worth looking at in at least three translations if at all.

Pay close attention to who and what is nonlinear in these translations of the verse, as it shifts pretty radically from one to another!

 New International Version

"All inhabitants of the earth will worship the beast--all whose names have not been written in the Lamb's book of life, the Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world." 

New Living Translation

"And all the people who belong to this world worshiped the beast. They are the ones whose names were not written in the Book of Life before the world was made--the Book that belongs to the Lamb who was slaughtered."

English Standard Version

"and all who dwell on earth will worship it, everyone whose name has not been written before the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb who was slain."

 

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