This is a great story about how William Lane Craig went to study for two Ph.D’s! I met William Lane Craig once at a talk that Alvin Plantinga was giving. We started conversing and realized that we both went to the same seminary, and of course were there for the philosophy. (Of course he’s a well-known Christian philosopher, and I was just a nobody Ph.D. student in philosophy at the time. I’m still a nobody, but I’ve finally graduated.)

From: http://www.williamlanecraig.com/

Question 83
Subject: Double Doctorates
———————-
Question:
Dear Dr. Craig,

I am curious as to how you obtained your double Phds. How did you attain the second one? I am curious because such an achievement is among my own goals. Thank you Sir, God Bless.

Yours Respectfully,

Christopher
———————-
Dr. Craig responds:

Then you’re certainly more ambitious than I was, Christopher! We never planned to do such a thing; we were just sort of led into it. Jan and I have found that the Lord never shines His light very far down our path but gives us just enough light to take the next step.

Occasionally I like to take a more personal Question of the Week like yours, so let me share a bit of the story of how God has led us.

My senior year at Wheaton College I was introduced to the subject of Apologetics through reading of E. J. Carnell’s An Introduction to Christian Apologetics. Carnell’s book electrified me. He was addressing all the interesting questions that I wondered about and wanted answers to. I admired Carnell greatly because he had earned doctorates in philosophy and theology from Boston University and Harvard University respectively. I thought how wonderful it would be to have expertise like that in both areas, but I never dreamt that this would be something I might aspire to.

I did, however, aspire to a seminary education following my college graduation, so in 1973 I moved with my young wife to Deerfield, Illinois, to commence studies in Philosophy of Religion under Norman Geisler at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. We spent two great years at Trinity, studying under men such as Paul Feinberg, David Wolfe, John Warwick Montgomery, David Wells, John Woodbridge, J. I. Packer, Clark Pinnock, and Murray Harris. I earned twin Master’s degrees in Philosophy of Religion and in Church History and the History of Christian Thought. It turned out to be a crucial stepping stone in the path God had laid out for us.

As graduation from Trinity neared, Jan and I were sitting one evening at the supper table in our little campus apartment, talking about what to do after graduation. Neither of us had any clear leading or inclination of what we should do next.

So Jan said to me, “Well, if money were no object, what would you really like to do next?”

I replied, “If money were no object, what I’d really like to do is go to England and do a doctorate under John Hick.”

“Who’s he?” she asked.

“Oh, he’s this famous British philosopher who’s written extensively on arguments for the existence of God,” I explained. “If I could study with him, I could develop a cosmological argument for God’s existence.”

But it hardly seemed a realistic idea.

The next evening at supper Jan handed me a slip of paper with John Hick’s address on it. “I went to the library today and found out that he’s at the University of Birmingham in England,” she said. “Why don’t you write him a letter and ask him if you can do a doctoral thesis under him on the cosmological argument?”

What a woman! So I did, and to our amazement and delight Professor Hick wrote back saying he’d be very pleased to supervise my doctoral work on that subject. So it was an open door!

The only problem was, the University of Birmingham required an official bank statement certifying that we had all of the money for all of the years it would take me to complete the doctoral degree. (They didn’t want foreign students dropping out midway through their doctoral programs because they had run out of cash.)

Well, we didn’t have that kind of money! In fact, we were as poor as church mice. Our efficiency apartment was so small that lying on our mattress on the floor I could reach out and touch the refrigerator. We used to cut paper plates in half just to keep down expenses! (That led to an embarrassing moment once when we had Dr. Woodbridge over for dessert, and Jan, not even thinking about it, served him his pie on a half of a paper plate! Gracious to a fault, he never said a thing.)

But we really sensed that God was calling us to go to England to do this degree. There were no scholarships for foreign students from the financially strapped British universities. We had to come up with the money ourselves. And so every morning and evening we began to pray that somehow the Lord would supply the money.

To make a long story short, we made an appointment with a non-Christian businessman whose family Jan was acquainted with, and we laid out for him what we believed God was calling us to do. And this non-Christian businessman gave us—not loaned us—he gave us all of the money we needed to do the doctoral degree under John Hick at the University of Birmingham! It was one of the most astonishing provisions of the Lord I have ever seen. So Jan and I felt as though God had miraculously plucked us up and transported us to England to do this degree.

I did write on the cosmological argument under Professor Hick’s direction and was awarded the Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Birmingham. Three books flowed out of my doctoral dissertation, including The Kalam Cosmological Argument (1979). Today the kalam argument has become one of the most discussed arguments of natural theology.

As Jan and I neared the completion of my doctoral studies in Birmingham, our future path was again unclear to us. I had sent out a number of applications for teaching positions in philosophy at American universities but had received no bites. We didn’t know what to do.

I remember it like yesterday. We were sitting at the supper table in our little house outside Birmingham, and Jan suddenly said to me, “Well, if money were no object, what would you really like to do next?”

I laughed because I remembered how the Lord had used her question to guide us in the past. I had no trouble answering the question. “If money were no object, what I’d really like to do is go to Germany and study under Wolfhart Pannenberg.”

“Who’s he?”

“Oh, he’s this famous German theologian who’s defended the resurrection of Christ historically,” I explained. “If I could study with him, I could develop a historical apologetic for the resurrection of Jesus.”

Our conversation drifted to other subjects, but Jan later told me that my remark had just lit a fire under her. The next day while I was at the university, she slipped away to the library and began to research grants-in-aid for study at German universities. Most of the leads proved to be defunct or otherwise inapplicable to our situation. But there were two grants she found that were possibilities. You can imagine how surprised I was when she sprung them on me!

One was from a government agency called the Deutsche Akademische Austauschdienst (DAAD), which offered scholarships to study at German universities. Unfortunately, the grant amounts were small and not intended to cover all one’s expenses. The other was from a foundation called the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung. This foundation was evidently an effort at Kulturpolitik (cultural politics), aimed at refurbishing Germany’s image in the post-War era. It provided very generous fellowships to bring foreign scientists and other scholars to do research for a year or two at German laboratories and universities.

Reading the literature from the Humboldt Stiftung just made my mouth water. They would pay for four months of a German refresher course at the Goethe Institute for the scholar and his spouse prior to beginning research, they would help find housing, they would pay for visits to another university if your research required it, they would pay for conferences, they would send pocket money from time to time—it was unbelievable! They even permitted recipients to submit the results of their research as a doctoral dissertation toward a degree from the university at which they were working.

The literature sent by the Humboldt Stiftung made it evident that the vast majority of their fellows were natural scientists—physicists, chemists, biologists, and so on. But it did say that applicants in any field were welcome. So we decided to apply in the field of theology and propose as my research topic an examination of the historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus! And we decided to go for the doctoral degree in theology at the same time.

We then began to pray morning and night that God would give us this fellowship. Sometimes I could believe God for such a thing; but then I would think of this panel of 80 German scientists in Bonn evaluating the applications and coming to this proposal on the historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus, and my heart would just sink!

It would take about nine months for the Humboldt Stiftung to evaluate the applications, and in the meantime our lease was expiring, so we needed to move out of our house in Birmingham. So I said to Jan, “Honey, you’ve sacrificed a lot for me during my studies. Let’s do something that you’d like to do. What would you really like to do?”

She said, “I’ve always wanted to learn French. I had to drop my French class in college because I got sick, and I’ve always felt bad I didn’t get to learn French.”

“O.K.,” I said, “Let’s go to France and enroll in a French language school!”

So we began to look into the possibilities. The obvious one was the Alliance Française, which is the official language school in France. But the far more interesting option was the Centre Missionnaire in Albertville, a Christian language school nestled in the French Alps for training foreign missionaries to French-speaking countries. They emphasized learning to really speak French with as little foreign accent as possible, as well as to read and write it, along with all the biblical and theological vocabulary only a Christian school would provide.

So we wrote to the Centre Missionnaire, asking if we could study there. To our dismay, they wrote back informing us that applicants have to be missionaries officially with a mission board and, moreover, the course would cost several thousand dollars. Well, we didn’t have that kind of money. We had spent just about all of the money given to us by the businessman to do our doctoral studies in Birmingham.

So I wrote back to the Centre Missionnaire explaining our financial situation. I also explained that while we weren’t officially missionaries, we did want to serve the Lord, and I included a letter of commendation from one of the elders at the Brethren church we were attending in Birmingham. Then I basically forgot about it.

Time passed, and none of my other efforts to find a job had materialized. We had shipped all of our belongings back to my parents’ home in Illinois. In one week we had to move out of our house in Birmingham, and we had nowhere to go.

I remember walking out to the mail box that day to collect the mail. I found there a letter from the Centre Missionnaire. I opened it half-heartedly and began to read. And then—my eyes suddenly grew wide as I read the words: “It doesn’t really matter to us whether you are missionaries as long as you want to serve the Lord. And as for the money, you just pay what you can, and we’ll trust God for the rest.” Unbelievable!

Once again we felt as though God had just miraculously plucked us up and transported us to another country to do His will. We later learned that the Centre had actually turned down paying missionaries and accepted us instead. We went to France with a deep sense of divine commissioning and so threw ourselves into our language studies. It was unbelievably rigorous, but by the end of our eight months there I was preaching in French at our small church, and Jan led our French neighbors to Christ.

Our French language training was going to be over in August, and as of July we still hadn’t heard anything from the Humboldt Stiftung. Then one day we received a letter from the Humboldt Stiftung. The only problem was, it was in German, and with my rusty high school German I wasn’t sure what it said!

So we grabbed the letter and rushed into the village to a small bookstore, where we found a French-German dictionary. As we stood there slowly translating the letter into French, hoping against hope, we could scarcely contain our excitement. “We are pleased to inform you that you have been granted a fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation to study the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus under the direction of Professor Dr. Wolfhart Pannenberg at the University of Munich.” So for the next two years the German government paid me to study the historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus! Incredible! Absolutely incredible!

Jan and I arrived in Germany on a cold January day to begin four months of language studies at the Goethe Institute in Göttingen, a small university town near the East German border. We had chosen Göttingen because “high German” is spoken by the ordinary people in that region, as opposed to a local dialect. It’s amazing how much you can learn in four months when you’re immersed in the language. We hired a university student named Heidi to help us with our pronunciation. With my post-doctoral studies in Munich looming, we were super-motivated to learn German. After a couple of months we determined only to speak German with each other until 8:00 p.m., when we’d revert to English. (It’s funny, but even when you know the meaning of the words, “Ich liebe dich” just doesn’t convey the same feeling as “I love you” to a native English speaker!)

By the end of our four months I had finished the advanced class with the highest grade of “1,” and Jan, whose knowledge of German when we started didn’t extend beyond “eins, zwei, drei,” was able to converse freely with the shopkeepers and people in our town. One evening during dinner at the Goethe Institute she astonished me. There’s a German proverb, “Ohne Fleiss, kein Preis!” (Without effort, no reward!). So during the meal Jan asked the Turkish fellow next to her (in German) to pass the meat. But he showed her the empty serving dish and offered her the bowl of rice instead. To which she instantly retorted, “Danke, nein! Ohne Fleisch, kein Reis!” (No thanks! Without meat, no rice!) I about split! Here she was already punning in German!

I have to admit that it seemed a little nutty to spend nine months learning French just before going off to do post-doctoral studies in Germany. But the Lord’s providence is amazing. The first day I showed up at the theology department at the University of Munich to confer with Professor Dr. Pannenberg, he took me into the departmental library and pulled three books off the shelf and said, “Why don’t you get started with these?” To my amazement, two of the three were in French! I thought to myself, “Praise you, Lord!” I could never have said to Pannenberg that I didn’t read French. That would have been equivalent to saying that I wasn’t qualified to do the research! God knew what He was doing.

Doing my doctorate in theology under Pannenberg was the most difficult thing I’ve ever done in my life. I even had to pass a Latin qualifying exam to get the degree, which necessitated my taking Latin in German! But by the end of our time in Munich I’d learned so much about the resurrection of Jesus that I was worlds away from where I’d been when we first came. As a Christian, I of course believed in Jesus’ resurrection, and I was familiar with popular apologetics for it; but I was quite surprised to discover as a result of my research how solid a historical case can be made for the resurrection. Again, three books came out of that research, one of which served as the dissertation for my second doctorate, this time in theology from the University of Munich.

Since that time I’ve had the opportunity to debate some of the world’s leading sceptical New Testament scholars like John Dominic Crossan, Marcus Borg, Gerd Lüdemann, and Bart Ehrman, as well as best-selling popularizers like John Shelby Spong, on the historicity of Jesus’ resurrection. In all objectivity, I have to say I’ve been shocked at how impotent these eminent scholars are when it comes to refuting the evidence for Jesus’ resurrection.

Very often, and I mean, very often, it turns out to be philosophical considerations, not historical considerations, that lie at the root of their scepticism. But, of course, these men aren’t trained in philosophy and so make amateurish blunders, which a trained philosopher can easily spot. I’m so thankful that the Lord in His providence led us first to do doctoral work on philosophy before turning to a study of Jesus’ resurrection, for it is really philosophy and not history which under girds the scepticism of radical critics.

So we’re very grateful for the way the Lord has marvelously led us, as we stepped out in faith, and equipped us beyond what we could ever have imagined to do His work.

Pastor Bae Hyung-kyu, a true witness of the Lord Jesus Christ in both word and deed.

HT: http://www.christianitydaily.com/template/articleenn.htm?code=wor&id=2255

Slain Korean Hostage was Killed for Refusing to Convert

The youth pastor who was leading the group of 22 South Korean aid volunteers in Afghanistan was killed for refusing to convert to Islam, the head pastor of the church revealed after the final 19 former hostages arrived home.

“Among the 19 hostages who returned on the second (of September), some were asked by the Taliban to convert and when they rejected, they were assaulted and severely beaten,” reported Park Eun-jo, pastor of hostages’ home church – Saemmul Presbyterian Church in Bundang, just south of the South Korean capital Seoul. “I heard from the hostages that they were threatened with death,” he added, according to the Seoul-based Christian Today newspaper. “Especially it is known that the reason Pastor Bae Hyung-kyu was murdered was because he refused the Taliban’s demand to convert.”

A hospital chief also said on Monday that some of the 5 South Korean men freed from captivity last week reported being beaten by their Taliban abductors for refusing to convert to Islam and for protecting their female colleagues. “We found through medical checks that some male hostages were beaten,” Cha Seung-gyun told reporters, according to Agence France-Presse. “They said they were beaten at first for refusing to take part in Islamic prayers or for rejecting a demand to convert.”

Meanwhile, medical examinations showed no signs that the last 12 women were raped and none reported being sexually harassed despite reports from the first two released hostages – both women – who said they were repeatedly raped by their captors, according to an ABC News report on Saturday. Mirajuddin Pathan, the governor of Ghazni province, had also said he received reports that “various Taliban commanders were fighting over the women hostages” and that “[t]hey were abused over and over,” according to ABC News. Although Park had heard that some of the female hostages were in danger of being raped, he said they were able to “overcome the crisis” through strong resistance. Furthermore, at least two male hostages were beaten or threatened with death when they refused to leave behind female hostages, according to hospital chief Cha. While all the men were said to have fully recovered and now show no external signs of their beating, Cha reported that six or seven female hostages show symptoms of insomnia and depression and continue to worry about their lives even after returning to Korea. Moreover, some of the patients still suffer from shock from news that two of their male colleagues were murdered.

The hospital chief predicts that the former hostages will need about two weeks of treatment. More reports on the freed hostages’ six-week ordeal have been emerging since the release of the final 19 aid workers – 14 women and five men – last week and their safe return to their homeland on Sunday. The original group of 23 Korean Christian volunteers had been kidnapped by Taliban militants on July 19 while on their way to provide free medical aid to poor Afghans. Over the course of their 40-day captivity, the rebels killed two men and freed two women before releasing the last groups of hostages last Wednesday and Thursday.

To free the remaining hostages, South Korea promised to ban Korean missionaries from Afghanistan and pledged to pull out its 210 troops by the end of the year – a move it was already planning to make prior to the hostage crisis. Ally countries such as Canada, Germany and Afghanistan have publicly criticized Seoul for negotiating with the Taliban – which they consider a terrorist group – and seemingly giving into them.

ChDaily correspondent Michelle Vu in Washington and ChDaily correspondent Lee Dae-won in Seoul contributed to this report.

Paul Hiebert, a renowned missiologist, anthropologist, and missionary to India was my missions professor during my seminary years. I learned so much from this man about missions. He was invited to deliver a commencement speech for the seminary’s graduation services but he passed away to be with the Lord only a day before the actual date. His words below are truly penetrating. There is much much Godly wisdom in this short speech:

Paul Hiebert’s Commencement Speech 2007
We, your families, churches and colleagues, gather to celebrate your completion of this major step in your lives. There have been steps before, and will be more, but today we want to rejoice that God has given you the strength and wisdom to complete your degrees and is sending many of you out in your life ministries.

Take a minute as you gather and celebrate, and look at your fellow graduates. Yes, you see a joyful crowd of new graduates. Look deeper and more carefully, and you see the leaders in the global church in the 21st century. But, you say, we are such ordinary people. God needs extraordinary people for extraordinary times. But down through the centuries God has chosen ordinary people like you to accomplish his extraordinary ministries around the world, because God’s mission and ministry is ultimately God’s work. So stop and look, really look around at your colleagues. You are God’s leaders and coworkers for the coming years.

A Rapidly Changing World
The world in which you minister is radically different from the one Frances and I entered in 1960. Then it took us three months by ship to reach India; three weeks for mail to go and return, and three days to book an underseas cable to phone the U.S. People returned once every seven years on furlough. Today transcultural flights and instant communication have become routine.

Every few centuries, we seem to pass through an “Alice in Wonderland’s mirror” and enter a world radically different from the one we left. In the past we adjusted old theories and methods of ministry to a changing world. Today we do not need old theories and methods. We need new kinds of ministers and missionaries who learn to think in new ways, to exegete their social and cultural contexts as well as others, and faithfully communicate the Gospel to our new world. Most of us leave seminary with a deep understanding of the Gospel, but with few ways to exegete humans. The message we preach often touches the surface of people’s lives but does not transform them deeply. We must develop more effective methods of understanding and go deeper to understand the central questions people are facing. We need to show them that the Gospel provides definitive answers to their felt needs and their deep theological needs. In other words, we need theologians and missionaries who do both theological and anthropological reflections on the human scene more deeply and who learn how to incarnate faithfully the Gospel in contemporary human contexts.

Our Unchanging Lord
In our fractured, changing world, the great news is that Jesus Christ, the Lord of all history, and the commander in world mission is the same today as he was with Adam, Moses and David. He is the Lord who took on human flesh to bring us salvation, and a new creation.

We who have walked before, commend you into God’s hand. We have lived in changing worlds, and have experienced our Lord’s faithfulness and constancy throughout our lives. If you asked us: if we had the chance would we live differently, I know most of us would say no, not at the deepest levels of our lives. As we grow old, we can look back at the story, “the plot” of our lives, and see that God has been writing a drama in our years of living. When we were young we sometimes saw our life stories as detective stories, as mysteries, as tragedies, possibly as comedies, but in looking back we realize that these are great Love Stories. He who created us is coming back to bring us home as his bride.

Our Challenge to You
We who have gone before today charge you in the presence of God and Christ Jesus: be ready to minister in season and out of season; reproving, rebuking and exhorting with complete patience and teaching. Like Paul we encourage you to share the Gospel you have heard among us. YOU are already the leaders of the world church in the 21st century. Remember, central to your task is to train leaders who will, in turn, train leaders—not followers. Remember that God is writing a story in your lives as you minister in his kingdom, but your story takes on meaning because it is part of an eternal story. Paul received that Gospel and passed it on to Timothy, who passed it on to those who followed . That Gospel has come down through the centuries through our spiritual genealogy, and we must pass it on to those who follow us. When Christ returns, he will continue establishing his eternal reign of peace, justice and love over the universe.

1954 Taegu or Daegu. It’s so easy to forget the past. I forget sometimes that all of my grandparents, uncles, and my parents were born in this city. I forget sometimes that my parents were both a pre-teen and a teenager in 1954. I forget sometimes that my grandfather was a pastor and a translator for the American GI’s that were there during the Korean War only a few years earlier. I forget sometimes how much my parents had suffered before I was born and yet were able to overcome. I have been trying to picture what it was like to have lived the life my mother did. Here I tried to reflect: http://www.jumbobody.com/blog/?p=29.

The following pictures were taken by an American Christian as a young man. They are truly amazing:

1) http://blog.naver.com/texasatm/150014112537.

2) http://blog.naver.com/texasatm/150014159170.

3) http://blog.naver.com/texasatm/150014212857

4) http://blog.naver.com/texasatm/150014344545

(HT: http://www.rjkoehler.com/)

On a spiritual note, I sometimes forget my own spiritual past and how the Lord has used every ounce of joy, pain, and suffering in myself and those around me to mold me into becoming the man he desires me to be. Sometimes one of the Lord’s greatest gifts is that we forget the past. Other times, it is a gift from the Lord to have us clearly remember our history so that we can forge ahead into what He has called us to do. These pictures are simply a reminder of a part of my past that should never be forgotten.

I have not been able to blog as of late. I’m teaching three classes, trying to work on my dissertation, and of course trying to be faithful to my church. So here’s a quick post on what I am thankful to God for: my family.

For my wife, she is a blessing to me daily. She lifts me up when I am weak, and I cannot imagine God could have created a more beautiful and wonderful person. She is the joy of my life. I love her truly.

For my son, he is a gift full of God’s love. At first I thought he was the one that needed me, but God knew that I needed my little boy just as much as he needed me. I love him truly.

For my parents, they have in so many ways shown me what the love of God is all about. Obviously they make mistakes and sin, but still, at times they have given me a visible example of who God is. I love them truly.

For my brother, though he is younger he has taught me much. He is doing his best to live a life full of purpose and integrity, and not only do I respect him for that but he has been my inspiration in so many areas of my life. I love him truly.

For my in-laws, my father-in-law, my mother-in-law, and my two brother-in-laws. They have become an addition to my family, and I see God’s covenantal blessing working through the hands and love of my wife’s family. I love them truly.

King David captures my thoughts here in this prayer:

Who am I, O Sovereign LORD, and what is my family, that you have brought me this far? And now, Sovereign LORD, in addition to everything else, you speak of giving me a lasting dynasty! Do you deal with everyone this way, O Sovereign LORD? What more can I say? You know what I am really like, Sovereign LORD. For the sake of your promise and according to your will, you have done all these great things and have shown them to me. 2 Samuel 7:18-21

When I graduated from college, our commencement speaker was the new First Lady of the United States – Hillary Clinton. I don’t remember much about her speech (in fact, I don’t remember much from those years), but I do remember clearly the first time I read the speech below. My brother-in-law is graduating from college today and I dedicate this post to him. It has truly been great seeing you grow to be a man of God. Congratulations to all the graduates.

And now, the greatest graduation speech I have ever heard or read:

(Postman has written some very insightful books, including one of my favorites “Amusing ourselves to death”.)

MY GRADUATION SPEECH by Neil Postman” Having sat through two dozen or so graduation speeches, I have naturally wondered why they are so often so bad. One reason, of course, is that the speakers are chosen for their eminence in some field, and not because they are either competent speakers or gifted writers. Another reason is that the audience is eager to be done with all ceremony so that it can proceed to some serious reveling. Thus any speech longer than, say, fifteen minutes will seem tedious, if not entirely pointless. There are other reasons as well, including the difficulty of saying something inspirational without being banal. Here I try my hand at writing a graduation speech, and not merely to discover if I can conquer the form. This is precisely what I would like to say to young people if I had their attention for a few minutes.

If you think my graduation speech is good, I hereby grant you permission to use it, without further approval from or credit to me, should you be in an appropriate situation.

Members of the faculty, parents, guests, and graduates, have no fear. I am well aware that on a day of such high excitement, what you require, first and foremost, of any speaker is brevity. I shall not fail you in this respect. There are exactly eighty-five sentences in my speech, four of which you have just heard. It will take me about twelve minutes to speak all of them and I must tell you that such economy was not easy for me to arrange, because I have chosen as my topic the complex subject of your ancestors. Not, of course, your biological ancestors, about whom I know nothing, but your spiritual ancestors, about whom I know a little. To be specific, I want to tell you about two groups of people who lived many years ago but whose influence is still with us. They were very different from each other, representing opposite values and traditions. I think it is appropriate for you to be reminded of them on this day because, sooner than you know, you must align yourself with the spirit of one or the spirit of the other.

The first group lived about 2,500 years ago in the place which we now call Greece, in a city they called Athens. We do not know as much about their origins as we would like. But we do know a great deal about their accomplishments. They were, for example, the first people to develop a complete alphabet, and therefore they became the first truly literate population on earth. They invented the idea of political democracy, which they practiced with a vigor that puts us to shame. They invented what we call philosophy. And they also invented what we call logic and rhetoric. They came very close to inventing what we call science, and one of them-Democritus by name-conceived of the atomic theory of matter 2,300 years before it occurred to any modern scientist. They composed and sang epic poems of unsurpassed beauty and insight. And they wrote and performed plays that, almost three millennia later, still have the power to make audiences laugh and weep. They even invented what, today, we call the Olympics, and among their values none stood higher than that in all things one should strive for excellence. They believed in reason. They believed in beauty. They believed in moderation. And they invented the word and the idea which we know today as ecology.

About 2,000 years ago, the vitality of their culture declined and these people began to disappear. But not what they had created. Their imagination, art, politics, literature, and language spread all over the world so that, today, it is hardly possible to speak on any subject without repeating what some Athenian said on the matter 2,500 years ago.

The second group of people lived in the place we now call Germany, and flourished about 1,700 years ago. We call them the Visigoths, and you may remember that your sixth or seventh-grade teacher mentioned them. They were spectacularly good horsemen, which is about the only pleasant thing history can say of them. They were marauders-ruthless and brutal. Their language lacked subtlety and depth. Their art was crude and even grotesque. They swept down through Europe destroying everything in their path, and they overran the Roman Empire. There was nothing a Visigoth liked better than to burn a book, desecrate a building, or smash a work of art. From the Visigoths, we have no poetry, no theater, no logic, no science, no humane politics.

Like the Athenians, the Visigoths also disappeared, but not before they had ushered in the period known as the Dark Ages. It took Europe almost a thousand years to recover from the Visigoths.

Now, the point I want to make is that the Athenians and the Visigoths still survive, and they do so through us and the ways in which we conduct our lives. All around us-in this hall, in this community, in our city-there are people whose way of looking at the world reflects the way of the Athenians, and there are people whose way is the way of the Visigoths. I do not mean, of course, that our modern-day Athenians roam abstractedly through the streets reciting poetry and philosophy, or that the modern-day Visigoths are killers. I mean that to be an Athenian or a Visigoth is to organize your life around a set of values. An Athenian is an idea. And a Visigoth is an idea. Let me tell you briefly what these ideas consist of.

To be an Athenian is to hold knowledge and, especially the quest for knowledge in high esteem. To contemplate, to reason, to experiment, to question-these are, to an Athenian, the most exalted activities a person can perform. To a Visigoth, the quest for knowledge is useless unless it can help you to earn money or to gain power over other people.

To be an Athenian is to cherish language because you believe it to be humankind’s most precious gift. In their use of language, Athenians strive for grace, precision, and variety. And they admire those who can achieve such skill. To a Visigoth, one word is as good as another, one sentence in distinguishable from another. A Visigoth’s language aspires to nothing higher than the cliché.

To be an Athenian is to understand that the thread which holds civilized society together is thin and vulnerable; therefore, Athenians place great value on tradition, social restraint, and continuity. To an Athenian, bad manners are acts of violence against the social order. The modern Visigoth cares very little about any of this. The Visigoths think of themselves as the center of the universe. Tradition exists for their own convenience, good manners are an affectation and a burden, and history is merely what is in yesterday’s newspaper.

To be an Athenian is to take an interest in public affairs and the improvement of public behavior. Indeed, the ancient Athenians had a word for people who did not. The word was idiotes, from which we get our word “idiot.” A modern Visigoth is interested only in his own affairs and has no sense of the meaning of community.

And, finally, to be an Athenian is to esteem the discipline, skill, and taste that are required to produce enduring art. Therefore, in approaching a work of art, Athenians prepare their imagination through learning and experience. To a Visigoth, there is no measure of artistic excellence except popularity. What catches the fancy of the multitude is good. No other standard is respected or even acknowledged by the Visigoth.

Now, it must be obvious what all of this has to do with you. Eventually, like the rest of us, you must be on one side or the other. You must be an Athenian or a Visigoth. Of course, it is much harder to be an Athenian, for you must learn how to be one, you must work at being one, whereas we are all, in a way, natural-born Visigoths. That is why there are so many more Visigoths than Athenians. And I must tell you that you do not become an Athenian merely by attending school or accumulating academic degrees. My father-in-law was one of the most committed Athenians I have ever known, and he spent his entire adult life working as a dress cutter on Seventh Avenue in New York City. On the other hand, I know physicians, lawyers, and engineers who are Visigoths of unmistakable persuasion. And I must also tell you, as much in sorrow as in shame, that at some of our great universities, perhaps even this one, there are professors of whom we may fairly say they are closet Visigoths. And yet, you must not doubt for a moment that a school, after all, is essentially an Athenian idea. There is a direct link between the cultural achievements of Athens and what the faculty at this university is all about. I have no difficulty imagining that Plato, Aristotle, or Democritus would be quite at home in our class rooms. A Visigoth would merely scrawl obscenities on the wall.

And so, whether you were aware of it or not, the purpose of your having been at this university was to give you a glimpse of the Athenian way, to interest you in the Athenian way. We cannot know on this day how many of you will choose that way and how many will not. You are young and it is not given to us to see your future. But I will tell you this, with which I will close: I can wish for you no higher compliment than that in the future it will be reported that among your graduating class the Athenians mightily outnumbered the Visigoths.

Thank you, and congratulations.

Consider what one atheistic philosopher has to say about a fellow philosopher who is also an atheist: ” Instead of grappling with the arguments for and against the existence of God, which every great thinker for at least two millennia has done, he dismisses religious belief on the basis of its origin. Like Freud, he believes that religion is a wish-fulfillment. Theists, he thinks, want a transcendent father, so they create one. God is loving and stern, like an earthly father, but with no imperfections. Belief in an afterlife is rooted in fear of death. …What he doesn’t realize is that everything he says about theism is true of atheism. Theism is belief that God exists. Atheism (as opposed to agnosticism) is belief that God does not exist. Why should one of these beliefs be disreputable but the other not? If giving a naturalistic explanation of theism calls theism into question, why does giving a naturalistic explanation of atheism not call atheism into question? After all, theists can tell the same sort of story about atheism as atheists tell about theism. Atheists, it might be said, are rebelling against their earthly father. (This would explain why most atheists are men.) …Motives are not reasons. How a belief came about has nothing to do with whether it is true. “

It seems that both the atheist and the theist can use the same sort of fallacious reasoning as such:

1. Your belief that ‘X is true’ is due to some wish fulfillment that you have
2. Hence, your belief that ‘X is true’ is false

Now, substitute anything you want for X whether it be Christianity, Islam, or atheism. You’ll see that this sort of argument is clearly invalid. Quite an honest assessment indeed.

There are times when I am studying and I wonder: Why am I doing this? What is a minister doing in a graduate program in philosophy?

I am much more interested in discipleship than in philosophical logic, yet I spend a lot more time thinking about the latter. I am much more interested in justification in terms of atonement before God than notions of epistemic justification, yet I spend a lot more time thinking about the latter. It’s not that I don’t love philosophy, I do. I just love ministry more.

When I have to get through some very difficult philosophical arguments, I feel that I’m just lacking in philosophical talent. I know I’m at a certain disadvantage b/c I got a late start. I had already graduated seminary and was working as a minister before pursuing a graduate degree in analytic philosophy. If top philosophers are NBA all-stars and good philosophers are NBA role players, I consider myself a CBA player at best. That is on a very very good day, I can ’somewhat’ compete with the NBA players but for the most part I just don’t have the talent to ball with them. Yet God has a different calling for each person, and I have no doubt that my calling is tied both to ministry and philosophy. I value training and I’m convinced this is a part of my training. However, like any person running a difficult race – even those with a clear purpose – sometimes one can lose sight of the goal. We all need reminders that what we are doing is worthy and that it is not in vain. Here are two of those reminders for any Christian who is working in philosophy:

1) Advice to Christian Philosophers by Alvin Plantinga

http://www.leaderu.com/truth/1truth10.html

(I read this article nearly 15 years ago as an undergraduate, and to this day I still read it a few times a year. Alvin Plantinga has been my biggest philosophical influence. After reading everything he has published I finally met the man. Not only was I impressed by his razor sharp intellect, I was equally impressed by his gracious spirit.)

2) Advice to Christian Apologists by William Lane Craig

http://www.apologeticsnetwork.org/william-craig.htm

(I met William Lane Craig a few years ago at a conference, and he is just the type of scholar that I hope to become. He can go from explaining the resurrection of Christ to a high school student and then without missing a beat get into some really technical analytic philosophy. He too is an amazing intellect full of grace.)

Happy Valentine’s Day.
—————————————————————————————————

A WOMAN’S QUESTION

Do you know you have asked for the costliest thing
Ever made by the hand above?
A woman’s heart, and a woman’s life–
And a woman’s wonderful love.

Do you know you have asked for this priceless thing
As a child might ask for a toy?
Demanding what others have died to win
With the reckless dash of a boy.

You have written my lesson of duty out,
Manlike, you have questioned me.
Now stand at the bars of my woman’s soul
Until I shall question thee.

You require your mutton shall always be hot,
Your socks and your shirt be whole;
I require your heart be as true as God’s stars
And as pure as His heaven your soul.

You require a cook for your mutton and beef,
I require a far greater thing;
A seamstress you’re wanting for socks and shirts—
I look for a man and a king.

A king for the beautiful realm called Home,
And a man that his Maker, God,
Shall look upon as he did on the first
And say: “It is very good.”

I am fair and young, but the rose may fade
From this soft young cheeck one day;
Will you love me then, ‘mid the falling leaves
As you did ‘mong the blossoms of May?

Is your heart an ocean so strong and true,
I may launch my all on its tide?
A loving woman finds heaven or hell
On the day she is made a bride.

I require all things that are grand and true,
All things that a man should be;
If you give this all, I would stake my life
To be all you demand of me.

If you cannot be this, a laundress and cook
You can hire and little to pay;
But a woman’s heart and a woman’s life
Are not to be won that way.

Lena Lathrop

Blogosophy is philosophy done via blogs or over the internet. Hence, the blogosopher takes a very difficult and slow moving subject and tries to do it over a very fast medium. The biggest difference in my opinion between blogosophy and philosophy is that in the former the focus is primarily on the conclusion of an argument with very little (or quick pieces of) justification for the premises whereas in the latter the focus is primarily on the premises of an argument and what conclusions follow from such. This is precisely why philosophy is slow, long, and arduous while blogosophy tends to be quick, sometimes informative, and of course much easier to pull off. There are plenty of professional philosophers who blogosophize quite well, but most blogosophers are those with no training in philosophy. Hence what counts as blogosophy varies greatly in terms of philosophical quality. Anyways, what follows is a little bit of blogosophy based on an interview with Daniel Dennett.

New York Times
January 22, 2006
“Questions for Daniel C. Dennett: The Nonbeliever”, interviewed by Deborah Solomon.

How could you, as a longtime professor of philosophy at Tufts University, write a book that promotes the idea that religious devotion is a function of biology? Why would you hold a scientist’s microscope to something as intangible as belief?

D: I don’t know about you, but I find St. Paul’s and St. Peter’s pretty physical.

But your new book, “Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon,” is not about cathedrals. It’s about religious belief, which cannot be dissected in a lab as if it were a disease.

D: That itself is a scientific claim, and I think it is false. Belief can be explained in much the way that cancer can. I think the time has come to shed our taboo that says, “Oh, let’s just tiptoe by this, we don’t have to study this.” People think they know a lot about religion. But they don’t know.

So what can you tell us about God?

D: Certainly the idea of a God that can answer prayers and whom you can talk to, and who intervenes in the world – that’s a hopeless idea. There is no such thing.

Yet faith, by definition, means believing in something whose existence cannot be proved scientifically. If we knew for sure that God existed, it would not require a leap of faith to believe in him.

D: Isn’t it interesting that you want to take that leap? Why do you want to take that leap? Why does our craving for God persist? It may be that we need it for something. It may be that we don’t need it, and it is left over from something that we used to be. There are lots of biological possibilities.

Didn’t religion spring up in its earliest forms in connection with the weather, the desire to make sense of rain and lightning?

D: We have a built-in, very potent hair-trigger tendency to find agency in things that are not agents, like snow falling off the roof.

There was so much infant mortality in the past, which must have played a large role in encouraging people to believe in an afterlife.

D: When a person dies, we can’t just turn that off. We go on thinking about that person as if that person were still alive. Our inability to turn off our people-seer and our people-hearer naturally turns into our hallucinations of ghosts, our sense that they are still with us.

But they are still with us, through the process of memory.

D: These aren’t just memories.

I take it you do not subscribe to the idea of an everlasting soul, which is part of almost every religion.

D: Ugh. I certainly don’t believe in the soul as an enduring entity. Our brains are made of neurons, and nothing else. Nerve cells are very complicated mechanical systems. You take enough of those, and you put them together, and you get a soul.

That strikes me as a very reductive and uninteresting approach to religious feeling.

D: Love can be studied scientifically, too.

But what’s the point of that? Wouldn’t it be more worthwhile to spend your time and research money looking for a cure for AIDS?

D: How about if we study hatred and fear? Don’t you think that would be worthwhile?

Traditionally, evolutionary biologists like Stephen Jay Gould insisted on keeping a separation between hard science and less knowable realms like religion.

D: He was the evolutionist laureate of the U.S., and everybody got their Darwin from Steve. The trouble was he gave a rather biased view of evolution. He called me a Darwinian fundamentalist.

Which I imagine was his idea of a put-down, since he thought evolutionists should not apply their theories to religion.

D: Churches make a great show about the creed, but they don’t really care. A lot of the evangelicals don’t really care what you believe as long as you say the right thing and do the right thing and put a lot of money in the collection box.

I take it you are not a churchgoer.

D: No, not really. Sometimes I go to church for the music.

Yes, the church gave us Bach, in addition to some fairly spectacular architecture and painting.

D: Churches have given us great treasures. Whether that pays for the harm they have done is another matter.

*******************************************************************

And now to the blogosophy:

First, Dennett says that:

…the idea of a God that can answer prayers and whom you can talk to, and who intervenes in the world – that’s a hopeless idea. There is no such thing.

Ah, a very bold claim. We’ll see whether this claim amounts to something more than just a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. He also makes the claim that religious beliefs can be dissected scientifically, much like any other beliefs. Of course his claim that “religious beliefs can be dissected scientifically” is not itself a scientific claim, but a metaphysical one. So here he forays into metaphysics while claiming that it’s science. So consider the following claim P by Dennett:

P: The idea of a God that can answer prayers and whom you can talk to, and who intervenes in the world, that’s a hopeless idea. There is no such thing.

Now, since Dennett claims that “religious beliefs can be dissected scientifically” one can say that “Dennett’s belief that ‘religious beliefs can be dissected scientifically’” can also be dissected scientifically. If not, then why should Dennett’s beliefs be held to a different standard than religious beliefs? Since Dennett does hold scientific assessment in the highest light possible, he would have to concede that “Dennett’s belief that ‘religious beliefs can be dissected scientifically’” should also be assessed scientifically. So the implication here is that all beliefs ought to be assessed scientifically. So we can take this notion of scientifically assessing Dennet’s belief and arrive at P*:

P*: P is a scientific claim

Can one assess P* strictly from a scientific standpoint? If the answer is no, then Dennett is doing metaphysics and not science since now it looks like we have a belief P* that is not to be assessed from a scientific standpoint. If the answer is yes, then we’d have to use science to assess whether P* is a scientific claim. So then we get belief P**:

P**: P* is a scientific claim

And of course we can then move to P*** and then to P**** and so on, ad infinitum. Our philosophical enemy, the infinite regress, shows up. So one can’t assess whether P is a scientific claim without having some sort of standpoint outside of science from which to judge whether P* really holds. As a result the only argument one can give for the truth of P* (since we’ve eliminated the scientific option) is a metaphysical one that pertains to the ontological status of such questions. I’m not sure why Dennett makes such claims, since now he’s venturing into metaphysics while claiming that what he’s really providing is a scientific inquiry of religious belief. What puts Dennett in such a superior epistemic position from which to adjudicate such matters? I think one can make a good case that Dennett is doing pretty much the same thing that religious thinkers are doing – he’s doing metaphysics. Now, I don’t think that this shows that what Dennett is doing can be shown false but neither do I think that what religious thinkers are doing can be shown false as well – certainly not from a scientific standpoint. So it seems that Dennett is on similar (rather than superior) epistemic ground when compared to the religious thinkers since both are in the realm of metaphysics.

Second, I agree with Dennett that one needs to take a leap of faith at some point, and that some have a desire to take a leap towards faith in God. However, Dennett seems to be taking his own leap as a scientific naturalist – namely the truth of P*. If he wants to affirm P* above, he has clearly left the realm of science. Why do that? In other words, why believe that P* is true? Unless he gives some independent argument for P* within the realm of science (and clearly I think none can be given), it seems he’s also taking a leap of faith towards some metaphysics that is clearly beyond the realm of science. Perhaps he has some metaphysical argument that shows that P* is true, but that’s highly improbable. Just like the religious folk, he’s committing himself to some proposition or state of affairs without having scientific evidence for such.

Next, Dennett says that:

Churches make a great show about the creed, but they don’t really care. A lot of the evangelicals don’t really care what you believe as long as you say the right thing and do the right thing and put a lot of money in the collection box.

This I agree with 100%. Most Christians don’t care that much about creeds, mostly because we don’t know them or we’ve abandoned them altogether. Although some of us mistakenly use the word heretic quite loosely and throw it around as if it were a buy-one-get-one free burger, I think it is fair to say that a lot of Christians seem to think there is no such thing as a heretic – someone who dissents from correct Christian doctrine. To have a heretical doctrine (i.e. wrong view) means there must be an orthodox doctrine (i.e. correct view) from which to deviate from. Of course, the problem with this is that we have to have some doctrine in the first place to affirm as orthodox. So the trend seems to be to have this attitude where ‘what you believe really doesn’t matter, so long as you act a particular way’. Dennett clearly makes an astute observation. If one can criticize the average Catholic Christian as caring too much about doctrine, I think one can also fairly criticize the average American Protestant Christian as caring too little about doctrine. So it’s interesting that even an atheist like Dennett recognizes the difference between those who really care about Christian doctrine (as the New Testament writers did, heck Paul even tells some churches to kick some folks out for their heretical views) and those who do not. This is a serious issue that we Christians – ordained minister or not – need to think about.

Finally, there are plenty of scientific naturalists (or methodological naturalists) who do not venture into the realm of metaphysical naturalism. So these naturalists will openly battle things like Intelligent Design and the like, without venturing into the existence of God and whether that’s a hopeless idea or not. Let science be science, and let metaphysics be metaphysics. It seems that Dennett conflates the two when claiming that religious belief can be solely assessed from a scientific vantage point. I think we Christians can learn quite a bit from folks like Mr. Dennett.

Of course you may be wondering why I have given such a short treatment of Mr. Dennett when he writes a whole book on the subject. I say if Dennett can spew out these conclusions without arguments in a New York Times interview (i.e. meant for a pop-culture audience) then I can spew out some quick blogosophical arguments just as well that is meant for a pop-culture audience. Of course he wants as many people to buy his book which I encourage everyone to do since I’m sure there will be some excellent material in there, though I highly doubt he’ll address my first point above.

I hope you enjoyed the interview.