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In the Introduction to his book, The Risen Jesus & Future Hope, Gary Habermas asserts the centrality of the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth to the Christian faith. While referring to other New Testament passages, the emphasis is placed on I Corinthians 15. Not only is this text the best testimony for the resurrection, it also explains its significance for all Christian faith.

Significance One: If Jesus was not raised from the dead, Christian faith and preaching is devoid of truth, or fallacious.

Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. (vv. 12-14 ESV)

Significance Two: If the resurrection is not true, then all of Chrisitianity would be futile, ineffective. Our sins are not forgiven. Martyrs have died in vain. The dictates of secularism would be true. All our hope lies in this world. Christians should be pitied above all.

For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. (vv. 16-19 ESV)

Significance Three: Because the resurrection is true, our faith has a firm foundation. Preaching is not devoid of truth, faith is not futile. Our sins are forgiven. Saints who have died do have hope. Life does have meaning.

But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. (v. 20 ESV)

Significance Four: The Resurrection has a direct impact on Christian behavior. If Christ is not risen, we should live for our own pleasure.

If the dead are not raised, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die”. (v. 32b ESV)

The resurrection of Jesus Christ is an amazing claim. It is a religious claim grounded in an historical event. It is the evidence for the resurrection and the centrality of the resurrection of Jesus to all Christian faith that makes it the central apologetic for Christianity. The resurrection is the thing that separates Christianity from all other world religions and provides an opportunity to offer a reasoned defense of the faith.

I just finished reading Hugh Hewitt’s book In, But Not Of: A Guide to Christian Ambition and the Desire to Influence the World, and so I thought I’d post a brief review.

Prior to reading this book, I’d never read anything by Hewitt and I’m still yet to hear his radio show. In fact, my only knowledge of him at all was from hearing his name mentioned from time to time on Stand to Reason’s weekly program. But once I saw the book laying on my dad’s end table last time I visited and read the title, my interest was piqued and I stole it from him (temporarily).

The book is mainly aimed at those who want to be like Hewitt - people with J.D. degrees who want to live in big cities and interact in some direct way with the federal government. This fact seems to have turned away or annoyed many in the various reviews I read of the book, but I don’t think it should. 99% of the advice Hewitt gives in the book is applicable to every Christian, no matter the profession, who wants to influence the world through that profession.

The book is small and a quick read, made more so by Hewitt’s direct and to-the-point writing style. The chapters are short enough that they can each be read in just a few minutes. I read it chapter by chapter, one every morning, and this made it seem almost like a devotional book to me. The main presupposition of the book is that western democracy and the freedom it allows are good things, making it much easier to spread the gospel. In the introduction, Hewitt says:

The effective and mass communication of the gospel depends upon the freedom to proclaim it. Though it is possible to proclaim the gospel in the face of persecution, the unfettered freedom to do so is much, much to be preferred.

If that is true, then our democracy is worth defending and allows those with ambition a greater opportunity to influence the world for good.

After that presuppostion is established, the rest of the book is essentially made up of short chapters of inspiration, encouragement, and advice. The advice includes things like knowing the basic outline of western history, getting into good habits, always showing gratitude, not talking badly about others at work, staying out of debt, and being slow to be offended. Not all of the advice is equally applicable to everyone, and none of it is particularly groundbreaking, but it is all useful nonetheless. As Hewitt says in the concluding chapter, “the very best how-to books are extended restatements of the obvious.” This is one of the better ones that I’ve read, and I reccomend it to anyone who wants to influence the world and needs some tips and inspiration. I know that I hope to put as much as his advice into practice as possible.

Dr. Mark Roberts, continuing his series on the reliability of the gospels has a couple good posts on the worries caused by the variations in the wordings of parallel quotes by Jesus in the synoptic gospels. In the first he discusses the danger of bringing an anachronistic view of reliability to these passages and briefly talks about the important differentiation between ipsissima vox and ipsissima verba. In the second, he gives an apologetic for doing biblical studies while at the same time illustrating the difference just mentioned and showing the implications for gospel reliability. A recommended read.

HOW rich, O Lord, how fresh Thy visits are !
‘Twas but just now my bleak leaves hopeless hung,
Sullied with dust and mud ;
Each snarling blast shot through me, and did share
Their youth and beauty ; cold showers nipt, and wrung
Their spiciness and blood ;
But since Thou didst in one sweet glance survey
Their sad decays, I flourish, and once more
Breathe all perfumes and spice ;
I smell a dew like myrrh, and all the day
Wear in my bosom a full sun ; such store
Hath one beam from Thy eyes.
But, ah, my God ! what fruit hast Thou of this
What one poor leaf did ever I yet fall
To wait upon Thy wreath ?
Thus Thou all day a thankless weed dost dress,
And when Th’ hast done, a stench, or fog is all
The odour I bequeath.

In preparation for my History and Philosophy of Science course that starts in a few weeks, I’m reading through Del Ratzsch’s Science and Its Limits and one sentence he made in passing while discussing radical Kuhnian philosophies of science really got my attention and made me think.

He said:

…it is obvious that science can only go as far as human conceptual and intellectual resources can take it. Those are all we have.

What reading this made me realize was that I have always maintained a sort of implicit optimism in our abilities, through science, to discover just about everything about what makes this world work. But what could possibly justify such an optimism? If anything about human nature is clear, it is our tendency to fail at most things, including understanding. What if it turns out that the workings of our universe are simply too complex for our human minds to comprehend? What if some day science just stopped moving forward? This surely seems possible, and I can’t really think of any reason why it wouldn’t turn out this way. I think that on a theistic worldview we at least have the guarantee of understanding a lot of the way nature works because it was designed by a mind that is at least somewhat similar to ours. But surely that mind is capable of creating things infinitely beyond our ability to comprehend. On a non-theistic worldview, I have difficulty seeing how to justify belief in faculties that can understand anything that is true at all, much less faculties that can completely and rightly understand everything about the universe which blindly spat us forth.

I don’t mean to sound too pessimistic, and I definitely don’t want to give the impression that I think science is a doomed or pointless enterprise. Nevertheless, this is something I’ve been thinking about that at least makes me think scientists should show a little more modesty. Food for thought, at any rate.

Al Mohler today blogs on the supposed right to not being offended. As Mohler notes, it seems to be the secularists who are pushing this so-called right in order to marginalize Christians from any visible impact on our culture. There is an excessive push to remove or keep out any Christian symbols, representations, and references from public view. However, this “right” of not being offended is something new in society. Our constitution protects the right of free speech, but not the right of not being offended. In fact, those rights are antithetic. One cannot have a right to free speech without the possibility (or even hard fact) that some will be offended. Mohler states:

The very idea of civil society assumes the very real possibility that individuals may at any time be offended by another member of the community. Civilization thrives when individuals and groups seek to minimize unnecessary offendedness, while recognizing that some degree of real or perceived offendedness is the cost the society must pay for the right to enjoy the free exchange of ideas and the freedom to speak one’s mind.

There are a few other points to made regarding offense and any right pertaining thereto.

1. Christians must resist this culture of sensitivity and offense as we must have the free speech to share the Gospel message. Of course many will be offended by this message, as the scripture clearly states.

2. Christians must allow others the same right to share there beliefs without taking offense. This is the cost of religious liberty.

3. Christians often provide offense for no reason. Much of the offense that may be taken may come from un-Christian attitudes and actions.

4. Christians need to be careful to not appeal to a right of not being offended. Such a right is anathema to free speech and civil liberties.

Finally, Mohler offers the following quotes from Salman Rushdie who offended Muslims by publishing the novel The Satanic Verses:

The idea that any kind of free society can be constructed in which people will never be offended or insulted is absurd. So too is the notion that people should have the right to call on the law to defend them against being offended or insulted. A fundamental decision needs to be made: do we want to live in a free society or not? Democracy is not a tea party where people sit around making polite conversation. In democracies people get extremely upset with each other. They argue vehemently against each other’s positions.

People have the fundamental right to take an argument to the point where somebody is offended by what they say. It is no trick to support the free speech of somebody you agree with or to whose opinion you are indifferent. The defense of free speech begins at the point where people say something you can’t stand. If you can’t defend their right to say it, then you don’t believe in free speech. You only believe in free speech as long as it doesn’t get up your nose.

A commenter on my last post suggested that perhaps a pragmatist approach is best regarding the reliability of our rational faculties and senses. We may just presuppose that our mental faculties are reliable and get on from there. Well, one may presuppose anything, but on what grounds? All worldviews have presuppositions which form the basis of making sense of the world. The point is that the presuppositions of Christianity make sense of how the world really is, while the presuppostions of naturalism do not. The naturalist has no grounding for the reliability of his senses and reason. He may live inconsistently with his worldview if he wishes, by acting as if he had reason to believe his senses and reason were reliable. One great test of a worldview is whether one can live consistently with it. The naturalist cannot.

C. S. Lewis, in Miracles, states:

…no account of the universe [including meaphysical naturalism] can be true unless that account leaves it possible for our thinking to be a real insight. A theory which explained everything else in the whole universe but which made it impossible to believe that our thinking was valid, would be utterly out of court. For that theory would itself have been reached by thinking, and if thinking is not valid that theory would, of course, be itself demolished. It would have destroyed its own credentials. It would be an argument which proved that no argument was sound - a proof that there are no such things as proofs - which is nonsense.

Richard Taylor, an American philosopher, presented a compelling argument against metaphysical naturalism in Metaphysics in 1963. He introduced the argument with a story. One is to imagine oneself on a British train. Looking out the window, one sees large white stones on a hillside forming a pattern which happens to spell out THE BRITISH RAILWAYS WELCOMES YOU TO WALES. One might reflect on how those stones happened to be in such an arrangement. It is possible that over a number of years wind, rain, and other forces of nature just happened to cause them to rest in their present position. Now many will find this implausible (hence, the intelligent design argument which this post has nothing to do with), but one must admit that it is logically possible for the stones to be as they are as a result of chance. So, there are two possible explanations: the result of an intelligent being’s actions or a natural, non-purposive result.

Now, suppose that the passenger, on the basis of the stones on the hillside, decides that she is actually entering Wales. If that is the case, Taylor argues that it would be quite unreasonable for her to assume the stones came to their present position by accident. It would be irrational to regard the arrangement of the stones as evidence one is entering Wales, and at the same time to suppose that they might have come to their present arrangement accidentally, as the result of the ordinary results of natural forces.

Taylor next invites us to consider similar reasoning about our cognitive faculties. Just as it is possible that the stones formed this interesting arrangement on the hillside by accidental causes, so it is at least possible that our organs of sense and rational abilities are unintended results of impersonal, non-purposeful forces. In fact, many modern scientists agree that this is true of our senses and reasoning. Althought, it seems prima facie highly implausible, let us grant this assertion.

Having granted the non-purposeful, accidental explanation for our senses, one can argue that it is just as irrational to think that those senses give us any reliable information about the world as it is to think that those stones which accidentally were found in a certain arrangment gave any reliable information about the world.

It would be irrational for one to say both that his sensory and cognitive faculties had a natural, nonpurposeful origin and also that they reveal some truth with respect to something other than themselves, something that is not merely inferred from them…We cannot say that they are, entirely by themselves, reliable guides to any truth whatever…If, on the other hand, we do assume that they are guides to some truths having nothing to do with themselves, then it is difficult to see how we can, consistently with that supposition, believe them to have arisen by accident, or by the ordinary workings of purposeless forces, even over ages of time.

Thus, the metaphysical naturalists are caught in a trap. Their whole enterprise is undermined by their presuppositions. Either we have no reason to believe that what they say is true, or we must suppose something other than random, non-intentional forces as the cause of what is. The Christian belief in a personal, rational God who created man in his own image provides a ground for believing what our senses and reason tells us.

Rob Stein, a Washinton Post syndicated writer, had an article in The Lakeland Ledger on Sunday. In it, he describes one of the major issues in bioethics which confronts health care providers. I’ve blogged on this previously here. According to Gene Rudd, of the Christian Medical and Dental Association:

“This issue is the San Andreas Fault of our culture. How we decide this is going to have a long-lasting impact on our society.”

The issue concerns the rights of health care workers to not violate their conscience and the rights of patients to receive care they feel they are entitled to. Among the scenarios presented in the article include an ambulance driver who refused to transport a patient for an abortion, fertility specialists who rebuffed a gay woman seeking artificial insemination, and a pharmacist who turned away a rape victim seeking the morning-after pill.

Stein framed the argument as follows:

Proponents of a “right of conscience” for health workers argue that there is nothing more American than protecting citizens from being forced to violate their moral and religious values.

Patient advocates and others point to a deep tradition in medicine of healers having an ethical and professional responsibility to put patients first.

Among the quotes of the those opposed to health care workers rights of conscience, are these:

“I think it’s absolutely wrong to impose your religious beliefs on someone else.” - Paige Gerson, whose doctor refused to give here the morning-after pill.

“If your religious orientation is such that you can’t discharge your professional responsibilities, then you shouldn’t take on those responsibilities in the first place,” said Ken Kipnis, a philosophy professor at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. “You should find other work.”

“I grew up in a very religious family. But I don’t think that religion tells you you can judge other people.” - Guadalupe Benitez, a lesbian who was refused an insemination procedure.

Unpacking the arguments from the previous statements, we are left with these principles:

1. A physician has an obligation to give a medication to a patient even when she feels the administration of this medication will kill a human being.
2. It is the responsibility of physicans (or substitute other health care providers) to provide to patients whatever treatments they request, even if morally objectionable.
3. A physician should administer whatever treatment is requested by his patient, even if he feels it is inappropriate and immoral to do so.

I’m not sure what professional responsibilities Kipnis was referring to when he suggested physicians who refuse to give treatments they feel are immoral should find another profession. I wish he would have outlined those duties. The Hippocratic Oath, which all physicians take (in some form or another) outlines the duties of the physician:

I swear by Apollo the physician, by Æsculapius, Hygeia, and Panacea, and I take to witness all the gods, all the goddesses, to keep according to my ability and my judgement, the following Oath.

To consider dear to me as my parents him who taught me this art; to live in common with him and if necessary to share my goods with him; To look upon his children as my own brothers, to teach them this art if they so desire without fee or written promise; to impart to my sons and the sons of the master who taught me and the disciples who have enrolled themselves and have agreed to the rules of the profession, but to these alone the precepts and the instruction.

I will prescribe regimens for the good of my patients according to my ability and my judgment and never do harm to anyone.

To please no one will I prescribe a deadly drug nor give advice which may cause his death.

Nor will I give a woman a pessary to procure abortion.

But I will preserve the purity of my life and my art.

I will not cut for stone, even for patients in whom the disease is manifest; I will leave this operation to be performed by practitioners, specialists in this art.

In every house where I come I will enter only for the good of my patients, keeping myself far from all intentional ill-doing and all seduction and especially from the pleasures of love with women or with men, be they free or slaves.

All that may come to my knowledge in the exercise of my profession or in daily commerce with men, which ought not to be spread abroad, I will keep secret and will never reveal.

If I keep this oath faithfully, may I enjoy my life and practice my art, respected by all men and in all times; but if I swerve from it or violate it, may the reverse be my lot.”

It would seem from the above, that the duty of a physician is to withhold treatment that would cause an abortion. The Hippocratic Oath imposes upon a physician the duty to act morally. A good physician will not simply give to a patient whatever he asks, he will do what is morally right. Following the moral logic of Kipnis and others, a physician would be wrong to refuse to assist someone in taking her life (of course many have already gone this far in their reasoning). It is interesting that the Hippocratic Oath prohibits both abortifacents and physician-assisted suicide. It seems the Oath has been turned on its head and the only responsibility the physician has is to cater to the whims of the patient, no matter what harm may come. The first duty of the physician is primum non nocere (First, do no harm). Health care workers must not be forced to violate their consciences by administering treatments which cause harm.