Intellectuelle   Melinda

...Melinda Penner, newest member of the Intellectuelle team! It is an honor and pleasure to introduce Melinda, co-founder and Director of Operations at Stand to Reason. Founded in 1993, Stand to Reason trains Christians to defend the faith with knowledge, wisdom, and character, teaching not just what to think, but how to think. Melinda runs the screening process for Stand to Reason�s radio show hosted by Greg Koukl and also blogs at the STR website.

A native Californian, Melinda graduated from Concordia University in Seward, Nebraska with her B.S. in Education, and then earned a B.A. in theology from Christ College in Irvine, CA. She also completed her M.A. in Philosophy of Religion and Ethics at Talbot School of Theology.

Welcome, Melinda! Your well-reasoned presentations will be a great asset to this forum.

Luke 2:8-14:

In the same region there were some shepherds staying out in the fields and keeping watch over their flock by night.

And an angel of the Lord suddenly stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them; and they were terribly frightened. But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of great joy which will be for all the people; for today in the city of David there has been born for you a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger."

And suddenly there appeared with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying,

"Glory to God in the highest,
And on earth peace among men with whom He is pleased."

This last part of the angel's message is one of the most frequently-quoted partial-verses from the Bible at this time of year. There's an important qualifier at the end of their sentence - "with whom He is pleased."

The peace among men if for this group. Now, who is God well-leased with? We know from the rest of Scripture that no one can please God without our intercessory Jesus Christ. His redemption is the reason God can be pleased with us. That's why He's the reason for the season. The child in that manger the shepherds hurried to after the angels left is our only hope of pleasing God. God Himself gave us the means to please Him because of His great mercy.

There were a series of posts a few months back discussing the usefulness of the term "evangelical." An article in USA Today last week raised some interesting ideas.

I don't like language that doesn't communicate because, after all, that is it's purpose.

USA Today asked whether the E-word can be saved.

Although 38% of Americans call themselves evangelical, only 9% actually agree with key evangelical beliefs, says research firm the Barna Group. In a surveys of 4,014 adults nationwide, conducted over four months in 2006, "one out of every four self-identified evangelicals has not even accepted Christ as their savior," says George Barna.

How you see "evangelical" depends on where you stand, says the Rev. Mark Coppenger, founding pastor of the Evanston (Ill.) Baptist Church and former spokesman for the Southern Baptist Convention.

When evangelical has become a subjective term, depending "on where you stand," the term has lost its usefulness. A term is only helpful if it actually helps someone identify what a person believes. If evangelical doesn't even narrow down that someone has accepted Jesus as Savior, then the term is not helpful.

That is the kind of thing the term was coined to identify - a set of doctrinal beliefs. It was very helpful at one time, distinguishing some Christians from the fundamentalist and liberal movements they did not agree with. The term was useful when it identified a Christian who believed the inerrancy of God's Word and who was still engaged with culture. Evangelicals were just that, evangelistic because they believed the truth of Christianity was for all people.

It seems to me that the term began to get diluted when more conditions got added on, starting in the 80s with the political engagement of the Moral Majority. Since them the term has become much more identified with a political perspective than a theological one. The problem is that Christianity doesn't necessitate a political platform, only some theological fundamentals. There's an important and fine line there where Christianity is specifically defined and then we have to allow someone their freedom to work out the implications of what they believe. I'm just uncomfortable with a term that seems to imply that Christians must have a certain political agenda or that a political platform is essential to being a Christian.

The theological clarity of the term has gotten lost in the political activism it's come to represent.

I think the term should be retired because it's lost its theological precision and is now a vague political term that doesn't really lend to insight or understanding

Here are a couple of good suggestions that communicates something helpful:

"When I travel, I call myself a 'creedal Christian' now," says Francis Beckwith, president of the Evangelical Theological Society and a professor at Baylor University in Waco, Texas....

Coppenger still calls himself evangelical "to distinguish myself from the more liberal mainline Christian groups." But, he adds, "I'm more inclined to call myself a 'Christian,' 'Bible believer,' 'Baptist,' or 'Southern Baptist.'

I just want to say that those of you who live through cold winters but therefore enjoy lily of the valley growing naturally are very blessed. Lilacs, too. I LOVE lily of the valley. They're elegant little flowers as they hang along the stem and the bells gently turn up. And their gorgeous scent far exceeds their size. They are amazing little flowers - and they don't grow in So. CA. Neither do lilacs with the invasive scent of those in colder climates.

If these wonders of creation grow naturally in your area, please enjoy them for me. I bet Bonnie gets to emjoy them.

Articles like this Belief Watch piece in Newsweek show not so much a shift in evangelical beliefs but the misunderstanding many reporters labor under, even those like Lisa Miller who cover religion regularly. Miller portrays the new president of Focus on the Family Jim Daly as representative of a new face of kindness and love toward homosexuals. She asks whether Daly is evidence of a shift in evangelicalism, a shift toward the center or a cosmetic one. What makes her think there's a shift at all?

The media face of Christianity's view of homosexuality is largely the creation of the media itself. Sure, there's some truth to it. Very small numbers of people hold up offensive signs. Jerry Falwell rubbed a lot of people the wrong way and he was on every reporters speed dial whenever there was a religious topic to comment on. The media pool of evangelicals has been a very small one. Yet the entire time there were a majority of Christians affirming their values yet behaving kindly, lovingly, tolerantly. These don't make the news. Daly doesn't represent a shift at all, just a friendly Christian they finally couldn't avoid.

Miller says that "new studies show some movement centerward, at least on the question of tolerance toward homosexuals." Now, whenever I see the world "tolerance" used, I'm very curious to find out how the writer uses the word. Miller goes on to cite a Barna study that young churchgoers believe Christianity is "anti-gay." She goes on to describe this generation as the vanguard of social change in the church. But, of course, that's not "tolerance," that's acceptance. Christians have been tolerating homosexuals all along. We simply object to being coerced by government to condone and approve of homosexuality through marriage, which is a public sanction. Disagreement and tolerance are bosom buddies, since disagreement is presumed in tolerance. The young people starting gay students groups don't tolerate homosexuality since you can't tolerant something you accept and approve of.

Tolerance and approval are confused constantly in our culture. Disagreement is mistaken for intolerance. That's why the misconception that Christians are unkind and intolerant of homosexuals is taken for granted in the minds of most people and especially the media. Kind, tolerant, temperate Christians are the norm in the real world. Jim Daly doesn't represent any shift. But I'm sure glad that there may be a new name in reporters' rolodexes.

There’s an interesting Q&A in this week’s U.S. News & World Report with the Mormon elder M. Russell Ballard. Obviously, he claims Mormons are Christian and they believe in the Bible. Of course, the definition of terms is always key when discussing theology with Mormons. We may use the same words, but they don’t mean the same things.

He says that we call Mormonism a cult because we just reject the ideas that there could be a “restoration” or a new prophet, or Apostles. We think “the heavens are sealed.” Well, of course that’s not the reason Mormon claims of revelation are rejected. It’s the mirror image of why we do accept the revelation of Scripture. In one word: authority. The writers had authority to write. The Old Testament prophets were judged as reliably delivering God’s message. For the New Testament writers, they were all eyewitnesses to Jesus or one generation removed, relaying firsthand testimony. Joseph Smith and subsequent Mormon revelations just don’t have the kind of authority that would cause us to evaluate it as God’s Word. This is, by the way, many other writings in the early centuries after Christ were rejected by the church. We don’t think the heavens are sealed; they just haven’t given us good evidence to accept the teachings. In fact, the essence of Mormon conviction is subjective – the burning in the bosom, not objective.

Ballard claims that there was great uncertainty in the four centuries after Jesus. This is an attempt to justify the Mormon claim that it is the restoration that was lost by the early church. But that’s not an accurate reflection of early church history. Pick up any good church history like Bryan M. Litfin’s new book on the early church fathers to get an accurate picture.

And the reason Mormonism and Christian cannot be the same thing is summarized nicely by elder Ballard when he describes the Trinity as three separate individuals, rather than three persons in one substance. That core difference clearly distinguishes two separate religions, however we label each other. Ballard seems to bolster the Mormon definition by citing the common understanding most Christians have. Well, that’s only evidence of the bad training Christians have gotten; it doesn’t at all go to the accuracy of the definition.

One thing that isn’t always clear in the efforts such as Ballard’s to claim the name Christian is that Mormons don’t believe the rest of us are Christians. The whole point of Joseph Smith beginning the Mormon church was to restore what all the churches had lost. There were no true churches according to his purported revelation. Why else do they evangelize even when they find out someone is a Christian?

They make truth claims. Christians make truth claims. That’s fine. Let’s just admit that our truth claims don’t agree.

Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse gets to the heart of what is very sad about the new California law that prohibits the use of gender language that seems to favor heterosexuality. As they say, as goes California so goes the country. Watch out America. The will affect textbooks in all 50 states because publishers write to the standards of the biggest markets, California among them.

Most disturbing, however, is that such legislation will cause struggles in the development of a healthy sense of gender in the vast majority of young people. Due to the flexible language employed, anything that looks remotely like gender stereotyping will run afoul of this law In other words, anything that says, “boys should do X” or “girls should do Y” will certainly be considered to “reflect adversely” on children with any gender identity confusion.

Most young people have questions about how to express their gender. What does it mean to be a man? What should a good woman do? These are questions with which all young people must grapple, and they are entitled to have some substantial guidance from adults. For far too long, we’ve been avoiding these questions out of fear of offending feminist sensibilities. With this new law, California school teachers and school boards will have to fear the gay lobby, as well as the feminist establishment.

Ample evidence exists to suggest that men and women react different to everything from cohabitation, to infertility, to child-bearing. The path on which we travail with such laws leaves children to discover these critical differences in unfortunate, and often very painful, ways. Such a law limits the fruitful discussion that would benefit the majority of children in order to protect the feelings of the handful of children who might have same sex attractions.

Bonnie is here at GodblogCon in Las Vegas and in her presentation gave a nice, concise definition of apologetics that gets at the heart of what we try to do: Explaining how faith affects every aspect of life. I like this because it captures the purpose of apologetics without being academic. It also points out the practicality of apologetics. And it presents the challenge of integrating our Christian convictions into every part of life. Christianity gives us a lot to think about. And the challenge is to do it well.

It's a historical fact that Christianity, the principles and values found in the Old and New Testaments, provided the necessary grounding for the religious freedom and all other freedoms our Founders established. Freedoms are just claims to something, and therefore have to be justified by something. They don't just float freely for grabs. Our founding documents establish that grounding in God-given rights and freedoms that government must respect.

That government is restrained by these inalienable rights is one of the unique features of our system. We essentially take that for granted now because it's so familiar to us, but it is a rare thing in history. And frankly, it's not just any religion or faith itself that provides the grounding for these rights. I truly think it unlikely that this system would have been founded if the Founders had been of a different kind of faith. Other holy books just don't offer this view of God-given rights.

Of course, it's the religious freedom grounded in Biblical theism that also supports the religious pluralism of our country, the freedom to worship as you wish without compulsion. So calling the U.S. "a Christian nation" is not incidental, and it's that very form of grounding rights that allows religious expression to flourish. There's no need to be uncomfortable with that phrase.

Alan Jacobs writes a fine review of Philip Pullman's trilogy His Dark Materials. The only point on which I disagree is that I find nothing appealing in the trilogy or on par with Tolkein or Lewis.

Whichever party readers support in the ancient contest between God and Satan, they will be disappointed to see how often, in The Amber Spyglass, the tale's momentum is interrupted by polemic. Pullman's anti-theistic scolding consorts poorly with his prodigious skills as a storyteller....

Again and again, Pullman's mocking of religious belief gets him into trouble. There is an irony in Pullman's calling Lewis's narrative method "dishonest," because dishonesty is the signal moral trait of Pullman's trilogy. One sees a number of unequivocally evil people in these books, and one sees a number of Christians, and these are always -- always -- the same people. Everyone associated with the Church is cruel, remorseless, and only rarely less than murderous.

Conversely, everyone outside the Church is blindingly righteous, Lord Asriel being the only partial exception. (And his most indefensible deed proves to be the inadvertent cause of -- in the narrative's terms -- an immeasurably great thing.) These decent, compassionate folk regularly denounce religion and God, while the monsters who run the Church utter scarcely a word in their own defense -- just to make sure that no reader comes to a conclusion Pullman doesn't want....

This is a nice trick: Other universes become places where Pullman's enemies can be made to do any imaginable evil, so that he can better justify his hatred of them. Meanwhile, who knows how many readers go away from this book believing that John Calvin massacred innocents with the callused enthusiasm of King Herod?

Omission serves Pullman's purposes as well. In the whole trilogy there is just one reference to Jesus Christ, whose teachings, character, and influence do not, after all, fit well with Pullman's picture of Christianity. And how many people, especially young people, know enough about Christian doctrine or the Biblical narrative to realize just how deceptive Pullman's treatment is? How many will know, for instance, that the sin of Adam and Eve had nothing to do with their love for each other, despite Pullman's contentions in The Amber Spyglass that the Authority wants a world of ice-cold celibates and that erotic love is a form of rebellious creativity?...

Such gilding fits Pullman's general disrespect for honesty: His heroine Lyra, though everyone she meets calls her "innocent," almost always saves the day with lies, and if in this final installment her lies get her into trouble, the lesson is certainly not that lying doesn't pay but rather that lying doesn't always pay.

If Christianity, and religion in general, are what Pullman is against, what is he for? Well, he's in favor of open minds; he thinks we must choose between loveless God and godless love, and we should choose love. Events near the story's end suggest that positive energy in the world, the Dust, is produced by specifically erotic love. Mary, that admirable tempter, asserts, "All we can say is that this is a good deed, because it helps someone, or that's an evil one, because it hurts them."...

Ultimately the flaw that cripples Pullman's ambitious trilogy is just this unwillingness to reckon with European history since the Age of Revolution. He renews the splendid anti-authoritarian rhetoric of that era without acknowledging that some of the best-intentioned rebels have seen their lovely plans turn foul. For Pullman, Blake's early romanticism marks the end of history, and in His Dark Materials Pullman positions his readers at that wonderful moment before anyone could see, in the cold light of the morning after, the tangled consequences of even the most principled revolutions.

This sentimental refusal of historical understanding leads directly to the Manicheanism of Pullman's moral vision: closed versus open minds, tyrants versus liberators, the vicious Church versus its righteous opponents....A writer who tells adolescents that good folks are distinguished from evil ones on the single criterion of religious belief is not doing them any favors.

Luke 2:8-14:

In the same region there were some shepherds staying out in the fields and keeping watch over their flock by night.

And an angel of the Lord suddenly stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them; and they were terribly frightened. But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of great joy which will be for all the people; for today in the city of David there has been born for you a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger."

And suddenly there appeared with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying,

"Glory to God in the highest,
And on earth peace among men with whom He is pleased."

This last part of the angel's message is one of the most frequently-quoted partial-verses from the Bible at this time of year. There's an important qualifier at the end of their sentence - "with whom He is pleased."

The peace among men if for this group. Now, who is God pleased with? We know from the rest of Scripture that no one can please God without our intercessory Jesus Christ. His redemption is the reason God can be pleased with us. That's why He's the reason for the season. The child in that manger the shepherds hurried to after the angels left is our only hope of pleasing God. God Himself gave us the means to please Him because of His great mercy. And His offer is open to all people.

One of the most misquoted Bible verses (paralleled only by "Judge not" said in a scolding tone) is John 8:32 - "The truth will make you free." It's usually used to refer to any truth, a general principle of truth. But as you can see in the context Jesus was referring to a particular truth - Himself and the message of forgiveness He preached that was conditioned on believing the truth about Him.

So Jesus was saying to those Jews who had believed Him, "If you continue in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free." They answered Him, "We are Abraham's descendants and have never yet been enslaved to anyone; how is it that You say, 'You will become free'?"

Jesus answered them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin. The slave does not remain in the house forever; the Son does remain forever. So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed."

Jesus' claim that the "truth will make you free" only refers to a particular truth, the truth of who He was and the sacrifice for us we can believe. Only then will we be free of the wages of our sin. Only Jesus paid our debt, He died and raised from the dead, so only He via our conviction in that truth can set us free from our sin.

Do a word search on "truth" in the Gospels and you'll see that the truth being refered to is a specific one. It's an objective truth. It's not truth in general, or a personal, subjective truth. Indeed, Jesus called Himself "the Truth" because He is the only Truth that can set us free.