By that I don't mean he goes around quoting proof texts from Matthew 24 or Revelation out of context and claiming the world will end in three to five years. That's not prophecy, that's stupidity, and best left to the moron fringe.
No, prophetic in the sense of stating unpleasant truths. For example:
The scandal of the Evangelical mind is that degrees, books, papers, and other marks of prestige are valued–provided you come to predetermined conclusions.
Ain't that the truth. In a nutshell... apologetics. A Christian committed to the apologetic enterprise has already prostituted their conscience by surrendering to the fear of truth.
Evangelicalism is not fundamentally an intellectual organism but an apologetic one.
Read the whole article here.
Some people would probably classify the non-ACOG church I attend as being Evangelical. However, as a rule, there isn't a heck of a lot of the mind-molding one has come to expect from the stricter Evangelical churches. We were recently told from the pulpit that it is important to agree on the essentials, like the existence of God, that the Bible is God's Word, and that Jesus was fully God and fully man, lived, and died for our sins, and was resurrected. I've heard it stated in the past that there are many things which can't be specifically known about creation, and about our eternal reward, but that this is so in order to force us to concentrate on the task at hand in our current lives. The pastor often says that there are some things that we can disagree about, and both get to heaven. That, considering our past background, is refreshingly honest!
ReplyDeleteIt makes me laugh when I hear that some churches teach about the dinosaurs being killed in Noah's flood, or the universe being 6,000 years old, and I understand that some Evangelicals subscribe to these and other laughable ideas. Sadly, some people believe that Christians must check their God-given minds at the door in order to follow Jesus. I don't.
BB
Anybody who believes in supernatural persons and places without any evidence of said persons and places has already checked their mind at the door.
ReplyDeleteWe must ask ourselves if apologetics is defense of the truth or defense of viewpoint. I believe it is the latter. Finding the truth is a quest. Moreover, finding what is important is a quest. Many evangelicals and atheists believe they already understand the truth and the quest is over. And so they engage in blistering debate that is personal apologetics for a viewpoint.
ReplyDeleteNot always does everything fall out in neat categories. I am a Christian and I believe in evolution. Evolution is also accepted by many evangelical churches. Although I agree with Enns and Knoll on most of what they say, Enns' views are colored by the fact that he lost a job over a viewpoint he espoused. C.S. Lewis is classed as an apologist but when you get into the detail, many evangelicals, though they adulate Lewis, would not agree with what he said. He smoked a pipe and drank beer, to start with. So an evangelical who requires strict adherence to a viewpoint is an evangelical who has capitulated to the baser tendencies that once made us all Armstrongites. We have been there, done that and bought the t-shirt.
-- Neo