The partnership between a Reformed para-church publisher and
the retail arm of the Southern Baptist Convention probably suggests something about
the inroads neo-Calvinists have made within that denomination. This is no
surprise, of course. Al Mohler has been in charge of the SBC’s flagship
seminary (SBTS) for quite some time. Additionally, Calvinistic Baptists seem to
be the only ones within that denomination who are consistently serious about
theology. I might be inclined to argue that when Christian fundamentalism intersects
with middle class pseudo-intellectualism, Calvinism is the meme most fit to
rise to the top. It's difficult not to agree with my friend Neil who observes that it is largely just “gentrified religious extremism.”
Once upon
a time, not so long ago, I was a Presuppositionalist. I've discussed this
briefly before, but having grown wary and suspect of the weaknesses of
apologetic methods like Thomistic arguments and evidentialism, I turned to the
seemingly-unassailable circularity offered by this “epistemology.” I just used scare quotes there because
Presuppositionalism probably isn’t as much of an epistemology as it is an apologetic
method (if it’s even that). The basic claim of Presuppositionalism is that the
Christian understanding of reality is the only internally consistent worldview
and that the propositions contained in the Protestant Bible, and implicitly the Westminsterian interpretation of those propositions, are to be taken axiomatically.
All other worldviews will fail the internal scrutiny of a reductio ad absurdum.
In this installment Jacob uses a magic rock to have an encounter with the deity, he has a curious response to Yahweh's promises while setting up a worship center in the wrong place, and we attempt to peel back the curtain a bit and show what source-critical scholars have been aware of for a while now.
I Kings 18:17-40
And
Ahab went to meet Elijah. And it came to pass, when Ahab saw Elijah,
that Ahab said unto him, “Art thou he that troubleth Israel?”
And
he answered, “I have not troubled Israel; but thou, and thy father's
house, in that ye have forsaken the commandments of Jehovah, and thou
hast followed Baalim. Now therefore send, and gather to me all Israel
unto mount Carmel, and the prophets of Baal four hundred and fifty, and
the prophets of the groves four hundred, which eat at Jezebel's table.”
So Ahab sent unto all the children of Israel, and gathered the prophets
together unto mount Carmel. For even though this was a ridiculous request, Elijah was some kind of svengali.
In this installment, which we could begin calling "The Old and the Restless", Jacob continues his trickery with the help of his shifty Aramean mother; Isaac makes a careless blunder when casting a spell; Esau gets a really raw deal again because, well, Yahweh just hates him; and then all four main characters act like none of it ever happened.
I dislike much
about what professional apologist William Lane Craig does and says and
that dislike extends back to well before my departure from the Christian
faith.
As a good, thoughtful Calvinist I found his philosophical approach to
Libertarian
Free Will, known as Molinism, to be highly flawed and clearly at odds
with
scripture and sound reasoning. I always thought he played fast and loose
with
the clear meaning of the texts of the Bible in order to make his
evidentialist
defenses of Christianity and it pissed me off. What can I say? I was an
Angry
Bearded Calvinist™ without the beard. Well, WLC continues to piss me off
because
of his disingenuousness and deliberate obfuscation and I’m not the only
one.
Bart Ehrman is understandably incensed by this old post from Craig that someone must’ve brought to his attention recently. In it Craig
straight up lies about Ehrman’s personal biography, claiming that it was Ehrman’s
rejection of biblical inerrancy that led to his deconversion. That’s just…I can’t…no.
Anyone remotely familiar with Ehrman’s story should know better, but especially
someone who knows him personally and has actually directly engaged Ehrman in a
pitched debate. He’s been pretty open about it. How open? Well, he wrote a friggin’ book about it. Now, in fairness to WLC, that book came out after this
post. However, as Ehrman points out, the man had access to Ehrman’s email
address. He could’ve just asked him. He didn’t. He just went ahead and
attributed whatever motives and reasons best fit his own preconceived ideas.
Just picking up a Bible and reading chapters like this one might make a reader come away yawning. Isaac goes to the territory of the Philistines to escape a famine, lies about his wife being his sister, gets rich in the process, develops a rivalry with the locals, gets into a dispute over some wells and settles things with a treaty. When taking other passages into account, however, there are a lot of interesting discrepancies.
