Science and Sin 1 (RJS)

Last updated on: October 16, 2012 at 6:24 am By RJS

While much of the furor over the conflict between science and faith centers on the question of origins and evolution – it is not limited to these questions alone. The sciences also impact our understanding of human behavior and human response and this can also lead to increased understanding or to conflict.

The September 2009 issue of Discover Magazine has an interesting article on the Seven Deadly Sins (the magazine has a website at discovermagazine.com – but this article is not available on-line, at least not yet). The article poses a question “Why does being bad feel so good?” and describes research being done these days to explore the science of sin. One of the most interesting techniques used in these studies is functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), another is PET (positron-emission tomography). In these technique the active areas of the brain are mapped as the subject responds to certain stimuli.

Consider one sin – Gluttony. In one experiment the researcher asks his volunteers to come in hungry.

He then torments them, asking them to describe their favorite food in loving detail while he heats it up in a near by microwave so that the aroma wafts through the room. … the motivational regions in their brains go wild. Parts of the front orbital cortex, which is implicated in decision making, also light up. (p. 50)

These and other studies indicate that obese people have lower reward sensitivity and that areas involved in inhibitory control are less active. In fact it appears that overeating downregulates inhibition control. Tongue in cheek (I think) the article suggests that this offers moral absolution. If a sin isn’t voluntary it isn’t a sin – at least according to Thomas Aquinas – and we are wired to overeat.

This is a relatively minor example – but it leads to an interesting question.

What role does chemistry or biology play in our understanding of sin?

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Genesis One 16 (RJS)

Last updated on: November 21, 2012 at 4:46 pm By RJS

Scot has handled most of the discussion on John Walton’s (professor at Wheaton) new book, The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate, but I am going to jump in with a post on his next two propositions (16 and 17).

The first ten or eleven propositions in this book lay out a powerful approach to the understanding of Genesis One in the context of the original cultures. The literal approach – assuming a material science and history behind the authorial intent of the text – may in fact distort our understanding of the message of the text. The remaining propositions deal with the implications or consequences of this approach to Genesis One.

The two propositions we will discuss today build on this background and assert that Scientific explanations of origins can be unobjectionable (Proposition 16) and that the Theology of Genesis One in this view is stronger not weaker (Proposition 17). I will start with the second – which I find to be one of the key points in Walton’s book.

The creeds state “We believe in one God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth.” This belief is common to all Christians – but does this rely on Genesis 1? Is the theology of God as creator strengthened or weakened when we look at Genesis 1 in terms of function?

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Worthy of Imitation 1

Last updated on: September 7, 2009 at 6:00 am By Scot McKnight

Protestants are nervous about the famous saints of the church, and they are nervous for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that veneration of saints by some in the Catholic and Orthodox traditions exceeds what is to be said of humans and diminishes (by default) what is said of Christ. But, those excesses do not diminish the powerful stories of those whom God has used mightily. Chris Armstrong has the perfect book for this issue: Patron Saints for Postmoderns: Ten from the Past Who Speak to Our Future

. Armstrong introduces us to ten saints, some of whom are not always on the top one hundred saints lists. This book would serve as an excellent textbook for Sunday school classes, for adult Bible studies, and for reading in a college course on Church history. The genius of the book is to teach church history while keeping us in touch with spiritual formation.

What have you learned from the monastics? What do you think are the dangers of the monastic life? Which monastic example has helped you the most? (Which saint, which Rule, etc?) How does the monastic life provide an example for those of us who are not monastics? What have you learned from Antony?

He begins with St Antony of Egypt (the monastery resting on his burial site is above) and Armstrong’s focus is on monasticism and its powerful example for Christian living today. Perhaps the most telling story of St Antony, told by Athanasius (St. Antony of the Desert
), is that while we remember Augustine’s conversion most from the “take and read” line, he was in that garden because of the challenging story of St. Antony that shook him to his core.

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Acts and Mission 10

Last updated on: August 18, 2009 at 12:32 pm By Guest Contributor

What happens when Pentecost happens? That’s our week’s question. What happens is that community happens? That’s our week’s answer. How does community happen? We’ll begin to look at that today. Again, the passage:

They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. Every

day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke
bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

There are a number of elements involved when Luke says the early messianists were “together.” (Again, I hope you can purchase and read Beverly Gaventa’s wise and to-the-point Acts commentary as we work this NT book over the next few months: The Acts of the Apostles (Abingdon New Testament Commentaries)
.)

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Evolution’s Place? 1 (RJS)

Last updated on: November 14, 2012 at 10:00 pm By RJS

What place can evolution have in a world created by a personal God?

The Darwinian paradigm of random mutation and natural selection seems to suggest that the development of life in the universe and sentient beings on our planet is a process dependent upon highly contingent improbable events. We are a product of blind cosmic chance – luck as it were.

But is this really true – is this the way the world works? Certainly it is a view that has been discussed in the scientific literature and popularized by writers and thinkers such as Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould. One of the most famous images is that given by Gould of a tape of time. Run the tape over and something entirely different will emerge. From his 1994 article in Scientific American (v. 271, pp. 84-91) The Evolution of Life:

History includes too much chaos, or extremely sensitive dependence on minute and unmeasurable differences in initial conditions, leading to massively divergent outcomes based on tiny and unknowable disparities in starting points. And history includes too much contingency, or shaping of present results by long chains of unpredictable antecedent states, rather than immediate determination by timeless laws of nature.

Homo sapiens did not appear on the earth, just a geologic second ago, because evolutionary theory predicts such an outcome based on themes of progress and increasing neural complexity. Humans arose, rather, as a fortuitous and contingent outcome of thousands of linked events, any one of which could have occurred differently and sent history on an alternative pathway that would not have led to consciousness.

The idea that we are products of random chance and historic contingency seems at odds with any reasonable theology.

Do you think that evolution poses a problem for a created universe? For the Christian faith? Why or why not?

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Missional Campus Ministry 1 (RJS)

Last updated on: November 21, 2012 at 9:58 pm By RJS

University 5 ds.JPG

Yet another academic year approaches – yet another set of fresh new faces on campus. As we approach a the start of term I would like to renew the conversation on campus ministry we began last spring (You can find my initial salvo here).

As many here know I am a professor, at a large secular University, not a Christian college, and have been involved in academia for some 28 years as a graduate student, post-doc and professor. There is no doubt that the modern University is a mission field in many different ways – and a challenging mission field at that. This year opens a new window on the situation however, as I am also a parent sending my eldest off to college with her friends dispersing to a wide range of campuses and contexts.

Over the course of several posts – one or two a week – we will consider several aspects of University ministry. I intend to look at Chuck Bomar’s new book College Ministry 101: A Guide to Working with 18-25 Year Olds and Benson Hines’s e-book (free on his site) Reaching the Campus Tribes. I will also point to some useful on-line blogs and discussions beginning with Steve Lutz and The SENTinel (good thoughts and good discussion on this site). I am open to suggestions for other good resources as well.

Before digging in however, I would like to open with some questions.

What are the biggest challenges in Campus Ministry today?

What should a missional campus ministry look like?

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The Pope’s Most Recent Encyclical 1

Last updated on: July 28, 2009 at 6:27 am By Scot McKnight

Once again, Mary Veeneman, professor in theology at North Park University, steps up to guide us into understanding Pope Benedict XVI’s most recent statement. This is a two-part post and tomorrow Mary will explore the significance of this new statement. Today Mary sets the stage by sketching Catholic social vision — and I wish I could point to more of this by evangelical thinkers.

Pope Benedict XVI’s encyclial Caritas in Veritate is the latest encyclical that falls under the

rubric of Catholic Social Teaching and has been fairly well received in the
mainstream media, due to its teaching on economic issues (more on that
later).

Modern Catholic Social
Teaching (CST) is made up of a number of encyclicals and other church documents that
elucidate the Catholic Church’s teachings on social ethics. Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum (1891) is understood as the origin of modern
CST. Rerum Novarum was written in the midst of labor disputes in various
industrial countries and talks about the importance of a living wage and the
right of workers to organize.

Question: If CST is characterized
as a care for life from “womb to tomb” as Firer Hinze argues, what might its
implications be as we think through various issues related to the sanctity of
life and the care for the poor?

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Marriage as Parable of Permanence 1

Last updated on: July 1, 2009 at 5:37 am By Scot McKnight

I begin a series today on John Piper’s new book about marriage (This Momentary Marriage: A Parable of Permanence

) but I do so by posting a recent essay of mine from Out of Ur: it was called there “The Story of Us.”

The Story of Us

At the end of his lecture and after answering a smattering of
questions, the pristine and aged New Testament scholar, Bruce Metzger,
asked Doug Moo, at that time a colleague of mine, if he could say
something on his heart to the seminary students gathered that day. With
the moral vigor and verbal clarity Metzger was known for, he looked at
his audience and simply said, “Stay married.” The brevity of his words
was matched by moral significance.

Questions: What is your church doing to help couples develop long-lasting, loving relationships and staying married?
Those of you who are divorced, where did it go wrong for you? Was there something that could have been taught or practiced that would have altered your path?

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The Church: Does it Matter? 1 (MV)

Last updated on: June 17, 2009 at 5:41 am By Scot McKnight

This series is by my colleague in theology, Dr. Mary Veeneman, and she’s guiding us through a brand new book by Brad Harper and Paul Metzger. The book is called: Exploring Ecclesiology: An Evangelical and Ecumenical Introduction

. The question we need to ask, especially of evangelicals, is this: Does the church matter? And if so, how does it matter? Now over to Mary…

While taking my doctoral exams in graduate school, I had to answer a
method question which asked me to grapple with the question, “Earth:
Does it matter for theology?” During the previous school year, my
department had offered a course in ecological theology, which everyone
facing that exam question wisely took. A friend of mine in the
program, a Catholic priest, joked to the professor offering the course
that he did not need to take it, as he already recycled. In all
seriousness, though, I think everyone in the class agreed at the end
that course had given us valuable content.

At one point in the course, we discussed the work of Lynn White and his
argument that environmental degradation was largely attributable to
ideas coming out of Christianity. Inevitably, someone mentioned
evangelical Christians and the way in which an evangelical
understanding of dispensational premillennialism (though that term
wasn’t used) led to a lack of care for the environment. As Tom Sine
argues, “It doesn’t make much sense to be overly concerned for the
environment is going to burn anyway” (Harper and Metzger, 79).

Do you think the gospel has anything to do with creation? Is creation care redemptive in a meaningful sense?

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Justification and New Perspective 18

Last updated on: June 15, 2009 at 12:02 am By Scot McKnight

One of the fiercest debates about the new perspective, from the old perspective angle, is the issue of double imputation and whether there are “two principles” at work in the human soul: the principle of works (self-merit) and the principle faith (no self-merit).

Tom Wright’s Justification: God’s Plan & Paul’s Vision next section (pp.210-216) takes both on through the lens of Romans 3:27-28. I’ll quote that text, quote Wright, and then ask a question:

Where, then, is boasting? It is excluded. On what principle [Greek: nomos or Torah] ? On that of observing the law? No, but on that [nomos/Torah] of faith. For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from observing the law.

The translation of “nomos”/law with “principle” is a much-disputed translation, and one Wright does not agree with. Wright believes the people of God keep the Torah through faith vs. those who aren’t who keep the Torah through works.

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