By Bob Robinson

There is an irony that might be missed by those who have embraced the APEST typology advocated by Alan Hirsch, Mike Breen, and others in the Missional Movement.

In our desire to overcome an overbearing leadership structure that was found in putting so much power in the Shepherd-Teacher, we are in danger of creating yet another overbearing leadership structure but with different leaders. We worry so much about the destructive nature of institutionalism that we shift the focus from 2/5 of the APEST typology to the other 3/5.

In other words, with the emphasis on APEST, we are still not focused on what God ultimately desires! We are still talking about leadership structures rather than on what the church is meant to produce: ‎‎Equipped saints! The goal is supposed to be giving God’s people in Christ the tools needed for what they are called to do: their work of ministry, and the building up of the body of Christ. The ultimate telos of all this is that we will all reach unity in our belief and loyalty by truly knowing God’s son, becoming mature as human beings, fully becoming like Christ (see Ephesians 4:11-13).

The Two Spheres Church Leaders Need to Tend

While there must be structures for church leadership so that believers can be made fit for their purpose in life, to say that therefore the goal is to help each believer fulfil their place in the APEST typology is a major misstep. The misstep is not in the desire to create a healthy leadership structure, it is in presuming that Ephesians 4:11-12 is about developing every Christian to become some sort of leader in the church, either an apostle, a prophet, an evangelist, a shepherd, or a teacher. It remains solely focused on developing church leadership for the sake of the local church rather than focusing on developing normal, everyday Christians in their ministry vocations.

Those in full-time church ministry too easily forget that there are two spheres that church leadership must constantly tend to: The development and implementation of church leadership and the development and implementation of regular, ordinary Christians in their works of ministry, utilizing their gifts for the common good.

The APEST typology may be in danger of not doing enough to shift the focus toward the Priesthood of All Believers and away from the authority figures in the church. The goal should be the equipping and empowering of Christians to be Salt and Light in every nook and cranny of the world in which they find themselves.

However, in an ironic twist, the effort to overcome one overbearing leadership structure may lead to another overbearing leadership structure. Why? Because APEST is still almost exclusively about the important sphere of developing church leaders. It is still about how the people in the local church can become leaders in that church, rather than about the main goal: the equipping of the saints for their works of ministry.

The Whole Counsel of Scripture

The problem stems from placing far too much emphasis on this one section of this one Epistle (Alan Hirsch actually calls Ephesians 4:11 the “Constitution” for the Church) without allowing the rest of Scripture inform us as well. I already criticized APEST for falsely separating the Pastor-Teacher role that should not separated and for ignoring the fact that the Pastoral Letters do not go into the need to develop all Christians into the typology of APEST but rather focusing on the offices of “Elders” and “Overseers” who are able to teach people so that they can mature.

Other important Scriptures that are not dealt with nearly enough in the APEST typology are those that Paul uses to explain the gifts that God gives his people in Romans 12:6-8, 1 Corinthians 7:7, 1 Corinthians 12:8-10, and 1 Corinthians 12:28. When we look at the gifts listed in all these passages, we find that Paul does not attempt to be exhaustive in any one of them.

In the lists that Paul provides in his letters, there are overlaps of the same gifts, and some gifts might actually be synonyms of gifts in another list. Sometimes there seems to be an order to the gifts (like in 1 Corinthians 12:28, where Paul puts apostles first and prophets second, but then, in a break from our Ephesians 4 passage, skips ahead to teachers). Mostly, it seems that Paul is just listing off random samples of gifts to his amanuensis, without any desire for us to place too much emphasis on order or what’s missing or included.

Some scholars believe that the reason Paul doesn’t provide long, meticulous lists is that these gifts have so many different expressions in different Christians that to do so would be to make it appear that Paul is limiting the number and kinds of gifts the Spirit will bestow on any one Christian. No one Christian’s mix of gifts will be exactly like another Christian’s mix.

Here are the lists:

Romans 12:6–8

• prophecy
• serving
• teaching
• encouraging
• contributing
• leadership
• mercy

1 Corinthians 7:7

• marriage
• celibacy

1 Corinthians 12:8–10

• word of wisdom
• word of knowledge
• faith
• gifts of healing
• miracles
• prophecy
• distinguishing between spirits
• tongues
• interpretation of tongues

1 Corinthians 12:28

• apostle
• prophet
• teacher
• miracles
• kinds of healings
• helps
• administration
• tongues

Ephesians 4:11

• apostle
• prophet
• evangelist
• pastor-teacher

So, a question raised to those advocating APEST is, Why are we focused on just this one list of spiritual gifts? What about all the other gifts that God’s Spirit freely gives to his people?

Do You See the Worrisome Irony?

The APEST typology has a danger of putting too much emphasis on one list of gifts given to the church, a list that they see as the keys to church leadership structure. They are providing new “Spiritual Gifts Tests” (remember those?) but just focusing on the five gifts listed in Ephesians 4 rather than all of the gifts listed in the New Testament (let alone all the even greater number of gifts found in the Old Testament!) – gifts that are meant to create in God’s people a deep reliance on God’s Spirit to provide the ability to do their work of ministry.

In the desire to spread the ministry of the church away from the exclusive grip of the Pastor-Teachers by emphasizing the Apostles, Prophets, and Evangelists of Ephesians 4:11, we ironically are simply moving from one set of leaders to another set.

It moves away from the plethora of gifts given to all of God’s people so that they can do the work of ministry. It mistakenly states that all believers must somehow fit into the APEST typology rather than on relying of God’s Spirit to provide, in a vast and various ways, the power to do their ministry!

One of the newer theories on the market today hails from some in the missional crowd and is called APEST: apostle, prophet, evangelist, shepherd/pastor, teacher. Many seem not to know that this was a very big discussion back in the late 60s and early 70s when Ray Stedman put it on the market with this justly acclaimed book Body Life. So when I began to see the APEST stuff (originally often called APE), I noticed both some similarities (often without knowledge of Stedman) and some dissimilarities (most notably the lack of exegetical finesse in the newer proposals). I also liked very much that Ray Stedman worked his out in a congregation where it flourished and then the word spread. I spent hours in those days exegeting the texts and teaching the ideas of Ray Stedman.

So, my former student and friend, Bob Robinson, has decided to evaluate APEST with fairness and exegetically-based observations, and I’m happy to post his first post today.

Bob Robinson

So, I was going through my Facebook feed and came across a post on April 12 from Brad Briscoe, the director of strategic development for Forge America (the organization that Alan Hirsch founded when he first came over from Australia) that stated,

“I am convinced that if a person denies or discounts the importance of #APEST in Eph 4:1-16, they simply haven’t dealt with the topic in a serious manner.”

I was astonished at that bold statement, so I had to comment:

“That would be a poor presumption. Very dismissive of those who HAVE seriously dealt with the concept.”

To which Brad wrote,

“Bob, I really don’t mean to be dismissive (although I know it sounds that way). I have recently run across a number of people that simply discount APEST without ever engaging the material… I guess a follow-up question I would have for you Bob, would be if you have seriously dealt with the concept, what are your thoughts on it after doing so?”

Thanks for asking! Here you go, Brad – I hope this helps. I look forward to a spirited dialogue.

Is APEST One of “The Forgotten Ways?”

When I first read Alan Hirsch’s book The Forgotten Ways (Brazos Press, 2006. 2nd Edition pubished by Baker, 2009), I was enthralled. The first five chapters had me rethinking the mission of the church in foundational ways. But then came chapter 6, in which he introduced the “apostolic environment” that feeds into a paradigm “APEPT,” the five words found in Ephesians 4:11-12 that describes gifts God gives to the church in order to equip Christians: Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists, Pastors, Teachers. (Since this book was published, the second “P” for “Pastor” has been replaced with an “S” for “Shepherd,” and thus it is now called “APEST”).

As I first read this proposal, I found it wanting – exegetically, theologically and ecclesiologically. I figured that others would just as easily see the problems with such a paradigm and we’d all move along.

But, the Missional Movement has latched heavily onto Hirsch’s paradigm and many churches are now using it as the means by which to identify leaders for the sake of advancing the missional church beyond what they see as an old, biblically ill-informed institutionalism that has ruined the modern church in American evangelicalism. Alan Hirsch further defined APEST in his 2012 book written with Tim Catchim, The Permanent Revolution and is now about to release a new book entitled 5Q: Reactivating the Original Intelligence and Capacity of the Body of Christ which is getting a lot of pre-publication hype.

More and more churches I know are giving a short survey to help each person figure out which of the APEST he or she might be (see the survey at fivefoldsurvey.com). The goal is to better utilize people and their gifts for the mission of the local church. I will dive into criticizing this survey in a later post.

In this post, I will review the exegetical issues. Then in the next posts, I will review the theological and ecclesiological issues.

APEST is Exegetically Flawed from the Start

I remember my first year learning Greek at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School under Andreas Köstenberger. Learning Greek vocabulary was hard enough, but Greek grammar and syntax – that was a challenge! Among the rules of Greek that every first-year Greek student learns is “Granville Sharp’s Rule.”

Granville Sharp found that this rule applies to the Greek of the New Testament:

When we find in a clause two or more nouns of the same case describing persons and if the first nouns in the sequence are preceded by any form of the Greek definite article but the last noun in the sequence is not preceded by the article but rather is connected with the Greek “kai” (that’s Greek for “and”), then the final two nouns are referring to the same person.

And do you know what verse was among the examples my esteemed Greek instructor used to teach us Granville Sharp’s Rule? You guessed it – Ephesians 4:11.

The verse literally reads how the ESV has rendered it:

“And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers…”

In English, we often add the word “and” at the end of a string of nouns like this as our grammatical custom, but in Greek, something very specific is going on.

The first exegetical problem with APEST is that it chooses to ignore Granville Sharp’s Rule. We do not have five specific people identified here but rather four. We are to see the last two as the same person – the shepherd-teacher. [SMcK: a minimal observation is that these two gifts are connected unlike any of the others; it would impossible to say they are identical but it would impermissible to say they are totally different; this is the pastor-shaped teacher or the teacher-shaped pastor. True teaching is pastoral; true pastor instruct. Something along those lines.]

In Alan Hirsch’s paradigm, these two words represent two different things. He believes that we need to find people who will be the pastors (or shepherds) and we need to find other people to be the teachers. In their book The Permanent Revolution, Hirsch and Catchim seek to exegete Ephesians 4:11. They write,

“Paul clearly states that Jesus has ‘given’ (aorist, indicative) certain ‘charisms’ (what we will variously call ministries, callings, or vocations) to the church, distributing them among all the people as he (the giver) sees fit. These gifts are clearly and unequivocally stated as being in the fivefold expressions of apostle, prophet, evangelist, shepherd, and teacher; they have a Christological source and basis and approximate what can now be called the constitutional ministry of the church.”

To show that they’re serious about exegesis, Hirsch and Catchim make references to Greek verb tenses and Greek words, but they do not mention a basic rule of Greek grammar.

To be fair, in the back of the book in an endnote, they do make this concession:

“Many have argued that APEST actually constitutes a fourfold ministry because the conjunction between the shepherd and the teacher might indicate that this is the case. We are not convinced from the text itself or from experience. There are many teachers who are not pastors, and vice versa. But, in fact, for our purposes, it does not matter at all. Some readers may prefer to join the role of the shepherd to that of teacher, and that is fine with us.”

However, in the main text of the book, they make it clear that in their opinion, these must be seen as separate things. The main reason is that they feel that the role of Pastor-Teacher has eclipsed the roles of the “APEs” (the apostles, prophets, and evangelists). There is certainly a good point to make here. However, we do not simply rid ourselves of basic Greek grammar because we don’t like how we’ve seen humans misuse it.

APEST Belittles the Importance of Teaching

Hirsch and the Missional Movement that follows him have a zealous desire to rid the contemporary church of the destruction of being “institutional.” Throughout The Permanent Revolution, we read that Christianity needs to be a “movement” rather than an “institution.” I will get into the importance of institutions in my next post.

Suffice it to say here that the Missional Movement is so anti-institutional that they are willing to badmouth all institutions and to belittle the importance of the Pastor-Teacher. They see the Pastor-Teacher as a vestige of the old institutionalism of the modern church and not what Jesus had in mind for starting new churches.

All this flows from Hirsch’s desire to democratize leadership more widely with the apostles, prophets, and evangelists. While it may be an appropriate thing to point out afresh the need for the APEs, we should not be willing to throw away an essential Greek exegetical rule in order to do so, relying instead on Hirsch’s and Catchim’s personal “experience” that some pastors seem to be unable to teach.

They have become convinced that pastors and teachers need to be separated so that this single office within the “institutional church” will quit abusing their authority. While insisting that they don’t want to belittle the gifts of pastors and teachers, they do so again and again in their insistence that teaching must be pulled way back from its previous lofty place in the church.

The second exegetical problem with APEST is that it chooses to ignore the New Testament’s insistence that teaching is central to discipleship.

The New Testament has much more to say on how to structure the local church than what we find in Ephesians 4:11-12 (as important of a passage as this is).

If, as Alan Hirsch insists, APEST is the key to properly planting and maintaining local churches and the forgotten way by which the first churches went about planting and growing churches, then why is it limited to this one verse? When Paul sent letters to his protégés Timothy and Titus about church planting, why didn’t he focus in on APEST? It is glaringly absent from those pastoral epistles!

Rather than focusing on what Hirsch wants to focus on (the decentralizing of authority in church leadership), Paul talks to Timothy and Titus about the importance of “presbyteroi” (“elders”) and “episkopoi” (“bishops” or “overseers.”). These were the key leaders of the early church.

According to F. F. Bruce, the “pastors” of Ephesians 4:11

“may readily be identified with the ministers who are elsewhere called elders or bishops… A bishop, according to 1 Tim. 3:2, should be ‘an apt teacher.’ Teaching is an essential part of the pastoral ministry.” (Bruce, NICNT: The Epistles to the Colossians to Philemon and to the Ephesians).

Timothy was once Paul’s apostolic partner. Now he is a pastor in Ephesus (the church that Paul wrote about APEST). Paul writes him about how to go about his ministry. Alongside instruction on how Timothy should lead in praying for people and caring for widows, there are numerous times that Paul reiterates Timothy’s duty to teach.

Timothy is directed not to do what Hirsch would direct him to do (limit himself to being just a shepherd and to find apostles, prophets, evangelists, and teachers to carry the rest of the burden of the ministry). He is told to not only pursue a teaching ministry himself but also to entrust what he has learned to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.

Where is APEST in Paul’s instruction to Timothy as he pastors in Ephesus? Teaching is the focus.

Jesus did not say, “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and find among them apostles and prophets and evangelists and shepherds and teachers.”

No.

He said, “and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.”

Do not mess with the Pastor-Teacher role in the church. It is so very important.

(NEXT: Ecclesiological and Theological Issues with APEST)

The forces at work in Greg Boyd’s new book, The Crucifixion of the Warrior God, include passages about God in the Old Testament — warrior God images — and how those relate to the revelation of God in Christ of the cross — the supreme revelation of God’s nature — as well as how to read the Bible in light of that full revelation in Christ. Those are the issues.

Let this be emphasized: this is a book about hermeneutics. It is a book about the tension between one depiction of God in the Bible and another.

For many — including Greg Boyd — one issue flashing its sword of “don’t go past this point” is the doctrine of inspiration, or what Greg calls “God-breathed.” He believes in the God-breathedness of the whole Bible because Jesus did.

[Boyd:] The theological reading of Scripture simply takes the final “God-breathed” form of the canon as its starting point, and it allows the interpretation of every particular passage to be influenced by the canon as a whole. 6 [And] , it is the “God-breathed” nature of the text that renders it authoritative, not the relation a text may or may not have with “actual history.” 7

Any framing of these issues as Boyd does — which involves reading the OT in light of the revelation of God in the cross of Christ — creates doubt for some. Boyd is not afraid of doubt. The standard view of Scripture itself “may feel so obvious to readers that to question it is tantamount to questioning the divine authority of Scripture itself” (9).

To prevent this, I would like to help readers understand that biblical faith does not equate the strength of a person’s faith with their level of psychological certainty. It thus does not view doubt as the antithesis of faith. And it therefore does not assume that questioning the way God sometimes appears in Scripture is sinful. To the contrary, it views our willingness to wrestle with God as virtuous. 9

Which is what “Israel” means: the one who struggles with God. So he sees Jacob as his examplar for this study. Our Bible has laments and it has Job; it does not have 100% certain figures. This highlights how Boyd moves in this book:

A different way in which Scripture arguably illustrates the wrestling-with-God motif concerns the manner in which certain canonical traditions challenge and/or qualify earlier canonical traditions.19 For example, while an earlier tradition depicted Yahweh as enjoying animal sacrifices (e.g., Exod 29:25, 41; Lev 1:9, 13, 17), later authors make it clear that Yahweh placed no value on them (e.g., Ps 51:16-17; Isa 1:11-14; Mic 6:6-8; Amos 5:21-25; Hos 6:6; Matt 9:13; Heb 10:8). While I will later offer a crucicentric interpretation of this alteration that discloses how it bears witness to the cross (vol. 2, ch. 14), for the present we need only note that its inclusion within the canon illustrates that the biblical understanding of faith does not rule out calling long-established traditions—including biblical traditions—into question. 11-12

Why have others not taught what Boyd teaches here? (Which is not to say no one ever has said things like this.) His responses:

… as I noted in the introduction, there is in principle nothing new about the claim that Scripture should be interpreted through the lens of the crucified Christ.

As I also mentioned in the introduction, the only novel aspect of my approach is that I am applying this practice to violent portraits of God. 14

Here’s the central question:

The question for Christians is this: Will our view of God be completely determined by the self-sacrificial love revealed on the cross or will it also be influenced by portraits of God doing things like commanding capital punishment for homosexuals (Lev 20:13) and rebellious children (Deut 21:18-21; Exod 21:15, 17; Lev 20:9), commanding genocide (e.g., Deut 7:2,16), incinerating cities (Genesis 19), and striking a servant down for trying to prevent a sacred object from falling (2 Sam 6:6-7)? 19

So long as we worship gods who fight, Volf is arguing, wewill inevitably follow suit and feel justified fighting in their name. 21

While historians may dispute the extent to which particular violent campaigns were motivated by politics versus religion, it is nevertheless indisputable that Christianity’s tragic “criminal history” is only intelligible against the backdrop of the remarkable violence found in Scripture. 23

Sadly, the mythic identification of America with Israel and its enemies as Canaanites continues to exercise an influence on how contemporary leaders frame warfare. 28

What will he propose?

In our case, I shall argue, this means we must trust God’s character as it has been revealed in the crucified Christ, to the point that we have no choice but to call into question all portraits of God that conflict with it, even as we continue to faithfully affirm that these portraits are “God-breathed.” 34

If you teach college students who tell you what they think, you will hear about this problem. My first semester at North Park many years ago meant teaching Joshua and Judges, to name but two of the locations. It means confronting the God of war in the Old Testament, and students who are honest are troubled — at least troubled, and some are flat out scandalized — by what they read.

I have read a number of treatments in the last 20 years on this topic because of the queries of students, and I’m not sure I ever read one that satisfied: Peter Craigie, Dan Reid and Tremper Longman (one of the best still), Eric Siebert, Paul Copan.

Some today just want to junk the OT — and that is why we need Brent Strawn’s new book, The Old Testament is Dying. 

Pastors are putting their hands on the table on this one, and the one who has gone at it with might and mane is Greg Boyd in his new colossal book The Crucifixion of the Warrior God. It’s big, it’s earnest, and it may well chart the path for many. Here’s what he’s on about:

How are we to reconcile the God revealed in Christ, who chose to die for his enemies rather than to crush them, with the many OT portraits of Yahweh violently smiting his enemies? How are we to reconcile the God revealed in Christ, who made swearing off violence a precondition for being considered a “child of your Father in heaven” (Matt 5:45), with the portraits of Yahweh commanding his followers to slaughter every man, woman, child, and animal in certain regions of Canaan (e.g., Deut 7:2, 20:16-20)? How are we to reconcile the God revealed in Christ, who with his dying breath prayed for the forgiveness of his tormenters (Luke 23:34) and who taught his disciples to forgive “seven times seventy” (Matt 18:21-22), with the OT’s portraits of God threatening a curse on anyone who extended mercy toward enemies (Jer 48:10; cf. Deut 7:2,16; 13:8; 19:13)? And how can we possibly reconcile the God revealed in Christ, who expressed profound love for children, promising blessings on all who treated them well and pronouncing warnings for all who might harm them (Luke 18:15-17; Matt 10:42,18:6-14), with the OT portrait of God bringing judgment on his people by having parents cannibalize their own children (Lev 26:28-29; Jer 19:7,9; Lam 2:20; Ezek 5:9-10)?

Because Jesus affirmed the inspiration of the OT, I cannot agree with the many today who argue that we must simply reject such violent portraits of God, even though I cannot disagree with their claim that some of these portraits “strike us as sinister and evil.” Yet, because I believe that Jesus reveals an agape-centered, other-oriented, enemy-embracing God who opposes all violence, and because I have become convinced that the New Testament (NT) presents Jesus as the revelation that surpasses all others, I also can no longer agree with many of my fellow Evangelicals who insist that we must simply embrace these violent divine portraits as completely accurate revelations of God alongside the revelation we are given in Christ.

I am thus caught between the Scylla of Jesus’s affirmation of the OT as divinely inspired and the Charybdis of his nonviolent revelation of God. This is the conundrum that motivated me—that forced me—to write this two-volume work. With Jerome Creach and many others, I am convinced that resolving the conundrum created by the OT’s violent portraits of God constitutes “one of the greatest challenges the church faces today.”

Will Boyd avoid Marcionism? Will he avoid Christomonism? Will he sustain the value of the OT for the Christian today? Will he be a supersessionist? 

Greg Boyd is unafraid because he pursues truth; join me in reading this book. I promise there will places to disagree and agree, and overall he will force the issue onto us with urgency. (I’ll also be looking at Brent Strawn’s new book on the blog.)

When my son was in third or fourth grade he gave a year end report on Tasmanian Devils (image credit). These are fascinating carnivorous marsupials now found only on on the Australian Island state of Tasmania. But it wasn’t all fun – there is a dark side to the tale of the Tasmanian Devil. They are severely threatened by a transmissible facial cancer. Bites transfer cancer cells from animal to animal. The genetic diversity of Tasmanian Devil is so small that the cells are not fought off as foreign invaders, instead they take root and the cancer spreads between individuals as it spreads within individuals. You can read more here. Genetic diversity in a population is a good thing.

Chapter three of Adam and the Genome looks at genetic diversity within our species, Homo sapiens, and the implications of this diversity. Dennis Venema introduces the Tasmanian Devil as an example of the potential consequences of population bottlenecks. The low genetic diversity of the Tasmanian Devil is believed to have resulted from a severe population bottleneck within the last 10,000 years (the holocene).  One recent paper (here, Biology Letters. 2014;10(11):20140619. doi:10.1098/rsbl.2014.0619) estimates a bottleneck of between 473 and 714 individuals between 1700 and 5700 years ago. Conservation efforts to save the Tasmanian Devil involve genomic analysis to preserve as much genetic diversity as possible in a healthy population kept free of the devastating facial cancer.

The observed genetic diversity across a wide variety of animal species is one of the strongest arguments against recent extensive population bottlenecks. Noah’s Ark is ruled out – unless we also postulate super-speed supernatural evolution in the immediate aftermath. This is not supported by Scripture or by any other evidence found anywhere.

Human Populations. Modern human populations exhibit far more genetic diversity than the Tasmanian Devil. Dennis runs through several lines of evidence for population bottlenecks in human evolution. This evidence suggests that human populations were never less than ca. 10⁴. The first important point is that populations evolve, individuals don’t. The genetic composition of the population varies with time, and this variation can accumulate to result in significant changes. Whale evolution is an excellent example. If two populations of the same species are separated in some fashion, often, but not always, by a physical barrier, and evolve independently they can produce very different results and two (or more) new species. There is no one instant in time where the two populations are suddenly distinct … although eventually they are clearly different.

Mutation frequency. An allele is a variant form of a gene located at the same position, or genetic locus, on a chromosome. Color of hair, skin, eyes all result from slight differences in our genes. By comparing the DNA of thousands of individuals, now rather straightforward thanks to the Human Genome Project, it is possible to estimate historical population sizes. “Taking into account the human mutation rate, and the mathematical probability of new mutations spreading in a population or being lost, these methods estimate an ancestral population size for humans right around that 10,000 figure.” (p. 48)

Linkage disequilibrium. If you want to stay away from mutation rates (perhaps these were more frequent in the past), population size can be estimated by considering gene recombination. In the cell division that results in sperm and egg cell, “there is a process of mixing and matching of alleles to make new combinations.” (p. 49) The crossover process of mixing and matching results in genes close to each other remaining together more often than genes widely separated on the chromosome. Millions of pairs of loci (different gene locations) have been analyzed for all of our chromosomes. “And what is the final tally after crunching all that data and counting up ancestors? The results indicate that we come from an ancestral population of about 10,000 individuals – the same result we obtained when using allele diversity alone.” (p. 51)

A more details analysis of the genetic data including mutation and recombination provides an estimate of something like 0.7×10⁴.  Dennis notes, however, that this number may shift upward as the number of sequenced individuals increases.

Incomplete lineage sorting provides another line of evidence for population sizes. Because populations evolve, there is always some diversity in the original population as it separates. It is possible for variants present in the original population to be lost or retained in the separate populations. The total genome suggests (strongly) that humans are most closely related to chimpanzees, with gorillas and then orangutans more distant. Because of incomplete lineage splitting, however, there are some genes that human share with gorillas but not with chimpanzees (read Dennis’s chapter, or his blog posts,  for details). This isn’t a problem for the theory – rather it is a line of evidence for the timing of population separation and the size of those populations. The common ancestral population of humans, chimpanzees, and gorillas were on the order of 5×10⁴.

Dennis concludes:

It seems our smallest effective population size over the last 18 million years was when we were already human, at around the time some of our ancestors left Africa.

…

Put most simply, DNA evidence indicates that humans descend from a large population because we, as a species, are so genetically diverse in the present day that a large ancestral population is needed to transmit that diversity to us. To date, every genetic analysis estimating ancestral population sizes has agreed that we descend from a population of thousands, not a single ancestral couple. Even though many of these methods are independent of each other, all methods employed to date agree that the human lineage has not dropped below several thousand individuals for the last 3 million years or more – long before our lineage was even remotely close to what we would call “human.” (p. 55)

Perhaps there is a purpose to the method of evolutionary creation. Descent from two individuals is not “good.” Genetic diversity is an asset – as the Tasmanian Devil illustrates. There is more in this chapter of Adam and the Genome, but this is enough for today.

What does the genetic evidence suggest to you?

Have you ever considered to consequence of low genetic diversity?

How does the genetic evidence challenge or shape our understanding of God’s creation?

If you wish to contact me directly you may do so at rjs4mail[at]att.net.

If interested you can subscribe to a full text feed of my posts at Musings on Science and Theology.

By Jonathan Storment

A year ago, I picked up Andy Crouch, the executive editor of Christianity Today to spend a weekend with the leadership at Highland, unpacking some of the ideas in his recent book Strong and Weak. [His new book, the subject of this post, is called The Tech-Wise Family.]

My wife was busy, so I picked him up in our minivan with 4 kids, and since I am a big fan of Andy’s work, I had hoped to make a good first impression.

I had given the kids the “Let’s be on our best behavior” speech, and I had made certain promises of cake afterward if they obeyed well.

But if you are a parent of young children, you know that the old carrot and stick forms of motivation only can work for so long.

In the words of Jim Gaffigan, driving with small children is a bit like transferring serial killers across state lines in maximum security.

So I hooked up the car DVD players and had them watching some Disney movie to make them into little digital zombies while I had a pleasant drive from the airport with Andy.   About 5 minutes into the drive, Andy casually commented that his daughter loved G.K. Chesterton.

If you know me, you know that I’m a huge fan of Chesterton, and having a teenage daughter reading him sounds like my dream come true. So I asked him how in the world did he convince his teenage children to read so much and so broadly.  That is when he told me it was because he and his wife never let their kids watch television when they were young.

Ouch.

Being Intentional with Our Tech

Turns out, of all the people in the world that I could have picked up that day with a car full of digitized younglings, Andy is the worst.  He proceeded to tell me that he was currently writing a book called “The Tech-Wise Family” (that released today and is wonderful) about how Christians are called to a different kind of way to engage technology, one that requires and cultivates both wisdom and courage.

I have read this book, and my wife and I are seriously talking about ways to implement some of the radical ideas in our family’s life. Since this is such a needed and important book, I want to spend the next few weeks reviewing it and commending some of the core ideas to you.

Because c’mon, deep down, don’t we all know how much we need a better relationship with our technology?

Did you know that the average kid spends about 9-12 hours a day digesting some form of media?  That is everything from surfing the web to playing video games.  The large majority of that time is of course watching television. That is up quite a significant number from even five years ago.  The stark truth is that we live in a world that is enmeshed in all forms of media, almost constantly.

The median Netflix subscriber watches over 24 hours a week (around 4 hours a day!) and that is just the content on Netflix.  How do you feel after being unplugged from reality for that long? Recharged and Refreshed? How is your mind these days?   Do you find yourselves constantly bored, easily distracted, and irritated?

Me too.

Tyrannized by Technology

Dallas Willard says that the best way for a person to take inventory of how they are doing with God is by asking the question “Am I becoming more or less easily irritated?”

Despite all my Bible study, time in prayer, and church attendance, sadly I don’t like my answer to that question these days.

Maybe that is not enough to convince you to buy the book, let alone reconsider technology’s place in your life.  Maybe you need to have Andy come take a ride in your van. But the thing that convinced me that I needed to at least hear him out was when he told me that his teenage daughter was writing the foreword.

Here is what she said:

Tech-wise parenting isn’t simply intended to eliminate technology but to put better things in its place. Technology promises that it can provide wonder. Take a picture with the proper filters and you’ll be awestruck—it will look better than real life! But this promise is deceptive. My iPhone’s wonder generators, from Instagram to Temple Run, turn out to be only distractions from the things that really spark wonder. Thanks to tech-wise parenting, I’ve discovered a world out there that is better than anything technology can offer—as close as our front lawn.

Tech-wise parenting has added wonder to my life, though, and that’s enough. The real world is so fantastic that getting a taste of it makes even the most jaded kid want more. Not only have I always known that wonder is out there; I’ve been taught how to search for it. No multitude of glowing rectangles will ever be able to replace a single bumblebee. 

So back to Andy Crouch in the van that day. He told me that he and his wife realized this principle, and they wanted to form their children in certain kinds of ways.

Without an ounce of judgment, he went on to tell me that their goal was to keep their kids in the real world and the world of words before they were exposed to screen time.

They wanted them to see God’s good world as it really is, unmediated by photo-shop and filters, before they grew old enough to accept that a screen-based version of reality is anywhere near as good as the real thing.

Or in the words of Amy, Andy’s daughter:

“Wonder comes from opening your eyes wider, not bringing the screen closer.”

He is risen indeed!

Yes a scientist can believe in the resurrection. Science trades in motivated belief, there are reasons for the positions taken and the theories accepted. But theology also trades in motivated belief. In his book Theology in the Context of Science John Polkinghorne presents a short summary of his motivation for Christian belief. Dr. Polkinghorne was a very successful scientist, Professor of Mathematical Physics at Cambridge University, before he resigned to study for the priesthood. He knows what it means to think as a scientist and as a Christian. (The picture to the right is of our visit to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in 2001 – when visitors were scarce.)

One of the difficulties that face a scientist wanting to speak to his colleagues about the Christian faith is to get across the fact that theology also trades in motivated belief. Many scientists are both wistful and wary in their attitude towards religion. … Their wariness arises from the mistaken idea that religious faith demands that those who embrace it should be willing to believe simply on the basis of submission to some unquestionable authority … (p. 124)

Dr. Polkinghorne goes on to acknowledge that he too would have trouble with faith if it required uncritical fideism.

What I am always trying to do in conversation with my not-yet-believing friends is to show them that I have motivations for my religious beliefs, just as I have motivations for my scientific beliefs. … This task is one of great importance, since the difficulty of getting a hearing for Christian faith in contemporary society often seems to stem from the fact that many people have never given adequate adult consideration to the possibility of its being true, thinking that they ‘know’ already that there can be no truth in claims so apparently at odds with notions of everyday secular expectation. (p. 124-125).

There are some distinct differences between scientific investigation and religious faith – Religious belief is not amenable to experimental confirmation. In this sense it is more like the judgement of the quality of a painting, the beauty of a piece of music, or the character of a friend, all examples used by Dr. Polkinghorne. He also notes that “no form of human truth-seeking enquiry can attain absolute certainty about its conclusions.”

Neither science nor religion can entertain the hope of establishing logically coercive proof of the kind that only a fool could deny. No one can avoid some degree of intellectual precariousness, and there is a consequent need for a degree of cautious daring in the quest for truth. Experience and interpretation intertwine in an inescapable circularity. Even science cannot wholly escape this dilemma (theory interprets experiments; experiments confirm or disconfirm theories). (p. 126)

Dr. Polkinghorne gives two prongs to his discussion of the factors motivating his Christian faith. The first is natural theology, and the second is personal experience including that recorded in scripture. What follows is a sparse sketch of his reasoning found in this book and in many of his other writings.

Natural Theology. Dr. Polkinghorne has discussed several aspects of his view of natural theology in ethis book and in several of his other books. Among the factors that play a role in his thinking:

(1) The deep and wonderful order of the world suggestive of a divine Mind.

(2) The anthropogenic fine-tuning of the universe suggesting divine Purpose in cosmic history.

(3) The existence of value, both moral and aesthetic, as human participation in the Creator’s joy in creation.

Natural theology though, can only lead to an impersonal and deist view of God. It cannot distinguish between a multitude of different possibilities, and we should not expect it to.

Personal Experience. Motivated belief for a personal God is not found in such impersonal considerations as the fine-tuning of the universe or the beauty of the equations of physics. Belief in a personal God is motivated “by reference to particular events and persons.” There is a specificity of divine action and communication that makes personal language such as father, king, or lord appropriate. This brings us unavoidably to scripture – not as a divine dictation to be believed – but as a record of God’s relationship with his people.

These considerations underline how essential it is to have a right understanding of the nature of revelation. … Christian theology accords a normative status to the Bible precisely because it contains an irreplaceable account of God’s dealing with God’s chosen people, the Israelites, and the uniquely significant history of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. (p. 130)

The most significant piece of this revelation is found in the facts and interpretation surrounding the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. All of the NT writers are interpreting Jesus.

(1) All the writers believe that the story of Jesus continued because God raised him from the dead on the third day after the crucifixion.

(2) They were driven to speak of Jesus in an extraordinary manner.

(3) They give testimony to the transforming power that the risen Christ had brought into their lives.

The resurrection is central. This is the event that provides the hinge for Dr. Polkinghorne’s discussion of motivated belief. Without resurrection the Christian story loses its power, its coherence, and its motivation for transcendent belief.

The pivot on which the claim of unique and transcendent significance for Jesus must turn is clearly the resurrection. (p. 135)

Resurrection is permanent victory over mortality. (p. 136)

[Christ’s resurrection] occurred within history as the unique seed event from which a resurrected destiny for all people will come about beyond history. (p. 138)

The evidence for resurrection can be sketched in two directions. (1) The encounters with the risen Lord recorded in scripture and the impact this had on the early church. (2) The empty tomb. Here Dr. Polkinghorne points out that in controversies between Jews and Christians beginning in the first century, the debates do not deny the empty tomb but provide alternative explanations for the empty tomb. There is good reason to believe that Jesus was laid in a tomb and that the tomb was later found empty.

Detailed discussions of the evidence for resurrection are available in books such as NT Wright’s The Resurrection of the Son of God or Surprised by Hope.

There is coherence. The story of God’s work in the world through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus is coherent. This is not some magical story, but a story of incarnation, God becoming man for the good of man, for the salvation of man. The Christian myth fuses the power of symbolic story with historically true story “The Christian myth is claimed to be an enacted myth and there is evidence to motivate that claim.” (p. 142)

Given the victory of God in the resurrection, the story of crucifixion yields two profound insights.

The Christian God is the crucified God. In this profound insight, Christian faith meets the challenge of theodicy at the deep level it demands. (p. 142)

A second Christian insight … ‘he died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures’ (1 Cor. 15:3). (p. 142)

The elephant in the room for Dr. Polkinghorne is the breadth of religions practiced across human cultures over thousands of years. This is the question for which he has found no completely satisfactory answer, although there are hints of a way forward. Among other things, Dr. Polkinghorne is not a strict exclusivist. He believes that other peoples and traditions preserve accounts of genuine encounters with the sacred reality. It seems unlikely that God simply ignored the vast majority of people for the majority of human history. Yet he is, in another sense, an exclusivist. He concludes the chapter:

I do not doubt that I have many things I need to learn from my brothers and sisters in the other faiths, but when we meet it would be disingenuous of me to try to disguise my motivated belief in the unique saving significance of Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God. (p. 148)

We all have motivations for our beliefs, and factors that still cause concern and questions.

What motivates your belief in the resurrection?

What questions or concerns remain?

If you wish to contact me directly you may do so at rjs4mail[at]att.net.

If interested you can subscribe to a full text feed of my posts at Musings on Science and Theology.

In a recent article in The National Review, Rachel Lu predictably contends for more presence and activism by Christians, and the author does so in some version of a Niebuhrian or Kuyperian or Catholic or Methodist activism. Rachel Lu, in a thoroughly civil review unlike at least one other review, says this of Rod Dreher’s Benedict Option:

Rod Dreher’s The Benedict Option has been particularly influential, igniting controversy with the suggestion that “the culture war as we knew it is over” and that Christians should focus their energies on building families and smaller communities that are self-consciously countercultural. That book was complemented in interesting ways by Anthony Esolen’s apocalyptic Out of the Ashes and Archbishop Charles Chaput’s less extreme but still bracing Strangers in a Strange Land, which offers advice on “living the Catholic faith in a post-Christian world.”In concert, these books have thrown Christians into a debate about the wisdom of radical withdrawal as a means of coping with cultural loss. Should Christians stay engaged in political and cultural battles? Or is it better to accept our losses and focus on the higher things?

The Benedict Option was controversial in large part because religious conservatives are already very attracted to quietist modes of thought. Quietism, a posture of spiritual detachment, has appeared in various forms throughout Christian history and culture. It gains force when a culture is in decline or elites become overtly hostile to Christianity. Withdrawal holds appeal, not only because the world is hard but also because Christians believe themselves to be the inheritors of a rich tradition that promises something better. To Christian faithful, life is first and foremost a quest for eternal redemption. If the mainstream culture seems uncongenial to that journey, there will always be some who judge it best to give up the fight for the world and to focus instead on forging a less perilous path for themselves and their loved ones.

Throughout Christian history, many believers have withdrawn from the world for such reasons. But quietist movements are also a familiar part of American tradition; our nation’s history is peppered with self-segregated faith communities. Some denominations, like the Anabaptists and Hutterites, explicitly prescribe a more segregated lifestyle. Other communities identify with a larger denomination but collectively commit to a prescribed countercultural lifestyle. Americans are a people with a robust religious foundation, a strong commitment to freedom, and relatively shallow cultural roots. Experimenting with faith in community seems natural to us.

Quietism and alarmism are the two prevailing winds against Dreher’s Benedict Option. To compare Dreher’s proposals to the “Anabaptists” (which group, Rachel?) and “Hutterites” (that’s very specific) is mistaken in important ways because unlike the Hutterites, Dreher’s supposed quietism is not as withdrawn or as insular as them. Nor is he a Quaker.

Instead of using terms like quietism let’s look at what Dreher actually says about his Benedict Option. Noticeably, he uses the Rule of Benedict and adjusts it by generalizing some principles for ordinary folks to use as they seek to make their way in post-Christian America. Here are Dreher’s proposals:

We are adrift in liquid modernity, with no direction home.

The forces of dissolution from popular culture are too great for individuals or families to resist on their own. We need to embed ourselves in stable communities of faith.

But that’s not necessarily quietism unless it means total withdrawal, monastery like or Hutterite like. What Dreher means by strategic withdrawal is exiting the culture war, regrouping by becoming more Christian, and turning churches into agents of Christian sanctification. Many of us have said the culture war is either over or not worth fighting for. Even James Davison Hunter leaned in that direction in his widely read To Change the World. Hunter’s proposals struck many of us with anabaptist leanings as quite anabaptist as he urged a kind of “faithful presence,” the title of my colleague, David Fitch’s book: Faithful Presence.

So what are the principles one can use from the Rule of Benedict according to Dreher? It begins with the cultural problem Dreher believes is upon us, or close enough to be upon us, or lurking the shadows. His rhetoric on the problems we face strike many as alarmist but his common jeremiads against our day are not held him by him alone. If he trades in hyperbole it serves a purpose to call attention to genuine problems for Christian living in post-Christian America. Here’s the cultural problem:

The Rule is for monastics, obviously, but its teachings are plain enough to be adapted by lay Christians for their own use. It provides a guide to serious and sustained Christian living in a fashion that reorders us interiorly, bringing together what is scattered within our own hearts and orienting it to prayer.

Nor are we trying to save the West. We are only trying to build a Christian way of life that stands as an island of sanctity and stability amid the high tide of liquid modernity. We are not looking to create heaven on earth-; we are simply looking for a way to be strong in faith through a time of great testing.

When I heard of this book and when I opened it I expected to read about Ave Maria University in Ave Maria FL, a community Kris and I wandered around one day. Not a word. Nor does it seem to me Dreher sees Ave Maria as what he’s on about. From my reading he imagines Christians remaining where they are but forming tighter fellowship with other like-minded Christians in their community. Unlike the Essenes of Qumran they are like the Pharisees of Galilee. (I know many see the word “Pharisee” and think “negative.” Forgive me, but I don’t. The Pharisees remained where they were and lived in their community according to their own rule of life, the Torah interpreted.)

His principles, which are an example of (mostly) Catholic virtue ethics, are these:

First, Order. If a defining characteristic of the modern world is disorder, then the most fundamental act of resistance is to establish order. If we don’t have internal order, we will be controlled by our human passions and by the powerful outside forces who are in greater control of directing liquid modernity’s deep currents.

This means the discovery of the order, the logos, that God has written into the nature of Creation and seeking to live in harmony with it. … To order the world rightly as Christians requires regarding all things as pointing to Christ. … In other words, ordering one’s actions is really about training one’s heart to love and to desire the right things, the things that are real, without having to think about it. It is acquiring virtue as a habit.

Second, Prayer. The 1960s media theorist Marshall McLuhan, a practicing Christian, once said that everyone he knew who lost his faith began by ceasing to pray. 60

Third, Work. This is how we must approach our jobs: as opportunities to glorify God. More deeply, Benedictines view their work as an expression of love and stewardship of the community and as a way of reordering the natural world in harmon with God’s will. For the Christian, work has sacramental value. 61

Fourth, Asceticism. I he closure of certain professions to faithful orthodox Christians will be difficult to accept. … . And many of us are not prepared to suffer deprivation for our faith. 63 Asceticism is an antidote to the poison of self-centeredness common in our culture, which teaches us that satisfying our own desires is the key to the good life. 63

Fifth, Stability. The Bible shows us that God calls some people to pick up and move to achieve His purposes, Father Benedict acknowledged. “Still, in a culture like ours, where everyone is always on the move, the Benedictine calling to stay put no matter what can call forth new and important ways of serving God.” 66

Sixth, Community. The rootlessness of contemporary life has frayed community bonds. It is common now to find people who don’t know their neighbors and don’t really want to. To be part of a community is to share in its life. That inevitably makes demands on the individual that limits his freedom. 67 To be a Christian, and to be a vowed member of a religious community, incurs certain obligations to others. … Life in Christian community, whether in monastic or ordinary congregations, is about building the kind of fellowship that every one of us needs to complete our individual pilgrimage. 70

Seventh, Hospitality. According to the Rule, we must never turn away someone who needs our love. A church or other Benedict Option community must be open to the world, to share the bounty of God’s love with those who lack it. 72

Eighth, Balance. Balance, then—or put another way, prudence, mercy, and good judgment — is key to governing the life of a Christian community. 74

Here is virtue ethics: “By methodically and practically ordering our bodies, souls, and minds to a harmonious life centered on the Christ who is everywhere present and filling all things, the Benedictine way offers a spirituality accessible to anyone.” 75

And here is the big theme of this book as I read it: “The way of Saint Benedict is not an escape from the real world but a way to see that world and dwell in it as it truly is. Benedictine spirituality teaches us to bear with the world in love and to transform it as the Holy Spirit transforms us” (77).

To order, click through one of these links:

By Michelle Van Loon

http://www.MomentsAndDays.org and http://www.MichelleVanLoon.com

At one end of the spectrum, we have the language of the Benedict Option, which includes a call to nurture a comprehensive Christian worldview in the greenhouse of a shared, committed faith community.

At the other end of the spectrum, we have encouragement for believers to think for themselves a la the Bereans named in Acts 17:11. Musician Steve Taylor’s 1983 satire, I Want To Be A Clone, sends up the fear driving some forms of Christian indoctrination: “They told me that I’d fall away/unless I followed what they say.”

How can we hold both in balance? Is it possible to fully align with a counter-cultural faith community and to love God with our minds (and hearts, souls, and strength) by learning to think and discern for ourselves? In some ways, my experience as a home school parent in the 1990’s and early 2000’s gave me a taste of the Benedict Option. The Christian home school community of which I was a part understood itself to be a counter-cultural community designed to pass on both faith and the riches of historical, Western Christian culture to the next generation. For many home school families I knew back then, the feeling was that most of our churches – predominately conservative or fundamentalist non-denominational congregations – weren’t going far enough when it came to countering the culture. Our good desire to disciple and educate our children drove many of us in the home school world to function as an ad-hoc BenOp community. (Others would call us a subculture of Christian subculture.)

The experience taught me that though in a perfect world, intentional faith community should encourage members to love God with our minds by discerning for themselves, it tends to be either the peer-pressured boundaries of membership in a counter-cultural group or the experience of diluted community that happens when Christians think for themselves.

In a perfect world, indoctrination and immersion in a subculture should create freedom. It rarely works this way in real life. To belong to a counter-cultural community requires adherence to the community’s written and unwritten rules. To think or act independently puts you outside the boundary markers of that community. The more counter-cultural your community is, the fewer bridges there tend to be to the outside world for those who no longer wish to be a part. Leaving may cost you friends, family, and even your faith.

On the other hand, independence carries other risks to faith. A recent piece posted by Benedict Option guru Rod Dreher quotes at length an individual named Elijah who penned his goodbye to Evangelicalism. Elijah challenged Evangelicalism’s “choose your own adventure” buffet line approach to teaching:

I was amazed at the disparate Christian writers, speakers, and bloggers that were liked, shared, and affirmed (and also mocked) on various social media sites by Christians of my acquaintance. Many of these “influencers” have little or no theological education, they haven’t done any Biblical scholarship, but they have wide audiences because they are perceived as authentic or “write from the heart”. This applies equally to progressive and conservative influencers, I hasten to add. Some of them are very well-expressed, but many of the ideas they share are simply at odds with a Christian worldview.

When I asked a few friends about some of the more egregious statements of these influencers that they “liked”, many said “Well, I don’t agree with that opinion. I just take what I need and leave the rest behind.” Several said to me they feel the same way about sermons in church that they don’t agree with: just leave that bit behind. (Ironically, one of the “I take what I need” guys regularly complains about “church hoppers”.)

The bulk of Elijah’s words focused on the impoverished Christian worldview that emerges from Evangelicalism’s terrible habit of slapping a patchwork of Bible verses on felt needs. His words echo the sentiments of many other people who’ve said adios to Evangelicalism. Whether you’re “Done” or “Still Hanging In There”, you’ll probably be able to affirm some of his concerns. I understood loud and clear what he was saying about the lack of discernment he kept running into among his Evangelical friends. I share his concern about the way many Christians mix and match teaching based on what tickles their ears and soothes their souls.

However, with my experience in a peer-pressure shaped home school community back in the day, I do want to add a small defense of something of the “I take what I need and leave the rest behind” mindset. To love God with our minds means that we must take what we need and leave the rest behind when we’re presented with the words of any book or sermon. In fact, I’d suggest that doing so is a hallmark of spiritual maturity.

That said, I’m still not quite sure how to balance thinking for myself with pursuing whole-hearted membership in counter-cultural, kingdom community. Jesus Creed readers, what are your thoughts? Is it possible to do both simultaneously?