Another Occasion to Be Glad to Be Protestant, Alas

The non-story of the week in religion was the Vatican’s announcement that anyone involved in the ordination of a woman to the priesthood would be excommunicated.

It’s a non-story because anyone who has paid the slightest attention to the last, oh, two or three decades of Roman Catholic leadership would have been able to predict with confidence approaching certainty that Joseph Ratzinger, once made pope, was not the guy to reverse the policy against female clergy.

So the fact that he felt it necessary to stamp out a little fire or two in the United States—the country in which there is the largest number of supporters of the ordination of women—is no surprise and hardly worth all the news attention it received.

Why comment on it here? Because Tony Blair has become a Roman Catholic, and so has ethicist Francis Beckwith, and so (further back) has philosopher and Buddhologist Paul Griffiths–all eminently intelligent, modern, progressive, and admirable people.

And here’s what I don’t get: not the resistance to female clergy, which I understand (although I disagree with it pretty soundly—and at length).

Scot McKnight and His Gang on “Making the Best of It”

Überblogger Scot McKnight, Professor of New Testament at North Park in Chicago and an indefatigable and highly esteemed writer, editor, and blogger, has launched a friendly and critical look at your servant’s new book, Making the Best of It: Following Christ in the Real World (Oxford University Press). McKnight has a (deservedly) huge following, and any readers of this blog who would like to get in on the beginning of a wide-ranging and intelligent discussion on Scot’s should go here to find it.

Many thanks, Brother McKnight, for taking time for my work. And many thanks also to blogger Michael Kruse, one of the earliest bloggers to notice the book—and to defend it, I see, on Scot’s blog, too!

Be Loved to Love

I’ve had occasion recently to reflect again upon the Apostle Paul’s great exposition of love in I Corinthians 13:

Love is patient;
love is kind;
love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.
It does not insist on its own way;
it is not irritable or resentful;
it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth.
It bears all things,
believes all things,
hopes all things,
endures all things.
Love never ends.

What is impressing me of late is this thought: Those of us who have experienced a lack of love tend then to act in just the way Paul tells us love does not act.

If we have not been loved, or have not let the love of others truly reach us and fill us and shape us and protect us and motivate us, then how do we tend to act?

Impatiently.
Unkindly.
Enviously, boastfully, arrogantly, and rudely.
We insist on our own way;
we are constantly irritable and resentful.
We rejoice in the wrong things—such as vengeance, cutting corners, getting ahead at all costs, and manipulating others—and we lie easily and frequently to exaggerate both our injuries and our successes, even as we blame others for our own misdeeds or failures.
We put up with nothing we don’t like.
We believe what we prefer to believe.
Deep down, we are hopeless that things will get much better.
We easily collapse into self-pity or rage or both.
And we end soon and badly.

Some of us are hungrier for love than we need to be: we’re not taking in what’s right there for us. Empty and sad and angry, then, we have nothing good to pass on.

God help us to love, yes, and in particular to recognize and receive the love he is trying to give us: through family members, through friends, through colleagues and neighbours, through the good circumstances and pleasures of our lives, through the delights of nature and of art, through the promises and encouragements of the Bible, through the companionship of fellow spiritual travelers, and through immediate communion with him in prayer.

For if we continue to feel unloved, we will not love.

When People Do Bad Things to Us . . .

A friend and former student wrote recently of having her heart broken by a man who had told her he loved her and wanted to make a life with her.

“Why would God allow me to be hurt like this?” she understandably wondered. “I’m not a kid, not foolish in relationships, said and did all the things I thought I was supposed to say and do, and out of the blue he dumps me. How can such a thing be part of God’s good plan?”

So here’s some of what I replied, which some of you will recognize is the perspective I outline in my book on the problem of evil (Can God Be Trusted?) and in my book on our calling in the world (Making the Best of It):

I believe that God does indeed “work all things together for good” (Rom. 8:28). But that oft-quoted Scripture needs to be understood carefully.

At Last: An “Evangelical Manifesto” That Doesn’t Punch Someone in the Face

A few correspondents have asked me what I think of the new “Evangelical Manifesto,” recently released by a group of evangelical leaders (including—full disclosure—some friends of mine).

Another friend, Prof. Alan Jacobs of Wheaton College, grumps in the Wall Street Journal about how boringly moderate it is, among other sins. But let’s just see if that’s such a bad thing.

The nice people at Merriam-Webster tell us that “manifesto” means “a public declaration of intentions, motives, or views: a public statement of policy or opinion.” Jacobs wants the writing to be “punchy” and the document to be “short,” although he recalls that the most famous manifesto ever, the communist one, amounts to a small book.

Still, this one is twenty pages, and when I read it, I wondered why anyone would care what I thought about it. It strikes me as completely sensible, moderate, intelligent, a bit wordy here and there, and kinda dull.

And isn’t that a pleasant change!

Richard Dawkins at UBC: Part Three, Dawkins as Mirror

In this last post, I’d like to reflect on how Richard Dawkins unwittingly and certainly unwillingly helps the Christian Church, as well as the other theists he so energetically opposes.

In particular, he helps us by showing us how some of us sound to people such as he, as well as to others who also do not share our premises. I was struck as Dawkins spoke at how similar was his style to that of many Christian apologists and preachers I have encountered/endured through the years.

For instance, he presented major issues in a simplistic fashion only to dispatch them with breathtaking swiftness. Here’s one example.

Dawkins averred that theism is patently contradictory. A God who can see the future with certainty (because of omniscience) thus is powerless to do anything other than what he foresees himself doing, thus compromising his omnipotence. Voilà! Theism is incoherent!

Richard Dawkins at UBC: Part Two, Dawkins as Ethicist

Richard Dawkins has traveled the world, sowing his particular gospel of atheism, science, rational argument, and the courage to live in the light of The Facts.

He has appeared before countless audiences, participated in dozens of debates, and handled hundreds of questioners. But he seemed surprised, even nonplussed, by the line of questioning he received from several members of the UBC audience who patiently lined up to press him on . . . vegetarianism.

By the time Dawkins encountered the third such questioner, he was moved to wonder aloud whether he was encountering some sort of “lobby.” No, just the West Coast.

Yet this particular issue presented an intriguing window into Dawkins that had not been provided in his presentation. For his presentation was mostly offensive, in the sense of attacking positions he disliked, rather than defensive, in the sense of offering cogent reasons for adopting his own life philosophy. (His presentation was also at times astonishingly offensive in the other sense, but more about that in my third post.)

Being pressed about vegetarianism, then, we got to see Richard Dawkins construct and defend some ethics. And what a ramshackle thing he produced!