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Apologia Report 13:9
March 6, 2008
Subject: Islam and the progress of Sharia law in the West
In this issue:
ABORTION - conservative book given unbiased review in Time magazine
BIBLICAL AUTHORITY - is Peter Enns' new look at "an old problem" tainted by postmodernism?
ISLAM - the invasion of Sharia law gains momentum in Europe
KELLER, TIM - Newsweek sympathetically profiles Reason for God author
NEW RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS - Are fringe belief systems America's most successful exports?
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ABORTION
"In their new book, Embryo: A Defense of Human Life [1], Princeton's Robert George [a member of the President's Council on Bioethics] and the University of South Carolina's Christopher Tollefsen argue for treating the embryo as inviolable. Their defense, less theological than biological, is that the embryo is a whole, living member of the human species in its earliest stage of development, not just a potential one or a part of one - and if destroyed, that particular individual has perished. From that conviction arise their rules for both research and reproduction: Don't create more embryos than you will implant. No freezing, no choosing, no storing for future use and no experimenting on them." This brief review is appropriately titled: "Wanted: Someone to Play God" by Nancy Gibbs. Time, Feb 21 '08, n.p. <http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1715279,00.html>
Publishers Weekly (Jan 15 '08, n.p.) adds that "Against those who argue that the embryo lacks consciousness and thus is not fully human, the authors reject mind-body dualism and argue that the embryo has the capacity to develop into a rational being. Yet while these questions continue to provoke controversy in relation to abortion as well as embryo research, this book provides no compelling new evidence about the moral status of the embryo to persuade readers who do not already agree with them."
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BIBLICAL AUTHORITY
Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament, by Peter Enns [2] -- reviewer Ken Esau asks: "Does divine inspiration really mean that the Bible should have little in common with the literature of its neighbouring societies? Enns rejects such a presupposition and suggests that there are literary connections between the Old Testament and ancient literary documents. [Enns] seems compelled to conclude that the texts situated at the beginning of Genesis are myth in the best sense of the word - 'an ancient, premodern, prescientific way of addressing questions of ultimate origins and meaning in the form of stories.' ...
"The second section of the book explores the case study of theological and factual diversity - or the integrity of the Old Testament. Once again, evangelicals traditionally assumed that divine authorship would rule out this kind of diversity and contradiction, but Enns boldly asserts that it is 'inherent to the text' and that 'God himself is pleased to allow this tension to stand.' ...
"In the third and final section, Enns explores the way the New Testament writers have interpreted Old Testament texts. He acknowledges that the apostolic writers were commenting on what the Old Testament texts meant without any effort to locate their original intention or context, and then Enns makes the surprising assertion that these writers' basic hermeneutical attitude should be followed by the church today. ...
"Evangelicalism has been trying to find ways of expressing how the Bible is fully trustworthy and authoritative for belief and ethics. Enns is suggesting a significant paradigm shift - one more warm toward some elements of postmodernity...."
Esau concludes by asking: "[A]s an orthodox Christology has always affirmed Jesus's full humanity as having a limit (viz., without sin), what does it mean to affirm the Bible's full humanity but yet having a limit? This question will continue to plague Enns's thesis." Crux, 43:1 - 2007, pp46-48.
POSTSCRIPT: In her report "Westminster Theological Suspension" announcing the penalty that Enns is paying for his current views, Sarah Pulliam summarizes in part that "Enns attempts to harmonize issues raised by historical-critical Bible scholarship with the doctrine of divine inspiration. Enns employs an incarnational analogy, arguing that Scripture should be viewed as both human and divine, similar to Jesus Christ." Christianity Today, Jun '08, p17-18.
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ISLAM
"England's Crisis Is Ours Too" by David Warren -- provides insight on the difficulty of getting unbiased reports on the progress of Sharia law and its acceptance in the West. For example, Warren notes that "a Shariah court in the London district of Woolwich was allowed recently - apparently with the co-operation of police - to pass judgment on unnamed Somali youths in a knifing incident." Ottawa Citizen, Feb 10 '08, n.p. <http://tinyurl.com/3638tq>
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KELLER, TIM
"The Smart Shepherd: A New York pastor who says he thinks too much wants to bring his Christian message to the world" by Lisa Miller -- where on a corner "near Central Park a churchlike building is filled to the rafters with Christian worshipers. ... There's no rock band, no drop-down theater-size video screen, no 100-member gospel choir - just a few chamber musicians and a couple of prayer leaders to help the congregation along in its hymns. The crowd at Redeemer Presbyterian is overwhelmingly young, single, professional....
"Rev. Tim Keller, a Manhattan institution, one of those open urban secrets.... He rarely speaks to the press.
"His reticence, though, is about to belong to the past. With the publication this week of his first book, The Reason for God [3], Keller, who is 57, is in the midst of a dramatic change in direction. Once highly protective of his community's grass-roots approach to growth - tell a friend, bring a friend - Keller is now pitching himself as a C. S. Lewis for the 21st century, a high-profile Christian apologist who can make orthodox belief not just palatable but necessary. ...
"Keller started Redeemer 17 years ago in a small rented church on Manhattan's Upper East Side. A recent sermon is taken from the Book of Job, and its message is unrelentingly grim. ... 'Basically,' he says later, 'the idea is, you can't manage your suffering and you shouldn't manage your suffering, and that's one of the values of it.' Keller is a pastor for people who like their Christianity straight up. ...
"He is helping other pastors use his 'formula,' if you can call it that - orthodox Christianity and challenging preaching, with an emphasis on social justice and community service - in cities like Amsterdam, Sao Paolo [sic], Berlin and Paris. Keller believes that young urban people too often face an unsatisfactory choice: the dispassionate formality of the established churches or the fire and brimstone of the conservative evangelicals.
"Like so many New Yorkers, Keller is a misfit. He's a megachurch pastor who doesn't like megachurches. He's an orthodox Christian who believes in evolution. He emulates the Puritan preacher Jonathan Edwards and loves a good restaurant. He's an evangelist who relishes the power of doubt." Newsweek, Feb 18 '08, p52. <http://www.newsweek.com/id/109609>
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NEW RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS
On occasions all we can pass on to Apologia Report readers is just the hint of something more significant. In his review of Peter Clarke's New Religions in Global Perspective: A Study of Religious Change in the Modern World [4], Eugene V. Gallagher offers only the faintest description of something that many of our readers will find interesting when he writes that "Clarke debunks the notion that North America has been the primary supplier of NRMs to the world and stresses that 'Oriental religions have begun to act as catalysts of change everywhere' and that the New Age movement has had a similarly broad impact." From the surprising to the confirming, that is all Gallagher bothers to tell his readers about these topics. Nova Religio, 11:3 - 2008, pp133-135.
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Sources, Monographs:
1 - Embryo: A Defense of Human Life, by Robert George and Christopher Tollefsen (Doubleday, 2008, hardcover, 256 pages) <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0385522827/apologiareport>
2 - Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament, by Peter Enns (Baker, 2005, paperback, 208 pages) <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0801027306/apologiareport>
3 - The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism, byæTimothy Keller (Dutton, 2008, hardcover, 320 pages) <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0525950494/apologiareport>
4 - New Religions in Global Perspective: A Study of Religious Change in the Modern World, by Peter Clarke (Routledge, 2006, paperback, 385 pages) <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0415257484/apologiareport>
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