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Apologia Report 15:33 (1,038)
September 17, 2010
Subject: Philip Pullman severs Jesus from Christ
In this issue:
APOLOGETICS - Greg Koukl's proven tactics for one-on-one apologetics
CHRISTOLOGY - Philip Pullman takes his turn at attempting to separate Jesus from Christ
FOSTER, RICHARD - a critical profile by the UK's Reachout Trust
YOGA - a byproduct of "the world's greatest 'have your rice cake and eat it' religion"?
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APOLOGETICS
Tactics: A Game Plan for Discussing Your Christian Convictions, by Gregory Koukl [1] -- Gregory E. Ganssle begins his review by emphasizing that "the evangelistic task of apologetics requires a good deal of knowledge, but its application also begins with listening and diagnosing the specific challenges in an individual life. [Tactics] presents listening and diagnostic skills that enable even the new believer to engage her friends in the defense of the gospel with confidence and gentleness. ... [Koukl] introduces the tactics, not to help us manipulate others or to win arguments, but to help us enter into more fruitful dialogue with those around us.
"The book is divided into two parts. The first part ('The Game Plan') introduces the notion of using tactics and then develops The Columbo Tactic [named after the 1970s television detective played by Peter Falk]. The second part ('Finding the Flaws') helps the reader diagnose common conceptual mistakes in the way people challenge Christian claims or articulate alternative beliefs. ...
"The Columbo Tactic involves the strategic use of questions. The right question can open up a conversation, clarify an issue and help both partners in a conversation think more clearly about their views.
...
"Part 2 helps the reader recognize common fallacies that can be engaged by asking questions. ...
"The use of questions as described in the second part of the book has two roles. As in the first section, here the believer is encouraged to use questions to clarify the discussion. It is important to be sure what claim is actually being made in a discussion. Second, the continued use of questions can help the conversation partner begin to see the inadequacy of her position."
Tactics "belongs as a required text in any introductory course on apologetics. I would like to see this book required at every evangelical seminary. It is a great way to equip future pastors and church leaders with the skills to engage seekers at any point in their spiritual journeys." Philosophia Christi, 12:1 - 2010, pp242-244.
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CHRISTOLOGY
The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, by Philip Pullman [2] -- Joseph Bottum initially uses his review to point out that Pullman is the author of the children's book series His Dark Materials [3], a trilogy which champions sex as the chief means of freeing teenagers from "the great, power-hungry, fascistical force" of organized religion, which seeks "to strip the joy and wondrous anarchic energy from sex. ...
"Pullman set himself to become the anti-C.S. Lewis, to undo Christianity for the young, and to refute what he called, in Lewis' Narnia books [4], 'one of the most vile movements in the whole of children's literature.'"
Pullman's latest work targets adults, and begins: "This is the story of Jesus and his brother Christ, of how they were born, of how they lived and of how one of them died. ...
"In Pullman's novelistic version, a naive young woman named Mary delivers two boys. The first of the twins turns out to be Jesus, a wise preacher of moral truths who comes to realize the lack of God from those truths only on his way to crucifixion. The other twin is Christ, a darker, smarter boy who grows up to become the founder of the Church based on his brother and who negotiates power with the Romans and the priests. He is also his brother's Judas - Christ betraying Jesus to get him out of the way so Christ can go on to establish Christianity."
Bottum notes the reflection of one critic who responds: "You may wonder if Pullman would be so confident [in his hostility] had he written a subversive fantasy about the Prophet Mohammed."
Bottum also observes that it's problematic to separate Jesus from Christ. "The problem is that we tend not so much to discover the historical Jesus as to create a blank spot on which to project our spiritual fantasies, as Albert Schweitzer recognized when he surveyed the nineteenth century's efforts to get back to the 'real Jesus' in his famous 1906 book The Quest for the Historical Jesus [5]. The historical Jesus turns out to be whatever the questing historian wants to find: a moral teacher or revolutionary prophet or kind preacher of love (see, for example, [Jesus Seminar scholar] Marcus Borg's picture of Jesus as a 1960s anti-establishment activist)." First Things, Aug/Sep '10, pp61-62.
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FOSTER, RICHARD
The UK-based Reachout Trust just published a significant summary of the problems that conservative Christians typically identify with Richard Foster's writings and with Renovare <renovare.info>, the movement he founded in 1988 (now active in Europe, Asia, and the Americas). The thrust of this profile is seen in its observation that Foster's best-known book, The Celebration of Discipline [6], "could meaningfully be entitled 'Celebration of Mystics' or "Celebration of Ecumenism.'" Reachout Quarterly, No. 101 - 2010, pp7-11. <www.tinyurl.com/23m5zl7>
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YOGA
The Subtle Body: The Story of Yoga in America, by Stefanie Syman [7] -- Pankaj Mishra's review portrays The Subtle Body as an objectively critical overview offering significant insights. Mishra notes that many "minor cultists" introduced yoga to the West and "were later outed as lecherous frauds and crooks." By the 1960s, yoga gained increasing popularity in America through the self-help movement, ultimately becoming (in Syman's words) "one of the first and most successful products of globalization."
Syman berates her fellow Americans for ignoring "the grand metaphysics of yoga and turning it into yet another prop for their isolated, hypercompetitive egos. 'The Self, that God spark in everyone,' she complains, has been demoted to the lowercase 'self,' forcing yoga to 'surrender its claim to transcendence.'
"The image of incorrigibly individualist and materialist Americans rummaging through ancient cultures in search of eternal youth, beauty and self-gratification has long provoked scorn. 'Yoga in Mayfair or Fifth Avenue,' Carl Jung sternly declared, 'is a spiritual fake.' But such a fetish of the 'authentic' assumes that people in the country of yoga's origin have upheld a timeless and unchanging yoga rather than practicing what Wendy Doniger, the distinguished historian of Hinduism, calls the world's greatest 'have your rice cake and eat it' religion." New York Times Book Review, Jul 15 '10, pp12-13. <www.tinyurl.com/29hbkkv>
For more yoga-related articles add the following codes to the tinyurl link sufix as shown above: 25obzhy, 29kywew, and 3ypp3al.
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SOURCES: Monographs
1 - Tactics: A Game Plan for Discussing Your Christian Convictions, by Gregory Koukl (Zondervan, 2009, paperback, 208 pages) <www.tinyurl.com/26994fy>
2 - The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, by Philip Pullman (Canongate, 2010, hardcover, 256 pages) <www.tinyurl.com/y9zzxsr>
3 - His Dark Materials Trilogy (The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, The Amber Spyglass), by Philip Pullman (Laurel Leaf, 2003, paperback boxed set) <www.tinyurl.com/2cynwtb>
4 - The Chronicles of Narnia Boxed Set, by C. S. Lewis (HarperCollins, 1994, paperback) <www.tinyurl.com/2dadxjl>
5 - The Quest for the Historical Jesus, by Albert Schweitzer (lulu.com, 2010, paperback, 424 pages) <www.tinyurl.com/2d49nqh>
6 - The Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth, by Richard Foster (HarperSanFrancisco. 3rd ed., 1988, hardcover, 228 pages) <www.tinyurl.com/2d97uu3>
7 - The Subtle Body: The Story of Yoga in America, by Stefanie Syman (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010, hardcover, 400 pages)
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