10AR15-44

Apologia Report 15:44 (1,049)

December 16, 2010

Subject: The Heresy of Orthodoxy

In this issue:

CHURCH HISTORY - the conflict between diversity and orthodoxy

HIGHER EDUCATION - academics naively view college as a spiritually "safe haven" for young students

POPULAR CULTURE - narcissism: what you get when "mass media replaces the church and the family as the main source of culture and values"

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CHURCH HISTORY

The Heresy of Orthodoxy: How Contemporary Culture's Fascination With Diversity Has Reshaped Our Understanding of Early Christianity, by Andreas J. Köstenberger and Michael J. Kruger [1] -- booknews.com explains: "New Testament scholars Köstenberger (Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary) and Kruger (Reformed Theological Seminary, North Carolina) challenge the pluralist and postmodernist purveyors of religious diversity who claim that orthodoxy was grafted onto Christianity rather than an original element of it. They argue that the teachings of Jesus and the first Christians brought a unified message that cannot be bent to convenience. Their topics are pluralism and the origins of the New Testament; the development of the New Testament canon; and manuscripts, scribes, and textual transmission."

Amazon.com adds: "Beginning with Walter Bauer in 1934, the denial of clear orthodoxy in early Christianity has shaped and largely defined modern New Testament criticism, recently given new life through the work of spokesmen like Bart Ehrman. Spreading from academia into mainstream media, the suggestion that diversity of doctrine in the early church led to many competing orthodoxies is indicative of today's postmodern relativism. Authors Köstenberger and Kruger engage Ehrman and others in this polemic against a dogged adherence to popular ideals of diversity."

"In the beginning was Diversity. And the Diversity was with God, and the Diversity was God. Without Diversity was nothing made that was made. And it came to pass that nasty old 'orthodox' people narrowed down diversity and finally squeezed it out, dismissing it as heresy. But in the fullness of time [i.e., the present], Diversity rose up and smote orthodoxy hip and thigh. Now, praise be, the only heresy is orthodoxy. As widely and as unthinkingly accepted as this reconstruction is, it is historical nonsense: the emperor has no clothes. I am grateful to Andreas Köstenberger and Michael Kruger for patiently, carefully, and politely exposing this shameful nakedness for what it is." Thus readeth D.A. Carson's endorsement, also on Amazon. If you liked it, you'll appreciate what several other distinguished authorities say about this book on the same web page.

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HIGHER EDUCATION

"Spirituality Finds a Home at College" by Rick Rojas -- begins: "Sandwiched between a time of squirming under parental control and the tethers of a career, college often means freedom for young people to begin a search for who they are and what they believe. ...

"'It kind of opens the student's mind,' Alexander Astin [founding director of the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) at UCLA], one of the study's authors, said of the college experience. He called it a period 'stimulated by exposure to new people and new ideas.'

"Astin said young people often enter college knowing only what they were brought up to believe. They may never have been faced with opposing views. College is a safe haven in which they can explore their spirituality and challenge it."

The College Student Beliefs and Values survey, "launched in 2003, was based on an initial survey of 112,000 American college freshmen, then a follow-up survey of more than 14,000 of the students after they completed their junior year at scores of colleges and universities nationwide. The researchers published their findings in a book released last month, Cultivating the Spirit: How College Can Enhance Students' Inner Lives. [2] ...

"The study found that many students struggled with their religious beliefs and became less certain of them during their college years.

"It also found that many young people eschewed the rituals of organized religion but embraced what the researchers defined as the cornerstones of spirituality: asking the big, existential questions; working to improve one's community; and showing empathy toward other people. ...

"The researchers also found that students who were more spiritual typically performed better academically, had stronger leadership skills, were more amiable and were generally more satisfied with college. ...

"College courses on religious subjects help teach students how to read sacred texts with an intellectually curious eye."

However Rev. Jim Burklo, associate dean of the Office of Religious Life at USC, said that experience can be a "shattering blow to the doctrine under which they grew up and becomes a spiritual crisis. It's very awkward for them, confusing and frightening. They're questioning their own faith and salvation."

"Katelyn Endow, a senior at USC, said she has seen herself transform into a more spiritual and more religiously devout person in the time she's been in college.

"'I grew up in a Christian family, but I didn't take my faith too seriously,' said Endow, 21, of Redwood City, near San Francisco. She joined a Christian student group at USC, where she made friends who pushed her to attend Bible studies and to examine her beliefs more deeply. ...

"Sylvia Charles, a medical student at USC, said she had a spiritual awakening through yoga. That came when she was a Duke University junior and studying in Spain. Studying abroad is another opportunity for spirituality to blossom, researchers found." Los Angeles Times, Nov 20 '10, pAA3 <www.tinyurl.com/2g7avsd>

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POPULAR CULTURE

"Narcissism at the Ballot Box" (adapted from Jennifer Senior in New York <www.tinyurl.com/38zhevg>) -- observes that "we frequently suspend what we know about politics - most crucially, how difficult change is - and choose to believe that this time ... the choice we make will have a magical effect. ...

"We are thinking in fanciful, binary choices. ...

"Politicians have always recognized and exploited these fantasies. ...

"In children, and in toddlers and adolescents in particular, acts of rebellion are the result of two conflicting forces: a sense that they are in total control, and a sense that they aren't. ...

"When children act this way, we say they're simply acting like children. But when adults behave with this same paradoxical mixture of self-importance and insecurity, we call it something else: narcissism. ...

"Similarly, one could argue that, if the conditions are right, an entire culture can plunge into narcissistic behavior. In fact, we've been here before. In The Culture of Narcissism [3] historian Christopher Lasch suggested that seventies rebellion culture was at once the result of too many constraints and too few." Then, "the mass media was [and now, interactive media is? - RP] replacing the church and the family as the main source of culture and values....

"This still very much describes people's experience of life today. Our world combines extreme complexity with dehumanizing, tumbling-down institutions and fast-dissolving social mores. ...

"The difference is scale. The boomers, it turns out, were just the beginning of the Me Generation. At least, this is the argument that psychologists Jean M. Twenge and W. Keith Campbell make in The Narcissism Epidemic [4]. Based on dozens of surveys, the authors found that college students have been scoring higher and higher on the Narcissism Personality Inventory since its debut in 1979." The Week, Nov 19 '10, p52-52.

Worth noting: Narcissistic personality disorder was one of five personality disorders dropped from the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, scheduled for release in 2013 <www.tinyurl.com/2eyrset>. Humorists are having a field day.

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SOURCES: Monographs

1 - The Heresy of Orthodoxy: How Contemporary Culture's Fascination With Diversity Has Reshaped Our Understanding of Early Christianity, by Andreas J. Köstenberger and Michael J. Kruger (Crossway, 2010, paperback, 256 pages) <www.tinyurl.com/26r2yjz>

2 - Cultivating the Spirit: How College Can Enhance Students' Inner Lives, by Alexander W. Astin, Helen S. Astin, and Jennifer A. Lindholm (Jossey-Bass, 2010, hardcover, 240 pages) <www.tinyurl.com/32okp6r>

3 - The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations, by Christopher Lasch (W. W. Norton, 1991, paperback, 304 pages) <www.tinyurl.com/2473os7>

4 - The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement, by Jean M. Twenge and W. Keith Campbell (Free Prs, 2010, paperback, 368 pages) <www.tinyurl.com/34oqzo8>

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