14AR19-36

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Apologia Report 19:36 (1,219)

October 23, 2014

Subject: Former western Islamic State leader tells his story

In this issue:

ISLAM - Jihadist groups as the new cults of the 21st century

THE LOCAL CHURCH/LIVING STREAM MINISTRY - how Witness Lee failed to realize that a little knowledge of biblical Greek can be dangerous

PARENTING - Pew study finds "sharp ideological differences and some common ground"

PASCAL, BLAISE - an important 15th-century apologist to know

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ISLAM

"Inside the Mind of the Western Jihadist" by Sohrab Ahmari -- "describes the allure of the Islamic State for young Westerners and the deadly peril it poses." Ahmari's story takes place in the United Kingdom and offers an explanation for why ISIS has grown from obscurity to domination of world news in such a short time.

However, what caught our attention in this profile of Shiraz Maher, "a British citizen who lived the experience," is the idea that radical Islamist groups number among the new cults of the 21st century. Maher had "risen from a cell leader to a regional director and even been invited to join the group's U.K. executive committee. Yet during graduate study at Cambridge, Mr. Maher encountered more pluralistic strands of Islam and came to conclude that [Islamist] radical ideology 'will lead to terrorism. It's also basically rubbish.'

"He left the group on July 7, 2005 - the day the London Underground bombings killed 52 people and maimed more than 700." Wall Street Journal, Aug 29 '14. <www.ow.ly/CYwbW>

Meanwhile, The Guardian newspaper covers the related phenomenon of "Schoolgirl jihadis: the female Islamists leaving home to join Isis fighters," explaining that "Hundreds of girls and women are going missing in the west, reappearing in Iraq and Syria to bear children for the caliphate."

"In most cases, women and girls appear to have left home to marry jihadis, drawn to the idea of supporting their 'brother fighters’ and having 'jihadist children to continue the spread of Islam', said Louis Caprioli, former head of the French security agency Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire. 'If their husband dies, they will be given adulation as the wife of a martyr.'" Guardian, Sep 29 '14. <www.ow.ly/DePMR>

POSTSCRIPT (Jan 10 '15): Also see "Isis: the inside story" Guradian, Dec 11 '14. <www.ow.ly/H6Ncg>

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THE LOCAL CHURCH/LIVING STREAM MINISTRY

Nigel Tomes has published a substantial collection of "LSM's Etymological Errors," explaining in his summary that controversial Living Stream Ministry (LSM) founder Witness Lee "had only a rudimentary, self-taught knowledge of [New Testament] Greek. He relied on outdated word studies (Alford, Vincent, Vine & Kittel). These traits plus a dismissive attitude towards scholarship and boundless self-confidence made him liable to etymological errors and exegetical fallacies. LSM was ignorant of the revolution in biblical linguistics since 1960 which exposed these errors & fallacies. Analysing LSM’s publications we illustrate cases of the etymological root fallacy, invalid word-dissections, the reverse etymological fallacy, illegitimate totality transfer, the selective evidence fallacy, the word-concept fallacy & the unwarranted associative fallacy. ... Such exegetical fallacies & etymological errors undermine the value of LSM’s NT Recovery Version [of the Bible] & Life-study commentaries." Tomes also demonstrates how Lee's followers have perpetuated his errors.

Tomes succeeds in pointing out the exegetical fallacies and etymological errors in older popular reference tools for biblical language study and shows how Lee's writings reproduce the same problems. As a corrective, Tomes "evaluates LSM’s works in terms of recent linguistic research." As it turns out, this example of learning from the error of another isn't a bad way to acquire an appreciation for the right way to practice biblical scholarship either. <www.ow.ly/CYsKx>

POSTSCRIPT Jan 10 '15: Give a plumber a calligraphy pen and he becomes a calligrapher. In his cover story, "The Bible in the Original Geek," for the March 2014 issue of Christianity Today, Ted Olsen observes (p33) that "the whole BibleTech sector ['an occasional gathering of coders, hackers, publishers, scholars, and Bible technology enthusiatsts'] believes that the Information Revolution is doing to the 'academic priesthood' what the Protestant Reformation did to Catholic priests - and lay people. ...

"BibleTech has provided personal epiphanies, such as when he [Eli Evans, interaction designer for Logos Bible Software] learned the Hebrew word for bread, lehem. 'Lehem is bread! Bethlehem means "House of Bread"! Jesus is the Bread of Life! Hebrew is magic!'"

(Just a note for the record: The above article informed me for the first time that BibleGateway.com is now owned by Zondervan / Harper.)

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PARENTING

BBC News describes the Pew Research report "Teaching the Children: Sharp Ideological Differences, Some Common Ground; Wide Gaps over Teaching Faith, Tolerance, Obedience" (Sep 18 '14) as follows: "According to the Pew [study], 59% of 'consistently conservative' respondents rated religious faith as the most important value to teach children, versus 11% of 'consistently liberal' respondents. Obedience (15%) is the second-most common choice among conservatives.

"For liberals qualities like empathy for others (34%), curiosity

(23%) and tolerance (22%) were considered most important.

"'It's the culture war, in one Pew Research figure,' tweets

University of Virginia Prof W Bradford Wilcox.

"The split was also apparent when subjects were asked whether values were 'especially important' or not. Among conservatives, 81% said that this described religious faith, while only 26% of liberals felt this way.

"As for tolerance, 88% of consistently liberal respondents said it was important, while only 41% of conservatives agreed. "There's also an interesting divergence in values when the responses are broken down by race. Blacks placed more importance on religious faith and obedience, for instance, while whites and Hispanics emphasised being responsible." <www.ow.ly/CYikl>

Interestingly, one chart in the report (p6) carries the heading "Responsibility Tops the List of Child-Rearing Values Across Ideological Groups." <www.ow.ly/CYhUV>

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PASCAL, BLAISE

It's an urban legend among evangelicals that Pascal once said: "There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God, the Creator, made known through Jesus." Actually, Pascal (1623-1662) said that a person "tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself." <www.ow.ly/CYn2s> The legend is close enough for some, but not accurate.

In "More than a Wager: Blaise Pascal and the Defense of the Faith," Robert Velarde explains that Pascal was a truly unique individual - for example, he invented "the world's first automated calculating machine."

However, "Pascal intended to write a substantial work of apologetics called An Apology for the Christian Religion, which he never completed. Instead, after his untimely death due to illness, his many thoughts and notes on the project were collected in Pensees (Thoughts), a classic work that has been honored with a place in Encyclopedia Britannica's Great Books of the Western World series and the Harvard Classics collection. Os Guinness and Louise Cowan rightly describe Pensees as 'a penetrating, original, and stylish defense of the Christian faith and one of the supreme Christian writings of all time...."

Velarde writes to "provide an overview of key insights Pascal has to offer contemporary Christians, especially in relation to the task of defending the faith." Pascal, "valued both faith and reason, emphasizing an intuitive 'heart' sense of God, as well as the implementation of various lines of argumentation and reasoning in support of Christianity. ...

"To Pascal, there is a significant seeming paradox within human beings - we have the capacity for greatness, but also inclinations toward wretchedness. ... Given the data, Pascal concludes that Christianity offers the best explanation for human greatness and wretchedness." In other words, we reflect His image even as we demonstrate our fallen nature.

"Pascal's wager is probably his most well-known philosophical argument and also one of his most controversial. ...

"Douglas Groothuis summarizes the wager as follows: "Pascal claims that even though philosophical proof for God is not possible, one should believe in God since, if God exists, one would be far better off believing in him (since this is a necessary condition for heaven) than disbelieving in him (which means the loss of heaven). ...

"In short, Pascal urges unbelievers to wager on God, as this makes the most prudential sense. 'Yes, but you must wager,' writes Pascal, "There is no choice, you are already committed. Which will you choose then? Let us see: since a choice must be made, let us see which offers you the least interest. You have two things to lose: the true and the good; and two things to stake: your reason and your will, your knowledge and your happiness; and your nature has two things to avoid: error and wretchedness.'" Christian Research Journal, 37:3 - 2014, pp51-54

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