18AR23-36

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AR 23:36 - GENETICS: "mind-boggling" ethics questions ahead

In this issue:

CHRISTOLOGY - a history of how Asians have remade Jesus

GENETICS - "societal and ethical questions begin to multiply"

ORIGINS - is religion "the cumulative effect of several major advances in brain evolution?"

ZIONISM - an intellectual history of the Church and Israel

Apologia Report 23:36 (1,402)

October 31, 2018

CHRISTOLOGY

Jesus in Asia, by R. S. Sugirtharajah, Emeritus Professor of Biblical Hermeneutics at the University of Birmingham [1] -- from the promo: "Reconstructions of Jesus occurred in Asia long before the Western search for the historical Jesus began in earnest. This enterprise sprang up in seventh-century China and seventeenth-century India, encouraged by the patronage and openness of the Chinese and Indian imperial courts. While the Western quest was largely a Protestant preoccupation, in Asia the search was marked by its diversity: participants included Hindus, Jains, Muslims, Catholics, and members of the Church of the East.

"During the age of European colonialism, Jesus was first seen by many Asians as a tribal god of the farangis, or white Europeans. But as his story circulated, Asians remade Jesus, at times appreciatively and at other times critically. R. S. Sugirtharajah <www.bit.ly/2SwCCuz> demonstrates how Buddhist and Taoist thought, combined with Christian insights, led to the creation of the Chinese Jesus Sutras of late antiquity, and explains the importance of a biography of Jesus composed in the sixteenth-century court of the Mughal emperor Akbar. He also brings to the fore the reconstructions of Jesus during the Chinese Taiping revolution, the Korean Minjung uprising, and the Indian and Sri Lankan anti-colonial movements." Any questions?

Choice (Aug '18) adds that Sugirtharajah "brings to light a number of marginalized biographies of Jesus - works largely forgotten in both the East and the West. ... Representing creative and imaginative energies at work in Eastern thought, the works are polemical in nature and aimed at counteracting the influences of Christian missionaries and Western colonial powers."

Library Journal (Apr '18, #1) calls attention to how "The Jesus Sutras portray Christ within the cultural milieu of ancient China, while The Mirror of Holiness is an intellectual imposition, asserting the superiority of Christianity and Western culture. ... Sugirtharajah further shows that the faults in such reconstructions have parallels in so-called 'objective' Western scholarship."

Publishers Weekly (no date) follows: "These reconstructions, predominantly from male and elite sources, situate Jesus in Asian contexts and challenge prevailing notions of how people can learn about Jesus as a spiritual figure, including a reimagining of Jesus as a kind of Jain tirthankara, an enlightened spiritual master who achieved perfect knowledge through a life of asceticism. The book’s claim that Jesus was reconceived in Asia concurrently to - and largely independently of - the Western search for the historical Jesus is more clarifying than illuminating; no cohesive argument emerges...."

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GENETICS

"The 'game-changing' technique to create babies from skin cells just stepped forward" by Carolyn Y. Johnson -- "Scientists in Japan made progress recently in the quest to combat infertility, creating the precursor to a human egg cell in a dish from nothing but a woman's blood cells. The research is an important step toward what scientists call a 'game-changing' technology that has the potential to transform reproduction.

"The primitive reproductive cell the scientists created is not a mature egg, and it cannot be fertilized to create an embryo. ...

"'The successful accomplishment of the same in human [cells] is just a matter of time.'... said Eli Adashi, a former dean of medicine and biological sciences <www.bit.ly/2ACdfR1> at Brown University....

"Many scientists think it is a matter of when, not if, scientists will be able to create a mature egg - and with that will come a slew of basic safety and mind-boggling ethics questions. ...

"If the safety questions are answered, the societal and ethical questions begin to multiply. ...

"Scientists say the time to start deliberating about those scenarios, educating the public and talking about oversight is now. ...

"In the meantime [more developments present ethical questions.] If researchers create large numbers of developing reproductive cells, they can systematically test and understand how medicines or environmental exposures affect those eggs. Scientists could better understand how chemotherapy, toxic chemicals or power-plant radiation affects reproductive cells." Washington Post, Sep 20 '18, <www.wapo.st/2z9N1DH>

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ORIGINS

Evolving Brains, Emerging Gods: Early Humans and the Origins of Religion, by E. Fuller Torrey, Associate Director for Research at the Stanley Medical Research Center <www.bit.ly/2Pp9qa4> [2] -- Angus Menuge (professor of philosophy at Concordia University and president of the Evangelical Philosophical Society) begins his review by explaining that Torrey "claims that religion is the cumulative effect of several major advances in brain evolution. His conclusion is that 'gods are a by-product of our acquisition of autobiographical memory,' and 'religions followed the emergence of gods as the population increased and societies became organized.'

"While Torrey does not explicitly comment on the question of whether any religious claims are true, the general tenor of the book is skeptical." And the skeptical "assumption behind Torrey's project seems in tension with the idea that science is a neutral, unbiased examination of the available facts."

Evidently, Torrey speculates quite a bit: "Throughout the book, Torrey apparently assumes that the source of religion must be from below God, from within the brain of human beings, but this discounts the possibility that religion is revealed from above, by God Himself. ...

"Readers should beware the tendency of naturalistic science to conflate primary and secondary causes. It may be that without certain features of the brain as secondary causes, we would not be able to entertain religious beliefs. It does not follow that these features of the brain are the primary causes of our belief."

Torrey's account recognizes different kinds of consciousness, yet includes "no discussion of how remarkable this is. ... [N]aturalistic evolution does not predict or adequately explain the facts of finite consciousness. [I]n a theistic world, there has always existed an infinite consciousness, which makes the existence of finite conscious beings much more to be expected. ...

"[T]he very fact that we can think of God as a being that has [infinite, eternal, morally perfect] characteristics cries out for an explanation that transcends the physical interactions of human brains with their environment. [T]he ability of human beings to believe in God is best explained by the existence of God." Christian Research Journal, 41:4 - 2018, pp52-3.

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ZIONISM

God's Country: Christian Zionism in America, by Samuel Goldman [3] -- from the publisher: "The United States is Israel's closest ally in the world. The fact is undeniable, and undeniably controversial, not least because it so often inspires conspiracy theorizing among those who refuse to believe that the special relationship serves America's strategic interests or places the United States on the right side of Israel's enduring conflict with the Palestinians. Some point to the nefarious influence of a powerful 'Israel lobby' within the halls of Congress. Others detect the hand of evangelical Protestants who fervently support Israel for their own theological reasons. The underlying assumption of all such accounts is that America's support for Israel must flow from a mixture of collusion, manipulation, and ideologically driven foolishness.

"Samuel Goldman <www.bit.ly/2JqYx2b> proposes another explanation. The political culture of the United States, he argues, has been marked from the very beginning by a Christian theology that views the American nation as deeply implicated in the historical fate of biblical Israel. God's Country is the first book to tell the complete story of Christian Zionism in American political and religious thought from the Puritans to 9/11. It identifies three sources of American Christian support for a Jewish state: covenant, or the idea of an ongoing relationship between God and the Jewish people; prophecy, or biblical predictions of return to The Promised Land; and cultural affinity, based on shared values and similar institutions. Combining original research with insights from the work of historians of American religion, Goldman crafts a provocative narrative that chronicles Americans' attachment to the State of Israel."

Choice (Aug '18) observes: "Those interested in the Christian Right will find more thorough accounts of contemporary Christian Zionism elsewhere. But Goldman's aim is focused more on intellectual history, with emphasis on the history. ... Goldman may overstate the connections among different ideological threads; American exceptionalist views [of] the US as a 'new Israel' may not be as tied up in eschatological claims about Israel's role in the end of days as Goldman sometimes implies. Still, this book offers an excellent opportunity to examine how various Christian theological traditions have shaped American views on both Israel and the US, separately and together."

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SOURCES: Monographs

1 - Jesus in Asia, by R. S. Sugirtharajah (Harvard Univ Prs, 2018, hardcover, 320 pages) <www.amzn.to/2Pz67gN>

2 - Evolving Brains, Emerging Gods: Early Humans and the Origins of Religion, by E. Fuller Torrey (Columbia Univ Prs, 2017, hardcover, 312 pages) <www.amzn.to/2PsX8O2>

3 - God's Country: Christian Zionism in America, by Samuel Goldman (Univ of Penn Prs, 2018, hardcover, 248 pages) <www.amzn.to/2EPNQHB>

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