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AR 29:47 - An "unrelentingly evidential and legal" apologia, ends
In this issue:
HIGHER EDUCATION - What do you get by melding "hydrosexuality and queer advocacy with feminist biology and blue posthumanities"?
MONTGOMERY, JOHN WARWICK - 1931-2024: a unique ability as an apologist to integrate his training as a theologian, historian, philosopher, and lawyer
Apologia Report 29:47 (1,688)
December 17, 2024
HIGHER EDUCATION
Back in 2020, Apologia Report recognized James Lindsay <www.tinyurl.com/AR-on-J-Lindsay> for noticing that higher education had gone off the rails years before. Lindsay and his small band of activists did this by "outing" entire fields of study - submitting papers of impressive, though intentional gibberish and having them accepted and then published by existing academic journals - thus demonstrating how these scholastic hosts were becoming a laughing-stock. Lindsay discovered soon after that, in this weakened state, higher ed had also been captured by the woke agenda. (See AR 25:37 - Sep 16 '20 <www.tinyurl.com/AR25-37> for more.)
On a lighter note, as a tribute to the comic memory of Lindsay's initial enterprise, we call your attention to this discovery: "Loving the Brine Shrimp: Exploring Queer Feminist Blue Posthumanities to Reimagine the 'America's Dead Sea' by Ewelina Jarosz - Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics (38:1 - 2025).
The abstract reads, in part: "The article aims to transform narratives surrounding Utah's Great Salt Lake [GSL], often referred to as 'America's Dead Sea,' by reimagining how brine shrimp (Artemia franciscana) are perceived in science, culture, and art. It introduces the concept of hydrosexuality to bridge these realms, thereby enriching feminist blue posthumanities and feminist biology through art-based practices and queer advocacy. By navigating the environmental narrative of the GSL, the hydrosexual perspective challenges settler science by exploring the connections between the reproductive system of brine shrimp and the economy, ecology and culture. The article provides a framework for integrative cultural analysis that bolsters arguments about the multilayered exploitation of the lake and amplifies voices that recognize the brine shrimp as vital to the survival of multiple species and to the GSL as a unique ecosystem. Furthermore, this cultural analysis draws inspiration from low trophic theory and Queer Death Studies." <www.tinyurl.com/24dvwdax>
Special thanks to Rod Dreher for bringing this mockery to our attention. <www.tinyurl.com/bddxdkte>
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MONTGOMERY, JOHN WARWICK
The following was included in a short personal notice sent to "friends and students" - "Dr. John Warwick Montgomery, born October 18, 1931, Warsaw, New York died on Wednesday, September 25, 2024 at the Bischwiller Regional Health Centre in France. Dr. Montgomery was a citizen of the United States, United Kingdom and France.
"He resided in Soufflenheim, France for much of the past three decades." Also included was this link to "a full obituary": <www.tinyurl.com/m64ztynk>
In that very full obit one learns how Montgomery "ordered that no eulogy be given at his funeral and that his gravestone simply recite John 11:25-26 ('I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me will never die.')"
JWM was "an English barrister, French avocat called to the Paris Bar, and American attorney licensed to practice in California, Virginia, Washington D.C., and before the Supreme Court of the United States. ...
JWM "As Seen in 3D (Doctorates, that is)" - under this heading, we read of his education, including a "Ph.D. (1962) from the University of Chicago, a Th.D. (1964) from the University of Strasbourg, ... and an LL.D. (2003) from Cardiff University in Wales."
We learn that "John's father owned a retail feed company, so when they discovered that young John had severe, life-threatening allergies to farm animals, he was sent to live with his grandmother, who was a believing Christian and a Fundamentalist Baptist with a very high view of Scripture and its accuracy. John attended Cornell University and majored in classics, and it was while at Cornell that he first encountered serious orthodox and evangelical theology. He was converted to Christianity in 1949, [and] Montgomery immediately sought to determine which expression of Christianity most clearly mirrored the Scriptures, so he set the Greek text of the New Testament alongside" the options found at hand - finally arriving at the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod.
"One may find amusement in pondering what it was like at the charismatic Melodyland School of Theology in Anaheim when Dr. Montgomery taught there in the late 1970's along with now sainted and then highly polemical duo of Walter Martin and Dr. Rod Rosenbladt, Rosenbladt being described by J. I. Packer as a 'living embodiment of Luther.' We do know, because of Montgomery's influence, that [the] school became the first theological seminary in the world to adopt a doctrinal statement with built-in hermeneutical commitments. ... Virtually the same doctrinal statement became the foundation for the later Simon Greenleaf School of Law, for which Montgomery served as Dean in the 1980s. <www.tinyurl.com/3z4hnu5f> ...
"As a French-speaking Lutheran without a German surname and lacking degrees from Synod-blessed schools ... the most frequent criticisms of Montgomery were accusations that he was either a liberal (because he was willing to teach all manner of Christians) or an Arminian (because he valued argument as a tool for communicating the Christian message and invited non-Christians to 'weigh the evidence'....)"
As noted above, "Montgomery held faculty positions at the charismatic-oriented Melodyland School of Theology (appropriately located across the street from Disneyland) as well as at the Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Illinois. In addition, he taught for numerous campus evangelical groups at universities across the country ... even lecturing for the Veritas Forum at the University of California, Santa Barbara on 'Why Human Rights Are Impossible Without Religion.'
"It was largely due to courageous polemicists such as Montgomery and Robert Preus in the late 1960s and early 70s that the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod successfully steered its seminary away from the path of theological liberalism. ... Lutherans by-and-large never understood, let alone embraced, Montgomery as one of their own. Of course, that assumes Lutherans have heard of him. Most have not.
"Montgomery's unique contributions to the apologetic task and his robust defense of the faith are best seen in his ability to integrate his training as a theologian, historian, philosopher, and lawyer...."
In "all [of] Montgomery's writing, lecturing, and debating ... he never failed to deliver a lecture on human rights, gastronomy, Sherlock Holmes, analytical philosophy, or the music of J. S. Bach without discussing the implications that topic had for the proclamation and defense of the gospel. ... There are three things one could always be sure of when attending a Montgomery lecture. First, he prepared like a trial lawyer operating in front of a jury. ... Second, Montgomery ensured that the case for the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ (Christ's perfect life, atoning death, and verifiable resurrection) always found its way into his presentation and emphasized the ... character of that evidential case. ... Third, his presentations were always at the highest level of scholarship and had such academic rigor that one could confidently invite a skeptic without the least apprehension. One can still advise someone to read or listen to Montgomery with the same confidence one has when recommending they read C. S. Lewis's Mere Christianity.
"Any non-Christian in the audience was respected, not talked down to, and not subjected to 'in group' Christian lingo. Modern-day American evangelicalism could benefit from a rediscovery of this apologetic acumen, an approach that combines rigorous research, clarity in message, breadth of application, and upholds the utter centrality of the gospel, as the intellectually credible center in dialogue with unbelief. ...
"Montgomery argued that a gospel contained in a text with errors and contradictions is intellectually indefensible. If the texts that give us the gospel (that is, the Holy Scripture, sometimes known as the 'formal principle of all theology') cannot be trusted in what they say about what the Temple in Jerusalem looked like, how can they be trusted when they speak of the heavenly Jerusalem? ...
"Montgomery sent [C. S.] Lewis the monograph that became the basis for one of Montgomery's earliest (and still most popular) works, History and Christianity (Minneapolis: Bethany, 1964). Lewis, in a letter to Montgomery in August 1963, said that Montgomery's 'two lectures did me good and I shall constantly find them useful.... I don't think it could be bettered.'" This has been reprinted as History, Law and Christianity. <www.tinyurl.com/h38amtze>
"As an evangelical apologist, Montgomery encouraged modern evangelicals to rediscover total confidence in the gospel and to recover a vigorous and intellectually defensible ground for that gospel in a totally reliable Scripture. ... As an evangelical apologist, Montgomery encouraged modern evangelicals to rediscover total confidence in the gospel and to recover a vigorous and intellectually defensible ground for that gospel in a totally reliable Scripture. ... His best-known work, History, Law, and Christianity [HLC], presents a 'historical-legal' apologetic that was utterly innovative and sets him apart from other contemporary apologists. This work sets forth several tests to determine the reliability of the New Testament gospels. ...
"The outline for the historical-legal argument progresses through a series of four propositions. First, Montgomery asserts that the gospels are reliable historical documents or primary source material. ... Second, in these reliable records Christ claims to be God in human flesh.... Third, Christ's bodily resurrection is described in great detail in all four gospel accounts. Fourth and finally, Christ's resurrection proves his claim to be God."
Within HLC, one finds that "The three-part test for establishing the reliability of the gospel records are the bibliographical test ... the internal evidence test ... and the external evidence test....
"The flow of Montgomery's legal defense of the faith arises from his training as an English barrister, American attorney, and French advocat and flows naturally from the groundbreaking work of professor Simon Greenleaf of the Harvard Law School. ...
"Montgomery helps us understand why lawyers have been more inclined to do apologetics than, say, dentists or street cleaners. ...
"Montgomery's apologetic is both evangelical and evidential because it is confessionally Lutheran. ...
"His unrelentingly evidential and legal approach to defending Christ crucified sets Montgomery apart from many modern apologists whose focus is on proving 'mere theism.' Montgomery was led to pursue legal training later in life, and he did this for the explicit purpose of integrating legal reasoning with the defense of the central claims of the Christian faith. ...
"Montgomery's 30,000-volume personal library will be kept largely intact thanks to the generosity of the Lanier Theological Library in Houston, Texas, which also endows an annual lecture in Montgomery's name in the area of evidential apologetics. The 2023 presenter was John Lennox," and the presenter of the November 9, 2024 Montgomery Lecture in Evidential Apologetics was Gary Habermas. <www.tinyurl.com/m267hutj>
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