The Trigger 01: Overview

Yes, it's our old friend the three-part review, only with some tweaks. The Trigger: A Novel on the Revelation by Hon Hoh, is not the usual End Times novel, and it has some peculiar strengths and weaknesses. Since these are often complementary (a strength in one area becomes a weakness in another area), my usual format of separating positives and negatives won't work. Also, since the story is more theologically motivated than most, the theology needs more of a look.

Anyway...

Properly beginning in 2032, the story concerns a rather different take on the Tribulation period and stars mostly Pastor Josh McGuire and his friends and family, though we quickly pick up a highly placed Chinese couple who, along with a senator in Pastor McGuire's congregation, gives us our mandatory VIP characters. This is one of the few genre clichés Hoh follows. (As a rule, in this genre the main characters are international figures: diplomats, politicians, and invariably journalists. Hoh doesn't follow this rule at all closely, which gives the story a certain freshness.) The pastor has been divinely chosen to evangelize the last unreached people group on the planet, thus triggering the return of Christ. According to Satan (though the point is echoed by more godly beings as well), if this effort is stymied, the Tribulation can go into major overtime (i.e., a diabolical version of the Millennium).

BWA-HA-Huh?

Matthew 24:22 and Mark 13:20 both quote Jesus as saying that the Tribulation would be shortened, not lengthened. So there are some exegetical and theological problems here, though probably not as many as these stories usually have. I'll dedicate a post or so to the more troubling ones.

Anyway again, the Antichrist pops up from an unexpected (and vaguely amusing) quarter, and Nasty Things Begin to Happen, in particular persecution and the occasional Apocalyptic plague. And throughout the piece we keep getting scenes of angelic and infernal plotting in Perettivision, which actually isn't a bad innovation. In fact, this is a more explicitly spiritual tale than any others I'm aware of in the genre.

Will the Antichrist obliterate the Christians before the final converts can come in?

Read The Trigger: A Novel on the Revelation.

As for me, I'll address some non-theological quirks of the story next time.

A Double Standard?

A friend of mine showed me his magnum opus of the moment. He's a fairly new writer, and it has the marks of the newbie. For example, there's a place where a pastor is explaining Life, the Universe, and Everything to a genuine Seeker. Ignoring the fact that it's set up as a showcase for the writer's interest in apologetics, there is a spot that seemed a little extra over the top.

I begin to see that a lot of would-be writers (and even a few who've arrived) have trouble with logical sequencing. In this case, the arguments are presented in no particular order, and sometimes a remark will contradict something said elsewhere. (In fairness, a lot of this stems from hasty editing: it's easy to assume that you can change something at one point without introducing conflicts elsewhere, but that's not the way it usually turns out.)

So the pastor jumps into an argument against Evilution (not so spelled, but that's the idea) without any warning or cogency. I pointed out that the question was properly not Creation vs. Evolution, but Design vs. Chance. The writer proceeded to equate Evilution and Chance, which is often true but not logically necessary. Yet even that is only the tip of the iceberg.

The pastor simply claims that there is no evidence whatever for evolution, that the fossil record does not substantiate it at all, and so forth, even to the cliché about a tornado converting a junkyard into an airliner. And for some reason the Seeker, though supposedly intelligent and apparently somewhat skeptical at other points, simply believes him.

Now consider: if a scientist, such as Stephen Hawking, pontificates about theoretical physics, I'll give him the benefit of any doubt: it's his field, not mine. But when Hawking wanders into theological matters and starts expounding his views, as C. S. Lewis used to say, he's no longer speaking as a professional scientist but as an amateur theologian, and in that field my credentials are at least as good as his. I am not overawed.

But if it's arrogant nonsense for a scientist with no theological background to pronounce on theological matters, why is it acceptable (to many Christians, at least) for a pastor with no discernible scientific background to pronounce on scientific matters?

This is why I seldom bother with scientific refutations of evolution: they are out of my field, and it's not appropriate for me to use them. On the other hand, the people who originate them sometimes wander into my field (language, the Bible, etc.), and their performance there is generally poor enough not to inspire any trust elsewhere. We could use a bit more caution along those lines.

The people whom we tend to cite and whose ideas we accept uncritically are Christians, but that doesn't make them right. They may be mistaken or even misled by their own biases. And since I'm not in a position to assess their claims and ideas properly, I won't use them--especially since my audience almost certainly can't assess them properly either.

And that means I'm needn't give Hawking, Dawkins, et al. equal time to avoid being a hypocrite.

An Approach to Bible-reading

I sometimes allude to my "famous two-step method for understanding the Bible":

1. Read the Bible through.
2. Do it again, and this time pay attention!

You need to read the Bible at least twice to begin to understand it: once for the general context, and again to use that context. (I'm not suggesting that you stop with two readings, of course.)

The first time through you should read in roughly chronological order--I say "roughly" because I've seen "chronological" Bibles, and they're often rather confusing. Thus I wouldn't recommend bouncing back and forth between Samuel and Kings on the one hand and Chronicles on the other, with side trips into Isaiah, Jeremiah, and other prophets. Not only would it be confusing, but it would muddle the styles and goals of the individual writers: for example, the Chronicler is more interested in immediate rewards and punishment for obedience and disobedience than the writer of Samuel/Kings is, and he also idealizes David and Solomon. He's also writing from a post-exilic standpoint with some theological differences.

Anyway, speed is useful the first time or so, as long as you have reasonable retention. Read as swiftly as you can without forgetting it all the next day. And the first time through, allow yourself to skim the genealogies and other challenging bits. Also have a separate time for devotional reading, perhaps with one of the many daily reading publications available. Reading for information and reading for growth are different things, especially at this stage.

Use a study Bible in a really easy-to-read translation. Later on, you should consider that "easy reading" tends to distance you from the text, so you should ditch it for something closer to the text on the second or third pass. Some good examples are the New International Version, the New American Standard Version, the English Standard Version, and the New King James. It's actually a good idea to have more than one more serious Bible and switch between them occasionally so you don't get locked into one version. Also, get in the habit of checking between translations. Each one has its own quirks, so if a particular reading only occurs in one of them, don't build a doctrine on it.

Once you've made your second or third pass, you might want to consider a method of Bible reading that will keep you current. At this point it can also have some devotional value, because you'll be reasonably familiar with the text.

I divide the Bible into six zones, and I read from each zone every day:

1. Old Testament History. Genesis through Exodus 19, then a jump to Joshua and on through Esther.

2. The Law. (Not the same territory as the Torah, of course, and not all rules and regs anyway.) Exodus 20 through Deuteronomy.

3. Wisdom Books. Job through Song of Solomon.

4. Prophecy. Isaiah through Malachi, plus the Revelation.

5. New Testament History. Matthew through Acts. I always go from Luke straight to Acts, then pick up John afterward.

6. New Testament Doctrine (a.k.a. the epistles). Romans through Jude.

One of the reasons I like this mix is the balance: I'm reading in both Old and New Testaments, and I have the Mosaic Law alongside the Gospel and epistles. And since the zones aren't the same length, you wind up with different combinations each time you read through. And there isn't an obvious end point: you don't finish the zones all at the same time, so it's easier to keep going.

In my own reading, since zones 1, 3, and 4 are longer, I read more than a chapter a day. (OT History in particular lends itself to this.) I find that 3, 2, 2 works well; if you bump prophecy to three chapters a day on weekends, it makes the zones fairly close in duration.

In any case, after you've read through the Bible a few times, you'll become extremely familiar with its contents. After a while, you'll nearly memorize it simply through repetition, and what's better, you'll be programming your brain with God's Word, which is a major bonus in itself.

Try it!

The Wrong Gospel?

No, this isn't a theological rant about goofed-up evangelists. It's something of practical use for anyone who runs into the occasional new Christian or even an unsaved enquirer. I am going to challenge established wisdom, however.

Specifically: Where do you tell such people to begin reading the Bible?

There are two obvious answers, and for most people they're both wrong.

1. Start in Genesis and keep going. This can kind of work, though I would recommend a very entry-level Bible. Though I generally dislike the New Living Translation, it's not a bad choice for someone who knows nothing whatever about the Bible. (He should graduate to a better translation after going through NLT once or twice, however.)

The problem is that while this gives a good background--too many Christians know nothing about the Old Testament--it gets the reader to the Gospels rather late. That brings us to Option Two:

2. Read the Gospel of John. No. Seriously no. Why not?

a. While the language of John is fairly simple (it is a good starting point for reading Greek, though the Johannine Epistles are even better), the content is not. There are several theological digressions that will probably lose most beginners.

b. It isn't one of the synoptics, which should probably be read as a group and early on.

c. It doesn't set up for the rest of the New Testament very well. This is important, and I'll come back to it.

Other Options. Let's go in usual order:

Matthew. Begins with a genealogy. (What fun! Beginners should ignore genealogies.) Takes a first-century Jewish standpoint, which will mislead a lot of twenty-first-century Jews, much less Gentiles, given the shifts in Judaism over the millennia.

Mark. Strong action and short, but the alternate ending could throw some people. The resurrection is covered a little too briefly.

Luke. By process of elimination, this is my preference. Why? Luke was as close to a modern historian/biographer as you can find in the NT, and he was writing evidently for a Gentile audience with minimal knowledge of the OT. That said, he gives a good feel for OT writing in the first chapter or so. The teaching/action balance is good. (It does have a genealogy, and beginners should skip it or skim it, but at least you've got a handle on the story by then.)

But the most important reason to begin with Luke is Acts. Luke prepares the reader for Acts, which gives early church history and provides background for the epistles (especially Paul's). Once someone has read Luke and Acts, he should be ready to start looking at the epistles and the OT. In fact, he can get a study Bible and some reading plan and go to it at this point.

Next up, I'll explain how I would approach the Bible as a whole.

Apologetics by the Book

From a Biblical standpoint, there are only two kinds of apologetics: scriptural and experiential.

Scriptural Apologetics seeks to prove the Gospel from Scripture itself. Paul (Acts 13:26-41, 17:2-3, etc.), Apollos (Acts 18:28), and many others did this. The drawback is that the person you're dealing with must accept the Scriptures as authoritative, and these days even a lot of branches of Judaism are too figurative in their readings for that to work. Similarly, it doesn't usually work well with cultists. In fact, it's most powerful with people who haven't considered the Gospel; many Jews and cultists have already had their mind closed by their superiors and peers. It's not hopeless, but the field isn't as open as in the first century.

Experiential Apologetics seeks to prove (or perhaps I should say "validate") the Gospel by an appeal to experience. There are several branches of this method:

1. Testimony. A classic. It's harder to counter a testimony than an argument. Just saying, "I saw this" is quite powerful: it's the frame of the earliest evangelistic messages, and the one Paul himself resorted to when faced with people who weren't open to Scriptural proof. This is unique in that it shares a personal experience with others. The remaining types attempt to give the audience an experience of their own.

2. Miracles. Sometimes called "Power Evangelism" today, this uses a miracle to open the door for the Gospel. The miracle becomes a personal experience for those who witness it. This method is used throughout Acts and Jesus' own ministry. I won't bother arguing that this is still an option; you accept it or you don't. If you don't, skip this.

3. Holiness. This is a form of miracle: it involves spending enough time with God (not with other Christians or with praise music, but waiting on the Lord) that his holiness rubs off. You live in a way impossible for the unsaved, and even when you goof up, it's obviously an exception, and you get right back to walking with God. Again, this provides an experience to others. Holiness is probably the best method, because it relies on God's power. But the price is too high, apparently.

4. Argumentation. This is the method used by such people as Augustine, Aquinas, C. S. Lewis, and Francis Schaeffer. It leads others to the personal experience of epiphany, first intellectual and then spiritual. There are two main sub-types:

a. Thin end of the wedge. Begin with an easily-proved abstraction, such as "There must be an objective moral standard, because we all know that some things are right or wrong in themselves." (See Mere Christianity for this approach.) It is experiential, because in invokes shared experiences and perceptions.

b. Thick end of the wedge. Similar, but focused on finding what Schaeffer called "the point of tension": the place where an unchristian view self-destructs by requiring people to do or believe things that are impossible. For example, no sane person can behave consistently as though he were merely an animal; his humanity will eventually assert itself. This is also experiential, because it involves living out the implications of a view.

It's worth contrasting these with modern apologetics.

Eschatological Apologetics. This seems like Scriptural Apologetics, but it isn't. Scriptural Apologetics assumes the validity of Scripture; Eschatological Apologetics attempts to prove Scripture. Moreover,

1. Scriptural Apologetics involves fulfilled prophecy, not unfulfilled, because it focuses on Jesus as the fulfillment.

2. Scriptural Apologetics focuses on Jesus, not on sensational events. In fact, all healthy apologetics focuses on Jesus, just as Christianity proper does. Even the argument type of Experiential Apologetics leads to Jesus, though sometimes in a roundabout way, and it does so through the everyday, not the sensational.

Scientific Apologetics. This is almost Experiential Apologetics without the experience. It also attempts to validate Scripture--something the early Christians didn't appear interested in--by means of esoteric arguments a layman can't follow, unlike the everyday-experience arguments of the Experiential method. Examples include Creation Science and related matters such as the Shroud of Turin. Intelligent Design is a modern version of classical Experiential Apologetics and thus borrows heavily from it.

Conclusion: A Biblical Apologetics
We need to return to our sources. We're trying to prove Scripture by appeals to other (and presumably higher) authorities such as science, and we're degrading the true authority. That can't be good. While Lewis and Schaeffer helped renew interest in argument, many of their self-proclaimed followers are just repeating words they don't fully understand. Argument requires thought, and few are up to the challenge. Miracles can become mere sensationalism, testimony a kind of bragging, and a show of holiness just hypocrisy. Doing these things right requires humility, time, and dedication; we'd rather go the sensational route with appeals to science we don't understand and prophecy passages we probably have never read in context.

And all the time God is wanting us to come outside of these little dungeons so we can call others to join us.

Onward, Christian Writers: No Neutrality II

The previous post generated some positive and negative comment, and I should explain a few points.

No enclaves. It has been objected that an overt Christian message would put Christians into a literary ghetto. Actually, we're already there, and we won't get out until we fight our way clear. We already have the reputation of following the world rather than pioneering, yet any proper study of literature would tell you that much of modern literature parasitizes from Christianity.

That's as it should be.

Instead, we are the Elvis impersonators of the literary and musical world. We turn out second-rate copies of stuff that isn't even worth a first-rate copy.

Subtlety. Subtlety can work--in a different world. People today are generally too ignorant of the Bible (and that includes Christian writers) to notice subtlety, much less produce it properly. Can God use it anyway? Of course; Jesus Christ, Superstar is outright blasphemous--it ends with Jesus very much dead and in many stagings Judas resurrected--but it also contains a lot of Scripture, and people have gotten saved as a result. "Subtle" Christian fiction seldom does even that well. But that doesn't justify blasphemy. (It might justify using Scripture, however.)

If God requires you to go this route, fine. You can count on him to bless the result as you submit to his leading. I doubt this happens much, though. My experience is that a writer will blame God (He told me to write it this way!) initially, only to turn around and rewrite the credits (It's MY story!). But be very sure you totally immerse yourself in Scripture. Turn off the TV and radio (including Christian programs) and give yourself over to prayer and Bible reading. It'll probably take you a month just to get the toxins out. Otherwise your "subtlety" will be nothing more than spouting what you've taken in, and most of it won't be the Gospel truth.

Vive la Différence! One of the big problems is that we try to blend in. We tell the unsaved that we're just like them. But if there's no difference, what's the difference? Groucho Marx heard about a nude musical (I think it was Hair) and stripped off in front of a full-length mirror. He said he didn't see anything worth buying a ticket for.

Neither do unbelievers. If our faith makes so little difference in our lives, if we can blend in that easily, we might as well stop pretending and drop the Christian act.

The side with the better narrative wins--and that should be us! Our story is more shocking, powerful, and beautiful than theirs--and it happens to be true. Let them borrow from us, not vice versa.

But I admit that back in the 1980s I fell for this idea myself for a while. Then I noticed that it didn't work. In fact, when unbelievers finally tumbled to the fact that a subtle story had Christian leanings, they usually felt betrayed. I encountered some very negative remarks about that.

On the other hand, what people want is something fresh and different. Got it. In today's post-Christian world, a lot of people are more curious than hostile, and practically everyone respects someone who's up front with his views. (Think about how popular blogs are! No pussyfooting there!) I know of one case in particular where atheists and others hostile to Christianity still strongly supported an overtly Christian novel because they respected the writer's candor and talent. If we hit them with full-force Christianity, we'll make a few enemies and a lot of converts.

Obedience. But more important, we'll be obeying God. If we continue with "wink-wink, nudge-nudge" writing, we invite the charge that we're ashamed of the Gospel. Why else sneak around? The early Christians were very in-your-face about their faith, and they turned the world upside down.

What will we do? And what will we answer when God asks in the end what we did with what he gave us? Burying the gift in the uncontroversial sands of subtilizing is not an option.

The Purpose of Apologetics

1 Peter 3:15 mentions being ready to give a defense of one's faith--it also mentions doing it respectfully, an attitude I don't see much of these days. But is a defense a proof? In context, I'm not sure it is. Peter's talking about dealing with abusive people, and the point is that when you respond to bullying with God's love, the bullies (and perhaps others) will ask how you can exhibit such superhuman love. That's when you give your defense, which will probably have less to do with Creation vs. Evolution than with simply giving your testimony.

Thus Paul's "defense" in Acts 26 did not involve proofs in the modern sense. He simply gave his testimony, which bore witness to the life-changing power of God. The closest he came to apologetics in the modern sense was in Athens (Acts 17:15ff), where he mostly confronted the Athenians with instances where their own culture (especially their literature) had points of agreement with the Gospel. But he doesn't bother proving very much; he mostly asserts certain truths and appeals to shared experience.

So is apologetics wrong? No. I think it's greatly misused, however. While it is reasonable to answer critics' arguments against the Bible, for example, the goal is not so much to win converts as to defuse error. Sometimes it provides an occasion to present the truth, as when Christians had an opportunity to contrast the historical truth of the Bible with the pseudohistorical nonsense of the da Vinci Code. But notice what happens: it isn't the argumentation that wins people so much as God's Word!

Back to the title: what is the purpose of apologetics? As we've just seen, it answers accusations. But it also satisfies our human desire for rationality. We can't live without understanding, and apologetics, like systematic theology, gives us a coherent picture of our beliefs. As in Paul's case, we can seek a bridge to pagan culture, though again as in his case, it will usually break down when we get to important points such as the resurrection. Apologetics of this sort is most effective with those who are actively seeking--who want to believe but find their reason getting in the way.

The problem, then, occurs when we try to use apologetics for evangelism--especially when we use it instead of scripture. Then it becomes the very appeal from human wisdom Paul spoke against in 1 Corinthians 1:17-2:5. But what's the alternative? We'll find out next time.