Mohler on "The New Atheism"
In his book,
Atheism Remix, R. Albert Mohler Jr. explains what distinguishes the “New Atheism”:
First, … an unprecedented new boldness. — p. 54
Second, there is a clear and specific rejection of the Christian God of the Bible [as opposed to combating a more philosophical idea of a supernatural being]. — p. 55
Third, the New Atheists explicitly reject Jesus Christ. Now this, too, is rather new, especially in its intensity. — p. 56
Fourth, the New Atheism is specifically grounded in scientific argument. — p. 58
Fifth, the New Atheism is new in its refusal to tolerate moderate and liberal forms of belief. … Unlike older forms of atheism, the New Atheists are not seeking to incite accommodationist forms of theistic belief. — p. 60
The sixth distinction … is the attack on toleration. … Sam Harris, more pointedly than the others, says the time has come to rid ourselves of religious toleration, for it is an experiment that has become too expensive. — p. 62
Seventh, the New Atheists have begun to question the right of parents to inculcate belief in their own children. — p. 62
Eighth and finally, the New Atheists argue that religion itself must be eliminated in order to preserve human freedom. — p. 63
Anchor Points/Amplification Ratio
In our homiletics discussion this week, we began defining a principle we feel may be important for communicating to a contemporary American audience. I'm calling it the Anchor Points to Amplification Ratio, or
AP/AM Ratio for short. The idea is simply this:
In any given sermon or teaching presentation, the audience can only absorb so many important points per session. Therefore, a limited number of important ideas must be anchored securely in the minds of the audience by an appropriate amount of amplification (i.e., explanation and illustration) of those ideas.
If in a presentation there are
too many important propositions presented relative to the amount of time spent amplifying them, the audience becomes bewildered by the number of things to think about and the propositions fail to anchor in their minds.
Too many anchor points relative to the amount of amplification results in a broad but shallow presentation. On the other hand, if only one or two main ideas are presented and then too much time is spent amplifying those ideas, the audience will become fidgety, waiting for you to "get on with it!"
Too much amplification relative to the number of significant anchor points results in a deep but boring presentation.Where's the perfect balance? It depends upon the particular audience and setting, but I would guess that for today's American audience we should present no more than 1 major point for every 20 minutes of amplification. We can present many other points and ideas in that 20 minutes of course, but
they should be well organized under the heading of the main anchor point and effectively amplify it so that it solidly hooks into our audience's mind. Do comment!
Tithing Hermeneutics No. 1
Matt and Kaj did some heavy lifting in our Friday morning Biblical Gym last week. The subject was the science of Hermeneutics, i.e., the science of interpreting Scripture, and the question for discussion was:
Does the Bible encourage Christians to tithe?
The point of our hermeneutics discussions are not to prove or disprove a practice or belief. Rather, what we want to do is develop our biblical thinking to the point where
whatever we say to our congregations and students can be said with utter conviction and complete biblical authority. The times are too strategic for us as leaders to share weak opinions and vague perspectives that our people can’t sink their Christian teeth into. We want to fulfill
1Pe 4.11: “If anyone speaks, he should do it as one speaking the very words of God.” To me that means preaching and teaching with
conviction, clarity, passion and authority. And for me, that’s what hermeneutics is about.
So, in the process of analyzing our biblical convictions, a question like...
1a. Does the Bible encourage Christians to tithe?
... will raise other questions that sooner or later must be settled. Here are the related questions we surfaced in first Hermeneutics of Tithing discussion:
1b. Does the Bible encourage or require tithing?
1c. On what basis do we define the tithe as only 10%?
1d. If we tithe should we do so only with monetary income or with all our increase (e.g., apples from our trees)?
2a. Are Christians obligated to keep OT laws?
2b. Are Christians obligated to abide by OT principles?
2c. Was Abram’s tithe to Melchizedek intended as an example to follow (i.e., a principle) or was it just a unique incident?
3. Does the Bible (or NT) teach a greater principle [of giving] than tithing?
4. If we tithe, to whom should the tithe go in view of the fact that there is no more Levitical priesthood?
In arriving at these questions we applied 3 hermeneutical principles; in our
Polishing Our Hermeneutical Glasses text, these principles are numbers 10, 11 and 14:
10. Build doctrine in the light of Progressive Revelation.
11. Interpret Scripture in its linguistic, thematic and cultural Context.
14. Build doctrine by Beginning With An Explicit Text.
We quickly discovered that the explicit commands to tithe (Hermeneutical Principle #14) are all in the OT, and given in the context (HP #11) of the Levitical priesthood and the agrarian Temple culture. We discovered that there were 3 distinct tithes mandated by the law: 1 to the Levites (Num 18.24-26), 1 to be consumed with family and friends at religious festivals (Deu 14.22,23) and 1 to be given to the poor (Deu 14.28,29). The 3 tithes together amounted to roughly 24% of a person’s increase.
Matt, Kaj and I also discovered that the context (HP #11) of Mat 23.23 was
not instruction on tithing, but rather a rebuke to the Pharisees for their lack of justice, mercy and faith. This passage contains no explicit (HP #14) indication that non-Jews should take the laws of tithing upon themselves. In fact, Matt told us at the outset that there is no explicit scripture (HP #14) teaching Christians to tithe.
Kaj, however, underscored the biblical principle of Progressive Revelation (HP #10) for us by insisting that we must take the whole Bible into account and not base our teaching on the NT alone. Kaj is absolutely right: we must neither teach a NT passage without reference to the OT foundation, nor teach an OT passage without reference to the NT fulfillment!
As we began to look for bedrock on the tithing question, we did find an explicit text (HP #14) teaching us to give: Luke 6.38. The implicit teaching of this verse is that we should give generously. Kaj appropriately cautioned us regarding the abuse of this text by Prosperity teachers.
We were just about to nail the tithing question to the wall when Roderick looked at his watch and realized he had to leave for an appointment.
