The Discipline of Critical Thinking: Phronesis

It is now time to take the five steps involved in Critical Thinking and put them into practice. Perhaps the best approach in demonstrating how the Discipline of Critical Thinking is to be worked out in day to day life is to use an example that most people can relate to.

A good example to conduct an exercise in critical thinking, in my opinion, is the recent election. Current President Barak Obama ran on the promise of two key words: Hope and Change. He stated during his campaign that he was going to fundamentally change the Armerican system, and that this change would serve to usher in a new hope. In the years leading up to this promise the American people had experienced a devastating terrorist attack which threatened our very way of life. And just as this experience was being put behind them, they experienced a financial crisis, the like of which had not been felt since the Great Depression. Within 7 seven years, Americans experienced a shattering of their confidence to the very foundation. They experieced fears that had previously been written off as impossibilities. The culture was ripe for anything that promised a return to the secutiry and confidence it had once taken for granted. Enter Barak Obama and an electrifying message that was all too easy for desperate hearts and uncritical minds to latch on to.

Proposition: If elected President, I will fundamentally change the American system!
The proper response of a critical thinker is to ask the question "what kind of fundamental change are we talking about? Do we really need fundamental change? Can you really deliver on your promise, assuming we do need this fundamental change? But too many Americans were so upset with the circumstances to pause, and apply these preliminary questions to the situation. Aristotle said that if we are to be succesful, we must first ask the right preliminary questions! How many Americans really stopped and ask these questions before they made their decision.
Secondly, what reliable and valid evidence did Mr. Obama provide in order to support his proposal of fundamental change? Did he propose economic models that have been tested elsewhere? And if so, how have those models held up in good times and how are they holding up now? Are those models insulated from the economic crises we find ourselves in? How is the healthcare system in those models?
Third, are there alternative ways of interpreting what Mr. Obama means by change? Are their alternative ways of interpreting the evidence that has been provided which he claims suggests that the old model of capitalism has failed? Can one really assert that a system that has been around for centuries has finally failed only a few months into a crises? Could it be that the capitialism is dead announcement is politically motivated more than the result of an actual assessment of the system itself? Wasn't it a bit early to make such a pronouncement? And couldn't one really say that such a profound and startling view was irresponsible given the timing of when it was made?
Fourth, what additional evidence is being offered, or is available for examination and evaluation? One can look very closely at the historical background of Mr. Obama in order to understand what his worldview is and from there deduce where this ideology is taking us. One could also examine the experiment of other countries to determine if similar models are working. Finally, one may examine the economics of the program to determine if it is affordable and perhaps what it would take to pull it off in terms of cost. The point here is not whether you agree or disagree with the President's philosophy. Rather, the point is that you are willing, able and ready to think more critically about what you are being asked to believe.
Fifth, based on all the questions that have been posed and the evidence that has been presented, laying aside all personal biases, what is the most likely outcome of your assessment of the proposal of change and hope that you have been asked to believe? Far too often people put on their blinders and hold true to one party or one man for all the wrong reasons. And for others, they have become so accustomed to just accepting their favorite party's offer that they don't even bother to determine if it is the best thing for the long term health and growth of our nation. In the end, the discipline of critical thinking is exchanged for mere convenience and the path of least resistance. There is an unjustified optimism around the supposed infallibility of our country and lifestyle that is built upon an arrogance, the like of which is unmatched by any generation preceding it. At least other generations had to prove themselves through hard work, sacrifice, suffering, wars, market collapses, etc. But this generation remains confident for no other reason than that it "is." The lack of critical thinking skills may not be the sole cause of the collapse of western culture, but it will certainly be one of those most fundamental characteristics that will do its part to contribute to the collapse.

It is now time to elucidate on what a distinctively Christian approach to critical thinking looks like. Since I am working in the field of hermeneutics it only makes sense for me to leverage that work by addressing one of the most interesting methods in hermeneutics in modern Christian culture: feminist hermeneutics. In order to understand what I mean by feminist hermeneutics, some qualification and amplification is useful. What is the central contention of feminist hermeneutics? That is to say, what are we being asked to believe by those who embrace a feminist interpretation of Scripture? Ann Loades writes,

And 'authoritative' here means that by using reason, imagination, historical insight, reflection on human experience and whatever other resources we can muster, the Bible somehow mediates to us a God who enables human beings to be most fully themselves. [Ann Loades: Feminist Interpretation - The Cambridge Companion to Biblical Interpretation, 81]

Note that each one of these resources mentioned by Loades is located in the human person. She understands interpretation as presupposing that the Bible is still read in an authoritative text in communities of belief. But for Loades, authority seems to be defined differently than the tradition orthodox understanding of authority. In the traditional sense, the authority of Scripture was understood to mean that all doctrinal norms and praxis were to be taken from the authoritative other, namely, the text of Scripture rightly interpretated by the aid of the Holy Spirit who is faithful to instruct sinners and illumine our hearts through faith. Scripture carries the final word. It is not my purpose here to offer an apology on the authority of Scripture or even the nature of authority, but rather to put the assertions of the feminist hermeneutic to the test using the discipline or skills of critical thinking. D. Martin Lloyd Jones wrote,

The authority of Scripture is not a matter to be defended, so much as to be asserted. I address this remark particularly to Conservative Evangelicals. [Jones: Authority, 41]

Charles Haddon Spurgeon once said,

There is no need for you to defend a lion when he is being attacked. All you need to do is open the gate and let him out. [ibid.]

There are two components of Loades statement which merit examination: 1) Her understanding of authority, and 2) her understanding of what it means for humans to be most fully themselves. By relocating authority within human experience, reason, imagination, etc., she abandons the traditional understanding of the authority of the other and in effect, authority in any meaningful sense. Secondly, and key to feminist hermeneutics is understanding how humans should be defined in and of themselves. What does it look like when I become most fully myself? For the feminist it means seeing everything from a strictly female perspective. It means taking up the cause of the abused and oppressed women of years past and cultures the world over and removing this oppression, freeing them to be who they truly want to be! But is being who you want to be and being what God commands or intends one to be the same thing? A man may want to be a millionnaire. In this country he is free to pursue that endeavor so long as he does it within the confines of the law. But just because he is free, according to our culture, to engage in this pursuit, does this mean that God's purpose in giving us the Bible was to remove all obstacles in his way to being who he truly wants to be?

The Feminist Assertion: The Bible was written in order to remove all obstacles that stand in the way of us becoming most fully ourselves. (With ourselves meaning who we are most comfortable being).

What are we being asked to believe? We are being asked to believe that the purpose for Scripture is to assist us in becoming the person we are most fully comfortable being. Is this really the purpose of Scripture? Does Scripture every really assert that this is in fact its purpose? Romans 12:1-2 commands us to be transformed by the renewing of our mind. But transformed into what? We are to be transformed into that image which is found in God's perceptive will for us, the church. Romans 8:29 we are to be conformed into the image of Christ! Again, Col. 3:10 emphatically says we are being renewed to a new image, the image of the one who has created us.

What evidence exists to support the feminist's assertion? Basically the evidence is weak and without objective foundations. The feminst assertion begins with where it desires to go and renovates the evidence in order to make it appear that the assertion is valid. For instance, what does it really mean to be most fully yourself? The answer is that it means different things for different people. In fact, it could mean whatever you want it to mean. This is precisely how the homosexual movement asserts that they too, belong in the community of faith. They are most fully themselves when men are allowed to carry out their sexual desires with other men and women with other women. They argue that this is not a behavior but rather  the definition of who they actually are.

Are there alternative ways for interpreting the evidence? Beginning with the relocation of authority to the human person, there is in fact an alternative. The alternative is a theocentric approach to authority as opposed to an anthropocentric one. Authority can and should be located in God, not man. If authority is not located in God, and therefore transcendent, then it, by definition ceases to be authority. Moreover, authority simply becomes he who has the most power when the transcendent other is removed. Authority, by nature, must transcend all human existence in order for it to be truly authoritative. Otherwise it becomes mere social convention. A way for getting by in this life and not real authority. In this case it can be replaced by the philosophy of the next power grab that comes along.

What additional evidence would help evaluate the alternatives? Outside of scripture it would be helpful for one to examine the history of Christian orthodoxy to see where the evidence for the feminist hermeneutic leads. In so doing, one can quickly begin to determine how the church dealt with such views over the centuries. A survey of churchmen throughout the history of the church would also help one arrive at an understanding of Christian tradition on this issue. Such investigations serve to help one arrive at the validity of the feminist claim in light of Scripture as well as help us understand how it should be dealt with.

What conclusions are most reasonable based on the evidence and the number of alternative explanations? Based on scriptural teachings, a history of Christian doctrine, and a survey of Churchmen and Theologians of years gone by, it would seem that the feminist location of authority within the human person, and of what it means to be fully oneself is a derivative of a radical feminst philosophy invented by a human desire for autonomy as opposed to the plain teachings of Scripture.

The point of this blog is not to provide an exhaustive review of one's political philosophy, nor is it intended to be a thoroughgoing treatment of a feminist hermeneutic. The point is to sketch out how one should reason or think about these and other assertions from day to day as they seek to love the Lord God with all their mind. While this requires a great deal of effort, discipline, and self-sacrifice, the fruit of such an endeavor is well worth it. What fruit is that you might ask? The fruit of a humble obedience to Christ as one diligently attempts to honor their Lord and Master with their mind, and subsequently, their conduct. After all, thinking is a behavior just like any other behavior. Think about it!

The Discipline of Critical Thinking

We live in a culture where postmodern influence has seemingly led to a society that exercises very little discipline, believes the word 'critical' carries only negative connotations, and lets google and wikipedia do all their thinking for them. Before addressing what some may believe is a most contemptuous accusation on my part against the contemporary intellectual state, I think it is important to define these terms so that we may arrive at an understanding of what I mean by the phrase "the discipline of critical thinking." The word discipline means, "training that develops self-control, character, or orderliness and efficiency." The word critical means, in its strictest use, implies "an attempt at objective judging so as to determine both merits and faults." And finally, the word 'think' means, "to form or have in the mind; conceive." When it is all brought together it looks something like this; critical thinking is an orderly and efficient cognitive examination and evaluation method by which a person attempts to determine the merits and faults of assertions and evidence. Put another way, critical thinking is the cognitive dexterity of exercising good judgment about that which comes before it.  

Consider the five steps of critical thinking. (a) What am I being asked to believe or accept? What is the hypothesis? (b) What evidence is available to support the assertion? Is it reliable and valid? (c) Are there alternative ways of interpreting the evidence? (d) What additional evidence would help to evaluate the alternatives? (e) What conclusions are most reasonable based on the evidence and the number of alternative explanations? I believe the best approach for thinking through these steps is to walk through them one by one and then apply a couple of examples where critical thinking skills can be brought to bear in order to arrive at the truthfulness of a proposition or evidence.

(a) What am I beoing asked to believe or accept? The very first step in critical thinking is the decision not to just accept statements or evidence at face value. By making an assertion, someone is asking you to accept as true, a specific proposition. People make truth claims every day. It falls to the critical thinker to determine whether or not such claims meet the necessary criteria to qualify as true. Unfortunately, for many in our culture, they do accept truth claims at face value without any attempt to exercise any critical thinking skills. In fact, years of political correct conditioning have left a tremendous vacuum in its wake. An intellectual deficit has been created that cannot easily be reversed. Within evangelical churches the prevailing mentality is that people who dare to question anything have a negative, critical spirit. 1 John 4:1 issues a command that we are to test the spirits to see whether they are from God. The Greek word test is DOKIMADZETE and its basic meaning is, "to make a critical examination of something to determine genuineness, put to the test, examine." The idea that we are not to engage in a critical examination of propositions is contrary to Scripture.

(b) What reliable and valid evidence exists to support the assertion? This requires that one actually begin to do the hard work of thinking through the assertion. Item (a) is the easiest step in the process of critical thinking. But if you do not proceed beyond this initial step, you run the danger of truly fitting the description of a negative, critical person. Unlike the initial step, this step requires that you begin the hard work of thinking and examination. Involved in this step is the asking of more and more questions. One exhausts the reliability and validity of the evidence before it. What is the source of the evidence, for example? Is the source reliable? What sort of reputation does the source bring? The more complex the assertion the more numerous the questions should become. Thinking is hard work! James Dobson once wrote a book entitled, "Parenting Isn't for Cowards." I think somone should write a book and title it, "Thinking Isn't for Cowards."

(c) Are there alternative ways of interpreting the evidence? There are no brute facts! There are no purely objective interpretations. Each one of us brings some kind of cultural conditioning and ultimate commitments to the interpretive process. It should never be presupposed that our way of looking at the evidence before us is the right way. When we are in the process of interpreting the evidence before us, we should always consider our own biases as well as the effects of sin on our own minds. Alternative interpretations should always be given their fair hearing and eliminated appropriately.

(d) What additional evidence would help to evaluate the alternatives? What else should be examined? This process leads, once again, to a number of questions and can be somewhat taxing on the mind. This step is not for the intellectual sloth.

(e) What conclusions are most reasonable based on the evidence and the number of alternative explanations? During this process you actually begin to reach your conclusion. The amount of evidence is examined along with with the quality and reliability of the evidence. Alternative evidence is examined along with competing interpretations of the evidence. Once you have completed the five steps of critical thinking, you are in a much better position to assess the proposition or evidence before you merits your support.

In my next post I will use both a political along with a theological example of how to put these five steps into practice in ther real world.

Owing The Puritans

Of the Eternity And Immutability Of Almighty God, Denied And Overthrown By The Arminians - John Owen

First, They undermine and overthrow the eternity of God’s purposes, by affirming that, in the order of the divine decrees, there are some which precede every act of the creature, and some again that follow them: so
Corvinus, the most famous of that sect. Now, all the acts of every creature being but of yesterday, temporary, like themselves, surely, those decrees of God cannot be eternal which follow them in order of time; and yet they press this, especially in respect of human actions, as a certain, unquestionable verity. “It is certain that God willeth or determineth many things which he would not, did not some act of man’s will go before it,” saith their great master, Arminius. The like affirmeth, with a little addition (as such men do always “proficere in pejus”), his genuine scholar, Nic. Grevin-chovius. “I suppose,” saith he, “that God willeth many
things which he neither would nor justly could will and purpose, did not some action of the creature precede.” And here observe, that in these 33 places they speak not of God’s external works, of those actions which outwardly are of him, — as inflicting of punishments, bestowing of rewards, and other such outward acts of his providence, whose administration we confess to be various, and diversely applied to several occasions, — but of the internal purposes of God’s will, his decrees and intentions, which have no present influence upon, or respect unto, any action of the creature; yea, they deny that concerning many things God hath any determinate resolution at all, or any purpose farther than a natural affection towards them.
“God doth or omitteth that towards which, in his own nature and his proper inclination, he is affected, as he findeth man to comply or not to comply with that order which he hath appointed,” saith Corvinus. Surely these men care not what indignities they cast upon the God of heaven, so they may maintain the pretended endowments of their own wills; for such an absolute power do they here ascribe unto them, that God himself cannot determine of a thing whereunto, as they strangely phrase it, he is well affected, before, by an actual concurrence, he is sure of their compliance. Now, this imputation, that they are temporary, which they cast upon the decrees of God in general, they press home upon that particular which lies most in their
way, the decree of election. Concerning this they tell us roundly, that it is false that election is confirmed from eternity: so the Remonstrants in their Apology, notwithstanding that St Paul tells us that it is the “purpose
of God,” Romans 9:11, and that we were “chosen before the foundation of the world,” Ephesians 1:4. Neither is it any thing material what the Arminians there grant, — namely, that there is a decree preceding this, which may be said to be from everlasting: for seeing that St Paul teacheth us that election is nothing but God’s purpose of saving us, to affirm that God eternally decreed that he would elect us is all one as to say that God purposed that in time he would purpose to save us. Such resolutions may be fit for their own wild heads, but must not be ascribed to God only wise.

The Reader and The Text

Man, in his fallen condition, is said to be dead in his tresspasses and sins. (Eph. 2:1) As such, his mind is held captive by Satan and he is not only unwilling, but incapable of understanding the things of God. (1 Cor. 2:14) The truth that he knows about God, he willingly and ignorantly perverts. (Rom 1:18-19) To deny this fact is to deny the very word of God. This is what Scripture reveals to us about the nature of fallen man without equivocation. Outside of this startling revelation, we cannot know the real impact of sin on human nature. Hence we are in need of a remedy. Thanksfully, God has provided just such a remedy for those whom He has graciouly chosen to salvation in Christ. Redemption comes through the blood of God's very own Son. Due to the work of applied redemption, regeneration comes to us, via the gracious ministry of God the Holy Spirit. Hence, Christ's redemptive work, along with the work of this applied redemption through the Spirit, results in the possibility of knowing God intimately once again.

But there are those who argue that man is unable to attain objective knowledge about reality due the contamination of his own subjective existence. Nietzsche contended for the death of metaphysics by asserting that the world is really a network of distortions and interpretations for which no interpretation and no text provides a basis (Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, pg. 95). It was not necessarily the case that Nietzsche denied reality, but that objective knowledge of reality was beyond the grasp of man. Futhermore, this philosophy has secretly made it's way into the minds of many in the Christian community. They may not go as far as to say that we cannot know anything, but the impact of thier modified, dressed-up, so-called Christian version, has no less devastating effect on the truth of God revealed in Scripture. When men make such arrogant assertions, dressed as they may be in a false intellectual humility, the best response is to turn to Scripture for the answer. The subtle shift in the mind of the typical Christian begins with the displacement and degradation of Christian doctrine and progresses into a full-blown, reworking of orthodox Christian teachings that offend the modern and postmodern senses. But Paul adopted an entirely antithetical view to the one outlined above.

"For this you know with certainty, that no immoral or impure person or covetous man, who is an idolater, has an inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God." [Eph. 5:5]

From this verse it seems rather obvious that the apostle Paul believed that we could know particular truths with certainty. The Greek syntax involved in exegeting this text is somewhat techincal, so I will spare you the details. Suffice it to say that exegetes agree that the expression in question, "ISTE GINOSKONTES," indicates that we can know this particular truth with surety. And if we can know this particular truth with certainty, it follows that we can know other truth with certainty. After all, postmodern thinking has a problem with the very idea of absolute knowledge, not just that absolute knowlege about certain things may be possible. Contrary to postmodern scholars of literary theory, the text apparently contains within it, 'real meaning' apart from that which the reader brings to it. How could the believers in Ephesus know with certainty that no immoral person can inherit the kingdom of God? From whence did this knowledge come? And how can they know it for sure? I would submit that all knowledge, in order to qualify as knowledge in any sense of the word, must be certain knowledge. But since we are fallen sinners, existing in a world contaminated by sin, possessing a mind that is terribly affected by sin, how can we be sure we know anything? How can we know that the knowledge we claim to possess is not merely a projection of ourselves? Can we be sure that when we look down into the well of God's text that we are not simply looking at our own reflection? Is the text really other? If so, how do we come to know it without turning it into the same? Into what we want it to be? In effect, into us. We begin with faith, as does every other hermeneutical method and philosophy. Vern Poythress writes,

"In short, valid hermeneutical principles show the implications of God's Lordship and our servanthood. They instruct us on how to submit ourselves to what God actually says rather than reading in our own autonomous desires." [The Supremacy of God in Interpretation, 7]

Every position expresses a faith commitment to one degree or another. Modernism commits to the self-sufficincy of human reason. This philosophy argues that man is capable, apart from God, of advancing his cause on his own terms. Man can attain knowledge of truth by reason of his own intellectual dexterity. He is independent, self-sufficient, and fully capable of interpreting reality apart from revelation, and apart from God. Hence modernism expresses an unjustifiable reliance on the ability of the human being. Furthermore, the epistemoloical approaches of science and reason alone are themselves propped up by certain faith commitments, or call them foundations, or ultimate commitments, that are assumed with extreme prejudice, to be true. This reliance has managed, like nearly all misguided philosphies, to penetrate the ranks of the visible church. Arminian theology is heavily influenced by modernism's over-exaggeration of fallen man's ability to interpret reality and life apart from God.

The truth is that the "text" is a stranger among readers. The two are not the same. This being the case, the text is entitled to the kind of ethical treatment we would afford any other stranger among us. We have not the right nor the authority to treat the text any way we please. After all, this text is not just any text. It is the text of the Sovereign Divine. And we are His subjects, having a moral obligation to respect that which He has sent to us in the instrument we call the text of Scripture. Will we impose ourselves on the virtuous and holy text of God? Do we think to ourselves that we have the right to approach the text with the same light regard for it as we have for everything else in our culture? Or will we treat it with the dignity and respect that its nature demands?

Kevin J. Vanhoozer sums it up far more eloquently that I ever could:

Bereft of sound doctrine, the church is blown about by cultural fads and intellectual trends. Indeed, this has largely been the story of the church, and of theology, in the modern world. There has been an atrophying of theological muscle as a result of too many correlations and accommodations to philosophical and cultural trends. [Vanhoozer, The Drama of Doctrine: A Canonical and Linguistic Approach to Christian Theology, pg. 3.]

Without a Christian text, Christian theology is impossible. And without Christian theology, Christian living is impossible. Hence, without Christian living, the Christian God is reduced to irrationalism of the most profane sort. Let each one of us regard the text as holy, and the reader as fallible, sinful, selfish, contaminated with idolatrous desires which lead us away from the Creator who has full right to our obedience in all places, at all times, and in all circumstances.

Regarding the Text

Over the course of my life I have experienced tremendous transformation. I suppose the one constant in humans in general, is change. But the kind of transformation I have experienced is distinctly rooted in the teachings of the Christian community. Specifically, my change is the product of the impact of the activity of the Holy Spirit as He has graciously and efficaciously illumined my mind to the content of Sacred Scripture. I was regenerated at the age of 14. The outward conversion of this regeneration initially expressed itself at the Crawley Creek Church of God in Crawley Creek, W.V. For a time my beliefs were closely aligned with Classic Pentecostal theology. Very early on I was instructed to make God’s word my only standard against which I should measure my understanding of the biblical text. As I engaged in this practice, I slowly drifted away from one Pentecostal distinctive after another until I no longer held enough in common with that theological system to continue referring to myself as distinctly Pentecostal.

But my transformation wasn’t complete. I was still a staunch Arminian. The transformation from Arminianism to Calvinism took much longer to complete. But gradually it came just as my move out of Classical Pentecostalism. The common thread that produced this change is best articulated by Kevin J. Vanhoozer’s book: Is There a Meaning in This Text? Dr. Vanhoozer talks about interpretive virtues. Outside of the core virtues of faith, hope, and love, he distinguishes the virtues of honesty, openness, attention, and obedience as the four necessary virtues for ethical treatment of the biblical text. I think it right in his proposition.

The word ‘regard’ has a range of meaning in the English language. Here I wish to use it in the sense of respect and affection or esteem. As I look back at my transformational experiences (which are continuing to this day), I attribute them to the activity of the Holy Spirit by which He created within me a desire for truth and a willingness to surrender my most cherished beliefs in exchange for complete and total submission to the biblical text (and no, I am not there yet). I first had to accept the fact that normative thinking and living were defined by the sacred text alone. Moreover, if one is to order their life according to that which is really true, then admitting that neither you, nor your understanding is the actual standard from which truth emanates is essential. Hence a fresh appreciation for the nature of the biblical text was called for in my case. I had to be honest about my biases that I brought to the text when I was in it. I had to admit that I could be wrong and this required a new level of openness. This required that I return to paying strict attention to the biblical text as I engaged it. This was a “starting over” for me in terms of my theological views. I have since learned that good interpreters of the biblical text start over every time they enter it. Finally, I had to learn to read the text the way the author actually intended. By learning how to approach the text in this manner, I became more sensitive to the work of the Holy Spirit in my mind and heart and as a result, transformation has become a way of life for me ever since. In fact, transformation is the Christian way of life.

It is my conviction that the Bible as a text is the text of God Himself. It has God as its ultimate author and creator and man as the agent through which He brought it into existence. By using man in this way, God intended to communicate to us in various genres, using a variety of literary styles and devices along the way that we are capable of adequately apprehend. But this variety requires that we pay due attention as we interact with the text. And paying attention requires mental discipline, something our culture terribly lacks. Perhaps this is why I am commanded to love the Lord my God with my whole mind.

There is a laxity around hermeneutics in the Christian community in modern times. A casual attitude with regard to how we approach the sacred text of God that would almost lead one to believe that people really don’t view the text as sacred, but common. I think this is partially attributable to the cultural prevalence of the idea that we should not take anything too seriously, and partly to an abuse of grace that permeates the church. The former can be attributed to the autonomous desires at the bottom of post-modern thought, while the later is mostly attributable to a deficient anthropology brought on by misguided Pelagian thinking and compounded by the idea of libertarian free-will in Arminian theology. Somehow we have adopted the view that grace equates laxity. Since God is so loving and merciful, kind, longsuffering and filled with grace, it matters not how badly we behave, He will dismiss it, understanding that we are just fallen, broken sinners. Hence the love of God displaces the justice of God. Much of this has to do with intellectual apathy. Our culture is a lazy culture when it comes to the discipline of critical thinking. It is my opinion that one of the reasons people reject the abstract and criticize those who do exercise their intellectual gift is because they are lazy. I hear it almost every time I teach. Knowledge for knowledge sake is bad. Or, the Bible has to get to your heart, not just your head. And while these statements are true, the fact that I hear them so often causes me to pause, if for no other reason than that we are living in an age when biblical ineptness is at historic highs. We interact with the biblical text in an effort to arrive at its meaning, that meaning intended by its author. This is, after all, the hermeneutical imperative. And once we understand the meaning of the text (illocution), we appropriate it to our hearts and lives (perlocution). It is in appropriation of the meaning of the text that Scripture transforms the reader. But without an adequate understanding of what the text says, transformation is impossible. Hence a right understanding of the biblical text is a fundamental prerequisite to experiencing biblical transformation in life. Knowledge is indispensible to wisdom. Moreover, without a healthy regard for the biblical text, our approach to it will not yield the kind of understanding adequate to produce profound transformation. In this sense, regard for the biblical text is the starting point for what, in the final analysis, is a radically transformed life. We need radical transformation in order to understand the text that radically transforms. Yes, this is circular reasoning, but the circle is not vicious. And in the end, all human reason is circular.

In the end, one must decide who is master and who is servant. Is the biblical text, God’s self-disclosed revelation, Master over your reading? Or are you, the reader, Master over the biblical text. Is the text there to serve the reader? Does the reader have the ethical “right” to find whatever meaning in the text they wish to find? In this sense meaning is no longer discovered, but created. But creating belongs to God. I submit that the reader is to serve the text, to respect it and regard it for what it is. The aim of the reader is to humbly approach the text for the other that it is. The text is God’s truth and as such is there to transform lives by imparting a living knowledge that is to be lived! Unless the text is handled with great regard, we run the risk of not only violating the sacred other, but of also nullifying its transformative intent. We invalidate the word of God through our interpretive autonomy (Matt. 15:6).

Reformation Rhetoric

Of Bearing The Cross - One Branch of Self-Denial

John Calvin

1. THE pious mind must ascend still higher, namely, whither Christ calls his disciples when he says, that every one of them must “take up his cross,” (Mt. 16:24). Those whom the Lord has chosen and honoured with his intercourse must prepare for a hard, laborious, troubled life, a life full of many and various kinds of evils; it being the will of our heavenly Father to exercise his people in this way while putting them to the proof. Having begun this course with Christ the first-born, he continues it towards all his children. For though that Son was dear to him above others, the Son in whom he was “well pleased,” yet we see, that far from being treated gently and indulgently, we may say, that not only was he subjected to a perpetual cross while he dwelt on earth, but his whole life was nothing else than a kind of perpetual cross. The Apostle assigns the reason, “Though he was a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered,” (Heb. 5:8). Why then should we exempt ourselves from that condition to which Christ our Head behoved to submit; especially since he submitted on our account, that he might in his own person exhibit a model of patience? Wherefore, the Apostle declares, that all the children of God are destined to be conformed to him. Hence it affords us great consolation in hard and difficult circumstances, which men deem evil and adverse, to think that we are holding fellowship with the sufferings of Christ; that as he passed to celestial glory through a labyrinth of many woes, so we too are conducted thither through various tribulations. For, in another passage, Paul himself thus speaks, “we must through much tribulation enter the kingdom of God,” (Acts 14:22); and again, “that I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death,” (Rom 8:29). How powerfully should it soften the bitterness of the cross, to think that the more we are afflicted with adversity, the surer we are made of our fellowship with Christ; by communion with whom our sufferings are not only blessed to us, but tend greatly to the furtherance of our salvation.

Deconstructioinism: Theology's Black Hole

Realism is the metaphysical position which asserts that certain things are mind independent. Hermeneutical realism is the position that believes meaning to be prior to and independent of the process of interpretation. For example, take Gilbert Kaplan’s recordings of Gustav Mahler. Gilbert Kaplan was an American business man, former journalist, and amateur conductor. Kaplan was so wealthy that he was able to teach himself how to conduct, and to hire, his own orchestra. He had a passion for authenticity. He desired to recover the original works of great composers like Gustav Mahler. He hired his own orchestra to perform Mahler’s “Resurrection” Symphony. After studying Mahler’s manuscript (which had cost him $300,000) he reinserted an F-note which had been emended to E-flat by conductors before him. Kaplan was clear, “My goal was to come as close as possible to what Mahler had in mind.” Kaplan also came to believe that Mahler’s famous Adagietto from his Fifth Symphony was actually not a dirge as so many before him thought. Instead, he saw in it an expression of love. He stated, “All I’m saying is that this piece has to be played in a way that is consistent with the composer’s intention. It’s not just enough to read the score.”

So it is with the task of hermeneutics. Our goal in examining the biblical text is to recover the meaning intended by the original composers of the sacred text itself. However, there is a toxic poison that has entered the interpretive landscape. This poison denies the slightest possibility that anyone can get to the intended meaning of the author. This is because such a meaning doesn’t really exist. In her work, The Comical Doctrine: An Epistemology of New Testament Hermeneutics, Roselind Shelby wrote,

“The ontological dimension is presupposed—that nothing short of realism is adequate in Christian theology and idealism can only arrogate to the human mind decisions which it is not entitled nor qualified to make.” [Selby, R. M. (2006). Comical Doctrine: An Epistemology of New Testament Hermeneutics (11). Milton Keynes: Paternoster]

 Yet for the hermeneutic non-realist,

"There are no facts, only interpretations." [Neitzsche, Will to Power, par. 481]

E.D. Hirsch, a champion for the determinacy of meaning in a text writes,

"A word sequence means nothing in particular until somebody means something by it...There is no magic land of meaning outside human consciousness." [Hirsch, Validity in Interpretation, pg. 4]

I stated at the very onset of this blog that Hermeneutical realism is the position that believes meaning to be prior to and independent of the process of interpretation. For non-realism, which is what Shelby criticizes in her remarks above,

"human language and thoughts do not correspond to the objective realities or to stable meanings. What we cavalierly call “reality” is rather a human construction, at least in part." [Shelby, 48-49]

If this is true, then truth itself vanishes from the scene. All that is left are signs and texts which come from nowhere and lead to nowhere. Humans become enslaved to some mysterious form of communication, about which they know nothing. All they can do is exist in this state without any hope of arriving at any meaningful understanding of what it is to be human in the first place. As one writer put it,

“The doctrine largely imported from Paris would have it that persons are simply linguistically encoded machines and that, far from being the impresarios of language, they are its slaves.” [Scott, The New Trahison des Clercsi, 417]

Hence, the metaphysics of meaning are destroyed by this idea. There is no longer a meaning in the text. The author dies, along with his authority to control the meaning of his own text. Hence, the text itself becomes a playground for the reader to take as much liberty with it as he or she pleases. In effect, the authority of the author must make way for the autonomy of the reader. No longer will the reader be enslaved to the traditional idea that interpretation involves a slow, tedious, and methodical process of getting to the intended meaning of the author! Moreover, the reader will no longer be a slave to the principle of single meaning. Instead, the reader is liberated to use the text, in whatever way they please, to enhance their life in whatever way they please. Truly, in deconstructionism, it is all about the reader! But while deconstructionism promises liberty, what it delivers is quite the contrary. It would appear that the reader has simply exchanged one prison for another. He has moved from the prison of author authoritarianism to the prison of meaningless and an authoritarianism about which he can know nothing other than the fact that he is a prisoner and that any hope for escape is futile.

As one might imagine, such views spell doom for Christian theology. Like a black hole that destroys everything it touches, deconstructionism destroys every text and all meaning that lay within its path. Moreover, the fact that it is coupled with the powerfully seductive force of reader autonomy makes it a formidable foe for any defender of biblical truth. William Robertson Smith was tried for heresy because he denied the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. He was removed from his professorial chair in Aberdeen in the late nineteenth century. Those responsible for his removal seemed to understand this basic principle all too well: without authors, texts have neither authority nor determining sense. The death of the author has grave consequences for biblical truth and authority. Without the authoritative revelation in the text, we have no stable, reliable knowledge or understanding of God. And without any reliable understanding of God, there is no understanding of self. And if hermeneutics is about self understanding as much as it is about understanding the other, then it follows that hermeneutics becomes an impossible task. Hence, it follows that if hermeneutics is impossible, theology becomes a field littered with relative ideas and speculations about God, none of which are reliable, let alone authoritative. Theology is sucked into the black hole of deconstructionism.

But this seems quite alright with those who argue as of late that doctrine or theology is unimportant. What really matters is relationships! But there is a glaring inconsistency in this view. For the very fact that relationships are important is itself built upon the abstract notion that humans, above everything else, are relational beings designed to relate to one another in very specific ways.

Truth is unavoidable. This is due to the nature and fidelity of God. After all, this is HIS creation and it bears HIS fingerprint. Try as we may, human beings will never be able to erase the fingerprint of God from anything in His creation, most especially, His most valued creation; mankind, whom He created in His very own image and His very own likeness.

Grant R. Osborne writes,

“Yet human efforts can never properly divine the true message of the Word of God. While Karl Barth wrongly taught that Scripture possesses only instrumental authority, he was certainly correct that it speaks to humanity through divinely controlled “flashes of insight.” We must depend on God and not just on humanly derived hermeneutical principles when studying the Bible.” [Osborne, G. R. (2006). The hermeneutical spiral : A comprehensive introduction to biblical interpretation ]

What is needed for an understanding of truth, of God, of self, is faith: the kind of faith that is the result of God’s regenerating power. Secondly, divine illumination of the Spirit must provide the necessary foundation upon which to build an adequate knowledge of God, self and reality.

"What we have in God is an agency and intelligence that stands outside language and controls it, making sure that words correspond to the world and guaranteeing the reliability and truth of speech." [Vanhoozer, Is There a Meaning in This Text?]

 The apostle Peter warned that anyone found guilty of twisting the intended meaning of the author, Paul, did so to their own destruction (2 Peter 3:16). In interpreting Christian Scripture we are bound by a higher ethic; a hermeneutical ethic which translates into a regard and respect for the text and the intended meaning of its author. The great commandment, “You shall not bear false witness” comes to mind when I think about how we are witnessing to the meaning of any given text of Scripture. When we bear false witness against the Scripture, we are bearing false witness against God. The words mh genoitai come to mind: may it never be!

In the final analysis, the main goal of hermeneutics is communion with God. This is not an exercise of the purely abstract. What good is it to understand what one should do if one in fact does not do it or even intend to do it? Zimmerman writes,

“Thus a proposition in the biblical text can be fully understood only when it is grasped in light of the meaning the divine author gave it: and this meaning is always one that demands the context of communion with the Divine. Understanding does not merely entail the grasping of propositions but includes their appropriation. Both the understanding and the general attitude toward the text must be changed before a genuine dialogue with the Divine is possible.” [Zimmerman, Recovering Theological Hermeneutics, 106-107]

In order to truly understand the meaning of the biblical text, it must be appropriated, and weaved into our thinking and actions. Otherwise we truly do not understand it. And this requires the work of the Holy Spirit who creates within the human being the capacity for faith. Augustine said “I believe in order to understand.” Vanhoozer writes,

“Interpreting Scripture theologically involves more than dealing with biblical words, more even than rules for textual interpretation. Interpreters must have receptive sprits as well, a possibility that depends on the work of the Holy Spirit.” [Vanhoozer, First Theology, 11.]

Deconstructionism then is the desire for absolute literary autonomy. What needs to be understood is that autonomy, in order for it to be true autonomy, must be total. That is to say, it must extend to every area of the human person. Any authoritarian elements always risk the loss of, not just some autonomy, but of total autonomy. Moveover, autonomy by definition must be total, otherwise it isn't autonomy. What deconstructionism is most concerned about is the metaphysical impulse to totalize. Totalizing sets out to acheive a unified perspective, to gain mastery over something by reducing it to the size of something one can grasp. [Vanhoozer, Is There a Meaning in the Text?] Derrida and Neitzsche held that the desire for totalizing was a desire for power. Then reason deconstrucitonism resists "the author" is because it rightfully views authorship as an authoritarian concept to which it does not wish to submit. Hence the ultimate desire of deconstructionism is to undergird the human desire for absolute independence, or autonomy.

James 4:7-10 provides us with clear instructions regarding autonomy: 1) Submit to God; 2) Resist the devil; 3) Draw near to God; 4) Cleanse your hands; 5) Purify your hearts 6) Do not be found rejoicing in your ungodliness; 7) Humble yourselves in the presense of the Lord!

The goal of hermeneutics is recovering the intended meaning of the biblical text. The goal of understanding the meaning of the biblical text is to develop a system of right beliefs, which we call theology. The goal of theology is praxis. That is to say, it is to practice right beliefs in our daily thinking and acting in all matters. The reason wrong beliefs are so dangerous is not only because they run the risk of bearing false witness against the revealed truth of the biblical text, but because people practice what they believe and if their belief is wrong it follows that their practice will be as well. Oswald Chambers says it well:

"We are not meant to spend our lives in the domain of intellectual thinking. A Christian’s thinking ought never to be in reflection, but in activities. The philosopher says, “I must isolate myself and think things out”; he is like a spider who spins his web and only catches flies. We come to right discernment in activities; thinking is meant to regulate the doing. Our destiny as spiritual men and women is the same as our destiny as natural men and women, viz., practical, from which destiny there is no escape." [Chambers, O. (1996). The Moral Foundation of Life, pg. 189]

SILENCING THE MARTYRS

“Lord, open the King of England’s eyes” was the last sermon preached by William Tyndale. The motivation for this particular blog can attributed to two sources: my wife Laura, who is reading through Fox’s Book of Martyrs and my dissertation research which is in the field of hermeneutics. One might ask what one has to do with the other. By the end of this blog it is my hope that you will experience an epiphany of sorts. I hope that some things, which may be acknowledged in your daily observations of church life but not quite digested, will become somewhat less foggy as a result of what you read here.

William Tyndale was a reformation ‘giant’ among giant reformers. He was an English reformer as well as a bible translator. Tyndale graduated from Oxford in 1515, having studied the Scriptures in Greek and Hebrew. It was his lifelong goal to translate the Scripture into English. In a refutation with a clergyman who believed that only clergymen can rightly understand the Scriptures, Tyndale said, “If God spare my life, ere many years, I will cause a boy that driveth the plough to know more of the Scripture than thou dost.” It is remarkably obvious to even the most casual reader of church history that churchmen like Tyndale had a burning passion for their cause. They believed in their mission with every fiber of their being. Tyndale fled to Germany where he successfully translated and smuggled fifteen thousand copies of his English translations from Germany into England between the years 1525 and 1530. In May of 1535, Tyndale was arrested and imprisoned near Brussels. On October 6, 1536, William Tyndale was strangled to death and burned at the stake. His final words were, “Lord, open the King of England’s eyes.”

For what did William Tyndale die? Was his death necessary? Did Tyndale’s death actually mean anything? Or was it a tragic waste of human life? Did Tyndale die for a cause in a state of extreme ignorance and naivety? Jacques Derrida, the most prominent scholar of the new “literary philosophers” believes that “the mind may be a ‘mirror of nature,’ but what it reflects is ultimately not nature but its own capacities.” Nietzsche held that, in the absence of a Creator, it was up to human being to impose meaning and order on the world.” Since all views of the world, according to these philosophers, involve self-projections, reality in any objective sense does not exist and if it does, these projections preclude any possibility of knowing it. There is no “other” because the “other” is always part and parcel the result of our own projection. Hence, metaphysics dies a slow agonizing death under the rubric of agnosticism. What does this mean for truth? What are the implications for Scripture? Moreover, what does this mean to the martyrs of years gone by who defended and died for truth, most especially, that truth divinely revealed to us in Scripture? According Rob Bell’s (leading pastor in the emergent church) wife, Kristin, agnosticism is a virtue to be embraced when it comes to understanding and knowing the biblical text: “Now I have no idea what most of it [the Bible] means. And yet I feel like life is big again – like life used to be black and white, and now it’s in color.” [DeYoung & Kluck: Why Were Not Emergent, pg. 70]

Imagine that! William Tyndale is strangled to death and burned at the stake so that non-clergy may have access to the content and teachings of sacred Scripture only to have Kristin Bell say, no thank you. We are better off without it! If you give us this bible and force us to understand it, we will be in bondage to a black and white, right and wrong world. That is a nice gesture, Rev. Tyndale, but we much more prefer our liberating agnosticism which gives our world a variety of color.

If it is true that the Author, along with God, has died, and meaning is whatever the reader wants it to be, then William Tyndale and a host of other martyrs died in vain. If it is true that truth is unobtainable and that deriving meaning from the biblical text is beyond our grasp, then the very notion of translating the biblical text into any language becomes a fruitless waste of time. Certainly such a project would not be worth dying for. Tyndale said, “I perceived how that it was impossible to establish the lay people in any truth except the Scripture were plainly laid before their eyes in their mother tongue.” Apparently for Tyndale, establishing people in the truth of Scripture was a burning passion. Hence, this cause was so great for him that he lived and died for it.



The best way of silencing martyrs of years past and of eliminating the possibility of martyrdom in the future is to remove any cause worthy of “death” from the picture. That is to say, make everything negotiable or flexible. Take away truth and you take away the rock upon which martyrs die. Deconstructionism, also known as postmodernism does this very thing. It has slowly crept into the evangelical church over the last decade or two. It has pounded its fist on the table arguing that relationships are all that matter, and that doctrine is not only “not important” but that it gets in the way of the very thing that is: relationships. It severs relationships, splits entire denominations, and has led to the useless death of many good Christians. This ideology has turned up the heat as of late in the form of the emergent church which seems to ravel in ignorance of the biblical text. Moreover, many in the emergent camp vilify and denigrate anyone or anything that implies there is a fixed meaning in the biblical text that is actually discoverable. That is to say that the emergent idea mocks the very notion that one can obtain a working knowledge and understanding of biblical truth because truth, in the first place does not actually exist, and in the second place, even if it did, the best anyone can do is project their own ideas of truth onto the text as they see fit.

Where does this leave men like William Tyndale, John Wycliffe, Martin Luther, John Calvin, and other great truth reformers. The reformation was in fact, a hermeneutical revolution. The governing principle of the entire movement was Sola Scriptura! To these men, Scripture alone was the container and discloser of truth and that to disclose truth really mattered. It mattered to the biblical authors, it matter to Christ, it matter to the reformers, and it matters today. Without intending to do so, perhaps, the postmodern Christian (so-called), with one single sentence has brought to nothing the life and blood of thousands and millions of Christians the world over. Such a contention should be met with equal force, I submit, by those who have been enlightened by the Holy Spirit, and who have taken up the cause of biblical truth and hermeneutics in an age when the crisis of truth in hermeneutics threatens to collapse society as we know it. “And I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded because of their testimony of Jesus and because of the word of God..” (Rev. 20:4)

Pressing Into the Kingdom of God - Jonathan Edwards

By pressing into the kingdom of God is denoted a breaking through
opposition and difficulties. There is in the expression a plain intimation of difficulty. If there were no opposition, but the way was all clear and open, there would be no need of pressing to get along. They therefore that are pressing into the kingdom of God, go on with such engagedness, that they break through the difficulties that are in their way. They are so set for salvation, that those things by which others are discouraged, and stopped,and turned back, do not stop them, but they press through them.

Persons ought to be so resolved for heaven, that if by any means they can obtain, they will obtain. Whether those means be difficult or easy, cross or agreeable, if they are requisite means of salvation, they should be complied with. When any thing is presented to be done, the question should not be, Is it easy or hard? is it agreeable to my carnal inclinations or interest, or against them? But is it a required means of my obtaining an interest in Jesus Christ, and eternal salvation? Thus the apostle, Php. 3:11. “If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead.” He tells us there in the context what difficulties he broke through, that he suffered the loss of all things, and was willingly made conformable even to Christ’s death, though that was attended with such extreme torment and ignominy.

He that is pressing into the kingdom of God, commonly finds many things
in the way that are against the grain; but he is not stopped by the cross that lies before him, but takes it up, and carries it. Suppose there be something incumbent on him to do, that is cross to his natural temper, and irksome to him on that account; suppose something that he cannot do without
suffering in his estate, or that he apprehends will look odd and strange in
the eyes of others, and expose him to ridicule and reproach, or any thing
that will offend a neighbour, and get his ill-will, or something that will be very cross to his own carnal appetite — he will press through such
difficulties. Every thing that is found to be a weight that hinders him in
running this race he casts from him, though it be a weight of gold or pearls; yea, if it be a right hand or foot that offends him, he will cut them off, and will not stick at plucking out a right eye with his own hands. These things are insuperable difficulties to those who are not thoroughly engaged in seeking their salvation; they are stumbling-blocks that they never get over. But it is not so with him that presses into the kingdom of God. Those things (before he was thoroughly roused from his security) about which he was wont to have long parleyings and disputings with his own conscience — employing carnal reason to invent arguments and pleas of excuse — he now sticks at no longer; he has done with this endless disputing and reasoning, and presses violently through all difficulties. Let what will be in the way, heaven is what he must and will obtain, not if he can without difficulty, but if it be possible. He meets with temptation: the devil is often whispering in his ear, setting allurements before him, magnifying the difficulties of the work he is engaged in, telling him that they are insuperable, and that he can never conquer them, and trying all ways in the world to discourage him; but still he presses forward. God has given and maintains such an earnest spirit for heaven, that the devil cannot stop him in his course; he is not at leisure to lend an ear to what he has to say.

Remembering the Reformer - John Calvin

The Life of a Christian Man [Calvins Institutes: 3.6.5

5. I insist not that the life of the Christian shall breathe nothing but the perfect Gospel, though this is to be desired, and ought to be attempted. I insist not so strictly on evangelical perfection, as to refuse to acknowledge as a Christian any man who has not attained it. In this way all would be excluded from the Church, since there is no man who is not far removed from this perfection, while many, who have made but little progress, would be undeservedly rejected. What then? Let us set this before our eye as the end at which we ought constantly to aim. Let it be regarded as the goal towards which we are to run. For you cannot divide the matter with God, undertaking part of what his word enjoins, and omitting part at pleasure. For, in the first place, God uniformly recommends integrity as the principal part of his worship, meaning by integrity real singleness of mind, devoid of gloss and fiction, and to this is opposed a double mind; as if it had been said, that the spiritual commencement of a good life is when the internal affections are sincerely devoted to God, in the cultivation of holiness and justice. But seeing that, in this earthly prison of the body, no man is supplied with strength sufficient to hasten in his course with due alacrity, while the greater number are so oppressed with weakness, that hesitating, and halting, and even crawling on the ground, they make little progress, let every one of us go as far as his humble ability enables him, and prosecute the journey once begun. No one will travel so badly as not daily to make some degree of progress. This, therefore, let us never cease to do, that we may daily advance in the way of the Lord; and let us not despair because of the slender measure of success. How little soever the success may correspond with our wish, our labour is not lost when to-day is better than yesterday, provided with true singleness of mind we keep our aim, and aspire to the goal, not speaking flattering things to ourselves, nor indulging our vices, but making it our constant endeavour to become better, until we attain to goodness itself. If during the whole course of our life we seek and follow, we shall at length attain it, when relieved from the infirmity of flesh we are admitted to full fellowship with God.


Calvin, J. (1997). Institutes of the Christian religion. Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.

Are We There Yet? Part II

To continue with the list of vices that Paul warned Timothy would serve as an indication that we are living in the last days, I pick up where I left of:


Men will be without self-control. The Greek word is AKRATES and it means, without self-control, dissolute; unable to govern one’s appetites; without command over oneself. The idea suggests that a person is unable to possess of their appetite, their proclivities, and their own self. A famous golfer comes to mind that seemingly was not able to control his own appetite for women who were not his wife.

Men will be brutal. The Greek word is ANEMEROS and it means untamed. The comparison is with the wild beasts of the field who are vicious, without conscious or discernment or compassion. The false teachers have no fear of God whatsoever and no regard for the damage they do to men’s souls with their pernicious teachings. Are we there yet?

Men will be haters of good. The Greek word is APHILAGATHOS and it means a lack of generous interest in the public good, without interest in the public good. Here Paul seems to use a satirical sketch of persons who are actually the opposite of public expectations.

Men will be treacherous. The Greek word is PRODOTES and it means traitor, betrayer. What does it mean to betray someone? It means to violate a person’s trust and confidence. Our society does this all the time. Any time a person enters into a contract or covenant with another and then changes their mind, they are behaving treacherously with the other person. Some people do this intentionally from the outset. Their treachery is calculated and deliberate and even premeditated. Others simply don’t place the same value in covenant making and as soon as there is a good enough reason, the covenant is abandoned. This behavior litters American Politics. Self-interest supersedes all else. In fact, treachery is one of the most selfish acts humans engage in. Let us love as Christ loves. His love nailed Him to a cross in unspeakable suffering. The minute love costs us anything whatsoever, we find an alternative path that is more convenient and one that does not involve self-sacrifice in the slightest.

Men will be reckless. The Greek word is PROPETES. This word literally means falling down or forward. The idea is one of recklessness, rash, thoughtless. We should never rush to judgment, but always consider the facts before taking action. Paul is saying that men will not give the same weight to the discipline of thinking and that judgment will suffer. Men will behave recklessly.

Men will be conceited. The Greek word is TUPHOO and it means becloud, delude. The idea is that one will have a deluded understanding and estimation of their own self- importance or significance. It likely means mentally ill in 1 Tim. 6:4 which I think is kind of humerous in a way. Are we there yet?

Men will be lovers of pleasure. The Greek word is PHILEDONOS and it means a particular or specific love for pleasure. The idea is one who is given over to a fondness for pleasure. And in this sense they are said to love pleasure more than they love God. Whatever brings them pleasure becomes more important to them than God. In fact, loving God is no longer viewed as being an act that pleases or brings pleasure.

Finally, men will have a form of godliness. The Greek word for form is MORPHOSIS and it means that state of being formally structured, embodiment, formulation, form. Philo used this language to refer to a semblance of piety. There is, among these men, a real outward form of what appears to be true religion. The Greek word for godliness is EUSEBEIA and it means piety, reverence, loyalty exhibited toward parents or deity, fear of God. Here it means to be devout only in appearance. The idea is that one follows external routines that would typically be expected in those who actually are devoted to God, but indeed their heart is actually not seeking God at all. The glaring truth is that these people are not external to the Church. They are actually members of the visible body of Christ. By all appearances they look like they are a valid part of the Christian community. In fact, they are greater enemies of the faith than those who are clearly not participating in the body. For these possess deceptive powers that those outside the body do not typically have at their disposal. A wolf is not so dangerous as long as you can see his fangs. But nothing is quite as dangerous as the wolf that pants and whines as if he wants affection when what he is really after is blood.

One of the more fascinating features of this text of Scripture is the number of hapax legomena that appear. A hapax legomenon is a word that appears only once in the Greek NT.

Are we there yet? It seems clear that these behaviors in men have marked the last days since the time of Timothy. They are visible markers of false teachers and believers and serve as warning signs to those who are legitimate members of the body of Christ. We should react to them accordingly. Not only this, they also serve as a list of vices that we as Christians should always be aware of. These behaviors constantly war against our own souls, tempting us to behave autonomously, selfishly, in subtle or even open rebellion against our God. May God grant us His mercy and grace by providing us with the Spirit who will shape us and mold us with God’s word into the image of Christ He has called us to be.

People LIVE what they believe: EVERYTHING else is just noise!