Posts Tagged with Theology-Religion

Religion Reboot?

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This is a bit of my episode with Drs. Win Corduan and Nace Howell on Mormonism and world religions. Hear the whole episode below. Enjoy.

Penjammin: After describing Mormonism as a religion (so in terms of, less its history but more its theory, I guess you might say) — [There's] its idea of the supernatural. Is it monotheistic or henotheistic or whatever? And then also there's Is it a salvation-oriented religion? And if so, what does salvation entail? (Saved to what? from what?) We talked about that. And then also what's the mechanism? to put crudely. What's the how-to to get right with heaven? … there was some a matter of works involved in some way. So, what does that sound most similar to, for you guys?

Nace: I would say it compares most closely to Islam, as far as world religions are concerned. The reason I would say that it closely compares to it is because of the number of things that we can compare it to. You can compare it to Christianity because it says the word Jesus Christ in its name. But I would say that there are more across-the-board similarities to Islam.

Penjammin: Like what?

Nace: So I wrote about seven of these similarities in my book, and I find that there's more like maybe 25 or 30 similarities. And . . .

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Penjammin grew up in a labyrinthine cavern. Later he ran with the wolves and lived every moment marinated in the sweet scent of his game, until pirates landed and… See About for full story, and get his eletter at penjams.com/subscribe.

Apples and Oranges

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This is a bit of my episode with Dr. Nace Howell on the nature of Mormonism. Hear the whole episode below. Enjoy.

Penjammin: So if you don't mind, can we go through some of these points here? Because like you said, this little tweet here is remarkably typical. It's almost a feat, an accomplishment.

Nace: Absolutely. Yep.

. . .

Penjammin: Okay. He starts off as a lifelong member [of the LDS], so he's got some some cred there. But he also claims to be a Christian. [By the way, that's] lifelong member of the “Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints”. To me, that's also PR.

Nace: Absolutely. Yeah.

Penjammin: Just like, “No, no, no, no, we're not a different church. This is what you should call us.” It reminds me of the trans talk. “Use my pronouns; affirm my ideology with your own language.” And so “Don't call us Mormons. Call us this.” Eh. I want to talk how I want to talk, but we'll be respectful, you know?

Okay. Here's the first bullet point. (It's got, like, a lot of points.) But the first one is that “Jesus Christ is the only begotten Son of God, born of the Virgin Mary.” And he cites Luke. Okay, so what's wrong with that, Nace?

Nace: Yeah. So I would say, like in general, all of these are based on a fundamentally different Jesus. So, what's going on here is you know, they'll say that Jesus existed before the creation, and he was with the father before the creation of the world, according to, say, that second one there, John 1:1-3. And they'll say that he's the only way. They'll say, like Acts 4:12, he's the only way to salvation. They'll say that he rose from the dead. Like I said, these are typical arguments. But the problem is that this sounds a lot like what Christians believe, but it is fundamentally different. And that fundamental difference is because the Mormon Jesus is a created being. So when they're talking about their Jesus, he is fundamentally different from the Jesus that we know as Christians…

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Heads up: Due to a goof on my end, the audio came out in need of some help, but after much time and effort, the episode is saved! Some warble is noticeable, but it is now an enjoyable listen. *takes bow*

Penjammin grew up in a labyrinthine cavern. Later he ran with the wolves and lived every moment marinated in the sweet scent of his game, until pirates landed and… See About for full story, and get his eletter at penjams.com/subscribe.

Neighboring Faiths

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This is a bit of my episode with Dr. Win Corduan in which we talk the latest edition of his book Neighboring Faiths. Hear the whole episode below. Enjoy.

Penjammin: Oh, I have a list of things I wanted to ask you, but mostly I want to talk about your book, which is not about elves or dwarves or anything like that. Some people probably still believe in them, so maybe in a future edition. Right? [laughter] It's Neighboring faiths. Why this book, and how is it distinct from others?

Win: In the 90s, if you were looking for a book in world religions to use as a textbook in your class at a Christian college, your choice was between books that were motivated by various agendas (all religions are the same or maybe the original religion of humankind was the worship of Mother God and so forth). And having been placed in the situation by the Lord that I needed to teach world religions . . . I started to study for that to make my teaching worth while more and more and more. Then finally, I got to the point where some students were encouraging me to write that book, and I thought about it, and I approached InterVarsity press with the idea of writing a book from a Christian perspective, and they went along with that. And so I wrote the first edition, and thankfully, the Lord has blessed that. So now up to the third edition, and I don't know if there will be any more.

Win: You know, I think that as a Christian who makes no pretense of being anything else, who even prefaces his book with reflections on Christianity and world religions, I can give a fairer and more objective picture of what others believe than those who think it's all the same pudding just in different cups.

Penjammin: Yeah, yeah.

Win: I distance myself from, say, Buddhism and Hinduism. It's not my religion. I can give an objective description of both rather than looking for a nonexistent common core.

Penjammin: That's interesting because it also points out that the perspective that the religions all have this common core, that they all melt down to pretty much the same thing, that is just as much of an assumption or a presumption or a slanting bias, potentially, as anything else would be. And it seems like that's assumed to be the objective point, when really it's one other view, right?

Win: Right. It becomes almost a religion in itself. When you say that we really don't worship Jesus, but we all worship “The Real”; we just don't know it, as a Christian, I feel like I'm being shortchanged. I think most people would think the same.

Penjammin: Right. That's interesting when the “neutral” person says something like that, and then every other adherent of a religion says, “No, you got us wrong!”

Win: Yeah.

Penjammin: Like, Wait a minute. Everyone disagrees with your [analysis]? Maybe it's you.

Win: From the first edition on, from the very start, I had for each religion, the section . . .

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Penjammin grew up in a labyrinthine cavern. Later he ran with the wolves and lived every moment marinated in the sweet scent of his game, until pirates landed and… See About for full story, and get his eletter at penjams.com/subscribe.

Systematic Philosophical Theology

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This is a bit of my episode with Alex from The Protestant Libertarian Podcast in which we talk William Lane Craig's new book Systematic Philosophical Theology Vol. 1. Hear the whole episode below. Enjoy.

Penjammin: So what'd you think about this book in general? We're talking about, by the way, William Lane Craig's book just coming out with a multi-volume series of a systematic theology, and it's called Systematic Philosophical Theology. So for those listening in, there's a little courtesy heads up for you. What did you think about it?

Alex: I'm familiar with William Lane Craig's work. I have a lot of respect for him. I think he's a brilliant intellectual. There are some issues of course [that] I haven't agreed with him on in the past, but that's okay because I respect his output. And I think that in general he's on the right track. And I'm also not really a systematic theology guy. My background is in biblical studies, which, as William Lane Craig talks about in the book – I know he has a section where he quotes Ben Witherington and I think Brevard Childs, when he talks about how there's a difference between I guess, the theology that emerges out of biblical studies and then trying to systematize that theology into this, this kind of orderly structure, which is what he's trying to do with his book. So I obviously I do read a little bit of systematic theology for the podcast, and I have an interest in certain issues, and I'll read what the systematics think, but I'm not an expert on that by any stretch of the imagination. But it seems, at least with the Prolegomenon the introductory section of the book, he is laying out this kind of grand picture for a way of rationally systemizing theology based on kind of strict philosophical reasoning. And one of the things that I really appreciate about what he incorporates in the Prolegomena is the idea that this has to conform to what we find in the Scripture.

Alex: And he actually has this really great passage, which maybe we'll talk about in a little bit, where he discusses how actually our reading of the Bible has to be the starting point for any systematic theology. And this has always been one of my problems with systematic theology is that, as I've read some of this, it almost seems like the systematic theologians, they're born into a particular tradition, whether it's the Lutheran tradition or the reformed tradition or whatever tradition, the Catholic tradition. And instead of using the Bible to critique their tradition, you know, the kind of reading their tradition through the lens of the Bible, what they do is they read the Bible through the lens of their tradition. So you wind up having a Lutheran reading of the Bible or a reformed reading of the Bible. And I just think that as a Protestant who believes in the ultimate authority of Scripture, that should be our balance for us. Our starting point should be the Scripture, and we should work forward from there. And that's exactly what William Lane Craig argues in this book. And so I think that this might give him a huge advantage as a systematic theologian in this series. And so it'll be really interesting to see where he takes it in the long run. But knowing his work, I think he's going to do a great job with it.

Penjammin grew up in a labyrinthine cavern. Later he ran with the wolves and lived every moment marinated in the sweet scent of his game, until pirates landed and… See About for full story, and get his eletter at penjams.com/subscribe.