Christian Apologetics Research Articles

The open secret: a new vision for natural theology

Acknowledgments. 1 Theology: Introducing an Approach. is an Indeterminate Concept. Theology is an Empirical Discipline. A Christian Theology Concerns the Christian God. A Theology is Incarnational, not Dualist. Resonance, Not Proof: Theology and Empirical Fit. Beyond Sense-Making: The Good, the True, and the Beautiful. Part I: The Human Quest for the Transcendent: The Context for Theology:. 2 The Persistence of the Transcendent. Theology and the Transcendent. The Triggers of Transcendent Experiences. The Transcendent and Religion. 3 Thinking About the Transcendent: Three Recent Examples. Iris Murdoch: The Transcendent and the Sublime. Roy Bhaskar: The Intimation of Meta-Reality. John Dewey: The Curious Plausibility of the Transcendent. 4 Accessing the Transcendent: Strategies and Practices. Ascending to the Transcendent from the Transcendent Through Withdrawing From Nature to Find the Transcendent Within Oneself. Discerning the Transcendent in 5 Discernment and the Psychology of Perception. Perception is Brain-Based. Perception Involves Dynamic Mental Structures. Perception is Egocentric and Enactive. Perception Pays Attention to Significance. Perception Can Be Modulated by Motivation and Affect. Human Perception and Theology. Conclusion to Part I. Part II: The Foundations of Theology: Ground-Clearing and Rediscovery:. 6 The Open Secret: The Ambiguity of The Mystery of the Kingdom: Jesus of Nazareth and the Realm. The Levels of Nature: The Johannine I Am Sayings. Gerard Manley Hopkins on Seeing 7 A Dead End? Enlightenment Approaches to Theology. The Enlightenment and its Theologies: Historical Reflections. The Multiple Translations and Interpretations of the Book of Nature. The Flawed Psychological Assumptions of the Enlightenment. The Barth--Brunner Controversy (1934) and Human Perception. Enlightenment Styles of Theology: Concluding Criticisms. 8 A Christian Approach to Theology. On Seeing Glory: The Prologue to John's Gospel. A Biblical Example: The Call of Samuel. The Christian Tradition as a Framework for Theology. Theology and a Self-Disclosing God. Theology and an Analogy Between God and the Creation. Theology and the Image of God. Theology and the Economy of Salvation. Theology and the Incarnation. Conclusion to Part II. Part III: Truth, Beauty, and Goodness: An agenda for a Renewed Theology:. 9 Truth, Beauty, and Goodness: Expanding the Vision for Theology. 10 Theology and Truth. Resonance, Not Proof: Theology and Sense-Making. The Big Picture, Not the Gaps: Theology and Observation of the World. Theology, Counterintuitive Thinking, and Anthropic Phenomena. Theology and Mathematics: A Natural Way of Representing Reality. Truth, Theology and Other Religious Traditions. On Retrieving the Richness of Truth. Truth and a Theology of the Imagination. 11 Theology and Beauty. Recovering the Place of Beauty in Theology. The Neglect of Beauty: The Deconversion of John Ruskin. Hugh Millar on the Aesthetic Deficiencies of Sense-Making. John Ruskin and the Representation of The Beauty of Theoretical Representations of Beauty, Awe, and the Aesthetic Engagement with Aesthetics and the Seeing of Beauty. Beauty, Theology, and Christian Apologetics. 12 Theology and Goodness. The Moral Vision of Reality. Theology and Law. The Eternal Return of Law. The Moral Ambivalence of The Knowability of Goodness in The Discernment of Goodness: The Euthyphro Dilemma. Conclusion to Part III. Conclusion. Index

The Other Bishop Berkeley: An Exercise in Reenchantment by Costica Bradatan

232 can be a dense tangle of assertion and rebuttal. Especially appealing is the simultaneous attentiveness to literary and philosophical topics, for example, Mr. Cope’s insight about ‘‘Woolston’s commitment to eighteenth-century literarycritical and aesthetic ideals’’ and Mr. Venturo’s framework of the beast fable for understanding Bridoul’s School. A gentle chide: Mr. Cope opposes an ‘‘acute concern for identity issues found in gender studies’’ to the study of Augustan religion in the Preface. Certainly it is the case that much study of gender has overlooked the importance of religion , but we also cannot ignore the work that has been done—and needs to continue—on gender and or within religious writings. It is arguable, for example , that an interest in women writers such as Mary Astell has increased our collective knowledge of eighteenth-century religion. A full understanding of the rhetorical tactics deployed in these debates would involve some study of the subtle role of gender. Notwithstanding this minor point, this collection is excellent . Laura M. Stevens University of Tulsa COSTICA BRADATAN. The Other Bishop Berkeley: An Exercise in Reenchantment . New York: Fordham, 2006. Pp. x ⫹ 227. $55. The George Berkeley whom we have all grown to know and love in histories of philosophy is a critic of abstractions who ridicules believers in the mystical existence of things beyond our perception . He insists that common sense requires that we limit our claims to what we actually see, and that means thinking of things in the world simply in terms of regular patterns in what we experience . Of course, we experience only our ideas, but that in no way threatens our ability to say that we daily confront the real world. His New Theory of Vision (1709) and Principles of Human Knowledge (1710) are thus reminders of just how solidly he is a man whose feet are firmly on the ground. But then there are Berkeley’s other, troubling works—writings that embarrass hardcore commentators as much as Newton’s fascination with numerology and alchemy. Berkeley’s fixation on nature as a language, his invocation of Neoplatonic and hermetic sources, and his insistence on tar water as a panacea that links all things physical and spiritual seem to have little connection to the enchanting clarity of his early insights. In spending so much time thinking about vision and the intricacies of knowledge, Berkeley seems a visionary himself, swept up in the gnosis of idealism and carried off by a longing for a paradise not of this world (except perhaps in Bermuda). Mr. Bradatan draws our attention to this other Bishop Berkeley. The Bishop ’s attempt to establish a college in America and his later writings— especially Alciphron (1732) and Siris (1744)—are made intelligible by contextualizing them in utopian thinking, Christian apologetics, and Platonism. Steeped in the tradition of Plato, Hermes Trismegistos, Plotinus, and Ficino, this reenchanted Berkeley finds the key for the elixir of life and moral salvation in doctrines that portray all things as expressions in the book of nature and links in the great chain of being. Even the early Berkeley invokes such themes when he describes how divine archetypes are models for human knowledge. But in the current account, the Principles and the Dialogues between Hylas 233 and Philonous (1713) are overshadowed by the ‘‘unavoidable’’ triumph in Siris of esoteric wisdom, the Christian ‘‘mystical alchemy’’ of tar water, and the Neoplatonic subordination of matter. Berkeley is considered in contexts with which he is seldom associated. Chapters highlight his subversive literary procedures and rhetorical techniques , the resonance of his visuallanguage doctrine with the medieval tradition of the Book of the World, the alchemical background of Siris, the role of Christian apologetics in Alciphron, the eschatological and utopian character of Berkeley’s Bermuda project, and (most puzzlingly) how the Cathar characterization of matter as the source of evil helps in explaining Berkeley’s immaterialism . It is this last theme that raises questions about the underlying assumptions of the whole book, because unlike the Cathars, Berkeley does not think of matter and the natural world as the source of evil. Rather, for Berkeley, thinking that matter exists apart from what we perceive is the source of...

Alvin Plantinga and Christian Apologetics – By Keith A. Mascord

Alvin Plantinga and Christian Apologetics – By Keith A. Mascord

A Sense of History and Apologetics in a Hindu Context

Apologetic discourses will have to be contextual if they are to be meaningful. The communication of the historical Jesus in a Hindu context stands to benefit from bearing in mind the Hindu sense of history. With this in view, the article delineates a Hindu sense of time/history and outlines how it has been confronted by the modern understanding of time. Highlighting the tensions between a cyclic and a linear sense of time and between history and myth, this article brings out the challenges that the Hindu worldview presents for Christian apologetics.

Is Jesus my Superhero?

This paper considers an implicit trend in youth ministry to present Jesus as the archetypal superhero and asks if this is a valid and a helpful approach. The paper examines the relationship between the biblical category of hero and the contemporary notion of superhero and a broader appreciation of the use of myth for communicating Christian apologetics as seen in Lewis and Tolkien. The starting point for the paper is that an arguable starting point for the creation of Superman is in the epic character of Hercules and the biblical hero Samson. Through an examination of biblical and other Near East material the paper calls for a deeper and more nuanced appreciation of the relevance of modern western myth in the task of communicating theological narratives and concepts.

Scholia to Sterne’s Sermons

96 been fully legitimated and regularized within the scholarly community in which they participated. . . . In the wake of the exegetical crisis engendered by historicism and philology that had been so dramatically displayed in the public debate between Whiston and Collins, they understood more acutely than ever before the immense value of rabbinic learning for Christian self-understanding .’’ This is a very fine book, valuable for what it tells us about Christian apologetics and scholarship during the period , but also because it demonstrates to those of us who concentrate on scriblerian literature just how little we know of the actual interests of several primary targets; alas, in the hands of a satirist, the life of a scholar is rarely a happy one. Melvyn New University of Florida SCHOLIA TO STERNE’S SERMONS In ‘‘The Levite and his concubine’’ Sterne writes: ‘‘For my own part, I fear, I should never so find the way: let me be wise and religious—but let me be M A N’’ (Sermons, 4:170). The Florida edition cites a parallel passage in ASJ, ‘‘The Conquest’’ (6:124), and also the observation by Leopold Damrosch that while Sterne seems at times to embrace ‘‘a potential skepticism very similar to Hume’s, he ultimately resists . . .’’ (God’s Plots and Man’s Stories, 1985, p. 298). There is, however, a possible echo of Hume in the sermon passage that both Damrosch and the Florida editor overlooked. The note should be expanded to include what might be the only intimation available, however faint, that Sterne had some knowledge of Hume’s writings before meeting him in Paris in 1762. 170.7–14 (add at end of present note.) Significantly enough, Sterne seems to echo in lines 7–9, Hume’s Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1739), 1.6: ‘‘Be a philosopher; but, amidst all your philosophy, be still a man’’ (ed. Anthony Flew [La Salle, Illinois, Open Court, 1988], 56). Geoffrey Vincent Newton University of Exeter SCHOLIA TO A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY In the chapter ‘‘The Remise Door. Calais,’’ Yorick quotes from the Apocryphal book of Esdras and directs the reader to his source, as noted by the Florida editors, who quote 2 Esdras 10: 31: ‘‘What aileth thee? and why art thou so disquieted? and why is thine understanding troubled, and the thoughts of thine heart?’’ Several verses following are worth quoting as well, since they help to elucidate a context for Yorick’s ‘‘sentimental journey’’ and they should be added to the present note. 23.15–16 (add at end of present note.) Esdras’s disquieting vision is then several times extended and amplified: ‘‘Thou sawest a woman mourning, and thou begannest to comfort her . . . . And behold, thou sawest her likeness, and because she mourned for her son, thou begannest to comfort her . . . . For now the most High seeth that thou art grieved unfeignedly, and sufferest from thy whole heart for her, so hath he shewed thee the brightness of her glory, and the ...

Book Review: New Dictionary of Christian Apologetics

Book Review: New Dictionary of Christian Apologetics

Confessing the Faith in the Intellectual Context

AbstractIn this paper an account is offered of a project concerning the prolegomena to Christian apologetics. Two historical soundings are discussed that, between them, raise the questions of the starting-point and content of Christian apologetics. The primary Christian confession and the identity of the confessors are considered, and the challenges to apologetics from within and without the church are noted. The presuppositions concerning transcendence, immanence, and history are discussed, as are the traditional starting-points of reason, faith, and experience. The conclusion is that Christian apologetics will take the form of a reasoned eclecticism that sets out from, and is compatible with, God's saving act in Christ.

Ethik als Ausweis christlicher Identität bei Justin Martyr

Abstract Ethics have Iong been a neglected matter in schalarship on early Christian apologetics. However, a closer Iook at the composition of the texts of Justin Martyr teaches us how important the references to Christi an ethics actually are in the run of his argument. The external reason forthat lies in the fact that Justin wants to prove the legal proceedings against the Christians in the Roman empire to be unjust and absurd. The inner reason is that he interprets Christianity as »true philosophy«: in view of the understanding of »philosophy~< in his pagan environment, this brings about fundamental ethical implications. Both his apologies and the dialogue with Trypho show how Justin employs ethical convictions as a criterio for Christian identity and as a trait of difference between Christianity and Paganism on the one hand, and between Christianity and Judaism on the other.

Some North African Turning Points in Christian Apologetics

Apologetics take their place beside miracles of healing and courage in the face of persecution as an important means of furthering the early Christian mission. In the first two centuries AD, when the popular perception was that Christianity was closely allied to Judaism, the argument from Old Testament prophecy was important. In the third century, however, as the Church gained ground among the educated classes in east and west, the emphasis changed to an attempt to demonstrate the superiority of Christianity over its pagan rivals as a philosophy with a more convincing understanding of the role of providence. Apologists in the north African tradition, Tertullian, Minucius Felix, Arnobius and Lactantius, all played their part in this process. The prophecies of the Old Testament had to be confirmed by other prophecies, notably the Sibylline oracles and the sayings of Hermes Trismegistus. Finally, in the fourth century, many north Africans who, like Augustine for ten years, adhered to Manichaean Christianity relied wholly on these authorities, rejecting the Old Testament altogether.

Chesterton on Higher Education and Vice Versa

English writer G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) was an essayist, novelist, poet, and literary and social critic who was well known for his aphorisms, paradoxes, and Christian apologetics. Though his work was highly regarded in his lifetime, he went into a period of eclipse in the second half of the 20th century. Now he is being rediscovered by a new generation, but this resurgence of interest is largely outside of the academy. Most universities have not returned any Chesterton works to their curricula. This is partly understandable in that Chesterton was a consistent critic of most modern ideas regarding science, psychology, art, economics, philosophy, theology, and even higher education itself. However, Chesterton is valuable not only for the striking and far-reaching counter-arguments he offers to modern theories, but for the clarity and completeness of his thinking. This paper argues that a broad and deep reading of Chesterton is exactly what higher education needs, especially Christian higher education.

Apologetic Discourse and the Scribal Tradition: Evidence of the Influence of Apologetic Interests on the Text of the Canonical Gospels

Apologetic Discourse and the Scribal Tradition: Evidence of the Influence of Apologetic Interests on the Text of the Canonical Gospels, by Wayne C. Kannaday. SBL TextCritical Studies 5. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature; Leiden: Brill, 2004. Pp. xiii + 274. $130,00/$39.95. ISBN 9004130853/1589831012. That the early Christians were engaged textual wars with pagan critics is by now well known. What has scarcely been explored, until now, is the degree to which early Christian scribes participated these wars the process of reproducing-copyingearly Christian texts. This study succeeds filling this gap. Kannaday's study, a revision of his doctoral dissertation under the of Bart D. Ehrman, is a compelling one: he argues, quite conclusively to my mind, scribes engaged the work of transmitting the canonical Gospels did indeed, some cases, modify their exemplars under the influence of apologetic (p. 57). To build his case for apologetics (p. 139), Kannaday focuses his attention on the textual traditions of the NT Gospels and proceeds successive chapters to show how the precise arguments made by pagan critics and Christian apologists can be found variant readings throughout the Gospels. The opening chapter introduces the various subfields that will be united the volume: the field of NT textual criticism and the field of early Christian apologetics. Specialists either of these fields will find little here, but including this material (which may well be a remnant of its once-dissertation status) allows the volume to reach a much broader audience. Kannaday offers brief introductions to the works of pagan critics (e.g., Pliny, Tacitus, Seutonius, Lucian, Apuleius, Marcus Cornelius Pronto, Celsus, Porphyry) and early Christian apologists (e.g., Quadratus, Aristides, Justin Martyr, Tatian, Athenagoras, Theophilus, Melito, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Tertullian, and Minucius Felix). Particularly helpful this first chapter is Kannaday's overview of the directions taken the field of NT textual criticism: while the seeds of this new direction were sown a century ago by the works of J. Rendel Harris and others, Kannaday is right to highlight how the work of his mentor, Bart Ehrman, (and others) has sought to redirect the focus away from establishing the original text of the NT and toward exploring how the transmission of the NT intersected with the historical dynamics of the second, third, and fourth centuries. Chapter 2 (Antiquity, Harmony, and Factual Consistency) brings the reader to the evidence itself. In a pattern that will repeat itself for the next three chapters, Kannaday begins by highlighting a particular theme the controversies between Christians and their pagan opponents and then demonstrates how the theme is apparent the textual traditions themselves. Here the subject is the pagan attacks on the apparent novelty (i.e., newness) of Christianity and their criticisms of the inconsistencies Christian Scriptures. Kannaday shows how Christian apologists and scribes worked to prove the antiquity of the Christian faith and modified the Scriptures so as to make them more consistent. Many of the variants Kannaday treats here and elsewhere, of course, have been studied by other NT textual critics, but Kannaday offers plausible, and often highly compelling, explanations for the cause of the variants. For example, his lengthy treatment of a variant at Mark 1:2 (Does the text read in Isaiah the prophet or in the prophets?), Kannaday suggests that, although scribes may simply have wished to omit errors-and hence preferred the more general reading in the prophets since what follows is not simply a prophetic passage from Isaiah-there may well have been an additional motivation at work: it is reasonable to posit apologetic interests as the momentum behind this scribal alteration. Certainly the effect of the change served apologetic interests, as the correction buttressed a vulnerable spot the text that had already been exploited by an antagonist [i. …

Messianism among Jews and Christians: Twelve Biblical and Historical Studies (review)

Reviewed by: Messianism among Jews and Christians: Twelve Biblical and Historical Studies Wayne A. Meeks William Horbury . Messianism among Jews and Christians: Twelve Biblical and Historical Studies. London and New York: T and T Clark, 2003. Pp. ix + 417. Early in the Gospel according to John, a vivid scene portrays John the Baptist interrogated by emissaries from "the Pharisees" in Jerusalem. "Who are you?" the latter ask. "I am not the Anointed One," he replies. "What then, are you Elijah?" "I am not." "Are you the Prophet?" "No." "Who are you then, that we may answer those who sent us?" (John 1.20-22). Almost uniquely among early Christian documents, this scene suggests the wide diversity of speculation among some Jews in the early Roman period about special messengers who might be sent by God at "the end of days." Reminders of that diversity of eschatological hope fit the rhetorical strategy of the Fourth Evangelist, but most Christian apologetics for the following nineteen centuries would follow a simpler construction, first clearly laid out in the two-volume work comprising the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles. Its central theme may be summed up in a syllogism: The scriptures of Israel predict the coming of a single Messiah whose expected character and actions those scriptures delineate. The story of Jesus fits that prophecy perfectly. Therefore all sensible and honest Jews should have recognized him as the Messiah. Although the origins of this scheme in Christian apologetics are evident, some parts of it have continued to influence the common picture of Judaism in antiquity, even in nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholarship. The notion has persisted that some kind of Jewish "orthodoxy" existed, despite evidence for considerable variety in belief and practice, and that expectation of a Messiah was an important element in that orthodoxy. In recent decades the ground has shifted. Modern scholarship has tended more and more to emphasize the diversity of Jewish eschatological beliefs in the early centuries of the common era and, moreover, to suggest that such beliefs were less central to the lives of most Jews than Christians have assumed. While the identity of the early followers of Jesus was centered on the confession of his identity as "Messiah," the identity of most Jews was centered on their practical appropriation of the Torah—variously construed by various groups—and on their general allegiance to their ethnic communities in towns of the Diaspora. William Horbury, professor of Jewish and Early Christian studies at the University of Cambridge, has been laboring to reverse the current trend. He [End Page 336] argues that "messianism" is a central and defining theme in Judaism throughout the period "roughly from Haggai to Bar Kokhba," that it arises directly from themes in the Hebrew Bible, and that it is a feature of the "great stream of biblical interpretation" that can be discerned already in the translations of the Septuagint and then in the apocryphal and pseudepigraphical writings, in writings of the Jewish Greek-speaking Diaspora, in early as well as late rabbinic literature, and of course in early Christian documents. The twelve essays included here were originally published between 1981 and 1998. In 1998 Horbury also published a book drawing together their substance under the general theme "Jewish Messianism and the Cult of Christ."1 Because Horbury has updated the essays for the new publication, to some extent taking account of criticisms of the earlier book, the present volume represents the latest stage in an ongoing argument—if "argument" is the right word, for in fact there is surprisingly little argument in the book. Rather, there are repeated assertions of the main theses, juxtaposed without very clear logical connection with a treasure of mostly quite interesting evidence from an unusually broad spectrum of sources. Some of the scholars who interpret the evidence differently are mentioned, but only rarely does Horbury engage them in pertinent debate. There is very much that is valuable in the essays. Horbury is a keen reader of texts, and he has read from an assortment of literatures that for most of us are separated by the boundaries of academic disciplines or linguistic competence. His sources range across Greek...

"Conscience the Ground of Consciousness": The Moral Epistemology of Coleridge's Aids to Reflection

It will hardly come as a shock to the readers of this journal that Kant has been the philosophical gatekeeper of all those who have come after him and that the scale of his achievement was recognized even by his immediate peers and the generation which followed them.1 It may be rather more surprising that Samuel Taylor Coleridge belongs among the most interesting members of that second generation, comparable to Fichte, Schelling, Schopenhauer, and Hegel in the originality of his response—not because of the Biographia Literaria (1817), the book for which he is now most famous, but because of the stream of work that followed the publication of the revised Friend (1818). Though the Collected Coleridge project has made available a mass of previously unpublished material, which in turn has stimulated a great deal of interesting research, one must still agree with Elinor Shaffer's recent assessment that "we have no accurate or adequate conception of the late Coleridge from 1819 to his death in 1834."2 Shaffer's range of dates is not accidental, indicating that the revised [End Page 455] Friend (and, more specifically, the break with Schelling) marks the beginning of the "late" Coleridge. In the "Essays on Method" that were a part of the revised Friend (1818) Coleridge effectively freed himself of Schelling's Idealism, which is so notoriously crucial to philosophical chapters of the Biographia, by moving away from the latter's metaphysics of the Absolute towards a metaphysics grounded in an ongoing and in principle unending exploration of "inquiry" itself.3 Though it did not appear until 1825, Aids to Reflection was the first book published by Coleridge following the revised Friend. It was his most popular and influential work during the nineteenth century, but it has been read almost exclusively in strictly theological terms. The implicit contention that the "middle" Coleridge of the Biographia was philosophical and that the "late," post-Biographia Coleridge turned to theology as a refuge from the Biographia's failure was ratified by Thomas McFarland's classic argument concerning the late Coleridge's "trinitarian resolution" to the problems that the middle Coleridge could not solve.4 One pernicious effect of this view (which is more nuanced than I have presented it here) is that until fairly recently it was still possible to describe Aids to Reflection as simply "an effort to argue away the terrifying import of The Ancient Mariner, which would lead us, since it jars our moral feelings, to hatred of God."5 I argue in this essay that although Aids to Reflection employs theological vocabulary it is more than—indeed, cannot rightly be considered—an exercise in dogmatic Christian apologetics. More specifically, I will show that the book includes a vigorous engagement with Kant's moral philosophy not primarily by undercutting the metaphysical basis of the critical project's architectonic, though this is an ancillary effect, but by putting pressure on the model of judgment that underlies Kantian ethics. The importance of Kant to Coleridge's intellectual development is not a secret. Coleridge himself describes the way Kant "took possession of me as [End Page 456] with a giant's hand," though he confesses he "could never believe it was possible for him to have meant no more by his Noumenon, or THING IN ITSELF, than his mere words express" and that he even "entertained doubts likewise, whether in his own mind, he even laid all the stress, which he appears to do on the moral postulates."6 Kant's impact on Coleridge was primarily due to his status as a logician and a moral philosopher. Thus Coleridge contends in a letter of 1820 that "Kant will demonstrate to you, that this [Christian] Faith is ... grounded on Postulates authorized & substantiated solely by the Moral Being,"7 and adds in another letter five years later that he...

Joan of Arc and Sacrificial Authorship by Ann W. Astell (review)

Reviews Ann w. astell, Joan ofArc and SacrificialAuthorship. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003. Pp. xvi, 226. isbn: 0-268-03259-9 (cloth), $55. isbn: 0—268-03260-2 (paper), $25. Astell's probing inquiry into modern literary constructions ofJoan ofArc builds its case upon, as she puts it, 'the poet's ability to depart from historical reality, to transform its matter in the process ofimitating it, and thus to give the world itself new, mythic models and ideals.' Astell's book offers a broadly researched and profoundly considered analysis ofpost-Enlightenment portrayals ofJoan ofArc in vernacular literature ranging from poetry to biography to drama to film, from Schiller to Sackville-West to Shaw to Dreyer. In essence, Astell demonstrates that Joan of Arc evolves mythically from the 'historical record' ofa living saint ofFrench liberation to a mythic symbol ofsuffering and sacrifice for universal humanity. Innovatively applying René Girard's theory of sacred violence and scapegoating for the ritual reunification of conflicted communities, Astell narrates the mythic constructions ofJoan's sacrificial agency in modern contexts of ideological change, political turmoil and artistic inspiration. Astell argues that every new construction of Joan beyond the fifteenth-century historical record is 'inescapably autobiographical' and reflects the voices ofboth its own historical era and the private world of its author. Astell directly and fairly addresses her own voice as author as well—a Catholic scholar and lifelong devotee of St. Joan. At various points, Astell objects toJoan's 'de-Christianization' by modern humanist thinkers. However, she goes on to reflect lucidly upon the ways in which Joan has been truly a 'catholic' rather than a 'Catholic' saint, i.e. a source of universal inspiration. Astell's own religious assertion (drawn from Girard), that the authentic ethos ofChristianity is 'antimythic' and 'antisacrificial' attempts to substantiate her argument that modern literary portrayals ofJoan as a sacrificial victim are mythic lies that decidedly swerve from the 'historical record.' Astell's Christian apologetics are insufficiently refined and considered, however, to meet the complex demands posed by Christian history's vast range of diverse voices, including the so-called 'historical record' ofJoan ofArc in particular. As a result, a rocky tension besets Astell's book between, on the one hand, what the author identifies as the 'historical record' ofJoan ofArc, and on the other, later literary constructions of Joan. Astell does not address directly why she considers Joan's fifteenth-century trial documents to be 'historical record' exempt from any literary criticism themselves. John H. Arnold's Inquisition and Power has recently shown that medieval trial texts embody distinctive constructions ofboth their authors ARTHURIANA I4.2 (2004) 83 84ARTHURIANA and subjects in genres of Latin writing shaped by legally formal, mythic, and discursive traditions. To explore further the unresolved implications about historical record versus artistic construction in Astell's book, one might consider how the author herselfat times imaginatively constructs the life of Joan of Arc while presenting it to her reader as 'historical record.' Astell would benefit from conscious reflection on her role in speculating upon and imaginatively constructing the historical Joan. For example, no forensic evidence exists at this time that precisely determines the abuses Joan experienced in prison at the hands of her hostile English guards and brutal living conditions. Astell asserts, however, as a matter ofhistorical record, that Joan underwent a rape 'attempt' in her condemnation trial. Whether Joan underwent a rape attempt, multiple rape attempts, an actual rape, multiple rapes, or indeed whatever degree or type of degradation, including what courts today refer to as 'sexual assault' versus 'rape,' remains a question that can only be speculated upon by historians on the basis ofsparse trial testimonies. This type of interpretive error unfortunately pervades Astell's analysis that straightforwardly contrasts historical reality with artistic deviations from the record. Identifying her intellectual perspective as that of a Catholic scholar, however, it may be Astell's wish in her 'rape attempt' assertion to dismiss certain offensive literary constructions ofJoan as a prostitute and to affirm Joan's virginity as lifelong, thus upholding Joan's canonization as a 'virgin' saint by the Catholic Church. If this is the case, Astell overlooks the extensive medieval discussion...

Reformed epistemology and Christian apologetics

It is a widely held viewpoint in Christian apologetics that in addition to defending Christian theism against objections (negative apologetics), apologists should also present arguments in support of the truth of theism and Christianity (positive apologetics). In contemporary philosophy of religion, the Reformed epistemology movement has often been criticized on the grounds that it falls considerably short of satisfying the positive side of this two-tiered approach to Christian apologetics. Reformed epistemology is said to constitute or entail an inadequate apologetic methodology since it rejects positive apologetics or at least favours negative over positive apologetics. In this paper I argue that this common objection fails on two grounds. First, while the arguments of Reformed epistemology are relevant and useful to apologetics, neither Reformed epistemology nor its epistemological project should be identified with a distinct school or method of apologetics. Secondly, while certain claims of Reformed epistemology seem to imply a rejection of positive apologetics, or at least a preference for negative or positive apologetics, I argue that no such conclusion follows. In fact, although unimpressed by particular versions of natural theology and positive apologetics, Reformed epistemologists have provided criticisms of each that can constructively shape future approaches to the apologetic employment of natural theology and Christian evidences.

Is Cornelius Van Til’s Apologetic Method Christian, or Merely Theistic?

This paper compares J. W. Montgomery’s evidentialist approach to apologetics to Cornelius Van Til’s presuppositional approach. My position is that Van Til’s system is only theistic; it may support the existence of ‘God,’ but it does not prove the existence of the Christian God. In fact, Van Til’s method could just as easily be used by a Muslim apologist to assert the validity of Islam. This is because Van Til refuses to allow objective evidence to have any place in Christian apologetics. Because of this, he offers the non-theist no way of judging between the truth claims of Christianity and other religions. In fact, the most powerful weapon in the Christian apologist’s arsenal, the resurrection of Christ, cannot be used in an effective manner. This is in direct contradiction to the New Testament itself, where the resurrection is often used evidentially to validate the Christian faith.

The Weakness and Strength of Christianity

That divine and human wisdom do not necessarily coincide, is an ancient idea, whose validity, in the Christian world at any rate, may not depend solely on the rhetorical talent of its first proponent, St Paul. Similarly, the reversal of apparently self-evident ideas – for example, that strength is superior to weakness, or that fame is preferable to obscurity – has not just been part of the stock-in-trade of Christian apologetics over the centuries, but seems to be woven into the fundamental experience of humanity. ‘Greatness’ comes eventually to be revealed as megalomania, and ‘fame’, as the Chinese sage, Chuang Tzu, has it, ‘is the beginning of disgrace’.

La position des apologistes conciliateurs

Christian apologetics in the second half of the 18th Century, far from being rigid as has been claimed, was influenced by history and a fervent desire to adapt to the modern world. Protestants like Formey appealed to reasonable Christianity, rejecting asceticism and mysticism, while Catholics like abbé Yvon, both apologist and Encyclopaedist, represent another category. Others moved the threshhold of ideological toleration by recognising the philosophical contributions of Locke and Montesquieu (abbé Baudisson, Essai sur l'union du christianisme avec la philosophie, 1787). Finally another thread, even more open to new ideas, claimed, by a sort of backhanded legitimation without any theological reference, that the Christian religion was the best way to achieve happiness in this world (père Lamourette). On the eve of the Revolution, the opposition was mainly between Christian conciliators and radical apologists.

Thomas Cooper and Christian Apologetics in Victorian Britain

Journal Article Thomas Cooper and Christian Apologetics in Victorian Britain Get access Timothy Larsen Timothy Larsen 1Tyndale Seminary, Toronto Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of Victorian Culture, Volume 5, Issue 2, January 2000, Pages 239–259, https://doi.org/10.3366/jvc.2000.5.2.239 Published: 01 January 2000