Shows About Nothing

A student repeated back to me a point I was trying to make in class the other day. He said, "So a well told story is one that's told the way God tells the gospel." To which I could only reply, "Yes! I couldn't have said it any better.

God's story begins with creation (setting), then moves to fall (conflict), redemption (climax), and consummation (resolution). This is the Christian metanarrative or grand story that gives our personal stories ultimate meaning, hope, and a goal for which to strive.

Jean Francois Lyotard famously put it, "Postmodernism is skepticism toward all metanarratives." Post modern stories tend to remove redemption and resolution in favor of distress and despair. There is no hope of improvement for the characters, justice in the face of evil, or redemption through repentance. For instance, the characters in Seinfeld end up in prison discussing the same things they discussed in Jerry's apartment. Hannibal Lector and the Talented Mister Ripley live on. Justice is not done and that's the point: Life is ultimately pointless. As Seinfeld admits a show can be about nothing. Nothing is working together for a greater good. There is no providence, just a demonic anti-providence. See Thomas Hibbs Shows About Nothing: Nihilism in Popular Culture

Yes there are tragedies in the Bible like the Levite and his concubine but they are set in the meta-narrative of the gospel comedy where sad things come untrue.

Neither Teen Nor Old-timer in Christ

In The Rise and Fall of the American Teenager Thomas Hine documents how advertisers purposely try to play up the differences between the generations in order to sell them their own unique identity. This is the main reason why the "teenager" was identified as a new social class in the mid twentieth century and the "emerging adult" more recently.

When churches have a hipster service and a traditional service are we not segregating the generations as well? If Paul were writing to the church in America today, would he point out that their is neither teen nor old-timer in Christ?

We have been part of a small group for years where our kids have mixed with people the age of their great-grandparents. I have been so grateful for this influence and shudder to think of teens, emerging adults, and other social groups who are isolated in their own "taste communities" and are never exposed to the richness of older and younger generations.

Let's desegregate, shall we?

Whose Story Is This?

Last night the fam and I watched Mirror Mirror, and I found it delightful over all.

There were problems like (spoiler alert) the king doing a wedding. Not only was there no minister but the king pronounced the couple man and wife "By the authority invested in me ... by myself." Yikes! That's a recipe for tyranny worse than that of the wicked stepmother. Douglas Wilson recently quipped that a despot was anyone who didn't recognize any authority above himself.

There were also the modern slang updates such as the queen referring to Snow as "high maintenance."

At the outset I was very uneasy that this would be a postmodern retelling as the film opened with the queen narrating. She in fact called it "her story." But in the end good triumphed and the queen confessed that this was Snow White's story after all.

That is really the question in the culture war. Whose story is this? Is it the story of Jesus the Messiah, Allah, World Soul, or the secular elites? Since it is Christ's story we are called to play our role with all our might and leave the plot twists, climax, and conclusion to him.

The Problem with the Sovereign Self

Sometimes post modernity is an amplification of modernity. For instance, both take for granted the sovereignty of the self. In modernity the self could know all. In post modernity, the self has to be more modest. Reality is too slippery, so let it go slip-slidin'-away. It's a beautiful destination right?

Right, except there are no standards for beauty except what the individual likes. So this leads me to the sovereign self of post modernity. The self is sovereign not because it can fit the universe into its brain but because it can remake the universe in its own image. That is as long as it doesn't run roughshod over someone else's sovereign self. So we live for pleasure in splendid isolation. Not too comforting is it?

Christianity has a unique opportunity to say to the modernist that we can reliably but not exhaustively know the world, and, to the post-modernist, that skepticism is not the final answer. This is because we are created by the Logos, in the image of the Logos, and thus our reason and senses were made to know the world. So we can say yes to certainty AND humility. Reason is made to know the world of God's natural and special revelation through the senses. Thus, the self is not sovereign but is its true self under God in Christ.

Kurt Cameron's Mouth

As one who agrees with most of Lutheran theology, I simply adore this:

Bottum's Up or the Forgotten Reformation

Joseph Bottum has reviewed Pascal Bruckner's Perpetual Euphoria: On the Duty to Be Happy in the recent Books and Culture (March/April 2011). Here's Bruckner:

From existentialism to deconstructionsim, all of modern thought can be reduced to a mechanical denunciation of the West, emphasizing the latter's hypcrysy, violence, and abomination.... The whole world hates us and we deserve it. That is what most Europeans think.

Bottum comments:

Much of Europe--much of America, as well--has simply lost its nerve, unable to maintain the delicate balance of self-critique and self-confidence that was the gift of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the Enlightenment. 

The Middle Ages was not perfect and it knew it. The medievals knew enough however to accept the claims of Christ that all things hold together in him. The Renaissance was diverse, but every humanist agreed on going ad fontes (to the sources). The Enlightenment agreed on one thing--the church was out. They chanted aude sapere (dare to know) to each other, but it was Eden all over again: "Hath God said ... ? ... He knows that in the day that you eat, you will be like him knowing both good and evil."

Dare to know the difference between good and evil for yourself. Protagorus returned with a vengeance. The familiar homo mensura (man the measure) was shouted from the rooftops. Man is the measure of all things "visible and invisible." Dare to be your own god. That's confidence, but terribly misplaced. Where's the self-critique? What about semper reformanda (always reforming)? Who came up with that? Oh ya! That pesky little movement called the Reformation. Self confidence? Who spoke truth to power? Wasn't it Luther who told Charles V and the papal nuncio:

Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures or by clear reason (for I do not trust either in the pope or in councils alone, since it is well known that they have often erred and contradicted themselves), I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and will not recant anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. May God help me. Amen

Always reforming? Why not? The Word of God must have its say no matter how imperfectly we read it.  How could Bottum have forgotten that? The Enlightenment idols of Darwinism and rationalism die hard and slow, but they are dying.

Bruckner's Perpetual Euphoria takes a shot at our happiness entitlement program. He thinks it's about the  right to pursue happiness rather than demanding to have it. That's not bad, and we should even give two cheers for Mr. Bottum. But there's so much more offered by the one who came so that we might have life, and "have it more abundantly" (John 10:10). 

Trends Change, Truth Changes

Kenda Creasy Dean, author of Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers is Telling the American Church, recently appeared on Mars Hill Audio Journal and gave a great insight into our culture. I paraphrase:

Our consumer culture breeds attitudes of low commitment. This is because the consumer fix is a quick fix. When it runs out we go get something else.

Could this be why so many of our churches are revolving doors? What's even more alarming is when the gospel is packaged in the cheap gleam of top-ten lists, movie clips, trendy beats, and lousy drama. Whatever happened to the "permanent things:" preaching, sacraments, confessions, creeds, psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs? David Wells once quipped, "What you win them with, is what you win them to." Trends change but truth changes.

Plot and Character

Poetics by Aristotle
My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Aristotle says that the exercise of any capacity brings pleasure. He defines poetry as language made pleasurable in verse form. Aristotle distinguishes the poetic genres of epic poetry (like Homer's Illiad and Odyssey) and tragedy (like the plays of Aeschylus and Sophocles) and comedy (like the plays of Aristophanes). Aristotle only mentions lyric poetry, which is what we normally think of as poetry (like a sonnet). When Aristotle is talking about poetics, we should think of stories in verse form like Shakespeare's plays.

Aristotle explains that we enjoy poetics because of their imitation (mimesis) of reality. Thus Aristotle doesn't believe that our enjoyment of good poetry is purely subjective or only a matter of taste. The better the imitation of reality and the more pleasurable the language, the more our enjoyment will increase. I suppose that the subjective element is our own version of reality, which dictates whether we agree with the author's vision of reality. While Aristotle might have conceded this, he focuses on standards for imitation and pleasurable language.

Comedy is "an imitation of inferior people.... The laughable is an error or disgrace that does not involve pain or destruction" (3.4). When we laugh we recognize something ridiculous in others. Hopefully we can do this when we recognize our own silliness, but Aristotle doesn't "go there." Epic poetry, on the other hand, "is an imitation in verse of admirable people," like the hero Odysseus. "Tragedy is an imitation of an action that is admirable, complete and possesses magnitude ... effecting through pity and fear the purification (katharsis) of such emotion" (4.1). Thus we come to one of the main differences between Aristotle and Plato.

Plato criticized the poets in Book Ten of Republic, because he considered their work a mere representation of reality, which also stirred up the emotions. Plato considered reason the highest human faculty, whose job it was to tame the passions of the heart and discipline the appetites of the body. Thus poets were guilty of creating escapist fiction. Conversely, in his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle wrote:

For example, fear, confidence, desire, anger, pity and in general pleasure and distress can be experienced in greater or lesser degree, and in both cases wrongly. To feel them at the right time, in response to the right things, with regard to the right people, for the right reason and in the right way--that is the mean and optimum, which is the characteristic of virtue (1106b.18-23; cited in Introduction xxxviii).

According to Aristotle, the emotions weren't necessarily inferior to reason. They merely needed to be exercised and trained, just like reason. This happened during katharsis or "purification" by experiencing emotion through tragic stories. Thus if tragedies could release and train the emotions in a positive way, we need quality stories with good plots. A good plot imitates reality accurately and presents characters that we can recognize.

A defective plot was one in which "the sequence of episodes is neither necessary nor probable.... they draw out the plot beyond its potential" (5.6). We tend not to love books or movies whose plots or actions are not believable or inaccurate. But we must also take into account the genre of the story. We wouldn't expect the driver in "Driving Miss Daisy" to suddenly put on a wizard's hat and wave a staff to avoid a car accident, but such actions in a fantasy story would not be unrealistic.

Good plots, for Aristotle, create astonishment through reversal, recognition, and suffering. Aristotle cites Sophocles' "Oedipus Rex," as an example. At the end of the play, when understanding dawns and the great king falls, the reader is amazed. A modern example would be the movie "The Sixth Sense," in which a reversal occurs at the end of the action. We then “recognize” what’s really going on and are surprised to find that we have been watching the movie the wrong way from the beginning.

The goal of character is goodness, appropriateness, likeness, and consistency. This means that characters, once established, must not act out of character. Concerning goodness, Aristotle says, "The character is good if the choice is good" (8.1). In the movie “Shadowlands,” the following words are put into the mouth of C. S. Lewis: "Aristotle’s solution was simple and radical, plot is character. Forget psychology; forget the insides of men’s heads. Judge them by their actions." This insight into Aristotle is in sharp contrast to our post-modern movies, which often try to reconstruct villains by creating sympathy for them.

From a Christian point of view, sympathy for a bad character is sinister, unless it creates a desire to redeem the bad character. This happens in Lord of the Rings with Gollum, when we are given a peek into his background. As Frodo begins the "taming of Smeagol [Gollum]," we begin to feel pity for him Gollum and hope that he can change. There are examples in the Bible like Jacob's brothers, but the norm in Scripture is bad guys are bad guys, and they will be judged by their actions. God will call us all to account, and good plots do the same, rather than making excuses for badness or trying to create sympathy toward sin.

Also contrary to Hollywood is Aristotle's dictum "no unnecessary badness" (8.1). The gratuitous, the explicit, and the shocking pass for realism today instead of the true, the good, and the beautiful. There are endless examples of this in recent movies and books. Aristotle provides some from the ancient world, and they are quite tame in comparison to our own. An example of a terrible villain who isn't “unnecessarily badæ is Kevin Bacon's character in "The River Wild." I think he says about two cuss words in the whole movie and there is little to no sexual innuendo. Oh, to read and watch without feeling the need afterwards to take a bath!

Aristotle also discusses poetic style:

The most important quality in diction is clarity, provided there is no loss of dignity. The clearest diction is that based on current words; but that lacks dignity. By contrast, diction is distinguished and out of the ordinary when it makes use of exotic expressions -- by which I mean non-standard words, metaphors, lengthening, and anything contrary to current usage.... So what is needed is some kind of mixture of these two things: one of them will make the diction out of the ordinary and avoid a loss of dignity ... while current usage will contribute clarity (9.4).

Aristotle gives plenty of examples to illustrate his points and Homer is praised beyond the rest as "he excels everyone in diction and reasoning" (10.2). Constructing quality plots is not easy but Aristotle advises: "nature itself teaches people to choose what is appropriate to it" (10.3). Nature, not artifice, is the standard for Aristotle.

Aristotle also addressed strict imitation vs. poetic license: "Impossibilities should be referred to poetic effect, or idealization of the truth, or opinion. With regard to poetic effect, a plausible impossibility is preferable to what is implausible but possible.... It is probable that improbable things will happen" (11.3). When we think of or experience an improbability, we might have the basis for an interesting plot. I'm afraid that many moviemakers today start with special effects they want to create, and a screenplay is concocted artificially to present it. A return to Aristotle would mean a much needed return to plot and character.

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What We Should Already Know

G. K. Chesterton wrote:

The cinema boasts of being a substitute for the tavern, but I think it a very bad substitute. I think so quite apart from the question of fermented liquor. Nobody enjoys cinema more than I, but to enjoy them a man has only to look and not even to listen and in a tavern he has to talk. Occasionally, I admit, he has to fight; but he never need move at the movies (What I Saw in America, 102).

Current research supports the common sense notion that reading, learning languages, and social interaction improves memory function and prevents cognitive decline. It also shows that watching TV reduces memory function and contributes to decline in both the young and old ("Maintaing Your Mental Edge," Lecture 29 in "Lifelong Health: Achieving Optimum Well-Being at Any Age," The Great Courses [The Teaching Company, 2010]).

Why don't we make common sense a little more common? Then perhaps we won't spend millions funding research to demonstrate what we should already know. We can knock off early and go to the tavern. Maybe instead of a fist fight, a verbal brawl, in Christian love of course, might do us some good. Even taking in the occasional movie might prove a good field for battle.

Nominal Nominations

After seeing "The King's Speech" last night I would like to go ahead with my Oscar nominations:


Movie of the Year:

• "The Kings Speech" (compelling)
• "Nanny McPhee Returns" (Inspirational)
• "True Grit" (Grisled Realism, except the rattle snakes)
• "Despicable Me" (Redemptive)
• "Inception" (Dreamy)

Best Actor:

• The young girl in "True Grit" 
• Colin Firth "The Kings Speech" 

Best Supporting Actor:

• Geoffrey Rush "The Kings Speech" 
• Jeff Bridges "True Grit"

Special Effects:

• "Inception"
• "Voyage of the Dawn Treader"
• "Tron Legacy"

Screen Play:

• "Inception"
• "The Kings Speech"

Worst Hack Job:

• "Gulliver's Travels"
• "The Actual Nominations of the Academy"

Hollywood Meets Holy Wood

There's a great article by Steven Boyer called "Narnia Invaded" over at Touchstone on the problem with the first two Narnia movies. Find it here.

Here are a few comments of my own. In Hollywood and the culture at large there can be no such thing as what Anthony Esolen calls "blessed hierarchies." When Hollywood tries to translate C. S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia it significantly warps the message and changes the characters. Instead a young man ready to lead, Peter is little better than Edmund at the beginning of the cinematic version of The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. 

If you didn't know the book, I think the movie might lead you to believe that Edmund was first a victim of Peter and then the witch, instead of a kid who needed a new heart. The Peter of the movies is more conflicted than noble, and is a far cry from the chivalric knight of Lewis' imagination. 

Boyer points out that the movies have so far perverted Lewis' message to modernity into the message of modernity. Instead of the ennobling effects of duty to God-given authority, we have Edmund learning to not "do as he was told" and saving the day at the end of The Lion. Instead of his reign in Narnia teaching him to be a better leader in this world, Peter picks fights at the beginning of Prince Caspian and even with Prince Caspian, once he gets back to Narnia. The High King is anything but noble through most of the movies, because, as we post moderns know, kings by definition are self-centered tyrants. So Peter must learn to not be so kingly in the movies.

Aslan also becomes more like the god of Deism than the untame Lion who ruled at the top of the "blessed hierarchy." Mr. Beaver says, "Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you." When will we learn that we need royal priests and servant kings who know how to take orders from the King of Kings in the government, church, and families?

I'm still hoping against all odds for better from Friday's release of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. When Hollywood meets Holy Wood the result usually leaves a lot to be desired. We shall see....

Playing Marco Polo in the Shallow End

A recent article in Christianity Today called "The Leavers: Young Doubters Exit the Church" by Drew Dyck stirred up some reflection on the state of American teenagers and another group called "emerging adults." Dyck cited the work of Christian Smith who wrote Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers. Smith documents the shallowness of the Christianity we have passed on to teens.

He characterizes the worldview of American teens as "Moralistic, therapeutic, Deism." Most teens believe that the purpose of life is to be "nice." Nice people go to heaven and "not nice" people don't. So it's moral. God created us, but he doesn't get in the way. He's there if you need him, like a therapist. Other than that, he doesn't interfere. So it's deistic.

Smith found that even kids from conservative Bible-believing churches were practically deists. I would add that if we don't show our kids the difference between Christianity and other worldviews, and why it matters, we leave them in the shallows. When deep problems begin to sink their faith, it's no wonder that they climb into someone else's boat. Dyck's article cites statistics that this is happening right now in an unprecedented way.

Smith's other work Souls in Transition: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Emerging Adults documents a prolonged adolescence, where young people continue to experiment morally and vocationally into their late twenties.  God may be there at the end of life, but if not, at least one has made a lot of money and been successful.

For most emerging adults, life is about having a good time and settling down "someday" with a beautiful spouse, having a couple of kids, and parties surrounded by lots of toys and friends. There's anxiety about navigating all the transitions and not messing up the future. They don't put down roots in traditional communities because they are constantly adjusting to changes.

Smith's research found that most emerging adults who attend church have no idea what their church teaches or that there's supposed to be some sort of commitment to Christ. Many go to mega-churches where nobody knows them. According to this group, dubbed "selective adherents" by Smith, church is a good thing to do on a Sunday morning as long as you don't have other plans.

Smith shows that emerging adults have little conviction about anything, even politics, because they confess to being trapped in their own subjectivity. Post modernism has made them aware that the outside world is socially constructed by the individual in his own time and place. People believe what they believe because that is how they were raised. Belief makes it true for the person, and there is no objective, shared reality to test truth claims. Live and let live for pleasure.

As a church, we've got to be more deliberate about worldview teaching and living. Christian redemption of the individual and the world for God's glory is the driving force of the Bible and redemptive history. We can know this because God has revealed it objectively and created us to know it subjectively. Our senses and our souls can reliably know the world because God made them for that purpose. Either we get into that epistemological stream or we're still playing "Marco Polo" in the shallow end.

Dyck appears to be critical of "seeker sensitive" services and "low commitment Bible Studies," of evangelical mega-churches. But in the end he says that there's nothing wrong with them as long as we also teach the faithful with more depth. I would suggest that Dyck has fallen prey to the post modern here, because everything he cited in his article militates against the low commitment approach with non-believers. This doesn't seem to jive with Jesus, who made his listeners count the cost up front. David Wells has pointed out, "What you win them with is what you win them to."

Now enter "When Scripture Becomes An A-La-Carte Menu" by James Tonkowich in By Faith. Tonkowich summarizes Smith's six categories of emerging adults:

1. Committed Traditionalists represent approximately 15 percent of emerging adults. They “embrace a strong religious faith, whose beliefs they can reasonably well articulate and which they actively practice.”
2. Selective Adherents (30%) believe and perform certain aspects of their religious tradition, but neglect or ignore others.” The attitude of so-called “cafeteria Catholics” is now widespread across evangelical and Reformed churches.
3. The Spiritually Open (15%) while not committed to any specific religious faith “are nevertheless receptive to or at least mildly interested in some spiritual or religious matters.”
4. The Religiously Indifferent (25%) don’t oppose religion, but don’t have any interest either.
5. The Religiously Disconnected (5%) admitted to no opinions about religion because they know nothing about, and are not connected in any way, with religious bodies or friends.
6. The Irreligious (10%) are openly hostile to all religion.

Tonkowich proceeds to a discussion of how to reach "emerging adults" who have been catechized by the culture into moral relativism. The moral relativism can be seen in the following examples cited by Tonkowich:

A man who attends a mega-church with his live-in fiancé explained to Smith why he felt comfortable ignoring his church’s teaching about pre-marital sex: “I think in my head it’s all personal opinion, whether you’re going to believe it or choose to like it and listen to it.”

“There is [a] self indulgent attitude,” ... “that says, ‘My life is difficult. I have lots of brokenness. I know it’s not right, but … .’”

Ruling Elder Bob Baldwin at GraceDC commented that when it comes to biblical sexuality, “If the rules don’t fit their cultural expectations, they mentally find a way around them, ignoring what they know to be true scripturally. What surprises me most is how carefully they have thought through their work-arounds.”

Smith documents the same pattern with the story of a young woman he interviewed: “In the middle of explaining that for religious reasons she does not believe in cohabitation before marriage, a young evangelical woman, who is devoted to gospel missionary work overseas, interrupted herself with this observation, ‘I don’t know. I think everyone is different so I don’t think [cohabitation before marriage] would work for me, but it could work for someone else.’”

Tonkowich's argues that we must reach emerging adults, especially those afflicted with moral relativism, through relationships. Tonkowich writes:

One pastor has noticed, “There are feelings of guilt, insecurity, and shame—especially shame. The problem for them is that they don’t know why these feelings exist.” In fact, these feelings hint at an authority beyond the self.

Romans 1:18-32 teaches that there are truths about life and God that we cannot not know (to use author J. Budziszewski’s phrase). We may pretend we don’t know them. We may suppress them. We may bury them under layers of carefully constructed philosophical skepticism, but all to no avail. From time to time these truths bubble uncomfortably to the surface.

Ministry to emerging adults should create opportunities founded on strong, honest relationships to explore the truths that will not be ignored, truths that explain the guilt and shame that will not go away. Apologetics begins not with correcting bad thinking, but with listening and helping to dig up the uncomfortable facts of life that, by the grace of God, will not go away.

Tonkowich collects much anecdotal evidence that opening up about struggles invites people to share honestly. Emerging adults have been programmed to "never let them see you sweat" and always exude competence. But when they see us modeling repentance then perhaps the deep end won't seem so scary.

I would add that when it comes to raising and educating children and young adults it begins with  correcting sinful ways and thinking with Bible, Bible, Bible, coupled with love deeds and modeling repentance. Constant excursions to the deep end with plenty of swimming, diving, splash fights, dunking, and laughter will build a strong Christian culture in the home that will serve them well into the future. As one pastor has noted, they will be able to "do more harm to the world than the world will be able to do to them."

Fore Golfers

A Little More Nonsense Now and Again

A Little Nonsense Now and Then

Infectious Hampsters!

To Change the World!

Alexis De Tocqueville said:

Americans have used their liberty to combat the individuality born of equality, and they have won.

This is old-fashioned populism. The problem with this, according to James Davison Hunter in To Change the World (click on the title), is that populism tends to ignore high culture and leave it untransformed. High cultural forms like academia, media, and government build the plausibility structures that makes the gospel seem implausible to moderns.

Hunter says that we will not change the world until we assume a "faithful presence" in the centers of high culture.

The Spirit of Modernity

Modernism broke up the medieval synthesis and tried to hold civilization together with science and statecraft. Postmodernity reduces modernism to individual autonomy, and is thus not only a critique of modernity but a salvaging of its spirit.

Scandalizing the Scandal

The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind by Mark A. Noll

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Puritans who settled Massachusetts combined heart-felt devotion to Christ with a love of theology. They practiced a vigorous intellectual life centered on the Bible and embraced cutting edge science like inoculation against disease. By the time of the First Great Awakening however, this tradition had degenerated into a formal and lifeless orthodoxy. Noll argues that during the First Great Awakening evangelicals like George Whitfield tried to revive the church with biblical preaching and a theatrical style that appealed to the masses and called for an emotional response.

Whitfield unwittingly contributed to the anti-intellectualism of the time and promoted an anti-institutional Christianity that would abandon the intellectual centers of the culture. This "biblical democratism" meant that the Bible does not belong to me as part of a historical community known as the church, but it belongs to me as an individual. For most evangelicals the Bible became a book dropped from the sky for self-help purposes (97). Jonathan Edwards resisted the anti-intellectual tendencies of experience based revivalism, but evangelicals continued to abandon the life of the mind and have been paying the price in academic credibility ever since.

Noll cites creation science as exhibit A, because it fails to allow the book of nature to help us interpret the book of Scripture. Charles Hodge and B. B. Warfield were better in this regard than evangelicals who seem to think it's a virtue to abandon cutting edge scientific research to unbelievers and fight for a twenty-four hour creation days (which is not even the historical position of church fathers like St. Augustine). The abandonment of the front lines of research is one reason why evangelicals haven't developed any major research universities.

Where evangelicals did try to maintain intellectual credibility, they articulated Christian truth in the secular, rationalistic, and mechanistic language of the Enlightenment. This was a cultural accommodation that tempted the church give up the home field advantage it enjoyed during most of Western civilization. Noll calls Witherspoon, Hodge, and Warfield to account for making revelation dependent on reason for its plausibility.

In concert with the Enlightenment marginalizing Christian faith to the private sphere, Noll points out how dispensationalism, the holiness movement, and Pentecostalism compounded the scandal by putting forth a Christianity that turns the things of earth “strangely dim.” No one polishes the brass on a sinking ship, as they say. Noll reminds us that what is distinctive about American Christianity is not necessarily essential to the gospel. Thus evangelicals need to rediscover history.

Noll also points out that evangelicals have preserved the one thing that can revitalize the Christian mind--the gospel. Thus Noll is still a fan of his own tradition, and he calls evangelicals to scandalize the scandal by reentering the intellectual centers of cultural without compromising the gospel and the authorty of biblical revelation. This means reaffirming that since God is the author of both Scripture and nature the two books interpret each other as we press on. Noll also promotes a Reformation theology that embraces a comprehensive view of the world that affirms the goodness of creation and the need to redeem it with Christian action.

Since Noll published Scandal in 1994, evangelicals have continued to rediscover history and press forward with scientific research in intelligent design and the human genome project ( a la Francis Collins who doesn't seem to be a fan of Intelligent Design, :(). But much of the church growth movement continues to play to our radical individualism with its focus on self-help and personal success. Evangelical Christians still need to be challenged by Noll to scandalize the scandal.

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Amazing Beat Box Girl