Quotes for Pondering

A quick post today with some quotes I’ve been pondering.

First, from Carl Trueman’s excellent new book, The Desecration of Man, we have a thoroughgoing exploration of how a series of shifts over the centuries have fundamentally altered how we view the human person:

The old morality has not faded away. It has been overthrown in an instant. But such comprehensive change in social behavior indicates that there have to have been deep changes within the social imaginary. Now, the rapid change and violent transformation of social values may be shocking and sudden, but the underlying causes have been building for a long time. And the net result is that we now have a very different answer to the question “What is man?” than our ancestors did. The social imaginary has been completely transformed. (Kindle location 553)

The shifts have not only been intellectual, but technological:

Technology, more than anything else, has transformed the world into a place of dramatic flux and constant change. Ask me who I am and I will find it much harder to give an answer, for the only constants are those I have chosen for myself: my job, my partner, my location, my career. Yes, I have children, but I chose to have them. And even my own body now seems increasingly equivocal as a given: If I want to become a woman, why should I not choose to do so? My limits, my obligations, and my ends come down to my choice. I have to decide who I am. The “I” has been destabilized by forces beyond my control, because those limits, obligations, and ends have all themselves been destabilized. (Kindle location 781)

He specifically mentions the Methodist and pietist movements as part of the larger movement towards the internalization of the sense of self:

The rise of Methodism and Pietism, both movements with a strong experiential component, are also evidence of this inward turn toward emotion and feeling. With the church fragmented by the Reformation, the quest for religious certainty, like the quest for human identity, moved inward. The central importance of individual self-consciousness also continued in broader philosophical and cultural developments in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, for example German idealism and Romanticism. As the outer world became more fluid, the inner space became more important as a source of stability and continuity. (Kindle location 831)

The book then traces how these shifts led to the artistic class seeing their mission as one of transgression and desecration, and what that steady cultural influence has yielded after a century or so. He explores the implications for our culture’s views of both sexuality and death. In both cases, he shows how the loss of a biblical anthropology and the fallen impulse to desecration has led us to where we are today. It’s a sobering but illuminating read.

In a somewhat related vein, I came across this quote from Abigail Favale, whose work on gender and feminism is excellent.

If the man has a primary role in preserving and safeguarding the dynamic of mutual self-gift and love between the sexes, in receiving the woman as a gift—the woman has a primary role in safeguarding the gift of the child, and protecting this dynamic of love from the threat of domination.

It is telling, perhaps, that the most damaging scandals of our time reflect a violent betrayal of both of these calls: the sex scandals within the Church reveal a perverse and total betrayal of the masculine mission to resist the temptation of dehumanizing sexual conquest; and the culture-wide embrace of abortion under the guise of protecting women’s rights is a betrayal of the feminine mission to safeguard the sanctity of hidden human life.

The idea of complementary and unique “missions” for each gender makes a lot of intuitive sense to me. This leads to the conclusion that we are most scandalized when men or women sin in ways that betray their particular missions. How could it not be so? For deep down we know that a man ought to protect the vulnerable, not abuse and exploit them sexually; and that women ought to love and nurture the children they conceive.

On Writing in the Age of AI (and a Pre-Announcement)

Things have been quiet—too quiet—over here on the blog. This is a big reason why I did not want to switch to Substack and try to get paying subscribers. Whatever gifts and abilities I have, productive regularity in my writing is not one of them. And I’ve seen too many ambitious Substackers get themselves in an awkward situation with regard to failing to crank out content for their paying subscribers.

M-Dashes and the AI Temptation

The reason it’s been quiet here is—follow me closely here—I haven’t been writing very much. Now some astute readers may start to get suspicious at this point. I’ve used two sets of m-dashes in these first few paragraphs, and m-dashes are notorious indications of generative AI writing. But you know what? I love m-dashes. That’s why I quite loved reading this article, “I Love the Em Dash—Too Bad If AI Does Too.” (I found the link to it from this post from Tim Challies). I’ll admit I’ve been avoiding the m-dash for months—until reading the article and embracing my beloved punctuation friend again. Why the avoidance? Because in the back of every writer’s mind is the growing consciousness that something has changed in recent months. And what has changed? Namely that readers now read online texts with a suspicion that it was written by an artificial neural network and not a human person, and they don’t like it.

The writer’s awareness of the reader’s awareness drives the writer to avoid any indications of being artificial, even if that means changing the natural way they would normally write—which is ironic. But it makes sense when you realize that the AI models don’t have any writing ability or any style of their own, they only mimic and ape human writing with varying degrees of skill. So the programmers get the AI to write like good writers and good writers look in horror at the machine simulacra being churned out which most readers would not be able to distinguish from their own writing and the writers respond by changing the way they write to sound more human. The next step is inevitable: the programmers will teach the AI models to mimic this new, more human-style of writing, and the writers will resort to ever more extreme efforts to sound genuinely human.

As I’ve thought about this feedback loop dynamic and the profound challenge it poses to writers, I’ve concluded three things:

It will not be possible for human writers to outpace generative AI, nor for readers to reliably distinguish human from machine text.
Despite this, most readers will continue to strongly prefer human-written texts over AI texts for anything in the fields of journalism, opinion, creative non-fiction, or fiction. These are irreducibly human endeavours, and a reader rightly feels cheated and wronged when he or she discovers that a text of that nature was written by a machine.
Therefore, the only way through for all involved is to cultivate trust. Readers will gravitate towards writers and institutions that have gained their trust through a demonstrated commitment to keeping their writing genuinely human.

I don’t see any other way forward. Writers credibly accused of using generative AI to write for them ought to lose their readers’ trust. (Caveat: I think there is a legitimate place for AI in research and some of the more mechanical aspects of editing).

Sadly, the temptation to use generative AI to write more and better will be too strong for some. There will be more scandals, especially among Christian writers aspiring to greater readership, larger platforms, and more followers. My advice to writers is to tread extremely carefully and consider the realm of AI as a kind of forbidden-fruit temptation. Yes, you’ll surely gain something, but you’ll end up losing far more, even if you don’t get caught.

Related to this is growing importance of institutional stewardship. I see two factors coming together to create a severe challenge to any organization that publishes content. The first is the general decline of trust in institutions that has characterized the 21st century, a trend that was accelerated during the pandemic. The second is the temptation to pass AI-generated content as human-generated content in order to do more faster.

My most popular post of all time on this blog was a critical response to what I considered to be a grievous failure of institutional stewardship: “Yes, Jesus was Crucified with Nails (and It’s Irresponsible to Suggest Otherwise).” In that case, it was not the use of AI that was the issue but the undermining of readers’ trust in the truthfulness of the Scriptures that was the issue. Still, it was a stark reminder that trust is a precious commodity in the realm of readers, writers, and editors.

An Announcement of an Announcement

All this has been on my mind not only because I’m a freelance writer and editor, but also because of a new and exciting development in my life that will soon be public. When that happens, I’ll be sure to post an update here as well.

The Pleasures of Good Reading—My 15 Best Reads of 2025

What a delightful year of reading it has been. Despite travels for work and other responsibilities, I always found time to read (surpassing my reading goal of 52 books this year). Perhaps too much time! For me reading is like eating or sleeping—a necessity without which I shrivel up and die. I know not everyone feels that way, and that’s good. It would not be good if everyone was like me.

I’ve collected 15 of the best reads from this year (in no particular order), along with some brief thoughts from my Goodreads reviews (where I track all my reading). For longer reviews, I cut it short and put a link to the full review.

Let me take this opportunity to say thank you for reading and subscribing to my little blog.

I wish you and yours a Merry Christmas season and a Happy New Year.

Mere Christian Hermeneutics – Kevin Vanhoozer

This is a game changer, on my short list of life-changing books. I have so much to say about it, but I am trying to gather my thoughts and write something coherent about it elsewhere. For here, I will simply say that I listened to it twice and then bought a paper copy to re-read again. It answered a lot of lingering questions for me and renewed and deepened my love for the Word. Reading it was so very edifying. You get the idea. I loved it.

The Genesis of Gender – Abigail Favale

This is a very fine contribution to the growing body of work by Christian (or Christian-adjacent) women who are confidently standing up to the feminist dogma that has deceived and disappointed generations of women. Included in this list would be Mary Harrington, Louise Perry, and Erika Bachiochi.

The book is both positive and negative in its approach: positively building a vision for gender and femininity in particular from the basis of the book of Genesis; and negative in critiquing at a profound level the reigning views of secular feminist and gender theorists today. …

Full review here.

Why Liberalism Failed – Patrick Deneen

I’ve had this book on my radar for some years, but until now haven’t found the opportunity to read it. I was happy to find a copy in a library and pick it up. As a novice in the field of political theory, I feared the book would be confusing, boring, or some mix of the two, but it really wasn’t. In fact, it was very well written, with long flowing sentences that were easy to follow, sprinkled with some advanced vocabulary fitting for a distinguished professor at an elite University.

So what is this book? It is a diagnosis and critique. But not just any critique; Deneen offers a radical-to the roots-critique of liberalism as an ideology. For that is exactly what he claims it is. Born out of the myth of the autonomous individual freely choosing to form a state by way of the social contract, it was in fact a revolution in anthropology, he claims. The free market was devised to serve the telos of this new project: the emancipation of the human person, not from vice and passions, but from any unchosen external restraint or limit. …

Full review here.

A Learned Discourse on Justification – Richard Hooker

This is my first reading of Richard Hooker. Very impressive. I resonated deeply with his demeanour and approach to the topic of what divides Protestants from Roman Catholics, and the irenic way he went about clarifying those differences. He by no means blurs the differences or downplays their significance, but he does make a compelling argument about the fact that people can be truly children of God while being simultaneously mistaken on some serious doctrinal errors, not because those errors are no big deal, but because they do not directly deny the foundation of the faith.

Rather, they affirm things that undermine the foundation by necessary logical implication, but, as he points out, and as anyone who has gone back and forth with a muddle-headed person knows, not everyone has the cognitive ability to see logical inconsistencies that are one or two or four steps removed from the starting premises. …

Full Review here.

The Hidden Life of Trees – Peter Wohlleben

An enjoyable read that will re-enchant your experience of trees and forests. It demonstrates that everything Tolkien wrote about trees in The Lord of the Rings is basically true.

The Harvard Psychedelic Club – Don Lattin

Lattin tells the compelling story of four pioneering figures who shaped not only the 60s counterculture movement but also American society since then. Their lives were, on the whole, chaotic. Their relationships? Enlightened and harmonious, of course, glowing with the unity that psychedelic revelations of universal oneness has enshrined in their souls. Actually, not quite. Their relationships were fractious and troubled; all too human.

The book is well written and researched, with copious insights and quotes coming from Lattin’s own interviews with the subjects of the book. Lattin’s journalistic prose is very easy and pleasant to read. And although he puts his cards on the table in the Afterword—as a baby boomer former psychonaut still quite positive on psychedelics—I always got the sense he was playing it fair with his portrayals of people and events.

In a time when pro-psychedelic writing often has a strong bias driven by a sense of mission to advance the cause, this book was not at all like that. It helped me tremendously to understand the 60s better.

The Collected Writings of Stanley K. Fowler

Dr. Stan Fowler may not be a household name among evangelicals, but he was a faithful voice of biblical wisdom in the Canadian evangelical church and beyond for decades. This handsome set of his shorter writings makes his thought available to a whole new generation.

Some of the pieces that are decades old have an uncanny relevance today. The lack of historical roots in evangelical churches? Check. The resulting wave of interest in more historical, liturgical, and sacramental forms of worship? Check. Baptists debating ecclesiology and membership? Check. Baptists converting to Anglicanism? Check. Evangelicals converting to Eastern Orthodoxy? Check. And all of it happening fully a generation ago in the 80s, 90s, and 2000s. Fowler was on the vanguard of formulating cogent answers to these challenges, answers which remain relevant and helpful to this day.

Dr. Fowler’s work is always thoughtful, irenic, and worthwhile. I really enjoyed this collection of his shorter writings, especially his thought on sacramentalism for Baptists.

Gilead – Marilynne Robinson

Third time through, and I feel I’m starting to understand why I love this book so much and the effect it has upon me. Much of it comes down to a kind of sacramental view of Creation; or a participatory aspect to existence — that we might participate in God’s goodness in some way simply by enjoying what He has made. It teaches me to see, to look and really see what is there.

“Wherever you turn your eyes the world can shine like transfiguration. You don’t have to bring thing to it except a little willingness to see. Only, who could have the courage to see it?”

“There are two occasions when the sacred beauty of Creation becomes dazzlingly apparent, and they occur together. One is when we feel our mortal insufficiency to the world, and the other is when we feel the world’s mortal insufficiency to us.”

Click here to read my recent personal essay over at Front Porch Republic: Gilead Reveals a Gilded World.

To Gaze Upon God – Samuel G. Parkison

This book is a great achievement. It succeeds in its mission, which is to retrieve the doctrine of the beatific vision for evangelicals, and in so doing, reintroducing new generations of Protestants to the riches of their own tradition. The introduction and opening chapters do a great job situating the modern reader in terms of where we are in late modernity and how that relates to the metaphysical foundations that undergirded earlier eras of Christian thought. The book self-consciously situates itself within the ‘Great Tradition’ and calls evangelicals back to classical Trinitarian theism from the barren wilds of modernist biblicism.

Having been thus oriented, Parkison takes the reader through a number of major figures from the early church, the middle ages, and the Reformation, and explores how the church’s view of the beatific vision has evolved over the centuries. The author then attempts to synthesize the best of these views into a coherent whole that is digestible for modern readers. His distinctive contribution seems to be a more thoroughly trinitarian formulation of the beatific vision, drawing on and continuing the work of Protestant giants such as John Owen and Jonathan Edwards.

One of the book’s strengths is the affective tone, the marriage of academic and spiritual concerns. In other words, the book is edifying and, when rightly read, is sure to bring the reader to worship. That being said, it is still quite dense, and some of the middle chapters felt like a bit of a slog at times. Perseverance, however, is richly rewarded. I recommend it most heartily.

A History of the English Speaking Peoples (4 volumes) – Winston Churchill

On the one hand, I want to think it’s an achievement to have completed the four volumes of Churchill’s History of the English Speaking Peoples, but on the other hand, it took no great effort at all, such was the pull of the unfolding narrative in Winston’s characteristic voice.

One of the notable elements of Churchill’s treatment of the history is his detailed interest in the particulars of wars. There is a story told about his childhood, where his father was unconvinced that Winston was well suited for the usual aristocratic occupations. Then he came upon him with his lead soldiers, which numbered over a thousand, all lined up upon the (living room) battlefield, with infantry and cavalry divisions clearly delineated. And so it was decided: Winston would become a soldier. This childlike delight in the organization and movement of troops upon the field never left Churchill.

It is this fascination with the minutiae of troop movements which gave his historical treatment a bit of a lopsided feel. He spilled much ink tracing the marches, maneuvers, and munitions of both sides of the American Civil War, to such a degree that it was a bit comical. One feels that the author was indulging his own interest at the cost of the book’s narrative flow, but this can be forgiven.

The impression I am left with at the conclusion of volume 4 is that this is a momentous achievement of popular history, and with prose of such a quality that it must be considered a triumph of the English language.

From Bauhaus to Our House – Tom Wolfe

Similarly to The Painted Word (about modern art), Wolfe hilariously pokes the pretenses of modernist architecture. And again it is quite informative and insightful. The cataclysmic break with everything past was driven by the same revolutionary spirit that animated the radical politics of the early-mid 20th century.

Sex and the Unreal City – Anthony Esolen

While the book certainly deals with sex in a broad and philosophical way, it’s probably a lot less than a casual reader might expect from that clickbait of a title. What it really is is a loosely-connected series of essays that all revolve around the central idea of the Real, and the degree to which our current hollowed-out culture is in a futile war against it.

Mythmakers – John Hendrix

Dang. I did not expect this graphic novel to so good or so moving (especially the ending). It provides a great introduction to the biographies of Lewis and Tolkien, their fruitful but troubled friendship, and the themes of myth that guided their fictional writing.

Nuclear War – Annie Jacobsen

The style of this book was very creative – using a plausible scenario as a spine from which to educate the reader on countless aspects of nuclear weapons and nuclear war. I thought it was generally very well done; indeed I could hardly stop listening to the book. There were a few twists to the scenario that did stretch credulity, but overall it was all too believable.

The message, of course, is dire, troubling, and urgent. If Jacobsen (and her sources) are correct, then nuclear war is un-winnable, and preventing the use of nuclear weapons is unspeakably important. The scale of destruction from just one of these warheads is truly unimaginable; the consequences of an escalatory exchange of such weapons is apocalyptic.

In these matters, concern and advocacy goes well with a secure trust in the providence of God.

Delighting in the Trinity – Michael Reeves

Simply fantastic. Somehow manages to be both readable and very profound. The church is seriously in need of a revival of trinity-shaped piety among the laity. There has been a heartening renewal of classical trinitarianism among scholars and pastors, but I don’t think it has properly filtered down into the lived spirituality of normal Christians yet. This book ought to be in every church library and be considered a ‘standard’ along with Packer’s Knowing God and Sproul’s The Holiness of God.

The Real Reason Many Reject Penal Substitutionary Atonement

Ever since Bible College almost 20 years ago (gasp!), I have wondered why there is so much argument and furor over “theories of the atonement.” I remember seeing an essay in the student paper that questioned penal substitutionary atonement (hereafter PSA) and put forward an argument for Christus Victor. It revealed a clear aversion to PSA and this mystified me. Why, I wondered, would someone be so motivated to deny something which seems to be the plain teaching of the Bible?

Over the years I came to better understand the issues at stake, but I admit I still had trouble making it make sense. I could understand why some progressive Christians refused to believe in a God who poured out wrath and judgment (due to liberal theology’s allergy to descriptions of God that went against the grain of respectable modern moral sensibilities), but then what about those who had no problem with those parts of the Bible but who still seemed to have so much animus against PSA? I recently heard Derek Rishmawy make a comment on an episode of the Mere Fidelity podcast that struck me as an excellent answer to that question.

Here is the point he made: penal substitutionary atonement gets pulled out of shape and distorted when the categories of classical theism are not there. The prevalence of modernist metaphysics throughout the 20th century gave us a strange mix: conservatives held onto supernaturalism (like the virgin birth and the resurrection) but unwittingly lost the doctrinal substructure that served to keep PSA in its proper shape. Rishmawy observed that many conservatives in the 20th century (and into the 21st) were defending what they rightly thought of as a doctrinal core (PSA), but doing it in ways that would be contrary to earlier advocates in the tradition who had certain doctrines in place that protected them against the severe distortions. The most obvious stabilizing doctrine would be a classical view of the Trinity. He added that “substitution is an extraordinarily powerful doctrine that, without the right machinery around it, creates severe shearing forces in preaching that can go wrong.”

This seems quite right to me, like a key piece of the puzzle going right into its place. This insight explains some of the dynamics at play in these discussions and debates. For instance, without a clear understanding of the inseparable operations of the one triune God, then there is no guardrail to keep a preacher from describing the cross as the Father over here pouring his wrath out on the innocent and reticent Son over there, introducing a firm separation between Father and Son, as if they were not together fulfilling the plan of redemption they drew up before the foundation of the world. And without divine impassibility—the idea the God is without passions—then any talk of the wrath or punishment of God conjures images of uncontrolled anger or passionate revenge. But this is not the way to understand the wrath of God.

Here is a possible sequence of steps to summarize this process:

Modern metaphysical assumptions seep into theology —> classical trinitarian theism is revised —> loss of doctrines like divine impassibility and inseparable operations —> PSA language gets pulled out of shape by many of its proponents —> people react against the distortions of PSA by energetically rejecting PSA and pursuing alternative understandings of the atonement.

This would explain the strong overlap between those who reject classical theism and those who reject PSA, of which John Mark Comer would be one obvious example. Without the former, the latter is too easily distorted into absurdity (”cosmic child abuse”). So a twofold dynamic happens: proponents of PSA who haven’t got a firm grasp on classical theism tend to present it in distorted ways since they lack that doctrinal framework, and those who have rejected classical theism have a hard time conceiving of PSA without it quickly devolving into something grotesque, making it easier for them to reject PSA.

The parallel track that runs alongside this, mentioned above, is the rejection of wrath and judgment as fitting for God, a hallmark of liberal theology. Even the great evangelical stalwart John Stott seemed to be affected by the sense that it was not respectable, and perhaps unthinkable, to claim that God would pour out his wrath in judgment for all eternity. Stott’s case was mild — preferring annihilationism to the idea of eternal judgment. But the same impulse has pulled many a Christian to rethink PSA on the grounds that the idea that God’s wrath against sin must be satisfied is beyond the pale.

Even without a thoroughgoing classical trinitarianism, the best exegetes throughout the 20th century always managed to avoid serious problems in their description of the atonement by sticking close to the text of the Bible and letting their preaching and teaching reflect the overall balanced emphasis of the Scriptures. This is a point that D.A. Carson has made repeatedly, and it is worth bearing in mind: it is not enough to find something true that the Bible affirms and then proclaim it from the rooftops. There is a matrix of truths that are all interconnected, and the careful student of the Scriptures pays attention to the relative emphasis and the context of those truths as found in the whole Bible.

Talk of the various theories of the atonement seems to me to start the whole conversation off on the wrong foot. Let us rather seek to understand and rightly represent the multifaceted glory of the atonement. Wonder of wonders—our God has reconciled us to himself through the cross! And how? Let me count the ways, for the Scriptures unfold and tease out multiple threads of wondrous truth about this singular moment in history. One of these, among others, is the idea that in our place condemned he stood, becoming sin for us, bearing the punishment our sins deserved, that in Him we might become the righteousness of God. Our triune God planned and accomplished this for the fame of his name among the nations, and because he loves us. He redeemed us from the curse of sin, becoming a curse for us; he ransomed us, buying us with a price; he defeated the powers of darkness, triumphing over them and disarming them. Yes and amen.

The insight from Rishmawy is helpful because it reminds us that our theology is a complex matrix of interrelated truths. And there are some, it must be said, that are foundational, load-bearing truths. They keep the whole superstructure balanced and strong in ways that are not immediately obvious. And once they are removed or compromised, the whole building may not immediately fall down, but it may sway and wobble and buckle in unhealthy ways. I think this is what we’ve seen with popular-level representations of PSA, with lamentable results in driving people away from any kind of penal substitutionary element in their understanding of the atonement. The answer to overcorrections and pendulum swings, however, is careful and loving attention to the holy Scriptures.

A Double Dose of Psychedelics Content

I’m trying to balance my focus on the psychedelics movement with writing and content that covers a far broader array of topics (AKA my interests!). But this last week, the stars aligned for there to be a strong focus on the topic of psychedelics, with my first TGC (USA) article being released as well as a podcast conversation with the fine folks at What Would Jesus Tech (WWJT). Here’s a direct link to the YouTube version of the WWJT episode. I think they did a pretty good job with the podcast episode thumbnail image:

I wish I could say the same for the TGC article. The image they chose is a little creepy! Hah, oh well.

Many thanks to the hosts of WWJT for having me on and having such good questions. I really enjoyed our conversation. They are a legit podcast with some really legit and impressive guests. If you are a Christian interested in how technology (in all its manifestations) intersects with the faith, you need to check them out.

The TGC article, called “The Psychedelic Renaissance: A Story of Hype and Hubris,” is an “explainer” kind of essay where I try to inform the reader about this large and complex topic, but with an editorial twist where I render a verdict about the psychedelic movement in general. There is certainly some overlap with the article my late-2023 article at Mere Orthodoxy, but this recent one delves more deeply into the current state of the research and especially into the increasingly visible network of activists and funders who are pulling the strings behind the scenes of the public-facing pro-psychedelics movement. Here is how I conclude the first section of the article, which deals with this:

One thing ought to be clear: It simply isn’t the case that disinterested scientists have stumbled on surprising cures for mental health problems. Rather, advocates already committed to the promise of psychedelic therapies, usually bundled with New Age spiritual beliefs, have patiently pursued a strategy to build a veneer of scientific, medical respectability for their agenda.

This state of affairs makes it difficult for the public (and regulators) to parse the data and evaluate possible legitimate medical applications of these substances. It may be many years before those assessments can be made confidently, but that won’t stop a growing number of people from trying psychedelics for themselves.

One way I’ve started thinking about how Christians ought to respond to the psychedelics movement with with a dual response: one at low-resolution and a second one at higher-resolution. (I go into this idea a bit in response to some really thoughtful questions in the WWJT episode.) Here’s what I mean: the low Christian resolution response to the pro-psychedelics movement in general should be a giant waving red flag. In the article, I try to get this across with the following sentence: “The hype of healing will not ultimately deliver on its promises, and the hubris of spiritual exploration outside of Christ will expose many to unbiblical ideas and even demonic spiritual forces.”

That’s the first and most important thing for the church to get clear on, in my humble opinion. But there is a second, higher resolution response that is also legitimate. It has to do with a more narrow discussion about possible legitimate medical uses of psychedelic compounds for the treatment of specific issues such as PTSD, some forms of addiction, etc. This is separate from all discussion of spiritual or recreational uses, which are out of bounds if one takes the Scriptures as inerrant and authoritative.

I am still thinking through some of the nuances of this more narrow question about possible valid uses of these compounds in certain medical cases. The best treatment of the question I’ve come across so far is a journal article by Thomas Carroll, a Catholic medical doctor. He argues, convincingly in my view, that the specific problem with psychedelics is the mystical experience it generates for the user. This is what makes psychedelics unlike other substances, and why they rightly exist in a class of their own. Further, he argues that since Christians have a category for legitimate mystical experiences that are given by God, and since it has never been the teaching of the church that Christians ought to try and contrive these experiences themselves, that it is therefore illicit for Christians to intentionally take these substances for the purposes of some kind of therapy where the mechanism of healing is bound up with the mystical experience itself.

However, these substances have effects other than just the mystical experience. They make one more suggestible and they interrupt some of our deeply ingrained patterns of thinking; both of these effects have the potential to be powerful aids when coupled with wise counseling. There is indeed a little-known branch of psychedelic therapy known as psycholytic therapy (PLT) and it specifically focuses on using small doses in conjunction with talk therapy to work through problems. This approach has been eclipsed in recent years by the big push for and major coverage of psychedelic-assisted therapy (PAT).

Carroll’s article basically concludes that, since the mystical experience is the very mechanism by which psychedelic-assisted therapy functions, it should be considered illicit for Christians, but that participation in psycholytic therapy should be considered a question of personal conscience. This seems right to me, and it’s where I am landing at the moment.

A friend of mine sees this very similarly but takes a slightly different and more open position: he believes that a Christian could partake of psychedelic-assisted therapy as long as he regarded the mystical experience as a negative side-effect to be endured, a bug rather than a feature. This is very different from the general approach to psychedelic therapy, and although I’m not there myself, I don’t think it’s an unreasonable position for a Christian to take. My concern with it is how it actually plays out in practice. How do pastors counsel their church member to go through with this kind of therapy for their PTSD? How does one handle the possibility that despite going into it with the idea that I won’t place my hope in or even lend credence to this mystical experience, it ends up being so profound and powerful that I can’t help it? To me it seems to leave a door open that I think should remain shut.

That’s all for now. As always, thanks for reading and following.

Dave Barry—Still a Clown after All these Years

Dave Barry, true to form, made fun of himself and almost everything else in his memoir. I’ve enjoyed Barry’s writing on and off over the years as I’ve come across it. This book, like many of his columns, had me bursting out with laughter. For that reason alone it was worth reading.

The more serious sections were handled with adequate solemnity, but Barry’s brand of irreverence, as funny as it is, seems inadequate to face up to the realities of the world. The ability to make everything into a joke cuts both ways, of course. It helps one get through tough times with humour and wit, but it also encourages a habit of mind and heart that ultimately undermines one’s ability to take seriously what in fact is serious.

C.S. Lewis is helpful here, lest I be accused of simply being a fun-hating curmudgeon. In the Screwtape Letters, he helpfully distinguishes between four types of laughter: joy, fun, the joke proper, and flippancy. The first two are good and harmless. Barry’s humour contains a fair amount of rejoicing in sheer fun, and this is all to the good. The joke proper relies “on [a] sudden perception of incongruity,” and this is Barry’s bread and butter. Much of the time, it is simply clever and a good deal of fun, but Lewis warns that this type of humour is especially apt to be used to destroy the healthy human instinct towards shame (Brené Brown will just have to deal with it; I’m going with Lewis on this one). Barry certainly deploys jokes in this way, though not nearly as much as so many of the most popular comedians.

The last type of laughter, flippancy, is described memorably in the following lines: “Only a clever
human can make a real Joke about virtue, or indeed about anything else; any of them can be trained to talk as if virtue were funny. Among flippant people the Joke is always assumed to have been made. No one actually makes it; but every serious subject is discussed in a manner which implies that they have already found a ridiculous side to it…. It is a thousand miles away from joy it deadens, instead of sharpening, the intellect; and it excites no affection between those who practice it.”

As much as I enjoyed the book, I did feel this kind of flippancy to be at work in Barry’s writing, and it is the part of it I enjoyed least. Perhaps it is an occupational hazard when one is in the business of comedy. The other thought that came to me was that Barry’s type of humour is particularly situated in the baby boomer generation’s experience of the world. This is not a criticism, only an observation. And it seems to me that it’s unlikely to appear again in any subsequent generation.

I grabbed the (audio)book because I wanted something light and enjoyable to listen to on my commutes that wasn’t a current events podcast riling me up about the latest unbelievable political outrage. It certainly met and exceeded my hopes for such a light and enjoyable read. If that’s what you’re looking for, Dave Barry’s memoir may be just the ticket.

A Review of Dr. Heiser’s ‘Demons’

For some reason I was expecting this to be a popular-level book on the topic. Instead, like Unseen Realm, it was a substantive work of scholarship that delved deeply into the academic literature. That’s fine with me, but it is good to know when considering recommending it to others. That being said, the audiobook version I listened to was very well done, with substantive footnotes being included while footnote citations were excluded. This approach came as close as it is possible to get to the experience of reading a physical copy.

I enjoyed the book, much as I enjoyed Unseen Realm. Indeed, there is a lot of overlap between the two books. He chronicles in detail his contention that there were three (instead of one) supernatural rebellions (Gen 3, Gen 6, and Gen 11), each of them by different sorts of beings and for different reasons, with different consequences that play out across the rest of Scripture’s narrative.

Heiser’s strength is also a cause for caution; he pays little heed to interpretive tradition after the NT era. Rather, he privileges Ancient Near Eastern and Second Temple Jewish understandings of these topics since he argues these were the formative influences guiding the thinking of the OT and NT writers. And he undoubtedly has a strong case. It’s undeniable that the NT writers were familiar with this material, like 1 Enoch (referenced in Jude and 2 Peter).

In Heiser’s telling, this 2nd Temple material synthesized the scattered and partial OT teaching on the powers of darkness into a more cohesive narrative. There is explanatory power in this since it’s obvious that when we turn from the OT to the first pages of the NT, a significant shift has occurred in the way these spiritual forces are described. And his framework makes sense of the fragmentary evidence in a way that the typical default framework of Christians does not.

But the concern this work raises is also worth considering. Heiser is perhaps too comfortable departing from the near-consensus of Christian thought throughout the centuries. His reliance on textual variants and extra-biblical sources to frame his narrative mean that we ought to be cautious about thinking we’re on very solid ground. The fact is, despite my desire to understand all this, the topic is shrouded in much mystery. The evidence is scattered and ambiguous–seemingly deliberately.

One strength of the book is what so many have found so helpful about Heiser’s work–he is not beholden to modernist anti-supernaturalism. Instead, he is refreshingly open to a thoroughly supernatural worldview all while being a careful scholar.

He has done much to chart a path forward for Christians to be unembarrassed in our affirmation of the supernatural while being intellectually rigorous. In other words, staying out of the ditch of kooky theories built on the flimsiest conjectures, a ditch with too many denizens already. For that, and for much else, I am thankful for Dr. Heiser’s work.

Escaping the Malaise of Modernity

The opening chapter of Samuel Parkison’s ‘To Gaze Upon God’ — a work of theological retrieval for evangelicals on the beatific vision — makes a striking argument.

Parkison states that all Christians throughout history have agreed that the beatific vision — seeing God face to face — is what makes heaven heaven, it is our blessed hope. But evangelicals in the last couple centuries have largely abandoned the term, though thankfully, many have not abandoned the idea. For example, John Piper’s ministry has hammered home the idea that seeing and savouring Christ is the chief delight of the soul; C.S. Lewis’ vision of “further up and further in” forever in Aslan’s country is similar, and so on.

But then Parkison takes aim at what he calls the “fundamentalist-biblicist” approach to the Bible as fatally compromised by the spirit of the Enlightenment. “Tradition, according to the Enlightenment, is a straight jacket, confining the would-be liberated intellect to immaturity.” Sola Scriptura, he argues, was never meant to be a rejection of the “confessional, catechetical, and liturgical life” that is shaped by the wisdom of past generations.

“The contemporary antipathy for tradition that often accompanies fundamentalism and a biblicist approach to theology did not come from sola Scriptura; modernity and the Enlightenment are to blame for this aberration form historic Christianity.”

This is a bold statement. And we are only at page 6. He goes on to argue that we have been largely cut off from our historical inheritance as Christians by this Enlightenment turn, this promise of intellectual maturity that turned out to be more like the journey of the prodigal son. Seeking self-fulfillment and freedom, we’ve ended up as a culture and in much of the evangelical church at a dead end, wondering what went wrong.

In this context of modern confusion, the idea of the beatific vision “touches a nerve within the soul; a nerve for which the post-Enlightenment imagination does not even have a category.”

And here is the conclusion he drives home to conclude the section:

“The way we escape the malaise of modernity is not by embracing individualistic biblicism, for individualistic biblicism is stuck in that very same malaise. The way forward is first the way backward. We must correct our course, and theological retrieval is the way to do this.”

I find myself resonating with this line of argument, though Parkison puts a very sharp point on the matter. One of the challenges here is that not every Christian or lay leader or pastor can be (or *should* be) doing this work of retrieval. There are SO many other good things to give ourselves to.

But I am convinced we do need a broad movement within evangelical Protestantism that consciously works to retrieve the best of the small-c catholic tradition, the ‘Great Tradition’ that forms the central core of Christian belief (including philosophical substructures) in such a way that is accessible and digestible for 21st-century believers of all kinds. Thankfully, there is such a movement already underway.

I’m looking forward to what I’ll find in pages 8-214 of this book, and maybe I’ll have more to share. I expect this book will be intellectually stimulating and, more importantly, spiritually edifying.

Yes, Jesus was Crucified with Nails (and It’s Irresponsible to Suggest Otherwise)

A Response to Christianity Today’s recent article, which featured a subversive argument, a spirit of revisionist speculation, and evinced poor editorial stewardship.

Correction: In a previous version of this post I stated that Gordon College is associated with Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, but I was mistaken. Gordon-Conwell was formed in 1969 as a merger between Gordon College’s Divinity School and the Conwell School of Theology, so the two institutions (Gordon College and Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary) have been separate entities since 1969. I apologize for this error and any confusion it engendered.

Introduction

I do not make a habit of speaking to the latest furor or controversy. It’s not healthy to be fixated on such things, at least for me. Polemics is not my wheelhouse. But I read an article on Good Friday that I found frankly shocking, called ‘Was Jesus Crucified with Nails?’ with the subtitle being ‘Why one evangelical scholar thinks the answer might be no’. It was featured at Christianity Today, under their Church Life section, as a kind of report on the thought of this scholar, Jeffrey P. Arroyo García, from Gordon College.

So I’m breaking from my usual habit and I want to share a few thoughts about this article and the three problems I see in it. The first problem is the argument, which I think is very weak and contrary to the clear teaching of Scripture. The second problem is the spirit of revisionist speculation that motivates the argument in the first place; and the third problem is the editorial decision by CT to publish this and push it during Easter week.

I have already seen a number of responses to this ill-begotten article. And so probably my voice is not needed to push back on it, but this is one of those pieces that I felt compelled to write, if for no other reason than to get it out of my system.

*It’s never a good sign when a post has 25 times more comments than likes.*

The Argument: Nails or Ropes?

Dr. García’s argument boils down to this: Since the crucifixion narratives themselves don’t explicitly mention nails, and since it is well established that crucifixion during Roman times was often done using ropes instead of nails, then it is quite possible that Jesus was not actually nailed to the cross but only hung with ropes. I think I have represented the argument fairly, but you can read the article for yourself and make of it what you will.

In one sense I am grateful for this article because it sent me, like the Bereans, examining the Scriptures “to see if these things were so.” And lo, I beheld they were not so. The article itself admits this problem about three quarters of the way through, where García deals with John 20:25, which he says is the “one place in the New Testament that mentions nails.” That’s not quite true, as we’ll see, but even if all we had was John 20, it’s a slam dunk that puts this argument to bed.

In John 20:25, Thomas says “Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe.” Then, in verse 27, Jesus makes clear that Thomas was not mistaken in assuming nail holes in his hands, when he responds: “Put your finger here, and see my hands.” It’s hard to imagine how the text could be clearer about the fact that Jesus was crucified with nails. The only way around the clear meaning of John 20 is to undermine the truthfulness of John’s gospel itself. Sadly, that’s exactly what García does:

But he isn’t completely convinced. Jesus doesn’t explicitly say “nails,” and the Bible does not say Thomas touches Christ’s hands or his feet. Many scholars think John was written later—perhaps after crucifixion with nails had become more common, García said.

Come again? I had to read that paragraph over a few times to believe what I was seeing. What does the dating of John’s gospel have to do with the argument? How is this not just refusing to believe what the text clearly says? What does it matter whether Jesus says the word “nails” when he does say “put your finger here.” García seems to be more riddled with doubt than poor Thomas was.

There are a lot of other passages in the Bible that point firmly towards the crucifixion being done with nails, including Colossians 2, Psalm 22, and Luke 24. For an excellent overview of these passages and more, see Benjamin Gladd’s article over at The Gospel Coalition.

To summarize, the Bible clearly teaches that Jesus was nailed to a Roman cross. This was the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies and served as a powerful symbolic image for Paul to use in Col. 2:14, where he explained that God took “the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands” and set it aside, “nailing it to the cross.”

It grieves me that this clear teaching was undermined in this subversive and speculative article that only serves to get Christians to question whether the text itself is trustworthy. But it raises the question of what exactly is driving this project? For lack of a better term, I’m calling it a spirit of revisionist speculation.

A Spirit of Revisionist Speculation

One of the few things I didn’t enjoy about my time living on a Bible College campus was the way in which some of the young men seemed to enjoy speculating about all kinds of biblical and theological matters. I hadn’t experienced that before and I wasn’t expecting it. My own formation had been towards seeing these things as weighty, consequential, eternal matters, so I was thrown off by the apparent enjoyment some guys took in questioning and speculating.

I was reminded of this experience as I read the article and came across the words “perhaps,” “unclear,” “maybe,” “not convinced,” and then language like this:

‘“We don’t really know,” García said. “We don’t really have a lot of evidence, and the evidence we do have, it involves interpretation.”’

This is the lexicon of speculation. I don’t mean to imply it’s wrong to ask questions and think through various sides of an issue. There is most certainly a place for that. But what I’m trying to put my finger on is this spirit of taking delight in calling into question things that normal Christians consider to be solid received truth. This is destabilizing for simple Christians, and it strikes me as a problem related to scholars who are divorced from the nitty-gritty sin and glory realities of church life among normal people.

Kevin Vanhoozer addresses this problem in his recent book, ‘Mere Christian Hermeneutics’, where he claims that this division between the academy and the church has led to a theological anemia in the church and an ecclesial anemia in the academy. That seems to apply here, for I cannot imagine how this line of speculation and subversive revisionism about the crucifixion could possibly be edifying for God’s people. As an intellectual exercise between historians and scholars, maybe, but not as a featured article for Easter week for a publication that claims to be the flagship magazine for evangelicals. And that brings me to the third problem.

Publishing as Editorial Stewardship

Christianity Today’s unfortunate trajectory of decline has been well documented. I subscribed to it a few years ago, while it was under the editorial leadership of Mark Galli. It was a mixed bag to be sure, but I found value in keeping abreast of the conversation in broad evangelicalism. But what became clear over time is that it was more reflective of an elite cadre of left-leaning evangelicals than actual normal evangelicals. Galli left his post and then converted to Catholicism, which is perhaps not the ideal trajectory we are looking for in the people who fill these very consequential editorial positions. He was replaced by Russell Moore, who has had his own troubling theological trajectory.

The magazine and website still publishes good straight news reporting on issues facing evangelicals around the world, and it also still publishes good, thoughtful writing, but it certainly does seem to suffer from what some have dubbed living under the progressive gaze. This latest article is sadly on brand for what CT has come to represent, though it is the most egregious I have seen because of its direct attack on the truthfulness of the Gospel of John.

Whether John’s gospel was written early or late makes no difference when we are talking about the canon of Holy Scripture. Consider the staggering hubris of the argument once again. Consider what John himself writes in verse 24 of chapter 21, “This is the disciple who is bearing witness about these things, and who has written these things, and we know that his testimony is true.” But here comes a scholar who, having studied extra-biblical sources, decides that they are a better guide to what really happened than the divinely inspired biblical author.

Should we also question wedding at Cana? The conversation with Nicodemus? The encounter with the woman at the well? The raising of Lazarus? After all, these stories only appear in the gospel of John, which “many scholars think was written later.” And if we shouldn’t question the truth of those stories, why not? On what basis are we deciding which parts of the gospel of John are trustworthy?

Whatever this is, it isn’t an evangelical view of the Bible.

Vanhoozer warns about the danger of allowing the world behind the text (historical context and research) to eclipse the text itself. I think that is what has happened here because it’s stated plainly in the article, here in the penultimate paragraph:

“The most important thing for me is that we read the text,” García said. “And then there is a world lying behind the text—but it takes some work for us as moderns to get to the point where we know something about that world, and for me, that deepens, that broadens and focuses how you read the text, how you understand it.” (emphasis mine).

Historical context is helpful, but it should not be used to contradict the plain meaning of the biblical text.

Any publishing outlet that puts content out has to decide what it will feature. These editorial decisions are what give each publication its own flavour and voice, and are therefore a stewardship of the trust and attention that readers grant. I think every publication has at times put out content that wasn’t so good in retrospect, but over time a publication does reveal what its agenda and priorities are—and readers will take note.

It strikes me as a staggeringly poor editorial choice to feature this article prominently on the week of Easter, and a poor stewardship of the trust and attention that regular churchgoers place in the masthead of Christianity Today.

I hope and pray that CT learns from this decision and recommits itself to building up the faith of its readers with robust, wholesome, edifying content. Especially during Easter, when the focus should be on the wonder and cosmic significance of the resurrection of the Son of God, as testified to by the trustworthy Scriptures.

Happy Easter, dear reader.

Update: The article’s author, Daniel Silliman, has since written an apology at the Christianity Today website, which is commendable and for which I am grateful. My critiques of the original article and of CT more generally remain the same, but good on them for course-correcting.

Philosophy for the People – A Review of Francis Schaeffer’s ‘He is There and He is Not Silent’

I haven’t read very much by Francis Schaeffer, so I was glad to come across this handsome reprint by Crossway, a publisher who continues to impress with the aesthetic and editorial quality of their books. And I came across it while browsing in a local library in Southwest Florida – something that I feel quite sure would never happen in Canada.

The book is short, moving along at a fine clip. And yet it is anything but simplistic. What it is is a readable popular-level work of Christian philosophy responding to the particular shape and blind spots of contemporary culture circa 1970. But despite the fifty-five years that have elapsed since its publishing, the insights are certainly still relevant.

I was impressed with Schaeffer’s use of simple language to cut through academic jargon and get at the nub of the issue. You can tell he cares little about academic respectability and a lot about the lives of regular people. He rightly identifies two areas of catastrophic error in the modern mind: metaphysics and epistemology. This comes back to the title of the book: He Is There (Metaphysics) and He Is Not Silent (Epistemology).

An alternative title might have been: “A Christian Response to Contemporary Metaphysical and Epistemological Thought.” And then we would never have heard of it because it would have been read by exactly seven people. So Schaeffer had a gift for boiling things down to their essentials. This comes across strongly in this brisk and fast-paced book, which leaves the reader with the impression that it might have been written in a week-end. The style of writing is conversational, and not especially eloquent. It’s a workmanlike prose that gets the job done.

The drawback of Schaeffer’s style is that he deals very briefly with those he disagrees with. He boils down their view to some essential points and then explains why he disagrees. This is actually quite helpful for the layman who is not and cannot be familiar with the finer points of, let’s say, logical positivism, but I am sure it would be objected to by a logical positivist, who might rightly point out that Schaeffer glossed over many important nuances. Be that as it may, for a work this brief, it manages to cover a lot of terrain in contemporary philosophy.

Schaeffer’s driving concern seems to be twofold: To speak to the seeker who is dismayed and confused by the spiritually devastating consequences of modern philosophical materialism; and to build up the believer in holding fast to a Biblical view of metaphysics and epistemology which is so out of step with the late 20th-century mind. When this is kept in mind, the pace and style of the book makes a lot of sense.

It is a work of evangelistic and pastoral philosophy. It’s central message is something like: “The world now says that ‘the material world is all there is and that the best we can say about God is that God-language is comforting to the mind’, but in reality, despite this modern hubris, there really is a God Who Is There. He is not just a projection of religious hopes, not just the composite picture of responses to religious experiences, but an eternal, self-existent, Triune Being who can and does reach down into the universe he made at His pleasure. And despite the claim that we can never truly know anything with certainty, the truth is that God Is Not Silent — He has chosen to reveal himself using human language. That revelation, it is true, cannot lead to exhaustive knowledge, but it is true revelation that does lead to true knowledge of God. Modern man is wrong. There *is* a God. He is There and He is Not Silent.”

While some of the references in Schaeffer’s book may be a bit dated, the central argument is fresh and relevant. It is a message that not only remains relevant, but may in fact receive a warmer response now than at any point since its original publication in 1972. I say this because of the massive shifts roiling the Western world in recent years. In God’s providence, people are open to reconsidering these most fundamental questions in a way they were not before. Call it the vibe-shift or the ‘Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God’ as Justin Brierley does, it is a real phenomenon.

I for one hope that this short and readable treatment finds its way into many more hands.