Is the New Atheism Dead?
In addition to their own jarring polemics and personal misfires, the New Atheists failed to realize that religion, especially Christianity, was the proverbial branch upon which they were sitting. For example, the freedom of expression depends on a number of assumptions, that there is objective truth, that it can be discovered, that it is accessible to people regardless of race or class, that belief should be free instead of coerced, that people have innate value, and that because of this value they should not be silenced. Every one of these ideas assumes the kind of world described in the Bible and mediated across centuries of Christian thought. Not one of these assumptions can be grounded in a purposeless world that is the product of only natural causes and processes.
Though it’s not always clear when a movement is over, there are many indicators that suggest this is the case of the “New Atheism,” a cultural wave that rose in the 2000s and aggressively attacked religion in the guise of scientific rationalism. Despite the name, the New Atheism wasn’t really new, at least not in the sense of presenting new arguments. Instead, leveraging the global shock of 9/11, New Atheists pushed an anti-religious mood along with a vision of a society free from the cobwebs of religion, defined by scientific inquiry, free speech, and a morality not built on God or religious traditions.
In 1996, prominent New Atheist Richard Dawkins articulated this mood in his acceptance speech for the “Humanist of the Year” Award: “I think a case can be made that faith is one of the world’s great evils,” he said, “comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to eradicate.” There was a commercial aspect to the New Atheism, with bumper stickers and T-shirts carrying well-worn slogans, such as one coined by Victor Stenger: “Science flies you to the moon. Religion flies you into buildings.”
Though, at the time, it grew into somewhat of a cultural force and platformed a group of minor celebrities, the New Atheism now seems to have run out of steam. Divided by progressive politics and haunted by the obnoxious tone of many of its own founders, the movement is being devoured by other ideologies. Concepts like freedom of expression, scientific realism, and morality without God have all met their antitheses, often in clashes featuring the New Atheists themselves.
One watershed moment was a conflict over the role of science. Just last year, the American Humanist Association revoked Richard Dawkins’ “Humanist of the Year” award for his long history of offensive tweets. For example, Dawkins told women who experience sexual harassment to “stop whining” and parents of babies with Down syndrome to “abort and try again.”
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Christian Education in Seven Books (5)—Cultural Literacy
What kind of education would have the audacity to call itself Christian if its graduates have only the faintest grasp of Christian doctrine, history, or worship, and if they feel no loyalty to the civilisation that bequeathed them most of the blessings they now enjoy?
I would not be surprised by the “Huh?” reaction to a number of books on this list. After all, they are not “how-to” manuals on education. Instead, each of them represents one major aspect of what comprises a Christian education. This is why all of the authors or the books could be substituted with similar books or authors saying the same thing. This is the case with the fifth book in our series, Cultural Literacy, by E. D. Hirsch.
For busy homeschooling parents or school administrators, this is not a book you need to plough through from cover to cover, though you’ll likely benefit if you are able to. The first chapter and the appendix will, however, give you the main idea. Hirsch’s thesis is simple: to function in society, people need background knowledge that we absorb from our wider culture. Sayings, mottoes, proverbs, quotes, aphorisms, place names, historical events, abbreviations, prominent people and places and dates, fables, works of art and many other items of knowledge are not learnt alphabetically from an encyclopaedia. They are taught when a culture imparts its traditions to its young over many years.
Without this background knowledge – this literacy in one’s own culture – one is a stranger in your own home, a foreigner in your own country. Educated writing and discourse will go over your head, because you lack the cultural literacy to decipher all the background knowledge that is present in the terms.
Consider this sentence: “Covid has brought about an Orwellian scenario, where the raison d’être of government has devolved from a Jeffersonian ideal to a Machiavellian one”. Background knowledge of Western philosophy, political theory, 20th-century literature, and borrowed phrases from French is necessary to make sense of that sentence. Hirsch argues that this kind of cultural literacy is declining, and with it, much breakdown in communication and mutual understanding.
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Let Down Your Nets For A Catch
If the workers obediently cast their nets into the deep Christ’s way then those drawn into the net will be genuine because they are effectually called by God Himself. When He saves someone, it is always genuine for it is not simply a human decision, but it is the result of the washing of regeneration and belief in Jesus as Lord and Saviour. These are justified by God’s grace through the faith given to them by Him.
4 When He had finished speaking, He said to Simon, “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.” Luke 5:4 (NASB)
The builder and sustainer of the Church, the Body of Christ, is the Lord Jesus not any man (Matthew 16:18). The building of the true Church is accomplished as God works through the foolishness of preaching to draw people from the darkness into the light and life that is found in Christ alone. It is built up in Christ through the means of grace, which are ordained by God not men. While we see that it is God who actually is doing the building, He has chosen to work through His servants to accomplish that which will bring Him glory. These servants that He uses as fishers of men are symbolically like the fishermen in their boats on the Sea of Galilee who cast their nets to catch fish to sell as their business. Let us make some comparisons.
1 Now it happened that while the crowd was pressing around Him and listening to the word of God, He was standing by the lake of Gennesaret; 2 and He saw two boats lying at the edge of the lake; but the fishermen had gotten out of them and were washing their nets. 3 And He got into one of the boats, which was Simon’s, and asked him to put out a little way from the land. And He sat down and began teaching the people from the boat. 4 When He had finished speaking, He said to Simon, “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.” 5 Simon answered and said, “Master, we worked hard all night and caught nothing, but I will do as You say and let down the nets.” 6 When they had done this, they enclosed a great quantity of fish, and their nets began to break; 7 so they signaled to their partners in the other boat for them to come and help them. And they came and filled both of the boats, so that they began to sink. Luke 5:1-7 (NASB)
This event happened immediately prior to our Lord calling His first disciples. Notice that without our Lord being with Peter, James and John they toiled all night and caught nothing. However, our Lord got in the boat, taught the people and told Peter, “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.” The difference this time was that this is a divine command, although Peter does not know it. The partners who had to come and help drag the great catch to shore were the brothers James and John. I don’t often like to make these sorts of analogies from Scripture for I have heard so many that are man-made things that some take and overuse to the deception of many. However, in this case, we are looking at something our Lord used to teach these men the truth about God and how He uses His servants to do His will in the preaching of the Gospel and the building of His Church.
If we compare the mindset of many Christians, they believe that it is their efforts, their ideas, their inovations that when added to preaching the gospel (if it even includes it) that will cause numbers to go up and that many will be added to the Kingdom because of their efforts. From this analogy, however, we learn that a true catch, the saving of many souls is always the work of God as He labors through His obedient servants. If He is not present then the fruit will not be genuine. If our Lord is not part of an evangelical push then it can only accomplish what men can do. Some may ‘decide for Jesus’ as the result of the entertainment or the glitz or the personality of the preacher, but is it genuine? No, it is as these fishermen laboring all night and catching nothing. However, if the workers obediently cast their nets into the deep Christ’s way then those drawn into the net will be genuine because they are effectually called by God Himself. When He saves someone, it is always genuine for it is not simply a human decision, but it is the result of the washing of regeneration and belief in Jesus as Lord and Saviour. These are justified by God’s grace through the faith given to them by Him. Numbers may or may not be large, but these who are effectually called and drawn by God are the real deal. The “catch” is miraculous for it is God’s work not man’s.
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Machen on the Necessity of Christian Doctrine: An Application of Christianity and Liberalism Chapter 2 (Part 2)
Written by Fred G. Zaspel |
Monday, June 19, 2023
Because of the sinfulness of the human heart the old covenant could not bring about the righteousness it commanded, so God promised a new covenant that would provide both obedience from the heart and forgiveness for sin. What the law could not accomplish, God has accomplished in us through Christ. Led by his Spirit we have a new freedom from sin and a new enablement in overcoming it (Rom. 8:1–15).Having examined J. Gresham Machen’s arguments in chapter two of Christianity and Liberalism, we now turn to reflect on the implications this seminal work has for our own time. While the old modernism is considered dead today, its effects remain. This matter of doctrinal indifferentism in particular has come to characterize much of professed Christianity, even evangelical Christianity. Popular contemporary Christian songs as well as preaching passionately plead that “just Jesus,” or perhaps “the cross,” is all that is important, not doctrines and not our interpretations.[1] The rhetoric has a certain attraction, and it conveys the happy sentiment that our fellowship is, after all, in the Lord Jesus Christ. But the plea is muddle-headed, for as soon as we ask, “Who is Jesus?” or “Why does he matter?” or “Why is the cross important?” we are into Christian doctrine—the very thing said to be unnecessary. Apart from doctrine and clear biblical interpretation, both Jesus and his cross have lost meaning.
Often this indifference to doctrine is just laziness, an aversion to thinking. But the problem goes deeper than ignorance and muddled thinking. The consequences of doctrinal indifference are severe, and much is lost.
Christian Essentials
The fundamental claim of Christianity is that it is a revelation from God. God has revealed himself and his saving purpose, and this revelation is written for us in Scripture. This revelation—this message—is true, and it is every Christian’s responsibility to propagate this truth to others. This “gospel” is to make its way throughout the entire world not by the sword but by word and witness, both spoken and written. Christianity has, first and foremost, a message to be proclaimed, and God’s kingdom makes its saving advance to the nations by this message.
Machen sums up his argument in chapter two in these terms exactly. He cites the words of the risen Jesus, who said just before his ascension, “you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8). This commission of Jesus to his followers shapes the character of Christianity as founded on a message. “Christianity is based, then, upon an account of something that happened, and the Christian worker is primarily a witness.” From the beginning Christianity has been “a campaign of witnessing,”[2] and the first Christians understood themselves as entrusted with a message. The book of Acts records for us the first stages of this witnessing campaign, and the New Testament epistles are given to the same purpose—the proclamation and exposition of this message.
The Christian obligation to “contend for the faith once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3) reflects this conviction perhaps more pointedly, even polemically. The Lord Jesus is God’s supreme self-revelation (John 1:1; Heb. 1:1–3; cf. Matt. 17:5; John 7:16; 14:24), and he entrusted this revelation to his apostles (John 14:24–26; 16:12–15; 17:4–8) who by his Spirit received “all truth” (John 16:13; cf. 15:26–27). The word of the apostles is the message from Christ that the world must receive and believe (John 17:8, 18, 20). The apostles, in turn, claim that their message from the Lord Jesus (e.g., 1 Cor. 14:37; 2 Thess. 2:15; 3:6; 1 Pet. 1:12; cf. Eph. 2:20) has been entrusted to the church “once for all” to be proclaimed, preserved, and defended at all costs (cf. 1 Tim. 3:15; 6:20; 2 Tim. 2:2; Jude 3). In short, Christianity is characterized as essentially a doctrinal religion. And its ministers are therefore commanded to devote themselves “to teaching” (1 Tim. 4:13), to “keep a close watch on . . . the teaching” (1 Tim. 4:16), and to give diligence to “rightly handle the word of truth” (2 Tim. 2:15).
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