Basic Ideas Post 3: Words

You may have noticed that when we talk about basic ideas, we’re using words. You may also have noticed that in talking about the Bible as a source of fundamental knowledge, this also involves words since the Bible is a book written using words. Furthermore, we called it God’s words. If you haven’t noticed, the God of the Bible is a very verbal being. In creation, many of God’s acts of creation are described as speaking. God spoke the world into existence. He spoke something out of nothing. The Hebrew tradition concerning the Ten Commandments isn’t to call them the Ten Commandments; it’s to call them the ten words. In the scriptural account, it appears that God created Adam and Eve with knowledge of language. They didn’t invent language or discover it; they simply awoke talking and thinking in words. They were able to communicate with God and each other in words. Of course, Genesis also explains at the Tower of Babel, the Divine origin of the confusion and multiplicity of languages. Throughout the Bible, God seems quite unconcerned with the fact that language is a useful medium for his revelation. It appears that he takes it quite for granted that while words might have some ambiguity in the fallen human mind, they are more than an effective way to communicate. God also describes Jesus as the Word of God or the Divine Logos, a word that means more than word, also logic, reason, argument, order etc. But it does also mean word. When the prophets speak in the Bible, they often say “the word of the LORD” or “the word of the LORD came to so and so” or “proclaim the word of the LORD” and such phrases. There is constantly an emphasis on word, or words, or messages from God in human language.

The postmodern person who thinks that language is a human invention, or the nominalist, a person who doesn’t believe that universals exist, all this reliance on language as a way of trying to communicate truths that are allegedly objective could be a bit troubling. But it really shouldn’t be. I believe the traditional answer of Christian theologians and Augustine in particular suffices. God created human beings in His image. Part of this creation of humans in His image is that, like him, human beings are verbal beings. We are able to understand language and express ourselves in language. Furthermore, the language that we understand is not purely referential. We don’t merely have words for things we can point to and see. We also have words for things we can’t ever see but yet we know what they mean. Words like justice, freedom, unity, truth, beauty, property, negligence, agreement, consideration, law, justification, mercy, tenderness. All these words are what we call universals, that is, words that everyone seems to know and understand the meaning of but that no one has ever seen in their pure form, that is, unless perhaps you have seen God. It is also the tradition of Augustine and many other Christian theologians that the positive universals are embodied in God himself. As Plato said, and we’ve mentioned before, God is preeminently the measure of all things. He is the origin of language and the origin of the meaning of the universals. The positive universals in one way or another describe aspects of God. For this reason, while they each have a distinctive core meaning, the meaning of positive universals tends to get fuzzy the more broadly you examine them. It’s difficult to tell the difference sometimes between righteousness and justice, or beauty and goodness and while each of them is distinctive, they tend to blend together at the edges. This is because God is one and you can’t really divide Him up into pieces or sections. And yet, all of these words find their referential in God’s character, personality, and nature. Negative universals are those things that find their opposite or find their meaning by being unlike God such as evil, hatred, bitterness, envy, and other sins and destructive impulses, emotions, and ideas.

Now, in saying this, we’re not saying that human’s understanding of language is perfect. Our understanding and use of language was affected by our fall into sin, just like every other aspect of our personalities. But language is still practical for working purposes. While it may take a lot of discussion for us to come to an agreement about justice, we all, more or less, know it when we see it, provided that we’re honest with ourselves and others. We often times want to redefine justice in order to justify ourselves or to make a complicated concept simpler than it really is. While there have been many attempts by philosophers to define words like justice, they fail. It simply isn’t possible to provide a perfect definition of any universal in words, deeds, examples, or concrete reference other than by reference to God himself. And yet we can talk about what those universals mean in various aspects. So, while many definitions of justice may tell us something about justice itself – Socrates idea that justice is doing your work excellently and minding your own business – Plato’s idea that justice is living by what we know of the divine – Aristotle’s idea that justice is giving to everyone according to their deserve – or Justinian’s three fold concept of justice that includes hurting no one and rendering to everyone his due – are all good, but are not the last word in Justice. For the last word on Justice we have to look to the Word of God Himself.

10 Tips for looking for a legal job after law school

1. Learn the common areas of practice.

When you apply for a legal job, the lawyers interviewing you will ask you what areas of practice you’re interested in. Of course, the optimal answer is that you’re interested in the very area of practice that they themselves work on and are hiring an associate to help them with. So in order to properly answer this question you have to first find out what the common practice areas are. Legal practice is divided into a variety of unofficial practice areas. Lawyers usually concentrate on cases within a particular practice area or a couple of practice areas. Sometimes, sole practitioners will do some things in several different practice areas but most lawyers find comfort in sticking to a definite practice area. What are the major practice areas? Here are a few: criminal prosecution; criminal defense; insurance defense law (representing defendants in personal injury cases where you are hired by the insurance company for the defendant); plaintiff’s personal injury; real estate transactions; real estate litigation; entrepreneurial business practice; corporate business practice; securities law; entertainment law; wills, trusts, and estate; intellectual property; mergers and acquisitions; maritime law (in which there are sub-practice areas of plaintiff’s personal injury, insurance defense, cargo loss, and some even more esoteric divisions); tax law; environmental law; bankruptcy law; and workers compensation law. There are other areas, but these are the most common.

2. Decide what you can do and what you love to do.

Once you know the practice areas, the next important question is: in which practice areas is it reasonable for you to believe you can get a job? And of those practice areas, what do you really love doing? It may be that in the beginning you’ll have to be happy doing something like insurance defense cases that focus on auto accidents even though your real desire is to be a specialist in products liability law. If the area you love and the area you can reasonably get into are two different things, try to pick something close to what you love. People are most effective in their work when they enjoy it. So what do I mean by asking what you can do? For example, many of the firms that do mergers and acquisitions law are large, powerful, corporate law firms that only accept graduates from the top of the class in the top law schools. As a result, unless you’re able to find a smaller firm in a smaller city that does mergers and acquisitions work, it may not be reasonable to think you can get into that practice easily if you’re from a small law school or were not in the top of your class.

3. Find the firms that engage in the practice areas you want to target.

There is a lot of information about law firms and what they do on the internet. It is also worthwhile to talk to people and network to find firms that have particular practices. Knowing someone in a firm is often the best way to find information about a viable job. Look for as many firms as possible since you will probably have to talk to more than 100 firms to find a job in a tight market like the one that currently exists.

4. Research the target firms.

To be successful in a legal interview, it not only helps to be a good candidate, but to know as much as possible about the firm you’re interested in. You especially need to know their practice areas. If you know what their partners do, where they went to school, what interests they have, and what published cases they may have been involved with or what major litigation they have been involved in, you can ask and answer questions intelligently and you have a chance of demonstrating to the firm that you picked them because you really are interested in their particular practice, not because you’re merely applying to every law firm in Southern California.

5. Write a good resume and cover letter.

You need to explain in your cover letter what kind of job you’re looking for and why. What attracted you to this particular firm? In your resume you need to present personal information about yourself, your education, and your job experience that demonstrates you have the qualities that a law firm would be looking for in a potential candidate. That would include things like proof that you know how to work hard, proof that you’re intelligent, that you’re capable of thinking on your feet, that you’re a good legal researcher, that you know how to write, that you’re good with public relations, that you have an excellent memory, etc. It is definitely worth getting advice from someone in the legal field about your resume and cover letter to be sure it meets with the expectations of the industry. In addition, you must carefully proofread the resume and the cover letter. Many many people have failed to obtain jobs because of spelling errors or errors in spacing or consistency in their resume. When employers are making a snap judgment of who to interview by going through hundreds of resumes, small difference make a big impact. You also don’t want your resume to be ugly, too plain, or too ostentatious. You want a resume that is businesslike and well-balanced. It should be appealing to the eye and provide the information the reader wants quickly and easily.

6. Send your resume and cover letter to as many target firms as possible.

In particular look for firms that are advertising openings. The daily newspaper provides a list of law firm classified ads at the back in every daily issue. Firms also sometimes advertise online. Word of mouth, though, is probably the best way to find an opening. Don’t be skimpy in the number of firms you apply to. The more you apply to, the more likely it is that you’ll get a job.

7. Follow up on your letter.

You need to find out who in the firm is responsible for hiring decisions or who that person’s secretary is. Follow up with the secretary to be sure your letter and resume were received and to find out what, if anything, the next step would be.

8. Be persistent.

Hard work pays off in seeking a job. Don’t nag the people who you’re applying to, but make sure that you apply to many places and that you follow up with each of them.

9. Network.

As I’ve mentioned above, a personal contact is the best way to get a job. When you’re looking for a job, you shouldn’t only do the things mentioned above. You should get involved with networks which may lead you to a job source. Join chapters of the local county bar association, especially chapters that deal with the practice area in which you are interested. If you’re a conservative or libertarian, it doesn’t hurt to become a member of the federalist society. If you’re a believer, you may want to join your local Christian legal society chapter. Having attorneys as friends may help you get a job and may also give you an opportunity to refer cases to someone, to obtain referrals, and to occasionally get advice and help. The best way to make friends is to be a friend. If you talk to others, listen to them, and encourage them, they may be able to help you as well.

10. Be positive and thankful.

In the brutal world of looking for work it’s easy to feel bitter. But any kind of bitterness, resentment, or unthankfulness will show on your face and make you look bad to potential employers. You need to remain positive and thankful for whatever it is that you have and the opportunities that you face. Prayer is an important part of any job search. Knowing Jesus Christ is the one thing that can help you be positive and thankful throughout the unpleasantness of the job search experience.

Basic Ideas, Post 2

In A Guide to Basic Ideas post 1, I advocated the notion that God is the foundation of all truth and that in order to truly know, one must accept Him. I quoted Augustine and Anselm who said we must believe in order to understand. But, while significant, our natural knowledge of God is not really enough considering how dimmed by sin our will and faculties have become. In order to know not only that there is a God, but to confirm to our dim understanding what we should already be able to deduce about his nature and plans but usually do not, we need his written revelation: the Bible. I don’t doubt that the acceptance of a postulate that is over 1000 pages long and many printings will be a difficult pill to swallow for many people. But if we are trying to establish truth and create a system of ideas that will last, we must believe the scriptures in order to understand the universe. Once again, this cannot be an instrumentalist relationship either. The scriptures must be accepted for the sake of God not merely for the sake of human knowledge.
The Bible is a self authenticating divine message. The Bible itself claims to be inspired by God and to have authority as a communication from God that is full of specific communications from God. 2 Timothy 3:16 says, “All scripture is God breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness.” 2 Peter 1:21 says that the prophecies of the Old Testament did not come “by the impulse of man” but “men knew by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.” There are also the times when Jesus attributes words in the Old Testament scripture written by the authors of the Old Testament to God himself such as Matthew 1:21 and Matthew 19:5. The same thing is done in the book of Acts in Acts 1:16, and by implication, in Acts 2:16-17. There are also the many passages in the Old Testament and the New where it describes God himself as speaking or says Thus sayeth the LORD. I could go on and on. If you’re interested in the details, you should consult a good systematic theology treatise like Wayne Grudem’s systematic theology or Gordon Clark’s book God’s Hammer: the Bible and its critics. So the Bible claims for itself to be a divinely inspired communication. When we read the Bible we are also convinced of its claims and convinced that its words are a communication from God. Just as God cannot be proved, neither can his words be proved in an ultimate objective sense of being forced to receive them. But when we are confronted with the truths in the scriptures, if we seek the truth with an open mind we will be convinced by the Holy Spirit that the Bible’s claims to be God’s words are accurate. The Bible is systematically consistent and fits the facts. It meets the needs of the human condition. The apologist Carnel made these points in a very persuasive way. We can also see, in looking at the scriptures, that it claims to be a set of eye witness accounts. It is not written in the once-upon-a-time manner of fairy stories or myths. The Bible claims to be set of descriptions of events in time and space as well as poetry and prophetic literature. The Bible is full of fulfilled prophecies, eyewitness testimony to divine intervention in everyday life. The greatest and most important eyewitness testimony of divine intervention is the testimony of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. We also have the evidence of lives transformed by the Bible’s message today and throughout history. The Bible is also extraordinary in that it is the only book of its kind and the only book to have survived the many attacks, persecutions, hostilities, and attempts at refutation that the Bible has survived. While many religions have experienced persecution, no religion or religious message has been so besieged as first Judaism and then Christianity. The message of their scriptures has been resented by the world since it was spoken and then put in written form. Yet despite all of the attempts to destroy it and refute it and to kill and torture its people into recanting, the Bible has survived as have God’s believers. To sum up, the Bible is self authenticating. While it cannot be proved by putting you in an intellectual situation where you are forced to accept it, God has not left himself or his word without evidence. From here, we will go on to see what the Bible and God’s general revelation tell us about God himself.

An Update on Religious Liberty

Many people who read my blog post on religious liberty and who have read similar accounts of the dilemmas facing society in the realm of religious freedom find it difficult to believe that religious liberty could actually be under siege in any way. They don’t believe there are people out there who would like to do away with the freedom of Christians to teach the truths of Christianity to their children. While such people are definitely not the majority and are definitely not in control of the government, they do exist. For example, the blog Cranmer has an extensive quote dated Friday, March 12, 2010 from David Laws, the shadow Secretary of State for children, schools, and families of the Liberal Democrat party in England. Now mind you, the Liberal Democrats are not in control in England and are not likely to be. The Tories should win the next election if everything continues along its current path. But this is some of what David Laws has said about the approach of his political party to the question of schools with a religious mission. You also need to keep in mind in reading this that religious schools in England are called faith schools and they are partially funded by the government. Laws has stated:

"Can it be right that a child living in the catchment area of a faith school whose parents want to choose that school for the child should be denied entry to the nearest taxpayer funded school on the basis of a religious test? That is a reality in many communities. Liberal democrats therefore voted to require all faith schools to have a more inclusive approach to entry…democrats also decided that, with the exception of religious instruction, staff in faith schools should be chosen on the basis of the ability to teach and not simply on the basis of faith. That is surely right – anything else is unfair both to children who need the best education, and to the teacher with the right skills.
Finally what of sex and relationship education? … Is it really acceptable that in the 21st century that – for example – a school should be able to teach about homosexuality while at the same time making clear those same sex relationships are morally wrong or that hell could await those who find their sexuality defined in this way? Can we really expect young people to be treated with respect and gain confidence in themselves if state-funded schools are allowed to teach such nonsense? Liberal democrats will defend the role of faith schools in state education. But state funded prejudice is not a freedom that liberals or liberal democrats should feel the need to justify or tolerate."

In other words, to recap, the third largest political party in the United Kingdom maintains as part of their platform that faith school should not be able to discriminate against potential students on the basis of their faith, should not be able to hire teachers primarily on the basis of the faith of the teacher, except in the area of religious instruction, and should not be able to teach that homosexuality is morally wrong or could result in eternal judgment. Such policies might never be implemented. But if people who believe in the need for Christians to be able to teach the truth don’t stand up for their rights to do so, who knows what could happen?

A Guide to Basic Ideas: Post 1

There is an interesting article about Christians and postmodernism in the March 2010 First Things magazine. It inspired me to attempt a series of posts on reality and knowledge. None of the ideas in these posts will be new or original, but will attempt to synthesize and summarize common knowledge Christian thought on these issues from many sources.
How do we begin to describe the truth? How can we discover and catalogue the contents of the world of ideas? We cannot. To find out the order of things and see reality, we cannot start with any thing. We cannot start with seeking what we hope to find. We cannot lay a foundation of our own making. We cannot even start from the perspective of “we” or “I.”
That which is, that which was from the beginning, the word of truth. Before all else comes God. Nothing is more fundamental. As your eyes rely on light to see, your mind relies on God to think or know or reason. Nothing is more fundamental than God. In a sense, God cannot be proved because He is the most fundamental reality. All other reality depends on him for its being and purpose, its existence and definition, its context and relationships. God is before all else.
You may be wondering how can we accept what we cannot prove? You have no real choice in this matter if you want to know or prove or think or accept anything else. Whether you yield on this or not, all knowledge, reason, being and form depend on God. To deny Him is like claiming you do not believe in light. You go on seeing by the light anyway, and your rejection of the light can only hurt your efforts to improve your vision.
But then it is also the case you do not need proof of God because you already know He is. You know He is there whether you acknowledge Him or not. You always have. In fact, it was probably easiest for you to just accept He exists before you could think much or talk much about Him. Your mind has tried hard to pretend He is not there as you have grown into an adult and have wanted to be comfortable with doing more and more you knew was incompatible with Him.
Of course knowing God in any way is made possible by Jesus, the Messiah, and the second person of God. And there are different qualities of knowledge. Everyone knows God exists and knows more than enough about what God is like and what he wants for the purposes of everyday life. But you need to know Him, not just know He is there.
So, acknowledge that God is there – and is here. God is the center. God is the start and the end. God is the foundation and the capstone. Everything else depends on Him. As Augustine and Anselm said, we must believe in order to understand. But to know the goal cannot be knowing, the goal must be God Himself, just as God Himself is our starting place.

Religious Liberty

Religious liberty is one of our most cherished ideals. Humans have struggled and yearned for religious freedom from the start. Attorney Sam Ericson has pointed out that when Cain killed Abel, committing the first murder, the motive was religious: Cain was angry that Abel’s way of worshiping God was not only different from his own, but was more pleasing to God. Rather than “convert”, Cain killed his brother. People have been persecuting each other over religious differences ever since.

Christians remember the decades of persecution of Christianity under Rome and other governments. This persecution of Christians still continues today in many places around the world. Christians from non-established churches or dissenting churches remember the persecution and pressure applied to them by the national churches of various countries. In addition, horrible crimes have been committed because of national and ethnic prejudices linked with religious language. The founding fathers of the USA remembered these terrors, too, and sought to avoid them through the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights. Religious liberty is America’s first freedom, the most important cornerstone of our Bill of Rights. And yet, religious liberty is becoming an increasingly difficult thing to achieve and maintain.

For over a hundred years religious liberty in America was not a huge issue. Churches were allowed to meet in US government buildings even during the Presidency of that most liberal and secular of the founders, Thomas Jefferson. In fact, he attended services in government buildings while President. Most Americans were members of a limited number of protestant Christian churches, or shared the worldview of those churches, or were at least happily accepting of those who did. It was understood and accepted by many that religious faith was important for social order and the self government of citizens. As Os Guinness has pointed out, it was important that most people not only obeyed the law, but did what was ethical and moral without being coerced to do so. It was also important, except on a few very difficult issues, that most people had agreement about basic moral ideas and principles. America was nearly destroyed by the one great disagreement she had: slavery. Everybody knew that slavery was wrong but many people were reluctant to stop doing something that was so linked to the old Southern way of life. People increasingly tried to justify it as right as the 1800’s went by. The great war and conflagration which followed magnified other smaller issues and tensions, and caused some people to lose their faith rather than continue to believe that morality could justify or require the carnage of the Civil War. They lost their conviction that freeing the oppressed sometimes requires great sacrifice, including the use of force and the suffering of force. Sadly, without the moral guidance of Abraham Lincoln, and with the great bitterness raised by the war, America did not completely free the oppressed, but continued to discriminate on the basis of race for many more decades. Our laws are still affected by the philosophical gymnastics used to justify laws that sanctioned slavery and discrimination even though everyone knew that the natural law did not. (See my prior post, “When American Law Went South”).

Nevertheless, America had great religious renewal in some parts of the country following the Civil War. This recommitment to Christianity also resulted in great reform of the law, including laws against prostitution, abortion, and human trafficking. Do people today realize that the same women who were lobbying for the vote were also lobbying for these issues, which were near and dear to their hearts?

The first real battles over religious liberty didn’t happen until the 1960’s. It was at this point, strangely enough, that some very old tensions asserted themselves. Some protestant members of the Supreme Court of the United States were concerned about the rise of Catholicism and the influence of parochial schools. Afraid that parochial schools would benefit from government help and that Roman Catholics might lead prayers in public schools, the Supreme Court was willing, with the sanction of many religious believers, to ban public prayer and much of the public support of Christian works that had gone uncontested for nearly two hundred years. As atheism became more popular in America, and as more Americans either stopped taking the Bible seriously, or decided to re-interpret it to mean whatever they wanted it to mean, a radical political liberalism that sought to separate government policy and law from morality became a dominant sentiment in American law schools. (Or should I say a dominant faith? The truth is, all beliefs about reality involve a faith commitment of some kind.) The religion clauses of the first amendment were reinterpreted from their old meanings. Instead of merely preventing the federal government or the states from establishing a particular church as the official church of the government, the establishment clause has now been used as a bludgeon to protect government from any religious influence and atheists from any reminder of God’s existence in any public place. This has been done to such an extent that children attending public schools today must surely be convinced that God does not exist and is not important because otherwise He would have a greater role in the knowledge of reality that they are given through their public education. The scope of religious free exercise has also been diminished by many recent court opinions that were more concerned that religion would be used as an excuse for license than with preserving genuine religious liberty and freedom of conscious.

With the rise of the great social issues; abortion; cloning; embryonic stem cell research; killing of the aged, the unfit, and the suffering; and a desire to eliminate the globally acknowledged understanding of marriage in favor of a sort of contractual, sexual free-for-all, the debate over religious liberty has been raised to a fever pitch because some people seek to impose their views of abortion, euthanasia, same sex marriage, etc., upon society through education and law to such an extent that even religious faith and conscience will not be an excuse for dissenting from particular political views on these topics. Those who favor abortion, etc., have also adopted the tactic of claiming that laws against abortion or against gay marriage interfere with their religious liberty. In a recent First Thoughts blog post, Matt Cavedon, mentions how Brian McGrath Davis has argued that the house healthcare bill “discriminates against religious freedom” by forbidding the use of public funds for abortion (I was unaware any religions still required child sacrifice). These new political tensions are only the tip of the iceberg, grating against the side of the ship of state.

An even bigger issue than the desire to mobilize the religious liberty argument as a way to foreclose political arguments on various topics is the friction between some of the worldviews in our heterogeneous globalized world. Modern radical political liberals are frustrated by the fact that evangelical Christians do not feel they have religious freedom unless they are able to witness about Christ anywhere, anytime, and in any way they wish, including in the public square. Atheists, agnostics and religious liberals often feel that granting evangelicals what they would consider religious liberty would in some way impinge on what they believe is a right of their own to be free from religion. They do not feel religiously free if they are reminded of the existence of God or the moral claims made in the Scriptures. For them, religious freedom means complete toleration of what used to be thought of as moral and ethical license, but is now accepted as a progressive lifestyle. This conflict is not the only one. While there are many types of Islam, and they are not all in agreement with each other, there are sectors within Islam that do not feel religiously free unless they have Shari’a law. They also require, for a feeling of true religious freedom, that their people must not hear about Christianity, and must not be allowed to convert to Christianity. Even beyond this, if anyone says anything about Islam that would be likely to make people unwilling to convert to Islam, even if those statements are historically true or endorsed by Muslim documents themselves, some Muslims do not feel religiously free unless they can ban and prosecute such comments as “hate speech” or what we used to call “blasphemy”. Among high ranking academic elites today there is actually talk about forbidding parents from having any religious influence over their children in the name of “religious liberty”. Obviously most parents would regard the need to share their religious faith with their children as paramount and that any ban on such communication would be the ultimate interference with religious liberty by the state.

Needless to say, these competing understandings of religious liberty create a problem: they are mutually exclusive of one another. It is probably not possible to create a regime or a settlement in which radical Muslims, radical atheists, radical political liberals, and evangelicals Christians all feel free. Our system of government is designed to try to accommodate all the major variations in religion, and yet these conflicting world views threaten to destroy the American system itself. This is a serious difficulty. In the long run it is going to require a great public debate and a new settlement of exactly how religious liberty works and what it means in practice.

One of the things that is difficult about this for Christians who take the Bible seriously, is that the difficulties outlined above form a sort of pincer movement. If we protect our ability to use truth to influence the state we also protect the ability of radical Islam to influence the state. If we take steps to limit radical Islam, those same steps may be used to shackle our own religious liberty and deprive us of the ability to teach truth to our children or to use truth to influence the state.

I would argue that history shows that commitment to true religious liberty is critical. On the one hand as Os Guinness has pointed out, we don’t want the complete banning of all religious dialog and ideas in the public square. On the other hand, we do not want an established religion, whether it be Islam, secular humanism, or evangelical Christianity. But maintaining a balance in which everyone is free to discuss ideas, even though they may come from a religious worldview, while at the same time not creating what would objectively be oppression, or what could amount to persecution of Christians, is increasingly difficult. I do not believe that it has become impossible. But I think that the ultimate solution to the problem can only rely on a spiritual awakening and a recommitment to objective moral truth rather than on greater liberalism and greater relativism.

Merry Christmas!

May God bless you and lead you to an increased knowledge of Him as we celebrate His incarnation. God, who being fully God, became fully man too. He lived among us and is called Jesus. Jesus lived a perfect life, died on our place, and rose from the dead. He did this so we who believe what God has revealed through the Bible could be forgiven, reconciled to God, have Jesus' righteous life accounted to us, be resurrected when Jesus returns, and enter into an eternal life of joy with God. This is truly good news. Merry Christmas.

Manhattan Declaration

It’s always exciting when Christians stand up for the fundamental truths. So often we are either confused, complacent, or unwilling to speak out on justice and the common good of our communities. But a recent new declaratory statement signed by a large number of Evangelicals, Roman Catholics and East Orthodox Christians has recently appeared on the internet. This is the Manhattan Declaration, a statement taking a detailed position in favor of the sanctity of human life, the dignity of marriage as the conjugal union between one man and one woman, and the importance of the rights of conscience and religious liberty. These are three of the great issues of our time and it is really wonderful to see a comprehensive declaration dealing with these three areas at once. To see the Manhattan Declaration and add your signature in support, go to the following link: http://manhattandeclaration.org/.

Liberty University Law Review Article on Natural Law

In February of 2008 I attended a symposium on Natural Law at Liberty University. I gave a talk on “The Nature in Natural Law”. That talk is now published as a complete law review article in the Liberty University Law Review, Volume 2, Number 3, Spring 2008 issue. Copies should be available through Hein & Co., New York. Their contact information is as follows:

William S. Hein & Co., Inc. 1285 Main Street Buffalo, NY 14209-1987 Phone: 1-800-828-7571

The symposium issue contains a number of very interesting articles on natural law by authors like J. Daryl Charles, Gilbert Meilaender and David VanDrunen. My own natural law article deals with the question of why natural law is called “natural”. The article performs a historical survey of different definitions of natural law from ancient times up to the present. It provides some analysis and commentary on each of the views, and put them in an overall perspective that I believe points to the true nature behind natural law.

Listen to the Apologetics.com Radio Show on Christ, Government and the Law

How can a Christian lawyer defend a guilty client? What is the proper relationship between church and state? These and other questions are discussed on the Apologetics.com radio show available as a podcast on itunes and at this link:

http://apologetics.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=385:christianity-the-church-and-government&catid=43:kkla-995-fm-los-angeles&Itemid=74

I guest hosted the show with Trinity Law School Admissions Director Doug Eaton and Trinity Law School student Lane Chaplin as discussion panel members.

Upcoming Apologetics.com Show

At midnight between Friday September 5 and Saturday September 6, and for the next two hours, lasting until 2 am Saturday morning, Trinity Law School Dean Donald McConnell will be hosting the Apologetics.com radio show on KKLA 99.5 FM. With Dean McConnell will be TLS Director of Admissions Doug Eaton and Trinty Law School student and famed podcaster Lane Chaplin. The show will answer questions about a Christian perspective on human law and government.

Doubt and "Fundamentalism"

A strong Christian friend of mine recently showed me an article by Gregory Rodriguez in the L. A. Times. The article discussed a new book by Peter L. Berger and Anton C. Zijerveld: In Praise of Doubt: How to have Convictions without becoming a Fanatic. I admit I have not read the book, but the article raised an interesting question. Attempting to summarize Berger and Zijerveld, Rodriguez says “you must have conviction and uncertainty simultaneously in order to ward off fundamentalism. Beliefs are necessary.” He proposes that radical relativism is dangerous because it encourages people to respond by retrenching into a radical fundamentalism; that the chaos and angst generated by those deconstructing society causes people to retreat into the “safe” territory of believing in really absolute absolutes and thereby becoming equally undesirable “fundamentalists.” (I don't really like this use of the word fundamentalism - but it is so common we must deal with it).

The antidote, Rodriguez tells us, is balance: believe a few “core certainties”, but be flexible about other “negotiable beliefs.” Then we are told that: “The most important core certainty, and one found in most belief systems, is ‘do unto others ...’ -- the Golden Rule. It leaves enough wiggle room for your beliefs, my beliefs and their beliefs to coexist. And what makes it all work is the same thing that burdened us all to begin with: doubt. Berger and Zijderveld believe that doubt can serve as a type of psychic cushion between all our different certainties.”

I think this line of thinking has appeal for many people today. First, many people have doubts about things that are important to them. It is human to doubt. The Bible tells us that after he had been in prison for some time, John the Baptist began to doubt if Jesus was the Messiah. Jesus sent him back the message of the works and words of his Messianic ministry to reassure the soon-to-be martyr. Some of us deal with our doubts by encouraging others to admit they have doubts – a sort of cultural group therapy that makes us all say “I’m ok and you are ok about doubts” These people are especially comfortable with the sort of opinion Rodriguez is documenting. And there are many people in this position in our society today.

A second group of doubters deals with doubt by violently embracing it: for them doubt makes God and the whole world false. I think of the “new atheists” and the old German philosophers when I think of this group. At some level and to some degree we all know innately and from reason that God exists, that he is not identical with the created world or ourselves, that God has standards, and that we have not lived up to those standards. Many of us place faith in God that he has redeemed us from this situation himself in the person of Jesus Christ through his life, death, and resurrection. But for some people, when God does not play by their rules or meet their demands – whether for empirical certainty or for moral license or rescue from the tragedies of life in a fallen world – they respond by being so angry with God that they try to punish him by telling people he does not exist. In a way, these dogmatic unbelievers are a culture of fundamentalism all to themselves. Rodrigeuz et al are probably right that this assault on the foundations of the Universe turns some people into what they call “fundamentalists.” But is this really why people become “fundamentalists”?

A third response to doubt is to embrace doubt with sad sentimentality like the philosopher George Santayana. The great liberal theologians, who believe in religion, but not in God, often come from this stock. They too can probably be seen to encourage fundamentalism by their smug refusal to see that their argument of an emotional need for religion is an evidence for a true religion somewhere, not a proof that all religions are false. By contrast to the liberals, C. S. Lewis argues that a world in which all get thirsty is evidence for the existence of water. Somehow these sad philosophers who embrace doubt with feigned reluctance prefer to speak of the “beautiful myth of water” while dying of thirst.

Second to last in my analysis, though undoubtedly in reality we could find hundreds of categories, are those who do deal with doubt by what I suspect the authors mean by “fundamentalism.” These are those who deal with doubt by violently forswearing doubt. You see, because doubt is rooted in our imperfect human nature, we not only all have it from time to time, but we sometimes feel guilty about it. One way to deal with this guilt is to suppress it and deny it: to emphasize to yourself and others just how certain you really are – because you think doubt would be unacceptable to them or to yourself. In traditions where doubt is punished, or might even be fatal, this out is common. This repression can break out in persecution of others, fear, hostility, and all the other negative behavior that Rodriguez, et al, are thinking of when they think of “fundamentalists.” This kind of doubter tries to drown his doubts in zeal. Because he is still human, and therefore still sinful, the repressing doubter sometimes impresses others as a hypocrite rather than a “believer.”

Would the approach recommended by Rodriguez moderate these repressing doubters? They probably would not be changed. They would reject the suggestion that they should hold even questionable beliefs less tightly. It would also not deal with what I believe to be the driving force behind what Rodriguez thinks of as “fundamentalism” – the guilt about doubt. Accepting some doubts without more than a pragmatic reason for doing so would only cause more doubt and more guilt.

But who are my fourth group of doubters? I will call them the “believing doubters.” Believing doubters vanquish the cultural and psychological trappings known popularly as “fundamentalism” through additional knowledge and faith in a few key ideas that deliver them most of the time from the pitfalls of doubt.

Believing doubters know God has called them to love their enemies. This means treating people with respect and dignity. It does not mean we cannot disagree. It does not mean we cannot try to persuade others. It does not mean we cannot tell others they are wrong. It may not even rule out the use of humor, satire and parody to convince others. In extreme cases, love does not rule out just wars. But love does mean, to paraphrase the late ethicist Lewis Smedes, that we must wish our enemies well and act reasonably to further their best interests to the extent it does not harm others. We cannot lie about our enemies. We cannot demonize them. We must not try to convert them through violence nor try to exterminate them because they will not convert.

Believing doubters know God is the source of their faith. When they doubt, they say “I believe, God please save me from my unbelief.” They do not panic when a doubting thought comes into the mind because they know their salvation depends on the love and sacrifice of Christ, not on their own effort. They know Christianity is about being in God’s hands, not about clinging to the edge of a cliff through their own power. The believing doubter is a real person. The believing doubter can have doubts. They can go through the dark night of the soul. They can feel angry with God. They can feel disillusioned by the failings of fellow humans or themselves. But ultimately their faith is about God, not about themselves.

Believing doubters know about human fallibility – including their own. They know that humans are sinful and often wrong, so they are slow to anger on the peripheral issues where our beliefs are based more on judgment and philosophy than on revelation. In the areas where revelation is clear, they believe firmly. Where revelation is unclear, they believe, but hold their belief more loosely. Believing doubters know that human sinfulness has lead to unjust persecutions throughout history; so they do not trust themselves or other individuals with corrupting absolute power over the whole of the state and or the whole church.

The believing doubter is also forearmed against doubt by the doctrines she/he believes. Because the believing doubter knows he/she is a sinful human being, knows he or she is weak, and knows how bio-chemistry and circumstances can prey on his/her mind, the believing doubter knows that doubts cannot be trusted. The believing doubter doubts her/his doubts more than his or her faith. For this reason, some believing doubters go through life almost appearing to have no doubts at all because the few fleeting doubts they have are such mere shadows without substance that they are mistaken to be no doubts at all.

Believing doubters know their own experience is limited. Though they may be tempted not to do so, they try to put the universally true revelation of the whole of scripture ahead of personal experience (a luxury people who lived before scripture did not have). So if they see evil triumph, they remember that the Bible says God will eventually bring the evil to judgment. If they see the bad things happening to a person, they do not assume that it must be caused by his/her sin since the bible clearly teaches there are other reasons that bad things happen to good people.

As you can tell, I believe that only Christians can be real “believing doubters.” The “believing doubter” has had his mind illumined by the Holy Spirit of God. He or she believes in the Bible and takes it seriously, recognizing it as a self authenticating message from the living God. The believing doubter follows Augustine and Anselm in “believing in order to understand.” The believing doubter’s faith is rational – but by a God-centered rationality that flows from the mind of Christ, not a self-centered rationality that depends on the power, experience and ego of the believer’s mind alone.

Everyone should be a believing doubter. But the difficulty is that it is something you can ask God to do in you, but not something you can do for yourself. But if you ask God for a good gift, like the gift of faith, surely he will give it to you. He may give it on his own terms and in his own time and in his own way – but faith will come if you seek it. It will not be guaranteed to make you rich or to solve all your problems or to free you from all temptation. I can’t even guarantee you will not be considered a fundamentalist. But I do believe that the negative behavior associated with what Rodriguez means by “fundamentalism” will be less common in believing doubters because of what they believe.

Believing doubters may solve the personal problem for some, but what of the global problem of fundamentalisms like radical jihadist Islam? I don’t think there is an easy answer to that question because I do not believe the problems and mechanics of belief are the same for all religions. And I do believe that there is real evil in the world; not just the typical evil of each fallen human, but dark spiritual evil that raises up evil empires and false ideas to enslave and denigrate human beings if it can. In responding to evil we must remember the sin within our own hearts and not succumb to being as bad or worse than those deceived by the dark spiritual forces we are resisting. We do need to maintain religious liberty. As Peter L. Berger and Anton C. Zijerveld say, we ought to keep the golden rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. And we need to remember, that quite literally, but for the grace of God it would be us advocating some terrible false idea because of the pressures of family, culture, and sword.
People with dangerous false ideas can sometimes be contained. But if they are persistently violent, they may need to be converted by persuasion or defeated militarily to prevent harm to third persons. Persuasion is often still a necessity. War alone cannot solve problems caused by ideas. Happily, uncontainable error is rare. False sects within America can easily be tolerated and dealt with merely through words. With the exceptions of guerilla wars, Korea, and Viet Nam, Soviet Communism and Chinese Communism have largely been contained and converted, except on University Campuses. The Communists killed 80 million people, but their expansion was limited. Nazism required a war to defeat, but we also had to deal with the ideas behind it. Radical jihadist Islam has led us to war, but is so widespread that war alone, at least on a humane scale, cannot solve the problem. Persuasion is always the key. To do so we must try to persuade – not try to accept. Persuasion does require understanding and love, though. And it requires more. In the final analysis we need God’s help to persuade others. Prayer is our most potent weapon against “fundamentalisms” like radical jihadist Islam, Communism, and yes even fundamentalist atheism. But sadly, the only cure to fundamentalist Islam will strike those with an allergy to Christianity as “fundamentalist Christianity” because it believes in what they, as fundamentalist secularists, will not believe in. But we cannot help that. We can be well behaved on behalf of the truth, but we cannot change the truth to accommodate error.

Rodriguez in his understanding of the book he is reviewing draws on our emotions. We all know people who believe things we think they should not believe or who are obnoxious about their beliefs. But asking people not to believe strongly in what they believe cannot be the right answer if truth really exists (which I believe it must). The only course of action can be to seek truth and encourage others to do likewise in the faith that real truth brings virtue not vice.

Great Law Quotes: Calvin Coolidge

"About the Declaration of Independence there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. . . If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed by their creator with inalienable rights, that is final. . . No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward. . ." - Calvin Coolidge

God and Governing Conference in Print

The book based on the God and Governing Conference put on by Trinity Law School will be in bookstores in August. Orders can be placed now at: http://wipfandstock.com/store/God_and_Governing_Reflections_on_Ethics_Virtue_and_Statesmanship

The book includes chapters by some of the leading evangelical thinkers of our time (and one by myself) on the problem of why evangelicals have not been more successful in changing the political climate in the USA, and what we should do from here on.