Christian Citizen
June 8th, 2007 by tempe
I returned yesterday from the annual meeting of General Synod of the ARP (my denomination) church. When I arrived home, I was very pleased to find a couple of book shipments waiting for me: a textbook for learning theological German (a summer project, though probably a flight of fancy/fantasy on my part), and three books from American Vision. The books from AV were all apologetics works: two by Joel McDurmon (The Return of the Village Atheist and Manifested in the Flesh) and one by Doug Wilson (Letter from a Christian Citizen).
I have enjoyed reading the responses of Wilson to the atheism of Christopher Hitchens at the Christianity Today website. Mr. Wilson has a wonderful and witty command of the English language. Letter is a response to another atheist, Sam Harris. I enjoyed reading this comment this morning, which speaks to one of the huge problems (and unfounded assumptions) of the atheistic worldview. Wilson does this in the context of a complaint by Harris concerning nasty letters he received from Christians after the publication of his book:
“I could not get to your second page [of Harris’ Letter to a Christian Nation] without encountering a cluster of indignant moral judgments, and I am genuinely curious as to what you could possibly offer as the basis for these judgments. Pick the nastiest letter you got from the nastiest Christian out there. As a pastor, I know what I would say to him about it because I can appeal to the Bible. But what could you say to him? He is just doing his thing. Two hundred years years from now, when both you and he have returned to the soil, what difference will it make? There is no judgment, no standard, no law that overarches the two of you. … The material universe will not give anyone thirty minutes after death to readjust their thoughts on the subject before they pass into final oblivion. So why, on your terms, should he have written you a nice letter? I think he should have, but then again, I’m the pastor guy.”
Harris assumes that the letter writer should have treated him in a kind matter, but that assumption goes against his materialistic presuppositions. Harris, and all atheists for that matter, need to provide a rational for why such things as morality (and morality should be the easiest, most basic of the myriad assumptions that the atheist worldview must deal with — questions regarding epistemology and especially metaphysics are much more demanding, imho) exist and are utilized within the frame work of his thinking. I look forward to completing the book and would highly recommend it (thus far, of course).
You didn’t give any comments on Synod. How was it? I saw that GS officially added the county in Virginia in which i live to First presbytery. What went on in the discussion about Erskine? Just curious about that. RJG mentioned something about it.
I enjoyed the original blog postings that Wilson wrote that became _Letter from a Christian Citizen_. I’m sure they were edited, but the basics are most like the same.
Glad to see you posting again.
Synod was pretty much Synod. The “annexation” of the VA (and TN and KY) counties went forward without any opposition. First Presbytery wants to begin a mission in Appalachia, and this provided the opportunity for the work to go forward.
The only “controversies” were over the new Book of Worship (and just over language in a couple of places — some suggestions over the introduction of a “may” here and there so as not to bind the consciences of Christian brothers concerning the use of choirs and solos and such) and Erskine College (not the Seminary). You know as well as I that EC has some major problems: the embarrassment of a pro-evolution biology prof whose comments appeared in major newspapers in NC and SC; inappropriate student parties; etc. I have no doubt that Dr. Ruble is going to do a great job (and deserves our prayers in this effort). The sad thing is that all the bad stuff came from a minority report of the Erskine Board; the submitted report was all peaches and cream and rosy. It’s almost as if the rationale is that if we pretend the problem doesn’t exist, it’ll go away. We can then just forget about Erskine College’s problems until we return to Synod next year and wrestle with this all over again.