Thank you for this thoughtful review. The testimony of honest thinking unbelievers is powerful. The struggle of a rigorous man with faith is understandable. May God grant Mr. Murray that light while it is still Today.
I have less sympathy for the professing believer who seeks to temporize what is uncomfortably clear in Scripture. May God protect those who seek Him.
Haven’t read Douthat but the sincerity of Murray’s journey is gripping. It’s a gift from God to be able to look simultaneously into the mirror of truth and the suppositions of one’s own heart with the humility required for true change. (A gift even many christian believers somehow lack.) For a top level intellectual to be open about it is challenging and endearing. And to anthropomorphize, the Lord is pleased.
Douthat's approach reminds me of Eisenhower's line that “our form of government has no sense unless it is founded in a deeply felt religious faith, and I don’t care what it is.” From Murray's perspective as a seeker, this makes a lot of sense for him to say, but even in a pluralistic setting, it really undermines Douthat's commitments and convictions beyond his safe, private personal sphere.
It might lead to a warmer, fuzzier world to live in, but only if those faiths are diluted to satisfy the franchise standards of the American religious Luby's cafeteria.
That's completely believable and I'd expect it. Murray's account, as you describe it, is sort of that of an in-progress seeker's journey.
Douthat's seems to be more arguing that faith in something more well-defined, even if he believes it to be wrong, is inherently better than faith in nothing or something amorphous and purposefully vague. The problem is that that's a well that runs low for the following generation and is bone-dry by their grandchildren's generation when there's a significant Christian cultural foundation, except that there's no cultural reserves left like Greatest/Silent Generation liberal Protestantism heavily borrowed from.
In one way, it seems that Murray is on what Os Guinness calls The Great Quest. Many of the themes you address seem to be in Guinness’ book of the same name: Do his statements “…the quest is an adventure rather than just an argument…so the search calls for passionate engagement as much as clear thinking” reinforce you expressing “the magisteria of faith and reason can and should overlap”? Additionally, it seems that “woo” could be what Guinness calls “signals of transcendence”. Although I think he would be the first to say that “woo” is just a step in the journey to someone greater.
And while it seems I’m plugging Guinness (not intentionally), I have found both your parents’ work on the reliability of scripture very helpful. It was through Esther O. that I started to listen to your father’s lectures and debates. Currently, I’m in the midst of going through your mother’s podcasts on inerrancy. Your parents might not be as well known but their views are well thought out and beneficial in my own quest.
Bethel, I have visited your mother's YouTube channel and find it intriguing, but is there a succinct explanation of her views on Inerrancy?
I was saved in 1972, and my fellow believers and I read a lot. One of the items was a popular "Gospel Harmony" that argued that Peter denied Christ not three times but nine times, for there was no other way to make the 4 Gospels fit together.
I'm inclined toward George MacDonald's view that the doctrine of Inerrancy is "errant nonsense," yet I accept that the Bible is "absolutely true and given to us in love."
Anything you could do to help me make sense of it all would be greatly appreciated.
Hi Michael! Yes, she's made a video about her view on the doctrine. TL;DR, she isn't an inerrantist, however she ironically is closer to being one than some "evangelical" scholars who sign on the dotted line but whose work functionally erodes even reliability let alone inerrancy.
Yes, I've heard of that "Peter denied Jesus nine times" chestnut. Of course I think it's very strained, however it tends to be wheeled out as a strawman of *all* attempts to harmonize gospel discrepancies. Harmonizing is not a fruitless exercise in general, and in fact it follows in a long tradition with completely secular historical texts. I do still think there are a few passages where no clear harmonization leaps out, in which case I'm fine supposing that a gospel author made an honest error. However there is an attempt to rig up an extremely contrived in its own way theory of fictionalization where the gospels were like "movies based on a true story" all along, but that's okay because it was already a thing at the time and the readers were cool with it. It's junk cargo cult scholarship and my mom has carefully dismantled the theory on every level in her book The Mirror or the Mask, but she doesn't do so by presupposing inerrancy and going from there. It's just that the arguments are a disaster on their own merits. Highly recommend that book if you'd like to get into this stuff a little more deeply! Here is a handy playlist with a few other short videos from her channel that may also be clarifying:
Bethel, thank you so much for your thoughtful reply. Your mom’s video was helpful, and I've ordered her book. Also, I saved something in my notes that I want to bring to your attention now:
“[Jordan] Peterson is like many men whose identity is bound up with their intellectual prowess. Perhaps he should stop thinking so hard and surrender to the spirit.” Elizabeth Oldfield and Rod Dreher's observation at the “Conference of Misfits” as summarized by Bethel McGrew.
I saved that because it tracked so perfectly with the conclusion of The Waste Land which was the subject of my Master's thesis. By my reading, Eliot's speaker reached the end of his journey but hesitated at the critical moment.
“The boat responded
Gaily to the hand expert with sail and oar
The sea was calm, your heart would have responded gaily when invited, beating obedient to controlling hands.”
The speaker's failure was a refusal to act, to make the choice that a child could make. I experienced this epiphany regarding the poem in May of 1972, namely, that I was required to make a fearful decision that would change my life forever. It was not until a month later that the Gospel was explained to me by a campus evangelist, and it took me an additional four days to surrender. I knew his message was true, had “believed in my heart,” but I still needed to confess with my lips unto salvation and thereby accept the ignominy of the Christian label. (Pride is indeed the deadliest sin.)
“The wind blows where it will. You hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with every one who is born of the spirit.”
I don't need to comprehend this mystery to know it happened to me and to be eternally grateful it did.
You and your mother share this quality: like Jacob, you wrestle and do not let go. One of my bedrock beliefs is from the Milton quote from 1644, “Let truth and falsehood grapple. Whoever knew truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter.”
I have yet to find a question that God has not eventually answered, so I go on searching with confidence. He promised that we would be rewarded if we continued to ask, seek, and knock.
And I am grateful for people like you and your mother, like-minded fellow believers blessed with intelligence and knowledge beyond my own.
Your parents named you well, Bethel, and I love the way you pronounce your name! ❤️
Bethel, thank you so much for your thoughtful reply. Your mom’s video was helpful, and I've ordered her book. Also, I saved something in my notes that I want to bring to your attention now:
“[Jordan] Peterson is like many men whose identity is bound up with their intellectual prowess. Perhaps he should stop thinking so hard and surrender to the spirit.” Elizabeth Oldfield and Rod Dreher's observation at the “Conference of Misfits” as summarized by Bethel McGrew.
I saved that because it tracked so perfectly with the conclusion of The Waste Land which was the subject of my Master's thesis. By my reading, Eliot's speaker reached the end of his journey but hesitated at the critical moment.
“The boat responded
Gaily to the hand expert with sail and oar
The sea was calm, your heart would have responded gaily when invited, beating obedient to controlling hands.”
The speaker's failure was a refusal to act, to make the choice that a child could make. I experienced this epiphany regarding the poem in May of 1972, namely, that I was required to make a fearful decision that would change my life forever. It was not until a month later that the Gospel was explained to me by a campus evangelist, and it took me an additional four days to surrender. I knew his message was true, had “believed in my heart,” but I still needed to confess with my lips unto salvation and thereby accept the ignominy of the Christian label. (Pride is indeed the deadliest sin.)
“The wind blows where it will. You hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with every one who is born of the spirit.”
I don't need to comprehend this mystery to know it happened to me and to be eternally grateful it did.
You and your mother share this quality: like Jacob, you wrestle and do not let go. One of my bedrock beliefs is from the Milton quote from 1644, “Let truth and falsehood grapple. Whoever knew truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter.”
I have yet to find a question that God has not eventually answered, so I go on searching with confidence. He promised that we would be rewarded if we continued to ask, seek, and knock.
And I am grateful for people like you and your mother, like-minded fellow believers blessed with intelligence and knowledge beyond my own.
Your parents named you well, Bethel, and I love the way you pronounce your name! ❤️
Thank you for this thoughtful review. The testimony of honest thinking unbelievers is powerful. The struggle of a rigorous man with faith is understandable. May God grant Mr. Murray that light while it is still Today.
I have less sympathy for the professing believer who seeks to temporize what is uncomfortably clear in Scripture. May God protect those who seek Him.
Thank you! Yes, I still like things about Ross's book but I'm definitely tougher on him.
The era of the individual is over. We must tribe or die. And where two or three gather together in the name of the tribe, the woo may be among them.
Haven’t read Douthat but the sincerity of Murray’s journey is gripping. It’s a gift from God to be able to look simultaneously into the mirror of truth and the suppositions of one’s own heart with the humility required for true change. (A gift even many christian believers somehow lack.) For a top level intellectual to be open about it is challenging and endearing. And to anthropomorphize, the Lord is pleased.
Douthat's approach reminds me of Eisenhower's line that “our form of government has no sense unless it is founded in a deeply felt religious faith, and I don’t care what it is.” From Murray's perspective as a seeker, this makes a lot of sense for him to say, but even in a pluralistic setting, it really undermines Douthat's commitments and convictions beyond his safe, private personal sphere.
It might lead to a warmer, fuzzier world to live in, but only if those faiths are diluted to satisfy the franchise standards of the American religious Luby's cafeteria.
Wow, that's quite a line.
The interesting thing is that Murray's book actually spends more time discussing Jesus and the gospels than Douthat's!
That's completely believable and I'd expect it. Murray's account, as you describe it, is sort of that of an in-progress seeker's journey.
Douthat's seems to be more arguing that faith in something more well-defined, even if he believes it to be wrong, is inherently better than faith in nothing or something amorphous and purposefully vague. The problem is that that's a well that runs low for the following generation and is bone-dry by their grandchildren's generation when there's a significant Christian cultural foundation, except that there's no cultural reserves left like Greatest/Silent Generation liberal Protestantism heavily borrowed from.
In one way, it seems that Murray is on what Os Guinness calls The Great Quest. Many of the themes you address seem to be in Guinness’ book of the same name: Do his statements “…the quest is an adventure rather than just an argument…so the search calls for passionate engagement as much as clear thinking” reinforce you expressing “the magisteria of faith and reason can and should overlap”? Additionally, it seems that “woo” could be what Guinness calls “signals of transcendence”. Although I think he would be the first to say that “woo” is just a step in the journey to someone greater.
And while it seems I’m plugging Guinness (not intentionally), I have found both your parents’ work on the reliability of scripture very helpful. It was through Esther O. that I started to listen to your father’s lectures and debates. Currently, I’m in the midst of going through your mother’s podcasts on inerrancy. Your parents might not be as well known but their views are well thought out and beneficial in my own quest.
Bethel, I have visited your mother's YouTube channel and find it intriguing, but is there a succinct explanation of her views on Inerrancy?
I was saved in 1972, and my fellow believers and I read a lot. One of the items was a popular "Gospel Harmony" that argued that Peter denied Christ not three times but nine times, for there was no other way to make the 4 Gospels fit together.
I'm inclined toward George MacDonald's view that the doctrine of Inerrancy is "errant nonsense," yet I accept that the Bible is "absolutely true and given to us in love."
Anything you could do to help me make sense of it all would be greatly appreciated.
Hi Michael! Yes, she's made a video about her view on the doctrine. TL;DR, she isn't an inerrantist, however she ironically is closer to being one than some "evangelical" scholars who sign on the dotted line but whose work functionally erodes even reliability let alone inerrancy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jlIVbsHL4k&
Yes, I've heard of that "Peter denied Jesus nine times" chestnut. Of course I think it's very strained, however it tends to be wheeled out as a strawman of *all* attempts to harmonize gospel discrepancies. Harmonizing is not a fruitless exercise in general, and in fact it follows in a long tradition with completely secular historical texts. I do still think there are a few passages where no clear harmonization leaps out, in which case I'm fine supposing that a gospel author made an honest error. However there is an attempt to rig up an extremely contrived in its own way theory of fictionalization where the gospels were like "movies based on a true story" all along, but that's okay because it was already a thing at the time and the readers were cool with it. It's junk cargo cult scholarship and my mom has carefully dismantled the theory on every level in her book The Mirror or the Mask, but she doesn't do so by presupposing inerrancy and going from there. It's just that the arguments are a disaster on their own merits. Highly recommend that book if you'd like to get into this stuff a little more deeply! Here is a handy playlist with a few other short videos from her channel that may also be clarifying:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jj-pgFID6aw&list=PLe1tMOs8ARn3Uy9dvxyqhBvEldBgkqtN5
Bethel, thank you so much for your thoughtful reply. Your mom’s video was helpful, and I've ordered her book. Also, I saved something in my notes that I want to bring to your attention now:
“[Jordan] Peterson is like many men whose identity is bound up with their intellectual prowess. Perhaps he should stop thinking so hard and surrender to the spirit.” Elizabeth Oldfield and Rod Dreher's observation at the “Conference of Misfits” as summarized by Bethel McGrew.
I saved that because it tracked so perfectly with the conclusion of The Waste Land which was the subject of my Master's thesis. By my reading, Eliot's speaker reached the end of his journey but hesitated at the critical moment.
“The boat responded
Gaily to the hand expert with sail and oar
The sea was calm, your heart would have responded gaily when invited, beating obedient to controlling hands.”
The speaker's failure was a refusal to act, to make the choice that a child could make. I experienced this epiphany regarding the poem in May of 1972, namely, that I was required to make a fearful decision that would change my life forever. It was not until a month later that the Gospel was explained to me by a campus evangelist, and it took me an additional four days to surrender. I knew his message was true, had “believed in my heart,” but I still needed to confess with my lips unto salvation and thereby accept the ignominy of the Christian label. (Pride is indeed the deadliest sin.)
“The wind blows where it will. You hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with every one who is born of the spirit.”
I don't need to comprehend this mystery to know it happened to me and to be eternally grateful it did.
You and your mother share this quality: like Jacob, you wrestle and do not let go. One of my bedrock beliefs is from the Milton quote from 1644, “Let truth and falsehood grapple. Whoever knew truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter.”
I have yet to find a question that God has not eventually answered, so I go on searching with confidence. He promised that we would be rewarded if we continued to ask, seek, and knock.
And I am grateful for people like you and your mother, like-minded fellow believers blessed with intelligence and knowledge beyond my own.
Your parents named you well, Bethel, and I love the way you pronounce your name! ❤️
Michael
Bethel, thank you so much for your thoughtful reply. Your mom’s video was helpful, and I've ordered her book. Also, I saved something in my notes that I want to bring to your attention now:
“[Jordan] Peterson is like many men whose identity is bound up with their intellectual prowess. Perhaps he should stop thinking so hard and surrender to the spirit.” Elizabeth Oldfield and Rod Dreher's observation at the “Conference of Misfits” as summarized by Bethel McGrew.
I saved that because it tracked so perfectly with the conclusion of The Waste Land which was the subject of my Master's thesis. By my reading, Eliot's speaker reached the end of his journey but hesitated at the critical moment.
“The boat responded
Gaily to the hand expert with sail and oar
The sea was calm, your heart would have responded gaily when invited, beating obedient to controlling hands.”
The speaker's failure was a refusal to act, to make the choice that a child could make. I experienced this epiphany regarding the poem in May of 1972, namely, that I was required to make a fearful decision that would change my life forever. It was not until a month later that the Gospel was explained to me by a campus evangelist, and it took me an additional four days to surrender. I knew his message was true, had “believed in my heart,” but I still needed to confess with my lips unto salvation and thereby accept the ignominy of the Christian label. (Pride is indeed the deadliest sin.)
“The wind blows where it will. You hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with every one who is born of the spirit.”
I don't need to comprehend this mystery to know it happened to me and to be eternally grateful it did.
You and your mother share this quality: like Jacob, you wrestle and do not let go. One of my bedrock beliefs is from the Milton quote from 1644, “Let truth and falsehood grapple. Whoever knew truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter.”
I have yet to find a question that God has not eventually answered, so I go on searching with confidence. He promised that we would be rewarded if we continued to ask, seek, and knock.
And I am grateful for people like you and your mother, like-minded fellow believers blessed with intelligence and knowledge beyond my own.
Your parents named you well, Bethel, and I love the way you pronounce your name! ❤️
Michael