On Secondary Sources
A couple days ago I got into a mini back-and-forth of facebook. In my defense, it's been awhile. The discussion was very civil and took place on a Christian magazine's post linking to an article on their site. The article's topic was hell. The headline posed the question of whether people will spend an eternity in hell, but the actual article wasn't so much a question of if hell exists as much as why does it exist. The writer pondered how a loving God could cast away people to hell.
It was a fine, if ordinary, post. It wasn't Rob Bell level heresy, but it didn't exactly instill confidence in this individual's exegesis. Like Bell, questions were asked, but not really answered. Instead, the writer, himself a pastor, encouraged people to read books such as Four Views of Hell by C.S. Lewis, Love Wins by Bell, Erasing Hell, Francis Chan's rebuttal to Love Wins, and Four Views of Hell edited by Preston Sprinkle. Absent from this entire post was any scriptural references to hell (the writer did reference scripture at least once, but it was about being unable to fully comprehend God).
I don't know this writer. His bio on the article says he's a pastor and a professor. The guy could be awesome and have incredibly theology or he could be Joel Osteen with a beard for all I know. Regardless, I was disappointed a post about searching for the meaning of hell to lack scripture on hell. I'm not trying to make the "Jesus spoke more about hell than heaven" argument, because I'm not entirely sure that's true. However, he did in fact speak about hell. As do many other passages of scripture. So for me, the article was a letdown. My facebook comment:
Again, the back-and-forth was very civil and I don't think either one of us got too fired up. Still, it was disheartening to have to argue with another Christian the benefit of going to scripture first, and then looking at secondary resources.
This week I also got my copy of Imprimis from Hillsdale College in the mail. This month's article was "Who Was Ty Cobb? The History We Know That's Wrong" by Charles Leerhsen, adapted from a speech he delivered last month at Hillsdale College. Leerhsen, an adjunct journalism professor at the City University of New York and former editor of Sports Illustrated, has a new biography on Cobb releasing next month, and this article is obviously a tease to get someone like me to purchase it (I will). I've been a lifelong baseball fan. As a child it meant the world to me, and now, years later, I am still a lover of the game and a diehard Phillies fan. Growing up I always thought Cobb was the greatest player to pick up a bat. He wasn't the most talented in the league, but he wanted it more. With limited abilities, that's how I reached any level of success I had on the diamond. Still, there were not so great stories about Cobb that were tough to deal with. The sharpening the spikes thing I could take, but was he really that racist? Did he really ignore letters he received from kids? Was he that much of a "son of a bitch" as Ray Liotta's Joe Jackson says in Field of Dreams?
Leerhsen examines the beginnings of these ideas, and is left wanting. He decided to go back to original sources on Cobby's life. Sources from the 1900s, 1910s, 1920s, and so on. Leerhsen finds first-hand accounts of Cobb's patience with journalists and kindness towards children. He reads about his support of integrating baseball, an his adoration of players like Willie Mays and Roy Campanella. He discovers a man whose paternal bloodline includes a great-grandfather who was an abolitionist southern preacher run out of town, a grandfather who refused to fight for the Confederate army during the Civil War, and a father who was a state senator who once broke up a lynch mob. You see, Leerhsen went back to the beginning of Cobb's life and his public actions. While Cobb was an imperfect person, as we all are, the factual reality does not match the myth.
I'm unfortunately part of a generation that doesn't have time for source material. We'll read Wikipedia and assume its all true, accurate, and complete. We hear "free college" and respond with "you have my vote" without looking to see the full-scale economic impact. Our news comes from facebook, and there is no need to read contrasting viewpoints.
Truth be told, I actually love Wikipedia. Yes, it's a great first-stop to get a little more information on a topic. But it's only a great first-stop because you can scroll to the bottom and be linked to original source material. The problem is so few of us take the time to read the end notes anymore.
In the Christian sphere this results in false theology. Paul tells us to "test everything" (1 Thessalonians 5:21) when it comes to prophecy and John says, "Do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world (1 John 4:1). How are we to test these things? By holding it up against the Word of God.
We know we shouldn't believe everything we hear, yet we seem to be too comfortable believing something just because John Piper says it. Or Rob Bell. Or Kevin DeYoung. Or Joel Osteen. I tend to side with Piper and DeYoung on issues because they use scripture to make their point, and not just feelings. We need more of that.
It was a fine, if ordinary, post. It wasn't Rob Bell level heresy, but it didn't exactly instill confidence in this individual's exegesis. Like Bell, questions were asked, but not really answered. Instead, the writer, himself a pastor, encouraged people to read books such as Four Views of Hell by C.S. Lewis, Love Wins by Bell, Erasing Hell, Francis Chan's rebuttal to Love Wins, and Four Views of Hell edited by Preston Sprinkle. Absent from this entire post was any scriptural references to hell (the writer did reference scripture at least once, but it was about being unable to fully comprehend God).
I don't know this writer. His bio on the article says he's a pastor and a professor. The guy could be awesome and have incredibly theology or he could be Joel Osteen with a beard for all I know. Regardless, I was disappointed a post about searching for the meaning of hell to lack scripture on hell. I'm not trying to make the "Jesus spoke more about hell than heaven" argument, because I'm not entirely sure that's true. However, he did in fact speak about hell. As do many other passages of scripture. So for me, the article was a letdown. My facebook comment:
This is a nice stream of consciousness styled discussion of the topic. And I don't know if there is really much I would necessarily disagree with in this article. But if we as Christians are going to discuss hell, shouldn't we spend more time with scripture that discusses hell? There were zero passages referencing hell used in this post. The books listed might be decent additional reading, but the starting point should be the Bible. Jesus speaks quite a bit about hell.In my mind, this is a pretty benign point, yet there were a couple people who challenged me on this. Yes, I was being challenged on my belief that if we talk about a biblical idea we should see what the bible says first before we go to additional sources. At one point, the argument was made that you can't really argue biblical reasoning on hell in a short post. I countered with this excellent piece discussing the story of Lazarus and the rich man and its picture of hell.
Again, the back-and-forth was very civil and I don't think either one of us got too fired up. Still, it was disheartening to have to argue with another Christian the benefit of going to scripture first, and then looking at secondary resources.
This week I also got my copy of Imprimis from Hillsdale College in the mail. This month's article was "Who Was Ty Cobb? The History We Know That's Wrong" by Charles Leerhsen, adapted from a speech he delivered last month at Hillsdale College. Leerhsen, an adjunct journalism professor at the City University of New York and former editor of Sports Illustrated, has a new biography on Cobb releasing next month, and this article is obviously a tease to get someone like me to purchase it (I will). I've been a lifelong baseball fan. As a child it meant the world to me, and now, years later, I am still a lover of the game and a diehard Phillies fan. Growing up I always thought Cobb was the greatest player to pick up a bat. He wasn't the most talented in the league, but he wanted it more. With limited abilities, that's how I reached any level of success I had on the diamond. Still, there were not so great stories about Cobb that were tough to deal with. The sharpening the spikes thing I could take, but was he really that racist? Did he really ignore letters he received from kids? Was he that much of a "son of a bitch" as Ray Liotta's Joe Jackson says in Field of Dreams?
Leerhsen examines the beginnings of these ideas, and is left wanting. He decided to go back to original sources on Cobby's life. Sources from the 1900s, 1910s, 1920s, and so on. Leerhsen finds first-hand accounts of Cobb's patience with journalists and kindness towards children. He reads about his support of integrating baseball, an his adoration of players like Willie Mays and Roy Campanella. He discovers a man whose paternal bloodline includes a great-grandfather who was an abolitionist southern preacher run out of town, a grandfather who refused to fight for the Confederate army during the Civil War, and a father who was a state senator who once broke up a lynch mob. You see, Leerhsen went back to the beginning of Cobb's life and his public actions. While Cobb was an imperfect person, as we all are, the factual reality does not match the myth.
I'm unfortunately part of a generation that doesn't have time for source material. We'll read Wikipedia and assume its all true, accurate, and complete. We hear "free college" and respond with "you have my vote" without looking to see the full-scale economic impact. Our news comes from facebook, and there is no need to read contrasting viewpoints.
Truth be told, I actually love Wikipedia. Yes, it's a great first-stop to get a little more information on a topic. But it's only a great first-stop because you can scroll to the bottom and be linked to original source material. The problem is so few of us take the time to read the end notes anymore.
In the Christian sphere this results in false theology. Paul tells us to "test everything" (1 Thessalonians 5:21) when it comes to prophecy and John says, "Do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world (1 John 4:1). How are we to test these things? By holding it up against the Word of God.
We know we shouldn't believe everything we hear, yet we seem to be too comfortable believing something just because John Piper says it. Or Rob Bell. Or Kevin DeYoung. Or Joel Osteen. I tend to side with Piper and DeYoung on issues because they use scripture to make their point, and not just feelings. We need more of that.
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