Kevin Stilley

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December 5, 2014 by kevinstilley

Discussion Questions: The Unlearned Lessons of the Twentieth Century

Book CoverCHAPTER ONE

Delsol asserts that modern man has given up on hope; “that hope today consists in doing without hope.” Do you agree with her? What evidence would you use to support her assertion or to argue against it?

Delsol describes those living without hope and expectations as a “the society of well-being alone” who are locked into a material world that “makes of us the sad heroes of emptiness.” What alternative does she offer to living in such a state? Do you agree with her diagnosis and prognosis? (page 4)

Delsol describes the “new culture” in which we find ourselves as “late modernity.” Why does she not use the more commonly employed term – “postmodernity”? (page 5)

She cites Plato as stating that “every institution ends up dying through the excess of its own principle.” She explains in following chapters how 19th century ideologies (principles) failed in the 20th century (excess) leading to the current “new culture.” How would her argument related to Francis Schaeffer’s assertion in How Should We Then Live that there is a flow to history? How far do you think we have to go back in time to understand our own identity, values, culture? (page 6)

Consider this question/comment from the text: “But can the principle of personal dignity be maintained and secured without the cultural world that justifies and sustains it? This principle, the fulcrum of human rights thinking , is not an isolated and insular belief, a concept that can simply stay afloat and find sustenance in nothingness.” (page 8) How does this question assertion echo Nietsche’s madman speech in The Gay Science? (see video below)

Do you agree with Delsol when she says, “The dignity of man as a unique being without substitute is a postulate of faith, not of science.” (page 8)  Why, or why not? How might this argument be employed as part of a “taking the roof off” apologetic?

Delsol writes, “The ideas of human dignity depends upon an inherited cultural world. Indeed, it was by destroying this heritage that Nazism and communism pulverized it.”  (page 8)  In what ways did communism and Nazism attempt to destroy an inherited cultural world?  Do you think that this strategy is being employed by some ideologues today? How?  We make a distinction between western civilization and the western heritage and that of the rest of the world.  Does that mean that those who are not part of the Western World do not believe in human dignity?

 

CHAPTER TWO

Delsol writes, “Because dignity is a distinction, the philosophy of human rights rests upon anthropocentrism: no man can have dignity if Man himself is not King of nature.”  (page 12)   Can you give examples of man being treated as one without dignity (poorly, inhumanely) due to the denial that man is distinct from the rest of nature?  How does this relate to historical attempts to deny human status to certain people groups by denying that they have a soul or referring to them as “animals” or “monkeys”?

In the “enlightened” world in which we live, are there remaining attempts to deny human status (personhood) to anyone? How does this discussion relate to the moral philosophy of Peter Singer, Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University? (pages 14, 24)

How does euthanasia, abortion, forced sterilization, infanticide, and eugenics fit into this discussion? (pages 14, 24)

Delsol writes, “Scientific progress was able to sweep away the certainty that the human species is unique because science found itself in charge of establishing certain criteria and definitions after religious messages had lost their legitimacy.  Scientism, not science, disunites humanity, and scientism operates through the despotism of a rationality placed above all else.”  (page 15)  What is the distinction that Delsol is making between science and scientism?  Are Christians anti-science?

Delsol argues that 20th century totalitarianisms were the logical result of the desacralization of humanity; “if humanity is no longer sacred, everything becomes possible, from hatred to mass assassination.” (page 21)  This argument moves beyond that of Dostoevsky in The Brothers Karamozov, “If God does not exist, everything is permitted“; not only is God necessary for morality but the idea that man is special to God – created distinctly in the imago dei.  Do you believe that Delsol’s additional step is required as a basis for morality?

Delsol writes, “And perhaps the biblical tale does indeed represent the only guarantee against the temptation to displace the human species.  It is nothing more than a story one might object.  Yet dignity does not exist without this story, for dignity was discovered or invented along with it, and all our efforts to establish other foundations have turned out to be poor substitutes.”  (page 21)  Sartre posited a morality based not on an antropocentrism of derived dignity as Delsol describes, but on an antropocentrism that results from a “doctrine of action.” Do you think that Existentialism is one of the “poor substitutes” Delsol is referencing?  What about Kant’s categorical imperative?  To what other substitutes might she be referring?

She continues, “The creation story which bestows meaning, guarantees human dignity better than any form of reason ever could. For the problem is not to ensure that human dignity exists: this is the only certitude that we have. We do not need to prove it since we hold it to be above any proof.”  (pages 21-22) Do you think that most people believe as Delsol does that the dignity of man is axiomatic (self-evident, unquestionable)?  Do you think that the moral argument for the existence of God is persuasive? For whom in the “new culture” would it not be persuasive?  (Further reading:  The Abolition of Man, by C.S. Lewis)

 

CHAPTER THREE

Delsol writes, “An offense against the good is always accompanied by a rejection of the true, and since Plato, philosophy has known that justice and truth walk hand in hand.”  How might today’s moral relativity be considered the result of failed (or rejected) epistemologies?  (page 27)

How might the following comment of Delsol be applied to the study of late modern history? — “It is not enough to have lived through experiences to enter into the future.  They must also become the objects of our consideration.  They need to be observed, translated, pondered, brought forward with us, so that the future can become more than just the passage of time.”  (page 28)

Do you agree with Delsol that the failed totalitarianisms of the twentieth century were attempted utopias built upon the myths of self-creation, self-foundation, and self-sufficiency of mankind?

CHAPTER FOUR

Delsol writes, “Egalitarian utopia undoubtedly represents the most ancient social dream, having been longed for for centuries.”  (page 35)  What examples might she give to support this claim?

Delsol repeatedly speaks of “the events of 1989”.  (pages 36, 48)  To what is she referring?

Delsol talks of belief (ideological commitments) becoming an identity that cannot be renounced “without committing a kind of symbolic suicide.” (page 36)  What are the consequences of this for those who are committed to failed 19th century mythologies of utopia or progressivism?

What does Delsol mean by “the logic of resentment”? (page 37)  How serious an issue do you think this is in terms of American public policy?

Delsol describes the hypocrisy that occurs when someone refuses “to suffer the catastrophic consequences of his ideology, but he is too proud to publicly abandon it.  He leads an upper middle-class life, but relentlessly disparages the middle class; he runs things as though he were a free-market advocate, but jeers at free market ideas;  he enrolls his own children in demanding, even austere schools, while preaching indulgence for delinquency in schools attended by the children of others.  In other words, he continues to propagate the utopia he no longer lives by and attacks the moralism of those who simply put into words what he himself is doing.” (page 37)  Can you think of examples of this in public life?  Delsol goes on to claim that such a person salvages their honor at the expense of “a diminished life for everyone else.”  Do you think the general public is aware of this hypocrisy and its results?  If so, why does it allow it to continue?

Delsol claims that derision and sarcasm are extremely effective cultural change agents employed by those embracing failed utopian ideologies and those committed to progressivism. (pages 38-40)  Do you agree?

CHAPTER FIVE

Delsol writes, “The ideology of progress equates happiness with ‘maturity’, or replaces happiness with ‘maturity’ as a criterion of the good. Maturity means a distancing from childhood. The more society differentiates itself from the past, the better it will be.” (page 50) How does her comment relate to what C.S. Lewis says about “chronological snobbery”?

What do you think that Predrag Matvegevic means when writing, “The dissident is a hostage of truth.” (page 50)

Delsol writes, “The heaven’s were closed by magistrate’s order.”  What does she mean? (page 51)

 

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“Due to lack of interest, tomorrow has been cancelled.” If asked what this means, you would probably respond that it is a reference to modern apathy.  Why is apathy prevalent in the “new culture”?

 

MORE QUESTIONS FOR CONSIDERATION

In what ways might the radical behaviorism of B.F. Skinner be considered a continuation of failed 19th century utopian ideologies.

Delsol writes much about the communism of eastern Europe and the USSR but has little to say about China.  Why do you think this might be?

Filed Under: Blog, Books, Ethics / Praxis, Philosophy, Politics, Zeitgeist Tagged With: 20th century, Communism, History, liberalism, Nazi, western civilization

April 26, 2011 by kevinstilley

Authority For Evangelicals?

Question: I am concerned by what I see in the modern church. It seems that evangelicals no longer claim the Bible as their authority for faith and practice. What do you think?

Answer: In order to answer this question I think we have to look at historical developments in the Western church during the last century. Classical 19th Century Liberalism asserted that reason (man) was the authority for theological truth claims. During the 20th century a number of theological movements (Fundamentalism, Neo-orthodoxy, Pentecostalism) all developed as a reaction to such “authority” claims made by classical nineteenth century liberalism. Fundamentalism said, “No way, the proper authority for belief and practice is the Bible.” Neo-orthodoxy said, “No way, the proper authority for belief and practice is one’s personal [crisis] experience with God.” Pentecostalism said, “No way, the proper authority for belief and practice is the Holy Spirit.”

So, those who have been called Evangelicals have always been pretty diverse when it comes to what they have believed about the ultimate authority for belief and practice. And, Evangelicalism today has become so diverse that the nomenclature is almost meaningless; — What is Evangelicalism? Consider the following quote from David Wells;

As evangelicalism has continued to grow numerically, it has seeped through its older structures and now spills out in all directions, producing a family of hybrids whose theological connections are quite baffling: evangelical Catholics, evangelicals who are Catholic, evangelical liberationalists, evangelical feminists, evangelical ecumenists, ecumenists who are evangelical, young evangelicals, orthodox evangelicals, radical evangelicals, liberal evangelicals, Liberals who are evangelical, and charismatic evangelicals. The word evangelical, precisely because it has lost its confessional dimension, has become descriptively anemic. To say that someone is an evangelical says little about what they are likely to believe (although it says more if they are older and less if they are younger). And so the term is forced to compensate for its theolog¬ical weakness by borrowing meaning from adjectives the very presence of which signals the fragmentation and disintegration of the move¬ment. What is now primary is not what is evangelical but what is adjectivally distinctive, whether Catholic, liberationalist, feminist, ecu-menist, young, orthodox, radical, liberal, or charismatic. It is, I believe, the dark prelude to death, when parasites have finally succeeded in bringing down their host. Amid the clamor of all these new models of evangelical faith there is the sound of a death rattle.

The sound of death is hard to hear, however, given the rumble of the large numbers that the evangelical movement has attracted and the chorus of voices being echoed from the cultural pluralism that surrounds it. The pluralism is providing insulation from criticism and reality. It is not hard to see that the disappearance of a center of values in culture is now paralleled by a disappearance of a theological center in evangelicalism.
— David F. Wells, No Place for Truth, p.134

Filed Under: Blog, Church History, Quotes Tagged With: Ecumenicism, emergent, Emerging Church, evangelicalism, Fundamentalism, liberalism, Orthodox, postmodern

February 9, 2011 by kevinstilley

Sermon on the Mount

Hell will be full of people who thought highly of the Sermon on the Mount. You must do more than that. You must obey it and take action.
~John MacArthur

In the world of men we find nothing approaching the virtues of which Jesus spoke in the opening words of the famous Sermon on the Mount. Instead of poverty of spirit we find the rankest kind of pride; instead of mourners we find pleasure seekers; instead of meekness, arrogance; instead of hunger after righteousness we hear men saying, `I am rich and increased with goods and have need of nothing’; instead of mercy we find cruelty; instead of purity of heart, corrupt imaginings; instead of peacemakers we find men quarrelsome and resentful; instead of rejoicing in mistreatment we find them fighting back with every weapon at their command. Of this kind of moral stuff civilized society is composed.
~ A.W. Tozer, in The Pursuit of God (Chapter 9 – “Meekness and Rest”)

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Free Audio Downloads:

The Sermon on the Mount, by Paige Patterson. This series of 12 chapel sermons were originally given at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and are available through iTunes U. You can also access these sermons via the following link – http://www.swbts.edu/events/Patterson/patterson_chapelsp08.cfm

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Filed Under: Blog, New Testament, Quotes Tagged With: Dispensationalism, Ethics, liberalism, Matthew, New Testament

October 20, 2009 by kevinstilley

Socialism – Select Quotes

The inherent vice of Capitalism is
the unequal sharing of blessings;
the inherent vice of Socialism is
the equal sharing of miseries.
~ Winston Churchill

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  • Index to Great Quotes

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Book Cover

Filed Under: Blog, Quotes Tagged With: Barack Obama, fascism, liberalism, Quotes, socialism

July 30, 2008 by kevinstilley

Taking Back the United Methodist Church

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7P_WIRUln7U&hl=en&fs=1]

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: Church History, Denominations, liberalism, Methodist

July 21, 2008 by kevinstilley

Taking Back The United Methodist Church, by Mark Tooley

You have just discovered that the money you have been giving to your church is being used to support those engaging in terrorism – What do you do?

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Blog, Books Tagged With: Blog, Books, denomination, liberalism, Mark Tooley, Methodist, Missions, UMC, United Methodist Church

June 6, 2008 by kevinstilley

Free Expression & Censorship On College Campuses

I am confused. Should not the ideology behind liberalism promote free expression? Yet, it would seem that on most college campuses free expression of ideas is only free for those who agree with the dominant liberal culture. Whether in the area of poli-sci, the hard sciences, or journalism it is simply not acceptable to openly express conservative ideas.

In Letters To A Young Conservative, Dinesh D’Souza shares what happened when he was invited to a university to speak. He arrived to find protesters with bullhorns and placards surrounding the auditorium making it impossible to enter without the assistance of security. The protesters then proceeded to follow him into the auditorium where they did everything possible to keep him from sharing his thoughts with those assembled.

Undoubtedly the high point of the evening occurred near the end of my talk when the large, disheveled woman came rolling up the aisle shouting, “We don’t need a debate! Stop this man from speaking! My usual strategy in such circumstances is to try to calm the protester down and engage in a discussion, but this time there was no point. Finally, the woman was dragged from the room by the campus police. On her way out she yelled, “I am being censored! I am being censored!

It is amazing to me that so many of those who invoke the first amendment to justify their own right to freedom of expression, are often the same people who will do everything possible to keep others from expressing ideas contrary to their own. Maybe what we need most on our college campuses are courses in critical thinking.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: Blog, campus, college, conservativism, constitution, Dinesh D'Souza, Education, first amendment, freedom of expression, freedom of speech, liberalism, university

February 9, 2007 by kevinstilley

Orthodoxy, Heresy, and Liberalism

While commenting on the faith of Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori of the Episcopal Church USA, Dr. Albert Mohler quotes from J. Gresham Machen’s classic Christianity and Liberalism.

In the sphere of religion, in particular, the present time is a time of conflict; the great redemptive religion which has always been known as Christianity is battling against a totally diverse type of religious belief, which is only the more destructive of the Christian faith because it makes use of traditional Christian terminology. This modern non-redemptive religion is called “modernism” or “liberalism.” Both names are unsatisfactory; the latter, in particular, is question-begging. The movement designated as “liberalism” is regarded as “liberal” only by its friends; to its opponents it seems to involve a narrow ignoring of many relevant facts. And indeed the movement is so various in its manifestations that one may almost despair of finding any common name which will apply to all its forms. But manifold as are the forms in which the movement appears, the root of the movement is one; the many varieties of modern liberal religion are rooted in naturalism–that is, in the denial of any entrance of the creative power of God (as distinguished from the ordinary course of nature) in connection with the origin of Christianity. The word “naturalism” is here used in a sense somewhat different from its philosophical meaning. In this non-philosophical sense it describes with fair accuracy the real root of what is called, by what may turn out to be a degradation of an originally noble word, “liberal” religion.

Machen’s book is an important text that belongs in every theological library. A decade ago I taught a course on Heresy at Tyndale Theological Seminary and used Christianity and Liberalism as one of the required texts. The other required text was Harold O.J. Brown’s book Heresies: Heresy and Orthodoxy in the History of the Church.

Filed Under: Apologetics, Blog, Books Tagged With: Albert Mohler, Episcopal, Heresy, liberalism, Orthodoxy

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