Kevin Stilley

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December 11, 2014 by kevinstilley

Improbable? Unbelievable?

Over the last few days I have repeatedly heard a common refrain from people in regard to very different circumstances.

From a prominent philosopher and a well-meaning theologian we hear that the scriptural claims of the dead rising and walking after the crucifixion of Jesus must be the inclusion of a legend not to be taken literally because it is otherwise unbelievable. (Matthew 27)

From several television journalists we hear that the actions predicated of a person in a very public case are so improbable as to be inconceivable, unbelievable.

These incidents and others reminded me of an essay by Ambrose Bierce in which he defended his art form from novelists who were criticizing the validity of short story composition. In the process of doing so he addressed the issues of probability and believability. Here is an excerpt:

“Among the laws which Cato Howells has given his little senate, and which his little senators would impose upon the rest of us, in an inhibitory statute against a breach of this “probability”– and to them nothing is probable outside the narrow domain of the commonplace man’s most commonplace experience. It is not known to them that all men and women sometimes, many men and women frequently, and some men and women habitually, act from impenetrable motives and in a way that is consonant with nothing in their lives, characters, and conditions. It is known to them that “truth is stranger than fiction,” but not that this has any practical meaning or value in letters. It is to him of widest knowledge, of deepest feeling, of sharpest observation and insight, that life is most crowded with figures of heroic stature, with spirits of dream, with demons of the pit, with graves that yawn in pathways leading to the light, with existences not of earth, both malign and benign–ministers of grace and ministers of doom. The truest eye is that which discerns the shadow and the portent, the dead hands reaching, the light that is the heart of darkness, the sky “with dreadful faces thronged and fiery arms.” The truest ear is that which hears

Celestial voices to the midnight air,

Sole, or responsive each to the other’s, note

Singing

not “their great Creator,” but not a negro melody, either; no nor the latest favorite of the drawing-room.  In short, he to whom life is not picturesque, enchanting, astonishing, terrible, is denied the gift and faculty divine, and being no poet can write no prose.  He can tell nothing because he knows nothing.  He has not a speaking acquaintance with Nature (by which he means, in a vague general way, the vegetable kingdom) and no more find

Her secret meaning in her deeds

than he can discern and expound the immutable law underlying coincidence.

Let us suppose that I have written a novel–which God forbid that I should do. In the last chapter my assistant hero learns that the hero-in-chief has supplanted him in the affections of the shero.  He roams aimless about the streets of the sleeping city and follows his toes into a silent public square. There after appropriate mental agonies he resolves in the nobility of his soul to remove himself forever from a world where his presence can not fail to be disagreeable to the lady’s conscience.  He flings up his hands in mad disquietude and rushes down to the bay, where there is water enough to drown all such as he.  Does he throw himself in? Not he–no, indeed. He finds a tug lying there with steam up and, going aboard, descends to the fire-hold. Opening one of the iron doors of the furnace, which discloses an aperture just wide enough to admit him, he wriggles in upon the glowing coals and there, with never a cry, dies a cherry-red death of unquestionable ingenuity.  With that the story ends and the critics begin.

It is easy to imagine what they say: “This is too much”; “it insults the reader’s intelligence”; “it is hardly more shocking for its atrocity than disgusting for its cold-blooded and unnatural defiance of probability”; “art should have some traceable relation to the facts of human experience.”

Well, that is exactly what occurred once in the stoke-hold of a tug lying at a wharf in San Francisco.  Only the man had not been disappointed in love, nor disappointed at all.  He was a cheerful sort of person, indubitably sane, ceremoniously civil and considerate enough (evidence of a good heart) to spare whom it might concern any written explanation defining his deed as a “rash act.”

Probability? Nothing is so improbable as what is true. It is the unexpected that occurs; but that is not saying enough; it is also the unlikely–one might almost say the impossible.  John, for example, meets and marries Jane.  John was born in Bombay of poor but detestable parents; Jane, the daughter of a gorgeous hidalgo, on a ship bound from Vladivostok to Buenos Ayres.  Will some gentleman who has written a realistic novel in which something so nearly out of the common as a wedding was permitted to occur have the goodness to figure out what, at their birth, were the chances that John would meet and marry Jane?  Not one in a thousand–not one in a million–not one in a million million! Considered from a viewpoint a little anterior in time, it was almost infinitely unlikely that any event which has occurred would occur–any event worth telling in a story.

(Excerpt taken from Tales of Soldiers and Civilians and Other Stories by Ambrose Bierce)

Filed Under: Blog, Epistemology, History, Philosophy, Politics, Worldview Tagged With: Anthropology, belief, Epistemology, Miracles

March 16, 2011 by kevinstilley

Perspective on Difficulties

Pastor James Montgomery Boice stood before Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia in May 2000 and shared with them that he had been diagnosed with liver cancer. His perspective on his condition is one that would greatly enrich the spiritual life of many Christians suffering in diverse circumstances.

“Should you pray for a miracle? Well, you’re free to do that, of course. My general impression is that the God who is able to do miracles–and He certainly can–is also able to keep you from getting the problem in the first place. So although miracles do happen, they’re rare by definition.…Above all, I would say pray for the glory of God. If you think of God glorifying Himself in history and you say, where in all of history has God most glorified Himself? He did it at the cross of Jesus Christ, and it wasn’t by delivering Jesus from the cross, though He could have.…God is in charge. When things like this come into our lives, they are not accidental. It’s not as if God somehow forgot what was going on, and something bad slipped by.… God is not only the one who is in charge; God is also good. Everything He does is good.… If God does something in your life, would you change it? If you’d change it, you’d make it worse. It wouldn’t be as good” (James Montgomery Boice, quoted by Randy Alcorn in If God is Good, p.14).

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James Montgomery Boice Bibliography

Books:

1970  Witness and Revelation in the Gospel of John (Zondervan)
1971  Philippians: An Expositional Commentary (Zondervan)
1972  The Sermon on the Mount (Zondervan)
1973  How to Live the Christian Life (Moody; originally, How to Live It Up, Zondervan)
1974  Ordinary Men Called by God (Victor; originally, How God Can Use Nobodies)
1974 The Last and Future World (Zondervan)
1975-79  The Gospel of John: An Expositional Commentary (5 volumes, Zondervan; issued in one volume, 1985; 5 volumes, Baker 1999)
1976  “Galatians” in the Expositor’s Bible Commentary (Zondervan)
1977 Can You Run Away from God? (Victor)
1977  Does Inerrancy Matter? (Tyndale)
1977  Our Sovereign God, editor (Baker)
1978  The Foundation of Biblical Authority, editor (Zondervan)
1979  The Epistles of John: An Expositional Commentary (Zondervan)
1979  Making God’s Word Plain, editor (Tenth Presbyterian Church)
1980  Our Savior God: Studies on Man, Christ and the Atonement, editor (Baker)
1982-87  Genesis: An Expositional Commentary (3 volumes, Zondervan)
1983  The Parables of Jesus (Moody)
1983  The Christ of Christmas (Moody)
1983-86  The Minor Prophets: An Expositional Commentary (2 volumes, Zondervan)
1984  Standing on the Rock (Tyndale). Reissued 1994 (Baker)
1985  The Christ of the Open Tomb (Moody)
1986  Foundations of the Christian Faith (4 volumes in one, InterVarsity Press; original volumes issued, 1978-81)
1986  Christ’s Call to Discipleship (Moody)
1988  Transforming Our World: A Call to Action, editor (Multnomah)
1988, 98  Ephesians: An Expositional Commentary (Baker)
1989  Daniel: An Expositional Commentary (Zondervan)
1989  Joshua: We Will Serve the Lord (Revell)
1990  Nehemiah: Learning to Lead (Revell)
1992-94  Romans (4 volumes, Baker)
1992 The King Has Come (Christian Focus Publications)
1993  Amazing Grace (Tyndale)
1993  Mind Renewal in a Mindless Age (Baker)
1994-98  Psalms (3 volumes, Baker)
1994  Sure I Believe, So What! (Christian Focus Publications)
1995  Hearing God When You Hurt (Baker)
1996  Two Cities, Two Loves (InterVarsity)
1996  Here We Stand: A Call from Confessing Evangelicals, editor with Benjamin E. Sasse (Baker)
1997  Living By the Book (Baker)
1997  Acts: An Expositional Commentary (Baker)
1999  The Heart of the Cross, with Philip Graham Ryken (Crossway)
1999  What Makes a Church Evangelical?
2000  Hymns for a Modern Reformation, with Paul S. Jones
2001  Matthew: An Expositional Commentary (2 volumes, Baker)
2001  Whatever Happened to the Gospel of Grace? (Crossway)
2002  The Doctrines of Grace, with Philip Graham Ryken (Crossway)
2002  Jesus on Trial, with Philip Graham Ryken (Crossway)

Chapters:

1985  “The Future of Reformed Theology” in David F. Wells, editor, Reformed Theology in America: A History of Its Modern Development (Eerdmans)
1986  “The Preacher and Scholarship” in Samuel T. Logan, editor, The Preacher and Preaching: Reviving the Art in the Twentieth Century (Presbyterian and Reformed)
1992  “A Better Way: The Power of Word and Spirit” in Michael Scott Horton, editor, Power Religion: The Selling Out of the Evangelical Church? (Moody)
1994  “The Sovereignty of God” in John D. Carson and David W. Hall, editors, To Glorify and Enjoy God: A Commemoration of the 350th Anniversary of the Westminster Assembly (Banner of Truth Trust)

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RELATED

Click here for the full text of Boice’s announcement

Suffering – Select Quotes

Filed Under: Blog, Quotes, Theology Tagged With: cancer, Miracles, Providence, Sovereignty of God, suffering

February 8, 2011 by kevinstilley

Miracles – select quotes

It is impossible to use electrical light and the wireless and to avail ourselves of modern medical and surgical discoveries, and at the same time to believe in the New Testament world of spirits and miracles.
~ Rudolf Bultmann

There are two ways to look at life. One is that nothing is a miracle, and the other is that everything is a miracle.
~ Albert Einstein

When the Old Testament says that Sennacherib’s invasion was stopped by angels (2 Kings 19:35), and Herodotus says it was stopped by a lot of mise who came and ate up all the bowstrings of his army (Herodotus, Bk. II, Sect. 141), an open-minded person will be on the side of the angels. Unless you start by begging the question [assuming miracles cannot happen], there is nothing intrinsically unlikely in the existence of angels or in the action ascribed to them. But mise just don’t do these things.
~ C.S. Lewis, “Miracles”, God in the Dock (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1970), pages 27-28.

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RELATED CONTENT

  • Index To Great Quotes

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Book Cover

Filed Under: Blog, Quotes, Theology Tagged With: Miracles, quotations, quote

December 5, 2008 by kevinstilley

What Do You Think?

What is your definition of a miracle?  Do you think you have ever experienced one?

(Share your answers in the comments below.)

Filed Under: Blog, What Do You Think? Tagged With: Apologetics, Blog, Miracles, Theology, What Do You Think?

August 22, 2008 by kevinstilley

Why Believe In Miracles?

In I’m Glad You Asked, Kenneth Boa & Larry Moody recommend the following books on the topic of “Why Believe In Miracles”:

William Lane Craig, The Son Rises: Historical Evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ

Gary R. Habermas, The Resurrection of Jesus

Arlie Hoover, The Case For Christian Theism

Gordon R. Lewis, Judge For Yourself

C.S. Lewis, Miracles

Josh McDowell, Evidence That Demands A Verdict

Josh McDowell, The Resurrection Factor

Frank Morrrison, Who Moved The Stone?

Merrill C. Tenney, The Reality of the Resurrection

More Books of Interest

Book Cover Book Cover Book Cover

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: Apologetics, Miracles, resurrection

October 29, 2006 by kevinstilley

To Be Continued: Are The Miraculous Gifts For Today?

Over at Pyromaniacs, Dan Phillips has posted a book review of To Be Continued: Are The Miraculous Gifts For Today?

What did he think of it? He gave it 4.5 matchsticks.

Book Cover

Filed Under: Blog, Books, Ecclesiology Tagged With: gifts, healing, Holy Spirit, Miracles, prophecy, Spiritual Gifts, Tongues

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