Since there has been no little stir over my blog series on Hyper-dispensationalism, I figured I’d share a chunk from John Owen’s commentary on Hebrews 8.

…there is much express mention made, not only in this, but in various other places of the Scripture also, of two distinct covenants, or testaments, and such different natures, properties, and effects, ascribed to them, as seem to constitute two distinct covenants. This, therefore, we must inquire into; and will first declare what is agreed to by those who are sober in this matter, though they differ in their judgments about this question, whether two distinct covenants, or only a twofold administration of the same covenant, be intended. And indeed there is so much agreed on, as that what remains seems rather to be a difference about the expression of the same truth, than any real contradiction about the things themselves, For,

Four Agreements about the Two Administrations

1. It is agreed that the way of reconciliation with God, of justification and salvation, was always one and the same; and that from the giving of the first promise non was ever justified or saved but by the new covenant, and Jesus Christ, the mediator of it. The foolish imagination before mentioned, that men were saved before the giving of the law by following the guidance of the light of nature, and after the giving of the law by obedience to the directions of it, is rejected by all that are sober, as destructive of the Old Testament and the New.

2. That the writings of the Old Testament, namely, the Law, Psalms, and Prophets, do contain and declare the doctrine of justification and salvation by Christ. The church of old believed this, in that the doctrine mentioned is frequently confirmed in the New Testament by testimonies taken out of the Old.

3. That by the covenant of Sinai, as properly so called, separated from its figurative relation to the covenant of grace, none was ever eternally saved.

4. That the use of all the institutions in accordance with which the old covenant was administered, was to represent and direct to Jesus Christ, and his mediation.”[1]

In simpler terms,

1. Despite the difference in covenantal administrations, all people all the time are saved by the same grace, same mediator, and same justifying faith. It’s not as if people were saved by works in the Old Testament and people were saved by grace in the New Testament. All instances of salvation are by God’s grace.
2. The Old Testament testifies to this fact; justification by faith alone in Christ alone is not a new reality.
3. No one was saved by the  covenant and laws given at Sinai. Put, in other terms by the author of Hebrews, “it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins,” (Hebrews 10:4).
4. All of the features and requirements laid out in the Old Testament covenants were ultimately there to point us to Christ.

I’m curious to know which Dispensationalists agree and don’t agree with these points. But, it’s good to know a kind of “common denominator” in the various strands of covenant theology.

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[1] John Owen and Nehemiah Coxe. Covenant Theology: From Adam to Christ (Palmsdale: Reformed Baptist Academic Press, 2005), 181.

Lyndon Unger posted a lengthy comment on my post “Darby’s Dubious Method of Bible Interpretation.” I decided to post my response here as well:

I’m not sure you understand that this post is part and parcel of a larger refutation of Hyper-Dispensationalism. So when you say “I havent read anyone who says x,” it’s often clear that you have not read the Hyper-Dispys I’m primarily responding to, let alone the popularizers of Darby’s method today (i.e. Hagee, etc.) who hold several of the views I address, and perhaps of times past; I’m not writing this article specifically about your views (which is, as far as I know, only your own personalized version of dispensationalism), so don’t take it too personally.

Nevertheless, I’d like to respond to a few charges/questions in your comment:

9. How is this article doing apologetics?

Are dispensationalists enemies of the faith against which you need to prepare a defense?

Are we wrecking your churches with all our faithful expository preaching?

Of course, the answer is “no.” But if you were consistent, Unger, why don’t you ask these questions whenever a person posts a blog entry on infant vs. paedo baptism? Apologetics sometimes involves “in house” debate, to encourage one another to strive towards pure doctrine. Granted, I would rather be dealing with more anti-Christian stuff out there. But, surely you don’t see a problem with debates regarding presuppositional vs. evidential apologetics, infant baptism vs. believers only baptism, etc.? Then why is dispensationalism vs. covenant theology too touchy of a subject for you?

Why is it that people like yourself, RazorsKiss and others from the AOMin circle seem to not follow Dr. White’s wisdom and leave some of these “in house debate” issues outside of your public apologetics writing and work?

- Again, my primary concern is with Hyper-Dispensationalism. But to refute those absurdities, I have to first explain Dispensationalism and its history so people know the origins of Hyper-Dispensationalism. That’s the way good apologetic work is done.

I know White disagrees strongly with Phil Johnson, let alone me, but I respect that he understands that the “Covenant theology vs. Dispensationalism” hill isn’t one worth dying on in his public apologetics ministry and creates unnecessary division and needless enemies. The dispensationalists and the covenant theologians are brothers in reformed soteriology, doctrine of scripture, pneumatology, hamartiology, etc. We have so much in common that we’re basically only divided on questions of eschatology, principles of OT/NT interpretation (specifically regarding prophecy and the role of national Israel) and questions possibly regarding the baptism of children (and certainly not across the board).

- I’m not dying on any hill, and the topic of dispensationalism has been minimal on this blog when compared with the other dozens of topics covered over the past year.
As far as our agreeing and disagreeing, sure, we agree on alot of basic stuff. But, again, peripheral issues are still issues, and I suppose it also depends on how odd you think re-instituting the sacrifices are (a more central issue of the sufficiency and efficacy of the atonement), and of course, those issues you mentioned regarding hermeneutics, like saying Amos 9:11-15 quoted in Acts 15 isn’t talking about the church, and interpreting a numerical figure (1000) as literal in the most symbolic book in Scripture where the figure has never been used literally elsewhere in Scripture, etc.. More importantly, it also depends on how fruitful the consistent application of dispensationalism really is. Stam and Finck have outlined that result, as others have, and it isn’t pretty. Indeed, the party guilty for unnecessary division and creating needless enemies is the Dispensationalist who must substantiate his/her position, not the other way around.

I’m confused as to why, in your public apologetics ministry, you’re going after Dispensationalism…of ALL things?

- Again, you seem to be completely unaware that this post is part of a critique of Hyper-dispensationalism. Unaware still, that I’ve recommended on my blog listening to the dispensationalist Chuck Swindoll’s sermons. Finally, unaware that a great portion of this series has been posted on Dr. White’s blog. You’re just not making any sense.

I rejoice when someone comes to know the Lord through the proclamation of his word. I rejoice even when someone embraces covenant theology, as long as they’re doing so from careful study of scripture! I’m not worried if they systematize their theology in a different way than I do…they’re believers and I praise the Lord for that!

- I do as well. But, again, my simple plea in this series on hyper-dispensationalism is “look at the fruit.” Not merely questionable teaching about reinstituting the sacrifices, but the heretical conclusions of Stam and his followers who seem to be applying Darby’s principles a bit more consistently.

As all Christians should know, the atheist has no real grounds for objective morals. Without an objective standard there can be no objective “right” or “wrong.” Ethics can be nothing more than personal preference or the success of evolution to create a clever (and still subjective) mechanism for furthering our species.

Alonzo Fyfe and his blog “Atheist Ethicist“  essentially assumes the possibility of the contrary:

When I was in high school, I decided that I wanted to leave the world better off than it would have been if I had not existed. This started a quest, through 12 years of college and on to today, to try to discover what a “better” world consists of. I have written a book describing that journey that you can find on my website. In this blog, I will keep track of the issues I have confronted since then.

How does this really work out? And what problems can be found when an atheist of this type interacts with things like the existence of God?

To Know or Not to Know

The answer is clear in one of his recent posts, “To Know that God Doesn’t Exist”:

A member of the studio audience sent me the following question:

I would love to know how you manage to know that god and the supernatural don’t exist. i am an atheist myself yet i believe(not claim) that god does not exist, but not claim that “god does not exist” is a fact. i am therefore an atheist agnostic and i would assume that you’re a gnostic atheist?

I would love to know why, when conversations turn to God, people shift the meaning of the word “know” to something entirely at odds with the way the term is used everywhere else.

That’s easy: because God is different than everything else. He’s the Creator of the universe, entirely unique, utterly holy. There is nothing in all the universe like God (He is “wholly other”), and as such, knowing God is different (in some sense) as knowing everything else, especially as God Himself wrote a book for us to understand Him and His works in creation. That is, nothing can be compared to knowing God through the Creator’s specific/special revelation; the Creator-creature relationship in epistemology bears the mark of uniqueness when compared to creature-creation relationships of knowing. More about this in a moment.

If I were to say, at work, that I know that the meeting will take more than an hour, I am not going to be jumped by co-workers asking me how I could possibly know that. Nobody is going to assert that, because of factors I have not considered or am not aware of, it is possible that the meeting will take less then an hour, so I am making a mistake in claiming to know that it will last more than an hour. Our regular everyday use of the word “know” is quite compatible with the possibility of error.

Of course. But there are different degrees of “knowing.” Or, to put it differently, if “knowledge” is (generally) “justified true belief,” there are different types and degrees of justification. Is Fyfe really asserting that belief in God and disbelief in God is really no different than the belief in the date of a meeting at work?

If it turns out that I am mistaken – that the meeting lasts 30 minutes because a key member has to catch a plane – then I have to retract my claim to have known that it would take more than an hour.

However, the point is that “know” claims in regular conversation are retractable claims. Whenever a person makes a knowledge claim in any conversation not having to do with God, it is with the understanding on the part of the speaker and the listener that the know claim might ultimately have to be retracted.

Again, depending on the type of “knowing” the knower is doing, the detractable nature of the claim changes. (Probability, for example, comes into play.) However, if Fyfe is asserting (in the distinction of “having to do with God” and not) that creatures know God in some different way than knowing everything else, he might be on to something. After all, in a Christian epistemology, a claim made by Creator is more epistemically certain than a claim made by a creature. There are two levels of everything: the level of creature and the level of Creator; God knows things differently than we do. Moreover, God Himself is sovereign over creation which includes both the knower, the knowledge, and the object of knowledge. The Creator can control the creature’s faculties, guaranteeing the highest degree of justification for a given claim.  But, I doubt Fyfe is asserting this in his general distinction.

This seems not to be true when we talk about God. Here, when I say that I know that a God does not exist, I am accused of using the term “know” improperly unless it is an unretractable claim.

“You cannot justifiably claim to know that a God does not exist unless you are willing to assert no possibility of error that might force you to retract that claim.”

Why is there this double standard?

“If I use the standard, retractable concept of ‘know’ when I talk about God, then the phrase ‘I know that God does not exist’ would be a true and sensible statement to make about myself. However, that would mean that I am an atheist. My friends and family would freak out if I were an atheist. In fact, all the time I was growing up I was taught to look down on atheists and view them as inferior who are beneath us good religious folks. I certainly do not want to apply this term ‘atheist’ to myself. Therefore, when it comes to claims about God, I am going to shift to a different definition in which ‘know’ claims are not retractable. Since it is not the case that I ‘know’ that God does not exist in the non-retractable sense (a sense that actually prohibits me from knowing anything at all, including my own name), I can avoid the label ‘atheist’.”

This description is not true of the person who sent the original question. However, it does explain why he has come to think that, when it comes to claims about God, we must use the non-retractable concept. It explains why he thinks it is proper to accuse me of claiming that I have non-retractable knowledge that God does not exist when I claim to know that God does not exist.

The other reason we have this non-retractable definition of “to know” when we speak about God is the theist reason.

The theist wants to believe in God. To do this, in light of what we see around us in the real world, she needs to set the evidence bar low enough that it is possible to get over it. In a universe with absolutely no evidence for the existence of God, one argument that a person can still use is to claim, “I am justified in claiming that God exists as long as non-retractable knowledge that God does not exist is impossible.”

First of all, the theist, to be a theist, believes in God. Desire of belief in God is irrelevant, let alone impossible to objectively prove in the case of any believer (e.g. what is the criteria for proving that a believer merely wants to believe instead of believing out of the impossibility of the contrary?). Second of all, who determines what is the “real world”, the Creator or the creature? Why presuppose the impossibility of the Creator? Third of all, could Fyfe provide an example of “setting the bar low enough that it is possible to get over it,” let alone what this means? Could Fyfe provide a standard for this “bar” since he has no objective means of doing so? And if there is no objective norm to follow, what does he then mean by “low”? Low compared to what? (It sounds like the “believing in God is like believing Mickey Mouse” argument.)

This form of argument is not logically valid, but it can be psychologically comforting.

Tell that to Abraham, Moses, David, Paul, and the author of Hebrews who said “let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe,
for our God is a consuming fire,” (12:28). The affirmation of the existence of God is the most psychologically discomforting fact of reality for the sinful man! Granted, there is much “comfort” for the Christian since his/her God is “the God of all comfort” (II Cor. 1:3), and being justified, we have peace with God our Father (Rom. 5:1). But this biblical sense of comfort is not the comfort Fyfe is talking about. And for anyone in the state of sin, Christian or not, God is a galactic inconvenience. Why? Because God is Holy and man is sinful, and the One who is Holy is unfortunately (for a sinner) the Creator and owner of everything. That means we are accountable to him. Perhaps Fyfe should again define his terms.

To the person who is afraid to let go of God, either for personal reasons or because this would lead to his being an outcast in his community of friends and family, this rationalization serves its purpose. This person can join his friends and family in looking down on those atheists who claim that God does not exist when they cannot possibly have non-retractable knowledge that God does not exist.

Of course, there are some theists who set the evidence bar even lower than this. For them, the evidence bar is not sitting on the floor, it IS the floor. These are the faith-peddlers, the people who claim that one can know that God exists without any evidence at all – that there is absolutely no bar to clear.

I’m one of those guys, and I’m not ashamed of it. No, I’m not talking about a person who believes in God without any evidence, but I am a person – as are all genuine Christians – who doesn’t approach the Creator of the universe with a man-made “bar” and say jump it God! Or I won’t believe in you! The fact is, the bar, the floor, and the evidence for either wouldn’t exist, let alone have meaning, without the Source of all being and meaning.

If these people were applying this standard only to beliefs that have no effect on others, then there would be little reason to complain about it. However, many of those who use the faith standard are using it to decide how they are going to treat other people, what laws they are going to vote for and against, and what politicians are worthy of holding power. In fact, many insist that the only politician worthy of holding power is one whose standard of evidence is as low as theirs – which provides a very dangerous foundation for public policy.

Well, “many of those who use the faith standard” includes all Christians, and all non-Christians. And all people use this “faith standard” to determine their values and thus their behavior. This “faith standard” is called a worldview, and everyone has one. And a person’s worldview determines values (i.e. truth values), and values determines behavior (i.e. your votes, public actions). Fyfe has absolutely no reason to be looking down on theists because they make actions according to their faith-commitment and “ultimate presupposition” as Frame says; everyone has faith in something, and everyone acts on it whether they are conscious of it or not.

I am not saying that these are the conscious thoughts of individuals involved in these ways of thinking. In fact, as conscious thoughts they would fail. Rather, the way these arguments work in practice is in the form of beliefs grounded on emotion.

Seems like classic Freudism. People believe in God only because they are driven by fear and emotion. Another unfounded presupposition. At any rate, I’m still confused as to how a conscious thought that a worldview determines our values and behavior “would fail.” What is failure? How is it determined?

An individual experiences a learned aversion to the atheist label. Because of the discomfort of this learned aversion, he finds that he is more comfortable thinking that atheism requires a non-retractable definition of “to know”. Because this non-retractable definition is comfortable, the agent adopts it.

Or maybe everything coming from revelation through the senses to the brain assumes, demonstrates, and demands God’s glory and fact of existence, so to say “well, God might not exist” would be the very definition of borderline absurdity?

The same is true of the person who is afraid to let go of God. She is more comfortable holding onto the belief, and finds that she is comfortable thinking that atheism requires this non-retractable concept of “to know”. Because these beliefs are comfortable to her, she adopts them as being true.

For these reasons, we find ourselves in a culture that allows a retractable concept of “to know” everywhere other than when we talk about God, and a non-retractable concept when we talk about God. We are surrounded by such a culture because it helps people to avoid conclusions they do not like. It helps atheists avoid the stigma of thinking of themselves as atheists, and it helps theists hold onto a belief in God that they are desperate to hold onto.

I know that no God exists. I know it in the same sense that I know who my biological parents are and I know on what day I was born. It doesn’t mean that there is no chance that I am wrong . . . only that I consider the chance of error to be remote.

Here is where Fyfe makes the parallel and in doing so falls off an epistemological cliff. He presents the two truth claims as if there are no distinctions with epistemological consequence. I mean, is Fyfe really suggesting that one truth claim (an event? A present reality? etc.) requires no more justification than another? Can we say “I know no star or planet or speck of dust beyond Pluto exists. I know it in the same sense that I know Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President”? I doubt this is really some “ordinary use” of the term “know.” Indeed, it is the opposite.

Truth claims and claims of knowledge come in a variety of shapes and sizes. Some require different types or degrees of justification (the “bar” Fyfe refers to) than others. For example, a claim about history is obviously different in nature than a claim about immediate sensory experience. “Jerusalem fell in 70AD” is a bit different than “I smell chocolate chip cookies.” How do we know this? Because of how we try to prove the claim. What is required to demonstrate the truthfulness of the fall of Jerusalem? The truthfulness of me smelling cookies? The answers are much, much different.

The same is the case for God’s non-existence and the illustrations Fyfe provided. The first major distinction he misses is that the knowledge of the non-existence of something requires far greater justification than the knowledge of the existence of something. Or in other terms, positive truth claims are easier to prove (and know) than negative truth claims. If I say “I know that a debate over Mormonism occurred in the year 1922,” my knowledge of this fact might only need one newspaper article from 1922. With that article, I would be justified in saying “I know” that it happened. But if I said, “I know that a debate over Mormonism did not occur in the year 1922,” I would have to have read absolutely everything written in that year, and perhaps literature from years past to demonstrate that I “know” that a debate didn’t occur – still using “know” in the same sense as in the positive claim. And, even if I exhausted all evidence, I still might not know that the debate didn’t occur – for it may not simply have been on record. There is a possibility for error and retraction on both, but that doesn’t put them on equal ground as far as what is required to “know.”

Again, that is true for ontological claims of knowledge and the existence of God. “I know that no God exists” requires an insurmountable amount of evidence and epistemic justification for there to be adequate grounds for saying it, even in the most ordinary way of “know.” You would have to be everywhere all the time and be able to see everything, and even then, there is a chance you’re wrong. Wouldn’t it be much more logical, according to Fyfe, to simply respond to such a claim with “No, you don’t ‘know’ God doesn’t exist,” given the general use of the term he has described?

Again, all of these claims are “retractable.” Our senses could deceive us. We could be in error. Historians could be lying to us, etc. But this is where Christian epistemology makes a massive distinction: the Creator controls the knowing faculties of the knower, and is the Creator of both – and the knowledge being known. Thus, if there is any non-retractable claim, a claim that has the highest degree of certainty, it is a claim made by the Creator Himself, revealed to his creatures, and secured by this Creator’s Spirit in the mind of the interpreter. The Word of God is the final standard for truth claims. But the atheist has no such God, and therefore no such basis to assert the reliability of the senses, etc. In fact, he has no reason to explain why one person interprets information in the same way as another; to “know” might be different (even opposite!) in another person’s evolved mind. Furthermore, human beings by their very nature are God-conscious. Revelation everywhere screams “God Made!” “God is the Creator!” “Great, Wise, and Powerful is the Lord of Creation!” (Rom. 1:21-23) Contrary to popular thought, self-consciousness is no more ultimate or important than God-consciousness (the details of this are too lengthy to describe at present); to retract “God exists” is to retract “I exist.” There is no basis to have it any other way as long as the creature is a creature made in God’s image.

This is essentially the end of the major portions of Fyfe’s article. Much more could be said. But, in short, the skeptic is simply left to absurdity when trying to deny his/her Maker. The pot is correcting the Potter. Silly indeed.

Here is a list of definitions of the word “apologetics” from both presuppositional and classical/evidential apologists:

Presuppositional Apologists

“Christian apologetics is, at root, a biblical discipline.” Richard Gaffin Jr. in K. Scott Oliphint and Lane G. Tipton, eds. Revelation and Reason: New Essays in Reformed Apologetics (Phillipsburg, N.J.: P&R Publishing, 2007), 1.

“Apologetics is about inviting people to look into the face of this absolute, personal God. It dares them to see him for who he is and what he means for the world.” Thom E. Notaro in Revelation and Reason, 157.

“We may define it as the discipline that teaches Christians how to give a reason for their hope.” John Frame. Apologetics to the Glory of God (Phillipsburg, New Jersey: P&R Publishing, 1994), 1.

“Apologetics is the vindication of the presence of Christ as his church against the various forms of the non-Christian philosophy of life that constantly attempt to invade and intrude that presence.” William D. Dennison in Revelation and Reason, 203.

“Apologetics is a way of doing theology, a way of doing evangelism, a way of doing philosophy.” Greg Bahnsen in Van Til’s Apologetic (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 1998),  44-45.

“Apologetics may be defined as persuading people to think through their worldviews, abandon their false beliefs, and embrace Jesus, all while defending the truths of the gospel.” Jamin Hubner, Light Up the Darkness (BookSurge, 2008), 119.

Classical/Evidential Apologists

“Apologetics is the reasoned defense of the Christian religion.” R.C. Sproul, John Gerstner, and Arthur Lindsley. Classical Apologetics (Zondervan, 1984), 13.

“Apologetics…is that branch of Christian theology which seeks to provide a rational justification for the truth claims of the Christian faith.” William Lane Craig. Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics (Crossway, 2008), 15.

“Apologetics is the discipline of defending Christianity as true, rational, and pertinent to life.” William Lane Craig. On Guard: Defending Your Faith with Reason and Precision (Colorado Springs:David C. Cook, 2010)

“Apologetics is directed primarily for those who do not believe so that they may have a reason to believe.” Norman Geisler. “An Apologetic for Apologetics.” http://www.normangeisler.net/apologetic.html

“At its essence, apologetics is the art and science of Christian persuasion: communicating the relevance, coherence, and reasonableness of the Christian Gospel to skeptics, cultural influencers, and critical thinkers across the globe.” Ravi Zacharias International Ministries. http://www.rzim.org/initiatives.aspx

“Apologetics is the attempt to ally reason to faith, to defend faith with reason’s weapon.” Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli. Handbook of Catholic Apologetics: Reasoned Answers to Questions of Faith (Ignatius Press, 2009), 32.

Registration is now open for JBI at the Black Hills/Rapid City location! Lord willing, I will be teaching Introduction to Apologetics, beginning October 5th, 2010. Like all Jesus Bible Institute courses, there are 8 sessions, once a week in the evening for two hours (total of 16 lectures). Unlike most college courses, this 3-credit equivalent is a fraction of the cost ($200 instead of $1,000+). So, if you’re a Christian who doesn’t have a lot of time or money, but wants to know all about the defense of the faith, the nature of truth, and learn all kinds of things about the Bible, theology, and various religions, this is your chance. As my favorite camper salesman says, “it’ll be a hoot.”

So get the word out! And in fact, I’ll give you a free signed copy of my book Light Up the Darkness if you get anyone to register for this course. Given geography, the number of readers on this blog, and the state of the economy, the odds of this happening are about 0/0. But I figured I’d make a deal anyway.

I’m praying this course and the new JBI location will be honoring to God and His kingdom. Solid college-level courses on Christian apologetics (regardless of the price tag) are a serious rarity, but it is my goal to provide such teaching, even as I struggle to find an economical place to live in the Black Hills (how we all know housing is a blessing!). Believers, laypeople, and Christian leaders of all kinds need to have training in a day and age where error drenches our senses.

Just paging through the interview of William Edgar, apologetics professor at Westminster, in the July 31st edition of World Magazine. He definitely had a few good ones that puts presuppositional (biblical) apologetics in simple terms:

Vail Til is considered to be the leading exponent of “presuppositionalism,” an apologetic that looks at issues of the heart and worldview, rather than simply amassing great doses of evidence that are presented as though facts were neutral. Van Til was very favorable to evidence but it had to be in a framework. I took that ball and ran with it into the area of culture studies, and now I teach cultural apologetics.

…Apologetics that simply take tight philosophical arguments, dump them on people, and then simply wait to see if they can say “uncle” or not, are not very effective. First of all, not all of us are philosophers; second, it doesn’t reach into heart commitments, which is where the issues of life are. It’s not how bright I am and whether I can think through a problem that is going to lead me to Christ. It’s whether I have the kind of information, wisdom, and preaching that will challenge my deepest assumptions and lead me to Christ. (28)

Edgar, of course, edited the wonderful Christian Apologetics Past and Present: A Primary Source Reader (2009) and Van Til’s Christian Apologetics and Introduction to Systematic Theology (one of my top 5 all time favorite books).

As many of you know, I published a book on “faith and film” a few years ago during college. I basically argued that all good stories borrow from the ultimate story of the gospel. Hollywood has no ideas of their own; they have to borrow from the true and final origin of all drama (for a scholarly treatment of this subject in combination with the development of Christian theology in biblical studies, see Vanhoozer’s The Drama of Doctrine on the RealApologetics.org Recommended Reading). Indeed, it was a simple application of presuppositionalism; unbelieving worldviews can only borrow from the Christian worldview since God made everything. And in the last third of the book I added an apologetic twist, which put the movie-viewer in their place at least as a creature before God. Unless you are a Christian, you cannot account for bondage, the villain, the savior, redemption, the beauty, and all the other major themes found in epic stories.

I haven’t really touched the subject since. And I knew that I had hardly scratched the surface with regards to this area and our culture. But, it was a joy gaining a new friend at a coffee house in Sioux Falls a number of months ago who has a more keen eye for the big screen. Cory Kitch has competently taken over the field even as he ministers to the flock as the Associate Pastor at Central Valley Community Church in Hartford, SD. He regularly reviews movies from a uniquely Christian (Reformed and Presuppositionalist at that) perspective on his blog Nothing New Under the Sun; his whit and sarcasm also keeps it fun. So, if there is ever a movie-review blog online worth reading, it’s his.

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Let me begin by thanking Real Apologetics for asking me to contribute my take on Christopher Nolan’s newest cinematic effort, INCEPTION.

The summer movie season is not supposed to produce movies like INCEPTION. Summer Movies are about thoughtless, stupid eye candy. It’s a season that often marks our local movie houses with giant transforming plot holes…ahem…I mean robots and vampires that fall in love with mediocre actresses.

Then, as soon as summer is over, we get a lot movies that Hollywood thinks are important, thoughtful and award worthy but are really about as much fun as renewing your driver’s license or riding a bicycle with no seat.

That is, until someone like Christopher Nolan comes along and proves to be a regular Hollywood paradox; a director who can produce eye-candy that is also, genuinely thought provoking.

I’ll start by urging you to see this film before you read anything about it. I’ll try to be as general as I can be, but there are some SPOILERS ahead. You’ve been warned.

INCEPTION takes place in a world where you can enter other people’s minds, share their dreams and even steal their secrets. Leonardo DiCaprio is Dom Cobb, the leader of a rag-tag group of secret-thieves who’ve made their living by looting secrets from high and mighty corporate types, like Mr. Saito (Ken Watanabe), and selling them off to the highest bidder.  But what happens if someone like Mr. Saito decides to hire you, not to steal an idea, but to plant one in someone’s mind instead? That is INCEPTION on the surface.

Christopher Nolan explicitly intends the first layer of this film to be a metaphor for the theatrical experience. Just as Cobb and his crew of dream thieves hack into their target’s mind in order to plant a life changing idea, so the filmmaker crafts an idea to be transmitted and implanted into the mind of an audience. On this level, INCEPTION is very much about the power of ideas and how easily they can infiltrate a person’s thinking.

Whether he did it on purpose or not, Nolan has stumbled across something that is affirmed from the very beginning of the redemption narrative. Look, for example, how easy it was for Eve to believe that, by eating what she was commanded not to eat, she could actually become like God. Look how easy it was for Adam to disobey God once the idea takes hold in his mind that disobedience did not, in fact, lead to death but resulted instead in divinity. It takes roughly two sentences. One idea and their entire world is corrupted.

Who Needs Inception? We Have Incarnation!

It takes another sort of inception, a Superior Architect, to reverse the damage that was done with a single idea. St. John describes this “inception,”

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth… And from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known” (John 1:14, 16-18)

He also describes the mission of this “inception,”

“He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:10-13).

An idea, communicated through words, corrupted the world, subjecting it to futility and then came The Word to redeem what was corrupted and lost.

Subjectivity = Captivity

In yet another level this film is about perception, specifically our own personal, relative, subjective perception. Inception is a movie that is difficult to interpret and it’s designed to be that way. It is constantly keeping the audience on their heels as they try to discern what is real and what is not. Everything we learn in the film is subjective and open to interpretation. Until it’s not…but then it “ends” leaving the film open to even more interpretation and debate!

The ending is what most people are talking about after they see this movie. It is an ambiguous ending at best and this has frustrated many viewers. I can understand that. I like definitive happy-endings as well, but maybe, just maybe the point is that you’re supposed to be frustrated by the ambiguity, even the subjectivity of it. What if the ending is ambiguous because you’re supposed to push against the idea that you can’t know what is or isn’t real.

James Harleman of Cinemagogue has pointed out what is so frustrating and desperate about treating life and reality as something that is subjective. He says that Subjectivity is Captivity. This is the plight of both Dom and Dom’s ill-fated spouse. Subjectivity and relativism drives them mad with depression, confusion and guilt and there’s no escaping the damage, no escaping the maze. What is needed for both of them is for someone, outside the maze, to infiltrate and rescue them.

That’s where the most important character of the film (in my opinion) enters and begs for some examination.

ARIADNE: The Mistress of the Maze

Ellen Page plays, Ariadne, the newest addition to the “dream-team” (Yes. I’m just as embarrassed about that pun as you are). I think the character of Ariadne proves that Nolan intends his audience to reject the notion that reality is relative.

The name Ariadne has quite a history in Greek mythology – a history rich with alternate versions of her story. Apparently the Greeks were as fond of rebooting franchises as Hollywood is now. Skimming the variations of myths about Ariadne reveals that she was known, not only as the Mistress of the Maze, but also as the one who gave Theseus the red string he needed to get into the Labyrinth, kill the Minotaur and find his way out again.

What does this have to do with Inception? So glad you asked. Dom is a man that is desperately trying to relieve the guilt he feels over the death of his wife. His method for doing this is locking a piece of her away in his subconscious so that he can build a perfect dream world for them to inhabit forever. A great plan if reality really was subjective and relative. But, if reality is actually objective then it would stand to reason that Dom’s pursuit would mark his life less by freedom from guilt and more by confusion and self-destruction.

Oh, what a surprise! That’s exactly what his life is like.

Ariadne is in this movie for one reason and one reason only. She is there to be an advocate for reality. She’s there to tell Dom, and us, that we can’t possibly conjure our own justification or absolve our own guilt out of thin air. She is there to affirm that the distinction between dreams and reality is not a false dichotomy. She’s there to give Dom his red string, so he can begin to find a way out of his maze. Because of Ariadne’s wisdom Dom finally acknowledges that if he’s ever going to be free of his guilt, he’s got to quit trying to justify himself. He’s got to quit feeding his fantasy world as if restoring what was lost in his own dreams will count in reality.

Cobb to his “dream” wife: “You’re a shade. Your the best I can do but you’re just not good enough.”

We never really get the satisfying answer we want when it comes to Dom’s redemption, but that’s ok by me because we, the audience, leave Dom right where a lot of us might be. We realize that, ultimately, we need help to be justified. We need help to kill our Minotaurs. We need help to be saved. We need intervention. We need foreign righteousness. It’s not enough to simply realize that we’re helplessly lost in a maze of guilt and sin. We need a redeemer. We need a redeemer who will do more than give us a red string. We need a redeemer who will spill his blood and sacrifice his life in order to take the punishment we deserve for our sin.

“I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus…who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ” (I Corinthians 1:4, 8).

I don’t imagine that Nolan intended for Inception to point to the Incarnation, the need for foreign righteousness or the maddening futility of relativism but that is the direction to which Inception’s finger inevitably points.