Every year, my theological hero is invited to a debate by the local atheist group. Every year, after the debate, you can hear him make comments both inside and outside his classes such as “I wiped the floor with his a%^&*!” “It’s really not fair!” “I creamed him!” and so on.
The fact that they invite him back year after year only proves what masochists they are. I mean, if they didn’t like being humiliated in the debate, wouldn’t they invite some lightweight thinker instead of my theological hero?
My hero knows how logically infeasible atheism is because he actually was an atheist for a while—perhaps several weeks. During that time, he argued for atheism as dogmatically as he now argues for conservative evangelicalism. But eventually he realized that he just couldn’t get over the logical impossibility of it and he converted back to the Truth he was raised in: conservative evangelicalism.
Shortly after the debate one year, while he was still basking in the thrill of his triumph, I was fortunate enough to hear him talking at lunch with one of our colleagues. She asked him whether the question of “the problem of evil” came up and how he dealt with it. He went through the argument he had given to them:
- Demons are in charge of the earth, not God.
- You don’t have to accept the argument that demons are in charge of the earth, you only have to accept that this does solve the problem of evil.
The woman he was speaking to didn’t seem to accept his answer. Tellingly, she didn’t even attempt to make a logical argument against it. Instead, she simply said, “Well, I don’t believe that!”
My hero patiently and gently said, “Well, the Bible is very clear about that.”
Once again, tellingly, she didn’t argue about how clear the Bible is about that issue. She simply repeated, “Well, I don’t believe that.”
And he repeated, without elaboration or detail, his patient reply, “Well, the Bible is very clear.”
A third time, she responded, “Well, I don’t believe that.”
Then someone interrupted and the subject was changed.
I’m sure you are wondering how a person can face an impenetrable wall of logic, plus the claim from the mouth of a great theologian that the Bible is “very clear” and still say, “I don’t believe it.” Here is how: this woman is a Roman Catholic.
The Roman Catholics are not like us conservative evangelicals. They focus on all the wrong passages of scripture, apply twisted interpretations to them, then claim that the Bible backs up their ludicrous point of view. They are utterly blind to gaping holes in their “logic”. This is why they are considered a cult. Their beliefs make absolutely no sense at all to outsiders.
It’s embarrassing. It’s really not fair to argue with them, we have such an advantage.
Now you are surely wondering how a Roman Catholic came to be employed at our University. Well, she wasn’t one when she was hired. She converted after being here for some time. When she told the president, he put her on notice but never fired her.
Now that Rudyard is president, I expect she will stay. Rudyard seems to want our University to quicken its descent down the “Snelling Slide” toward such previously Christian colleges as Macalester and Hamline. So sad.
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Pingback on Aug 5th, 2008 at 12:57 pm
[...] to negate some of Litfin’s points. About this attempt, I will borrow a phrase I often hear my theological hero in the Biblical and Theological Studies department here use: “there was a lot of rhetoric and [...]
July 28, 2008 at 6:38 am
I was under the impression you believed in God. You know- the one who created everything. The one who is more powerful than Satan and outnumbers him two to one.
I could be wrong, but his… theology, bears no resemblance what so ever to Christianity.
It gets worse. Why are demons causing this? Because they are demons? So the problem of evil is answered by saying… there are creatures who cause the evil to happen?