During my academic career, I have made students on both sides of the Atlantic miserable by insisting that (1) they never rely on unverified web references, and (2) they never copy a reference from an author without going to the cited source to make sure that the reference is accurate. This of course slows down the writing of research papers and debate preparation, but it is the only way to prevent the creation of “bibliographical ghosts”: references to non-existent material or citations that actually lead nowhere.
Here is an example encountered serendipitously—and one that will warm the cockles of the heart of every conservative reader.
Go to the Wikipedia article on Chief Justice John Marshall (accessed 16 April 2012). There you will read: “Marshall himself was not religious and never joined a church; he did not believe Jesus was a divine being.” The footnote (66) given as the authority for this assertion is “Smith, John Marshall, pp. 36, 406.” This refers to Jean Edward Smith’s acclaimed biography, John Marshall: Definer of a Nation (Henry Holt, 1996, 1998).
Smith is professor of political science at the University of Toronto. The book was listed as a New York Times Notable Book of 1996 and, typical of euphoric reviews, Gordon S. Wood wrote in the New Republic: “We are in Smith’s debt for a richer, more accurate and more balanced view of Marshall and his achievements than we have ever had before….The best single-volume biography of the Chief Justice that we have.”
“More accurate and more balanced”? We go to page 406 and find the Wikipedia claim stated—but with no documentation. The claim also appears on page 36, in the following terms: Marshall was “unable to believe in the divinity of Christ.” The authority for this assertion is given in a footnote as “Dillon, 3 John Marshall: Life, Character, Judicial Services 14-17.” That three-volume collection of tributes to Marshall (Chicago, Callaghan, 1903) was edited by the distinguished jurist John F. Dillon and prepared as a centenary tribute to Marshall, who had been appointed chief justice by John Adams in 1801. Now go to Vol. 3, pp. 14-17: you will find not a single word corroborating the claim that Marshall denied the deity of Christ, much less any comment about his religious views.
But perhaps the page reference is just a typographical error? So we consult the detailed subject index at the end of the work (covering all three volumes) and what do we find? No reference anywhere in Dillon’s work to such a view as held by Marshall. To the contrary, the following references are typical of those pertaining to Marshall’s religious position:
“Chief Justice Marshall was a steadfast believer in the truth of Christianity as revealed in the Bible. He was brought up in the Episcopal Church; and Bishop Meade, who knew him well, tells us that he was a constant and reverent worshipper in that church” (Justice Horace Gray, Volume 1, p. 88).

“He [Marshall] was a sincere Christian and believed in and obeyed the commands of the Bible” (E. Baldwin, Vol. 1, p. 330).
“Would you not call a man religious who said the Lord’s Prayer every day? And the prayer he learned at his mother’s knee went down with him to the grave. He was a constant and liberal contributor to the support of the Episcopal Church. He never doubted the fact of the Christian revelation, but he was not convinced of the fact of the divinity of Christ till late in life. Then, after refusing privately to commune, he expressed a desire to do so publicly, and was ready and willing to do so when opportunity should be had. The circumstances of his death only forbade it…. He was never professedly Unitarian, and he had no place in his heart for either an ancient or a modern agnosticism” (William Pinkney Whyte, Vol. 2, pp. 2-3).

Marshall “was a Christian, believed in the gospel, and practiced its tenets” (Horace Binney, Vol. 3, p. 325).

To be sure, the above statements appear in eulogies and may not be regarded as primary sources (though Marshall’s daughter is the source of the account of his late coming to faith in Christ’s deity and consequent desire to commune). But suppose we hear from the Chief Justice himself?

The following appears in Marshall’s letter of 9 May 1833 to the Revd Jasper Adams:

“No person, I believe, questions the importance of religion to the happiness of man even during his existence in this world. The American population is entirely Christian; and with us Christianity and religion are identical. It would be strange indeed if, with such a people, our institutions did not presuppose Christianity, and did not often refer to it and exhibit relations with it” (12 The Papers of John Marshall, ed. Charles Hobson [Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006], 278).[1] To add insult to injury, Smith adds the following gratuitous comment to his entirely unfounded assertion as to Marshall’s disbelief in Christ’s deity: “If Marshall needed reinforcement for that skepticism, it may have come from Pope. The Essay on Man is a ringing endorsement of the deist views of the Age of Reason, and although Pope was Catholic, his emphasis on man as a rational being inevitably diminished the role of Christianity” (Smith, p. 36).
But Marshall was no Unitarian-Deist, unlike Jefferson and Tom Paine. Smith here simply blows his cover in suggesting that rationality and Christianity are somehow incompatible. Years ago, when I was librarian of the Swift Library of Divinity and Philosophy at the University of Chicago, I compared the Swift book collection with that of the Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. The former had practically no conservative theological publications; the latter had both liberal and conservative materials. I wrote this up in an article that caused quite a ruckus: “Bibliographical Bigotry” (reprinted in my book, Suicide of Christian Theology). My conclusion was that liberals are often the illiberal ones. The lesson drawn from Smith’s treatment of Marshall may suggest that they are often also very poor scholars—in spite of the accolades they receive in the press. And, sadly, those who do not check their references end up disseminating historical falsehoods in the guise of scholarship.
[1] It is worth noting that this passage does not justify the notion that “America is a Christian nation” in the constitutional sense; no mention of the gospel or of Jesus Christ appear in the founding documents of the nation (see Montgomery, The Shaping of America, passim). But Marshall’s statement is a reasonably accurate empirical description of the faith of most Americans in the 18th and 19th centuries.
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This first issue of Vol. 11 of the Global Journal features a most important article by our frequent contributor Dr Donald T. Williams: “Lacking, Ludicrous, or Logical? The Validity of Lewis’s ‘Trilemma'”: a defense of C. S. Lewis’s argument that since Jesus was neither lunatic nor liar, his claim to be Lord God Incarnate needs to be accepted as factually true. Pastor Jim A. Stewart contributes a related article: a trenchant critique of Hume’s classic argument against the miraculous. Finally, Michael Parsons of Paternoster Press and Spurgeon’s College, London, offers “Luther’s Insights into Grief: His Pastoral Letters”–a clear testimony to the deep spirituality of Protestantism’s founder and a solid help to Christians today suffering the pangs of grief and loss.
— John Warwick Montgomery

Secularism has been around for a long time; though (pace Francis Shaeffer) it did not become dominant during the Renaissance, it certainly became mainline ideology in the western world beginning with the 18th century (misdesignated) Enlightenment. As for stupidity, that has been around even longer—ever since our first parents in the Garden of Eden believed the lies of the serpent.

But, unless my imagination is running wild, during the last few decades the incremental rates of both stupidity and secularity have been rising at an unprecedented rate. [1] Here are just a few examples:

(1) The wide acceptance of evolutionary arguments à la Dawkins that, given enough time, one can explain developmental change without resorting to intelligent design. The problem here is that time contains no causal element. A birdhouse can sit for an infinite period of time and will still be a birdhouse; it will not change into a castle.[2]

(2) In the Union of South Africa, public holidays of ecclesiastical significance such as Ascension Day have been scrapped in favour of humanistic festivals (“Women’s Day,” “Worker’s Day,” “Youth Day,” etc.).

(3) When I read for the English bar, the most influential figures on the English legal scene were serious, practicing Christians: Lord Chancellor Hailsham, whose first autobiography, The Door Wherein I Went, contains an important legal apologetic for Christian faith[3]; Lord Diplock, who worshipped regularly at the barristers’ Temple Church; and Lord Denning, president of the Lawyers’ Christian Fellowship. Now the atmosphere has radically changed: an English judge recently denied the appeal of a Christian relationships counselor who was fired for refusing to provide sex counseling to a homosexual couple, stating that religious justifications were “irrational”[4]; and two civil servants have been told not to wear crosses to work—the English courts agreeing and the government taking the same position before the European Court of Human Rights.

(4) In the 2012 French presidential race, Sarkozy, the experienced president, lost to Hollande, a man with zero experience in running a government and even less experience in foreign affairs. This occurred against the background of the desperate need for financial austerity as promoted by Sarkozy—whilst the departement headed by Hollande had the biggest financial deficit in the entire country. The more committed to Christianity one was, the more he or she voted for Sarkozy, whilst Hollande was heavily favoured in the national election by those with no religion—and by the Muslims. Here are the statistics of the percentage of each religious category voting for Sarkozy, as reported by Le Figaro (8 May 2012):
Regularly practicing Roman Catholics 73%
Protestants 61%
Occasionally practicing Roman Catholics 58%
Non-practicing Roman Catholics 51%
No religion 34%
Muslims 7%

Hollande received 52% of the total national vote, becoming the first divorced French president with an unmarried “partner.”

(5) Meanwhile, evangelicals are engaged in systematic dumbing down—charismatic emotionalism, pabulum theologies, and mega-church populism (focused on the overhead projector rather than the cross) substituting for the serious theologies of the Reformation past. Even the graduates of respected theological seminaries have trouble understanding the writings of professionals in their field.[5]

So what can be done? Perhaps nothing; history moves in cycles and we may be experiencing another Dark Age. But a classical education, with a strong dose of formal logic, would certainly help—as would serious study of the writings of the great theologians of the past: Augustine, Luther, Calvin, B. B. Warfield, C. F. W. Walther, Herman Sasse. At very minimum, they might teach us how to think.[6]

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Global Journal’s Associate Editor, Dr Edward N. Martin—doubtless out of humility—rarely offers his scholarly articles to us. (Readers must go back to archived issue Vol. 1, No. 1 and Vol. 4., No. 1 for previous contributions—followed over the years by several valuable reviews.) But the present issue features his important apologetic contribution to the philosophical Problem of Evil: “On the Impossibility of Omnimalevolence: Plantinga on Tooley’s New Evidential Argument from Evil.” This article is especially timely–treating, as it does, a recent scholarly interchange between secularist Michael Tooley and Reformed epistemologist Alvin Plantinga. Two other papers of apologetic significance also appear in this issue: Nicole Frazer’s critique of Marcus Borg’s “Jesus Seminar” approach to the Gospels and James Barta’s analysis of Paul Kurtz’s secular humanism.

John Warwick Montgomery

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[1] P. T. Barnum remarked that “there’s a fool born every minute.” To be sure, the birthrate was lower during his time than it is in ours . . .
[2] Cf. Montgomery, Global Journal of Classical Theology, Vol. 6, No. 1 (May, 2007): http://phc.edu/gj_toc_v6n1.php
[3] Reprinted in Vol. 4 (1984-1985) of The Simon Greenleaf Law Review, under my editorship.
[4] See Montgomery, “Religious ‘Irrationality’ and Civil Liberties,” Amicus Curiae: Journal of the Society for Advanced Legal Studies [U.K.], Summer, 2010.
[5] The reader will forgive a personal example. One anonymous net review of the author’s book, Suicide of Christian Theology reads as follows: “I found the writing so complicated that I had difficulty following the intricately woven arguments. I actually had to take some of his sentences and rewrite them in simpler terms before I understood what he meant. . . . PS. I am no dummy either. I have a 3.96 GPA at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.” Other reviewers—who had nothing but praise for the book–did not seem to have this problem.
[6] It was Sasse who said that the modern Christian has lost the ability to “think theologically.”

The contemporary film industry, like today’s journalism, seems to thrive on radicalism. Therefore it’s a treat when something different comes along.

Run—do not walk—to your neighbourhood cinema to see J Edgar and The Iron Lady.

Both films are semi-autobiographical: the first deals with J. Edgar Hoover, creator of the FBI and its director through eight U. S. presidencies; the second portrays Margaret Thatcher, the longest serving western Prime Minister in the 20th century. The common denominator of these two remarkable careers lies in single-minded dedication: Hoover’s passion to keep America safe from leftwing evils and Thatcher’s conviction that the United Kingdom could only retain greatness if individual freedom and national pride were made preeminent.

J. Edgar is directed by Clint Eastwood—who, remarkably, also wrote the music for the film. Eastwood is, by all odds, one of the very finest living film directors. Though not a Christian believer, he understands and appreciates classic Christian values: witness his role as a Christ-figure, sacrificing himself for others, in Gran Torino. Leonard DiCaprio’s portrayal of Hoover across the decades is solid—not just in the technical sense (makeup conveying the aging of the FBI director) but through impeccable characterization. The only downside lies in the script, where Hoover, who never married, can be read as having suffered from repressed homosexuality; but this interpretation is nowhere forced on the viewer and cannot be supported by historical documentation.

The film clearly shows how Hoover’s entire career was colored by his opposition to the Bolshevik, Marxist, and anarchist attempts to foment revolution in America in the early years of the 20th century. This eventually led to overzealousness in combating left-wing evils and a tendency to let the end justify the means (thus his conviction that Martin Luther King was a crypto-communist and his collecting of damaging evidence on the private lives of public figures). But the film makes very clear that on balance Hoover created a national vehicle for law and order (the FBI) which—whilst he often confused it with his own persona—was a magnificent and essential contribution to the strength of the nation and to the rule of law.

In Iron Lady, Meryl Streep’s offers a stunning portrayal of Thatcher: even the English accent and speech style of the Prime Minister are faultlessly represented. Thatcher, on the other side of the Atlantic from Hoover’s America, with a single-minded determination paralleling the FBI director’s, accomplished what the British establishment lacked the courage to achieve: she beat the labour unions (especially “Red” Ken Livingstone’s coal miners) that were destroying the British economy, and thereby ushered in a period of unprecedented free-market economic growth. As a patriot, Thatcher did not tolerate for a moment Argentina’s attempt to retake the Falkland Islands: she won a military victory against great odds and great opposition, recovering the Falklands for the Crown. One of the most interesting scenes in the film is her encounter with the American ambassador, who sees the war as silly—expensive and involving a small and distant island. Retorts Thatcher: “So why did you not let the Japanese take Hawaii, considering its distance from mainland America”? Thatcher’s character is especially underscored when her psychiatrist asks her, in the early stages of her crippling Alzheimer’s disease, how she is “feeling.” This elicits a tirade in which she identifies not with those who feel but with those who think—particularly when the thinking involves ideas of real importance.

What can one learn from these two films? Lives built on solid values, even if fallible and shortsighted in certain respects, can have immense positive impact. Would that Christian believers in our time might demonstrate such conviction, courage, and leadership.

By the way, if you are still not sure these films are worth seeing, you will certainly agree on learning that even those most difficult of all moviegoers, the French, are raving over them—as I discovered on seeing both films in Paris.

* * *

This issue of the Global Journal features two technical but powerful articles. Prof. Dr Thomas Schirrmacher, one of the foremost living European evangelical theologians, treats “Violence against Abortion Clinics” in light of the philosophy of right-to-life as espoused by evangelicals and by conservative Roman Catholics. And Rick Brannan of Logos Bible Software offers a powerful argument for the eyewitness nature of Acts 18:19—a passage frequently held to be non-historical by the higher critics of the New Testament. Prepare thyself, O reader, for serious study!

John Warwick Montgomery

The lead article in this issue of the Global Journal, Dr Daniel Heimbach’s essay on torture, raises a key ethical issue that particularly plagues evangelical believers. Evangelicals (like Roman Catholics engaged in moral casuistry and the quest for “sainthood”) desperately want to fulfil John Wesley’s desire for moral perfection. But how is this possible in a fallen world where ethical ambiguities can leave one with no choice that is inherently good? Take the standard torture example: suppose that only by physically torturing a terrorist can we find out where he has planted a bomb that, if and when it goes off, will kill one hundred school children. Most rational people would—as a lesser-of-evils—torture the terrorist, but such an act is, nonetheless, morally reprehensible.

Or take war. Here is a telling passage from Scott Turow’s second-world-war novel, Ordinary Heroes; the narrator is a soldier who took part in the D-Day landings:

“It was the devil’s hell, all right. Sitting in church, having the preacher tell me where the sinners was gonna find their ugly selves, and thinking so hard about it, that was what I’d seen. The banging, the screaming, the pain. Even the smells of the bombs and the artillery rounds. That’s a saying, sir, you know, war is hell, but it’s a truth. The souls screaming and sinking down. And the skies falling. When I get to thinking about it, sometimes I wonder if I’m not dead after all.”

One of the most widely accepted ethical solutions for evangelicals is what Norman Geisler has denominated “graded absolutism.” In essence, this view says that biblical commands vary in importance and if one chooses to violate a “lower” command in order to follow a “higher” command, one is not sinning at all. Thus, in Corrie ten Boom’s “hiding place” dilemma, if one lies to protect Jews, one does not commit sin and one’s sanctification remains intact. Of course, the problem with such a viewpoint is simply the flat biblical assertion that “whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all” (James 2:10).

Far more satisfactory (and biblical) is the Reformation position that sees such ethical “hells” as negating a doctrine of perfectionism. When one sins, one sins; and the only proper recourse is to go back to the Cross of Christ for forgiveness and restoration. One chooses the “lesser-of-evils”—but a “lesser” evil does not become a good by virtue of the fact that its pragmatically negative consequences are less than the opposing choice. Of course, it is better to lie than to sacrifice the lives of fellow human beings, but lying is still wrong; indeed, Jesus classifies lying as devilish (John 8:44).

Geisler makes three points in arguing against the Reformation ethic, which he terms “ideal absolutism” or “conflicting absolutism” or “the lesser-of-evils view” (Options in Contemporary Christian Ethics [Baker, 1981], pp. 81-101). Here they are, with our commentary: (1) The Reformation view “holds the individual guilty for doing his best in an unavoidably bad situation.” But this is precisely God’s judgment against every generation of mankind since Adam fell: “When you shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants” (Luke 17:10). (2) “There is always at least one right thing to do—1 Corinthians 10:13.” But the temptation referred to in this passage, and which we need never give in to, is that of irresponsibility: not bothering to go through the agonizing process of choosing the lesser-of-evils. (3) Reformation ethics “would render the sinlessness of Christ either impossible or meaningless.” But to be true man, Christ neither had to have every particular human experience (he never experienced old age, for example) nor had to experience every particular human temptation (he was never in the military and he was apparently never presented with the “hiding place” situation). To be “touched with the feeling of our infirmities” and “tempted in all points like as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15) requires qualitative, not quantitative, identification with fallen mankind. God was incarnate “in the fullness of time” (Galatians 4:4): doubtless one aspect of God’s choice of time and place was to ensure that during his sojourn on earth he would not have to choose even a lesser evil; and his omniscience (except as to the hour of the Second Coming) whilst in the earthly state gave him the knowledge totally to avoid ethically compromising choices.

In contrast to so-called “situation ethics,” which is totally lacking in ethical absolutes (save for “love,” which, being undefined, loses absolute quality in any case), Reformation ethics takes biblical principle so seriously that it recognises genuine moral conflicts in a fallen world. The difficulty is not with the principles (of course both lying and betraying one’s fellow man are contrary to scriptural principles!) but with the depravity of the world which we have made—in Adam as our representative and in the selfishness that penetrates our every decision and action. (Cf. Joseph Fletcher and John Warwick Montgomery, Situation Ethics—True or False: A Dialogue [2d ed.; Calgary, Alberta: Canadian Institute for Law, Theology and Public Policy, 1999], passim, but especially pp. 64-66.)

So, whether in the case of war or torture or the “hiding place,” we need to give up our chimerical belief in realisable holiness in this life. With Luther, there are occasions where we must “sin bravely”—“but believe and rejoice in Christ even more bravely, for he is victorious over sin, death and the world” (WA, 2, 371). When we must act in such ambiguous situations, let us not dissemble but courageously pray, “O Lord, forgive me for my participation in this sinful and fallen world. Without thy death for me, I would be lost forever. Raise me up by thy sacrifice and take me into thy presence in spite of what I have had to do. When I am called out of this world may I spend eternity in that land where sin is no more and which thou hast prepared for those who know that they cannot save themselves.” (See Montgomery, Human Rights and Human Dignity [2d ed.; Calgary, Alberta: Canadian Institute for Law, Theology and Public Policy, 1995], notes 347 and 376.)

In conclusion, a word from another character in Turow’s Ordinary Heroes; in this instance, a battlefield general who eventually becomes a theologian:

“We’re lost. Utterly lost. Because we need God, Dubin. Every man out here needs God. . . . Do you know why we need God, why we must have him? . . .

“Well, I’ll tell you, Dubin. Why we need God. Why I need God. To forgive us,” he said then, and with the words his anger almost instantly subsided to sadness. . . . “Because when this is over, this war, that’s what we’ll need, all of us who have done what war requires and, worse, what war permits, that’s what we’ll need, in order to be able to live the rest of our lives.”

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This issue marks the tenth anniversary of the Global Journal: tempus doth indeed fugit!

As noted above, our lead article, by Dr Daniel R. Heimbach — a distinguished previous contributor – deals with the thorny contemporary issue of torture. By a careful study of this paper, readers will be able to wrestle with an ethical issue of great importance vis-à-vis the war against terrorism.

Vol. 10, No. 1 also features Willie Honeycutt’s “Analysis and Appraisal of the Exclusivist Claims of Hinduism, Buddhism and Christianity” — refuting the commonly-held fallacy that Hinduism and Buddhism are “open” religions in contrast to exclusivist biblical Christianity.

Finally, Daniel Janosik provides an historical essay on one of the most fundamental distinctions between Christian doctrine and Muslim beliefs: “John of Damascus’ Response to the Islamic View of Justification by Works.”

Raise a glass for our tenth anniversary celebration (even though, if you are Baptist, your glass may contain only grape juice . . .)!

John Warwick Montgomery

I am a convinced Mac user. I also do the PC but only for primitive activities such as gaming. For anything really serious, such as programming, it’s an Apple Mac. I kid my Patrick Henry College students that if they want problems they have only to wrestle with the miseries of Windows operating systems—which have become tolerable only by shamelessly imitating the Mac OS.

Italian polymath Umberto Eco, in a celebrated article in the Italian weekly news magazine, Espresso, way back on September 30, 1994, argued that

the world is divided between users of the Macintosh computer and users of MS-DOS compatible computers. I am firmly of the opinion that the Macintosh is Catholic and that DOS is Protestant. Indeed, the Macintosh is counter-reformist and has been influenced by the ratio studiorum of the Jesuits. It is cheerful, friendly, conciliatory; it tells the faithful how they must proceed step by step to reach — if not the kingdom of Heaven — the moment in which their document is printed. It is catechistic: The essence of revelation is dealt with via simple formulae and sumptuous icons. Everyone has a right to salvation. DOS is Protestant, or even Calvinistic. It allows free interpretation of scripture, demands difficult personal decisions, imposes a subtle hermeneutics upon the user, and takes for granted the idea that not all can achieve salvation. To make the system work you need to interpret the program yourself: Far away from the baroque community of revelers, the user is closed within the loneliness of his own inner torment.

I strongly disagree. Ecco has never understood the Reformation message that we are saved by grace through faith apart from the works of the law. It is the PC (and not merely in its horrific DOS manifestation) that has required of the user conformity with an immense number of arcane rules and has promised early arrival in computer heaven only to those who have somehow reduced their time in purgatory by penitential acts of recovery after crashes due to viral attacks that cannot touch the Mac. True Christian faith in the Reformation spirit is the easiest religion in the world, since Christ has done everything for our salvation—but it is at the same time the hardest, since one must admit that, not being able to save itself, a fallen race needed Christ that much. The intuitive Mac user interface requires only trust that its Unix-based OS will deliver the goods; and that faith is so eminently justified that computer bookracks now feature a wide variety of change-over titles for those in process of conversion to the Mac from the woes of the PC.

The danger, however, is to turn a technical triumph into a religious phenomenon. Ten years ago, a religious sociologist published a trenchant article entitled, “May the Force of the Operating System Be with You: Macintosh Devotion As Implicit Religion” (Pui-Yan Lam, in 62/2 Sociology of Religion). Lam surveyed the Mac literature and conducted interviews with Mac users. He noted, inter alia, that the Mac enthusiasts, like a religious denomination, had its “devil” (Bill Gates and Microsoft); regarded its minority position as a badge not dissimilar to countercultural “election”; suffered perceived humiliation and persecution at the hands of the larger and more influential PC, especially business, community; and had a vision of “thinking differently” in an ethical quest “for an utopian future—a future about the harmonious co-existence of humans and technology.”

With the death by pancreatic cancer of Apple’s founder and guru Steve Jobs at the early age of 56 on 5 October, the religious side of the Mac phenomenon has became particularly acute. Across the world, cards and messages such as the following were to be found at the Apple stores: “Thank you for changing the world for the better.” “You changed my life.” “You made me a believer.” “See you in the ‘Cloud’ [a play on Scripture and on Apple’s soon to be released version of cloud computing].”

In spite of the staggering accomplishments and success of Steve Jobs’ Apple, one must face certain facts and, at all costs, refuse to fall into idolatry when viewing the Mac phenomenon.

Salvation does not come by technology, for a computer is still but a tool and can never rise above that level—as philosopher John Searle has so definitively shown in the restatement of his “Chinese Room Argument” (Minds, Brains, and Science, 1984).
True, Steve Jobs has rightly been described as one who, instead of relying on “Darwinian evolution” to change our computing habits, engaged in “intelligent design” to advance the field beyond all imaginings (Farhad Manjoo in the Washington Post, 9 October 2011). But Jobs left much to be desired in the religious realm. He dabbled in Buddhism and stayed away from all organized religion. There is no reason to think that he ever understood that his personal gifts and talents derived from a beneficent Creator—or that he needed salvation from self-centeredness.
Utopias, whether technological, political, or religious, have been one of modern man’s most dangerous dreams, leading to scientism, totalitarianism, and the loss—not the gain—of the truly human. The computer geek, no matter how capable in his sphere, has no qualifications to usher in the millennium. Only with the return of the perfect Man, the Second Adam, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, will the world be made right.
A former President of Apple Products—a Frenchman, no less—Jean-Louis Gassée, declared (The Third Apple, trans. I. A. Leonard, 1987):

In the Old Testament there was the first apple, the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, which with one taste sent Adam, Eve, and all mankind into the great current of History. The second Apple was Isaac Newton’s, the symbol of our entry into the age of modern science. The Apple Computer symbol . . . represents the third Apple, the one that widens the paths of knowledge leading toward the future.

May we hypothesize that Mac computers, owing to their quality, could well be destined for use during the Eschaton? But, if so, it will be by grace and not because of human intelligence or cleverness, and those invited to the delicacies (including Chausson aux pommes flambées) at the Marriage Supper of the Lamb will still need to be clothed in Christ’s righteousness, not in the rags of human accomplishment.

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The Global Journal manifests diversity—not politically-correct diversity (we stand for the historic biblical gospel, once for all delivered to the saints!) but diversity of theme in our articles. The present issue particularly illustrates our catholic—small “c”—tastes.

John D. Laing, who provided a trenchant article on Plantinga’s “Reformed epistemology” in the previous issue, is a distinguished military chaplain; though we do not ordinarily publish an author in two consecutive issues of the Global Journal, his paper “Evangelical Chaplains, Ceremonial Deism, and the Establishment Clause” is too important not to reach our readers right away, touching, as it does, the fundamental issue of the degree of separation of church and state in America.

Then, on the philosophical side of things, Kevin Smith treats a viewpoint, panentheism, which has had much influence in liberal (especially process theology) circles: “The Rise of the Eighth-Day Man: The Advent of Modern Panentheism and Its Impact on the Doctrine of Biblical Sufficiency.”

Finally, we return to the first generation of the Protestant Reformation with a paper by Aaron T. O’Kelley: “Luther and Melanchthon on Justification: Continuity or Discontinuity.” Even if one disagrees with the author at certain points (e.g., Luther’s supposed non-acceptance of the Third Use of the Law), the reader will be transported by this essay to the heart of biblical teaching: the doctrine of justification, “on which the church stands or falls.” [1]

— John Warwick Montgomery

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[1] See, in support of Luther’s having held to a Third Use of the Law, Montgomery, “The Law’s Third Use: Sanctification,” in his Crisis in Lutheran Theology (2d ed., 2 vols.; Minneapolis: Bethany, 1973), I, 124-27; and Edward A. Engelbrecht, “Luther’s Threefold Use of the Law,” 75/1-2 Concordia Theological Quarterly 135-50 (January/April 2011).