Category: Ethics and Morality

Identity in Christ and the Moral Witness of the Church

Social engagement has become acceptable in many conservative churches today. But social engagement in the ideologically crowded space of civil society is inherently contentious. The danger arises when Christians, in their eagerness to be “relevant” and to be accepted by wider society, end up following an agenda set by other social activists. Luke Bretherton identifies three processes whereby society may domesticate the church: 1) co-option – the church becoming a client of state patronage, 2) competition – the church is reduced to just another player in identity politics, pursuing its own religious rights, 3) commodification – the market construes the church as a product of consumption as Christianity becomes simply another privatized lifestyle choice.1Luke Bretherton, Christianity and Contemporary Politics (Blackwell, 2010), pp. 1-2. Instead of allowing the church to be swept along by fashionable social tides, Christian activists must clearly focus on social priorities determined by Christian values. However, Christian values will remain as ‘ghostly’ abstractions unless they are embodied in a community. Hence, social engagement needs to go beyond mere discussion on personal values and focus more on how Christian values are exemplified in a Christian community. Continue reading “Identity in Christ and the Moral Witness of the Church”

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    Luke Bretherton, Christianity and Contemporary Politics (Blackwell, 2010), pp. 1-2.

Identity in Christ and the Quest for Authenticity

“Let me know you, for you are the God who knows me; let me recognize you as you have recognized me.” (Augustine, Confessions x.1)

Personal identity in the modern world is commonly premised on the idea of expressive individualism, that is, the idea that we find our true self by listening to our inner voice to discover and articulate our personal identity. Instead of conforming to social conventions, we give expression to our feelings and desires in order to become authentic. As noted in the previous post, expressive individualism is the underlying philosophy of the LGBT sexual revolution. [Re: The Triumph of the Therapeutic and the LGBTQ Sexual Revolution]

However, Charles Taylor warns that “taking authenticity to be the sole or chief criterion for human behavior and the main way to direct our lives raises significant concerns. The urge to self-fulfillment can lead to a shallow and destructive narcissism. And on its own, the urge to be true to ourselves ignores the social fabric of our existence. Relationships can easily become disposable if they stand in the way of self-expression: “Our ties to others, as well as external moral demands, can easily be in conflict with our personal development.” Continue reading “Identity in Christ and the Quest for Authenticity”

The Triumph of the Therapeutic and the LGBTQ Sexual Revolution

Philosophical and Social Origins of Identity Politics and the LGBTQ Sexual Revolution. Part 3.

A. The Autonomous Self and Expressive Individualism
Recent Gallup surveys show that the number of people in the West who identify as LGBTQ and reject the heterosexual family in preference for “non-binary” sexual relationships is increasing. This extraordinary development is the culmination of a sequence of historical developments in the West beginning from the 17th century. This includes the decline of Judeo-Christian religion, the influence of the Enlightenment-Romantic philosophy of the autonomous self, the erosion of community relationships in secular society, and “expressive individualism”, the modern notion that one must be true to oneself to be authentic.1“Expressive individualism holds that each person has a unique core of feeling and intuition that should unfold or be expressed if individuality is to be realized…In the twentieth century, it shows affinities with the culture of psychotherapy.”Robert Bellah, Richard Madsen et. al, Habits of the Heart (Uni. California, 1985, 1996), pp. 333-334.

Historically, the individual in the West based his identity on his relationship with God and the community he belonged to. The role of religion and pastoral care was to help individuals to be integrated with their community. The good life required the individual to order his life in conformity to God’s created order, in accordance the mimetic view of life. But skeptical Enlightenment philosophy dispensed with the idea of God. Consequently, nature and social order became desacralized and may be manipulated and exploited to serve the welfare of individuals and society, in accordance with the poietic view of life. If there is no created order, then society and culture are merely social constructs, and if nature possesses no intrinsic meaning or purpose, then human beings must create meaning and moral values for themselves. This led in the emergence of the autonomous individual who defines for himself his moral values, and sets the goal of self-fulfillment on his own terms. Continue reading “The Triumph of the Therapeutic and the LGBTQ Sexual Revolution”

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    “Expressive individualism holds that each person has a unique core of feeling and intuition that should unfold or be expressed if individuality is to be realized…In the twentieth century, it shows affinities with the culture of psychotherapy.”Robert Bellah, Richard Madsen et. al, Habits of the Heart (Uni. California, 1985, 1996), pp. 333-334.

All that is Solid Melts into Air: The Recentred but Empty Self

Philosophical and Social Origins of Identity Politics and the LGBTQ Sexual Revolution. Part 2.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
W.B. Yeats, The Second Coming

A) Loss of meaningful sacred order and providence
Since antiquity, people acknowledged that there is a natural order of law and morals. Life is best lived when it is lived in accordance with the requirements of natural order. Among the Greeks, the Stoics taught that man must live in harmony with the rational and purposive order in nature. Ancient Israel also acknowledged a natural order, one that is implanted into creation by the Creator. According to the sages of ancient Israel, knowledge of God comes from experiencing God’s activity in the world. Faith in God’s providence means trusting in the reliability of the creation which the benevolent God has ordered to support human life and guide man in his moral knowledge and action. Gerhard von Rad explains, “This order [of creation] was, indeed, simply there and could, in the last resort, speak for itself. The fact that it quietly but reliably worked towards a balance in the ceaselessly changing state of human relationships ensured that it was experienced over and over again as a beneficent force. In it, however, Yahweh himself was at work in so far as he defended goodness and resisted evil. It was he who was present as an ordering and upholding will in so far as he gave a beneficent stability to life and kept it open to receive his blessings.”1Gerhard von Rad, Wisdom in Israel (SCM, 1972), pp. 191-192. Continue reading “All that is Solid Melts into Air: The Recentred but Empty Self”

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    Gerhard von Rad, Wisdom in Israel (SCM, 1972), pp. 191-192.

The Vanished Soul and Quest for the Authentic Self in Modern Western Thought

Philosophical and Social Origins of Identity Politics and the LGBTQ Sexual Revolution. Part 1.

Due to the influence of the Bible, the majority of thinkers in Western society for centuries have acknowledged the reality of the soul which is distinct and yet intimately linked to the body. According to the Christian tradition, what we refer to as body and soul are aspects of one unitary reality and process, that is, the body and soul are viewed as a psychophysical unit, the human person. The physical body changes through time but the soul persists as the person interacts continuously with the world. It is the continuity of the soul, with its faculties of intellect and will, which ensures coherence and defines the personal identity of the person.1Due to constrains of a short article, the words “soul”, “self” and “mind” are used in this post interchangeably in the light of overlaps in their semantic domain. For example, the immortality of the soul is linked to the immateriality of the mind and the mind is a power of the soul. However, we should be sensitive to the nuances of each thinker in how he uses these words.

Knowledge of the soul is inseparable from knowledge of God.2John Calvin notes, “true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves. But, while joined by many bonds, which one precedes and brings forth the other is not easy to discern. In the first place, no one can look upon himself without immediately turning his thoughts to the contemplation of God, in whom he “lives and moves”… Again, it is certain that man never achieves a clear knowledge of himself unless he has first looked upon God’s face, and then descends from contemplating him to scrutinize himself.” John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (Westminster, 1960), Book 1.1.1, 2. However, from the 17th century, many Western scholars and scientists began to reject both the idea of God and the soul. Indeed, the soul has become absent or irrelevant in contemporary intellectual discourse. How did this happen?

To answer this question, we begin with the French philosopher, Rene Descartes. Continue reading “The Vanished Soul and Quest for the Authentic Self in Modern Western Thought”

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    Due to constrains of a short article, the words “soul”, “self” and “mind” are used in this post interchangeably in the light of overlaps in their semantic domain. For example, the immortality of the soul is linked to the immateriality of the mind and the mind is a power of the soul. However, we should be sensitive to the nuances of each thinker in how he uses these words.
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    John Calvin notes, “true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves. But, while joined by many bonds, which one precedes and brings forth the other is not easy to discern. In the first place, no one can look upon himself without immediately turning his thoughts to the contemplation of God, in whom he “lives and moves”… Again, it is certain that man never achieves a clear knowledge of himself unless he has first looked upon God’s face, and then descends from contemplating him to scrutinize himself.” John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (Westminster, 1960), Book 1.1.1, 2.

The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis (1943) – Kairos Podcast Review on Books & Culture


The Abolition of Man (1943) by C.S. Lewis
Kairos Podcast Review on Books & Culture

Reviewer: David B.C. Tan
Discussant: Micheal Lim

You are welcome to join the discussion at:

Book Review: The Abolition of Man

Please forward this message if you find the video discussion helpful.
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In The Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis sets out to persuade his audience of the importance and relevance of universal values such as courage and honor in contemporary society. “The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts. The right defence against false sentiments is to inculcate just sentiments.” (C.S. Lewis)

By it [right sentiments] Lewis means “emotions conform[ing] to Reason.” As he explains it, “The heart never takes the place of the head: but it can, and should, obey it…For Lewis the ability to have right sentiments is what separates humans from animals…The failure to nurture right sentiments ultimately results in the abolition of man, Lewis contends, because modern education produces “what may be called Men without Chests.” (Enc. Britannica)

In Lewis’s template, “the head rules the belly through the chest”—the chest is the mediator between our animal urges and minds and is the mechanism for training and tempering the belly. Without the chest, our disordered loves run wild. (J. Kohm)

Video Recording of Talk on Bible and Homosexuality by Ng Kam Weng

You can view the one hour video at:
The Bible and Homosexuality

Outline of Talk

A. Getting the Facts Right
– possible causes of homosexuality and homosexual life-style.
– Can homosexual change?
– What the bible says about homosexual practice.

B. Relevant Biblical Texts
– Matt. 19:1-6 – God’s creation order of heterosexual marriage.
– Gen. 19:4-8; Jude 7 – Judgment on Sodom.
– Lev. 18:22; Lev. 20:13 – Homosexual practice as an abomination to the Lord.
– 1 Sam. 18 – Were David and Jonathan in a homosexual relationship?
– Rom. 1 – Homosexual practice is “contrary to nature” or disordered desire.
– 1 Cor. 6:9-10. Homosexual practice, along with other sexual sins condemned..

C. Affirmation
1. Sexual complementarity is good.
2. Marriage is good.
3. Sex is good – Sacramental reminder of the joys of first love.
4. Family Reproduction is good. Learning to love and give.

D. Final Challenge
– Fulfilment in Christ beyond sex.
– We seek humbly to share the wholeness found in God’s grace that brings liberation and substantial healing to our brokenness.

Related Posts
Nashville Statement (2017): A Coalition For Biblical Sexuality

 

 

The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self and the Sexual Revolution

Carl Trueman, a distinguished Reformed theologian and historian has just published a new book which has been described as “perhaps the most significant analysis and evaluation of Western culture written by a Protestant during the past fifty years,” – The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution. Not surprisingly, the book deals with the Western obsession with sexual identity and sexual freedom, that is, homosexuality and sex outside the bounds of marriage.

The controversy over sexuality in the West may seem far away and one wonders why we should bother with this Western obsession? But the reality is that many of our younger generation (including Christian youths) have bought into the same sexual revolution because of the dominance of the West ideas in the global media.

Trueman’s analysis builds on the writings of Philip Rieff (The Triumph of the Therapeutic), Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue) and Charles Taylor (The Secular Age), but he has the virtue of zeroing onto the roots of the sexual revolution – expressive individualism in an age of authenticity. To this we may add (1) the loss of divine transcendence which grounds objective morality. Morality becomes a matter of personal taste and manipulative power games, (2)  the death of the soul which historically served as the basis for human significance and identity. Human nature becomes devoid of intrinsic essence or meaning. Selfhood is focused on the inner life of emotions of the individual. According to Freud, our sexual desires are ultimately decisive for who we are.

With the triumph of the therapeutic and erotic, personal aesthetics replaces ethics, and the therapeutic ‘self’ becomes a social construct which may be deconstructed and reconstructed at will, especially in the area of sexual identity. Based on Nietzsche’s genealogical approach to morality and Marx’s dialectical materialism, activists for transgenderism and sexual freedom reject Judeo-Christian morality (bourgeois family morality) as the source of sexual oppression and portray themselves as heroic liberators and champions of human rights. Continue reading “The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self and the Sexual Revolution”

It’s Someone Else’s Fault! Thank you, Freud

I went to my psychiatrist to be psychoanalyzed,
To find out why I killed the cat and blacked my wifie’s eyes.
He laid me on a comfy couch to see what he could find,
And this is what he dredged up out of my unconscious mind.
When I was one my mommy locked my dolly in the trunk,
And so it follows naturally I am always drunk.
When I was two, I saw my father kissed the maid one day,
And that is why I suffer now from klep-to-ma-nia.
At three I was ambivalent toward my younger brothers,
And that’s the reason why, to date, I’ve poisoned all my lovers.
And I’m so glad since I have learned the lesson I’ve been taught,
That everything I do that is wrong is someone else’s fault.

Actually, we can appeal to a more ancient and venerable authority to justify our blame game. Re: Genesis 3:12-13 – The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.” 13 Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”

Continue reading “It’s Someone Else’s Fault! Thank you, Freud”

Divine Sovereignty and Human Freedom. Part 6/7 – Distinction Between Necessity of the Consequent and Necessity of the Consequence –

I. The purpose of this article is to show that the Open Theist’s argument against divine foreknowledge is flawed because it fails to distinguish between “the necessity of the consequent” and“the necessity of the consequence”. We begin with some clarifications of the terms that are crucial to our discussion: Things are contingent of which it … Continue reading “Divine Sovereignty and Human Freedom. Part 6/7 – Distinction Between Necessity of the Consequent and Necessity of the Consequence –”


I. The purpose of this article is to show that the Open Theist’s argument against divine foreknowledge is flawed because it fails to distinguish between “the necessity of the consequent” and“the necessity of the consequence”.

We begin with some clarifications of the terms that are crucial to our discussion:

Things are contingent of which it is possible that they are or are not.
Things are necessary of which it is impossible that they are not.

A necessary proposition is a proposition that could not possibly have been false, whose negation is impossible as this would entail a contradiction in reality. For example, it is necessary that 2 + 2 = 4. Philosophers describe a necessary proposition as one that true in all possible worlds.

A contingent proposition is a proposition that is not necessarily true or necessarily false (i.e. whose negation does not entail a contradiction in reality). An example of a contingent proposition is the proposition that human beings must be born on earth. A contingent proposition is one that is true in some possible worlds and not in others.

II. We recall the Open Theist argument:
1. An omniscient God knows all true propositions, past present and future. That is he holds no false beliefs (future propositions).
2. If God foreknows John will do X at 9 pm tomorrow, then John must do what God foreknows he will do. Continue reading “Divine Sovereignty and Human Freedom. Part 6/7 – Distinction Between Necessity of the Consequent and Necessity of the Consequence –”