The handful of Fred Phelps’ family members who comprise Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas have garnered national notoriety with a simple message: God hates gays, soldiers, you, me, and basically everyone. Their message is carefully crafted to maximize offense, as are the venues they choose, very often funerals. Their knack for inflammatory rhetoric and self-promotion has earned them almost universal disapprobation. Nevertheless, the Phelps take themselves to be God’s prophets. Their website is replete with biblical references. Their biblical rationale is clearly highlighted. I find myself asking a troubling question. Biblically and theologically, is their gospel of hate defensible? After all, I hear echoes of their theology elsewhere. The Phelps are extreme exemplars of a virulent strain within Calvinistic theology whose mission is the proclamation of what I will call a “gospel of condemnation”. Pickets, placards, and bullhorns are very often their preferred prophetic tools. (Is the medium the message?) God’s imminent judgment in Hell is the predominant theme. Like the Phelps, they are more than eager to play at blblical prooftexting with any and all comers. Indeed, they are especially fond of picketing “Laodicean” Christian events where they can expect to be rifling through scripture with a host of challengers and onlookers. They’ll be chomping at the bit at any mention of John 3:16. And so again, I ask, are they faithfully representing the Bible? Does God hate people? Does God hate wrongdoers? Recently (October 7, 2011), Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Church sounded similar notes in his thoroughgoing series on the gospel of Luke, stating and restating that “God hates you”, before doubling back confusingly to reassure the listener that “God loves you”. Driscoll is not at all marginal. He is a gifted and highly influential exegete and pastor within Reformed circles. He does his homework and cares about accurately teaching the Bible. Hearing a similar theology of God’s hate from the likes of Driscoll makes it clear that the theology itself cannot be dismissed out of hand. If you had thought, like me, that the Christian gospel was one of God’s boundless, unmerited love for sinners, this theology of God’s hatefulness must be considered on its own terms. So, what does the Bible say?

The handful of Fred Phelps’ family members who comprise Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas have garnered national notoriety with a simple message: God hates gays, soldiers, you, me, and basically everyone. Their message is carefully crafted to maximize offense, as are the venues they choose, very often funerals. Their knack for inflammatory rhetoric and self-promotion has earned them almost universal disapprobation. Nevertheless, the Phelps take themselves to be God’s prophets. Their website is replete with biblical references. Their biblical rationale is clearly highlighted. I find myself asking
a troubling question. Biblically and theologically, is their gospel of hate defensible? After all, I hear echoes of their theology elsewhere. The Phelps are extreme exemplars of a virulent strain within Calvinistic theology whose mission is the proclamation of what I will call a “gospel of condemnation”. Pickets, placards, and bullhorns are very often their preferred prophetic tools. (Is the medium the message?) God’s imminent judgment in Hell is the predominant theme. Like the Phelps, they are more than eager to play at blblical prooftexting with any and all comers. Indeed, they are especially fond of picketing “Laodicean” Christian events where they can expect to be rifling through scripture with a host of challengers and onlookers. They’ll be chomping at the bit at any mention of John 3:16. And so again, I ask, are they faithfully representing the Bible? Does God hate people? Does God hate wrongdoers? Recently (October 7, 2011), Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Church sounded similar notes in his thoroughgoing series on the gospel of Luke, stating and restating that “God hates you”, before doubling back confusingly to reassure the listener that “God loves you”. Driscoll is not at all marginal. He is a gifted and highly influential exegete and pastor within Reformed circles. He does his homework and cares about accurately teaching the Bible. Hearing a similar theology of God’s hate from the likes of Driscoll makes it clear that the theology itself cannot be dismissed out of hand. If you had thought, like me, that the Christian gospel was one of God’s boundless, unmerited love for sinners, this theology of God’s hatefulness must be considered on its own terms. So, what does the Bible say?

The handful of Fred Phelps’ family members who comprise Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas have garnered national notoriety with a simple message: God hates gays, soldiers, you, me, and basically everyone. Their message is carefully crafted to maximize offense, as are the venues they choose, very often funerals. Their knack for inflammatory rhetoric and self-promotion has earned them almost universal disapprobation. Nevertheless, the Phelps take themselves to be God’s prophets. Their website is replete with biblical references. Their biblical rationale is clearly highlighted. I find myself asking
a troubling question. Biblically and theologically, is their gospel of hate defensible? After all, I hear echoes of their theology elsewhere. The Phelps are extreme exemplars of a virulent strain within Calvinistic theology whose mission is the proclamation of what I will call a “gospel of condemnation”. Pickets, placards, and bullhorns are very often their preferred prophetic tools. (Is the medium the message?) God’s imminent judgment in Hell is the predominant theme. Like the Phelps, they are more than eager to play at blblical prooftexting with any and all comers. Indeed, they are especially fond of picketing “Laodicean” Christian events where they can expect to be rifling through scripture with a host of challengers and onlookers. They’ll be chomping at the bit at any mention of John 3:16. And so again, I ask, are they faithfully representing the Bible? Does God hate people? Does God hate wrongdoers? Recently (October 7, 2011), Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Church sounded similar notes in his thoroughgoing series on the gospel of Luke, stating and restating that “God hates you”, before doubling back confusingly to reassure the listener that “God loves you”. Driscoll is not at all marginal. He is a gifted and highly influential exegete and pastor within Reformed circles. He does his homework and cares about accurately teaching the Bible. Hearing a similar theology of God’s hate from the likes of Driscoll makes it clear that the theology itself cannot be dismissed out of hand. If you had thought, like me, that the Christian gospel was one of God’s boundless, unmerited love for sinners, this theology of God’s hatefulness must be considered on its own terms. So, what does the Bible
say?

Central to the plot of Clint Eastwood’s Invictus is William Ernest Henley’s short poem of the same name. Though the role of the poem suffers some historical revisionism in the film, its role in the life of Nelson Mandela is worth consideration. The film recounts the remarkable story of Mandela’s efforts at national reconciliation through his embrace of the South African rugby team, which at the time remained a symbol of Apartheid’s ethnic segregation. In 1996, when I returned for the first time to South Africa, my childhood home, some old friends shared with me how meaningful it was when Mandela appeared at Ellis Park donning the Springbok green and gold. I’m gratified that this remarkable story of reconciliation has made it to the screen, especially while Morgan Freeman is still with us. He was born to play Mandela. During Mandela’s long internment on Robben Island, Henley’s poem adorned a wall of his cell, a constant reminder that though his freedom had been taken from him, he remained “the captain of his soul“. The words of this poem, and their significance to Mandela, underscore a central point of contention in the debate about human free will. It seems to me that one problem with some arguments for compatibilism, the idea that determinism and human responsibility are compatible, is the conflating of freedom and free will. Mandela’s story is a powerful reminder that there is freedom beyond freedom. That is, it matters whether we are captains or merely observers of our souls.

Central to the plot of Clint Eastwood’s Invictus is William Ernest Henley’s short poem of the same name. Though the role of the poem suffers some historical revisionism in the film, its role in the life of Nelson Mandela is worth consideration. The film recounts the remarkable story of Mandela’s efforts at national reconciliation through his embrace of the South African rugby team, which at the time remained a symbol of Apartheid’s ethnic segregation. In 1996, when I returned for the first time to South Africa, my childhood home, some old friends shared with me how meaningful it was when Mandela appeared at Ellis Park donning the Springbok green and gold. I’m gratified that this remarkable story of reconciliation has made it to the screen, especially while Morgan Freeman is still with us. He was born to play Mandela. During Mandela’s long internment on Robben Island, Henley’s poem adorned a wall of his cell, a constant reminder that though his freedom had been taken from him, he remained “the captain of his soul“. The words of this poem, and their significance to Mandela, underscore a central point of contention in the debate about human free will. It seems to me that one problem with some arguments for compatibilism, the idea that determinism and human responsibility are compatible, is the conflating of freedom and free will. Mandela’s story is a powerful reminder that there is freedom beyond freedom. That is, it matters whether we are captains or merely observers of our souls.

The reasons for rejecting Darwin’s proposal were many, but first of all that many innovations cannot possibly come into existence through accumulation of many small steps, and even if they can, natural selection cannot accomplish it, because incipient and intermediate stages are not advantageous.

If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous successive slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find out no such case. No doubt many organs exist of which we do not know the transitional grades … We should be extremely cautious in concluding that an organ could not have been formed by transitional gradations of some kind.

Paleontology is now looking at what is actually finds, not what it is told that it is supposed to find. As is now well known, most fossil species appear instantaneously in the fossil record, persist for some millions of years virtually unchanged, only to disappear abruptly — the “punctuated equilibrium” pattern of Eldredge and Gould.

It is still, as it was in Darwin’s day, overwhelmingly true that the first representatives of all the major classes of organisms known to biology are already highly characteristic of their class when they make their initial appearance in the fossil record. This phenomenon is particularly obvious in the case of the invertebrate fossil record. At its first appearance in the ancient paleozoic seas, invertebrate life
was already divided into practically all the major groups with which we are familiar today.

If any event in life’s history resembles man’s creation myths, it is this sudden diversification of marine life when multicellular organisms took over as the dominant actors in ecology and evolution. Baffling (and embarrassing) to Darwin, this event still dazzles us and stands as a major biological revolution on a par with the invention of self-replication and the origin of the eukariotic cell. The animal phyla emerged out of the Precambrian mists with most of the attributes of their modern descendants.