Wells states; “This book [No Place for Truth] produced only half the picture I wanted to present, however. It offers an explanation of the cultural factors that have diminished the place and importance of theology in the church, but it offers no suggestions for a remedy of the problem.” He attempts to provide solutions, from a theological perspective, to the problem presented in his first book where modernism, technology, culture, and pastors bear a significant part of the blame in the changes the modern believers are facing in our churches today. Dr. Wells premise that Christianity has experienced,
Throwing recyclables away in the trash instead of taking them to be used again can potentially harm or kill wildlife. God’s creations of the plants, trees, and the animals were to help us live on earth and to give us a source of food. The bible teaches Christians to understand the true value of the World and what is in it so that we can properly administer a remedy when there is an environment crisis. With everything that has been
John asks Mond if it is natural to feel the existence of God, and Mond responds that people believe what they have been conditioned to believe. “Providence takes its cue from men” John claims that if the people of the World State believed in God, they wouldn’t be degraded by their pleasant vices. Mond rebuts that Soma is “Christianity without fears.” 18 Bernard and Helmholtz say goodbye to John. Bernard apologizes for the scene in Mond’s office. John asks Mond if he can go with them to the islands, but Mond refuses because he wants to continue “the experiment”.
Masserman at heart agrees with Freud’s argument that religion is an illusion humans hold onto, but he makes a key distinction in saying that this illusion is necessary for the well doing of human beings, “they are substitutive or compensatory beliefs, quite necessary to make human life at all livable” [Herberg 177]. Having set up Masserman’s ideas, Herberg is now able to explain with key distinction what the ideas of Masserman, which he calls the idea of ‘Natural Religion’, really are and why they are different then his ideas of true faith, of ‘Biblical Faith’. Herberg calls Masserman’s ideas one of ‘Natural Religion’. Herberg best explains this as “Sinful man…needs God and searches for him….but the God he finds is the God he constructs-if not with his hands than with his heart and mind- to suite his purposes” [Herberg 180,181]. Herberg
James speaks against these in his teaching. He exhorts them to remain true to the teachings and practices of the faith. James’ teachings are often compared to Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, which would be logical due to him being brought up in the same environment as Jesus. The book of James is a protest against hypocrisy. Some have criticized James in that they thought he was teaching that salvation was by works alone, but in reality he is complementing Paul’s teaching of salvation by faith.
Philosophers both past and present have sought a solid bases for morality. A strong influence on peoples perceived morality is religion. Divine Command theory is the belief that somehow your morals are dependent upon God. This theory has come under immense scrutiny due to a deeper understanding of natural selection, one sentence in Plato’s dialogue ‘Euthyphro’ and a study showing the polar opposite of what the theory would have you believe. Several books, including Robert Hinde’s Why Good is Good, have argued that our sense of right and wrong is derived from a Darwinian origin.
Believers practicing loving God with all their mind would be a witness to this world and even a way of reaching out in compassion and gentleness we have left behind by burying our arguments in our Bibles and not engaging the questions raised by the lost. Understanding where Evangelicals have fallen intellectually will help foster obedience to Christ’s command to love God with all of our mind. The major arguments held by critics Richard Hofstadter, George M. Marsden, and Alister McGrath, declare modern Evangelicalism anti-intellectual. Some of the main reasons for this are the average Evangelicals fear of defending their faith, the separation of the spiritual and secular, and the slothfulness Evangelicals have to
God also has standards for man regarding morality and/or ethics. He gave us the ability to choose, even knowing that we could choose to disregard His guidelines or Commandments. In Exodus 20:6 we are told how to please God. Though we may please God, in Ephesians 2:8-10, we see what we must ultimately do to atone for man’s fall from God. “How a Christian lives their life reveals their spiritual condition” (Weider & Gutierrez, 2011, p.65).
Conceptions of God and Human Nature The quote “God made man in his own image, and man returned the compliment” explains God's image to man as up for open interpretation and varying from believer to believer, which applies to the Puritans and Benjamin Franklin. The Puritans that arrived in New England were frustrated with the Church of England's methods of practice because they were too closely related to Catholicism. The Puritans departed to the New World between the 16th and 17th century, in hope of purifying their religion and creating a society that properly and strictly obeyed God. The Puritan ways heavily influenced life in New England, even for the Franklin family. Benjamin Franklin was raised in a Calvinist family with Puritan foundations, but Franklin later grew to become a worldly individual through his studies and life experiences.
It is the love that Jesus and St Paul talked about in the Bible – AGAPE. Situation ethics is ideal because agape appeals to both theists and non-theists: C. S. Lewis was a theist and he said ‘love himself can work in those who know nothing of him’; whereas B. Russell was an atheist and said ‘what the world needs is Christian love or compassion’. Situation ethics means that there is no ethical standard that can be uniformly or consistently applied, for each situation demands its own standard of ethics. It basically states that sometimes other moral principles can be cast aside in certain situations if love is best served. Situation ethics was created upon the belief that there are no universal moral rules or right because each case or situation is unique and deserves a unique solution.