I'm Glad You Asked!
by Steve Hays
Contents
1. Epistemology:
(i)
God-Talk
(ii)
Divine Silence
(iii)
Coherence of Theism:
(a)
Divine Attributes
(b)
Trinity
(c)
Incarnation
(iv)
Freudian faith
2. Bible Criticism:
(i)
Miracles
(ii)
Mythology
(iii)
Contradictions
3. Science:
(i)
Creation
(ii)
Flood
(iii)
Physicalism
4. Ethics:
(i)
Problem of Evil
(ii)
Hell
(iii)
Holy War
(iv)
Original Sin
(v)
Predestination
(vi)
Euthyphro Dilemma
(vii)
Crimes of Christianity
(viii)
Christian Chauvinism
Preface
In Why I Believe, I presented a personal and positive case for my
Christian faith. This essay is a sequel to that one, for here I field the major
objections to Christian faith—some traditional, others of more modern vintage.
But as before, I'm confining myself to the answers I favor, even though that
does not exhaust all the good answers.
Interested readers are still encouraged to check out the bibliographies
in the complementary essay.
I. Epistemology
1. God-Talk
Both inside and outside the Church
there is often felt to be a peculiar difficulty with religious language. This apparent problem has both an epistemic
and ontological dimension. At the epistemic level, it is felt that if our
knowledge derives from experience in general, and sensory perception in
particular, and if God is not a sensible object, then whatever we may say or
think or believe about God is a figurative extension of mundane concepts.
At the ontological level, it is
felt that if God is in a class by himself and apart from the creative order,
then all our statements about God are vitiated by a systematic equivocation
inasmuch as there is no longer any common ground between the human subject and
divine object of knowledge.
What are we to say to these
considerations? Regarding the epistemic issue, the first thing to be said is
that this assumes a particular theory of knowledge. So if this is a problem, it is not a problem
peculiar to religious epistemology, but goes back to the ancient debates
between empiricism and rationalism, nominalism and realism. If you are a
Thomist, then this is a problem generated by your chosen theory of
knowledge. But if, say, you are an
Augustinian, then you don't believe that all knowledge derives from the senses.
Abstract objects are objects of knowledge without being perceived by the
senses—at least on an Augustinian theory of knowledge.
This does not, therefore,
constitute a direct objection to God-talk.
If such an objection is to be raised, it necessitates a preliminary and
independent argument for radical empiricism. And this debate has been going on
for 2500 years. So it seems unlikely that the critic of God-talk will be
successful in mounting a compelling case on epistemic grounds alone.
In addition, a good case can be
made for the view that human discourse is pervasively and incurably
metaphorical.[1] So even if God-talk were figurative, that
would not be distinctive to religious discourse, but would, rather, apply with
equal force to ordinary language—as well as scientific nomenclature, which is
refined from concrete usage.
Our knowledge of the sensible
world is analogical, for the human mind does not enjoy direct access to the
sensible world. Sense-data are a highly processed form of information that has
undergone repeated encoding in order to reach our consciousness.
So, if anything, the venerable via negativa has the relation exactly
backwards. The natural world is a material manifestation, in finite form, of
God's impalpable attributes (cf. Ps 19:1-7; Acts 14:17; Rom 1:18ff.; Eph
3:9-10). Metaphor is deeply embedded in human language inasmuch as nature is
figural of God. So God-talk is the only kind of talk there is. Strictly
speaking, God is the only object of literal predication whereas all mundane
phenomena, as property-instances of divine properties, are objects of
analogical predication.[2]
But even if we waive the epistemic
objection, it may be felt that the ontological issue is, in any event, more
fundamental. The real nub of the problem, it would be said, lies with the
ontological wall separating subject and object. If God is wholly sui generis, then what is our shared
frame of reference for knowing or saying anything about him? Aren't we reduced, not only to analogy, but
the utter negation of our mental and mundane categories?
One of the problems with this
objection is it equivocates over the conditions of equivocation. What, exactly,
is the relevant point of similarity to form a sound analogy? A fork and fingers can both be used to
consume food, yet they don't have a lot in common in terms of their
constitution or configuration. The same thing could be said about doing math in
your head, counting on your fingers, using an abacus or a computer. The same thing could also be said about
telling time by a sundial, hourglass, atomic clock, analogue or digital watch.
So the ontological objection has pretty fuzzy boundaries.
And this points up another
issue. It is a category mistake to
equate analogy and metaphor. All
metaphors are analogies, but all analogies are not metaphors. Forks and fingers are analogous, but their
relation is not figurative. Even if God
were only known by his effects, an effect need not resemble its cause. What a Turner painting resembles is not the
painter, but a Venetian sunset. Yet a Turner painting reveals a great deal
about the painter.
A deeper issue is the relation
between divine and mundane properties. According to the Augustinian tradition,
to which Calvinism is heir, God is not merely the Maker of the world, but the
exemplar of the world. On this view, time and space are limits which instance
the illimitable being of God. Finite
reason and natural design instance infinite reason. Natural examples of the one-over-many
instance the supernatural symmetry of God's Trinitarian being. So such a position posits an internal
relation between our knowledge of God and our knowledge of the world.[3]
Let us apply these considerations
to a couple of classic attacks on religious epistemology. Kant erected a phenomenal/noumenal wall and
proceeded to put God on the noumenal side of the barrier. But Kant confounds a
general theory of knowledge with a special theory of perception. Even if there
were a radical hiatus between appearance and reality, that would be irrelevant
to the status of God as an object of knowledge, for God is not a sensible
object to begin with— just as you can know what the number five is without
having a mental picture of the number five. Numbers are not that sort of
object. You know by knowing the definition.[4]
Again, even if you bought into
Kantian assumptions, the narrative history of God's creative, redemptive and
retributive deeds tracks at the phenomenal rather than noumenal level. The Exodus, Crucifixion, Resurrection and
great assize are public, sensible events; their historicity and significance
doesn't turn on the topology of space, hyperfine structure of matter,
Copernican Revolution, ontological status of phenomenal qualia or suchlike. You don't need to be a direct realist to
fully affirm whatever the Bible says about God, man and history.
Turning to Hume, his basic
objection is that if we only know God by his effects, then we must proportion
cause and effect and not overdraw the evidence. He also assumes that an
argument from design is an argument from analogy, which is, in turn, an
argument from experience.
But it is hard to take this
objection seriously. A poet is greater than the poem, a painter than the
painting. The Last Supper does not exhaust the imagination of Da Vinci. For one thing, the creative act is as much an
act of omission as commission, of choosing what to put in and what to leave
out, of not doing as well as doing. The range of possible variations is, in
principle, nothing short of infinite.
Hume's objection is directed
against a Paley-style watchmaker argument.
In Paley's classic illustration,
In
crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a stone, and were asked how
the stone came to be there; I might possibly answer, that, for all I knew to
the contrary it had lain there forever. But suppose I found a watch on the
ground. I should hardly think of the answer I gave before.
Now Hume would say that this
inference is fallacious because it is an argument from analogy, and the analogy
derives from our prior knowledge of man-made artifacts. But is that a fair
criticism?
To begin with, Paley's distinction
between a rock and a watch is somewhat artificial, for the same object can be
both a natural object and a human artifact.
A rock can be turned into a timepiece.
For example, a rock, with suitable markings, can be converted into a
starchart. Let's rewrite Paley's
illustration with this in mind,
In
crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a stone. The stone bare a pitted surface. I made a rubbing and took it home. Although the distribution pattern was
apparently random, and I couldn't tell if the indentations were man-made or
owing to erosion, yet I found, on further comparison, that they charted the
first magnitude stars of the northern hemisphere.
Now we would all attribute this
correspondence to design, even though the markings were indistinguishable from
the effects of natural weathering. And yet this is not an argument from analogy
or experience. The evidence of design is
not inferred from other rocks, or the tooling, or the position of the stars or
pattern of dots, both of which are asymmetrical, but in their studied relation.
But if Hume has misrepresented the
teleological argument, then that invalidates his efforts to discredit the
argument by invoking invidious analogies and disanalogies, as well as appealing
to the limits of induction. It should be further noted that Christian apologetics
was never prized on general revelation alone, but on the coordination of
general and special revelation—like the aforesaid match between the stars and
the starchart.
Hume, however, has a fallback, for
he parades a whole host of fantastic variations on the faith. Unless a
Christian chases down every decoy, he's failed to rout out the competition. But
one of the problems with this stalling tactic is that it cuts both ways. It cuts against Hume as well as a
Christian. For every belief held by
Hume, a Christian could just as well propose a host of hypothetical
alternatives. It keeps you from checkmating me and vice versa. The price for never losing is never winning.
But if there's no closing move, why bother with the opening gambit?
A believer is under no obligation
to run down every rabbit trail and bag every hypothetical hare. Why rebut
objections that the unbeliever doesn't believe in himself, but only trots out
to delay defeat? There is, as William James would say, a distinction between
bare possibilities and live possibilities. In honest dialogue, both sides
should confine themselves to what they really believe or believe to be
realistic options.
2. Divine Silence
The objection here is that if God
existed, he would make his existence more evident so that everyone would
believe in him. This objection has been
kicking around for some time, but there is now a burgeoning literature on the
subject. By way of reply:
i) At one level, this is an
argument from experience. It amounts to
saying that many folks are unbelievers because they have had no experience of
God's presence. But this argument cuts
both ways. What about all the folks who
believe in God because they have felt the grace of God in their lives?
Now, the argument from religious
experience has been widely criticized by unbelieving philosophers. But by the same token, believing philosophers
could attack the argument from religious inexperience or irreligious
experience. So this whole line of
objection seems at least to be a wash.
Moreover, experience and
inexperience do not enjoy epistemic parity.
Experience is a positive form of evidence whereas inexperience is
neutral on the existence of the object in question.
This objection also makes certain
assumptions about what it would mean for God to be evident. Is the unbeliever saying that if there were a
God, he should be as evident to me as a tree I see outside my kitchen window?
On this assumption, to be evident
is to be evident to the senses. And it
is true that, as a rule, God is inevident in that respect—leaving theophanies
to one side. But is that a reasonable
criterion? If God were a sensible object, then perhaps he ought to be evident
to the senses. But seeing as that is not the doctrine of God, it is hardly
inconsistent with the existence of God that he should be inevident to the
senses.
Let us take a different
comparison. How do I know that you are a
person? Your body is evident to the
senses, yet personality and corporeality are rather different things, for a
corpse is not a person. What makes you a
person—call it what you will, your mind, soul, consciousness—is inevident to
the senses. So my knowledge of other
persons is indirect, being mediated by words and gestures, sign language and
facial expressions. Person-to-person communication may be at several removes
from the immediacy of the personal subject—by books and letters, phone calls and
email, art and music. If the existence of God is inevident in this intermediate
sense, then that is not distinctive to God as an object of knowledge, but is a
general feature of our knowledge of other persons.
The Bible itself speaks of a
hidden aspect of God (Deut 29:29, especially in relation to sin, to
life-crises, and unanswered prayer (Job 13:24; Ps 10:1,11; 13:1; 27:9; 30:7;
44:24; 55:1; 88:14; 89:46; 102:2; 104:29; 143:7; Isa 45:15; 58:7). So one reason the Bible gives for the
apparent absence of God in our experience is that God withdraws his presence as
a chastisement or judgment on sin.
The objection assumes that if
there were a God, he would be generally evident. But the Bible regards that as
a false expectation. For one consequence of the Fall is the general silence of
God.
Now an unbeliever may object that
this reply is question-begging. If we
already knew that God were real, then this explanation would have its proper
place; but when the very question of his existence is at issue, it is
tendentious to offer a religious explanation.
But whether or not that is a valid
criticism depends on both the nature of the initial objection and the purpose
of the explanation. If the initial objection is that the inevidence of God is
inconsistent with the existence of God, then it is valid to point out that the
alleged inconsistency rests on a tendentious assumption. So the critic needs to justify his assumption.
Again, the purpose of the explanation is not to offer positive evidence for the
existence of God, or warrant our faith in God, but merely to counter the claim
of an inconsistent relation between the existence and evidence of God.
The Bible would attribute
unbelief, not to inevidence, but ill-will. The reprobate and unregenerate fear
the judgment of God, and therefore suppress and supplant their knowledge of
God.
An unbeliever would, of course,
regard this claim as question-begging.
Again, though, it is a valid reply to the charge of inconsistency. Moreover, it is a commonplace of the human
experience that men will often resist an unwelcome truth. This applies in many
walks of life. So it is not as though the Christian apologist were trumping up
a special condition to justify his faith. And it must be said that the way in
which many unbelievers have tried to squelch Christian expression and dissent
confirms the charge.
In addition, the allegation of a Deus absconditus is, itself, a
question-begging assumption, for many Christians would say that God has, in
fact, left his fingerprints all over the natural world. And that is more than bare assertion, for
Christian philosophers and theologians have turned this raw data into a broad
range of theistic arguments. To be sure, the cogency of the theistic proofs is
a bone of contention, both inside and outside the church. But the immediate point is that, in the face
of philosophical theology and apologetics, the thesis of a Deus absconditus cannot be posited as an unquestioned datum—on
which to hoist further conclusions.
What is more, God has broken his
silence in the canon of Scripture. For the Christian, the allegation of divine
silence is question-begging because it disregards the witness of Scripture. To be sure, this appeal assumes the
revelatory status of Scripture, but Christians have advanced various arguments
for that proposition as well. So the
allegation of a hidden God must come to terms with Scripture and arguments for
its inspiration.
It may be objected that God has
not made himself known to everyone in his word, for his word is not accessible
to everyone. Yet this assumes that if
there were a God, he would make himself equally evident to everyone under the
sun. But why assume such a thing?
Certainly, there is no
inconsistency at this point for the Calvinist.
Special revelation parallels special election and special
redemption. Although the public nature
of special revelation will incidentally take in a wider audience, its primary
target is the elect. The uneven evidence of God is not an issue of divine
existence, but divine intent.
3. Coherence of Theism:
i) Trinity
It is commonplace for unbelievers
to attack the Trinity as incoherent. And even many believers treat the Trinity
as a grand a paradox. And perhaps that
is so. But remember that the Bible never presents the Trinity as a paradox.
Paradox does not figure in the revealed datum or orthodox definition of the
Trinity. Although the Trinity is an
object of faith, believing it to be a paradox is not an object of faith and
dogma.
Rather, that is a subjective
impression on the part of some readers. And their impression is formed on the
basis of preconceptions that they bring to the teaching of Scripture. They come to the Biblical witness with a
preconception of the one-over-many relation. And the paradox is generated by a
particular preconception. It is often rather simplistic, and takes the form of
one or another of two opposing level-confusions.
On the one hand, it may operate
with an overly abstract model of the one-over-many by reducing numbered objects
(1x; 3y) or numerical relations (1x=3y) to sheer numbers (1=3). But the
Trinitarian "equation" doesn't operate at that level of generality. "One God in three persons" is not reducible
to "the number one equals the number three." Rather, the relation is more like
saying that A and B are the same with respect to C.
On the other hand, it may operate
with an overly-concrete model of the one-over-many relation by reducing
numbered objects to concrete particulars.
We use numbers to count discrete units.
One unit of x doesn't equal three units of x. And this is true enough when dealing with
spatially discrete objects, like a loaf
of bread. But the members of the Trinity
have no physical boundaries. They cannot
be divided and subdivided into parts less than the whole.
In addition, it is a mistake to
press adjectives like "same" and "different" into relations
of strict identity and absolute alterity. We use these words more loosely. Am I
the same man I was ten years ago? In some respects, yes; in others—no. But it is
possible for two objects to sustain a point-by-point correspondence without
reducing one to the other. For example,
a symmetry sustains an internal one-over-many relation. Of particular interest
are enatiomorphic symmetries, such as we find in tessellation, strict
counterpoint and crystallography. This type of symmetry sets up a relation that
is both equipollent and irreducible.
Although A sustains a closed, one-one correspondence to B, A is not
reducible to B. One-to-one is not the
same thing as one-of-one.
ii) Divine Attributes
Unbelievers not only allege that
the Trinity is incoherent, but that the divine attributes are incoherent,
either in isolation or conjunction.
They'll parade paradoxes of omnipotence.
They'll say that omniscience is incompatible with an aspatiotemporal
mode of existence. Or they'll say that benevolence and omnipotence are
incompatible with evil.
(a) Omniscience
Before we delve into divine
omniscience, it is useful to begin with a definition. The Christian is not interested in defending
some abstract attribute or definition, but only in defending the revealed
perfections of God in Scripture. As a working definition, I would submit that
for God to know everything is for God to know everything that is true, and to
believe no falsehoods. The ontological identity of God and truth is a fixture
of Johannine theology.
For example, it is sometimes said
that God cannot be omniscient because he cannot know what it feels like to
taste an ice cream cone or break out in a cold sweat. But bare sensation has no truth-value. To be hot or cold or feel fearful is without
truth-value. It is either true or false
to predicate fear of something, to
say that something is fearful or induces
fear in the subject, but fear itself is neither true nor false, and so is not a
proper object of knowledge.
Another objection to divine
omniscience is that God cannot know what a free agent will do. If we define freedom in libertarian terms,
then I would concede the point. But,
from a Reformed standpoint, this objection does not pose an impediment to God's
knowledge seeing as a Calvinist would deny that sort of freedom to finite
agents.
Still another objection is that if
God exists outside of time and space, then there are things a spatiotemporal
agent can know to which God is not privy.
How can God know the color red? How can God know what time it is?
Now these objections rest on some
unexamined assumptions. Take a red
apple. When I perceive a red apple, do I
perceive the red property as it inheres in the apple, or do I perceive the red
property-instance in my mind? The apple is a material object, but is my mental
impression a material object? The apple
occupies space, but my mental image does not.
So the way in which I sense a red apple is indirect and immaterial. Although there is a physical and external
object, as well as a physical process by which that stimulus is presented to
the mind, the universal is not necessarily, or of itself, a physical object,
but rather, a symbol or simulation or optical illusion. The process is roughly as follows:
sensible>sensation>perception>conception.
Now, if even in the case of
sensory processing, the immediate object of knowledge is a concept of the
object, then I don't see why, in the case of God, a sensible object cannot be
an object of knowledge. There are
differences, to be sure. God knows the object without recourse to any sensory
input. Indeed, the object only exists in time and space because God
instantiated the object according to his prior concept.
Now, not everyone would agree with
this epistemology. But, if so, the issue is not distinctive to religious
epistemology, but turns on your general theory of knowledge. And it is incumbent on a critic of
omniscience to make a separate case for his epistemic assumptions before he is
in any position to launch an attack on omniscience from that front.
With regard to time, it is felt
that a timeless God doesn't know what time it is. He may know the sequence, but cannot know how
far we are into the sequence of unfolding events. However, this way of framing
the question conceals a certain bias. For by casting the question in terms of
now and then, past, present and future, we already assume the A-theory of time.
So before we can adequately discuss God's relation to time, we need to settle
on a theory of time.
Is time like an ever-rolling
stream? That's the popular, common-sense
view. But what is commonsensical can
turn nonsensical in a flash as soon as we ask a few simple questions. Remember
Augustine's famous digression on the subject of time in the Confessions? If you don't ask, I know;
if you ask, I don't know. What is the
present? Is it only a common surface between an unreal past and unrealized
future? A wall without depth or duration?
That's the A-theory.
Or is time more like a motion
picture? We talk of timeframes, as if time were a series of snapshots on a strip of
film. Is the timeline a sequence without
succession? Is the passage of time an illusion, like flickering images on a
silver screen? Is all of time already in the can? Is all the footage on the
reel—from the opening shot to the closing shot? That's the B-theory.
We seem to be faced with a
paradox. If tense is real, then that seems to render time illusory by reducing
the momentary present to a vanishing borderline between what was and what will
be—in which case nothing ever is, but
only was or will be. But if time is
real, then that seems to render tense illusory, for a future moment or past
instant is just as real as the present—but within its own timeframe.
Unless you subscribe to naïve
realism, every side must admit an element of illusion into its theory of
perception. Just as we don't directly perceive space, we don't directly perceive
time. Our sense of time's "passage" is partly inferred from space
(i.e., locomotion). But whether the movement is actual or only apparent, like a
motion picture or stroboscopic effect, is not a direct datum of experience. And
even the awareness of our own "successive" mental states owes more to
memory and anticipation than a direct deliverance or immediate presentation of
time and tense—like the difference between direct perception or introspection
and visual persistence. We enjoy immediate access to our own mental states, but
not to the passage of time, for even on the A-theory, consciousness is bounded
by the specious present.
Now, if we assume the B-theory of
time, then knowing the sequence is all there is to know, for time and tense are
a given totality. So, on such a view, asking if God knows the time is
misplaced.
But which theory is true? It is
arguable that the Biblical doctrine of creation throws some weight behind the
B-theory. For Gen 1 tells us that the
timeline began with God's creative fiat, in which case the Creator falls outside
the timeline. And if that is so, then
creation is a temporal effect of a timeless act. And in that event, the effect
is fully enfolded and unfolded in this singular and indivisible fiat—like a
short story or novel or real of film. The writer or filmmaker exists outside
the timeline of the writing or film footage, and the writing or film is finished
from first to last.
Incidentally, this is the best way
of construing the relation between divine immanence and transcendence. God is
"present" or "active" within the world, not by acting in or on the world, but
by enacting the world. He not only sets the ball in motion but brings everything
into being.
More generally, the Bible has some
things to say about the priority of the eternal to the temporal (Ps 90:2,4;
102:25-27; 1 Cor 2:7; 2 Tim 1:9; Tit 1:2; Jas 1:17; Jude 25). It may be
objected that words like "before" imply an antemundane timeline. But this overlooks the fact that such words
are literally spatial-markers, and only applied to the divisions of time by
figurative extension. We're back on the river. The future lies ahead, the past
lies behind, and I paddle my way through time, like a rowboat or riverboat on
the current of the stream. But this is poetry and picture-language.
The fact that we apply a spatial
grid to our common conception of time raises the question of what would be left
of the sequence were we to strip away this picturesque metaphor. Is last month really more distant in time than last week? Or am I
allowing myself to be bewitched by a spatial simile? The real sequence would be
teleological rather than strictly linear or causal—more akin to a storybook
sequence or film footage.
It is often said that our concept
of eternity is privative and negative.
But I would turn this around. If time and space are limits, then
eternity implies an indivisible, unsurpassable plenity of being. To say that
God preexisted the world literally means that there is never a time when God
did not exist, for time was given in creation, and God subsists apart from the
world.
The notion of a negation carries
an unduly prejudicial connotation. Even
a photographic negative, although lacking the depth, color, scale and
orientation of the original, is descriptive of the original; while the
developed footage, although a double negation, being at two removes from the
original, is even more descriptive of the original.
(b) Omnipotence
In fielding the paradoxes of
omnipotence it is, again, important to keep in mind that what we're concerned
with defending is not some test-tube definition, cooked up in a philosophy lab,
but the revealed attributes of God.
The textbook case is the stone
paradox, viz., "Can God make a rock so big that he can't lift it?"
But it is hard to know how seriously to take this question. For it conjures up the anthropomorphic image
of a sweaty, muscle-bound Atlas having to huff and puff and heave a boulder
uphill. Since this is not the Biblical
view of God, the question is as silly as it is irrelevant—on par with asking if
God can turn green with envy. To the
extent that the question can even be retranslated into a coherent proposition,
the answer is that God doesn't make things happen by acting on a medium, but by enacting
a medium. And it is not God, but the finite medium, which is subject to
spatiotemporal limits.
A further problem with the
question is that it conceals a contradiction. The basic form of the question
is: Can God do something God can't to? If God is omnipotent, then is he able to
do something he is unable to do? Stripped down to the bare essentials, the question
does not amount to a coherent proposition.
And as such, it poses a pseudo-task. All we have here is a verbal trick:
If God can do anything, then he can even do something he can't do; but, if not,
then he can't to everything. This is just a game with words, pushing words
around—like moving blocks on a scrabble board. But words are not the same as
concepts.
A final question is whether the
existence of evil is compatible with divine omnipotence and benevolence. I'll address that issue under the section on
ethics.
iii) Incarnation
It is often alleged that the
Incarnation is incoherent. How is a
divine mode of subsistence compatible with a human mode of subsistence? How can
Christ be mortal and immortal, omniscient and ignorant, omnipotent and
impotent, &c.?
Before we broach this question, we
need to lay down a few markers. If the
critic is alleging a contradiction, then the critic shoulders the burden of
proof. In addition, most harmonizations
will be underdetermined by Scripture inasmuch as the Bible does not spell out
the nature of the relation. It says that
Christ enjoys a full complement of divine and human attributes, but does not
reveal a detailed model of how they interface. Hence, the main thing is to
avoid reductive harmonies (e.g., the docetic, Kenotic, Arian, Apollonarian,
Nestorian, Monophysite, & monothelite heresies).[5]
The Bible employs a literary
metaphor to depict God's economic relations (Gen 1:3; Ps 33:6; 139:16). And a
divine Incarnation would be a special case and limiting case of God's economic
relations. Indeed, the Logos—yet another
literary metaphor—is an economic title for the Incarnate Son (Jn 1:1-4).
So let us explore the explanatory
power of this metaphor. It is often said
that all creative writing is autobiographical inasmuch as the author projects
something of himself into the characters.
And there are cases in which the author writes himself into his own
story as the main character, and tells the story from the first person point of
view. Dante is a classic case in point.
Now, the writer exists outside his
storybook world, outside its spatiotemporal framework. He has his own set of attributes, his own
mode of subsistence. Likewise, his literary alter-ego has all the attributes
proper to a storybook character situated in a storybook world. And yet there's
a sense in which the author reincarnates himself in his autobiographical
character. This figure has the same
mental traits and character traits as the author, the same memories, the same
know-how. The author can even vest his literary alter-ego with the power to
rewrite the story from within.
This is a metaphor, but more than
a metaphor. For just as a storybook
character was once a figment of the writer's imagination, we were fictions in
the mind of God. And just as a creative writer objectifies his idea in time and
space, our Creator objectified his idea in time and space.
There is, of course, a point at
which the analogy would seem to break down.
For the storybook character is unreal. He is not alive. He knows
nothing, feels nothing. But suppose, for the sake of argument, that the dream
of artificial intelligence were to come true. Suppose that a writer could, in
fact, invest his characters with consciousness—like the old myth of Pygmalion.
And even if this is humanly unattainable, the analogy holds at the divine
level, for God does invest his imaginary characters with consciousness.
4. Freudian Faith
Freud and Feuerbach attributed
faith in God to a mental projection of our inner feelings. By way of reply:
i) This analysis is a
half-truth. The Bible treats idolatry as
a mental projection. The fallen imagination is an idol-making factory. Because
the sinner is apprehensive about the judgment of God, he substitutes surrogate
gods whom he can buy off by human sacrifice and other petty bribes.
ii) This analysis can backfire by
explaining unbelief as well as belief.
Perhaps the atheist is projecting his negative father-fixation. Indeed, a good many infidels fit this psychological
profile.
iii) This analysis is too
indiscriminate. On the one hand, it assigns faith to a variety of different and
divergent motives. Faith is the result
of hope or fear or guilt or pride or vengeance, &c. On the other hand,
believers come from a broad range of social backgrounds. Believers represent a
wide variety of temperamental types, with varying intellectual aptitudes. Some
believers were raised in the faith while others came to the faith from an
irreligious upbringing. Some switch from one church to another. Some drifted from the faith and returned
while others leave and never look back. Some family members remain in the faith
while others turn from the faith. Some lose their faith in college while others
find their faith in college. Some lose their faith after a personal tragedy
while others find their faith after a personal tragedy. Converts give different
reasons for their pilgrimage. When a theory is so flexible that it can
accommodate contrary lines of evidence, it amounts to a disguised description
under the guise of an efficient explanation.
iv) Projective theories have an
armchair quality to them. They don't
seem to be based on a wide sampling of case-studies or personal acquaintance
with Christians from various walks of life. How many churches did Freud attend?
How many devout believers did he know? How many did he interview? How many did
he observe up close over the course of a lifetime—from the sandbox and the
lecture hall to the dinner table and the deathbed?
The reason an atheist finds a
projective theory plausible is because he comes to the subject of faith as an
outsider rather than an insider. And by
the same token, the theory has an air of unreality to the believer because it
does not comport with his own experience. It is a theory of faith that is
wholly out-of-touch with faith. It reads like a love poem by a poet who had
never fallen in love.
The only field theory that
accounts for the diversity of data is not one based on nature or nurture, but
sin and grace. That factor is the only common denominator and differential
dynamic that can cut across so many parallel, convergent and divergent lines of
evidence.
II. Bible Criticism
1. Miracles
Hume's objection to miracles
shares a criterion in common with his objection to natural theology—namely, the
principle of proportionality. An extraordinary report demands extraordinary
evidence.
By defining a miracle as a
"violation" or "transgression" of natural law, Hume makes it sound as if God
were a squatter or house-burgler, whereas, from the Scriptural standpoint, God
is the homeowner. The Creator doesn't "break into" his own house. Rather, the
world was designed as a divine billboard. For a Christian, every "natural"
event is an act of God.
This is also why the definition of
a miracle as an "improbable" event is question-begging. A miracle would be a
work of personal agency. It is not a random event. It is not a throw of the
dice. There are no odds either for or against the occurrence of a miracle. And even on statistical grounds, the
evidentiary value of a word (prophecy) and sign (miracle) in tandem (Isa
35:5-6; Mt 11:4-5) is far higher than either in separation.
But to judge Scripture on
Scriptural grounds, the reason why folks don't ordinarily rise from the dead is
the same reason they die in the first place.
It is not owing to natural causes, but God's judgment on Adam's sin. The
impediment is not natural law, but moral law. So the claim that the Second
Adam rose from the dead is perfectly consistent with the ordinary state of
affairs inasmuch Christ reverses the curse and begins to restore the primordial
norm.
And this brings us to another
problem. Why assume that we must begin with a definition of the event rather
than the very event itself? Definitions
are ordinarily descriptive, not prescriptive.
We begin with the phenomena and then set about to classify them. But
Hume is using his grid to as a fine-mesh filter to screen out miracles in
advance of observation. Yet you could establish a miraculous event qua event before you establish a miraculous
event qua miraculous. While a miracle
assumes the prior existence of God,
it doesn't assume a prior belief in
God. That confounds the orders of being and knowing. If Hume were an Egyptian,
would he say to himself, "I won't believe my own eyes unless I can attribute
the plague of hail to freak atmospheric conditions!" Methinks he would stuff
his scruples and dive for cover or run for dear life!
It is also illogical to say that I
need an unusual amount of evidence for an unusual event. How could there be more evidence for a rare event than for a commonplace event? One reason we believe that
snow leopards are rare is the rarity of their sightings. It is unclear how Hume
would establish any out-of-the ordinary event. Moreover, how many inductive
instances to I need? The only evidence I need of a four-leaf clover is a
four-leaf clover. One will do—no more, no less.
Hume discounts the testimony to
miraculous incidents on the grounds that the witness pool is recruited from the
backward and barbarous peoples. One
can't help but sense a suppressed circularity in this objection: Why don't you
believe in miraculous reports? Because
the reporters are ignorant and barbarous! How do you know they are ignorant and
barbarous? Because they believe in miracles!
At most, all Hume's argument amounts to is that dumb people believe dumb
things. But that is hardly argument for the proposition that any particular
witness is dumb.
In addition, the general character
of a witness is not only irrelevant to a specific claim, but may be all the
more impressive when out-of-character. Even liars only lie when they have a
motive to lie, and not when it runs counter to their own interests. And it is
not as if the Apostles and prophets were rewarded for their testimony with a
tickertape parade.
Hume tries to play off the
miracles of one sect against another. However, most major religions don't stake
their dogma on miraculous attestation.
But even if they did, the Bible doesn't deny the power of witchcraft
(e.g. Exod 7-8). And there is no reason why a living faith should have to duel
a forgotten faith. Killing it once is quite sufficient. One hardly needs to
disinter the remains and have another go at them. For if the "gods" of a long dead
faith were unable to defend or resuscitate it (Judges
2. Mythology
Critics of the Bible discredit the
claims of Scripture on the basis of comparative mythology. The unargued
assumption is if mythology is false, and if there are parallels between the
Bible and mythology, then that falsifies the Bible.
To say that pagan mythology is
false is an ambiguous charge. Does it mean that that never happened, or that nothing like that ever happens?
There is quite a difference. In a
novel, none of the incidents may be historical, and yet they are true to
life. So even if mythology were wholly
fictitious, it might still be lifelike in certain key respects.
Indeed, one of the problems with
this dismissive approach is that it fails to explain anything. For it fails to explain why pagans believed
in magic and evil spirits and paranormal events. Was there something in their
experience which gave rise and substance to these beliefs?
There is, of course, a stock
explanation, or what purports to be an explanation, which attributes such
credulity to ignorance. But even if this enjoys a measure of truth, it suffers
from the circular limitation of any tautology: it's true when it's true, and
not when it's not. Even if it holds true for the uneducated masses, it doesn't
apply to the educated classes. And the fact is that illiterate peasants don't
write mythology, for they don't know how to read and write. So, by definition, the record of mythology
comes down to us by the hand of the educated classes.
Another problem with this elitist
criterion is that there's a sense in which a man of letters is at least as
gullible and superstitious as a peasant, for a man of letters gets his information
second-hand whereas a peasant is an amateur scientist who lives off the land,
relies on his eyes and ears, survives and prospers by dint of his direct and
accurate observation of the natural world.
Actually, the real correlation is
not between ignorance and belief but quite the reverse, between ignorance and
unbelief. What I find credible or
incredible has a whole lot to do with the measure of my personal
experience. If nothing out of the
ordinary has ever happened to me, then I find the report of an extraordinary event
less believable than if I've had some brush with the paranormal. For a
psychologist, the abnormal is normal, and for an exorcist, the paranormal is
normal. So some men don't believe the Bible because the world of the Bible
doesn't resemble the world they see out the window, whereas other men do
believe the Bible because the world of the Bible does resemble the world they
see out the window. It's like the old saying about the face at the bottom of
the well.
In fact, this can become a
self-fulfilling prophecy. I don't pray
because I don't believe in prayer, and I don't believe in prayer because I
don't pray!
For some, the objection takes a
more philosophical form. Especially for
those approaching every truth-claim from a scientific standpoint, you often get
the argument that they don't believe in the supernatural because nature is all
there is. But that's a rather prejudicial stance to strike, even on its own
grounds. Science is supposed to be a
descriptive rather than prescriptive discipline, based on observation rather
than stipulation, discovery rather than definition. To insist, in advance of
the facts, that every event must be confinable to naturalistic parameters is
not knowledge, but secular superstition. From the assumptions of empirical science,
the only way of knowing what is knowable is by investigation.
The Bible has its own analysis of
mythology. It identifies mythology with
idolatry. Fallen man is a
mythmaker. His strategy is to suppress
and supplant the knowledge of God with surrogate deities and proxy pieties
(e.g., Jn 3:20-21; Rom 1:18ff.). And lying in the background is the Devil, who
has many front-organizations and aliases (Rev 12-13).
So what we read in Genesis is not
a myth of origins, but the origins of myth. Genesis can account alike for piety
and idolatry, miracle and magic. For the account of creation unveils the origin
of all our cultural universals, as God ordains the social institutions that
recur in art and literature, religion and drama; while the account of the Fall
unveils the origin of their debasement, as apostate men and angels bow before
the creature rather than the Creator of all.
The popularity of the occult,
ufology and the SF genre go to show that science does not extinguish the mythic
impulse. Indeed, evolution repristinates a number of stock mythical motifs,
viz., Everyman, the quest, rites of passage.
In the Darwinian creation myth, the "hero" comes down from the
safe-haven of the trees (fall from innocence).
By passing through various ordeals (survival of the fittest) he attains
enlightenment (higher brain functions) and achieves apotheosis (monkey to man).
The popularity of evolution owes much its popularity to this folkloric appeal.
It's just variation on Puss-n-Boots and the domestication of Enkidu.[6]
Sometimes the parallel is said to
be more precise, in terms of genealogical dependence. But the only case I've
seen where there's a persuasive parallel is the Flood account. Yet since, according to Scripture, both the
Babylonians and the Jews were descendents of Noah (Gen 10), the fact that
Mesopotamian literature possesses a parallel account of the Flood is hardly
prejudicial to the historicity or independence of the Biblical account, for
their synoptic outlook is easily attributable to factual rather than literary
dependence. They share a common source in a shared historical event.[7]
Since real life has a cyclical
character, the stereotypical pattern of many literary themes needs no special
explanation. Art imitates life. Cultural universals derive from the universality
of human nature and experience in the natural world. God made mankind a racial unit with natural
needs and a normal life-cycle. There are patterns in biography as well as
history. Great men often exemplify the trials and traits of the epic hero (e.g.
quest, ordeal, rites of passage). To classify common literary themes as
mythical only pushes the question back a step, for it fails to account for the
origin of the "mythic" category itself. So there's a danger of substituting a
disguised description for an efficient explanation.
Since Genesis records the historic
origin of our archetypal institutions, mythical and literary parallels, such as
they are, cast no prejudice on the veracity of Scripture. In the nature of the case, certain formative
events in Genesis and Exodus acquire a thematic status. And the cultural diffusion of such themes
makes all the more sense if the human race radiated out from a common point of
origin—as the sons of Noah repopulate the earth, both by land and sea (Gen
10-11).
Because some giant animals have
become extinct in historic times (e.g., Irish Elk), we should not exclude the
possibility that "mythical" animals in Scripture (e.g., Rahab? Leviathan?)
are stylized versions of once living beasts. For example, the dragon-motif is
quite widespread in world mythology. Sometimes mythopoetic imagery is used for
decorative, polemical or ironic effect. In Ps 104, Yahweh is pictured in the
regalia of a storm-God, yet this is no more descriptive than the personification
of the waters (v7).
At the same time, there are
disanalogies as well as analogies. For there is a subversive element in
Biblical typology that breaks with conventional associations. Images of descent
carry a classically negative connotation, yet Yahweh's descent on
The history of Scripture is
remarkably restrained in comparison with pagan mythology. If the Bible writers felt free to make up
fantastic incidents, it is odd that they passed up so many tempting
opportunities to indulge their over-heated imagination. For example, Mark records the empty tomb, and
the other Gospels record some Easter appearances of Christ, but none of the
canonical Gospels record the actual moment of the Resurrection, or have Christ
appearing to Pilate or Caiaphas and saying, "I told you so!"
Moreover, the miracles of
Scripture have always some moral or meaningful purpose to them, in manifesting
the mercy and judgment of God, or advancing his redemptive designs. This is
quite different from the frivolous entertainment value of magical or supernatural
incidents in so much mythology.
And beyond their historic origin
is their prehistoric origin. We live in a sacramental universe. In the Fourth Gospel, sensible events are a
form of heavenly sign-language—a visible pointer to the invisible God. The
reason why so many natural metaphors are religious metaphors around the world
is that God has established a code language linking the inward and outward,
moral and material, visible and invisible, sensible and spiritual realms.[9]
We must also make allowance for
the role of dead metaphors. Based on
bare etymology, one could conclude that Holy Week (Ash Wednesday,
Maundy-Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday) was a pagan rather than Christian
festival; but allusions to Wodin, Thor, Freya and Saturn are purely
conventional. Likewise, I can identify a
chemical substance as "spirits of turpentine" without endorsing its alchemical
background, just as I can "fumigate" a house without trading on necromantic
associations.
Folklorists tend to read a lot of
symbolism into mythology (e.g., Sisyphus, Prometheus, Midas, Narcissus, Psyche,
Phaeton, Pygmalion, Tantalus). But is that the way an old bard and his audience
took the tale, or was it just a great campfire story? Hard to tell at a distance.
3. Contradictions
It is commonplace for unbelievers
to say that Scripture is riddled with contradictions. But this assumes that you know a
contradiction when you see one. Yet when you study a writing from the past, you
need to know something about the conventions and compositional methods of that
time and place, viz., idioms, round numbers, hyperbole, editorial asides,
paraphrastic citations, narrative compression, thematic sequencing, calendrical
variants,, audience adaptation, eye-level descriptions, &c. We can't just jump
from the 21C to the 1C or the 2nd
The best way of recovering the
reportorial techniques of the Bible is to study the way in which the same writer records the same event:
(a)
Oath of Abraham's servant (Gen 24:3-8; par. 37-41).
(b)
Prayer of Abraham's servant (Gen 24:12-24; par. 42-49).
(c)
Pharaoh's dream (Gen 41:1-7,18-24)
(d) Résumé of the wilderness wandering (Num 33:1-49; Deut
8-10:11; 29:1-8).
(e)
Decree of Cyrus (Ezra 1:1-4; par. 6:1-5).
(f)
Resurrection/Ascension (Lk
(g)
Conversion of Paul (Acts 9:1-30; par. 22:3-21; par. 26:4-20).
(h)
Conversion of Cornelius (Acts 10; par. 11:1-18; par. 15:7-9).
If we study our parallel accounts
with a modicum of critical sympathy, we can see that the historians of
Scripture were dutifully pedantic in all they say and summarize. They stick
with a rigid outline, sometimes saying more, sometimes less, but pedantically
faithful to the sense and substance of the speeches and events—with precious
little stylistic variance. The whole thing has the formulaic quality of a
well-rehearsed memory, using much the same words in much the same place, over
and over again—like a workhorse doing the rounds. What comes across is the
incurious absence of imagination, the utter lack of originality, the stubborn
stenographic tenacity, the dull disinclination to break with routine. The Bible writers are only too happy to repeat
themselves. They would be perfect in the witness box, ideal as court
reporters—dreadful as screenwriters, aweful as novelists. This must all be
terribly disappointing to the critic who had hoped to find in Scripture a
creative license untrammeled by the facts.
Another popular target of the charge
are the Passion and Easter narratives. but this objection overlooks the
technical challenge of presenting simultaneous events in a sequential
narrative. In the Passion and Easter
narratives you have a number of different people in different places doing
things at more or less the same time.
Yet a narrative is a linear medium, and so it is not possible, as a
practical matter, to position all these players in their real time relations.
This is a choice that every
historian must face. Does his block his
material by time or space? Usually, a historian jumps back and forth, tracing
out the timeline of one place for a little ways, then going back and tracing
out another, then returning to pick up where he left off. He can either be
continuous in time or space: if he's continuous in time, he's discontinuous in
space and vice versa. To equate a narrative sequence with a historical sequence
confuses a medium of communication with a series of events. In reporting
parallel action, some dislocation is inevitable—for the presentation must be
broken down into separate scenes. To treat this as a contradiction commits a
category mistake. The blunders belong to the critic and not the
Evangelist.
Most of the other discrepancies in
Scripture involve names and numbers. I suspect that most all of these
attributable to transcriptional errors. Numbers are especially susceptible to
miscopying. In addition, written Hebrew, with its unpointed
script, invites the interchange or transposition (metathesis) of consonants.
Imagine how much damage a dyslexic scribe might do! And once a mistake is made,
a later scribe may further compound the error by emending the text. Let us also
recall that a scribe might have to copy a faded MS in bad lighting—this was
pre-Edison, remember!. And this was, as well, in the days before corrective
lenses! Textual criticism has also shown that the differences between
Samuel-Kings and Chronicles are largely owing to a variant Vorlage.
III. Science
Before we can properly review the
scientific evidence, we need to review our philosophy of science, and that, in
turn, goes back to our underlying epistemology.
Does my perception of the world resemble the world?
A dog or cat is a consummate
realist. Fido believes that furry face
staring back at him in the mirror is the real deal. But I don't regard canine or feline
epistemology as the best available theory of knowledge—unless you're planning
to catch rats or hunt chipmunks.
Like man's best friend, many
people treat the percipient as though he were a camera obscura—with a
pair of holes bored into the front-end of the box to admit images, another pair
drilled on either side to admit sounds, and so on. On this view, there is no filtering
process. The light that passes through
the opening and casts a shadow on the backside is a scaled down replica of the
image that bounced off the sensible object. So there is a close, family resemblance
between the input and readout.
But on a more scientific analysis,
the observer or observable world is more like an enigma machine. Light bouncing
off the sensible object encodes the secondary properties in the form of
electromagnetic information, and when that strikes the eye, the data stream is
reencoded as electrochemical information.
What reaches consciousness is not a miniature image of the sensible
object, but a cryptogram. It bears no more resemblance to the original than a
music score is a facsimile of sound. A music score is code language. The relation between notes and tones is
conventional.
But even our scientific analysis
is more than a little illusory. When we
try to break down the various steps involved sensory processing, we are having
to describe the input in terms of the readout, as if we could retrace the process. We talk about the tree, and the light from
the tree, and the eye, and the optic nerve, and neural pathways and synapses
and so on. And this is described as if
we were on the outside, seeing the info feed in, when—in fact—our mind is on
the receiving end, and the readout is more like a little film projector. Our
perception of the external world is an optical illusion, like the silver
screen.
That doesn't mean that the
external world is an illusion. But it
lies at several removes from immediate awareness. At an ontological level,
there is a public world; but at an epistemic level, there is only a private
world of my mind and your mind.
At this point, someone might ask,
then how do you know that there even is an external world? Maybe it's just that
projector running in your head! And, at a philosophical level, there is no
knock down argument against this objection.
But, at a theological level, there
is. For the Creator of the world enjoys an intersubjectival knowledge of the
world. And by virtue of revelation, we
may tap into a God's-eye view of the world. For propositions, as abstract
information, are identical at either end of the transmission process—unless
they come out as gibberish (garbage in/garbage out). If you understand what you
read, then it was not garbled in transmission. It still must be encoded in a
sensible medium, but the readout is the same as the input. Otherwise, it would
be unintelligible.
At the level of basic
epistemology, science can never disprove the Bible because divine revelation is
our only clear window onto the world.
Otherwise, we perceive the world through the stained-glass solipsism of
our inescapable subjectivity.
I will go on to discuss some
scientific objections to the Bible, but always with this caveat in my back
pocket. For even if we were unable to field specific objections, the world of
the naked eye, of the microscope and telescope and other such like, is a hall
of mirrors, and left to our own devices, may as well be a trick mirror.
1. Creation
For some professing believers,
there is no conflict between science and Scripture because they constantly
revise their reading of Scripture with a view to the latest scientific
theory. For a couple of reasons, I won't
go that route. To begin with, if the Bible is divine revelation, then it enjoys
an independent and superior source of information. That being so, why would we
try to square it with another and lesser source of information? Isn't the
Creator of the world the world authority on how the world was made? Isn't that
the natural point of departure?
Of course, there are even people
in the church who deny the inspiration of Scripture on factual matters. But in
that event, there is nothing to harmonize—for, on their view,
As to my second reason, when we
interpret a document from the past, we need to turn back the clock and clear
our minds of all modern assumptions. The very last thing we want is to be
up-to-date. Rather, the objective is to be out-of-date—to assume the viewpoint
of the original writer and his implied audience—to see how the world would look
through his eyes. No one reads Dante with the Commedia in one hand and a
textbook on modern astronomy in the other.
Incidentally, this brings us back
to an earlier point. When professing believers partition the Bible into
inspired and uninspired portions, this does not reflect the viewpoint of the
Bible, but is an insulating strategy on the part of modern readers with divided
commitments. The creation account is of a piece with the Fall, the flood, the
patriarchal narratives, the Exodus, and so forth. To set up a buffer zone between the parts of
the Bible we accept and the parts we reject is a self-defensive and
self-deceptive exercise that betrays modern anxieties of which the original was
innocent.
To take another example, we're
often told that the Copernican revolution either falsifies the Bible or
falsifies a literal reading of Scripture.
But the danger here is to import extraneous debates into our reading of
Scripture. Joshua never read Ptolemy, so
why assume that Joshua was operating within a Ptolemaic framework? Both the Ptolemaic and the Copernican systems
assume an extra-terrestrial viewpoint.
When Bible writers talk about the
earth, the "earth" in view is not a stationary globe in relation to the other
planets, but the surface of the earth.
The "earth" is the land—seen at eye-level. An observation is not a theory of the solar
system. The Bible lacks the theoretical interest of Greek astronomy.
The Galileo affair is often
introduced as a bluff. We dare you to
take sides. If, on the one hand, you say
that Galileo was wrong, then you preserve a consistent position, but only at
the cost of consigning yourself to the dustbin of lost causes. If, on the other hand, you say that Galileo
was right, then you either admit that the Bible was wrong, or admit that
exegesis is silly putty; if we can reinterpret the geocentric verses, why not
Gen 1?
To this I'd say two things. If the Bible did teach geocentrism, then that
would commit the Christian to geocentrism.
Let God be true and every man a liar (Rom 3:4)! If Galileo finds himself
on the wrong side of Scripture, then to hell with Galileo! Sure, we would pay a price for this. But that's the cost of discipleship. You take your lumps like a man.
However, I think the bluff tries
to bully us into an artificial dilemma.
For it casts the debate in extra-Scriptural categories. Exegesis need not choose between either frame
of reference, for both fall outside the purview of Scripture.
When I read Genesis, I should put
myself in the sandals of an ancient Israelite, emancipated from
However, such anachronisms are not
limited to nominal believers. A quite common and unconscious misstep made by
scientific critics of the creation and flood accounts is first to build in
extra-Biblical assumptions, and then convict the narrative of inconsistency because
it conflicts with the various consequences of these extraneous assumptions.
What is lost sight of is that a
critic is supposed to exercise critical sympathy. In other words, a reviewer or philosopher or
historian is supposed to exercise enough detachment that he can separate his
own views from the viewpoint of the text, in order to grasp what is meant, make
sense of it on its own terms, and see how well it hangs together given the
assumptions of the author. Even if you're reading a writer in order to attack
him, you need to be a good listener. The difference between believer and
unbeliever is that the latter will put a temporary distance between his views
and the author's, whereas a believer will detach his views in order to make room
for the inspired viewpoint of Scripture.
As an example of this confusion,
we're told that, when measured in light-years, the scale of the universe
entails its multi-billion year age. But this inference rests on a number of
assumptions, viz., the initial size of the universe, the speed of light as a
cosmic constant, the relative rate of expansion, the ordinary emission and
transmission of starlight from its point of origin to the earth, and so
on.
Now, it should be clear that the
creation account is silent on most of these assumptions. That doesn't mean that it necessary negates
them. But it is, at best, neutral on
such assumptions. To point out, then, that Biblical cosmology is at odds with
modern cosmology only goes to show that the Biblical account is inconsistent
with certain extra-Biblical assumptions. So what? An inconsistency can be
relieved in either of two directions, so the unbeliever hasn't gone any
distance in proving his view to be true and the view of Scripture to be false.
Running in place may create the illusion of progress, but the motion is
circular.
What the unbeliever needs to do is
to ask how the world would look assuming, if only for the sake of argument, the
editorial viewpoint of the narrative. Suppose that the world was made at an
accelerated pace—say, in six straight days. Would it look old or new? Would it
appear different than if it happened in the normal amount of time it takes to
run through the life-cycle of a star or galaxy or mountain chain?
Unbelievers often dismiss this
approach as sleight-of-hand. Yet it is
no different than trying to read Dante through Medieval eyes. In fact, it is
the unbeliever who is dealing off the bottom of the deck. On the one hand, he
wants us to interpret the Bible as literally as possible because that puts the
Bible on a collision course with science.
On the other hand, when the believer begins to ask what sort of world a
literal interpretation predicts for, what a literal reading logically entails,
then the unbeliever cries foul!
Others dismiss this explanation as
implicating God in a web of deception. But such an objection is so hidebound as
to be unintentionally comic. They think
it's perfectly okay to say that a star is older than it looks, due to time lag,
but to say that it's younger than it looks is downright deceptive!
Yet the objection also commits the
naturalistic fallacy. The universe is not a cosmic clock with a pair of hands
sweeping out the hours and minutes. The fact that we coopt a natural process to
clock absolute time is a secondary, man-made application of a process that
serves another purpose altogether. I can also uncap beer bottles with my teeth,
but if I split a molar in the process, that is hardly a design flaw. The fact is that things don't look any
particular age. That's a comparative
judgment based on experience, and past experience is hardly germane to creation
ex nihilo. The proper subject-matter
of science is ordinary providence, not extraordinary providence (creation, the
miraculous). If I'd never see a Redwood before, I'd never guess it's age from
its appearance. Yes, I could count the rings, but that presupposes the prior
existence of seed-bearing trees.
2. Flood
Another objection is that even if
we grant the implications of creation ex
nihilo, that would only explain the cyclical appearance of nature, but not
the appearance of a linear progression from simple to complex—such as we find
in the fossil record.
To begin with, permit me to
question the premise. I may be wrong
about this, but it isn't clear to me that the fossil record presents such a
pattern. What I'm treated to is a
bait-and-switch scam. I'm told that the fossil record presents
such a pattern, but I'm never shown
such a pattern as given in the fossil
record. Rather, I'm shown artistic
diagrams and computer animations that reconstruct
an evolutionary trajectory. These are pasted together from scattered remains
gleaned from different digs. What the
Darwinist does is to cobble together fossil remains from a variety of sites,
and then line them up according to an assumed phylogeny. But is that evidence of evolution, or is the
theory arranging the evidence?
Now this is shrewd
salesmanship. Ray Bradbury once
attributed his success as a SF writer to his picturesque prose. As he explained, you can make people believe
in anything as long as you reach them through their senses.
In fact, in my reading of
evolutionary literature, there seems to be tremendous flexibility built into
the way the theory is positioned in relation to the evidence. Different
Darwinian writers make allowance for graduated, punctuated or even quantum
evolution; for convergent or divergent evolution; for progressive or regressive
evolution, or coevolution or sequential evolution; for biotic or organic
adaptation, preadaptation, coadaptiation, nonadaptive traits and spandrels; for
specialization and despecialization; for analogies,
homologies and homoplasies; for ancestral or derived homologies; for primitive
or acquired traits; for diversification or downsizing, &c. Yet a theory
consistent with everything is a theory of nothing.
Land animals are supposed to chart
an evolutionary trend, but if some land animals revert to water (e.g., whales),
then that also supports evolution. Increased cranial capacity is supposed to
chart an evolutionary trend, but deencephalization (e.g., the downsizing from
Cro-Magnon to modern man) also supports evolution. Pedal locomotion is supposed
to chart an evolutionary trend, but if some quadrupeds lose their limbs (e.g.,
snakes), then that also supports evolution. The cone of diversity is supposed
to chart an evolutionary tend, but upending the cone ((e.g., the Burgess Shale)
also supports evolution. This either looks like a disguised description
masquerading as a scientific theory, or else a theory that has been armored
against falsification by being made so pliant and compliant with every opposing
line of evidence.
However, I'd be the first to admit
that I'm only a layman, so I'll waive these reservations and move on to the
next point. The creation account should not be read in isolation from the flood
account. It is not merely a question of
how the world would look as it left its Maker's hand, but how such a world
would look after having been run through the blender of the Flood. Given that a global deluge would lay down a
lot of fossils, it is rather perverse to hold the fossil record against the
record of Scripture when it is the very record of Scripture that presents a
mechanism for the mass production of fossils.
Another imponderable is that you
cannot reproduce a global flood under laboratory conditions. So it is difficult, at best, to say what the
effects would be. We don't even know what variables to plug in for purposes of
computer modeling.
However, a critic would object
that this appeal props up one incredible event by invoking yet another
incredible event. Where did all the water come from and where did it all go?
Where did all the animals come from, and where did they all go?
Now it is only natural to pose
these logistical questions. But, as
before, they often betray extra-Biblical assumptions, and then convict the
Bible of inconsistency. For example, questions about how animals could cross
mountains and oceans, fit into the ark, eat the same food, how fresh water fish
could survive in brackish water, and so on, all make gratuitous assumptions
about the identity of pre- and post diluvian conditions, biogeography and
biodiversity before and after the flood, the relative salinity of prediluvian
seas, the gene pool, dietary restrictions and climatic adaptation, ecological
zones, distribution of land masses and natural barriers, and so on. But I don't
own a map of the prediluvian earth. Since the Bible says next to nothing about
these issues, it amounts to a massive straw man argument to make the text of
Scripture sink under the dead weight of so many extrinsic assumptions. Nothing has been proven one way or the other.
Indeed, the argument hasn't budged an inch.
If we confine ourselves to the
narrative assumptions, Genesis says that the earth began in a submerged state,
and rose out of the primeval deep (1:2-10); so in order to flood the earth I
imagine that God merely reversed the creative process (7:11; 8:2)—as Isaiah
says: every valley shall uplifted and every mountain and hill laid low (40:4).
This is no great feat for a God who measures the seas in the hollow of his hand
and numbers the mountains as fine dust in the balance (40:12).
As to how the animals migrated to
the far corners of the earth, and what they ate, one can only speculate. But the narrative invites a number of
suggestions. The flood would leave an abundance of carrion and vegetable matter
for animals to feed on. Because the descendents of Noah tarried in
But when Bible-believers reply to
their critics, their critics then do an about-face and accuse them of indulging
in unbridled speculation and profligate appeal to miracles. Well, what can you say? When they pose
questions the text was not designed to answer, they thereby invite conjecture.
3. Physicalism
Many unbelievers argue that mind
is reducible to matter. If so, then this undermines belief in the soul, and
other discarnate minds, whether God, angels or demons.
Popular prejudice notwithstanding,
idealism enjoys a prima facie advantage
over materialism inasmuch as we know our mind better than our body or the
external world, for whatever we know about our body or the outside world is
filtered through the mind. I don't say
this to negate either the body or the outside world, but merely to make the
point that the burden of proof sits squarely on the shoulders of the
materialist. And it is unclear to me how
he can ever dislodge that burden. It is like a room with a one-way door.
There is a presumption in favor of
the immaterial mind. As Dr. Johnson puts
it in popular terms,
Matter
can differ from matter only in form, density, bulk, motion, and direction of
motion: to which of these, however, varied or combined, can consciousness be
annexed. To be round or square, to be solid or fluid, to be great or little, to
be moved slowly or swiftly one way or
another, are modes of material existence, all equally alien to the nature of
cogitation...Consider your own conceptions...You will find substance without
extension...What space does the idea of a pyramid occupy?[10]
Now a materialist may say that
these mental properties, although apparently immaterial, are an emergent or
supervenient or epiphenomenal property of matter, like the sound coming out of
a radio. But there are several impediments to this claim:
i) Experience presents us with a
seeming or real dualism. Unless we have
some overriding reason to deny dualism, why should we question this primitive
datum? Why insist on a reductive analysis? If we already knew that dualism was
illusory, then there would be reason to do so, but it looks as if materialism
begins with a baseless assumption—all the subsequent argumentation is trucked
in to fill in the hole of that otherwise unfounded assumption.
ii) If a materialist could indeed
map mental properties back onto material properties in the same way we can draw
a one-to-one correspondence between the sound coming out of the speaker and the
circuit board, then he would at least have a working model of the relation
between mental and material properties; but, to my knowledge, neuroscience,
after decades of research, has yet to advance beyond rosy promises and
picturesque metaphors. Designing a machine (e.g., robot, computer) that can
simulate certain aspects of human behavior doesn't go any distance towards
reducing the human mind to a physical system. To begin with, we already know
that a machine is a material device; therefore, to treat this as properly
parallel to the mind assumes what needs to be proven. Moreover, a parallel
phenomenon doesn't explain the original phenomenon, any more than I can explain
how sound comes out of a speaker by turning on another radio. It may explain a
robot or computer, but it doesn't explain the brain and map mental events back
onto brain events. Unless a materialist can chart a causal, one-to-one
correspondence, then words like "emergent" or "supervenient" or "epiphenomenal"
are checks drawn on an empty bank account.
iii) And even if we could set up a
one-to-one correspondence, what would that prove? Savages hear weird voices
issuing from a ham radio. They infer
that there must be little people inside the box. They test their hypothesis by
impaling the box with a spear. And the
voices stop. Yet the explorer tries to
explain that the signal does not originate from the box, but comes from spooky
radio waves broadcast by a remote radio station. The savages seem more
scientific, and the explorer more superstitious.
iv) Not only does experience
present us with a seeming or real dualism, but it subordinates one to the
other. We must begin with the mind—with our own thoughts, concepts, images,
ideas and intentions. Everything we
receive from the outside world must take the form of pure thought to be thought
of at all. The object of thought is thought. At this level, subject and object
are one and the same thing. This is not
to deny that many or most of our ideas have their ultimate origin outside the
mind, but in the order of knowing, mental properties are prior to material
properties, and material properties are only accessible via mental properties;
that being so, why assume, and how would you prove, that the order of being is
in the reverse?
It is as though I were locked
inside a room with closed-circuit TV. I can receive information from the
outside world, information about the outside world. But from within my studio I
cannot retrace the process of transmission. What is presented to consciousness
is encrypted information and virtual imagery—like a closed-circuit TV. I cannot
retrieve the plaintext from the ciphertext and reconstruct the real
constitution and configuration of the outside world.
v) Our perception of the material
world is indirect, whereas we enjoy immediate access to our own mental
states. Therefore, the notion of an
immaterial substance is a primary and primitive datum, whereas the external
world lies at the end of an inference.
So the materialist has inverted the standard of comparison.
Much of our mental life is spent
in a dream state. Dreams are immaterial,
although they simulate sensory awareness.
Far from being a vague philosophical abstraction, the notion of an
immaterial substance is a universal of human experience.
vi) If computers have already
reproduced certain feats of human cognition (e.g. speech/ pattern recognition;
game-playing; problem-solving), and if they have pulled off that feat without
benefit of consciousness, then consciousness or spooky mind-stuff is not a defining
property of reason, human or otherwise.
Computers are smart without having recourse to beliefs, intentions, and
so on. Already, computers vastly surpass
our capacity to store information and perform numerical calculations—not to
mention chess.
While many people in AI research
seem to find this line of reasoning persuasive, it is fallacious:
(a)
Computers process electronic signals.
There is no understanding involved.
The signals have a symbolic meaning for the computer programmer or user,
but not for the machine.
(b) A
clock tells time better than I can in my head.
Does that mean that a clock is smarter than I am? Although the purpose of a clock is to keep
track of time, and it can tick off the seconds, minutes, and hours more
accurately than I can, this is not a purposeful action from the viewpoint of
the clock, since the clock doesn't have a viewpoint.
(c) That
brings us to a related point. Automation tempts us to personify objects. No one would attribute intelligence to a
sundial. Why then for a digital timepiece? Again, a library can store more data
more accurately than I can re-member. No
one would attribute intelligence to a library.
How does computer "memory" differ in principle? Somehow computers acquire this specious mystique.
(d) The
fact that certain tasks can be broken down into algorithmic steps doesn't imply
that our reasoning process is algorithmic.
A recipe is an algorithm, but that doesn't mean that the order in which
the ingredients are added mirrors the process of reason. Are we hard-wired to add the ingredients in
just that order? No, it's a matter of
culinary chemistry rather than brain chemistry.
(e) The
fact that machines can simulate aspects of human reason and even perform those
tasks more efficiently may foster the illusion of artificial intelligence, but
the analogous fact that very primitive devices can simulate this effect (e.g.
abacus; sundial) shows that the inference is fallacious. Again, we noted that breaking a task down
into a stepwise order doesn't parallel our thought process, but is simply a
practical adaptation to the physical constraints of the task.
vii) Another argument for
materialism is that head trauma results in mental impairment. And this implies the identity between mind
and brain, or so goes the argument. The
effect of mood- and mind-altering drugs confirms that identity.
(a) It
should go without saying that this isn't a scientific observation. People have known for millennia that a bump
on the head or puff of weed can impair or alter mental function. That isn't an argument against monism, but
opponents of dualism often act as if neuroscience has introduced a new line of
evidence which forces us to reexamine old assumptions.
(b) If
you damage a telephone, that will impair or destroy its capacity to send and
receive signals. Yet it's the person at
the end of the receiver who initiates the signal. The telephone is just a medium. It's easy to propose more sophisticated examples. I would say the same thing about the
brain. It coordinates body functions and
sets up an interface between the mind and the external world, processing
sensory input.
To claim that the human mind is
analogous to a computer ignores the introspective deliverance of
consciousness. Our thought process is
not formalizable. Much of our knowledge
is tacit. Even at the conscious level
our reasoning is largely non-propositional.
That is to say, consciousness rarely engages in an extended interior
dialogue or visualizes its operations.
Sentence fragments and scattered images from memory punctuate our
self-awareness. Even if an observer
could tap into our consciousness, what he saw and heard would be unintelligible
to him since its significance is private and privileged. Our mental contents aren't filed like a
library; rather, their organization is more fluid and fleeting— patchy
impressions, intense memories, free associations. It's more akin to the oblique logic of a
dream. What lies on the surface is
already a broken syntax—while the semantics of thought—the meaning, moods, and
tenses—are hidden from inspection and must be supplied. It's a code language of analogy and
allusion, context-dependent on the uniquely individual response of the original
subject.
IV. Ethics
1. Problem of Evil
The problem of evil is easily
stated. If God is both omnipotent and benevolent, why is there evil in the
world? It would seem that he is either unable to prevent it, in which case he
is not omnipotent; or else he is unwilling, in which case he is not
benevolent.
Now, in principle, this dilemma,
even if stringent, is not a disproof of the Deity, but only the existence of a
rather robust conception of God. Yet it would seem, from the standpoint of the
atheist, that the traditional view of God is the only kind of God worth disbelieving! So both the conservative Christian and the
atheist think that the only God worthy of the name is a full-strength God.
The most popular theodicy is the
freewill defense. But aside from the
question of whether the FWD is even Scriptural, it suffers from some internal
difficulties. Why should freewill be
defined in terms of the freedom to do otherwise? After all, even on a
libertarian account we can only make one choice at a time, and one choice
cancels out another. So why should God not limit the freedom of opportunity to
one or another natural goods?
If, as some liberals would have
it, God cannot know which way we'll choose, then that concedes the dilemma and
relieves it by sacrificing the sovereignty of God. Speaking for myself, I'd
just say that I'm more than happy to waive all claims to every little godling
in the liberal pantheon as long as I'm allowed to keep the only and only God of
the Bible.
And if you insist that a free
agent must have unfettered freedom, then this means that Jim can use his
freedom to gain power over John and thereby limit or deprive John of his
freedom. Indeed, this happens all the
time. How much significant freedom does
John enjoy as a political prisoner in his 5x5 cell or before the firing squad?[11]
The Bible takes a different tack.
History is theodicy. Knowing God is the highest good, for God is the highest
good. God foreordained the Fall of
Adam (Rom 11:32; Gal 3:22) so that his chosen people should glory in the wisdom
of his ever just and most merciful designs (Jn 9-12; 1 Jn 4:9-10; Rom
9:17,22-23; Eph 3:9-10). Although God's greatness shone forth in the
primavernal glory of
The common good and the greater
good are incompatible. There is no
greatest good for the greatest number.
Rather, there is a lesser good for a greater number, or a greater good
for a lesser number. A world without sin
is the best possible world for the common good.
But it is not the best possible world for the greatest good. An unfallen
world is a lesser good for every creature; but redemption is a greater good for
the elect.
In the nature of the case, a
theodicy pivots on a theological value-system. An unbeliever will find a
theodicy that takes the knowledge of God as a second-order good to be unpersuasive,
for he is unpersuaded of God's very existence, much less in his role as the exemplar
of good and chief end of man. At this level, there is no common ground.
For their own part, many believers
try to put an extra layer of latex between God and the fallen world order. Now there are no doubt models of divine and
human agency that would have the effect of inculpating God in evil. The "gods" of
But the danger doesn't only issue
from too much involvement. Too little detachment may also be blameworthy, as in
the case of an absentee landlord who fails to maintain the sewer system, so
that his tenants die of cholera. What I respect about the God of Calvinism,
who, by the way, bears an uncanny resemblance to the God of the Bible, is that
he doesn't relate to the world through a pair of latex gloves. The God of the Exodus, the God of Job, the
God of Isaiah, is not an absentee landlord.
Rather, it's like the relation
between an officer and a foot soldier. A foot soldier doesn't resent having to
follow orders, even if the orders induce personal pain and hardship, as long as
he respects his commanding officer and thinks that this is all for a good
cause. He even takes a filial pride in being treated like a grown man who can
be trusted to tough it out under duress. He only becomes resentful if, after
having carried out his orders and suffered for the cause, he finds his
commanding officer beginning to put distance between himself and the mission.
Now our God is the Lord of hosts
and Captain of the host. And the Lord
God of Sabaoth never says he's sorry for the mission or the orders—or denies
that he was the one issuing the orders. He keeps his word and keeps his own
counsel.
To speak of evil as "the
problem of evil" assumes that evil is nothing but a problem. Yet that is rather shortsighted. Although it is only natural to think of
goodness as a check on evil, we also need to appreciate the ways in which evil
can serve as a check on evil—for one evildoer will often block the malicious
designs of another evildoer. Ambition
counters ambition, incompetence gums up the totalitarian apparatus, and petty
corruption impedes more heinous schemes.
"Tyrants could do much more harm in the world if all their servants
were flawlessly efficient, untiringly industrious, and financially
incorruptible."[12]
So even vice, in moderation, has its fringe benefits. Remember that the next
time you must deal with a blundering bureaucrat and pencil pusher. His plodding
ineptitude is every bit as galling to the ruthless depot as it is to the man in
line.
The problem of evil takes for
granted a distinction between good and evil. But when deployed against the
existence of God, this distinction is deeply problematic. For, from a secular
standpoint, what is the source and standard of right and wrong? Evil assumes a
deviation from an ideal. But if we inhabit an accidental universe, if
intelligent life is a fortuitous turn of events, then nothing was supposed to
be one way or another. And if, when I die, it's as though I never lived; and if
nice guys and mean men suffer a common fate, then what does it matter how you
and I conduct our affairs?
2. Hell
How can a loving Lord send anyone
to hell? A common question. Let's pose
another question. How can a loving
husband divorce one of his wives? Now some readers might find that question
peculiar. How can a truly loving husband have more than one wife?
Ah, but that's the point! There is
a difference between marital love and alley cat affection. The intensity of a
man's love for a woman is in inverse relation to the extent of his love for
other women. And, in Scripture, the love of God is akin to marital love (Isa
54:5; Eph
How can you believe in a God who
presides over a perpetual torture chamber? Another common question. But this
picture owes more to Dante than Scripture. I see hell as less a torture chamber
than fantasy island, but with a twist. If you strip away the figurative imagery
of fire and outer darkness, what you're left with is that hell is Arminian
heaven, for there is where sinners have utter license to sin, to sin to their
heart's content, to sin without inhibition or intermission. So God punishes sin
with sin by adding iniquity end-to-end without end—which strikes me not as a
miscarriage of justice, but justice perfected.
What I find offensive is not the
belief in everlasting damnation, but the breezy way in which a universalist
presumes to speak for everyone, the victim included, and takes it upon himself
to extend forgiveness on the victim's behalf without the victim's consent.
3. Holy War
Many men, both inside and outside
the church, have a problem with OT holy war.
Now this is not a case in which a Christian apologist has to try and
supply a rationale for a Biblical doctrine or practice, for the Bible already
gives us a reason for holy war (Deut 9:4; 20:18). So the problem is not so much that critics
don't know the reason, but that they don't like the reason.
So, at a certain level, we may be
faced with incommensurable standards. OT morality is prized on a theological
value-system. If you don't subscribe to
the theology of Scripture, then you don't share its moral priorities. As long
as that is the case, further debate will not change many minds.
Many men and women are especially
disturbed by the wholesale slaughter of children. This is understandable and even commendable
up to a point. The love of children is ordinarily
a natural and theological virtue. Much of human mercy is based on fellow feeling.
Because we are men of like-passions, we have a sympathetic capacity for the
plight of our fellow man.
But we need to guard against an
anthropomorphic model of God. God has no
fellow feeling. Divine mercy is not
grounded in literal empathy or the bowels of compassion.[13]
And our visceral revulsion to this
aspect of holy war may be so strong that critics will have no patience with
patient explanations. But I'd point out
that if you lack intellectual patience, then you forfeit the right to raise
intellectual objections. And I'd also add that unreasoning moral outrage is
immoral. Unless indignation has a basis in truth, it doesn't deserve a
respectful hearing.
In a fallen world, you have three
options: (a) you can side with evil. You can do wrong; (b) you can oppose evil
and make the best of a bad situation, choosing the lesser of two evils; (c) you
can passively acquiesce to the status quo, not taking sides, and letting others
make the tough choices and do the dirty work on your behalf.
If you go with ©, then that will
save you a lot of wear-and-tear on your delicate conscience, but contracting
out the hard questions to second parties and mercenaries does not absolve you
complicity for their actions. It may make you feel better and sleep better, but
it doesn't make you a better person. And
it disqualifies you from waxing indignant over the choices which, by your moral
abdication, you have delegated to second parties.
If you are a morally serious
individual, you will go with (b). One of the things that makes evil so evil is
that it forces good men to do hateful and horrendous things they'd ordinarily
avoid. A physician may have to inflict terrible pain and suffering on a patient
in order to save him, but he is hardly in the wrong to do so.
With regard to children, several
things need to be said:
i) It isn't possible in this life
to be just and merciful to everyone alike. Everyone is related to someone. You
cannot punish a parent without causing the child to suffer. Does that mean that we should never punish a
parent? Is that just or merciful to the
victims of the parent? If a soldier or
policeman shoots a father, he leaves his wife a widow and single mom. If he shoots the father and mother, he leaves
the child an orphan. So there is
sometimes no way of exacting justice or defending the innocent without hurting
some other innocents.
ii) Moreover, we need to consider
the qualify of life of a boy or girl or woman raised in pure paganism, what
with infanticide, child sacrifice, cult prostitution, sodomy, bestiality and
the like. The whole culture is an assembly line of inhuman depravity. Sometimes
you must burn down the factory and start from the ground up.
iii) Furthermore, that sweet,
cherubic little boy may grow up to be Pharaoh or Ashurbanipal or a soldier in
the armies of Pharaoh or Ashurbanipal— who will one day be responsible for the
mass murder of cherubic little Jewish boys and the gang rape of their godly
mothers and grandmothers. I don't know, but God knows. The tares would choke
out the wheat unless God engaged in a periodic program of weeding.[14] And he saved the nation of
4. Original Sin
I suppose most folks have an
intuitive resistance to original sin. It
seems unfair. Yet what, exactly, is it that prompts this instinctive reaction?
There is a difference between being blamed for doing some I didn't do, and being blamed for something I didn't do.
The former is unjust because it is untrue. But the latter is subtler. When men
rankle under the dogma of original sin, I doubt that they draw this
distinction.
Certainly there are many cases in
which I'm blameworthy for something I didn't do—precisely because it was
something I was supposed to have done.
And there are cases in which I'm blameworthy, or share the blame, for
something done by another. A father is largely responsible for the behavior of
a young child.
The reprobate and unregenerate
cannot believe the Gospel in much the same way as a bad man cannot stand to be
in the same room as a good man. The mere
presence of a good man makes him feel unclean.
Having you ever noticed, in this regard, how the most indignant men are
the most evil men? They fly into a rage at the slightest breath of criticism,
whereas a saint is characteristically contrite.
The ubiquitous appeal of art,
drama and literature is prized on our capacity for imaginative identification
with another. We project ourselves into
the situation of the character—even to the point of moral complicity (e.g.
voyeurism). Hence, the idea of our vicarious
solidarity with Adam, so far from being counterintuitive, is more in the nature
of a cultural universal.
It is amusing to see how quickly
folks will forfeit their grandiose claims on freewill. A liberal preacher goes
to the movies Saturday night. There, in the darkened movie theater, his
attention is glued to a patch of dancing light. He sees everything through the
lens of the cameraman. His perspective is skewed by the director's viewpoint.
He identifies with a sympathetic character.
He relates to his sticky situation. He resonates with the pathos of a
powerful actor. His moods mirror the color scheme. His emotions are massaged by
the sound track. His feelings synchronize with the moviegoer behind him, beside
him, and ahead of him. Having marinated himself in polite mob psychology and
vicarious virtual reality for two or three hours, he mounts the pulpit Sunday
morning to denounce the dogma of original sin as a tyrannical infringement on
our impregnable freedom.
5. Predestination
A lot of folks seem to find the
idea of predestination claustrophobic.
How do we account for their existential panic? The reasoning seems to be as follows: If I
were just a dumb animal, then it wouldn't matter to me; but to be conscious of
my own fate feels as though I'm being shadowed by a doppelganger. I peer over
my shoulder only to catch myself fulfilling my own fate.
But this dualism is illusory, for
there is a wide difference between knowing that
my choices are foreordained, and knowing what
they are. If I knew in advance, and could do nothing to alter the fact, then
that would induce this paranoid feeling of a spectral self trapped in the body
of an automaton. But the decree is a hidden decree.
Suppose we compare predestination
to a game of seven-card stud. God is the dealer. One of the players is a believer, the other
an unbeliever who tries to cheat the believer at every turn. However, God has stacked the deck so that his
chosen people will win over the long haul.
Now, God is securing the outcome
by securing the deal. Yet he isn't
forcing the hand of a crooked player. Since a crooked player doesn't know that
the dealer is a cardsharp, he bets and bluffs just the same as if the deck were
randomly shuffled. He can only play the hand he's dealt, but that's true in any
poker game, and he enjoys the very same choices he'd have if the cards just
happened to play out in that order.
God allows the unbeliever to cheat
the believer, but feeds the believer enough winning cards to keep him in the
game. God then lets the crooked player become overconfident and bet the whole
jackpot on a weak hand, at which point the Christian calls his bluff and rakes
in all the chips.
To me, there's a delicious irony
in this arrangement, for a crooked player constantly tries to cheat his fellow
player, but all the while he's being cheated by the dealer. That's more than
bare permission, but less than overt coercion—just as Assyria was a rod of
wrath in the hands of the Almighty, levied by providence to crush a
hypocritical nation (Isa 10:5-19).
Man has more freedom of choice
than does a dog. Unlike the merely
instinctual or Pavlovian behavior of the animal
kingdom, man has been endowed with a capacity for moral and rational
deliberation. But God chooses our
choices.
There are many men who, for
whatever reason, find this deeply unpalatable.
And, for them, dislike and disbelief are one and the same thing. Yet
there are certain drab advantages to believing unlovely truths over lovely
lies. A lunatic is free to believe whatever he pleases, but as that renders him
a danger to himself and others, he is confined to a padded cell. Although the
truth may crimp our style, a clear-headed man is fundamentally freer than a
madman, for he knows what will work and what will not. A medium is both a door
and a wall. If you respect the medium, it empowers you; if you disrespect the
medium, it overpowers you. A ship on water is liberating; a car on water is a
coffin. Jumping off a cliff will get you to the bottom of the hill quicker than
keeping close to the trail, but the benefits of speed are off-set by the hard
landing. The only free man is a man who lives by the promises and admonitions
of the Lord. By respecting reality, he avoids the dangers and enjoys the
dividends that only a reverence for the truth can repay.
The popular appeal of freewill
stands for a state of arrested adolescence.
Now it may be natural and normal for teenagers to be a bit rebellious.
But God is not the sort of father we will ever outgrow, so the itch for independence
is out of place where our religious relations are concerned. Indeed, one purpose of parenting is to model
our dependence on God. Nothing is more laughable than the spectacle of an
emancipated five-year-old. His best
efforts to run away from home take him no further than the tree-house in his
own back yard. And even then he must come down for dinner and a dry place to
sleep.
Freewill is the oldest heresy in
the book, having a diabolical origin (Gen 3:1-5). It was the temper himself who insinuated that
our primal parents were free to defy God and go their own way. But while they were at liberty to disobey the
law of God, they were never free of the will of God, for their very downfall
was decreed of God (Rom
In a fallen world, freedom is like
a jailbreak. Would we really wish to empty the prisons and have marauding bands
roaming the streets? If evil is foreordained, then there is hope—for evil is
restrained by a higher reason for a higher good; but if evil is freely willed,
then there is only despair—for it has no boundaries in time and space.
6. Euthyphro Dilemma
It is often thought that the
Euthyphro dilemma cancels out the appeal to God as the ground of morality. I've already addressed this objection in my
essay on Bertrand Russell.[16]
7. Crimes of Christianity
One of the most popular objections
to the faith is the charge that various atrocities have been committed in the
name of Christ, viz., Inquisition, Crusades, pogroms, witch-hunting, wars of
religion, &c.
i) One of the revealing things
about this charge is the way it betrays the lack of a self-critical sense on
the part of unbelievers. For even if the
charge were altogether true, isn't the time past due for the secular humanist
to account for all the atrocities committed on his watch, viz., Baathism,
Maoism, Nazism, Stalinism?
ii) Although various sins are
inconsistent with Christian ethics, then are not inconsistent with Christian
theology for the obvious reason that Christian theology includes a theology of
sin. Sin does not disprove the Gospel, for the gospel is predicated on sin. Unbelievers
were hardly the first to find hypocrites inside the church (Mt 23). But what
about all the hypocrites outside the church?
iii) Freedom of dissent is a
modern idea. The
iv) At the same time, freedom
dissent has its logical corollary in freedom of assembly. The Church, like any voluntary association,
has the right to lay down the terms of membership—just like political parties
and professional associations.
v) There is a rote way in which
unbelievers tick off the crimes of Christianity. They always cite the same, shopworn examples,
viz., the Crusades, the Inquisition, &c. To this a couple of things need to
be said. To begin with, since I am not Roman Catholic, I'm no more blamable for
Catholic church history than Jews are blamable for the Nazis. After all, the
Spanish Inquisition targeted Evangelicals—among other victims, and the pogroms
slaughtered Armenian believers as well as Jews.
However, we need to make some
allowance the situation facing the Latin Church. Islam was the mortal enemy of
the Church. And it still is. The Crusades were a counteroffensive to push
back a rising Jihad. Just read Urban's speech to the Council of Constance. And
the Spanish Inquisition was a mopping up operation to round up collaborators
after the Moors were driven from of the
Witch-hunting peaked, not during
the Middle Ages, but the Enlightenment.
Likewise, the wars of religion took place during the Enlightenment.
Guilt-by-association has a long reach, and infidels may find themselves mired
in the same tar pit if they resort to such tactics.
I'd add that the wars of religion
did not a represent a popular movement, but were instigated and prosecuted by
European monarchs. The Christian conscript is not to blame for following orders
at gunpoint. And the Irish problem is owing to the legacy of English colonialism.
Let us also recall that it was
theologians like Augustine and Aquinas who tried to lay down the rules of war
in order to minimize atrocities. Just war doctrine is a Christian creation.
Before then it was a free-for-all.
8. Christian Chauvinism
Many people take great offense, or
at least feign offense, at the exclusive claims of the Christian faith. What are we to make of this?
i) It is a commonplace of human
experience that people disagree with one another. If I disagree with you, I must think that I'm
right and you're wrong. So unless the
critics of Christian chauvinism are going to resign the right to ever disagree
with anyone about anything, it is unclear why they reserve one standard for
themselves, and a contrary standard for the Christian.
ii) The alternative to believing
that only one religion is right and every opposing faith is false is believing
that every faith is false bar none. So it is hard to see how this is more
tolerant than Christian chauvinism.
iii) Christian chauvinism would
only be morally wrong if it were factually wrong. The pluralist assumes that Christian
chauvinism is false. And he is only tolerant in the demeaning sense that if all
religious creeds are false, then one creed is no better or worse than another,
and it matters not which one you believe in as long as your equally insincere.
iv) However, the objection may
take a more moderate form. The issue is not that all religions are wholly
false, but that no one religion is wholly true; hence, the propert
attitude is to revere the glimmers of truth in each religious tradition.
But even if this were so, the
question is how a pluralist happens to privy to knowing where the truth lies in
each religious tradition. What is his
benchmark? Under the guise of tolerant magnanimity, isn't he assuming a God's
eye view? For how can he say that this or that faith is relatively true or
false unless he is gazing down from his Olympian throne?
v) Many of those opposing
Christian mission are supporting sociopolitical activism. They feel that some political beliefs are
right, but others wrong. They deem it
terribly important to convert people from the wrong political party to the
right political party. They deem it
terribly important for educational institutions to indoctrinate the young in
liberal values. They write books and
articles to convince us of their superior views. They even support coercive
legislation to penalize dissent.
But why the double standard? Why
is religious persuasion immoral, but political persuasion is a moral
imperative? Why religious relativism, but sociopolitical absolutism?
vi) However, some would say that
the problem is not with believing that I am right, but in failing to make
allowance for the possibility that I may be wrong. By way of reply,
(a) The
abstract possibility that I may be wrong about something is no reason to
question my convictions. It may be that if I get out of bed, I'll be run over
by a car, but that is not sensible reason to stay in bed all day.
(b) Why
is the pluralist more worried about being wrong than being right? To be sure,
there are dangers in being wrong when you supposed you were right. But there
are equal dangers of moral paralysis, of refusing to act on what you deem to be
right for fear of being wrong.
(c) A
Christian is quite willing to admit that he
may be wrong about almost anything—excepting, that is, his Christian faith ;
what he is unwilling to admit is that God
may ever be wrong. The Christian does not lean on his own fallible wisdom, but
on the infallible wisdom of God.
(d) It
may be objected that (c) only pushes the problem back a step. At issue is the
question of whether the Christian may be wrong about God. But if that is,
indeed, a serious question, then the answer cannot be short-circuited by
preemptive finger-waging about the arrogance of religious intolerance.
vii) It is sometimes said that
oriental religions are more tolerant than occidental religions. Assuming, for the sake of argument, that that
is true, they have more reason to be tolerant, for eastern religions are not
prized on the principle of divine revelation.
And so they have no theoretical basis for religious certainty.
But to fault occidental religions
for being less tolerant that oriental religions ignores their varying
truth-conditions. A revealed religion has different truth-conditions, and for
that same reason, a claim to religious certainty. The primary question is the authenticity of
its revelatory status.
But are oriental religions more
tolerant? They have vicious fights over succession within a given school or
sect, and vicious fights between hostile schools and sects. They are fanatically
inflexible over fine points of ritual. They persecute Christian missionaries
and converts. The tolerant image of oriental religions seems to be the image
exported for Western consumption, and not an impression formed by those who
have had to live in the orient.
viii) Critics of Christian
chauvinism are fond of tossing around the charge of intellectual
arrogance. But what, exactly, is
intellectual arrogance? Is it merely the conviction that I am right and you are
wrong?
I define intellectual arrogance as
anti-intellectual arrogance. I am guilty
of intellectual arrogance if and when I do not hold myself accountable for my
beliefs—when I insist that I am right, and you are wrong, but I refuse to offer
a rational defense of my convictions, when I have no intellectual standards. To
be intellectually arrogant is to be both dogmatic and irresponsible inasmuch as
I don't have the arguments to back up my dogmatism. On the one hand I assume an
air of intellectual superiority while, at the same time, withdrawing into a shell
an unreasoning obstinacy when my vaunted beliefs come under fire. But the
Christian faith has always had a strong apologetic component. We make a reasoned case for what we believe.
[1]
Cf. G. Lakoff & M. Johnson, Metaphors We Live By
(
[2] "All virtues pertain first to God, then to the creature: God possesses these virtues 'in essence,' the creature 'through participation'…He allows us to speak of him in creaturely language because he himself has manifested his virtues and revealed them to us through the creature," H. Bavinck, The Doctrine of God (Banner of Trust, 1979), 94-95.
[3] Cf. Calvin, Inst. 1.1.1-2.
[4] An internal tension lies in the fact that Kantian epistemology must initially assume an objective standpoint in order to draw the phenomenal/noumenal hiatus that, in turn, denies such a standpoint.
[5] The same holds true of the Trinity.
[6] In the Epic of Gilgamesh
[7]
Another case is the alleged parallel between Gen 1 and the Enuma Elish. Cf. A.
Heidel, The Babylonian Genesis (
[8]
E.g., apocatastasis, apotheosis, primordial chaos, primeval caverns, ritual
masquerades, magic circles (labyrinth, mandala, wheel of karma),
transmigration, a descensus ad infernos
(Acts
[9] E.g., Ascent/descent; bondage/release; light/dark, death/rebirth; straight/crooked; lost/found.
[10] Samuel Johnson, Rasselas, Poems, and Selected Prose (Rinehart, 1971), 706-07.
[11] Another criticism is that self-determination is a viciously circular notion. The classic attack comes from Edwards in his Freedom of the Will.
[12] P. Geach, Truth & Hope (Notre Dame, 2001), 37.
[13] "There is only one living and true God, infinite in being and perfection, a most pure spirit, invisible, without body, parts, or passions" (WCF 2:1).
[14] It is sometimes said that OT holy war was racist. But God was just as unsparing with Jewish apostates (e.g., Exod 32; Num 16; 25; Deut 28:15-68).
[15]
Some readers may feel that it is irreverent to take an illustration from
professional gambling; but, in fact, the Bible uses a gaming metaphor to
describe God's providence (Prov
[16] "Why I am not a Russellite."