By: Steve Hays
I'm Glad You Asked!
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 6:31; 2 Kgs 18:27), then does that not expose
them as false gods?
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 Mt. Sinai, the Spirit’s descent at
Pentecost and the baptism of Christ, as well as the descent of the New Jerusalem,
reverse the ordinary expectations. In addition, a number of stock themes in
world mythology are missing in Scripture.[8]
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 Millennium
BC—using our own literary models as the assumed standard of comparison.
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 23:13-53; par. Acts 1:1-11).
(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, Darwin was right and Moses was wrong,
period.
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 Egypt, living in the Sinai, and
listening to Moses read aloud the law. When, for example, the first man and
woman are told that the stars serve a calendrical function, does this imply the
ordinary rate of propagation? Did Adam and Eve have to wait millions and
billions of years before beams of starlight struck the earth? Is that how our
Israelite would have construed the account? And if I’m not prepared to assume
that historical horizon and make it my own—not merely as a matter of critical
sympathy, but as an act of faith—then I should admit to myself that the game is
up and stopping kidding myself with sophistries and half-measures.
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 Mesopotamia
until the confusion of tongues, many animals had a head-start, which may be why
we find some animal remains buried beneath human remains. The descendants of
Noah knew about shipbuilding, and where sailors go, animals go—as livestock,
vermin and game.
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 Eden,
it burns more brightly in the autumnal glory of the cross.
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 Canaan were guilty of
sin.
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 5:25,32; Rev
19:6-10; 21:2). God is not a Tomcat. The Lord loves the elect, not the reprobate.
He tethers the reprobate for the sake of the sheep. Remember the parable of the
wheat and the tares? Because they share
a common field, God sends sun and rain on the tares in order to warm and water
the wheat (Mt 5:45; 13:29). Remember the remnant of grace? God fells the
terebinth and tithes on the stump for the sake of the holy seed within (Isa
6:13). "I gave Egypt as a ransom, for you were precious in my sight” (Isa
43:3-4)!
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 Israel to save the
Savior of Israel and the nations—for Israel was the medium of the Messianic
line. Whatever children are saved, are
saved in Christ. So holy war was a redemptive instrument.
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).
Assyria meant it for evil, but God meant it for good (Gen 50:20); for God tips
the scales here-and-now to right the scales hereafter.[15]
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 11:32; Gal 3:22).
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 Medieval Church was intolerant of dissent
because the Medieval Church was an autocratic institution. But the same could be said of the Medieval
State, or the pre-Christian state, or the post-Christian state—with its speech
codes and the like. To single out the Church for special censure is
anachronistic and blinkered.
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 Iberian Peninsula. Both the Inquisition
and the Crusades got out of hand, but it is easy for us to jeer from the cheap
seats, and I’m prepared to cut the Catholic Church a little slack on this
matter.
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 (Chicago, 2003).
[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 (Chicago,
1963), 129. But all Heidel has done is
to use the narrative framework of Gen 1 as an interpretive grid, and then map
that back onto the Enuma Elish. But if Heidel had begun in the opposite
direction, without using Gen 1 as his point of reference, the alleged parallels
would have sunk back into the cluttered plain of events, for there are no structural parallels between the two.
[8]
E.g., apocatastasis, apotheosis, primordial chaos, primeval caverns, ritual
masquerades, magic circles (labyrinth, mandala, wheel of karma),
transmigration, a descensus ad infernos
(Acts 2:27, Eph 4:8-9 and
1 Pet 3:18-20 have been
widely misconstrued. See commentaries by Grudem, Marshall and O'Brien).
[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 16:33).
[16]
"Why I am not a Russellite."
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