John Frame on Reason

There is no such thing as 'neutral' reasoning. There is only Christian-theistic reasoning and unbelieving reasoning: the wisdom of God and the wisdom of the world. When there is common ground between believer and unbeliever, that is a sign that either believer or unbeliever is inconsistent with his or her deepest commitments.
--John Frame, Five Views on Apologetics, p. 80, footnote 11


Further, agreements between believers and unbelievers indicate inconsistency in one or the other party. For example, when a Christian and an atheist agree on a scientific theory (assuming that the theory is true), the atheist is inconsistently relying on a worldview in which the universe is a rational order, matching the rational order of the human mind. At that point, the atheist is thinking as a theist. He is assuming a structure of rationality in the world that he has no right to assume.
--John Frame, Five Views on Apologetics, p. 136

John Dominic Crossan: Champion of Orthodoxy, Greatest Actor of Our Time

Joaquin Phoenix grew a crazy beard. He grew a crazy beard and appeared on David Letterman’s show totally out of sorts, acting strangely and declaring that he would abandon his acclaimed acting career to pursue his dream of becoming a rap artist. After his famous Letterman appearance, people debated whether Phoenix was serious. After much pleading on the part of the strange-looking Joaquin, and after news of a record being produced by Sean “Diddy” Combs, the public largely accepted that Phoenix was not joking. “There's not a hoax,” Phoenix said in an article from USA Today. “Might I be ridiculous? Might my career in music be laughable? Yeah, that's possible, but that's certainly not my intention.”

So. That was that. Joaquin Phoenix was really becoming a rapper. But then, in 2010, the documentary I’m Still Here came out, directed by Phoenix’s brother-in-law Casey Affleck and revealing the drug-addled, prostitute-ridden new life of Joaquin Phoenix. It was sad. But then, to the relief of some and the ire of many, Phoenix and Affleck admitted that the whole thing was a hoax, and that I’m Still Here was a mockumentary, scripted from beginning to end. Joaquin shaved his beard and became normal again. And that was that. The ridiculous was accepted as real and then revealed to be ridiculous after all. But how does this relate to John Dominic Crossan?

I want to suggest that Crossan is in fact in full support of the traditional account of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus, and that he also accepts the traditional dating and authorship of the New Testament documents. Crazy? Perhaps. But I want to do a little experiment in postmodern criticism here. Evidence is secondary. Interpretation is everything. And there is no authoritative interpretation. Of anything. So this is an intentionally postmodern reading of a postmodern reader.

Everything exists in context, and our interpretations are never objective. This is the truism of postmodern criticism if anything is. So what is Crossan’s context? He was born and raised in Ireland, and was at one point a Catholic priest. Eventually, however, he became famous as a radical scholar prominent in the quest for the historical Jesus. For someone with not just one but three Christian names (John, after the apostle; Dominic, from dominus, or Lord; Cross-an) there is precious little traditional Christianity left in Crossan’s corpus. Did his ideology truly undergo such an absolute turnaround, or is something happening under the surface, behind the text?

It is significant that Crossan is a writer, and as such his words are devoid of certain markers which serve to indicate meaning in other contexts. There is no method of determining intonation, inflection, tone of voice, facial expression, or bodily movement of the speaker in a written text. We have only the words. This can create problems. For example, the interjection, “Wonderful!” has a very different meaning when accompanied by an eye roll than when accompanied by a smile. In such a context, what is important is not what people say, but how they say it. Read with a tone of sarcasm or silliness, Crossan’s article could have a completely different meaning. But even at a stretch, this approach doesn’t sync well with the text.

This is where the Joaquin Phoenix theory comes in. What happens when we read Crossan through the eyes of a post-I’m Still Here audience? If John Dominic Crossan is Joaquin Phoenix, then he will deliberately put forward ridiculous and controversial interpretations and readings, totally going against evidence, common sense, and the majority of credible Biblical scholarship. Sounds good so far. But there’s more. He will not only publish ridiculous articles, but will cultivate a personality which he will “wear” in any and every public appearance, from book tours to PBS documentaries to SBL conferences. We may hold out hope that he will grow a crazy beard as well, but this does not tank the theory. When asked about his outrageous claims, he will assure questioners that he is indeed genuine, that this is his real position, that, more or less, he is not a hoax. He will disavow any ulterior motivation to his corpus of work. He will seem completely genuine, and, after a while, people will believe that he is in fact being serious. Some people may be “in on it,” and facilitate Crossan’s façade. This would be the optimistic explanation for why he keeps getting published.

The greatest actor of our time?

But what’s the point? As noted before, Crossan is an Irishman and a former Catholic priest and mendicant friar. Now he is one of the foremost radical Christian biblical scholars. I asked above whether Crossan could really undergo such a radical change. I want to suggest that we may view Crossan’s resignation from the priesthood and subsequent career as an elaborate and extensive hoax, intended to expose the true nature of contemporary biblical criticism as a bankrupt institution and urge readers back to the traditional Catholic doctrine. “Clearly,” he would say, “if scholarship allows for claims such as these, we must rethink what we call scholarship.”

Crossan can thus be seen as a lone voice amid postmodern criticism, crying out for a return to orthodoxy and biblical authority. It is certainly a possible explanation for his outrageous views. But what are the alternatives? Either Crossan is writing sarcastically, which does not seem to be the case, or he actually believes that a late second-century pseudonymous work such as the Gospel of Peter should be relied on more than Mark to give us a picture of the historical Jesus. Surely this strains credibility.

Did Crossan’s plan backfire? Either the publishing companies, etc. are “in on it,” or the discipline is more corrupt than even the conservative Crossan could imagine. Instead of exposing the fallacies of biblical criticism, he has popularized radical positions on Jesus, the Bible, and virtually every essential aspect of Christian faith, taken in by a gullible and unthinking mob because they were uttered by someone with a doctorate. Could Crossan be, even now, crying alone in his bed because he has invigorated the very thing he set out to destroy? It is possible.

But it is also possible that Crossan is simply biding his time, waiting for the mockumentary to reach its conclusion, when he will rise, Phoenix-like (note the wordplay, this is postmodern) from a now-disgraced liberalism and return in triumph to his Catholic home. Or perhaps he will even go to his grave with the secret of his conservatism. I can imagine a handwritten note, grasped in a cold hand, confessing everything, proclaiming the bodily resurrection of the Son of God. Pried away gently, it will be read, reread, and then published amid much media uproar and speculation, possibly several decades after its discovery. After a long time, people with degrees will conclude that the note must be a late forgery, certainly not written by the real John Dominic Crossan. It will be attributed, perhaps, to a well-meaning student using Crossan’s name to gain credibility for his or her ideological position, and the witnesses, having died long ago with Crossan himself, will be unable to shake scholarship from its bondage to the ridiculous. A few conservatives, not well respected, will argue for its authenticity, but will be largely ignored. One of them will get it into his mind to combat the radicals from inside, and the cycle will begin again. Maybe we’ll get someone with a beard this time.

Jonathan Edwards on Epistemology

Truth is the consistency and agreement of our ideas with the ideas of God.
--Jonathan Edwards, Notes on the Mind

A few especially nice glimmers of Scriptural truth in Aristotle

Was reading Nicomachean Ethics and came across these quotes in Book VIII on friendship:

Now it looks as though love were a feeling, friendship [defined as mutual love here] a state of character; for love may be felt just as much towards lifeless things, but mutual love involves choice and choice springs from a state of character; and men wish well to those whom they love, for their sake, not as a result of feeling but as a result of a state of character. (Bk VIII, 1157b29-33)

For a man is not a king unless he is sufficient to himself and excels his subjects in all good things...(Bk VIII, 1160b3-4)

As regards the first, I am reminded of the well-known point of practical Christian ethics that love is a choice and not a feeling, and choices shape character. As regards the second, I think about how wonderful it is to have a King who meets exactly these requirements--the True King.

Fashion and Moral Realism

1. Skinny jeans on guys is just wrong.
2. THEREFORE, objective moral values exist.
QED

Humanism and the Terrible Twos

Christianity is more intellectually mature than humanism. Most humanists espouse a system which rejects the notion of an extrinsically existent God, and focuses on self-realization rather than obedience. When God-language is retained, God becomes not a person, but a shorthand for the most desirable good for ourselves. He does not exist in any meaningful sense except as a symbol for what we are not, but are trying to become. But of course, were we ever to become perfectly good, we should be deserving of worship and obedience, and then the whole process of denying our existence in order to achieve our autonomy would have to begin over again. It is really a matter of convenience that we retain just a bit of injustice. This is really the basis of the humanist system: to hold onto our own autonomy. We cannot bear to think that another Person may know better than us what our own good is. But this simply reveals our own immaturity. It is the two-year-old who always demands his own way. It is the adult who knows when to be silent and obey. The greatest lie that our society has engendered is that unquestioning obedience is always an evil. For if God is perfectly good and wise, and He tells us to do something, then by definition disobedience is error, and the only person who actually wants to be in error is the person who is too prideful to admit that he isn’t God.

The Silence of Jesus

He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,
yet he opened not his mouth;
like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,
and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,
so he opened not his mouth.
--Isaiah 53:7

There is an account of Jesus' examination by Pontius Pilate in all four gospels, but only two of them, Matthew and Mark, make mention of the fact that Jesus stands silent before His accusers. He speaks with Pilate, and confirms that He is the King of the Jews, but "He did not answer him with regard to even a single charge, so the governor was quite amazed" (Mt 27:14). Why is this? Partially, I think, it is an identification with the oppressed and the voiceless. Jesus, our great High Priest, knows our sorrows. So He stands, just like some of us, without a voice to demand justice. The politically, racially, culturally, and ideologically downtrodden have in Jesus a Savior who can truly say, "I know what it is like to be you, and to have to bear the insults and false labels thrown onto you by those in power. And I have been righteous when you have not. Trust in Me." Jesus' silence is a silence of solidarity, a silence which bears the suffering of His sheep.

Christ and Caesar

19 The scribes and the chief priests sought to lay hands on him at that very hour, for they perceived that he had told this parable against them, but they feared the people. 20 So they watched him and sent spies, who pretended to be sincere, that they might catch him in something he said, so as to deliver him up to the authority and jurisdiction of the governor. 21 So they asked him, "Teacher, we know that you speak and teach rightly, and show no partiality, but truly teach the way of God. 22 Is it lawful for us to give tribute to Caesar, or not?" 23 But he perceived their craftiness, and said to them, 24 "Show me a denarius. Whose likeness and inscription does it have?" They said, "Caesar’s." 25 He said to them, "Then render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s."

I was listening to Michael Ramsden today and he had some nice analysis of this passage. What struck me, however, is the use of the word "likeness." I'm no Greek scholar, but could Jesus be reminding us that we are created in the likeness of God? Or in other words, demanding that just as the likenesses of Caesar must be given back to Caeasar, so the likenesses of God (ourselves) must be given back to God. He sees beyond the false sincerity of the Pharisees and Herodians and seeks to penetrate their heart with an appeal to give their lives to God. A simple point, but one worth considering.

The Idolatry of Biblical Criticism

It has often been stated that we project our desires onto the text. As is evident in the “carnivalesque” interpretations of Theodore Jennings and others, what we find is in large part dictated by what we look for. But what about, rather than conforming the Bible to our desires, conforming our desires to the Bible? This is of course a somewhat silly question in modern academia. But it is worth asking ourselves why that is. I believe that the Bible has been discounted as authoritative or normative in large part because higher biblical criticism and postmodernism have rendered the text’s plain sense untrustworthy in our eyes. But we continue to read and value it. So we must now make it trustworthy, by creating interpretations that we place (or in some cases, force) onto the text. And this is, essentially, the same as making ourselves trustworthy. But this of course means that it is no longer the Bible, but we who are responsible for the construction and propagation of moral and spiritual norms and/or truths. It is our interpretations of the text that become valid, meaningful, or normative, and so ultimately ourselves. We become our own Gods.

So by accepting the text as intrinsically untrustworthy, we come to a dilemma: either we continue to hold to a religion which we will call Christianity, but which is in reality self-worship, or we discard the Bible as anything other than a historical-cultural document, interesting as such but not spiritually significant. The problem with modern biblical criticism is this: we are dancing around an equivocation. Let us either be bold and discard the trappings of the community of faith which we continually attempt to redefine or undermine, or let us be courageous and hold to the trustworthiness and authority of the Bible, but most of all let us be honest, and not claim to be doing one when we are clearly doing the other.

Theocentrism, Ecology, and the Earth Bible Project

Much has been said and written regarding the methodology of the Earth Bible project and its three part framework for reading Biblical texts. Critics have often accused the project of distorting the text to fit the Earth Bible mold, either stuffing it into a framework that does not address the issues of the passage, or stretching minute detail into meaning-altering significance. However, Psalm 104 provides an opportunity to utilize the framework as a sort of guide, checking our response as in a mirror and bringing forth new insight as with a magnifying glass. It is not that we should find or force an anthropocentric or ecological reading, but that we should look for (and at) it. I depart from a “radical” ecological hermeneutic in that I have not attempted to find in nature a significance independent from humankind or God, but rather centered the reading on God and as a result found nature as a subject. I believe this to be the proper method. C. S. Lewis sums it up in his essay “First and Second Things”:

To sacrifice the greater good for the less and then not to get the lesser good after all--that is the surprising folly…Every preference of a small good to a great, or a partial good to a total good, involves the loss of the small or partial good for which the sacrifice was made. Apparently the world is made that way…You can't get second things by putting them first; you can get second things only by putting first things first.

If we are to take the Bible seriously as a subject of study, we must therefore take its worldview seriously, and this worldview centers on God as the Creator and King of the Universe. Only atop this foundation can a faithful biblical interpretation commence. We cannot simply shunt God off to the side and place something else in the spotlight—it will always ring false. And this is why Earth-as-subject can never become an end in itself. But if we respect the text, placing God at the center, we discover that God then immediately invests Earth with significance and dignity. Psalm 104 is an example.

Human beings are mentioned only in verses 1, 14-15, 23, 26, and 34-35, a mere seven verses in a total of thirty-five. The majority of the psalm is devoted to God and His provision for nature. We should point out, though, that God acts, if not in a human-like, then at least in a personal, way. He wears clothes (v. 1-2), builds a tent and a house (v. 2-3), rides a chariot (v. 3), and hides His face (v. 20). The rest of God’s actions are more magisterial, appointing, commanding, and making. In verses 14-15 plants are said to grow in order to nourish humans and make them glad, which Habel and his associates would clearly see as anthropocentric, refusing to recognize the right of the plant world to exist independently of humankind. Verse 23 mentions humans but makes no comment on their priority over the Earth. The writer mentions “ships” in verse 26, but only to say that they sail on the waters which God has made. The writer inserts himself into the psalm at the beginning and end, in verses 1 and 34-35. He calls God “my God” and seeks to please Him. Overall, while anthropocentrism may indeed lie behind the text, or within the author’s mind, it does not emerge in any significant way in Psalm 104.

The psalm does present a quite robust picture of empathy with the Earth and recognition of our “deep ecological connections” (Habel 4). The psalmist paints a natural world completely dependent upon God, from the grass to the animals to the mountains. The humans play a role, not as dominators or rulers, but as simply another kind of creature for which He provides. We find our nourishment in the produce of the field, just like the livestock (v. 14). The psalm gives us no pride of place, but mentions us in between cattle and cedars. We are encouraged to think outside of our own anthropocentrism and praise the God who has made the Earth and filled it with more than mere humanity. Here, perhaps contra the Earth Bible project, it is God and not Earth which provides the ultimate nourishment for the living things of the world. “They all look to you to give them their food in due season,” writes the psalmist in verse 27. Verses 27-30 establish the inseparable link between the fertility of the Earth and God’s superintendence. God gives food, and the animals eat. When God departs, they are dismayed. He gives and takes their breath and life.

Psalm 104 reminds us, much as the Earth Bible project attempts to, that we humans are not the center of the universe. But Psalm 104 finds its center not in praise of nature, but of nature’s God. We are constantly reminded that this is a theocentric universe, and nature is the method through which this message is conveyed. As we respect nature’s grandeur and richness, so we should look beyond it to the God who created it and give Him glory. Nature is therefore, in the eyes of the psalmist, not an end in itself but a means to worship. If we attempt to make nature into a “first thing,” we do violence to the text and become deliberately manipulative of its meaning. But if we put God first, we find that nature becomes an object of deep respect, appreciation, and wonder.

The psalmist continually deals with non-human characters as subject in their own right. God is shown as providing for the specific needs of each creature. He gives His gifts directly to the animals and plants, and the psalm states explicitly that the gifts are intended for them, and not for humans. The springs give drink “to every beast of the field” (v. 10); grass grows “for the livestock” (v. 14); the stork’s “home” is in the fir trees (v. 17); the mountains are “for the goats” and the rocks are “a refuge for the rock badgers” (v. 18); the lions seek their prey and lie down in their dens (v. 22) (emphasis added). The proper owners of these things are animals, not people. God does not only cater to human interests, but to all of His creatures. Any ecologically-minded reader would be overjoyed to find that God has clearly created a world in which animals have a right to live their lives, and in which human activity plays little role. In fact, as verses 19-23 state, animals and humans seem to live in separate realms.

We are driven to respect the natural world, not simply because it nourishes us, or rather because God nourishes us through it, but because it is given the role of God’s kingly domain. Verse 1 proclaims that God is “clothed with splendor and majesty,” clearly setting forth a kingship metaphor, which is then extended in the following verses. His kingly robe is light, and His tent is the sky. He rides on the clouds in His chariot, and uses wind and fire as servants. All of the elements in this kingship metaphor are drawn from the natural world. It is therefore reasonable that the rest of the psalm, in its description of God’s control of and power over nature should also be read in the context of God’s kingship, and the Earth as His kingdom. Since we too are under God’s authority, we should not attempt to rebel against His established rule over nature, establishing our own despotic authority against His just and good rulership. Doing so would be treason, and would fall under the curse of verse 35.

As a whole, ecological hermeneutics is not nearly so far removed from the text as some other interpretations have been, but not as closely linked with the meaning as it should be. The Earth Bible project is simply one of the attempts to read the Bible from an ecological framework, and so we must not pass judgment on the whole field based solely on this group of scholars. There are a multitude of differing efforts to draw from the Bible some sort of word about ecology and our relationship to the natural world. Norman Habel and his fellows are, self-admittedly, “radical” in their approach. The critiques leveled against Habel’s approach are, in my opinion, valid. The method replaces the text as the well from which we draw meaning, and as such brings into question the purpose of doing ecological Biblical hermeneutics in the first place. Commitment to textual analysis is obviously only of secondary concern to the goal of presenting an ecological philosophy. And if this is the case, why not simply present the philosophy and be done with it?

The issue can be compacted to a single question: is the Bible authoritative or not? If it is, the plain sense of the text dictates that we do in fact live in an anthropocentric universe, in which human beings occupy a higher position than the animals, and enjoy a special relationship to the Lord in which the rest of the natural world in does not fully participate. It is an inescapable theme running through the entire corpus. This does not exclude non-human characters from participating in the narrative or having intrinsic worth, but it does mean that human beings are more important. And if the text is not authoritative, why are we reading it? I can only surmise that the Earth Bible project is simply using the text as a medium through which to present an alien message, harnessing the power of the Bible in our cultural imaginings in order to foist off an agenda upon its readership. There are many texts which capture environmentalist sentiments much more clearly and broadly than the Bible. Why is it significant that we find such a message in this particular text? I believe we will indeed find the message, but perhaps not in the way the Earth Bible project intends.

Works Cited

Exploring Ecological Hermeneutics. Ed. Norman G. Habel and Peter Trudinger. SBL, 2008.

Descartes and God

Speaking of Descartes’ philosophy of God, his contemporary Blaise Pascal said, “I cannot forgive Descartes; in all his philosophy, Descartes did his best to dispense with God. But Descartes could not avoid prodding God to set the world in motion with a snap of his lordly fingers; after that, he had no more use for God.” It has seemed to me, and also to many of his critics, that despite his avowed Roman Catholic faith Descartes’ conception of God fell more into the deist camp than the orthodox Roman Catholic one. Descartes used God to guarantee trust in our senses and the “formal reality” of the world outside our own minds, but this seems to be all God does. At the very least, Descartes’ God is a sort of generic monotheistic deity, holding all of the basic godly properties but without the added weight of the Incarnation or activity in history, much less any opinions on sin or redemption. But, it can be argued, such doctrines were not relevant to the task at hand in the Meditations, and the Catholic Church could take it from there.

The (first) Cartesian argument for God’s existence can be summed up quite simply but understood only in the context of the larger work. As Descartes writes in the third meditation, on page 101, “By the word ‘God’ I mean an infinite substance, eternal, immutable, independent, omniscient, omnipotent, and that by I myself and all other existent things, if it is true that there are other existent things, have been created and produced. But these attributes are such—they are so great and so eminent—that the more attentively I consider them, the less I can persuade myself that I could have derived them from my own nature. And consequently we must necessarily conclude from all that I have previously said that God exists.” Descartes here explicitly gives us his definition of the God he is working with: infinite, immutable, eternal, independent, omniscient, omnipotent, and the creator of everything. Notably, Descartes does not include goodness in this list. The concept of perfection, says Descartes, does not admit of deception, because all deception is a sort of lessening. We may assume that Descartes therefore subsumes goodness under the banner of perfection, something which, while not listed in the description in Meditation III, is essential to the proof in Meditation V.

Descartes’ first and most substantial proof is a form of the classic ontological argument. It rests mainly on the assumption that the magnitude of reality of the effect cannot exceed the magnitude of reality of the cause. Thus, if we have the clear and distinct idea, or effect, of an infinite being with so many “great” and “eminent” properties that we do not possess, then the cause must be at least equal to the magnitude of reality of that effect, which seems to be infinite. The idea of a thing having more or less reality than another thing is somewhat alien to readers today, but basically signifies how perfect or independent a thing is.For example, if my copy of the Meditiations were burned in a fire, the other students’ copies would survive. The copies are independent of one another. However, if my copy of the Meditations were to burn, the whiteness of the cover would not survive, because the whiteness is dependent on the substance. The “accident” of whiteness is thus less perfect than the “substance” of the book. We can say, therefore, that because the whiteness of the book has less of an independent existence than the substance of the book, it is less real.

But more than a strange conception of a thing having more reality than another thing, there underlies Descartes’ argument the assertion that the concept of the infinite predates our concept of the finite. Without this assertion, we could simply say that God is an amalgamation of other concepts, like a unicorn or Gary Busey. As Descartes writes on page 101,

And I must not imagine that I do not conceive infinity as a real idea, but only through the negation of what is finite in the manner that I comprehend rest and darkness as the negation of movement and light. On the contrary, I see manifestly that there is more reality in infinite substance than in finite substance, and my notion of the infinite is somehow prior to that of the finite, that is, the notion of God is prior to that of myself. For how would it be possible for me to know that I doubt and that I desire—that is, that I lack something and am not all perfect—if I did not have in myself any idea of a being more perfect than my own, by comparison with which I might recognize the defects of my own nature?

So we see here a two-part argument for the positive conception of the infinite: infinite substances are more real than finite substances; and the fact that there seems to exist some sort of standard by which to measure imperfection. Descartes does not attempt to prove either of these claims. But he achieves, through the argument resting on these two assertions, a basis for believing in a cause of his ideas, namely, God. Added to this, by way of the natural light, is the fact that God is not a deceiver, and Descartes has a mechanism for reasonably believing the content of his sense perception.

The statement that God is not a deceiver is somewhat akin to the statement that God is good, but it is not equivalent. God could very well not be a deceiver and still be totally unconcerned with human life. So Descartes has yet to remove himself from the generic monotheistic conception of God, and remains at this point a deist. At the end of the third meditation he allows himself a moment to reflect on the magnificence of the God he has just proved, the possessor of so many great properties and attributes. This God is, if one may say, a god of milk and water. Descartes is very careful to keep a broad enough conception of God that he does not offend the reigning Roman Catholic Church, but keeps God at enough of a distance to allow free and autonomous reign to the rationalism and humanism that prevailed in the intellectual circles of the time.

But what about the second proof? Descartes uses the concept of clear and distinct ideas to once again demonstrate God’s existence. He writes on page 120,

It is certain that I find in my mind the idea of God, of a supremely perfect Being, no less than that of any shape or number whatsoever; and I recognize that an actual and eternal existence belongs to his nature no less clearly and distinctly than I recognize that all I can demonstrate about some figure or number actually belongs to the nature of that figure or number. Thus, even if everything that I concluded in the preceding Meditations were by chance not true, the existence of God should pass in my mind as at least as certain as I have hitherto considered all the truths of mathematics. . .

In this argument Descartes adds to his conception of God that God is a necessary being, or that God’s existence is a necessary part of God’s essence. This echoes very closely Saint Anselm’s response to Gaunilo’s objections to his ontological argument. So Descartes now has a sort of shortcut to trust in sensory perception, by reasoning that a clear and distinct idea of God has a property of necessary existence, and that a God containing all perfection would not be a deceiver, and thus one can trust the senses.

Throughout all this, Descartes never makes any statements about God being personal or interacting in any historical or direct way with the world or with human beings. While it could be concluded that such concerns are not relevant to the task of the Meditations, the conception of God as it stands in the Meditations is too close to a deist one to be ignored. Descartes does not say that God does not intervene in nature, perhaps fearing reproof from the Church, but it is not a stretch to assume that this is what he believes.

Bibliography

http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/philosophers/descartes-god.html

Kant and Barth on God: Knowing and Needing

Kant’s Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics sets up two important ideas which form the basis for his philosophy of God and God’s relationship to human beings. The first is that humans naturally seek to surpass the bounds of their reason and unite all of their knowledge into a cohesive whole. This leads to conceptions beyond the pale of knowability as Kant defines it, and results in conceptions of freedom, the immortality of the soul, and the existence of God. Humans desire God’s existence, Kant says, and it is natural for us to reason towards God. The second idea is that God is essentially unknowable. Kant speaks of knowledge of a supreme being as a “dialectical illusion” (Kant 102). We require God as a way to unify our experience, but can never actually know whether God exists or not. While Kant views the idea of God (as well as acting as if God existed) to be practically necessary, the vast gulf between the noumenal and the phenomenal ensures that knowledge of God according to reason will never be attainable. Karl Barth, one of the most important and influential theologians of the Twentieth Century, can perhaps be placed in dialogue with Kant on this point. After an overview of Kant’s arguments for the two ideas mentioned above, we will examine a striking similarity, as well as a possible avenue of critique of Kant’s position, in Barth’s conception of revelation.

Kant distinguishes between the phenomenal world, consisting of the way in which things appear to us as objects of experience, and the noumenal world, consisting of the way things are in themselves, independent of our experience. Kant claims that outside of the phenomenal world and the objects of our experience, we cannot have determinate knowledge. “It is true,” he says, “we cannot provide, beyond all possible experience, any determinate concept of what things in themselves might be” (Kant 105). This holds true even for those ideas which we have always deemed most important and essential to human existence and thought: ideas of God, the immortal soul, and freedom. This is what Kant means by “idea” in his technical sense: necessary concepts whose objects are by definition outside all possible experience and thus beyond the limits of our reason to discover. But they are not therefore unnatural or wrong, Kant says. “[The ideas] are just as intrinsic to the nature of reason as are [the categories of the understanding] to the nature of the understanding; and if the ideas carry with them an illusion that can easily mislead, this illusion is unavoidable, although it can very well be prevented ‘from leading us astray’” (Kant 82).

Our minds are naturally led to posit the idea of God. Despite the fact that knowledge of God in Godself is impossible,

who does not feel compelled, regardless of all prohibitions against losing oneself in transcendent ideas, nevertheless to look for peace and satisfaction beyond all concepts that one can justify through experience, in the concept of a being the idea of which indeed cannot in itself be understood as regards possibility—though it cannot be refused either, because it pertains to a mere being of the understanding—an idea without which, however, reason would always have to remain unsatisfied? (Kant 106)

Kant also notes that the transcendental ideas serve to show us the boundaries of the pure use of reason, as well as how to determine those boundaries (Kant 107). Metaphysics, says Kant, is placed in us by nature itself (Kant 107); so in a real sense, we have an inborn desire for God and God’s rulership over the universe. God is one of the three things which satisfy and complete reason, along with the soul and an intelligible world (Kant 108).

The problem, of course, is that we can never know God as God may be in Godself. But though we cannot know, we must still assume God exists in order to unify our reason and satisfy our innate desires for answers to questions which transgress the boundaries of pure reason. Kant’s solution is, rather than attempting to know God in Godself, we should see what we can learn about God in relation to the world as it appears to us. Only when God inhabits the boundaries of our reason can we discern things about God. We can speak of God only in analogical or symbolic language, avoiding Hume’s criticism of anthropomorphism.

God’s nature can therefore be constructed in the way of an analogy like the one Kant uses at the end of section fifty-seven. As the artisan is to the watch, the commander is to the regiment, or the captain is to the ship, so is the unknown to the world. In other words,

watch : artisan :: world : ?? (God)

So Kant writes that while we are “compelled to look upon the world as if it were the concept of a supreme understanding and will” (Kant 111), we avoid the problem of thinking about God in the noumenal by not cognizing according to what things are in themselves, but “only according to what it is for me, that is, with respect to the world of which I am a part” (Kant 111).

Kant summarizes this strange tension in the following paragraph, noting that this solution bypasses Hume’s argument against theism.

We thereby admit that the supreme being, as to what it may be in itself, is for us wholly inscrutable and that it cannot at all be thought by us in a determinate manner; and we are thereby prevented from making any transcendent use of the concepts that we have of reason as an efficient cause (by means of willing) in order to determine the divine nature through properties that are in any case always borrowed only from human nature, and so from losing ourselves in crude or fanatical concepts, and, on the other hand, we are prevented from swamping the contemplation of the world with hyperphysical modes of explanation according to concepts of human reason that we have transposed onto God, and so from diverting this contemplation from its true vocation, according to which it is supposed to be a study of mere nature through reason, and not an audacious derivation of the appearances of nature from a supreme reason. The expression suitable to our weak concepts will be: that we think the world as if it derives, as regards its existence and inner determination, from a supreme reason; whereby we in part cognize the constitution belonging to it (the world) itself, without presuming to want to determine in itself the constitution of the cause of the world, and, on the other hand, we in part posit the basis of this constitution (the rational form of the world) in the relation of the highest cause to the world, not finding the world by itself sufficient thereto (Kant 113, emphasis in original).

Karl Barth’s theology rests heavily on revelation. For Barth, God is “wholly other” and impossible to know by human beings—unless God reveals Himself to human beings Himself, which is what He does. As Kant holds that humans cannot reach upwards to God because of the phenomenal/noumenal distinction, Barth holds that humans cannot reach upwards to God because of His infinite nature. But Barth couples the impossibility of a human reaching-upward with the event encompassed by Jesus of God’s reaching-downward. In Kantian language, God comes into the phenomenal world to impart truths of Himself to us.

James Kincade, in his article in the Journal of Religion, describes the similarities between Kant and Barth. He notes that Barth himself takes on a kind of “Copernican revolution,” but instead of placing our minds at the center he places Christ there. The theology of the time had been attempting to make religion palatable to the human mind, as Schleiermacher and others had done. Barth, like Kant, turned the whole system upside down, demanding that the human mind make itself compatible with God’s revelation. This revelation, according to Barth, is independent of us (or our experience as such). “It is God’s search for man which is important—not man’s search for God,” writes Kincade (Kincade 167).

Like Kant, Barth wholeheartedly rejects natural theology (Fackre 5). It is impossible to reason from experience to God in Himself. Here Barth is still within the Kantian system. However, instead of closing the book on the matter, Barth instead explains that God has Himself decided to reveal knowledge of Himself as He is to humanity. “The act of self-disclosedness in Jesus Christ is an expression of the character of God as intrinsically self-disclosive. . . While there are reaches of mystery in the divine being, God does not tell us ‘one thing in history while being something else in eternity. His secondary [or phenomenal, in this case] objectivity is fully true, for it has its correspondence and basis in His primary [or noumenal] objectivity’” (Fackre, partially quoting Barth, 5).

Does this work? Can the noumenal disclose itself to the phenomenal, or does it forever remain outside of it? Kant, by his own admission, begins with a deistic conception of God and adds predicates to it. Kant writes, “For if one only grants us, at the beginning, the deistic concept of a first being as a necessary hypothesis . . . then nothing can keep us from predicating of this being a causality through reason with respect to the world, and thus from crossing over to theism” (Kant112). This conception, almost assuredly chosen in order to respond to Hume’s arguments against theism, cuts off God’s real activity within the bounds of the world of experience. God is forever outside and never within, only acting through the intermediary of reason. God-in-Godself is never present, and we only learn of God by analogy through reason.

In Barth’s view, however, the full revelation of God-in-Himself occurs in the incarnation of Jesus, who is God in the flesh. God here takes a full and active role in the world of experience. If we are justified in believing or knowing about other human beings in the phenomenal world, we are also justified in affirming God’s existence. While it does not solve the problem of knowing anything about God-in-Godself, since even other human interactions are “filtered” through the phenomenal, we do not transgress the bounds of reason by drawing conclusions about God or God’s nature. By having God exist for a time fully in the world of experience, Kant’s tension between the unknowability of God as pure reason and the practical desire for and necessity of God’s existence are solved. This is, in a way, Barth’s solution to this Kantian antinomy.

This approach may seem odd, and perhaps alien to what Kant’s concerns were, but if we examine the concepts in play we see that Barth’s idea of revelation can actually quite easily and naturally respond to Kant’s claims. Kant says that God-in-Godself is essentially unknowable. Though humans desire to posit God as a unificatory principle for their knowledge, experiential knowledge of a being which exists outside of the world of experience (i.e. as pure reason or soul) is impossible. Barth would respond by denying that God exclusively exists outside the world of experience. By coming into the world within a body, God gives the same justification for claims of His existence as claims of other people we encounter or read about. It is a short step from claiming the incarnation and trustworthiness of Jesus, who vouches for the rest of the written revelation of God, to build Christianity within the bounds of reason.

Works Cited

Fackre, Gabriel. "Revelation." Karl Barth and Evangelical Theology: Convergences and Divergences. Ed. Sung Wook Chung. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006. Print.

Kant, Immanuel. Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Print.

Kincade, James. "Karl Barth and Philosophy." Journal of Relgion. 40.3 (1960): 161-169. Print.

The Death of God-Language?

The way I see it, there is a major problem with theology today, and it is this: it is not theology. As is obvious, theology means instruction about God. I think it would be reasonable to assume that if I picked up a book on theology, I would find lots of God-language and, at least in a Christian context, I wouldn’t have to look too hard to find reference to Jesus Christ. But it turns out I am insane. A wide swath of theology today has divorced itself from God and rattles down the road of history without Him, like a car without an engine. And just like an engineless car, this theology will only roll downhill. God is the focus and the drive of theological study. Without Him in the mix, we are simply talking. I cannot understand how theology can be theology when the word and the propositional content are separated. But perhaps I’m old-fashioned.

Let me tell you my context: I am a white, male, middle-class American college student. I grew up in a Southern Baptist Church but am now Reformed Baptist. Some of my assumptions and commitments are that the Bible is absolutely authoritative and that it is divinely inspired. As such, I cannot speak to or about the experiences of many, many Christians. But my context does not dictate silence. I too have a voice, and though people like me have been speaking for centuries, it does not mean that I cannot speak now, and it does not mean that they were wrong then. In this paper, I want to argue that theology is only itself when it speaks of its subject, that is, God. I want to argue that the Bible has Something to say, and that the Gospel has been discarded in favor of the doctrines of humans. This position is controversial because it is traditional. It is unorthodox precisely because it defends orthodoxy. This paper is the refuse of secularism, dropped into the bag of common sense and set aflame on the doorstep of modern man. This is, in the colloquial parlance, the ding-dong-ditch of the death of God.

We have to pause for a moment, lingering on the brink of this earth-shattering epistle. Isn’t one of the primary assertions of contemporary theology (as set out in the handouts on secularism, assertions of contemporary theology, and the rise of modernism) that a conception of Christianity limited to the authority of the Bible and founded in an orthodox conception of Jesus as the historical God-Man and Savior a result of the exclusion of other voices from the discussion? Should we not listen to other, and (reportedly) equally valid, interpretations of the central meaning of the Message? Yes and no. In my erudite opinion, anyone who proposes a view of Christianity which rejects the Bible as the standard of knowledge and God’s message to the world, as well as replacing the historical and actual death of Jesus with myth-language or some sort of “higher” interpretation of what seems to me to be a common-sense reading of the text as a historical account, must examine their motives. Are they truly trying to reveal to people what they think the true message of Christianity has been all along? Or are they hijacking traditional language to mask the replacement of orthodox systems with their own ideologies in order to make it easier for the Church to swallow? I think this is what Tillich does, and I think it is ultimately dishonest. When a normal (and by normal here I mean not an academic) person on the street talks about God, they are not talking about the impersonal ground of being. Let’s not turn theology into a country club and have high and educated discussions in our ivory towers full of code words and secret meanings that the rest of the populace is oblivious to. Many contemporary theologians argue this, but does their message reflect it? If what you mean by “God” or “Gospel” is not what your audience means, are you truly communicating?

The sort of linguistic camouflage that Tillich or Hick presents is ultimately the enslavement of the universal to the particular. Culture and prevailing human thought forms, the absolute rulers of our minds, have dictated that we must reject the supernatural in favor of scientism and place absolute truth (and its supporters) in the furnace; in that place there is wailing and gnashing of teeth. And so Christianity, which does not anymore realize that it is a Message from Above rather than a human construction, blindly follows the spirit of the age which is itself the age of blindness to truth, and both fall into the pit. This spirit says that there is no universal truth, no claim to knowledge which applies to all peoples in all situations. And it is right, if it limits itself to speaking of humanity. But humanity, that limited, ignorant, pain-filled mass, is exactly where the Gospel did not come from. The Gospel is the message to the world, not the message from it. God reached down from the heavens and men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. And He spoke universally. It is ridiculous to say that the universal message of salvation and life does not apply to some situation. All you have succeeded in saying is that you don’t understand the concept “universal.” If the Bible is universal, it speaks to you. It applies to you. Take it and use it. Your context can dictate superadded meanings to the text, but do not mistake them for the primary ones.

What about liberation theologians like Gutierrez who claim that poor and oppressed people are not concerned with abstract metaphysical claims, but rather practical and particular changes to oppressive and evil worldly systems? Well, in a certain sense I understand that pure theology is perhaps not the most pressing need of the downcast. But in another sense the Gospel of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus is of utmost importance. Let’s assume that the orthodox Christian conception of the world is correct, and that after this life there are two eternal destinations contingent upon a person’s response to the work of Jesus, namely, heaven and hell. Now, if one assumes that an eternity of happiness and fulfillment are available upon acceptance of Jesus, then that eternal reward infinitely outweighs any improvement to the conditions of this life. Does this mean that Christians should ignore social reform? By no means! I like Gutierrez and I think he makes an important point, but I think he takes it too far. What I mean is that if we focus only on preaching a message of liberation from social or worldly oppression we are denying the oppressed a much greater good—liberation from sin and the wrath of God.

While most contemporary theologians argue that the legitimacy of established Christian doctrine is less than solid (in part) because entire swaths of people were left out of its formulation, I want to argue a more practical point. I want to assert that the ecumenism of orthodox Christian creeds and doctrines are at this point irrelevant on the ground level. Key terms and ideas have been established in lay consciousness for hundreds to thousands of years, and a radical reevaluation of these concepts and a reassignment of their referents seems to me to be simply impractical. Words like ‘God’ and ‘salvation,’ the role of Jesus in the doctrine of the Christian church, these things are already defined in the public lexicon, and use of the same words with totally new referents, many of which (such as Tillich’s or Robinson’s conception of God) stand in stark contrast or outright opposition to the traditional and pre-established concepts behind those words. This strikes me as somewhat disingenuous. It is as if theologians want to capture the allegiance of unwitting laypersons with comfortable language while at the same time undertaking a secret revolution and rejection of everything those laypersons hold ‘Christianity’ to be.

So what then are we to say to theologians like Kwok Pui-lan and other syncretistic or inclusivisic writers, or to “Christian” pluralists like John Hick, or to proponents of liberation theology like Gustavo Gutierrez? Is there no place for them in the discussion? Once again, yes and no. I suggest that this more modern or liberal approach to Christianity, characterized by the reassignment of traditional language, should be given its own vocabulary. New ideas should have new ways of speaking. Old and firmly established ideas should retain the old words. Christian theology should retain traditional God-language as being about the personal, transcendent, God of the Bible as interpreted for thousands of years. New conceptions of God should be easily identifiable and fall under their own umbrella. Those who attempt theology without God should no longer claim to be continuing the course of orthodox thought, but rather depart from it to make their own world with their own history. Let the people decide which they prefer, rather than attempting to sway them with the shell of familiarity masking an alien worldview. I am not here arguing with scholars like Susan Thistlethwaite who challenge the inclusivity or appropriateness of God-language in terms of gender, etc. I am arguing with people like Hick, who call themselves Christian and depart from virtually every standard of definition for what Christianity means.

Theology without God is impossible. We have fooled ourselves into accepting it only because God-language has fallen prey to a linguistic Invasion of the Body-Snatchers, or to some other equally appropriate pop culture reference. The point is, the only reason we think it even exists is because it looks the same on the outside. But it isn’t. This is something new; this is idolatry. We worship ourselves or we worship the universe or we worship life or love or being or any of a million other things, anything to avoid worshiping the God we once knew. We have said that the traditional idea of God is irrelevant to modern society… have we ever considered that the dictates of modern society are irrelevant to God?

The point is that the idea of a transcendent and active God is only irrelevant because we have abandoned it. In our rush to seek fulfillment in individualism and self-actualization, we have made man the measure of all things, and thrown out the Ruler. And then the theologians come and say that theology must speak to the culture, and so theology must discard God. But what if theologians concerned themselves, not with “limping after reality” but with proclaiming the Reality of God? Let culture drift in the sea of relativism, and let true theology be the port that the ship of faith returns longingly to, tired of the restless waves and storms of changing cultural norms and social pressures. Theology will endure not by being water, but by being stone. Let us look to our Rock and shape our theology around Him, and not try to chisel Him small enough to fit into the box we want to give Him.

In this paper I want to sound the death knell of the death of God. Let us move beyond the declaration of God’s death at the hands of a mustachioed German iconoclast to the divine declaration of His death on a tree on the outskirts of a Middle Eastern city in 33 AD. Nietzsche said, “God is dead, and we killed him.” This was the cry of the Gospel writers, and then the triumphant Yes of “He is risen!” Let us not forget it.

Another Hiatus, If You Couldn't Tell

Blog is on indefinite hiatus, hopefully will update more regularly this summer.

The Freedom of Christianity and the Bondage of Materialism

My gratitude to G.K. Chesterton for this point.

"Free-thinking" atheism or naturalism is really nothing of the sort. By affirming naturalism/materialism (which claims that the physical is all there is) one must by definition reject many claims which a supernaturalist would be able to evaluate evidentially. Just as a determinist must reject even a single event which falls outside of strict causal laws but an indeterminist can accept any number of determined events, so a materialist must reject even a single supernatural occurrence out of hand. The supernaturalist, at the same time, can reject any number of supernatural claims, but retains the freedom to accept those which he or she has good reason to think true.

As such, there is really more intellectual freedom in supernaturalist Christianity than in atheistic materialism. For example, suppose there is a set of propositions S which consists of claims of miracles or supernatural events. Suppose there is also a set of propositions N which consists of claims of material or natural events. The materialist must evaluate set N on the basis of facts, likelihood, etc. and, perhaps, assent to propositions N1, N2, and N4 but reject N3 as having insufficient basis for belief. The materialist must, by definition reject all propositions in set S without consideration. He or she is constrained by their philosophy.

The supernaturalist must evaluate set N in the same way as the materialist, and will, say accept the same propositions N1, N2, and N4 but reject N3. But rather than uncritically reject the propositions S1...S4, he or she is free to evaluate them on the basis of evidence and accept those which seem credible. For example, to accept S1 and reject the rest.

Progress and improvement in theology are never to be expected from obsequious obedience to the spirit of the age; they can stem only from increased determination to pursue the law of theological knowledge itself, even when theologies are maintaining a cheerful openness toward the spirit of the times.

Karl Barth, Evangelical Theology: An Introduction

The Documentary Hypothesis and Biblical Inerrancy

The idea of multiple authorship of the Pentateuch is a somewhat heated point of contention between conservative, usually evangelical, Christians and more liberal academics, some of whom do not adhere to the faith they study. As such, the debate is usually characterized as educated scholars and experts versus lay Church members and naïve pastors. As with all religious and doctrinal contentions, the issue is more complicated than it may first appear. While the idea of multiple authorship of separate “strands” within the first five books of the Old Testament began to go out of vogue among biblical scholars in around the 1970s (in favor of a more complex vision of redaction, editing, and gradual development), the most famous iteration of source criticism remains the Documentary Hypothesis associated with Julius Wellhausen. In it, Wellhausen (among several others) attempts to identify the voices of the separate authors of the Pentateuch, and to speculate on their reasons for writing, worldview, and time of composition. But what are the difficulties this presents for conservative views of biblical inerrancy, and why does it matter so much to so many people?

It is, admittedly, almost impossible to make a strong case for biblical inerrancy without assuming divine revelation. Without the doctrine of God’s superintendence of the writing, composition, and compilation of the Bible, passages such as Genesis 1-11 must become virtually entirely fictional or legendary. Even assuming the traditional account of the Pentateuch’s composition by Moses, hundreds to thousands of years pass between “Let there be light” and “Let My people go.” Without God’s revelation to Moses (or any author) there would seem to be no way to know what happened in the world’s infancy. A tantalizing hint of an antediluvian scroll or record is given in Genesis 5:1, “the scroll of the generations of Adam,” which, given new discoveries of writing appearing as early as 3400 BCE among the Sumerians (Kaiser 58), may mean that the author of Genesis compiled the book from other written material. This is, however, not conclusive.

But for evangelical Christians who hold to the doctrine of plenary inspiration and inerrancy, the revelation of Holy Scripture is a presupposition already made, and thus justification of accounts in the early chapters of Genesis is quite simple. God was there, and He narrated it to Moses. This is, of course, an easy solution, but one cannot justify the inerrancy of the Bible by saying that God wrote it, and that we know God wrote it because the Bible is inerrant. This is obvious, though pious, circular reasoning.

The true basis for the inerrancy of scripture rests in faith. Unless one assumes the absolute truth of the Bible, one cannot trust it completely, and if one cannot trust it completely, one cannot trust its account of the perfect life, propitiatory death, and physical resurrection of Jesus Christ. If the Bible is not completely errorless, then there are (necessarily) errors in some of it. If there are errors in some of it, for example, the numerous claims of the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, then there is no way to know that the account of the resurrection of Jesus is not also in error. It is an all or nothing game. The basis of all Christian belief is called into question the moment the Bible descends from Logos to literature. Admittedly, the claims of God’s work in the lives of believers would remain were the Bible to fall, but the knowledge of the nature and demands of that God would be gone.

It is because one must trust the Bible completely that evangelical Christians resist the theory of multiple authorship of the Pentateuch. Throughout the Old and New Testaments, and from the mouth of Jesus Himself, Moses is called the author of the Torah. For example: Ex 17:14, 24:4, 34:27; Nm 33:1,2; Dt 31:9,11 within the Pentateuch itself, Jos 1:8, 8:31,32; 1 Kg 2:3; 2 Kg 14:6; Ezr 6:18; Neh 13:1; Dn 9:11-13; Mal 4:4 in the rest of the Old Testament, and Mt 19:8; Jn 5:46,47; Ac 3:22; Rm 10:5 in the New Testament (Block 158). If Christians are to take the Bible as truth, they must reckon with this mountain of claims to Mosaic authorship. Only through a sort of lexical gymnastics, going against the plain meaning of the text, can a view of multiple authorship be supported by one claiming biblical inerrancy. However, the text does record that Joshua added somewhat to the Mosaic corpus, presumably after Moses’ death, which would explain statements such as that recording Moses’ humility (Numbers 12:3), and the account of his death.

While it may be argued whether biblical inerrancy is a “modern” development, it certainly has a basis, at least for evangelical Christians, in theological necessity. Without a completely trustworthy account of God’s work, Christianity is severely crippled, if not killed. It has been shown that the Bible makes a myriad of claims to Mosaic authorship, which entails the exclusion of claims to multiple authorship. No other person besides Joshua is said to have added anything (Joshua 24:26). This especially excludes the Documentary Hypothesis, which would not match up with Biblical claims in authorship or even date of composition. Thus, the concepts of biblical inerrancy and multiple authorship seem to be mutually exclusive. Evidence for multiple authors, such as that provided above, would need to be accounted for, but it should be the policy of Christianity to take the authority of the Bible as absolute, and to hold to it even in the face of contradictory scholarship, in sure and certain faith that the Bible will be justified in the end. So while the doctrine of biblical inerrancy may be disagreed with due to source critical scholarship, it should not be dismissed or labeled as simple ignorance.


Works Cited

Block, Daniel J. "Who Wrote the Pentateuch and When Was It Written?." Apologetics Study Bible. Ed. Ted Cabal, Chad Owen Brand, E. Ray Clendenen, Paul Copan, J.P. Moreland. Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers, 2007. Print.

Kaiser, Jr., Walter C . The Old Testament Documents: Are They Reliable and Relevant? Downer's Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2001. Print.

G.K. Chesterton--Science and the Savages

This short essay from Chesterton's book Heretics deals with the fallacies of scientific anthropology and the likelihood of myth becoming fact. One can see a clear influence on C.S. Lewis' argument about Jesus Christ as the "true myth." I've been challenged quite a bit recently on the veracity of ancient Israelite stories in the Bible as similar to other Mesopotamian myths. The conclusion is, of course, that the Biblical narratives are therefore untrue. Chesterton masterfully demonstrates the falsity of such a line of reasoning, with his customary wit and humor.

A permanent disadvantage of the study of folk-lore and kindred subjects is that the man of science can hardly be in the nature of things very frequently a man of the world. He is a student of nature; he is scarcely ever a student of human nature. And even where this difficulty is overcome, and he is in some sense a student of human nature, this is only a very faint beginning of the painful progress towards being human. For the study of primitive race and religion stands apart in one important respect from all, or nearly all, the ordinary scientific studies. A man can understand astronomy only by being an astronomer; he can understand entomology only by being an entomologist (or, perhaps, an insect); but he can understand a great deal of anthropology merely by being a man. He is himself the animal which he studies. Hence arises the fact which strikes the eye everywhere in the records of ethnology and folk-lore — the fact that the same frigid and detached spirit which leads to success in the study of astronomy or botany leads to disaster in the study of mythology or human origins. It is necessary to cease to be a man in order to do justice to a microbe; it is not necessary to cease to be a man in order to do justice to men. That same suppression of sympathies, that same waving away of intuitions or guess-work which make a man preternaturally clever in dealing with the stomach of a spider, will make him preternaturally stupid in dealing with the heart of man. He is making himself inhuman in order to understand humanity. An ignorance of the other world is boasted by many men of science; but in this matter their defect arises, not from ignorance of the other world, but from ignorance of this world. For the secrets about which anthropologists concern themselves can be best learnt, not from books or voyages, but from the ordinary commerce of man with man. The secret of why some savage tribe worships monkeys or the moon is not to be found even by travelling among those savages and taking down their answers in a note-book, although the cleverest man may pursue this course. The answer to the riddle is in England; it is in London; nay, it is in his own heart. When a man has discovered why men in Bond Street wear black hats he will at the same moment have discovered why men in Timbuctoo wear red feathers. The mystery in the heart of some savage war-dance should not be studied in books of scientific travel; it should be studied at a subscription ball. If a man desires to find out the origins of religions, let him not go to the Sandwich Islands; let him go to church. If a man wishes to know the origin of human society, to know what society, philosophically speaking, really is, let him not go into the British Museum; let him go into society.

This total misunderstanding of the real nature of ceremonial gives rise to the most awkward and dehumanized versions of the conduct of men in rude lands or ages. The man of science, not realizing that ceremonial is essentially a thing which is done without a reason, has to find a reason for every sort of ceremonial, and, as might be supposed, the reason is generally a very absurd one — absurd because it originates not in the simple mind of the barbarian, but in the sophisticated mind of the professor. The learned man will say, for instance, “The natives of Mumbojumbo Land believe that the dead man can eat and will require food upon his journey to the other world. This is attested by the fact that they place food in the grave, and that any family not complying with this rite is the object of the anger of the priests and the tribe.” To any one acquainted with humanity this way of talking is topsy-turvy. It is like saying, “The English in the twentieth century believed that a dead man could smell. This is attested by the fact that they always covered his grave with lilies, violets, or other flowers. Some priestly and tribal terrors were evidently attached to the neglect of this action, as we have records of several old ladies who were very much disturbed in mind because their wreaths had not arrived in time for the funeral.” It may be of course that savages put food with a dead man because they think that a dead man can eat, or weapons with a dead man because they think that a dead man can fight. But personally I do not believe that they think anything of the kind. I believe they put food or weapons on the dead for the same reason that we put flowers, because it is an exceedingly natural and obvious thing to do. We do not understand, it is true, the emotion which makes us think it obvious and natural; but that is because, like all the important emotions of human existence it is essentially irrational. We do not understand the savage for the same reason that the savage does not understand himself. And the savage does not understand himself for the same reason that we do not understand ourselves either.

The obvious truth is that the moment any matter has passed through the human mind it is finally and for ever spoilt for all purposes of science. It has become a thing incurably mysterious and infinite; this mortal has put on immortality. Even what we call our material desires are spiritual, because they are human. Science can analyse a pork-chop, and say how much of it is phosphorus and how much is protein; but science cannot analyse any man’s wish for a pork-chop, and say how much of it is hunger, how much custom, how much nervous fancy, how much a haunting love of the beautiful. The man’s desire for the pork-chop remains literally as mystical and ethereal as his desire for heaven. All attempts, therefore, at a science of any human things, at a science of history, a science of folk-lore, a science of sociology, are by their nature not merely hopeless, but crazy. You can no more be certain in economic history that a man’s desire for money was merely a desire for money than you can be certain in hagiology that a saint’s desire for God was merely a desire for God. And this kind of vagueness in the primary phenomena of the study is an absolutely final blow to anything in the nature of a science. Men can construct a science with very few instruments, or with very plain instruments; but no one on earth could construct a science with unreliable instruments. A man might work out the whole of mathematics with a handful of pebbles, but not with a handful of clay which was always falling apart into new fragments, and falling together into new combinations. A man might measure heaven and earth with a reed, but not with a growing reed.

As one of the enormous follies of folk-lore, let us take the case of the transmigration of stories, and the alleged unity of their source. Story after story the scientific mythologists have cut out of its place in history, and pinned side by side with similar stories in their museum of fables. The process is industrious, it is fascinating, and the whole of it rests on one of the plainest fallacies in the world. That a story has been told all over the place at some time or other, not only does not prove that it never really happened; it does not even faintly indicate or make slightly more probable that it never happened. That a large number of fishermen have falsely asserted that they have caught a pike two feet long, does not in the least affect the question of whether any one ever really did so. That numberless journalists announce a Franco-German war merely for money is no evidence one way or the other upon the dark question of whether such a war ever occurred. Doubtless in a few hundred years the innumerable Franco-German wars that did not happen will have cleared the scientific mind of any belief in the legendary war of ‘70 which did. But that will be because if folk-lore students remain at all, their nature win be unchanged; and their services to folk-lore will be still as they are at present, greater than they know. For in truth these men do something far more godlike than studying legends; they create them.

There are two kinds of stories which the scientists say cannot be true, because everybody tells them. The first class consists of the stories which are told everywhere, because they are somewhat odd or clever; there is nothing in the world to prevent their having happened to somebody as an adventure any more than there is anything to prevent their having occurred, as they certainly did occur, to somebody as an idea. But they are not likely to have happened to many people. The second class of their “myths” consist of the stories that are told everywhere for the simple reason that they happen everywhere. Of the first class, for instance, we might take such an example as the story of William Tell, now generally ranked among legends upon the sole ground that it is found in the tales of other peoples. Now, it is obvious that this was told everywhere because whether true or fictitious it is what is called “a good story;” it is odd, exciting, and it has a climax. But to suggest that some such eccentric incident can never have happened in the whole history of archery, or that it did not happen to any particular person of whom it is told, is stark impudence. The idea of shooting at a mark attached to some valuable or beloved person is an idea doubtless that might easily have occurred to any inventive poet. But it is also an idea that might easily occur to any boastful archer. It might be one of the fantastic caprices of some story-teller. It might equally well be one of the fantastic caprices of some tyrant. It might occur first in real life and afterwards occur in legends. Or it might just as well occur first in legends and afterwards occur in real life. If no apple has ever been shot off a boy’s head from the beginning of the world, it may be done tomorrow morning, and by somebody who has never heard of William Tell.

This type of tale, indeed, may be pretty fairly paralleled with the ordinary anecdote terminating in a repartee or an Irish bull. Such a retort as the famous “je ne vois pas la necessité” we have all seen attributed to Talleyrand, to Voltaire, to Henri Quatre, to an anonymous judge, and so on. But this variety does not in anyway make it more likely that the thing was never said at all. It is highly likely that it was really said by somebody unknown. It is highly likely that it was really said by Talleyrand. In any case, it is not any more difficult to believe that the mot might have occurred to a man in conversation than to a man writing memoirs. It might have occurred to any of the men I have mentioned. But there is this point of distinction about it, that it is not likely to have occurred to all of them. And this is where the first class of so-called myth differs from the second to which I have previously referred. For there is a second class of incident found to be common to the stories of five or six heroes, say to Sigurd, to Hercules, to Rustem, to the Cid, and so on. And the peculiarity of this myth is that not only is it highly reasonable to imagine that it really happened to one hero, but it is highly reasonable to imagine that it really happened to all of them. Such a story, for instance, is that of a great man having his strength swayed or thwarted by the mysterious weakness of a woman. The anecdotal story, the story of William Tell, is as I have said, popular, because it is peculiar. But this kind of story, the story of Samson and Delilah of Arthur and Guinevere, is obviously popular because it is not peculiar. It is popular as good, quiet fiction is popular, because it tells the truth about people. If the ruin of Samson by a woman, and the ruin of Hercules by a woman, have a common legendary origin, it is gratifying to know that we can also explain, as a fable, the ruin of Nelson by a woman and the ruin of Parnell by a woman. And, indeed, I have no doubt whatever that, some centuries hence, the students of folk-lore will refuse altogether to believe that Elizabeth Barrett eloped with Robert Browning, and will prove their point up to the hilt by the, unquestionable fact that the whole fiction of the period was full of such elopements from end to end.

Possibly the most pathetic of all the delusions of the modern students of primitive belief is the notion they have about the thing they call anthropomorphism. They believe that primitive men attributed phenomena to a god in human form in order to explain them, because his mind in its sullen limitation could not reach any further than his own clownish existence. The thunder was called the voice of a man, the lightning the eyes of a man, because by this explanation they were made more reasonable and comfortable. The final cure for all this kind of philosophy is to walk down a lane at night. Any one who does so will discover very quickly that men pictured something semi-human at the back of all things, not because such a thought was natural, but because it was supernatural; not because it made things more comprehensible, but because it made them a hundred times more incomprehensible and mysterious. For a man walking down a lane at night can see the conspicuous fact that as long as nature keeps to her own course, she has no power with us at all. As long as a tree is a tree, it is a top-heavy monster with a hundred arms, a thousand tongues, and only one leg. But so long as a tree is a tree, it does not frighten us at all. It begins to be something alien, to be something strange, only when it looks like ourselves. When a tree really looks like a man our knees knock under us. And when the whole universe looks like a man we fall on our faces.