The Real Jesus and the Jesus of History

James McGrath has a nice post over on his blog about following the historical Jesus, and how it mirrors the situation that the first disciples and followers of Jesus faced. It's a good reminder once again that certainty is not something that Jesus ever promised anyone. After all, the religious leaders of his day apparently largely rejected him, and I would argue, they probably had good reasons in doing so. Not following Jesus was not absurd or illogical, then or now. As McGrath puts it

"Whereas many Christians envisage Jesus as one who is either literally or metaphorically 'irresistable,' clearly it was possible for not only opponents but even adherents to find the realities of who Jesus was challenging and at times unsettling. He was a figure about whom it was genuinely possible to have doubts."

This reminds of what Kierkegaard has to say about following Jesus in Training in Christianity. There, he argues that we must become contemporaneous with Christ if we want to follow him, and that involves recognizing that following Jesus in his own time was full of uncertainty and risk. It is not something that we can just complacently embrace on the basis of the subsequent course of Christian history, it involves to whatever extent it is possible, an unmediated encounter with Jesus. This is just as unsettling now as it has ever been. It involves trust and commitment over matters that can be doubted, and the only certainty that can be offered is certainty in God, a certainty that is personal and not propositional. And honestly, sometimes that just seems terrifying. It leaves me questioning, scared if I have committed myself to something that isn't true.

Doubt is absolutely essential to faith, and to life, but it is also deeply uncomfortable. If it weren't for doubt, I am sure I would have lost my faith by now. It isn't something terrible or the "atheist's secret weapon" or whatever else it is made out to be. A God who isn't open to intense questioning isn't worth following. The thing that gets forgotten, in my opinion, is that we are just as open to being questioned by God. It isn't a one way exchange, of us standing here and demanding that God reveal himself. Either way the questioning goes, it probably won't be comfortable, which is why Jesus Christ will always remain a stumbling block for many.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas!

Just taking the time to celebrate the mystery of the Incarnation. 2000 years later, we are still trying to wrap our minds around the wonderful truth that the writer of John recorded: the word became flesh and dwelt among us. So much can be said about this awesome revelation clothed in total humility, this divine emptying and all that Jesus Christ is and means, but for now I think it is best to simply reflect quietly. I'll have more to post later on of a more philosophical nature, but I wanted to provide a reminder, to myself and others, of the power of quieting yourself before God and reflecting on who he is.

Cheers and a Happy New Year!

God is Great, God is Good

Today I just finished reading God is Great, God is Good: Why Believing in God is Reasonable and Responsible, edited by William Lane Craig and Chad Meister. This book is a collection of essays by Christian academics in a variety of disciplines responding to the claims and writings of the so-called New Atheists. 14 different essays, each by a different Christian thinker on a variety of topics, constitutes the text of the book. I was interested in reading this book, particularly because I greatly respect the work of a number of the contributors to this volume. With chapters from Alister McGrath, Gary Habermas, William Lane Craig, John Polkinghore, Michael Murray, J.P. Moreland, Paul Moser, Paul Copan and others, the list of contributors contains many prominent names in philosophy, science, and religion. (Note: the following paragraphs I also posted, with a few small changes, as a review of the book on Amazon).

The essays that I enjoyed most from this book were the ones by Moser, Polkinghorne, McGrath, and Copan. Paul Moser's article makes the important point that the moral dimension of God has important bearing on what we should expect to find as evidence for God's existence. By looking for the "God of the Philosophers" as a first cause, unmoved mover, etc., Moser argues that we have acted as if the question of God being good, amoral, or malevolent has no bearing on whether or not God exists. He makes an interesting case for highlighting the moral nature of God, particularly the belief that God is love, should be central to the question of God's existence. Polkinghorne's chapter, entitled "God and Physics," shows how a Christian viewpoint not only accommodates but illuminates the understanding of physics that has developed in the twentieth and early twenty-first century. Alister McGrath does an excellent job of taking to task the view that religion is inherently violent, pointing out that the all of the dangers that are identified in religion are inherent to political movements. The use of religion to motivate violence points to features of human nature and not of religion. Thus, atheism, religion, politics, or any system or ideology is vulnerable to being co-opted for violent purposes, a point that is often lost or ignored by Christians and atheists alike. Paul Copan offers a thoughtful analysis of Old Testament law and ethics (which is far more nuanced than the response of Hector Avalos would lead one to believe, and Copan specifically responds to Avalos in a number of footnotes). Copan's essay, particularly what it is and is not saying, deserves some sustained reflection, which I may do at some point.

There were a few essays that I found to be somewhat lacking, either in quality of argument or in organization. While Craig is a clear writer, no matter how many times he formulates the ontological argument I still think it looks like witchcraft. Some people think its a powerful argument, but I think it is riddled with (probably insurmountable) problems. The same goes for Michael Behe's essay. I am not terribly impressed with the whole Intelligent Design movement, and Discovery Institute protestations aside, I still think its an example of a god-of-the-gaps defense. I do give Behe credit for helping me to better understand the project of ID, which is usually mischaracterized. For Behe at least, the question is not whether evolution is an adequate explanation, but whether the most widely supported mechanisms for evolution are able to account for the biological and genetic diversity we see. I'm not so sure that this distinction helps his project any more, but it at least shows that it does not reject things like fossil and DNA evidence for evolution. I was also disappointed with Michael Murray's essay on evolutionary explanations for religion. Murray had a number of excellent points, but the essay was poorly organized and frequently involved raising a number of points and then declaring that he did not have the space to address them here (of course followed by a footnote pointing to other works of his). I am interested in reading more of Murray's work, particularly The Believing Primate, but this particular essay was poorly executed.

The choice to give the last chapter to Mark Mittelberg also didn't sit so well with me. I was not familiar with Mittelberg so I had to look him up. Apparently he is a popular speaker and writer, but as far as I can tell isn't an academic by training. His chapter was essentially an altar call to the end the book, which is all good and well, but its lack of philosophical sophistication by comparison to the rest of the essays in the book was noticeable (references to non-scholars like Josh McDowell and Lee Strobel seem out of place by comparison to the sources referenced by the other contributors). It was frustrating to see the lack of theological precision in the article. For example, Mittelberg seems to presuppose some form of penal-substitution view of the atonement, which many of the New Atheists have (in my opinion rightly) attacked. In fact, the book would have benefited with a chapter specifically devoted to just that subject. Mittelberg doesn't explicitly defend such a position, but the language he uses seems to imply it. Again, not a terrible chapter, but in comparison with the other essays it was ending the book on a low note.

Overall, I give high marks to this book. While I do not agree with all of the points and perspectives raised, I was able to find much of value that helps clarify and deepen my understanding and thoughts on a number of topics. In fact, many of the authors in this book would disagree strongly with each other (I think specifically of Polkinghorne and Behe). This is a strength of the book, in my opinion, because it shows the diversity of opinions that make up the body of Christ. There is no one uniform Christian opinion on these issues, and it is heartening to see thoughtful and intelligent Christians of different backgrounds and perspectives come together to show the unity in diversity that Christianity represents. While the book is aimed at a broad audience so many of the essays reflect the strains of their author's attempt to cram a lifetime of thought and work into 15 pages (though this may not be as obvious to readers who have not read any of the other works by the contributors), there is still a good deal of philosophical and theological meat. It is a good starting point for those who may not have much of a background with Christian philosophy or the New Atheism and provides much fodder for reflection and discussion.

The Myth of Objectivity

The recent controversy surrounding the leaked emails from scientists involved in researching global warming is a nice reminder of the ineluctably subjective nature of the pursuit of knowledge. I am not in any way trying to deny global warming. Indeed, as this article shows, it does not appear that any global warming data was fabricated. What it does show is that the process of scientific investigation, and all pursuits of knowledge, reflect deeply subjective elements.

This point is captured nicely in the article linked to above: "This is normal science politics, but on the extreme end, though still within bounds," said Dan Sarewitz, a science policy professor at Arizona State University. "We talk about science as this pure ideal and the scientific method as if it is something out of a cookbook, but research is a social and human activity full of all the failings of society and humans, and this reality gets totally magnified by the high political stakes here." What is taking place within the scientific community is by no means unusual or unethical, it just isn't "objective."

There is often times this claim by those seeking to use science as an ax against religious knowledge that scientific knowledge is somehow objective while religious knowledge is not (admittedly this is usually not asserted by actual scientists, just popularizers who apparently have a much weaker grasp of the scientific enterprise). However, to make such a claim is to ignore the many subjective facets that mark science. This in no way weakens the power of science, it merely shows what the pursuit of knowledge looks like. This is why subjective experiences should not be looked down upon a priori.

Religious experiences need not be seen as subjective to the point that they have nothing to offer anyone beyond the person who experiences it. As the work of Michael Polanyi has helped demonstrate, there is not a rigid subjective/objective dichotomy that can be affirmed (I am indebted to Lesslie Newbigin's excellent short book Proper Confidence for many of these insights). Thus, all knowledge claims reflect subjective experiences, but these subjective experiences can be made with universal intent. This is what takes place in the sciences. Every experiment is marked by countless subjective decisions, reflecting the individual researcher's inclinations, intuitions, hunches, biases, circumstances, previous experiences, etc., but the results are made with universal intent.

I am saying that the same thing might be said of religious knowledge. I'm not going to try to push this to make an unwarranted claim (like that the scientific method is identical with religious experiences), I am only showing that any claim to knowledge, be it scientific or religious in nature, is put forth along a path of deep subjectivity. Objectivity is a chimera that neglects the ways in which we actually undertake the act of knowing. It is not something that can be set rigidly apart and in opposition to subjectivity. The two are interconnected and related in a way that one cannot be separated from the other. This doesn't make the case for religious knowledge, but that is not my point. My point is merely to point to a mistaken approach that often takes place in faith/science debates on a popular level.

An Excellent Conversation Between Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath

This is a great interview of Alister McGrath by Richard Dawkins. Both of them do an excellent job of articulating their positions, and the civility, charity, and respect that the two show to each other is a model of how all conversations between atheists and Christians should proceed. This is a much more effective way to flesh out these important issues than in a debate where the emphasis is on "winning" and "losing." It is very instructive also to see the way that each of these men is influenced by the presuppositions he brings to the world. The result is that while each does his best to understand the other, they end up talking past each other at a number of points.

Dawkins, for example, can't get beyond the idea that God must be an extraordinarily complex being. He candidly admits that his training as a biologist has shaped his view. The incredible explanatory power of evolutionary biology has conditioned him to see complex entities emerging from more simple ones. The idea of a complex entity at the beginning of all things, rather than the end, strikes Dawkins as completely improbably. This is because it runs counter to the way he has been trained and the way he has come to view the world, so anything that seems to deviate from that seems to be almost nonsensical. McGrath does not seem to be bothered by this claim in nearly the way that Dawkins is. As a Christian, I admit that it is hard for me to feel the force that Dawkins would like from his point, because such a claim does not strike me as so deeply troubling. The same goes for McGrath, who can't get beyond the person of Jesus and what this means for the rest of the world, while Dawkins is not nearly so impressed with what for McGrath (and myself) is something that is absolutely crucial to his Christian belief and his belief in God at all.

What McGrath points to, and what I find myself in agreement with, is that the truth of Christianity is in its power to explain the universe and human existence, and that most of its doctrinal presuppositions cannot be proven. This is something that Dawkins finds to be almost absurd, because it has no direct bearing on whether any of the doctrines of Christianity are true. Just because Christianity gives what for me is a satisfying explanation of my existence, how on earth am I justified in inferring that God is three persons, that Jesus was resurrected from the dead, etc., etc., etc.? The answer is simply that I am not. Dawkins is entirely correct to press this point home. However, what I want to say, is that this is not just a "problem" for Christianity.

No explanatory system is self-justifying. This is one of the powerful implications of Godel's incompleteness theorem: an explanatory system must have unproven true assumptions. The empirical methodology of the scientific method cannot be justified empirically, even though it postulates empirical investigation as the proper avenue to knowledge. So why do so many people hold it to be true? Because it is so successful at doing what it predicts it will do. It is set up as a means of pursuing discoveries in the world, and it has been successful. Surely, this should lend support or justification to the scientific method. What McGrath is arguing towards, is that Christianity can/will be shown true by its ability or inability to explain the world and human existence in the way that it claims to do.

The problem with two people operating in different explanatory systems is that it is very difficult to completely understand the claims of the others. I'm sure that most Christians will believe that McGrath has been quite eloquent and convincing. Just as I'm sure that most atheists will believe that Dawkins has driven home intractable flaws in Christianity (you can get a bit of atheistic reaction to this conversation here). These conversations are important, and the issues raised by both men are worthy of much reflection.

Morality and Ontology

I want to set out some thoughts on the issue of morality and objective moral standards, because morality is a contentious topic within faith and in dialogue with others of different faiths or no faith at all. Specifically, I want to critique one approach that I have seen used by many Christians to argue for the existence of moral absolutes. It is a common Christian argument against relativism to point out that relativistic statements reflect absolutes. To give a trivial example to say "everything is relative" or "what's true for you isn't true for me" are absolute statements that suppose objective realities. This fact is used by those who argue against relativism, situational ethics, and any other form of ethics or morality that does not claim to make contact with universal absolute truth, and it is true. It seems that we cannot articulate moral statements without implicitly universalizing them, even if our statement is trying to affirm the contextual nature of ethics and morals.

The problem I have with this approach is the next step that is usually taken. After it is shown that 'relative' statements have elements of absoluteness in them, it is argued that this shows that there are therefore actual moral absolutes. This is a completely unwarranted step. At best, what has been shown is that human language has a tendency towards universalizing its claims, or that human reason functions in such a way that it is unavoidable to make absolute statements, but this does not mean that these absolute statements must correspond to an ontological reality. Just because my mind is constituted to assume there are absolutes says nothing about the actual existence or nonexistence of these absolutes. It is entirely plausible that this could just be an example of Kantian categories like time and space that Kant held to be unshakable and irremovable features of human perception that could never be shown to exist objectively or not outside of the human mind because of the limits of our reason. Might this tendency to speak in terms of absolutes be a similar example of our reason pushing beyond what it can know simply because of the way it naturally functions?

I am not saying that this the case, but I am pointing out that it is entirely plausible and shows that the fact that we tend to speak in moral absolutes (even when we try not to) does not provide direct evidence that there in fact are moral absolutes. While I do think that there are moral principles that should be observed everywhere (although the ways in which they are observed will be highly contextual), arguing from the way we speak is clearly not going to get us there. Perhaps one might say that Christianity provides a more satisfying account of reality because it provides a reason for why we happen to speak this way, namely because it reflects a larger moral reality, but this is not something that can be demonstrated. Trying to make ontological claims on the basis of moral language (or any kind of language) seems like a misguided approach. Drawing connections between language and ontology is a difficult and muddle task. Clearly, language seeks to mirror reality, but its difficult to say to what extent we are justified in drawing ontological conclusions based on the way that we use language.

This is an important topic, because morality is often a major point of contention in atheist/theist debates, with theists claiming that while atheists clearly can and do act morally, they have no ontological basis for it. I'm not sure entirely what to make of these claims or how far they can be pressed, although there is some intuitive plausibility to it. Clearly, however, other accounts of morality can be given. The debate is then over which explanation can better satisfy the kind of moral claims that a person would like to make. This issue isn't strictly related to arguing to moral absolutes from moral language, but I bring it up just to throw some features of this contentious topic. I may have some further thoughts on this topic that I'll post later. It's just something that I keep thinking about and haven't come to any real conclusions on.

Some Thoughts on History

I recently read Grant Wacker's excellent essay "Understanding the Past, Using the Past: Reflections on Two Approaches to History," from the book Religious Advocacy and American History (1997). Wacker makes some excellent points about the nature of history as a discipline and how it relates to religion. It's worth quoting at length:

"All but the most obtuse readers readily see that the discipline's natural tendency is to debunk. Readers quite reasonably begin to worry when they learn that all religious artifacts, including their own, can be substantially if not wholly explained without recourse to God. They desperately want to believe that their most cherished views about life and the after-life were discovered, not invented, and they shudder when historians suggest otherwise. Religious folk recoil when they find out that other men and women have fashioned intellectual and moral universes dramatically different from their own. It is important to note that the problem here is not pluralism per se, but the recognition that other men and women, holding other points of view, came to those positions intelligently and with moral integrity. As far as that goes, religious folk resist being studied at all, or treated as though their beliefs and rituals were a quantifiable part of the natural world. And for many the most upsetting part of all is to learn how shabby their own story - the story of their own tribe, their own sect - really is, for all too often it proves to be a tale of small-minded men and women inflicting large-minded cruelties upon anyone who got in their way.
"So how does an internal approach to the past help believers cope? How does it de-fang the serpent of the historical study of religion, and especially of one's own religion? Not by telling lies, to be sure. Not even by telling little lies of prudent omission. Rather it serves them by letting the dead speak just as they were, eloquent and stammering, mellifluous and gasping. Thoughtful souls, newly burdened with an acute sense of humankind's "terrible predicaments," as Herbert Butterfield put it, may emerge from their encounter with the past feeling "a little sorry for everybody." If the price of such chastening is a sharpened vision of human pretension, the reward may be a heightened sense of divine faithfulness generation after generation. Yet such enrichment becomes an available resource only if believers take the fifth commandment, to honor their fathers and mothers - their forebears - with utter seriousness. And here it is worth remembering that the fifth commandment was the first commandment of the second table of the Law, the table that told folks how to get along with each other after they had taken care of the seemingly more manageable task of getting along with God."

The Church's story is one with many twists and turns, and its certainly not one of unflagging faithfulness. There is a need to face this past with candor, however, as Wacker so eloquently points out. Lies of omission and distortion does no favors for the cause of the Gospel. Neither does dismissing the religious traditions or experiences of others. We have no reason to deny that people of all faiths can and do have encounters with God. They interpret them through the beliefs and framework of their religion, just as I do as a Christian. The difference is that I believe that Jesus Christ provides the fullest expression of God and his relation to humans. Whether this is true is obviously a point of contention, but that does not mean that my religious experience or anyone else's can be dismissed simply for being interpreted differently. A completely secular or agnostic interpretation of what I call the presence of God might simply be that such experiences are entirely generated by our minds, or psychological pressure, or chemical predispositions. The question is then one of the adequacy of the explanation. I won't take the time right now to offer my view on why I feel that I really do experience the Triune God and not just self-generated mental experiences, though suffice to say I do believe that this is the case.

My point is only that taking a dismissive attitude towards the religious traditions and experiences of others is harmful and misguided, because as Wacker notes, these other traditions represent many people with rational and moral integrity. Looking at the past means that we must take our own history seriously, and the history of others. We must let our forebear's speak for themselves; with wisdom, with prejudice, with finitude, with sinfulness, with grace. The past offers hard questions and uncomfortable events, but trying to twist it or downplay its blemishes is not only dishonest, it also shows a lack of faith in the God who has chosen to place treasure in jars of clay. The Church universal, and all its sects and denominations, bear witness to the revelation of God in Jesus Christ, and its deep and complicated history, skeletons and all, is part of this legacy. This may raise some troubling questions and provoke anguished soul searching, but that is part of the humility that we as Christians ought to embody.

On the Joys of Plural Perspectives

I frequently come across comments/arguments that go something like "every Christian (or insert religion of choice) group interprets the world/Scripture/whathaveyou in different ways. There are huge differences within the same group, so clearly none of this can be true. Afterall, if Christianity were true, then God would have revealed things more clearly so we wouldn't have all of these disagreements." This line of thinking goes a long way to strike at an approach to faith that sees itself as having all of the answers while everyone else in the world wanders blindly.

The problem is that it isn't close to what Jesus taught. It falls into a troublesome view of faith as a matter of propositional knowledge. If that's all that my Christian faith is, then I have a problem on my hands, as has been pointed out in places like this blog, which specifically approaches religion from this propositional standpoint. This kind of perspective, which many Christians share, assumes that the Bible is a great big book of propositional knowledge that contains "answers" to "questions."

To think this way, in my humble opinion, is a huge exercise in missing the point. The kind of knowledge the Bible has to offer is deeply personal, as is evidenced by Jesus Christ's invitation to "follow me". It is the kind of knowledge that comes from following God, not from learning propositions. The Bible is a story (or stories) of interactions between humans and God, and God's interaction in the world. It is full of surprises (after all, Jesus was nothing like the messiah the religious authorities of his day were expecting, and these were the people who had read the scriptures the most of anyone. This should give us pause before making confident pronouncements about what God will do).

Stories and propositions are very different in terms of the kind of questions that can be asked of them. Debating the probability/plausibility of God having done something in the past makes no sense, since we are dealing with something that if genuine is an historical event. There are plenty of improbable events in history. An event being rare or unprecedented or even sui generis does not make it unhistorical simply by virute of its uniqueness and improbability. This just goes to say that if we think of the Bible as telling a story, a story in which we are in the middle and still don't know the end, then we should be open to surprises and turns that we did not see or expect. This also means that any hope for confidence must rely on our confidence in the author of this story, not in our own understanding.

This means that our hope for communion with God and salvation is not based on our own propositional understanding. Encountering the God who is three persons has nothing to do with propositional understanding of the Bible and our attitudes toward it. This doesn't mean that our interpretative frameworks don't heavily influence the ways in which we try to relate to God, but it should give make us realize that our horizon is almost certainly not broad enough. If God is a person, then to know God is to know in a relational sense. This is huge. The difference between a propositional approach to God and a personal one is the difference between a conversation and an autopsy. Too many people (including other Christians) try to perform autopsies instead of engaging in conversations (that's probably a topic for another post).

The consequence of all this is that our confidence must be a confidence in God Himself, and not in how we interpret the Bible. How we interpret is important, but we must recognize that we are in the middle of the story, so any framework we have will be limited by our own human, historical, and cultural finitude. So someone else interprets the Bible differently than me. So what? We're both probably wrong about some of it. Salvation and eternity isn't riding on our propositional understanding of religion. It is about our attitude towards God, an attitude that says "not my will, but yours be done." Because God is calling us to know Him, and not things about Him, then it isn't terribly troubling that Christians disagree with each other. Our different perspectives represent our different histories, contexts, family backgrounds, etc. but none of that prevents us from connecting with the God who transcends all of these things and reaches down to us in our subjective finiteness.

All of these different perspectives shed different light and many offer wonderful insights, but we are not called as Christians to adopt a specific perspective, so we must learn to acknowledge the inadequacy of our own interpretive frameworks. We can learn from each other, especially about the need for humility. It is deeply saddening to see denominations attacking each other, because it reflects this propositionally-oriented view. I'm not saying that beliefs aren't important (I deeply love the Nicene Creed), but they aren't the whole story or even the main point. I just fear that way too many Christians have bought into a view of faith and the Bible that is foreign to what the texts contained within it teach, creating an unintentional straw-man which critics and skeptics are quick (and right) to attack. The problem is, it's a view that doesn't match up with the New Testament I read or the God who it reveals to me. Letting go of a propositional view that has sadly replaced a personal view will go a long way to helping us better understand on our own faith and making sure that we aren't following a caricature.

A Work in Progress

I have no idea if anyone will ever find this blog.
At the moment, I have no intentions of trying to promote it or generate traffic or suck up to other bloggers in hopes of piggybacking off of their success. I just felt the need for an outlet for many of the thoughts that I have been working through.

This is inspired by the often frustrating experience I have had reading blogs about Christianity. I struggle a lot with how I can best articulate my faith. I find myself inhibited with words that have almost been robbed of their power by flippant repetition and trite sloganeering. "Grace," "love," "relationship," "faith," are all used by many of my fellow Christians (often in a well-intentioned way) in a way that trivializes pressing questions, important dilemmas, and painful situations and events. I also read regularly from atheist and former Christian blogs, and I have been struck by the struggle to communicate that many of the Christians who feel the need to comment on these blogs experience. Sometimes these blogs provide caricatures and wildly uncharitable (to say the least) interpretations of the faith I cherish, but many times they also raise important questions that challenge certain views of God, Jesus, the Bible, the Church, etc.

I don't want my faith to be defined by someone else. I also don't want to provide just another voice of argument. This isn't going to be about arguments for the existence of God or why the existence of evil isn't a problem. I am not here to make confident assertions. Faith is hard. I have a lot of questions, and so do many other people. This is my attempt to deal with them. Thinking and reflecting is crucial, and also incredibly rewarding. I cannot express how liberating it is to probe deeply into who God is and find myself freed from misguided assumptions that are often paraded as unshakable truths by some of my fellow believers.
I have been called to work out my salvation in fear and trembling, and that means questioning and being questioned. It means that I need to have humility and a sober appraisal of my own abilities. In the midst of questions, doubt, fear, I have also found joy in Jesus Christ. I simply want to express all of this in whatever way I am able, and hopefully it may resonate with others as well.