Beyond Science: Understanding Real Knowledge

In previous articles, I looked at how many people make the mistake of assuming that science is the only way we can know something is true. We showed how this view, known as scientism, must be false since it is self-refuting. This time, I thought we'd look at the idea of how we know that we know anything at all and how to better understand the differences between knowledge and beliefs.

Types of Knowledge

Philosophers have spent a lot of time on understanding what it means when we say we know this or that. In their book Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview, J.P. Moreland and William Lane Craig identify three basic types of knowing. The most basic type is knowledge by acquaintance which is simply that you have had some type of direct experience with an object or idea and therefore know it to be true. The authors offer an example of "I know the ball is in front of me." Because the ball is directly present in your conscious experience, you can confidently know that statement to be true. 1

A more debated aspect of this type of knowledge is basic mathematic statements and logical deductions. Some philosophers argue that we know 2+2=4 in the same sense that we know a ball is in front of us. It is directly perceived as true. You don't have to go out and observe 2+2 in different environments around the world or around the universe to confidently hold that he product will always turn out to be 4. We understand that it just is that way. Similarly, we experience the same type of understanding when we argue in this way: All men are born. Socrates was a man; therefore Socrates must have been born. That is a logical argument, but we know it to be true directly.

A second way we know something is through know-how. Know-how defines certain skills or abilities one may possess. When someone claims "I know how to play golf", they are expressing knowledge of ability. Moreland and Craig point out that knowledge of the laws or mechanics is not necessary to hold this type of knowledge. They write "For example, one can know how to adjust one's swing for a curve ball without consciously being aware that one's stride is changing or without knowing any background theory of hitting technique." 2

The third type of knowledge is what is usually debated the most. Known as propositional knowledge this type of knowledge deals with statements that make some kind of claim to fact. Statements such as "I know Abraham Lincoln was the sixteenth president of the United States", "I know our Sun is 93 million mionles away" or "I know humans evolved from apes" are all propositional statements.

Justified True Beliefs

One of the reasons propositional knowledge has been debated is because it has been more difficult than other types of knowledge to define completely and accurately. One of the most foundational definitions of propositional knowledge is the concept of "justified true beliefs" that Plato offered in his writing "Theaetetus". Plato said that if we claim to know something, then what we claim must indeed be true. If a claim is not true, then we didn't really know it; we were mistaken. Further, if we claim to know something we must actually believe the claim to be true. It makes no sense to know something but not to believe it. If I say, "I know the ball is on the floor, but I don't believe the ball is on the floor" I've spoken nonsense.

So truth and belief are what we would call necessary conditions for knowledge. For knowledge to exist, they must both be present. However, they are not sufficient conditions for knowing. Many people believe things, and those beliefs may in fact be true, but that doesn't mean they know those things. Take the statement "I know Jones had roast beef for dinner last night." Now, it may be the case that Jones did indeed have roast beef for dinner, and it may be the case that I truly believe Jones had roast beef for dinner, but by making that assertion without any basis, I've just guessed the right answerand thus cannot be taken as knowledge.

In order to truly know something, there must be some acceptable reason to hold that belief. Justified true belief is believing something that is true with good reason. If I claim to know Jones had roast beef for dinner last night because it's a Monday and he always has roast beef on Mondays, and I smelled roast beef coming from his home, I have good reasons to believe Jones in fact had roast beef. That is a justified belief that can be counted as knowledge. If, however, I claim to know Jones had roast beef for dinner last night because I consulted my Magic 8 Ball, that's not knowledge since the reasons I've given are spurious. It becomes the same as guessing.

Knowledge and the Limits of Science

So why does all of this knowledge stuff matter? Because it helps us understand what is real knowledge and what isn't. When looking at scientific propositions, we understand we can know certain things like the speed at which an object falls or what chemical reaction is necessary to produce nitro-glycerin. Science deals with observations of the material world, so these are justified beliefs; we can say we can know such things through science. However, for other claims, such as whether God exists or whether DNA is the proper basis for measuring the similarities between humans and other animals, science has no justification to make claims of knowledge.

You see, science can only tell us facts about the material world. By definition, science has no way of meaningfully commenting on the many other ways we know things. Science can tell us whether a person's heart is beating faster and he is sweating, but it must fall silent as to whether the cause of that reaction is lying or love. Similarly, science cannot tell us about the most unique aspect of humanity, that is the human soul. When looking at propositions such as the existence of God, science has no way of "testing for God-ness". However, I can know through reasoning that universe began to exist and whatever begins to exist must have a cause. 3 I can therefore conclude that if whatever exists must have a cause and the universe began to exist, then the universe must have a cause: God. That is a belief that has strong justification for it. It is knowledge that is outside the scope of science, but it is probably a more authoritative basis for knowing.

So, even though popular culture looks to the scientist to tell them "the facts" about all things, science is really woefully inadequate to explain many aspects of reality. Scientists may presupposes certain things like miracles cannot happen or there is no God, and then formulate other theories. But that's not knowledge, that's presupposition. Personal experience, emotions, reason, logic, and revelation all address truth-claims and all can be justifiable in their proper instances. To limit one's self to science in order to gain knowledge is like trying to build a house with only a hammer. A hammer can pound nails, but you wouldn't want to use it to drive a screw and it would be completely useless to cut wood.

References

1.Moreland, J.P. and William Lane Craig Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview
(Downers Grove, IL:InterVarsity Press, 2003). 72.
2. Ibid. 73.
3. See my article "What the Kalam tells us about God's existence"

J.P. Moreland on Why God Won't Force People Into Heaven

If you were to force people to do something against their free choice, you would be dehumanizing them. You would be saying that the good of what you want to do is more valuable than respecting their choices, and so you're treating people as a means to an end by requiring them to do something they don't want. That's what it would be like of God forced everyone to go to heaven.

If God has given people free will, then there's no guarantee that everybody's going to choose to cooperate with him. The option of forcing everyone to go to heaven is immoral, because it's dehumanizing; it strips them of the dignity of making their own decision; it denies them their freedom of choice; and it treats them as a means to an end.
God can't make people's character for them. And people who do evil or cultivate false beliefs start a slide away from God that ultimately ends in Hell. God respects human freedom. In fact it would be unloving—a sort of divine rape—to force people to accept heaven and God if they didn't really want them. When God allows people to say 'no' to him, he actually respects and dignifies them.

- J.P. Moreland quoted from Lee Strobel's The Case for Faith (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000).

Reaching Your Community by Intentionally Reaching Out (video)

There's a lot of worry in our churches today. Everyone is asking "How can we stop the tide of young people leaving the church?" Even Bible-believing churches have seen a decrease in the number of young people engaging.  But all is not dire.

In our relativistic culture, people generally want to find something that is more meaningful and more solid than the whims of amorphous spirituality that the world preaches. Young people want to take action! In this video I talk about how among Christians, interest in participating in community projects is escalating. That means the Church has a great opportunity to reach out in love, to touch the lives of others, and to show one way Christianity is still incredibly relevant in the world today.




For more on this idea, see my post here.

How to Get into Spiritual Conversations - Part 2

A few weeks ago, I wrote a popular post on how to start spiritual conversations (you can read it here.) There, I said that one way to begin discussing spiritual things is to listen and discuss topics where people are already interested, such as a news event or a holiday. Just this week, both the news and social media have been awash in stories about Robin Williams and his recent death. Certainly, thoughts about our mortality and whether there's an afterlife come into play. However, it isn't always best to force such a conversation, especially if the person had strong feelings towards the actor. People need to feel; they need to process difficult news and it would be offensive to jump in and immediately turn a tragedy into a sermon.

That said, once a few days pass, it may be appropriate to speak in more general terms about the cult of celebrity and whether our culture places too much value on the lives of the rich and famous. I remember when Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple Computer, died. The day after his passing, the International Business Times published a story which led with "Steve Jobs is dead, but his legacy will live on for decades to come. It is impossible to overstate the impact his work had not only on the world of technology, but on the world as a whole."1 Time magazine included Jobs in its 2012 list of the 20 most influential Americans of all time.2 Not of the past century, but of all time!

Some of the stories released seemed to treat Jobs' achievements as if they were on par not with Henry Ford but Jonas Salk. Such gushing even caused the popular secular tech site Gawker to publish an article with the title "Steve Jobs was not God."3 Author Hamilton Nolan writes:

"So, Steve Jobs is dead. A tech genius has passed on. Sad. Certainly a devastating loss to Steve Jobs' close friends and family members, as well as to Apple executives and shareholders. The rest of you? Calm down.

Among my Facebook friends yesterday, more than one wrote publicly that they were "crying" or "can't stop crying" or "teared up" due to Steve Jobs' death. Really now. You can't stop crying, now that you've heard that a middle-aged CEO has passed on, after a long battle with cancer? If humans were always so empathetic, well, that would be understandable. But this type of one-upmanship of public displays of grief is both unbecoming and undeserved.

"Real outpourings of public grief should be reserved for those people who lived life so heroically and selflessly that they stand as shining examples of love for all of humanity. People like, for example, the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth."4

For those of you who may not know, Shuttlesworth was a civil rights leader who marched with Dr. Martin Luther King.5 He happened to have died the same day as Jobs, but did anyone hear about it? The New York Times ran the story on Shuttlesworth on page A33, the story on Jobs ran on A1.

Although Jobs made products that many people love and use daily, I can easily picture a world not too different from this one without him. Further, although Jobs at his death was worth $8.3 billion, he didn't have a strong history of philanthropy. Jobs gave some personal donations to area hospitals and to AIDS support, but his gifts amounted to less than 1% of his wealth. Andrew Ross Sorkin even noted that as a company, philanthropy wasn't part of the Apple culture:

While many high-growth technology companies have philanthropic arms, Apple does not. It does not have a company matching program for charitable giving by its employees like some other Fortune 500 companies. The company did donate $100,000 in 2008 to a group seeking to block Proposition 8, a ballot measure that would have banned same-sex marriage in California. But over all, Apple has been one of "America's least philanthropic companies," as termed by Stanford Social Innovation Review, a magazine about the nonprofit sector, in 2007.6

So, in what type of esteem should one hold Jobs? Because he made popular products and had a keen eye for the future, does that merit the level of adulation he received after his passing? Does our culture place too high a value on things and people who make us feel good rather than how they may help others? How does it reflect upon us as a society if people "can't stop crying" after the death of someone they never knew? Does taking the Christian teaching on altruism and selflessness seriously change how people who are successful use their wealth?

There are many spiritual discussions that you can get into in this way. By using an example that's old news, you avoid the "raw" quality of attacking a recent situation but you can still make people think a bit about the reactions they see.

References

1. IBTimes Staff Reporter. "Steve Jobs Dead: 5 Ways His Legacy Changed the World." IBT Media. 06 Oct 2011. Web. http://www.ibtimes.com/steve-jobs-dead-5-ways-his-legacy-changed-world-321751
2. "The 20 Most Influential Americans of All Time." Time Magazine.24 Jul 2012. Web. http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/07/25/the-20-most-influential-americans-of-all-time/
3. Nolan, Hamilton. "Steve Jobs was not God." Gawker.com. 06 Oct 2011.. Web. http://gawker.com/5847338/steve-jobs-was-not-god
4. Nolan, Ibid.
5. Norheimer, Jon. "Rev. Fred L. Shuttlesworth, an Elder Statesman for Civil Rights, Dies at 89." The New York Times. 05 Oct 2011. Web. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/06/us/rev-fred-l-shuttlesworth-civil-rights-leader-dies-at-89.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
6. Sorkin, Andrew Ross. "The Mystery of Steve Jobs's Public Giving." The New York Times. 29 Aug 2011. Web .http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/08/29/the-mystery-of-steve-jobss-public-giving/

Arguing God's Existence Even When There are No Atheists

Today, Christians can run into many people who doubt God's existence. While books by the New Atheists like Dawkins, Hitchens, and Harris are the most well-known, many "Internet atheists" will comment about the lack of evidence for God's existence or the supposed incredulity of a Supreme Being.

Most Christians who defend God's existence have quite a few different arguments from which to draw upon. Apologists can recount arguments based on the fact that something exists rather than nothing (cosmological arguments), the design evident in creation (teleological arguments), the existence of moral values and duties (axiological arguments), as well as the argument from contingency, the argument from reason, the argument from consciousness, and even arguing that the greatest possible being must exist (ontological arguments).

The amazing thing isn't that as veritable smorgasbord of arguments for God's existence exist within Christianity, it's that arguments for God's existence have existed for millennia, while atheism as we know it is a relatively new phenomenon. In his book, Atheists: The Origin of the Species, Nick Spenser writes that while some of the seeds of atheism had developed through the Renaissance, it really wasn't until ‘the end of the eighteenth century, in which a handful of pioneers, most prominent in France, put forth the first openly and unapologetically atheist arguments since the classical period." 1 Yet, 1200 or so years before Hume and Hébert,  Augustine was offering arguments for God's existence in his On Free Choice of the Will. In the 11th century, Anselm came up with his famous Ontological argument, and during the 13th century, St. Thomas Aquinas wrote his Summa Theologica which included the famous Five Ways arguments for the existence of God.

There were no atheists in Christianized Europe during the Middle Ages. There may have been people branded as heretics and there were definitely many different faith traditions, but no one was actively pushing the non-existence of God. So why would some of the most famous collections of arguments for God's existence be written then?

The answer is simply that Christianity has always been a faith based on evidence. Jesus commanded us to love God with not only our hearts and souls, but with our minds as well. Paul also instructs Christians to "test everything; hold fast what is good." Christianity is built for intellectual inquiry. It should be no surprise, then, that Christians such as Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas would explore questions of God's existence even if there were no atheists to object to their claim that God does indeed exist.

Frederick Copleston, in commenting on Aquinas' arguments makes an interesting observation:

To us indeed living in a world where atheism is common, where powerful and influential philosophies eliminate or explain away the notion of God, where multitudes of men and women are educated without any belief in God, it seems only natural to think that God's existence requires proof… St. Thomas, however, did not live in a world where theoretic atheism was common, and he felt himself compelled to deal with not only early Christian writers which seem to imply that knowledge of God is innate in man, but also with the famous argument from St. Anselm which purports to show that the non-existence of God is inconceivable.2

Copleston says that Aquinas was arguing against other Christian writings, examining them and calling them out where he felt they were deficient. He was providing some intellectual checks and balances as it were. The fact that intellectual Christians would scrutinize their own teachings and offer rebuttals or counter-evidence demonstrates that leaders like Aquinas were interested in the truth.

Socrates is famously quoted as saying "the unexamined life is not worth living." Christianity is not an unexamined faith. It has been examined not only by its detractors, but by its proponents as well. It is probably one of the most scrutinized worldviews in all of history, yet it continues to offer a complete and cogent understanding f our world.

So the next time you hear an argument against God's existence, don't fear. Chances are it has been examined carefully by Christians already, and found wanting.

References

1. Spenser, Nick. Atheists: The Origin of the Species.(London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc., 2014). xvii.

2. Copleston, Frederick, SJ. A History of Philosophy Volume II: Medieval Philosophy. (New York: Image Books, 1993). 336.

Image provided by David Shankbone and licensed under the Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unportedlicense.

Scientism tries to Turn Man into a Monkey

Many Christians are familiar with the classic book The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan. For those of you who aren't, it's an allegory of growing in Christian faith where the protagonist named Christian meets some friends (such as Evangelist and Faithful) as well as many unsavory characters like Mr. Worldly Wiseman, Hypocrisy, and Talkative in his walk down the narrow path. While Bunyan wrote in the mid 1600's,the book is amazingly poignant for today.

One particularly striking section dealt with a character named Shame. Christian's friend Faithful recounts to him Shame's accusations against believers. Specifically, Shame claims the religious are basically weak-minded individuals, not living in the real world. He goes on to point out how successful and intelligent people don't believe in such things and how believing in Christianity forces one to ignore the scientific advancements and knowledge of the day. "He moreover objected to the base and low estate and condition of those who were chiefly the pilgrims of the times in which they lived; also in their want of understanding in the natural sciences." 1 So, Shame accuses the Christians of being willfully ignorant. Ignoring what he holds to be the true knowledge of science, Shame charges Christian with substituting the crutch of religion to salve his wounds.

Our Popular Conception of Science

Today, we are even more apt to hear such objections to believing the biblical message. This is in large part due to the over-emphasized view science is given in our modern culture. Science is understood in today's world to be the only reliable source of truth. One has only to look at the advertisements we use to sell products to see how much we esteem the concept of scientific veracity. If you really want to make your case for the potency of a product, just have your spokesman wear a white lab coat, begin his name with Dr., or explain how "tests have shown" the item to be more effective. If science has shown something to be true, then it must be true. And if there is a conflict between beliefs and what science has shown, then most people will assume that it is our beliefs that are in error, not science.

These assumptions are unfortunate, but not altogether unsurprising. As I've said before, science has helped humanity in incredible ways. Our lifespan have been extended by decades, we can modify our environment if we're too hot or too cold, and technology has made our daily chores easier. Our learning has also increased exponentially; we better understand the way the world works, we can predict certain phenomena and we've even visited the moon! So with all science has proven it can do, how could it not be real way to know truth?

Scientism's Claim to Truth

There are two problems we run into when discussing science and the way we know things to be true. The more egregious error is the one the easier to identify and argue against. That is the belief that only things that are scientifically verifiable are truly knowable and everything else is opinion and conjecture. This view is known a Scientism, and has had proponents such as Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking and the late evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould. Noted skeptic Michael Shermer defined Scientism as "a scientific worldview that encompasses natural explanations for all phenomena, eschews supernatural or paranormal speculations, and embraces empiricism and reason as the twin pillars of a philosophy of life appropriate for an age of science." 2

The proponents of Scientism hold that "only things that are scientifically verifiable are truly knowable", is a true and knowable statement. However, that statement is itself unverifiable scientifically. One cannot construct a hypothesis to test for the statement's veracity. There's no way to go into a laboratory and run this idea through a battery of tests to see whether it can be falsified. Scientism, by setting a standard that cannot itself meets, undercuts its own existence. It becomes what we call a self-refuting statement. Because it does so, Scientism should rightfully be rejected as illogical.

Who Chooses the Standard of Comparison?

The main problem with our popular view of science, though, is more subtle and it therefore takes more care to identify. Because science has taken such a high role in our society, statements that are couched in a scientific approach are thought to hold more weight than other types of assertions. However, many who are purporting to advance a scientific view are really making philosophic statements - and they're making a lot of assumptions along the way.

A good example of this is one that Christian philosopher Francis J. Beckwith related to me at dinner one evening. He told of how he had become engaged in a discussion on origins through an Internet bulletin board whose members were primarily biologists and other scientists. One member was asserting the fact of evolution by noting how science has shown human DNA and chimpanzee DNA to be 98% identical. The biologist then concluded that this proves humans and chimps share an evolutionary ancestor.

Dr. Beckwith countered this claim by asking a simple question: Why do you choose genetics be your basis of comparison? It seems an arbitrary choice. Why not any other field of science, say quantum mechanics? Dr. Beckwith went on to explain that if you examine humans and chimpanzees at the quantum level, why then we're 100% identical! Our atoms move and act in exactly the same way as the atoms of the chimp! Of course, human atoms and the atoms of the table where I'm writing this also act identically. How about if we examine each via physics? Again, we're identical: each species will remain in motion unless enacted upon by an outside force, for example.

The scientists had a very difficult time understanding Dr. Beckwith's point, but it was simply this: one cannot start with science to understand the world. Science relies on certain philosophical rules in order to work at all. What was happening is the biologist was making philosophical assumptions and then using science to try and support them. The assumption in the claim above is that all life can be reduced to its genetic make-up, and everything you need to know about any living thing can be deduced from its DNA. It's this assumption that's flawed. It doesn't follow that if humans share 98% of their DNA with chimps that evolution is therefore a fact. But the scientists today aren't trained in logic or philosophy, so they have a lot of difficulty understanding that they are making flawed philosophical arguments and packing them in scientific facts.

References:

1. Bunyan, John The Pilgrim's Progress
Baker Book house, Grand Rapids, MI 1984 p.89
2. Shermer, Michael "The Shamans of Scientism" Scientific American June 2002
Accessed online at: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000AA74F-FF5F-1CDB-B4A8809EC588EEDF

Digging into the Reliability of the OT Books of Kings

One of the more popular ways skeptics try to undermine the authoritative value of the Bible is to question the validity of its narratives. Usually this means asserting that the events recorded in the Bible never really happened or happened much differently than how the text reads. From the Jesus myth proponents who claimed that Jesus never lived to the more subtle claims of an author drawing upon various traditions or separate historical sources that existed during his time. The books of 1 &2 Kings and 1 &2 Chronicles have received much of this type of criticism, with various views of a later author creating the account to try and provide meaning to the tragedy of Israel's conquer and captivity.1

In his commentary on First and Second Kings, Richard D. Nelson echoes some of this sentiment:

Large portions of the narrative can no longer be considered "actual history" by any modern definition. There are legends, miracle stories, folktales, and fictional constructions. Kings draw moral lessons from events, a concern far removed from that of modern history writing. Most fundamentally, causation for events in Kings shifts from human to divine and back again without any embarrassment.2

While I certainly agree with Nelson that the primary reason we have the books of Kings and Chronicles in the Bible is not to learn history but to understand God and His nature, I don't think it follows that one may dismiss the accounts therein as fictional. While it would be impossible to fact-check things such as whether the Lord sent the Assyrian army to conquer the Northern Kingdom, it is possible to check whether such an event occurred. The more the history we can corroborate that is recorded in the books, the less room is left for myth.

It turns out that the books of Kings and Chronicles gets an awful lot of its history right. Kenneth Kitchen, his masterful work On the Reliability of the Old Testament, begins with the records of the various kings recorded in the books of Kings and Chronicles and shows just how historically reliable the records are. II kings and II Chronicles record a time spanning 350 years' worth of Jewish kings and foreign rulers who either were enemies or alliances, and Kitchen notes that the written accounts do a remarkable job in getting everything right. In looking at just the Babylonian and Assyrian rulers, Kitchen is able to build a timeline of succeeding rulers that accurately matches the archaeological inscriptions found within those lands themselves.3 He lists the various ways these books prove their reliability:4

1. Foreign Rulers in the Hebrew Record: "Out of twenty foreign rulers (and a general), all but two (or three?)duly turn up in the external records available to date, usually on their home patch (Assyria in Assyrian records, etc.), This is a highly satisfactory standard."
2. Hebrew Kings in External Records: "But from 853 onwards we do have some data. Some nine out of fourteen Israelite kings are named in external sources. Of the five missing men, three were ephemeral (Zechariah, Shallum, Pekahiah) and two reigned (Jehoahaz, Jeroboam II) when Assyria was not actice in the southwest Leant… Judah was farther away than Israel so the head count is smaller: from Jeraboam I to Zedekiah we have currently mention of eight kings out of fifteen."
3. Local Rulers and the Sequence of Rulers: "The time-line order of foreign rulers in 1-2 Kings is impeccably accurate, as is the order of Hebrew rulers, as attested by the external sources. As for chronology, (dates B.C.), the elaborate date lines of 1-2 Kings show a very high degree of consistency and reliability (tying with external dates)."

Kitchen goes on to talk about events and other sources that may be checked against the discoveries of coins, engravings and other records found by archaeologists. He then concludes:

At this stage, and without prejudice as to what may be seen elsewhere, the basic presentation of almost 350 years of the story of the Hebrew twin kingdoms comes out under factual examination as a highly reliable one, with mention of own and foreign rulers who were real, in the right order, at the right date, and sharing a common history that usually dovetails together well, when both the Hebrew and external sources are available. Therefore, we have no valid reason to cast gratuitous doubt on other episodes where comparable external data is comparably lacking, either because the records are long since destroyed or are still buried in the ground."5

References

1. Noth, Martin. "The Central Theological ideas." Reconsidering Israel and Judah: Recent Studies on the Deuteronomistic History, edited by Gary N. Knoppers, J. Gordon McConville. (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2000). 20ff.
2. Nelseon, Richard D. First and Second Kings. (Louisvillew, KY: John Knox Press, 1987). 1-2.
3. Kitchen, K. A. On the Reliability of the Old Testament. (Grand Rapids: Eeardmans, Pub., 2003). 23.
4. Kitchen, 62-63.
5. Kitchen, 64.

Ann Coulter is Wrong-People are More than Numbers

I finally had the chance to read the column Ann Coulter wrote about Kent Brantly, the African Missionary doctor who contracted the deadly Ebola virus while treating others in Liberia. Entitled "Ebola Doc's Condition Downgraded to 'Idiotic'," Coulter's piece is not only confused, but also mean-spirited. However, I want to use Coulter's disparagement of Christian missionary efforts as an opportunity for Christians to learn something: how judging Christian efforts by worldly standards is mistaken. Coulter thinks her reprimand is clever, but she fails to recognize the value of human life and discounts the power of God.

Devaluing Human Life

Coulter's article, aside from the emotionally poisonous words, tries to make the argument that Christian missions should be approached from a utilitarian perspective. She complains about how the cost of treating the now infected doctor and his nurse "has cost a Christian charity much more than any services he rendered" and then asks "why do we have to deal with this at all?"1 The answer is simple and something that is largely forgotten in this day and age: Christianity values human dignity. Because humans are made in the image of God, Christianity has always taught that alleviating suffering at cost to oneself is a noble and worthwhile pursuit in and of itself. In Jesus' parable of the Good Samaritan, it is an enemy of Israel that provides comfort and healing to the victim on the street. The Samaritan even pays the poor man's caretaker's bill and tells the innkeeper "whatever more you spend, I will repay you."2

Throughout the history of Christianity, Christians have sought to model their Master's words. The Romans thought Christians were crazy for picking up indigent children who had been abandoned on the Tiber. In an agrarian society, a healthy child is an asset, another hand to help work the farm. An indigent child is a liability. It means another mouth to feed and more overall suffering in times of drought or famine, not to mention the additional work. However, Christians recognized the image of God that was reflected in each life and could not do otherwise than serve them.3 As I've previously written, missionaries such as Father Damien purposely risked themselves to serve in a leper colony, with death as a result.

Coulter has seemingly bought into the concept that human suffering can be somehow quantified into dollars and cents. By advancing such an idea, Coulter herself demonstrates how cheaply our society's view on human life really is. While her facts are a confused (when Brantly went to Liberia, it was not yet a country infected; It was only after he was stationed there that the outbreak began and he chose to stay and treat the victims), she still wants to measure the alleviation of human suffering by cost. That cannot be done. Christian missionaries demonstrate how invaluable human life is in such selfless acts. If suffering becomes only a bottom-line game, then we've lost our humanity altogether.

Underestimating the Power of God

The other major error Coulter makes in taking a utilitarian approach to missionary efforts is she simply doesn't understand how God works. In her article, she accuses missionaries of being "tired of fighting the culture war in the U.S... So they slink off to Third World countries, away from American culture to do good works, forgetting that the first rule of life on a riverbank is that any good that one attempts downstream is quickly overtaken by what happens upstream. "I don't know how Coulter can read the minds of so many Christian missionaries to ascribe such motives, but she feels that it is more prudent to be missionaries here in America. She writes:

If Dr. Brantly had practiced at Cedars-Sinai hospital in Los Angeles and turned one single Hollywood power-broker to Christ, he would have done more good for the entire world than anything he could accomplish in a century spent in Liberia. Ebola kills only the body; the virus of spiritual bankruptcy and moral decadence spread by so many Hollywood movies infects the world.

If he had provided health care for the uninsured editors, writers, videographers and pundits in Gotham and managed to open one set of eyes, he would have done more good than marinating himself in medieval diseases of the Third World. 

Here, Coulter completely ignores 1 Corinthians 12:14 that the body of Christ has many members and each is called to a different role. Paul instructs the church "The eye cannot say to the hand, 'I have no need of you,' nor again the head to the feet, 'I have no need of you.' On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable."4

My calling is apologetics. It involves interacting with people, discussing ideas, and possibly changing minds, which Coulter sees as essential. But that doesn't mean all should be so called. Brantly had always felt the call to Africa, even as a kid according to his mother.5 He did the thing that God had laid up on his heart, and that is the more important thing. Mother Theresa did likewise.

If God is in control, then we have faith that He may work it out for His good. And, while it may be that Brantly could make a movie mogul like Christians a bit more by providing him with medical services in New York, it is also possible that by contracting Ebola movie studios would be interested in making a movie of Brantly's life and heroism. It may even be possible that such a move would have a greater effect on the population of the country than Coulter assumes her path would take. It isn't like Chariots of Fire, Lilies of the Field, and even Molokai don't show such a result.

For Christians, pragmatism is not the primary model for action: obedience is. It is not to us to merely count the number of people we may touch, but to trust God and follow His will for our lives. That doesn't mean we don't take any kind of results into account, but it does mean that ministry efforts cannot be reduced to numbers.

I know Coulter is politically and not spiritually motivated. But even in this area, it has been proven that Christian missionaries are THE factor responsible for stable democracies forming across the African nation. Perhaps Coulter should look at the history of Christian missionary efforts a bit more carefully before she lambasts it so. People are not numbers; by her criticism, Coulter is in danger of becoming the very thing she says she stands against.

References

1. Coulter, Ann. "Ebola Doc's Condition Downgraded to 'Idiotic'." AnnCoulter.Com. 6 August, 2014. Online. "http://www.anncoulter.com/columns/2014-08-06.html
2. Luke 10:25-37. English Standard Version. Crossway. Accessed online. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%2010:25-37&version=ESV
3. See my article "How will children be valued if Christianity is lost?" for several supporting cases.
4. 1 Corinthians 12:21-23. English Standard Version. Crossway. Accessed online. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Corinthians+12&version=ESV
5. Associated Press. "Mother: Doctor with Ebola sought to be missionary." LIN Television Corporation. 28 July, 2014. Online. http://wishtv.com/2014/07/28/mother-doctor-with-ebola-sought-to-be-missionary/
Photo courtesy Kyle Cassidy and licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Big Change at Come Reason - August Update

Come Reason Ministries has always had a bold online presence, ever since our founding. Since creating one of the first apologetics sites on the web in 1995, the ministry has sought to use technology as a tool to further God's kingdom. I'm excited to announce that we've just finished completely overhauling the www.comereason.org web site, making it more functional as well as more attractive. The site is cleaner and easier to read, both for mobile devices and computers. Pages have been renamed using natural English titles for friendlier indexing, and all articles are immediately accessible via the navigation bar.

Other improvements to the site include:

• Both the Apologetics-Notes blog and the podcast page have been integrated into the site.
• A completely redesigned Tools area for grabbing free apologetics downloads or purchasing resources.
• A Come Reason Videos page that gives you direct access to YouTube and other videos.
• Easier to use social media sharing tools to share your favorite articles with friends.
• An improved search engine that indexes ALL the Come Reason web properties to give you complete results.

The Web site receives over 300,000 visitors yearly form nearly every country on earth and it is my prayer that this new site will do an even better job at providing convincing Christianity to a lost world.

Soon, we will provide some additional features, such as the ability to purchase MP3s of apologetics teachings for immediate download, so keep checking back. Until then, check out the new site and its features. I'd love to hear your comments.

Free Seattle Apologetics Conference begins tomorrow!

I'm very excited to be a part of the Speaking the Truth in Love Conference being held this year at Kent Covenant Church in Kent, WA. The August 8th & 9th event has a stellar lineup of speakers, including Dr. Phil Fernandez, Abdu Murray, Dr. Rick Walston, Ron Wallace, Dr. Eric Odell-Hein and more.

I'm scheduled to speak three times during the conference. My topics are “Hidden Ways the Gospels Prove Reliable,” “How to Talk About Faith on Facebook,” and “Dealing with Bible Contradictions.” This event is also free for the public, and if you register early, you even get a free book! You can get all the information at http://www.speakingthetruthinloveconference.com/ I hope to see you there!

The Bible and Archaeology Class

On Monday, August 11 I will be holding my next apologetics class at Harvest Christian Fellowship in Riverside. The topic is “The Bible and Archaeology “and we will examine the various archaeological finds supporting how the Bible is unique among sacred texts in that God moves within a historical backdrop. Do recent archaeological discoveries validate or discredit the Biblical accounts? Join us this month as we explore the relationship between the Bible and archaeology.

The class is free and open to anyone. It begins at 7:00 PM and childcare is provided. Click here for details.

Top Five Blog Posts for July

The Come Reason blog has continued to draw readers, with over 22,000 page views. Proving popular were several articles dismantling Mormon claims that corresponded to the Manti Apologetics Missions trips. Other topics looked at claims about Gandhi's “goodness” and how moral relativism forces atheists to make egregious claims. The five most popular posts are linked below:

1. When an atheist says it's OK to rape her sister
2. Are Mormons Christians, too?
3. We Don't Know What We Believe
4. Is Gandhi a better model for Christians?
5. Science and Religion Resources

This Month's Apologetics Resource:
Hidden Ways the Gospels Prove Reliable

This month, I'm excited to offer a new resource for your gift of any size. "Hidden Ways the Gospels Prove Reliable" takes a look at evidence that has recently come to light showing how the gospel accounts must have been written by first century eyewitnesses of the events they record. By studying the names used throughout the accounts, noting interlocking testimony, and finding undesigned coincidences, it becomes easy to see that the gospels are not fable, fiction, nor falsehood.

This gift is your for a secure donation of any size to help support the efforts of our ministry.

Would you consider making a gift to Come Reason today? Your tax deductible gift may be given securely online here, or you may send us a check at the address on the bottom of this email. However the Lord leads you, please know that I'm deeply grateful for your prayers and your friendship.

Blessings,


Lenny Esposito

What is the Uncaused Cause of the Universe?

Christianity has always been a faith that relies on reason and evidence for its beliefs. Paul models this in his challenge in 1 Corinthians 15, where he hangs all of Christianity on the fact of Jesus' resurrection from the dead "(if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile").1 After the apostles, we have the witness of early church fathers, such as Justin Martyr, through thinkers like Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas who all contributed to not simply the church's mental development, but to the growth of reason the world over.

 One of the more famous defenses by Thomas Aquinas is his Five Ways argument for God's existence, one of which argues that God is the Uncaused Cause2. This particular argument is sometimes misunderstood as arguing that all events are caused by preceding events, like a chain of dominoes. So if you were to trace all events back in time, you'd eventually get to a first cause that starts the dominoes falling. That description is closer to another of Aquinas' Five Ways arguments, the Unmoved Mover. The Uncaused Cause isn't a time-dependent argument, but rather an explanation of contingency. Just as my life is contingent on me breathing air right now, not just in the past, so all effects can point to their current state of existence as contingent on something else.

Aquinas rightly notes that to try and explain an effect (say the existence of the universe) by pointing to itself is impossible. This also applied to multiverse scenarios, since we must ask what causes the multiverse "engine" to produce multiple universes. Aquinas rightly says that such claims are simply not explanations. We must ground all effects in an ultimate cause, otherwise we have explained nothing.

Peter S. Williams has a great little video clip clearly explaining Aquinas' Uncaused Cause argument.  Check it out below:

References

1. See: Esposito, Lenny. "Why is the Resurrection so important?" Come Reason Ministries. Web.
http://apologetics-notes.comereason.org/2013/03/why-is-resurrection-so-important.html 10 March 2013.
2. Aquinas, Thomas. "Whether God exists?" Summa Theologica. (Benziger Bros. edition, 1947). Web.
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/aquinas/summa.FP_Q2_A3.html 5 Aug 2014.

Would Rape Be Moral If God Commanded It?

Last week, I recounted a time speaking with an atheist woman on the campus at UC Berkeley who said that rape would be OK if the person doing so truly believed he was right. It showed the folly of those who held to moral relativism. The post spurred a comment by Mark, who asked, "If the man had been commanded by God to perform the rape, would it then be a moral act?"

While Mark's question seems to offer a twist on the concept of grounding morality in God, the objection itself is not a new one. In fact, we know it's been around for at least 2,300 years because the Greek philosopher Plato set it forth in one of his dialogues, where the protagonist Socrates asks Euthyphro basically "Is God good because he follows some intrinsic goodness independent of Him, or is good whatever God declares to be good?"

Euthyphro's dilemma is famous because both options have disastrous consequences. If there's some independent concept of goodness, then even God is obligated to be good. But what or how does one then discover that concept? What grounds it? And how can God be God if He must obey laws like the rest of us? Doesn't this make God a little less omnipotent? But if we take the other option, that good is simply whatever God says is good, it makes good and bad pretty arbitrary. God could conceivably do what Mark asks (command that rape is now a good thing) and sins become virtues while virtues turn to sins. What kind of morality is that?

Splitting the Horns of Euthyphro's Dilemma

Christians have not been unaware of Euthyphro's dilemma. God's relationship with morality has been written about extensively by the likes of Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, and others. However, the solution to this dilemma is not as hard as one may think. The answer lies in the fact that there are more than the two choices that Plato laid out in his original dialogue. Christian theology teaches that God has certain intrinsic properties within Himself, such as love. Love cannot exist without a person to express it and when the Bible says "God is love" it communicates that it is a fundamental part of God's nature to love. Similarly, goodness is something that flows from the nature of God Himself. When we talk about doing what is right or wrong, we are comparing our actions to those that God would naturally approve or disapprove of us performing.

For an example of actions flow from nature, we can look to ourselves. Human beings are naturally linguistic creatures; we think in terms of language. If I asked you to plan your evening in your mind right now, you would invariably use words as you thought about your options. We don't think in only pictures but we use words and sentences, even if we aren't communicating our thoughts to someone else. Language is part of human nature and it simply flows from us. To try and violate this nature is pretty much impossible, because there is no other way to think about abstract ideas like morality.

As language flows from human nature, so goodness flows from God's nature, and it would be impossible for Him to violate His nature. Because of this, we see the question Mark asked becomes nonsensical. To ask if rape would be a moral act if God commanded it makes as much sense as to ask whether God could make a rock so big that He couldn't lift it. God simply would never command rape to be moral. We can therefore split the horns of Euthyphro's dilemma and provide a third option.

By grounding moral attributes in God's nature, we achieve two things: 1) moral attributes are objective, they don't change because God' nature doesn't change and 2) God isn't somehow obligated to follow an independent law, but He follows the law within Himself. Thus, objective moral values make sense and we can know that the good is just that.

Photo courtesy Emmanuel Huybrechts via the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 generic license.

Thinking Less About Stuff and More About God (video)

Is pragmatism replacing piety in the church today? There are six megathemes—shifts in the way Christians think and act—that show how much the world's ideas are corrupting the church today. In the third of our six-part series, Lenny notes that growing numbers of people are less interested in spiritual principles and more desirous of learning pragmatic solutions for life. But by avoiding wrestling with ethical and theological questions, we are doomed to hold a very superficial view of both Christianity AND life. That is not only sin, it is a travesty of living.


 

Top Five Come Reason Apologetics Blog Posts for July

Facing off against atheists, Mormons, and those who would hold Gandhi in the same regard as Jesus are among our top five resources for July. Also is a collection of resources dealing with the science and religion controversy.  Here are the top five apologetics blog posts for July:

1. When an atheist says it's OK to rape her sister
2. Are Mormons Christians, too?
3. We Don't Know What We Believe
4. Is Gandhi a better model for Christians?
5. Science and Religion Resources

Christians in the Middle Ages Did Not Believe in a Flat Earth

Many times when I'm discussing issues of faith and science, I hear the accusation that one cannot hold the Bible to be true and accept modern scientific findings. Usually, the person with whom I'm conversing will assert how backwards the beliefs of Christian society was during the Middle Ages and that we would still believe in a flat earth had it not been for the scientific revolution brought on by the Renaissance.

The idea that the medieval Church held to a flat earth has been around for some time. In his popular historical text The Discoveres, Daniel Boorstin exemplifies the position, as he devotes a full chapter of the book, ominously entitled "A Flat Earth Returns," to the proposition.He writes:

While Christian geographers feared the close calculations of Eratosthenes, Hipparchus and Ptolemy, they cheerfully embellished their pious Jerusalem-centered maps with the wildest ventures of pagan imagination. Julius Solinus (fl. A.D. 220)… provided the standard source of geographic myth during all the years of the Great Interruption, from the fourth till the fourteenth centuries… Saint Augustine himself drew upon Solinus, as did all the other leading Christian thinkers during the Middle Ages."1

Boorstin elsewhere describes the Middle Ages as "a far more remarkable act of retreat."2 However, the idea that all the leading Christian thinkers during the Middle Ages feared an idea of a spherical earth is simply wrong. For example, at the very beginning of St. Thomas Aquinas' 13th century Summa Theologica, this leading Christian thinker writes about the spherical character of the earth. "For the astronomer and the physicist both may prove the same conclusion: that the earth, for instance, is round: the astronomer by means of mathematics (i.e. abstracting from matter), but the physicist by means of matter itself."3

The interesting thing about Aquinas' use of the roundness of the earth is that he was using the fact as an example of something well known. Thomas said that the theologian should explore theology to find its clear truths the way the astronomer or the physicist will use their disciplines to show the roundness of the earth. In other words, Aquinas is using the fact of a round earth the way the atheist would, as something no one would doubt.

By any measure, Aquinas must be considered one of the "leading Christian thinkers during the Middle Ages." Yet, here is Aquinas clearly believing in a round earth! This made me curious to investigate what some other church fathers believed. Since Boorstein brought up Augustine, I looked there next. In City of God, Book XVI, chapter 9, Augustine discusses possible races of men who may have escaped the Flood of Noah. He writes:

And, indeed, it is not affirmed that this has been learned by historical knowledge, but by scientific conjecture, on the ground that the earth is suspended within the concavity of the sky, and that it has as much room on the one side of it as on the other:  hence they say that the part which is beneath must also be inhabited.  But they do not remark that, although it be supposed or scientifically demonstrated that the world is of a round and spherical form, yet it does not follow that the other side of the earth is bare of water; nor even, though it be bare, does it immediately follow that it is peopled.4

Note that the focus here is whether there were human survivors of the Flood. Augustine is commenting on the possibility of antipodes—people taking a boat to the opposite end of the earth, not sailing off of an edge. Augustine states that even if science does show a round earth, it doesn't follow that it has people on it.

In preaching on Psalm 61, Augustine also makes his belief known, when he comments that Christ will "showeth himself to be throughout all nations in the whole round world, in great glory, but in great tribulation."5 It seems Augustine believed, then, in a round earth. Even the fifth century father Gregory of Nyssa taught that the earth was spherical, stating "As, when the sun shines above the earth, the shadow is spread over its lower part, because its spherical shape makes it impossible for it to be clasped all round at one and the same time by the rays."6

Gregory of Nyssa lived in the fourth century, Augustine lived in the fifth century, and Aquinas lived in the thirteenth. All are "leading Christian thinkers" and all believed in a spherical earth, so Boorstin's charge itself falls flat. It simply isn't true that the vast majority of people prior to the Renaissance held to a flat earth, and to accuse modern Christians of doing the same is boorishness.

References

1. Boorstin, Daniel J. The Discoverers. (New York: Vintage Books, 1983). 110.
2. Boorstin. 102.
3. Aquinas, Saint Thomas (2012-05-17). Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) From the Complete American Edition (Kindle Locations 94-95).  . Kindle Edition.
4. Schaff, Philip. St. Augustine's City of God and Christian Doctrine. (Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, Volume 2.0 Web. http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf102.iv.XVI.9.html
5. Schaff, Philip. St. Augustine: Exposition on the Book of Psalms. (Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 1, Volume 8) Web. http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf108.ii.LXI.html
6. St. Gregory of Nyssa." On the Soul and the Resurrection." New Advent. Web. http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/2915.htm

What Christianity Has Always Done

Why would a 33 year old man travel thousands of miles from his home to an isolated country, just so he could provide relief and medical care for those with an incurable disease? Why would this man risk such close proximity to those that basically carry a death sentence? How does he feel when he discovers he is infected with it himself? The man has told us. He said, "I am very satisfied and very happy."

Currently, the world is closely watching reports on Dr. Kent Brantly who, after studying for years in college, medical school and four years of residency, took a position with the Christian missionary organization Samaritan's Purse to provide medical services for the poor people of the African nation of Liberia. Brantly began is missionary efforts last year and when the deadly Ebola outbreak occurred there he chose to stay and provide treatment and comfort to those in need. Last week it was reported that the doctor had contracted the disease, which has no known cure and proves a 90% fatality rate.1

But Brantly isn't the man I'm speaking of.  I want to tell you the story of Joseph De Veuster, better known as Father Damien. Like Brantly, Father Damien left his comfortable home at the age of 33. Instead of Africa, he was sent to the Hawaiian Island of Molokai, where a quarantined camp for lepers (now defined as Hansen's disease) was located. Because of its isolation, victims of the disease where simply shipped there to die.  According to one web site, "The area was void of all amenities. No buildings, shelters nor potable water were available. The first arrivals dwelled in rock enclosures, caves, and in the most rudimentary shacks, built of sticks and dried leaves."2

Father Damien changed that. He felt called to share the saving message of Jesus Christ with the lepers, but he also put his faith into practice. An 1889 New York Times article states that Father Damien had "always expected that he should sooner or later become a leper… it was not likely that he would escape, as he was constantly living in a polluted atmosphere, dressing the sufferers' sores, washing their bodies, visiting their deathbeds, and even digging their graves."3

Father Damien even had the opportunity to leave the island, when his superiors wrote that he may leave "as your devotion dictates." It is said that when Damien received the letter "he was overjoyed; he had permission to stay where he was and where he longed with all his heart to be with the people he loved."4

Even though Father Damien died in 1889, people like Kent Brantly continue in the same spirit and with the same motivation. Brantly is following in a long line of individuals who've put others above self in order to obey the command of Jesus. This is what Christianity has always done. Sometimes, it means risking one's health to serve others. Sometimes it means taking an unpopular stand. But recognizing that all people are made in the image of God and therefore have dignity and worth, and should be treated that way, is fundamental to the Christian faith.

Books that disparage religion such as "God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything" don't talk about the Father Damiens or the Kent Brantlys of the world.  But the evangelization efforts of Christianity cannot be separated from its efforts to alleviate suffering; both are simply people taking the commands of their Lord seriously. I don't believe that religion poisoned those banished to Molokai, nor did it increase the suffering of those Ebola patients. In fact, it proved to do just the opposite.

References

1 The Associated Press. "American doctor in Africa tests positive for Ebola." Fort Worth Star-Telegram. 27 July 2014. Web.
http://www.star-telegram.com/2014/07/26/5998092/american-doctor-in-africa-tests.html
2. "The Lepers of Molokai." The New York Times. 26 May 1889. Accessed online.
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=1&res=9C00E7D61E38E533A25755C2A9639C94689FD7CF
3. "Brief Biography of St. Damien of Molokai." St. Damien Catholic Church. 21 Dec 2011. Web.
 http://www.stdamiens.org/02stdamienbiography.html
4. Ibid.

That Quote May Not Mean What You Think It Does!

Yesterday, I began a rebuttal of some comments from a previous post on Gandhi. I had said that Gandhi's eastern background hindered him from understanding the gospel message because he filtered it through his pre-existing Eastern conception. I quoted Gandhi, who said, "If God could have sons, all of us were His sons. If Jesus was like God, or God Himself, then all men were like God and could be God Himself." I then explained, "Jainism specifically teaches that one can remove all their bad karma and become God. In fact, in Jainism the only Gods that exist are those humans who've rid themselves of their karmas."1 So, it isn't surprising that Gandhi would somehow misunderstand Jesus' unique claim to divinity since in the Eastern view, being divine is not unique; it's the goal.

I supported my point with several footnotes, including one by scholar Huston Smith and one from Jainworld.com, which is one of the most comprehensive sites covering Jainism. However, that passage elicited this response from Nate:

Also, as far as Gandhi's issues with "if God could have sons, all of us were sons." Are we not "children of God?" I don't see any issue with his logic here. And this: "If Jesus was like God, or God himself, then all men were like God and could be God himself---" Seems as though his perspective is consistent with many great Christians.

In order for Gandhi's perspective to be consistent with many great Christians, these Christians would need to be polytheists, like Hindus and Jains are. However, being a polytheist is a direct contradiction to the most basic of Christian theology, which is widely recognized as one of the three great monotheistic faiths of the world.

For his support, Nate included sixteen different quotes from the Bible, C.S. Lewis, and others. They are reproduced here as he supplied them:

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship. . .
—C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

. . . the Spirit and our spirit bear united witness that we are children of God. And if we are children we are heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, sharing his sufferings so as to share his glory."
—St. Paul, Rom. 8:15-17

They (those who love him) are the ones he chose specially long ago and intended to become true images of his Son, so that his Son might be the eldest of many brothers.
—St. Paul Rom. 8:29

God became man, so that man might become God.
—Early Christian Proverb

I am the vine, you are the branches.
—Jesus, John 15:5a

For the Son of God became man, that we might become God.
—St. Athanasius, De inc

God said to this hairless monkey, "get on with it, become a god."
—C. S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

"the Word became flesh and the Son of God became the Son of Man: so that man, by entering into communion with the Word and thus receiving divine sonship, might become a son of God"
—St. Irenaeus, Adv Haer III 19,1

I tell you most solemnly, whoever believes in me will perform the same works as I do myself, he will perform even greater works.
—Jesus, John 14:12

Souls wherein the Spirit dwells, illuminated by the Spirit, themselves become spiritual, and send forth their grace to others. Hence comes . . . abiding in God, the being made like to God, and, highest of all, the being made God.
—St. Basil the Great, On the Spirit.

(God) said that we were "gods" and He is going to make good His words. If we let Him-for we can prevent Him if we choose—He will make the feeblest and filthiest of us into a god or goddess, dazzling, radiant, immortal creature, pulsating all through with such energy and joy and wisdom and love as we cannot now imagine, a bright stainless mirror which reflects back to God perfectly (though, of course, on a smaller scale) His own boundless power and delight and goodness. The process will be long and in parts very painful; but that is what we are in for.
—C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity 174-5

Let us applaud and give thanks that we have become not only Christians but Christ himself. Do you understand, my brothers, the grace that God our head has given us? Be filled with wonder and joy—we have become veritable Christs!
—St. Augustine of Hippo

The Only-begotten Son of God, wanting us to be partakers of his divinity, assumed our human nature so that, having become man, he might make men gods.
—St. Thomas Aquinas

In this way we are all to come to unity in our faith and in our knowledge of the Son of God, until we become the perfect Man, fully mature with the fullness of Christ himself.
—St. Paul, Ephesians 4:13

Morality is indispensable: but the Divine Life, which gives itself to us and which calls us to be gods, intends for us something in which morality will be swallowed up. We are to be remade. . . . we shall find underneath it all a thing we have never yet imagined: a real man, an ageless god, a son of God, strong, radiant, wise, beautiful, and drenched in joy.
—C. S. Lewis, The Grand Miracle, p. 85

A seed of God grows into God.
—Meister Eckhart

With the possible exception of Eckhart, who was a very controversial figure in the 14th century and whose teachings were put on trial as heretical, these are good Christian sources. However, these would more prove my initial point than Nate's. Each of these sources, removed from its context does not communicate the full thought of the passage. Some, such as the John 15:5 quote, are incomplete. The entire verse reads, "I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing" (emphasis added). Rather than teaching Gandhi's view that we have the power within ourselves to become sons of God, it teaches the opposite. We need Jesus otherwise we are hopelessly lost.

Quote-Mining Distorts of the Truth

I don't how Nate amassed these quotes. He may have been gathering them in his studies or he may have done a bit of Googling. Regardless, I highlight this to show how quote-mining without context is a dangerous thing.  Notice how C.S. Lewis used scare quotes in Mere Christianity when he wrote, "(God) said that we were ‘gods' and He is going to make good His words." That's a tip-off that Lewis doesn't believe that we will become divine in the way the Hindus, the Jains, or even the Mormons do. He's talking about something else. To use this quote as support for Gandhi's perspective being "consistent with many Christians" is to twist Lewis' words and make him say something he is not saying.

And so it is with all of the quotes above. Not one of these quotes supports a view that would coincide with man becoming an equal of Jesus. Remember what Gandhi said: "If Jesus was like God, or God Himself, then all men were like God and could be God Himself" (emphasis added). That isn't Gandhi claiming to have a God-centric attitude. That's saying man has the potential to be all that God is—omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent. Can the context for any of the quotes above to show that they argue for that position? I think not.

The problem with quote-mining is that it's pyrite, fool's gold. It looks like it supports a point of view, but it often has no value for the conversations. Occasionally, like the John passage above, it can even be used to support the opposing point. Without context it always disregards the author's intent. I think it smacks of dishonesty, as it portrays form of knowledge that doesn't really exist.

I've seen Christians who have been caught up trying to defend their faith sometimes resort to gathering quotes that they don't completely understand and offering them as proof of their position. You shouldn't do this! This is unfair to the author and to your objector. If you are researching some supporting evidence for your view, make sure you understand the author and his or her position.  Even then, make sure you understand the quote itself, in its proper context. That may even require you to read the entire chapter in which the sentence appears. However, it will be an honest way to present good evidence to others who are questioning the faith.

Yesterday, I quoted another passage from Mere Christianity where Lewis explicitly states that one cannot take Jesus as a moral teacher and leave behind His claims to Lordship. Lewis said, "let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to." Jesus very clearly taught the same thing: "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me" (John 14:6). While Gandhi wants to take Jesus in just this way, he has taken Jesus out of context.  That was his undoing.

References

1. Esposito, Lenny. "Why would Gandhi Reject Jesus?" Come Reason Ministries. 2014-07-24. Web http://apologetics-notes.comereason.org/2014/07/why-would-gandhi-reject-jesus.html

Is Gandhi a Better Model for Christians?

A post from last week discussing the difficulties in communicating with those of different backgrounds inspired several comments from Nate. He commented three times (most of which were quotes taken out of context) but prefaced those with a couple of paragraphs that seemed antagonistic, even though nothing he wrote addresses the post's central argument. First off, Nate responds with a bit of confusion between outward actions versus beliefs:

I would say, let Gandhi serve as a caution to Christians today that when you embody the teachings of Jesus, you may starve, be beaten, ridiculed, misunderstood, alienated, be poor.....Gandhi lived more like Christ than any Christian I have ever seen (with my own eyes), and yet here we are cautioning other Christians to his story. Hmmm... seems as though it should be the other way around.

Nate seems to be upset that I would use Gandhi for a blog post discussing Christianity at all, although I'm not sure why. I never said Gandhi was a bad man nor did I say that he didn't do great things. I affirm he did. As to his caution, Nate is obviously unaware of the history of Christianity. Jesus taught that we would be starved, beaten, ridiculed, misunderstood (even in blog posts, perhaps?), alienated, and poor. The Sermon on the Mount (Matt 5:1-11) starts with this and there is a HUGE historical record of Christians bettering society at extreme cost to themselves. Simply look at stories like St. Telemachus, David Livingstone, William Wilberforce, Father Damien, Corrie ten Boom, Mother Theresa, and Jim Elliott just to name a few. Paul the apostle recounts his sufferings as well in 2 Corinthians 11:23-27, where he writes:

Are they servants of Christ? I am a better one—I am talking like a madman—with far greater labors, far more imprisonments, with countless beatings, and often near death. Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure.1

Paul lays out just some of his sufferings in spreading the gospel, and they are more than nearly all Christians face today, to be sure. However, notice how Paul opens the list. He writes, "Are they servants of Christ? I am a better one—I am talking like a madman—with far greater labors." If one cares about what Paul is actually trying to communicate, he or she would stop and ask why the apostle qualified his list.

Christianity isn't about the suffering

The answer is simple; Paul is saying that it isn't suffering that makes a person a real Christian. Paul is continuing a thought he began in chapter 10 where he is defending his authority to correct the wayward church at Corinth. (He doesn't finish his thought until the end of chapter 12, so anyone who wishes to understand the passage above needs to read all three chapters.) Basically, Paul says that boasting in sufferings or what one does is nothing. It is what one believes about Jesus that matters. That's why he says his battle is spiritual and it is fought in the realm of beliefs: "We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ" (2 Cor. 10:5).

The big point here is that sufferings, beatings, and such are not the things that make one "live more like a Christian." That's not biblical; it's works-based nonsense. Nate didn't expressly say so, but it is what his comment (along with past comments) implied. Corinth was a city of great wealth, and the Christians there weren't poor like the church in Judea. That's why Paul in both his letters asks them to donate money for the Christians in Jerusalem (1 Cor. 16:1, 2 Cor. 9:6 ff). The Corinthians had huge problems with sexual immorality, too. Yet, even with a church in a prosperous city, where they had large feasts, and fell into unmentionable sexual sin, Paul still considered them Christians.

Of my post, Nate writes, "here we are cautioning other Christians to his story. Hmmm... seems as though it should be the other way around." Perhaps he needs to read the post again. The caution is about how we communicate with others, not how Gandhi lived. What I argued was that people with a western worldview and people with an eastern worldview could be talking past each other and not know it. The Christians in Gandhi's life failed to understand the Hindu and Janist concepts that all can become divine in the same way God is divine. (This is a mistake Nate makes in another comment, which I will address tomorrow.)

My caution was aimed towards Christians to make sure one asks instead of assumes what the other person believes. I would hope that such caution applies to carefully reading blog posts as well, to ensure one's criticism applies.

Gandhi is not a good model for Christians

Gandhi was not a Christian. He denied it himself and to say he lived more like Christ simply ignores the more fundamental teachings of Jesus. Jesus was asked once which is the greatest commandment? We're talking about the greatest commandment, now, the greatest. The most important one. I want to emphasize this so no one says "but what about this teaching on suffering or sacrifice?" This is the thing that Jesus holds as first and foremost. If you don't have this, you have nothing.

Jesus responded to this question with the definitive monotheistic text, quoting from Deuteronomy 6:5: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment" (Matt 22:37). Gandhi failed at this. He didn't love the God of  Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the way that Jesus said. Gandhi was a polytheist who believed that even he could become God some day. Such talk was blasphemy. So, Gandhi is not Christ-like in the most important way. Therefore, Gandhi doesn't serve as a model for Christians, but Jesus served as a model for Gandhi. Just after Gandhi talked of his distaste for the Old Testament, he commented on the New:

But the New Testament produced a different impression, especially the Sermon on the Mount which went straight to my heart. I compared it with the Gita. The verses, 'But I say unto you, that ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man take away thy coat let him have thy cloak too,' delighted me beyond measure and put me in mind of Shamal Bhatt's 'For a bowl of water, give a goodly meal' etc. My young mind tried to unify the teaching of the Gita, The Light of Asia and the Sermon on the Mount. That renunciation was the highest form of religion appealed to me greatly.

This reading whetted my appetite for studying the lives of other religious teachers. A friend recommended Carlyle's Heroes and Hero-Worship. I read the chapter on the Hero as a prophet and learnt of the Prophet's greatness and bravery and austere living.

Beyond this acquaintance with religion I could not go at the moment, as reading for the examination left me scarcely any time for outside subjects. But I took mental note of the fact that I should read more religious books and acquaint myself with all the principal religions (emphasis added). 3

It was the Sermon on the Mount that spurred Gandhi to become more religiously aware. Jesus' words awakened him to even the teachings of Hinduism that had a parallel to the Sermon's. Selflessness and nonviolence were prompted in Gandhi from Jesus' teachings. Christian teachings had a huge influence on his nonviolent practice. So, Christians can look to Jesus' teachings and get everything that Nate has said wiithout ever looking to Gandhi. But one cannot take parts of Jesus' teachings in isolation. One must take all of Jesus' teachings to understand them. Jesus claimed to be God in the flesh and He said that His authority rested on the fact that he would rise again. As C. S. Lewis rightly pointed out:

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.4

In my next post, I will address Nate's confusion on the deity of Jesus and his claim that Christianity somehow teaches we are all God in the same way that Jesus is God.

References

1. The ESV Study Bible, The English Standard Version. (Wheaton, Il: Crossway, 2008) Print. .2237-2238.
2Ibid.
3. Gandhi, Mahatma. An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth. (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, Reprint of the Public Affairs Press, Washington, DC, 1948 edition). 107.

4Lewis, Clive Staples. Mere Christianity. (New York: Macmillian Pub. Co., 1952). 55-56.

Christianity Is Not a Private Party

Is Christianity stuck in a Holy Huddle? How can we reach the world if we're only talking to ourselves? There are six mega-themes—shifts in the way Christians think and act—that show how much the world's ideas are corrupting the church today. In this second of a six-part series, we look at the charge that Christians are becoming more ingrown and less outreach-oriented.

For more on this point, see the accompanying blog post here.

Photo credit: Cameron. Licensed through the Creative Commons 2.0 Licence.