Education as Worship

The secular artist does not intend to provide an occasion for an encounter with the divine, but that is what he does. I don't see in him the natural terminus of his creative genius; it goes much deeper than him. He intended for me to worship him or his art, but of course I can't stop looking behind him to the true source of all creative genius. Perhaps there will be others that will exalt him, but I cannot be counted among them.

Imagine what it would mean if his innovative contributions were sourced in him alone and not in a source greater either than him or any congress of the best and brightest. It would mean that should some of our finest artists die, there would be no hope of ever seeing the beauty and glory of their work. But of course since it is true that the sum of human creativity is ultimately nothing more than a thimble full of the ocean of God's creativity, any instance of human ingenuity impels us to celebrate it, and yet to see it as epilogue to the great creation event and prologue to the best expressions of both divine and human creativity; it is no climax! Whatever we may think of Steve Jobs or Mozart, they are only midstream; indeed greater things have been done and will be done.

In the same way, the secular educator does not intend to provide an occasion for worship, but for the Christian he does so all the same. The Christian receives his secular education as another opportunity to search out the mind of God in all things. In that sense, for the Christian, either a secular or a Christian education are sacred journeys into theological truth, but a Christian education is self-consciously theological in its work while a secular education often is inherently hostile to the theological truths that alone can make sense of doing education in the first place. Everyone in the Christian institution is asking the question, "what is this telling me about God, His truth, His world, and my place in it?" In the secular institution, only the Christians within it are asking those questions; the others are far too cosmopolitan for all that.

In that sense, the Christian school is more liberal than the secular school. The secular school would tell us to make art--say, a landscape--but tells us not to question whether the scenes in nature that inspire art could themselves be the handiwork of a supremely powerful artist. In point of fact, the secular school tells us to create, but not to think that the universe is an artifact of creativity. The Christian school tells us to create because that is what we were created for (at least partially). Which is the more liberal idea? That nature observed is nothing more than nature observed? Or that nature observed indicates an entire supernatural realm that may be explored through nature? Is it more liberal to believe that Yosemite is just an accident of geometry and physics or that Yosemite tells us about geometry, physics and much much more?

Problems with Libertarian Freedom

Libertarian freedom is the notion, as articulated by Jerry Walls in Philosophia Christi, ("Why No Christian Should Be a Compatibalist") that in any choice 1, I can reasonably do either A or B. There are no constraints or controls with respect to my choices. It should be noted that by "constraints or controls" libertarians also mean causal factors such as coercion by God or by desires beyond the control of my conscious will. It simply means that for any act, it is possible that I can do the opposite. Now this sounds like will neutrality, and surely that is what it amounts to practically. The will is wholly spontaneous. It is even questionable what "generates" choices. They may be wholly self-generating. Alvin Plantinga has suggested as much, even likening human choices to spontaneous emissions of sub-atomic particles in radioactive decay. Choices just appear to emanate from individuals and perhaps without any causal interference. For if antecedent causal conditions produce choices, then such choices are determined, at least to some extent, but then they cannot be truly libertarian. The will must operate spontaneously with respect to choices or else the option is not a "live option."

Here are a few of my problems with the notion of libertarian freedom (and note that I am something of a novice with the libertarian position, so think of this as a way of working through the issues):

1. Why can God not actualize a world in which all free creatures (in the libertarian sense) choose to be saved? (Note here that the great concern of libertarians is the perceived arbitrary nature of the number of saved souls in the compatibalist/Calvinist scheme.)

We are told that perhaps this is not an available option for God among the possible worlds, but then again perhaps it is an available option and God has merely chosen to actualize this world instead. Surely the situation can be better in this world. Surely greater appeals to the libertarian will can be made, since libertarian will means that sin is not debilitating with respect to choices of extreme moral import such as salvation. Perhaps God could have improved things in this world for those with libertarian freedom by doing some or all of the following...

a. God could be more active in solving the language problem, thus presenting greater opportunities to come to belief for language groups.
b. God could be active in a complex fashion, appealing to various cultures simultaneously.
c. More miracles could be done, appealing again to the libertarian wills of men. Atheists often tell us that if they could see greater evidence of miracles, then they would believe. Why not take them at their word if their freedom is libertarian?
d. Those who require more evidence before they will submit their free will could receive that evidence.
e. God could kill all infants in the womb He knows "will not choose Him," thus instantly bringing them into heaven. In theory, the only people born would be those that freely come to belief.

It seems a frail objection to all of these points simply to say, "Well, God knows that among the possible worlds, this world with all of its unbelief is the best option." The point is that even in this world he could have done more to "inspire" belief without directly causing it.

Is it not at least possible that there exists a world in which God provides sufficient "circumstances" to lead all men to belief (or at least many more than presently do), but He nevertheless chooses not to instantiate such a world? One has to at least grant this as a possibility, in which case it is possible that God has chosen this world over one that would ensure that all (or at least more) would come to belief. But of course that leads the libertarian strait into the dilemma for which libertarianism is supposed to be the remedy--namely, that God has elected a world that condemns people (and perhaps a vast majority of them), and for no other reason than His mysterious intentions.

2. If libertarianism is true, then heaven makes no sense.

Why is this libertarian freedom, which is so unpredictable, even volatile, such that it is wholly stable in heaven?

Perhaps the libertarian would conclude that the only reason for this is that there are no longer any "external" enticements to sin. The will itself need not be healed, and neither do the affections or motives of the heart need to be healed. Why? Because remember that the will sits above the desires in pristine neutrality. While there are no causal factors anterior to willful engagements in the wrong, there must also be no causal factors anterior to willful engagements in the right. Thus, a man with only pure desires may make corrupt choices, and a man with consistently evil desires may make pure choices. A wholly righteous internal disposition in man is therefore not required to fund ongoing stable belief in heaven. So why is heaven so stable with respect to the willful choices of the people in a libertarian heaven? Heaven must be the one place in the universe that is so resplendently appealing that there is ample circumstantial reinforcement to inspire ongoing fidelity without manipulating the choices of people in heaven.

But this leads to a disturbing problem for the libertarian. If all that was required to "lead" or "inspire" the neutral will into ongoing faithfulness was a kind of aesthetic beauty that naturally appealed to that will, then why did not God provide so sublime a place for mankind initially? Again, to suggest that such a world is not among the possible worlds available for God to instantiate is silly since he will make such a world actual eventually. Thus the only thing that kept Adam and Even from ongoing faithfulness was that God did not deliver to their libertarian freedom the circumstances he will deliver to others in heaven later. But that means he must have had some purpose for the fall of man, which starts to sound rather Calvinistic.

Or consider this from another angle: Surely my libertarian freedom will not be removed in heaven. But then I am in the same position as Adam, in one sense. How can I be sure that the conditions of heaven will be such that I will always choose the good? Perhaps what we have said concerning the winsome conditions of heaven are merely speculative and that my libertarian will trumps any appeals and enticements from without no matter how glorious they are. Is it at least possible that for every choice 2 in heaven, I am truly free to do A or B. And if my will is not determined in any way, then it is perhaps inscrutable whether or not I will rebel in heaven. What power could constrain my will to choice A in heaven for all eternity and leave it free in the libertarian sense?

3. The doctrine of Hell makes no sense if libertarianism is true.

If for every person counterfactuals A and B face no determining interference, either from his or her nature or from God or from the environment, then surely hell poses no limits on libertarian freedom either. It is, in theory, within the power of a person in hell to live a sinless life. There is nothing preventing him from doing right in choice 1, then choice 2, then choice 3, and so on ad infinitum. Why? Because nothing interferes with libertarian freedom, even in hell.

And if it is mere external conditions that keep people from believing, even in hell, then why would God not merely eliminate these conditions, thus allowing them naturally to come to belief?

Perhaps the libertarian should be a universalist, for two reasons:

If Jesus dies for the sins of all men, then surely all men's sins are removed and God need not punish anyone in Hell. After all, Jesus has already been punished for the sins of all humanity.

And if therefore the only reason for hell is "libertarian consequentialism"--that is, people supposedly continue to choose to be there--then surely changing the circumstances of these unhappy people, or merely waiting for the right free responses, is the thing a loving God would do. But given an infinite time in hell, surely a libertarian free will is going to eventually make a right choice with respect to salvation at least.

And a last point that addresses both heaven and hell for a libertarian: How can God judge or reward someone for choices that are not even determined by the man's heart (motives)? If choices appear without any prior determining conditions, then they are wholly vacuous uncaused phenomena. People don't make choices; choices happen to people. The curious thing here is that libertarians assume that free choice is necessary to establish moral accountability. It looks to me as though the opposite is true. And if that is true, why would God need to punish such sins in hell or reward willful belief in heaven? All unhappy souls in hell need only plead that "their will made them do it."

A Few Thoughts About Roger Smith

Mr. Martin, our erudite senior Bible teacher at Bakersfield Christian High School, has invented a wonderful case study in ethics. It goes like this:

Roger Smith, a quite competent swimmer, is out for a leisurely autumn stroll. During the course of his walk he passes by a deserted pier from which a teenage boy, who apparently cannot swim, has fallen into the water. The boy is screaming for help. Smith recognizes that there is absolutely no danger to himself if he jumps in to save the boy; he could easily succeed if he tried. Nevertheless, he chooses to ignore the boy's cries. The water is cold and he is afraid of catching a cold -- he doesn't want to get his good clothes wet either. "Why should I inconvenience myself for this kid," Smith says to himself, and passes on. Does Smith have a moral obligation to save the boy?  Why or why not?  

I'm interested in asking the same question of God: Why does God not have a moral responsibility to do something about the plight of the young boy? Instinctively it seems that if we know about an evil and have power to stop the evil, then we have a moral responsibility to stop that evil. But surely God meets these criteria. 

God surely knows what a sorry individual Roger Smith happens to be, and still elects to do nothing. Are God's moral duties the same as ours? 

This question seems to have two aspects to it. One is the question of God's moral duties. The other is the question of how his moral duties differ from ours. In order to address whether or not God should do something here, we must ask a few other questions: Is God morally obligated to stop evil by direct action? Is he morally obligated to stop every evil by direct action? Is he morally obligated to act justly in response to every evil? All of these relate to the larger problem of evil. I think it rather evident biblically that God is not the source of evil, or its cause. In the case under review, he did not put the child into the river. But God has also stopped some evils and not others in history. That means that he must have some purpose in allowing various evils to occur. Philosophers generally speak here of God's "morally sufficient reasons" for permitting certain evil events. One thing we know for sure is that God will be a perfect judge in the midst of all evil acts. Roger Smith, even if no one else sees what he did, will face a day of reckoning before God, his just judge.

Another angle here is to remember that for God to end all evil would be for him to end the possibility of mercy for all evil men as well. The parable of the wheat (his redeemed family) and the weeds (unbelievers) is instructive here. God allows the wicked and the guilty to intermingle in the world presently so that the weeds can see God's great glory as a righteous judge and a righteous savior in Christ, and as such God will not act to stop evil until enough evil men and women are brought into the redeemed family. So it is simply a mistake to say that God is doing nothing about evil in the world. He is acting redemptively in time and space in the person of his Son and in the Spirit animated community called the Church.

So it must be the case that since we come to our ethical obligations without comprehensive knowledge of God's sovereign purposes with respect to evil, and thus cannot perceive who must receive exposure to the glories of the gospel, that our moral duties exist in direct proportion to our limited knowledge of God's sovereign purposes. We must defer to God's revelation in Christ then. What does Christ do about evil? What does He command us to do? And what does He empower us to do? That is the sum of our moral duty while God extends the boundaries of His kingdom in this wicked world. He has initiated this great work in Christ; and now I exist to extend the reach of that work in the world. And it must always be remembered that God owes no man mercy. No man is entitled to God's mercy; it flows from his merciful character at his pleasure alone!

So, even though God may not directly intervene to save the drowning boy, it is still consistent with the ethic modeled by Christ for me to do so, because surely saving the boy is the best way for me to proclaim God's redemptive purposes, to "love my neighbor as myself," and thus to proclaim Christ's saving work to the boy. If Roger is not a Christian, then his actions are still measured against the standard of Christ. If any Christian were to be in Roger's position, surely it is clear that the active Spirit of God would prompt him or her to act in keeping with the gospel. Even if it was Roger himself who was drowning, and he was a murderer, it would still be a Christian duty to save him. Why? Because, in short, that is what Jesus did for me! Jesus allowed an evil person sufficient exposure to the gospel to be saved. It is true that he may not receive it and may even turn to kill me, but that says nothing about my moral duty in the moment.

Imagine for a moment that you are a first century Christian, and it is the Apostle Paul himself drowning in that water (before his conversion). Paul is a murderer, and has been hunting down your people. Do you have a moral responsibility to save him? 

If I save a murderer, or fail to stop a murderer, is it an offense to the victims? Yes, they are offended to the extent that they are not cooperating with the Gospel. And to whom am I bound by allegiance to favor: the victims and their temporal claim to justice or God and His eternal purposes revealed in Christ?

It is curious that in these kinds of scenarios, Christians so rarely think in terms of the gospel. We are called in everything to be people of the good news. And what is that good news? God has provided forgiveness for sins through the cross of Jesus Christ! Yes, even if it is Roger Smith the murderer who is drowning, it is my duty to save his life, then boldly confront his sin, and then offer the gospel. How can I do anything else? 

And here is the point: The reason I am to do this is because that is precisely what God in Christ has done for me!

And by the way, this line of argument extends to the matter of killing in defense of others or self. It does not extend God's redemptive purposes in the midst of an evil world to merely control evil by force. One says that I have a moral responsibility to defend the innocent by killing, and then present the gospel to them. The only problem here has already been discussed--namely, this is not God's program for addressing evil in Christ. His program is to confront evil dialectically, incite it against himself, absorb the evil, be destroyed by it, and then emerge triumphant in resurrection. That is the glory that God would proclaim to the world! One has a moral responsibility to resist evil, but in the manner of Christ! In Christ, God's activity in the world with respect to evil is redemptive, not merely just or preemptive. Presumably God could control evil with a word, but he is pressing for the transformation of evil people. By confronting the evil in the way of Christ, I call for the redemption of evil hearts and not merely the temporal protection of victims. I demonstrate the glory of Christ in overcoming evil and not merely the glory of man's capacity to beat back evil in order to carve out a few more days in this fallen world. Perhaps we could say it this way: Christ has clearly delegated to me the ministry of reconciliation and not the ministry of just retribution. To proclaim reconciliation one must necessarily include the redemptive context of God's justice satisfied at the cross; to proclaim justice alone is to neglect the rich context of redemption.

And note also that if I take this approach with evil, it is simply not the case that I am doing nothing about evil, and it is also not the case that I am responsible for the evil by permitting it. God is clearly permitting evil, but for specific redemptive purposes. The real question is simply this: In the absence of God's direct action, what has he made it clear to me that I should do about evil in the world? (for analysis of the problem of evil see: http://monomaniacy.blogspot.com/2011/01/lecture-series-lecture-12-problem-of.html)

Is the Resurrection Enough?

This past weekend I was talking with my class at Fresno Pacific University about the topic of miracles. Here is a thought inspired by that discussion:

The resurrection is enough! Those are not my words. Jesus himself makes it plain that all other miracles in Biblical history are prelude and epilogue to this singular climatic event. He said, “an evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, but they shall only receive the sign of Jonah.” And yet many in our world apparently find Jesus’ words inadequate to their own private sense of fairness. The atheist believes that he too should be able to see a miracle, “in order that he might believe.” The Christian believes that he too should live a “blessed life.”

Every person in the Bible who experienced a miracle merely experienced a delay in the inevitable, and in some cases these people were raised to suffer death again. Not everyone who prayed diligently for a miracle received it, even if they believed with absolute purity of heart. Jesus warned those he healed not to tell anyone because he knew that people’s motives would run askew. They would come to him for all the wrong reasons. They would come to him for a relatively better life in this fallen world. Jesus came to give them another life altogether. They would seek limited physical repair while he promises complete destruction and complete restoration.

How about you? Is the resurrection enough for you or are you looking for more (which in the end is actually less)?

"What Happens in Vegas ... Lingers!"

This will be critical, but it must be said. I hate Las Vegas! Perhaps I'm judgmental. Perhaps I'm a hater! We just returned from a weekend getaway to Vegas where we celebrated my brother's 50th birthday. What follows is a critique of Las Vegas itself, and not the birthday party for my brother, which was a marvelous celebration.

I was struck first by the constant movement of people. There was no stillness, no contemplative silence. Only frenzy everywhere.

I wondered whether these were sad people, spending their meager income for a few moments of escape from the doldrums of their miserable lives. There are so many people titillated by the fantasy of it all. Anyone can be a star in Vegas! Anyone can become rich! Anyone can have sex with a beautiful woman! At least as long as the money lasts.

But of course the devastating truth is that after the erotic dream, all of these people will slink back to their anonymous lives, deeply disappointed that the money runs out, and when it does the girls aren't interested and the casino is decidedly less hospitable. No one can live this way; one can only escape life in this way. Vegas exists to blot out the memory of one's boring everyday life. After all, is anyone really content working, paying bills, raising children, gazing at a sunset and the like?

And what ever happened to the economic crisis we are told about? How can it be that 50% of Americans are upside down on their home loans, willing to make short sales and willing to foreclose on homes (because they are drowning in debt), and yet this city teems with people flashing credit cards for this and that manifest necessity.

Vegas constitutes one of the most exquisite examples I have ever seen of wealth transfer from the weak to the strong. This is "trickle-up" economics at its finest. Teachers, accountants, engineers and the like spend their hard earned money so they can, for a weekend, feel like something more than a teacher, an accountant or an engineer. And those who sell this fantasy prey (intentional spelling) human nature continues to be as pathetic as it presently is, for as long as men think that a trip to Vegas will help them manage their meager lives the coffers will continue to ring loudly. Surely those who own the majestic casino's of Vegas laugh at the pathetic souls that love this place; people all too willing to search out the next thrill in "Sin City." We seek thrills and they seek our cash. Such a perfect symbiosis.

Perhaps there is no better example of the sad ambition of the masses than the number of women dressed as prostitutes in Vegas. Housewives, mothers and grandmothers attempt (and that is the key word) to reproduce the images of feminine perfection they see everywhere on posters and billboards. And why? Because they too want to be noticed as those women are noticed. They want to feel sexy; to have the feminine power of exciting lust in men, for surely that is the glory of womanhood. And so the streets abound with overweight women, strutting about in outfits a few sizes too small, drinking alcohol until they are uninhibited in their desperate classlessness. Is anyone attracted? Only those equally desperate, and equally inebriated.

Everywhere one looks in Vegas, one finds three realities: sex and alcohol and gambling. Dress all the working women in Vegas in burkas and take away the alcohol and the city would become a hot ghost town. I'm not convinced that anyone comes to this city expressly for the shows, the lights or even the gambling. They come to overconsume and overindulge. And here it is done on a scale that defies the imagination. Where else but in America can an entire city rise up in a desert expressly for the purpose of promoting an endless orgy of human excess? Nothing is made in Vegas and everything is always changing. Whether it be a building, a party, a relationship, or any other thrill; you can be sure that tomorrow it will be replaced by another. Nothing will remain.

The idea that "what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas" is another of the carefully crafted lies that captivates the masses of people drinking too much, spending too much, crowding into nightclubs, erotic shows, patronizing prostitutes, etc.

I wonder if the people who open their credit card statements a month after the trip to Vegas still think that what happens in Vegas stays there? I wonder if men addicted to pornography or alcohol still think that way? I wonder if men and women, enamored by Las Vegas, even know that their ongoing lack of contentment in life has something to do with the fantasies they overconsume because they feel entitled to them? What happens in Vegas bleeds out into everything else. And we all know it!

Grad Speech

Recently I was given the honor of sharing the keynote speech at our graduation ceremony. Here is the transcript:

What I’d like to do today is to offer a simple message of encouragement and challenge to our graduates. As I was thinking about the many things that can be said at an event like this, and the many things that have been said and forgotten, I decided to describe what I hope every eagle will be that we graduate from this place. What do we want the characteristics of a BCHS Eagle to be?

We want our Eagles to have keen vision.

Your parents and your teachers here have tried to give you insight into the philosophical issues of our day and training that will prepare you for the intellectual challenges you will face. We have also tried to help you see your culture for what it is, in contrast to the culture of Christ. Many of you, perhaps even most of you, have accepted this training and have prepared well. I commend you.

Some of you have worked the system. Sorry to be so blunt here, but some of you have only jumped through the minimalist hoops we have designed for you to jump through and you are not in the least prepared to face thoughtful representatives of other worldviews and stand your ground.

One of three things could happen to you, and to any who are not prepared to face cultural and intellectual challenges to the Christian faith.

One, you could be overwhelmed and assimilated. You will perhaps sit in a lecture hall and hear compelling words artfully denouncing your beliefs, and you will not know what to say or even what to think. Perhaps you will conclude, “if I can’t beat them, why not join them.” And you will drift away.

Perhaps you will sit in your dorm hall and see glamorous, outrageous and fun people boldly and colorfully flouting God’s moral standards, and apparently getting away with it. And without an ability to articulate the emptiness of it all, you will end up living exactly as they do.

A second result may follow from a lack of preparation. Perhaps instead of joining them, you will separate wholly from them. You will descend from the evil of the culture and the dangers of intellectual challenges into the safe confines of the Christian subculture. Here you will surround yourselves with Christians, buy Christian music, Christian books, and Christian products of all kinds. Perhaps here you will remain a Christian, but you will be an impotent one, unable to meet thinking people on their ground and bring the truth of the Christian worldview into the marketplace of ideas.

But there is a final possibility. Perhaps if you haven’t prepared, on facing these challenges firsthand, you will wake up from your intellectual slumber and begin your training. This would be my prayer for any Eagles leaving this place today unprepared.

We also want our Eagles to mature rapidly.

The challenges of nature are urgent and that is why actual Eagles must mature so rapidly, but perhaps it is no different for our Eagles.

The writer of Hebrews similarly charges Christians to mature more rapidly than they were. He says to them, “by now you should be teachers, but you need someone again to teach you the elementary principles of God’s word.”

What is a mature Christian? According to Scripture, it is one who has learned in order to be a teacher. It is one thing to learn in order to navigate a test or dupe a teacher into thinking you read a book. It is quite another thing to learn so well that you become a resource for the next generation. And so I ask each of you solemnly: Have you learned well enough to be a teacher? Can you articulate the faith once for all handed down to the saints? Can you model it well? The time is coming when you will encounter people who will need more than Mr. Martin’s notes… as good as they are. They will need you to be a living witness to the reality of God in the world, both in word and in deed. I know by God’s grace you will be that for people.

We like our Eagles to be Aggressive.

You may remember the words of Dr. Bahnsen: “We set for the absolute necessity of Christianity in order to make sense of human reason, moral law, human dignity, love and every other intelligible human experience.”

That’s an aggressive statement. We see nothing here of the possibility or the probability of Christianity. We see no hedging or hemming and hawing. We see a gauntlet thrown down in the midst of all available worldviews. “Let Jesus be true and all else shown to be liars.”

But as you have learned here, this aggressiveness requires confidence in one’s understanding of one’s own faith and the deficiencies within other worldviews, and also grace in communicating both.

I challenge you to go forward from this place confidently proclaiming that education, morality, human reason, science, unity and diversity, and therefore love—are all our intellectual property as Christians.

It is time to play offense, to assert the superiority of Christ in the world loudly, and to insist that burden of proof is a shared burden when it comes to worldviews. We must insist that the atheist or pantheist, Muslim or postmodernist, demonstrate to us how their worldview makes sense of human reason, love, individual dignity, moral law, science and the like.

In the end, we need to be able to address the gaping philosophical emptiness of other worldviews, and demonstrate that Christianity is the only philosophical position that can suffuse the human experience with beauty and meaning.

We want our Eagles to Soar.

You are probably familiar with the parable of the eagle and the chickens… It goes something like this:

An eagle egg falls from its nest into a chicken coop, where it hatches. The eaglet is then raised by chickens and learns to behave like a chicken, scratching and pecking at the ground. And as I recall there are two interesting endings to the story; one in which the chicken sees an eagle in flight and after a certain length of time mounts to the skies to live among the clouds as nature designed him to live. The other, and less happy ending, has the eagle content to live the remainder of his days on the ground among the chickens though he was made for so much more.

My prayer is that you will soar higher than your culture.

That you will, in the words of Dr. Horner, “out-think and out-live your culture.”

My prayer is that you will lead in the arts, in science, and that our culture will be deeply affected by your various contributions in it.

In closing, let me say this: We love you! You are ours. You are our “living epistles, written on human hearts.” We have a vested interest in you. If you need us, you know where to find us.

Tribute to A Life Well Lived

My grandfather recently passed at the age of 94. He is a larger-than-life patriarchal figure in our family. Here is a eulogy I wrote in honor of his praiseworthy life:

I’m honored to share a few words in memory and loving praise of my grandfather. Perhaps the best way to summarize his life is the phrase, “a life well lived.” We all want to live such a life, and my grandfather did.

What makes for a life well lived? Jesus answered this question when he said, “He who would be greatest must be the servant of all.” My grandfather was a servant of all. Without glory or attention he served as the janitor for his church, raised three daughters, and loved one woman for 73 years. He worked with his hands and by the sweat of his brow contributed much to society and required little from it. He taught several grandchildren how to fish, how to work, and how to be men. He was a simple man, a man of honesty, integrity and hard work; an elegant example of the generation Brokaw aptly called “The Greatest Generation.” It is because of my grandfather that I have determined never to praise unworthy men, for I know how a man ought to be.

We will all remember his stories; the stories are what made him. From the purely comic ones, like the story of the psychotic stray cat pulling on the screen door, or the dismembered frogs his mother demanded he put out of their misery, to the stories of his Texas relatives, stories of growing up in the Great Depression, boning more hams than any human should be able to in a day, and of course, meeting Grandma, marrying young by today’s standards, and raising three daughters in a 900 square foot home in suburban Kansas City.

He loved to remind me of the summer I spent with them as a young boy. I now identify that summer as perhaps the greatest single memory and formative experience of my childhood. He would tell me the story of my first fishing trip, when we rose at 5am to see the sunrise over the Missouri hills. Apparently I made some comment about the unusual size of the sun, and then proceeded to tell my mom about it over the phone. I was in awe at just how majestic the sun could look so early in the morning. In so many words, grandpa suggested that this must be the first time I had dragged my sorry carcass out of bed early enough to see a sunrise. He was right. He introduced me to the beauty, glory and simplicity of nature, and taught me that the highest praise we can offer the best scenes of life is our receptive silence.

For all his strength my grandpa was a proud and fragile man. Every one of my years on this earth he served me, giving me encouragement, discipline, unjustified praise and even money when I was a struggling college student. This selfless love for me proved stronger than his fear of flying. I will never forget that perhaps the purest act of love ever expressed towards me by another human being was when my grandpa, at the age of 78, boarded an airplane for the first time to honor me with his presence on my wedding day. Please understand, it is not simply that this act is a beautiful sentiment to share with you all. I am different because I have been loved like that. Everyone needs to believe that someone thinks them worthy of extravagant love; that someone in this world finds them to be extraordinary and convinces them of it by consistent action. My grandpa did this for me.

He also knew suffering in a way I have never experienced, but weathered his life’s relentless pains with dignity. He outlived most of his friends and all of his siblings. When I saw his grief at his youngest daughter Wanda’s funeral, I wanted so badly to take his pain away as he had done so many times for others. Now there will be “no more pain, no more sorrow, no more suffering, for the former things have passed away. (Rev. 21)” His days of suffering in this broken world are over.

My grandfather was no theologian, but he was living theology. He possessed no formal education, but he was wise. He was no orator, but when he spoke, we all listened. He was never a mover and shaker in his church, but gave that community his heart and soul for 67 years. He was never a rich man, but he was rich in everything that counts—in love and virtue. He never learned the Internet, but his connection with us is substantial and lasting.

And one last brief thought that I think he would want me to mention: My grandpa grew to love and serve Jesus Christ at Evangel Temple. He committed his life to the savior because he knew he was not enough to overcome his own imperfections. He knew he was not simply okay the way he was. He trusted that God’s love could accept him as he was and lead him into an extraordinary life, and I trust that you will honor my grandpa’s legacy by reconsidering the teaching of Jesus today. He promises to give not just enduring life, but “the good life;” “a life well lived.”

"Be Vulnerable" "Open Up" "Be Transparent"

I know my wife needs this and deserves this, but do you really need me to be vulnerable, to open up and be transparent?

Why do I hear these sentiments everywhere, especially in the Church? I hear pleas to be vulnerable, to open up and to be transparent more than I hear pleas to consider some theological perspective.

I'm wondering if all of this talk flows from our cultural narcissism. The mantra of the day is, "I am okay the way I am." I am loved the way I am. I am screwed up. And I need to talk to someone about how screwed up I am so that I will feel better about being screwed up. The wonder of it is that you will listen to me because you can relate to screwed up people.

Don't give us perfect lives. Don't talk to us about your six-day-a-week workouts. Don't eat baked chicken and broccoli in front of us. Don't read impressive novels in front of us. Don't be impressive in general, unless you do it from a distance! We want our friends to be below us, or at least to struggle as much as we do. And that is why we can't stand being around either tools or saints, but perhaps it is the saint that most disturbs us. How can anyone face the issues of life we do and be ahead of us in nearly every way?

We want to join each other in mediocrity rather than spurring one another on to perfection. I would much rather have you tell me that I'm acceptable the way I am than show me a life that is in every way superior to my own.

Tell us how you cheated on your spouse, how you can't keep your diet, how you erupted in anger at your children or can't keep your head about finances. Not only can we relate to that, but if the truth be told, we want to relate to that. We want others to be pathetic because deep down we hope to stay pathetic.

It is one thing to address our faults with trusted friends; it is quite another thing to only be friends with those who share and encourage our faults.

Perhaps in bygone ages, people were preoccupied with discussion as a means to self-improvement. Today we have abandoned self-improvement for discussion itself. We talk to each other ad nauseam about our bad habits with no intention of change. This is the day and age when rehab and rebound is fashionable. In point of fact, our vulnerability with each other, our shared experiences, validate our intention to stay exactly as we are. Nobody wants a saint for a friend! We can't relate to people driven towards moral, physical, emotional and intellectual perfection. We would rather laugh with vulnerable failures than suffer with humorless perfectionists.

Various Objections to Christian Pacifism and Some Responses

Objection 1 - Christian pacifism denies the government its rightful role and as such would undermine justice.

Even if one were to accept a paradigm of extreme separation, such as the Amish, how is it obvious that such a conclusion would follow. The Amish do not deny the government its permissive right to rule, and in principle submit to governmental authority. They simply live an ethic which meets the minimalist requirements of the state and then go far beyond it in their own private ethical interactions as a community.

If the objector has in mind a universal application of Christian pacifism, then this question becomes more complicated, but not much more. It seems that most who object to pacifism on these grounds are thinking in Kantian terms--namely, what if all people were pacifists? Would there be grounds for a justice system?

Origen's response to this is interesting. When Celsus, the scholarly pagan critic of Christianity asked him the same question, Origin replied, "If all people in the Empire became Christians, then God would protect the empire." That may seem a bit terse for most Christians today to accept.

But this objection seems to me to miss the point. The entire point of Jesus' kingdom is that it is incompatible with any other kingdom. Because of this, the state refuses to submit to Jesus' right to rule and thus creates its own justice system, borrowing its best ideas from the moral law. Law in nations is a practical outworking of the need for order, so that even in the state's appropriation of moral law it is in rebellion against God. The state wants God's law to serve it; it doesn't want to serve Him by keeping it. In constructing its laws the state is not trying to understand and love God; it is attempting to secure self-interest. This is why mercy is totally irrelevant to the application of state law, or perhaps should be if it is to be consistent. Is it any wonder that Jesus says his kingdom is new wine that is incompatible with the wineskins of human governance?

Note also that this objection can be turned on its head. The idea is that pacifism cannot be generally applied, and as such is impractical and void of justice, can just as easily be charged against just war theory. Surely it can be argued that faithfulness to just war criteria is impossible as well and thus just war theory is at least as impractical as Christian pacifism. I'd like someone to provide for me one example of a war, especially a modern war, in which one party was totally faithful to just war principles. If one can only be an imperfect Christian pacifist or an imperfect just war practitioner, which is preferable if one is to be a Christ follower?

Objection 2 - Just because American government is corrupted does not make it evil. Work is corrupted but it is not evil, etc.

This objection is disanalogous. The true analogy would be comparing not work to America, but prostitution as work with democracy as government, etc. Work in principle is not bad and neither is government in principle bad. But note that this is not what people are talking about. They are comparing work in principle to various corrupted manifestations of government. Also, not everything a Prostitute does is evil, but her whole profession is directed by an action that is evil. In the same way, not everything done by those exercising power in a democracy is bad, but I think it can be reasonably charged that the whole enterprise is bad.

Another way of looking at this is by asking what will happen in the redemptive process. The restoration process will not eliminate government or work, but will rebuild it. I take it that subsuming humanity under His redemptive purposes, God will not stop until he has remade our minds (free wills), our hands (how we work) and our governments (how we relate to one another). But to hear many people talk, America requires no redemption. For them, America is the source of redemption for the world, a city set on a hill.

It seems then that original goods, such as government, free will or work, retain their ontologically good status in a conceived ideal Christian world, where identifiable corruptions of these, such as rebellion, prostitution or democracy, will be wholly discarded. Think of it thus: In the garden, it is conceivable that Adam and Eve, for their work, could have done things like harvesting or painting. These specific activities are largely unchanged by the fall and eventual restoration of man. We harvest and paint now, and conceivably will do so in heaven. But what about governments? Perhaps we will still pave roads, but will we gather into town halls to figure out how to manage ourselves in heaven? Will we develop standing armies to protect our temporal interests? Will God have to be re-elected?

And here is the big question: Can the tools used to preserve the damned and fallen earthly city be useful in promoting and enlarging the borders of the City of God?

Objection 3 - The Bible does not exclude the possibility of self-defense or defense of others, especially in cases where our faith is not under attack.

Jesus in the Sermon, and in his example, does not make this distinction. And neither did the early Christians. I think Bonhoeffer's scathing critique of this is sufficient refutation against it and I recommend it highly, notwithstanding of course his own behavior in this regard. You will find his argument in his book "The Cost of Discipleship." I discuss some of those principles in another blog article: http://monomaniacy.blogspot.com/2010/04/what-does-jesus-mean-by-loving-our.html

I also think there is an argument for various forms of defense, provided those defenses are not a violation of Jesus' injunction to go beyond simple retributive "eye for eye" responses. Clearly one defense is to move one's family to safety, even abandoning one's rightful property in order to do so. Christians did this frequently during the persecution age. Another response would be to absorb the evil so others can reach safety. A father could presumably distract and even occupy an assailant while his family got away, losing his own life in the process. This option seems reasonable even for a family during the imperial age attacked by Roman soldiers. But of course, assuming there is no option here because they are overwhelmed by superior force, then it would be unacceptable to do anything but accept a martyr's fate.

Objection 4 - Any relationship to the state is a contradiction of the separation mandate.

Not true! Surely there are many activities the Christian community can engage in that are wholly consistent with their identity as Kingdom people in a foreign land. If the people in this foreign land invite our votes on individual moral issues, for example, it will not be inconsistent for us to vote our consciences on those matters. And there are a whole variety of other issues. I acknowledge that a consistent Christian pacifist, if he clearly states his position on these matters, will not likely be voted into public office.

Objection 5 - What is a Christian justice system then?

In short, the cross of Jesus Christ, a stumbling block to many and foolishness to others. In the Christian community, the worst consequence for chronic sinful actions is excommunication. And excommunication is tantamount to turning someone over to the culture at large since they refuse to accept Christ's solution. And as I have said elsewhere, it is not the prerogative of the Church to deny the state its claim on the lives of criminals, but the Church can always plead its case for clemency. (This of course changes if the state requires us to do the killing, or so involves us that we would become culpable... for example, informing on the Jews during WWII.)

Again I would turn this around on the just war advocate. What is your sense of a Christian justice system? Is it Jesus and Democracy? Jesus and Socialism? Should mercy ever be offered? When and how much? What compromises are going to be acceptable here? Who is going to determine just and unjust wars? Elected officials or clergy or a combination? And which ones? How will they be qualified? The just war advocate exchanges the simplicity of the Sermon for the quagmire of spiritually gilded relativism and then justifies this move by wrenching the Sermon into agreement with his position through theological legerdemain. Sometimes only a scholar can see in the text the truth that isn't there!

Objection 6: Pacifism is just not manly.

Really? Mark Driscoll, pastor of Mars Hill Church, has suggested that he could not follow a man he could beat up. Does it not seem obvious that if Mark Driscoll were around in the 1st century, he would have joined the rest in thinking Jesus a bit too effeminate to be the King of the Jews? Many people shared Driscoll's sentiments in the 1st century and that is why they tortured and crucified the incarnate God. God was apparently not quite manly enough for these people!

I also wonder why people who state this objection can in any way praise the early church martyrs. Is Pacifism only manly if there is no other option? Is it manly if you are persecuted for your faith, but less manly in resisting other evils? Was Jesus manly? Were the early Christians weak fools? Take the case often used to condemn pacifism: Someone breaks into your home and attacks your family. Defending them by force is the manly thing to do, right?

But let's imagine for a moment that the person breaking in does so because he hates Christians and wants to torment them in this way and it is clear that this is his reason (he announces it so that he can make his point, or you live in an area where Christians are under persecution and this is the most likely motive). It seems to me at the very least odd to suggest that a "manly" response is warranted in the case of random violence, and that usually the martyr response would be cowardly, but it is not in this case. Resisting this specific evil in this way is manly, but resisting just any evil in this way is cowardly. Perhaps it can be argued whether or not pacifism or armed resistance is the correct response to evil, but surely the courage of the martyr need not be impugned in either case.

Objection 7: Protecting lives trumps other moral principles, such as truth telling.

We hear that it is acceptable to lie about hiding Jews because it is more important to protect the innocent than it is to speak the truth. Okay, but why not apply this principle to the early Christians? When confronted by a Roman soldier who threatens to kill the members of your Church unless you deny your faith, why not lie to protect the innocent? Most Christians say that protecting lives in such a case becomes less important than maintaining one's Christian witness. My question is simply, why does this principle not always govern our decisions? Why do we not think, when confronted by evil of all kinds, "Am I proclaiming Christ in all I do and in all I say?" So that hiding Jews or responding to war or any evil that encroaches upon us, our primary response is the response of Christ in all things. It occurs to me that many Christians could function without reference to Christ at all on the question of war. Jesus is frankly irrelevant to the politics of war for most Christians. His is merely a non-threatening and thankfully innocuous private ethic.

Much Ado About Education

It is interesting to note how much fevered talk there is about the matter of education in our day. If Oprah's talking about it, then it must raise our attention; or rather, because Oprah's talking about it, we can now pay attention to it. Let me sum up what I've heard from the cultural intelligentsia: We have bad teachers and not enough money. If we had better teachers and more money, or more money to give to good teachers, then our schools would improve. Much was made of various efforts to change the teacher tenure program and to reward good teachers while creating greater accountability, etc.

Is there something to this? Of course there is! Surely there are many bad teachers in the system, and surely one of the reasons is that we don't pay teachers what we ought to pay them. But I want to talk about four factors contributing to the failure of our educational system that are suspiciously absent from the present conflagration of cultural opinions.

First, there is the matter of the failure of parents and the disintegration of the home. As an educator, I recognize the need for foundational discipline and a basic respect for authority as necessary pre-requisites to effective student/teacher interactions. If a child has not been shaped by parents to afford the most basic tokens of respect to men and women in positions of leadership, then how can education proceed with any degree of success?

How many children of divorce are there in our nation? How many absentee parents? How many intact couples that simply fail to help their children manage their lives well? The effect of all of this is sometimes rather subtle. It produces a general coarsening of the attitutes of young people towards authority. And why would there be any other result? Young people have learned well that one cannot trust adults. If they cannot trust those adults whose natural affections and proximity should provide intimate motivation, then why should they trust total strangers? Why would they not view all adults with derision, or at least skepticism?

Of course if one believes that education is the responsibility of the state, then one can blame the state when a child passes through the halls of the schools of the state and remains ignorant.

If education is ultimately the responsibility of parents and their children, then individual families will need to look long and hard into the mirror if there is a failure to learn what must be learned.

The funny thing here is that many of the same voices that shift responsibility from the media to parents whenever a concern is raised about the influence of the media are the same voices blaming teachers and not parents for a failure in education. Someone must be blamed, and no politician, or aspiring mover of the masses, is going to blame the populace at large. It is one thing for an artist or cultural gadfly like John Stewart, whose demographic appeal is among 10-25 year olds (or those who are mentally that age), to rebuke parents. It is quite another thing for politicians and educators to do so. And so the easiest target here is clearly the state. After all, teachers aren't really human beings--they represent the machine of the state. And it is always en vogue to hate the state. Consider the many politicians whose rhetoric excoriates "Washington," as if the term denotes some abstract idea somehow separated from them.

Second, and related to the first, is the matter of the shift from an idea and word oriented culture to an image oriented entertainment culture. Neil Postman has said all that needs to be said on this point, and his work is perhaps the most devastating cultural critique you are likely to read. To put it simply, he provides clear evidence that we have departed from reasoned, linear, logical dialogue, and in its place we put the drug of various amusements. Words become accessories to images, and we lose our ability to think deeply at all. If Postman is right, the problem may be more complicated than hiring a more efficient teacher. In point of fact, even if we could hire Shakespeare to teach English in our schools, chances are most students would yawn at the man. (see related article: http://monomaniacy.blogspot.com/2010/06/lecture-series-lecture-3challenges-to.html)

Third is the philosophical shift that has accompanied all of this. Two philosophies have successfully supplanted better philosophies, and we are now reaping the rewards. The first is naturalism and the second is postmodernism, and both are philosophically incompatible with education on deep analysis. Bright students know this, and so when their UC trained teachers sell it to them, they know that the implications include what philosophers call an "undercutting defeater" of education itself. Of course students don't use terms like this, but they know that if their teachers are right philosophically, then there can be no objective and abiding motivation in education, nor can there be any objective knowledge. There is only appeasement of the ruling class, which includes educators occasionally. So what does the postmodernist/naturalist tell students is the reason to be educated? To avoid punishment or secure reward, and there can be little other motivation in education. This of course may work when a nation is desperate for a greater share of material comforts, but what if a nation is already fat and happy and still indifferent to knowledge or to sustaining for the next generation what the fruits of education provided for their own generation?

One is going to need a worldview that supplies education with sufficient objective meaning, wholly apart from simple personal payoff. Suffusing education with enough meaning to make it a "good in itself" is not going to come from postmodernism or naturalism. In both worldviews, education is ultimately rendered meaningless, even though on the surface it provides a self-aggrandizing motivation. Beneath the surface, and on careful analysis of the claims of naturalists and postmodernists, one is left with a philosophy that strips our experiences of any significance at all, including the experience of self-aggrandizement (see my various articles on education).

Fourth, modern education makes a fatally flawed assumption. I call it the assumption of will neutrality. The premise of the general argument in our day is that if we will provide better education, then students will eagerly learn. This addresses the sender problem (at least partially), but does not address the receiver problem. Plato put it this way, "The little human animal will not at first have the right responses; it does not naturally love and hate those things which really are lovely and contemptible." (this is something of a paraphrase from memory)

While Plato believed man's natural proclivities included the vice of laziness, an internal impediment to growth in education, the Christian religion has always referred to this internal impediment as sin. Of course there are many in our day who base their entire philosophy of education on the opposite assumption--that we do not possess any relevant lack of virtue making education at the very least more difficult for us. For many in our day the only barrier is simple ignorance, and of course if the only barrier is ignorance, the only solution is information. Irradiate the universe with information and all in the garden will be lovely. Hide or obscure information and we will live in the Dark Ages again, or so goes the argument.

But if in fact we are not simply ignorant, but also somehow corrupt, then providing more information, or information artfully conveyed, or various forms of information, or even by providing an information age in which information is available to all of us 24 hours a day, will not bring about a renaissance in education. We know this is true because of what is happening in our day. The state of education is steadily declining in the one nation in the world where information is most available. Curious isn't it. Perhaps Plato and the Christians were on to something. The solution to the current education crisis is not simply, "add education," but also, "raise virtuous people who can receive and appropriate education." Of course one wonders whether or not the public school system can raise virtuous men and women, especially when it turns virtue itself into a matter of opinion.

Lady Blah Blah

I know... really clever title to this blog, right? What I'm interested in discussing today is the argument in Lady Gaga's new song, "You Were Born This Way."

The key line is, "... you're on the right track, baby, you were born this way..." And it goes on to talk about gays, bisexuals, transvestites, etc. Real shocker that she has this kind of message and agenda.

But here is the latent argument within the song:

Premise 1: If you are born to do ... X , then it is acceptable for you to do X.
Premise 2: You were born to do ... X.
Conclusion: It is acceptable (morally) for you to do X.

My response here is a simple question regarding premise 1: Why should we believe it is obvious that if we are born a certain way that it must be morally acceptable for us to be that way? Does it really follow?

Let's play with a few examples:

Premise 1: If you are born to be a pedophile, then it is acceptable to be a pedophile.
Premise 2: Some people are born to be pedophiles.
Conclusion: Therefore, it is acceptable to be a pedophile.

Or...

Premise 1: If you are born to be a sociopath, then it is acceptable to be a sociopath.
Premise 2: Some people are born to be sociopaths.
Conclusion: Therefore, it is acceptable to be a sociopath.

Or...

Premise 1: If you are born to be homophobic, then it is acceptable to be homophobic.
Premise 2: Some are born to be homophobic.
Conclusion: Therefore, it is acceptable to be homophobic.

Now, of course Lady Gaga is no professional philosopher, but that doesn't mean we should accept muddle headed nonsense simply because it is accompanied by a driving beat.

Lecture Series: Lecture 18: The Problem of Unity and Diversity and The Trinity

I will here suggest a "social model" for the doctrine of the Trinity. This model is by no means new. It is as old as the Church, but is perhaps neglected in the west due to our analytic rather than mystical leanings. I think the glory of this model is that it is still faithful to logic, but asks us to think beyond it as well.

It should first be noted that the doctrine of the Trinity does not violate the axioms of logic because it only suggests that God is three in one sense and one in one sense. It does not ask us to imagine this in a spatial/numerical sense. God is not three bodies and one body at the same time. He is not three in the same sense that He is one. Such thinking will take us in quite the wrong direction. In the language of the creeds, God is simply three in person, one in essence.

There is only one "Godness" in the world; one substance that may be referred to as "God." But that substance is expressed through three dynamic personalities, and it is even expressed in their dynamic interelations. And since this is the language of the Trinity, then spatial/mathematical models merely oversimplify the case. God is not simply 3 and 1 and yet 1 and 3, etc. God is a dynamic interaction of individual personalities that constitute a perfect unity, an essential oneness. The language of society, of community, of relationship, is far nearer the truth of the glorious Trinity.

Lewis is helpful here: He suggests in his Mere Christianity that we experience on our dimension personalities combining in various ways (say the closeness that occurs in marriage or in close friendships). But can we imagine a dimension in which personalities combine in new ways, in perfect ways, so that there is on that plane of existence a perfection of unity and diversity. Lewis says that our experience is like lines combined in two dimensions to form a square. In three dimensions, squares can be combined to form a cube. Notice that a cube is not wholly unlike a square; it is merely a fuller expression of the simplicity of the square, or a new combination of squares in three dimensions. It is in a sense a development along the same trajectory. God's dimension and experience of unity and diversity compared to ours is something like the relationship of the cube to a two-dimensional square.

Or another illustration: Imagine calculus to a first year math student. It would seem irrational. But if he follows the path of logic laid down for him and continues to experience the forms of mathematics he can now understand, he will grow into an understanding of calculus. Calculus is an extension along the same trajectory; it is not a whole departure from simple reason or simple experience. It is an emersion into a deeper and richer expression of reality. In the same way, the unity and diversity in the Trinity is not a departure from our experience. If we could imagine continuing in growth in our relationships, we could see the road carrying us into the "happy land of the Trinity," as Sanders puts it.

Now what does this mean to us? Well, it means everything! Belief in the notion of love requires a robust philosophical answer to the problem of unity and diversity, and the only worldview that can provide such an answer is Christianity. Triune love unifies the distinct while giving distinction to the unified.

Perhaps the most fundamental philosophical problem is the problem of the one and the many. Is there only one thing or one will in the universe, or is there a diversity of things or wills and no meaningful unity in the universe? Early philosophers like Thales believed that everything was essentially unified--his view was that everything was water. Others concluded that everything was essentially separated, like Heraclitus' view that you cannot step into the same river twice. To this day the question holds our interest.

There are scientists in our day who believe that we are essentially products of chance, and chance is by definition the antithesis to any unifying principle. If we are products of chance, then obviously there is no agency that knits the universe together. As many consistent atheists have noted, we are merely accidents that have been "thrown into" this random interrelation of energy and matter. Bertrand Russell, the famous British atheist proclaimed confidently that the destiny of the universe is material particularization. Any stability or order we perceive in the universe will eventually disintegrate, and frankly, it could be nothing more than an arrogant perception now.

If men like Russell are right, then only one ethical choice remains--live for today and live for oneself. Of course logically, even this conclusion can be questioned if Russell's nihilism is true. Nihilism, by definition, means nothing matters. But if nothing matters, then even the view that a person should live a selfish life is another example of the irrelevant and impotent prattling molecules adrift in a violent sea. The curious thing about believing that there are only particulars in the universe is that to do so causes one to lose the value of those particulars. Relativism in the long run is meaningless without some stable and unchanging center by which relative position may be both anchored and understood. If the world is merely filled with random opinions about this or that matter and no truth can be found in them, then ideas are not relative to anything. They are mere by-products of synapses randomly firing in a vacuous ether of uncoordinated happenings. They are not relative happenings because they are not related to anything. They are pure, individual, and irreproducible occurrences, as men like Hume suspected. In an atheist universe, we are not only alone, but even the thought of our loneliness is also alone, isolated from all other thoughts in its vanishing pointlessness. Every thought is jettisoned into the unknown, unimportant and uncoordinated ocean of nihilistic noise, for nihilism is not the absence of something, but is rather the presence of everything but meaning in none of it. The Christian at least dignifies their enemies by arguing with them. The atheist would have us all believe that no man or woman does anything other than litter the universe.

But if the atheists are right and the universe is merely a collection of random happenings, then one can find no meaning in either the whole or the parts. Most cope with this by simply asserting individual will against the universe. As Crane's poem says it, we can shout to the universe that we exist, but it will only answer back, "yes, but the fact has not created in me a sense of obligation." The atheist is forced to be a champion of individuality and can offer no meaningful unity. Thus love becomes impossible, or reduces to individuals deluding themselves into believing that it is something more than meaningless and isolated chemical reactions swallowed up by a purposeless universe.

The Pantheist has the opposite problem of the atheist. His philosophical foundation eliminates the possibility of any meaningful individuality. The interesting thing in this worldview is that there is little attempt to hide this. Pantheists will confidently proclaim that one must abjure the need for individual dignity and embrace the whole. The problem we all face is that we are caught up in a powerful illusion. We actually believe we have a self, and worse, that that self deserves to enlarge its boundaries and become more perfectly self actualized. The Pantheist believes that through various spiritual practices and eventually through birth and rebirth, the individual soul will be absorbed into the universal and all permeating essence of all things.

In the Bhagava Gita, the Hindu holy text, a prince named Arjuna is visited by the Avatar of Brahman called Krishna. Krishna appears individually to Arjuna to lead him in the path of enlightenment. He teaches Arjuna that individuality is a powerful illusion. Now apart from the logical problem here (Why would not Arjuna simply conclude that Krishna also is a part of the illusion?), the real issue is the naked denial of individuality. Love requires an object and a subject and in Pantheism there is only one reality. Love is a matter of relationship, one person relating to another. But if there is no person there, in reality, then surely there can be no love. In Pantheism an individual appeal is made to embrace the idea that individuality doesn’t exist. But it should be clear that if singularity exists without multiplicity, then there can be no love.

Only the Christian worldview can hold unity and diversity together, and the reason it can is because Christian teaching is rooted in the nature and character of a God who is unified and diverse. The Triune God is the source of unity and diversity. Without a Triune concept of God, one is left to turn to other worldviews, none of which can provide a rational foundation for unity and diversity.

Consider how practical this matter can be. In governments that go wrong, the tension between unity and diversity is not maintained. In communism, there is a kind of unity, but individuality is lost. The state is more important than an individual. In a dictatorship, the will of one man is imposed upon the populace, and as such individual dignity is compromised for one uniform voice. One will absorbs the collective of wills. Democracy has the opposite problem. In a democracy, often disagreement is the only agreement. People boldly exercise their right to voice their individual views, and special interest groups often try to manipulate the political process in order to secure their own individual needs without much concern for the common good. Capitalism works well in a democracy because it rewards individual competition. The individual will is held to be more valuable than a sustainable unity of wills. The extreme example of a governmental system that denies unity for individuality would be either libertarianism or anarchy. In the case of anarchy the concept of a common will is totally abandoned and individual survival or advantage alone is sought.

The point here is that in something as mundane as a governmental system we see that the core problem is a failure to harmonize with the Triune reality of complete unity and diversity simultaneously.

And even more practical than governmental systems, consider the simple everyday reality of interpersonal relationships. In bad marriages, for example, unity or diversity diminishes over time. Some marriages polarize naturally, and in such cases individuality is preserved, but meaningful unity is lost. Some marriages are places of endless contention, with both individuals passionately asserting their right to be right. Obviously in such cases individuality is preserved at the cost of unity. In other marriages, one partner forfeits her will to the other, or is overpowered by the other. A marriage can be a place where unity is forged at the cost of one person’s individuality.

If we really were made in the image of a God who is the perfection of unity and diversity, then we would expect that our hearts would yearn both for connection to God and others and we would expect to find in ourselves a desire for the realization of our highest individual potential.

Divine love unifies the distinct while giving distinction to the unified.

(For a treatment of how the Trinity idea provides meaning to the whole educational enterprise, see the article titled “The Trinity and Education.”)

Lecture Series: Lecture 17: Philosophical Problems with Islam

It must be obvious that Christianity and Islam are in an adversarial relationship towards each other. And it is just philosophically inane for any people pleasing postmodernist to suggest that their differences are not that significant. Oprah and her largely ignorant legions try to convince the world that the differences that exist between religions like Islam and Christianity do not really exist, or are superficial, even cosmetic, differences.

What I find striking about this attitude is the arrogance in it, which of course is ironic since it is meant as a countermeasure to the arrogance of "one truth" religious positions. And the arrogance of Oprah and others who make this argument is much worse, in my estimation. First, she reduces all religious claims to mere matters of taste. But why should we believe that she has the right to do that? Religions claim that their understanding of truth is correct. Surely it is arrogant to suggest that all of these people the world over who think they have discovered the truth about God, the afterlife, morality and the like are merely wrong to think so. How does she know? Why not just think her arrogant for thinking she is right that no one can be right?

Secondly, her arrogance is revealed by the implications of such a statement. She knows what all religions teach, down to the fine details of each world system, and she knows that really everyone believes the same thing, even though all of their best scholars would disagree on this point. No matter. Apparently we should trust Oprah over Muslim and Christian scholars who claim these differences are significant. We must conclude that Oprah has a near divine level of knowledge to be able to supplant the best scholars of the worlds various religions, especially Islam and Christianity.

Thankfully, thinking people don't take Oprah seriously on this point. We simply must recognize that the differences between Christianity and Islam amount to a near complete incompatibility between the two religions. With that factual starting point, let us explore the simple question, why Christianity and not Islam?

I will attempt to organize this by discussing doctrines of the Islamic faith that I believe are at the very least problematic, and thus create serious doubt in the truthfulness of Islam.

Doctrine 1 - Mercy and Justice in Islam

While Christianity can account for the mercy and justice of God, Islam cannot.

There are two angles to take at this point. The first involves the actual transaction when God offers mercy and the other involves the process of "earning" God's mercy.

If Islam is correct, then it is clear that God need not punish his son for our sins or any other human representative for that matter. God needs only to "commute" the sentence, laying aside the guilt and all punishments associated with it. And while at first that seems reasonable--after all, when we forgive someone, it seems a wholly subjective affair, in which we just say, "okay, I forgive you." We don't say that there needs to be some just countermeasure to our actions. We don't go looking for our neighbor's cat to offer sacrifice as payment for the forgiveness we offered him. So while this seems to appeal to our common sense, it is an inadequate understanding of justice and mercy.

For example, if my neighbor has stolen from me and I forgive him, it is not as if penalty has not occurred. I have been punished already, in a sense, for his crimes, but that in itself is not just. Surely God will require fairness in all things, including this exchange. It is simply not right for a man to "get away" with stealing from another simply because he has been forgiven.

In short, for God to forgive men, he will have to stop being just. It is simply unjust for God to allow the universe to absorb the sins of men. The damage is done and cannot be undone. What can be done is a just recompense for these actions. But in Islam, God simple "turns aside" his wrath, or "looks away" from the damage done.

Perhaps a Muslim could answer this by suggesting that in mercy God has allowed a time for people to restore justice by doing what is right to compensate for the sins they have committed. In other words, God establishes a works system that "pays down" the debt owed to him. But taking this to the end, it must be clear that if men have time to overcome their bad deeds by performing sufficient good deeds, then they are merely keeping their end of God's bargain. God would be required, in pure justice, to let them into heaven because they fulfilled the conditions He himself set out for them to fulfill. It seems to be the case that mercy need not fit into the equation, since man is merely doing what he was rightly supposed to do with the time afforded and earning his way back to God. And practically it bears noting that a Muslim probably wouldn't labor under these conditions with any sense of the mercy of God affording him all the necessary time, resources and support to achieve the appropriate good works. He would most likely labor under a crushing burden of fear and uncertainty, with the thought of God's justice rather than any sense of mercy prominent in his mind.

Islam has a pendulum problem here: When concerns about the place of mercy in a works oriented system are raised, the Islamic answer is that God is really forgiving the sins of the past; and when concerns about the justice of merely "laying aside" these sins are raised, the Islamic answer is the justice of a works oriented system. Concerns about God's justice are solved by giving us only a just God while concerns about God's mercy are solved by giving us only a merciful God. And yet among the 99 names of Allah, the Qur'an makes it clear that He is both merciful and just. This is a serious logical problem.

This matter cannot be deferred to mystery either, and the reason surely is that the Qur'an explains God's justice and mercy.

A religious mystery is an area indicated but not fully explained (such as God's role in specific evils, if any). These areas need not be contradictory, and presumably Islam includes some of these.

But that is not what we see in the matter of mercy and justic in God. It is plainly explained that salvation is earned and that prior sins are simply laid aside. But these are clearly logical problems, as has already been explained. It is philosophically irresponsible after these observations are made to seek refuge in the notion of "God's mysteries."

Doctrine 2 - The Derivative Nature of Islamic Doctrine

The best ideas in Islam are borrowed from Judaism and Christianity. If one were to take out of the Qur'an every reference to the Old Testament story, one would find the Qur'an a very thin book indeed. This is so striking that anyone who reads the Qur'an will be amazed at the lack of original material in it. It will almost read like a Jewish cult rather than a separate religious tradition.

The troubling part in the Qur'an is the additional or manipulated material, such as the role of Ismael, the legal changes and the rejection of Jesus as the Son of God. On these grounds Christians must of course reject Islam, but surely there is much the two religions share in common.

Doctrine 3 - Evidentiary Problems with The Islamic Doctrine of Sin

One of the teachings in Islam that is at odds with Christianity and Judaism is the doctrine of sin. Muslims are essentially Pelagian (the Christian heresy that taught we do not inherit a disposition toward sin). In Islam, people are born with a capacity to keep God's law. There is no doctrine of "original sin." A person can, in theory, live a sinless life, provided he or she tries hard enough. This of course is immediately rejected by Christian teaching.

The problem here seems obvious. If we are born with a capacity for sinlessness, why are there not more sinless people in the world? To say that we fall into sin merely because of "peer pressure" is inadequate as an explanation of pervasive sin in the world. If human beings have the ability to do right, then the assumption is that they have knowledge of what is right. And if they have knowledge of what is right, and the capacity to do what is right, it follows that no exposure to what is wrong need deter them from doing what is right. In fact, if anything it would give them more incentive to do right, since there are so many examples of ruined lives all around them.

Does it not seem that the cleanest explanation for our experience--namely, that everyone we know is a sinner--is the Christian doctrine of original sin? G.K. Chesterton said it this way, "The only doctrine for which Christians have ample empirical evidence is the doctrine of original sin." What he meant is that daily we are exposed to evil both in our own lives and in the lives of others. The best explanation for the fact that sin comes so naturally to us is that humanity is messed up. The evidence supports Christian doctrine and not Islamic doctrine.

Doctrine 4 - Islam and Unity and Diversity

There is no love in Allah which he can share with anyone. Of the 99 names for God in Islam, the name love is strangely missing. The reason is clearly that he need not show love because he does not experience love in his own nature. Only a Triune God can experience love. Only when there is a dynamic interaction of wills can there be love. There must be a subject/subject relation in order to have love. When we speak of "loving ourselves," we must surely mean that there is something about us that is worthy of loving. Imagine for a moment that you were the only being in all of existence. Could you love anything then, standing in infinite space, with no other being in the universe with whom to relate? Surely love is meaningless without relationship and relationship is meaningless without another will that can converse with you. What would love mean then if it cannot be given to anyone? In Islam, God is alone, and none can understand or appreciate him. His creation is a feature of His sovereign power and not an expression of love. God is not creating to disclose himself to creation so that they might know and love Him. God creates to ensure the implementation of his unilateral will.

The question is this: If God need not bother about love, then why should anyone else? If God is not winning people by love, then why should his followers be constrained to do anything different? If God exists to enforce a set of directives without love, then his people can surely do the same.

Lewis once said that "monstrous nations have a monstrous conception of God." Is it any wonder most people the world over would not want to live in any consistently Muslim country, including probably most Muslims.

Doctrine 5 - Islamic View of History

It is because of the Islamic conception of God that Islamic history is what it is. Islam spreads by the blood of its enemies; Christianity, by the blood of its founder and His disciples for generations. Surely this by itself tells us something about the practical outworking of the ideas of each system. Islam spreads by conquest. Christianity spreads by martyrdom. Islam conquered the Mediterranean world in a short time using the methods of Alexander, Julius and other conquerors. Christianity conquered the Mediterranean world in a way unseen up until that point or since--by a sacrifice that transformed the heart of Rome. Islam contains and controls foreign ideas; Christianity penetrates and transforms them. People submit to Islam out of fear; they submit to Christianity out of love.

It is true that Christians turned at times to the efficiency of conquest in order to spread its position in the world. Thankfully, Christians now know that those times constitute a bold departure from the gospel of Jesus Christ. They are to be confessed among the Christian community as periods of great internal disease and sinfulness. You will wait a long time before you hear any Muslim scholar admit that the conquests of North Africa, Persia, Spain and Constantinople were sins in Islam.

Doctrine 6 - Islamic View of Salvation

In short, your performance saves you. We have already discussed the logical problem here. If you can perform your way back into God's good graces, then salvation cannot be a matter of mercy. If we can perform so as to overcome our sins, then the granting of salvation is a just recompense for having performed as one ought to perform.

The other dimension to this is the psychological state of the performer. Will he be burdened by fear or freedom in his pursuit of moral excellence? He can never be assured of his salvation until a sufficient number of good deeds compensate for any bad deeds he has committed. What if he runs out of time? What if the quality of his good deeds is not good enough though he has perhaps done many? And what will his lifelong motivations be?

Surely the Muslim operating in this performance mindset will see threat of punishment and promise of reward as his singular motivation in life. He will become an ethical egoist. Life will be about his own comfort in the end. He is not trying to know and love God and enjoy him forever. He can't know or love God since God is unmatched and unknowable. Thus his entire motivation with respect to God is to secure some payoff from him and to stave off any punishments coming from such a powerful being.

The curious thing about this is that even atheistic ethicists recognize the inferiority of ethical egoism. It turns everything in the universe into an excuse to feed self-interest alone. But what if everyone felt this way? What if everyone in my life only cared about me because I was somehow enriching their experience in life? There would be no one who could think of me as a "good" in and of myself. Strangely this attitude is consistent with the Muslim notion of God, who in effect has turned us into things to be used to achieve his purposes rather than subjects to be loved for who we are. But then the Muslim God should not be surprised when they respond to Him in precisely the same fashion, turning Him into a source of personal payoff rather than someone to love for who He is.

Doctrine 7 - Islamic View of Heaven

In keeping with the Islamic notion of God and the performance relationship of his subjects, heaven is merely a sensual reward for those who keep God's laws. There are virgins, succulent foods and serene scenes in God's oasis. In essence, one is given a cleaned up and exaggerated version of the pleasures of earth forever and ever. This of course all fits with an egoist ethic. The problem is that the egoist ethic is dreadful!

Lecture Series: Lecture 16: Evolution v. Creationism

And now we begin an assessment of the question of evolution. Since I am better equipped to handle philosophical questions than scientific ones, let me offer a philosophical point to begin:

Evolution is a tautology. Remember a tautology is a statement that is definitional and not explanatory, but it is often cited as an explanation. In other words, tautologies are definitions masquerading as arguments. An example of a tautology would be, "Either God exists or He doesn't." This statement is necessarily true, but it is useless and uninteresting. Another example would be, "a bachelor is an unmarried male." Yep, but again useless and philosophically void.

Here is the tautology of evolution: The confident evolutionist says, "Only the best creatures survive." And I ask, "What makes them the best?" And he says, "Because they survive." Or put plainly: "The evolved creatures are the ones that survive and the reason they are the most evolved is that they survive."

Of course it is plain when stated this way that evolution as a theory has virtually nothing to do with this tautological evolution. Evolution as a process would not be interested in ensuring that the "best" or "most evolved" would survive. Of course this has to do with what we mean by the "best" creatures. And surely this is the center of my point--namely, that evolution merely definitionally associates "best" with "survivor." But then the theory of evolution seems to indicate that living creatures began with a simple common ancestor and "developed" into the spectacular variety of living things we now encounter, among which are creatures that are more intelligent, altruistic, and in that sense "better" than their distant ancestors. In other words, evolution as a theory suggests that things are progressing through the ages by the refining power of natural selection. But is this so, other than merely definitionally? (in other words, because they tell us it is happening)

If evolution as a theory is true then it would not ensure "refinement" in the least. It would only ensure value-neutral change, genetic drift. One could not watch the change occur and then say after the fact that it was an improvement, because that would imply that evolution is a perfecting process and would beg the whole question.

In other words, evolution, at least as it has been explained by evolutionists, ensures only that random changes in an environment meet random changes in organisms, and when by happy accident the creature has the traits to survive in that environment, then it passes its genes to the next generation. That is it! It seems to me obvious that this kind of process would not "care" about producing something better over time. In fact over time this planet will become uninhabitable to humans, leaving only bacteria to survive. At that point, would it be reasonable to suggest that bacteria would be the "most evolved" creatures? Is it reasonable to suggest it now, since bacteria can survive myriad environments and we are less adaptive. Or consider this another way. Perhaps there are aliens in the universe whose intelligence exceeds ours at least as much as ours exceeds that of bacteria. Are they the most evolved, even if in colonizing our planet they should be destroyed by a simple virus?

And now we turn to the matter of evolutionary science and how a Christian can respond to it. First, let's establish a few key terms, as we are want to do in this class:

1. Evolution: Organisms develop in complexity over time, descending from a common, albeit simple, ancestor.

2. Natural selection: Only organisms suited to the environment survive to pass their genetics to the next generation. This is perhaps a more accurate definition of evolution itself, given the explanations most generally offered.

3. Theistic evolution: God is the creative causal agent behind the evolutionary process, perhaps in a merely Deistic or detached manner.

4. Punctuated equilibrium: The view of Stephen J. Gould that genetic changes in organisms happen so rapidly that the intermediary forms have little time to leave a fossil deposit.

5. Big bang cosmology: There is a residual echo of the big bang (traceable expansion, slowing), which demonstrates an absolute beginning to the universe.

6. Law of biogenesis: Creatures produce after their own kind. Chickens produce chickens and humans produce humans.

7. Second Law of Thermodynamics: Heat loss and loss of order occur in a closed system. Also referred to as entropy.

8. Irreducible complexity: Some organs/organisms do not appear to have any conceivable need of perfecting. In other words, some things in nature do not appear to be able to go through a developmental or emergent process. All the necessary parts need to be in place simultaneously (such as the bacterial flagellum, the eye, etc), which implies that the information system that coded for the creation of these systems (DNA) had to be in place prior to assembly as well.

9. Mutations: Mistakes in genetic duplication. These create changes in the way an organism functions. This is said to be the mechanism of evolutionary development. Generally this would require a slow process of genetic differentiation to create new systems, thus creating significant innovative changes  (sea mammal to land mammal, etc.).

10. Spontaneous generation: The view that life on earth came from the constituent chemicals of which the earth is made. It is said that non-living chemicals "came to life" or "self-assembled" as a result of a random interaction of these chemicals with an external energy source (such as lightening).

In confronting the matter of evolution, the Christian must face his most significant evidentiary challenge--namely, the age of the earth. Of course this is a significant problem because the Scriptures seem to indicate a rather young earth (6 - 15 thousand years).

What evidence is there of age? The two primary sources of this information come from the rocks (geological evidence) and from stars (cosmological evidence).

Radiometric dating is the process of discerning the age of rocks from the half-life of various elements within them. Christians are fond of claiming that radiometric dating is unreliable, and since I am no scientist, it occurs to me that I would not have the authority to counter or confirm this claim. For the sake of argument, let us assume that radiometric dating is roughly accurate. If it is, then surely the earth cannot be as young as Genesis indicates. It would have to be much older, on the order of 4-5 billion years.

Carbon dating looks at the half-life of carbon in a sample to find its approximate age. I'm told that it works only to about 50,000 years since that is the longest possible age signature carbon can leave.

Perhaps the strongest evidence for the age of the earth is the cosmological evidence. We know that the closest star to the earth is our sun, which is roughly 93 million miles away from us. That means that the light from our sun left 8 minutes ago. We are looking at a developing photograph that was taken 8 minutes ago. If that weren't amazing enough, consider that many of the stars we see in the night sky ceased to exist many millions of years ago, since the light traveling from those stars left millions of years ago. When we finally see the supernova of those stars, it is a time delay of several million years. Surely this indicates a very old universe indeed!

These evidentiary points cannot be brushed aside. They require some reasonable response from Christians. Now I highlight a few Christian responses to the age problem:

1. Theistic Evolution: Some Christians have adopted a compromise position between creation and evolution known as Theistic Evolution. The basic idea is that the universe is old and that God has chosen to use the slow process of evolution to create. God is the creative force behind phenomena that are as yet unexplained by evolutionary science, such as the origin of life from non-living chemicals, the wealth of necessary beneficial mutations and order from disorder.

One problem with TE is that it must turn the early Genesis account into an allegory (a symbolic story, or poem) of creation. One wonders where the allegory ends? One wonders whether Adam and Eve were real people?

Another problem with TE is that God is seen to use a method of creation that seems unworthy of Him. Why would God use such a slow and even imperfect process to bring about the emergence of man? Surely the Genesis account indicates that God, who is perfect, creates a world that is perfect, or at least harmonious, and then it deteriorates from that state into the imperfect state we see now. Evolution would seem to suggest the exact opposite paradigm.

And finally, TE would also involve the messy struggle for survival as its method of "creation." The Genesis account seems to indicate that death is a result of the fall and not that it is a tool of creation.

Having said all of this, perhaps there are ways of facing such challenges and offering a plausible Theistic Evolutionary model. Certainly many intelligent Christians have adopted it as their answer to the age question.

2. The Day Age Theory: This would be the interpretive framework for Genesis supplied by the Theistic Evolutionist or the model of Hugh Ross and his compatriots. It is said that the days of Genesis represent epochs of time. The word"yom" in Hebrew can have such a meaning, and as such it perhaps refers to an era or epoch. A strong counter to this is the Exodus 20 reference, in which the plural for "yom" is used, as in "In six days (yamim) God created the heavens and the earth..." Any time the plural "yamim" is used in Scripture, meaning "days," it refers to a succession of literal 24 hour days. This would seem to be a problem for the Day Age Theorist. Nevertheless, such an objection may reasonably be faced, thus giving the Day Age Theory stronger footing.

3. The Gap Theory: An unusual theory, to say the least. It is built on the notion that a gap of perhaps billions of years exists between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2. "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth... and the earth was formless and void..." The contention is that God created the world, then rendered it formless and void as the result of His judgment on a pre-Adamic race. The earth was in this formless and void condition for billions of years, after which God begins a recreation. This is not a widely held theory due to the fact that it reads far too much into the phrase "formless and void."

4. The Literalist Theory: It is still maintained by some "short age" creationists that God could have created the world in 6 literal 24 hour periods of time. They maintain that the matter of age is a matter of appearance--that is, God created the universe in a state of material maturity. It is said that God could have built a history into the rocks of the earth as well as a history into the Cosmos. The evidence for this is the maturity of the garden and the maturity of Adam and Eve. They were not created as fetuses, but as fully grown adults. In that sense, the chicken indeed came before the egg for the literalist.

The problem with the literalist theory is its relationship to the evidence for age and its explanations for the appearance of age. For example, in order for the universe to give an appearance of several billion years when it is only 6000 years old would require God in a sense deceiving us as to the light signature of distant stars. We see a light signature of stars 7 million light years away, and yet those stars presumably don't exist. It seems that such a theory would require that as we look at the night sky, the only stars that really exist are the the ones at or within the universal boundary of 6000 years, indicating that all the rest are "representations" of stars. And that would indicate that we are functioning within something like a giant "dome," as in the movie "The Truman Show."

Or it could be that the stars exist, but God accelerated the light to arrive on earth and then slowed the light again to the constant rate for light that we now know.

And consider the fossil question. This theory would indicate either that dinosaurs lived only 6000 years ago or that God deposited fossils of creatures that never really existed. But both strain the limits of credibility.

5. Schroeder's Theory (Quasar Theory): Perhaps not a widely known theory because it requires an ability to conceptualize Einstein's theory of relativity and its implications with respect to time. Perhaps the best thing to do here would be to link you to Schroeder's article on this: http://www.aish.com/ci/sam/48951136.html

In essence, this article indicates that the universe looks 15 billion years old from our vantage point in the expansion of the universe. Our relative position in the universe causes us to see the universe as that old, but if we were located at or near the point of the big bang, events would be radically accelerated and yet you wouldn't "feel" that they were. To get an idea of this, imagine for a moment teleporting to a distant galaxy on a planet where time didn't move as quickly. You are there, from the perspective of that planet, for 10 years and then you teleport back to earth only to learn that everyone you knew was now in their 80's. You aged ten years while they aged 60+ years. Einstein taught us that time does not function the same everywhere in the universe. In some places in the universe an orange could theoretically last for months. At the point of the big bang, events are rapidly accelerated, but if you were there you would not perceive this rapid change.

I personally like Schroeder's theory and think that it's merit lies in that if true it would demonstrate that the universe is both young and old at the same time. Looking forward from the point of the big bang would grant a short time frame, but looking back from our position in the expansion and slowing of the universe grants a long time frame.

So is it true that modern evolutionary science is at odds with Christian faith? Theistic Evolution, Short Age Creation and Schroeder's Theory offer plausible methods of resolving the age considerations within the creationist model. The real question is this: Is modern science at odds with modern science? In other words, is the evolutionary theory consistent with modern science? It seems the answer is a resounding no!

Now I would like to discuss a few problems with Naturalism:

1. The mind is the product of purposeless chance. We have discussed this already, so I won't labor the point. Suffice it to say that if our minds are the products of a purposeless process, there can be no objective reason to think that in using them we are doing something purposeful. But if there is no purpose to using the mind, then science surely is left without a motivational foundation. We can do it perhaps to cure boredom, but surely a party is more fun than the science lab.

2. All of human history is moving toward total annihilation. This is another point that has been raised, but it surely must be the case that if all of human history will become nothing more than a particularized junkyard of inert matter, then there can be no meaning in the things we are doing with our time now. In point of fact, if naturalism is true, then the universe is nothing but totally randomized shrapnel from a giant explosion. But if this is really true, then one might as well spend one's time finding pleasure in whatever will afford it rather than doing science.

3. Another problem in evolutionary "science" is that assumptions are passed of as observational facts.

For example, spontaneous generation is passed off as fact when every scientific test employed to confirm it has actually reinforced the fact that the opposite is true--namely, that life exploding from its constituent chemicals is impossible. Life does not spontaneously generate from chemical parts. Nature herself is insistent on this point. This is no canon of religious dogmatism (stubborn belief). Observationally, we have seen only that life comes from pre-existing life. Even in Darwin's own work, it is plain that he conceived of evolution as taking over once there was a creature in place that had reproductive capabilities. Darwinism itself simply doesn't make sense unless there exists some common ancestor with the requisite encyclopedic genetics necessary to reproduce itself.

Another assumption of modern evolutionary theory is that mutations are sufficient to create biological innovations on their own. It should be understood that a mutation is actually a random mistake in genetic duplication. These mistakes are often then passed on through successive generations of genetic duplication. This causes a kind of corruption of genetic information, usually resulting in too much information here or too little information there. As a result, mutations are almost wholly destructive to living things, or at least cause a less than optimal functionality. For example, genetic disorders such as down's syndrome or sickle cell anemia cause those who have these disorders to live more difficult and often shorter lives. This process of mutative change over time is the only meaningful mechanism for evolutionary development, and yet it seems almost totally destructive.

Another question persists: How many constructive and coordinated mutative genetic steps must there be to cause the transition of a sea-mammal to a land-going mammal, for example? Would it have to be on the order of millions? Does this not strain the limits of credibility?

On the question of mutations, the case of fruit flies is instructive. The life cycle of fruit flies is very short, which allows scientists to tinker with their genetics through cross-breeding, in the hope of demonstrating how mutations can be a source of biological innovation. The equivalent of many human generations of genetic drift can be traced because of the short life cycle of fruit flies. And what has been the result of this study? Scientists have found that strangely there seems to be a kind of genetic barrier surrounding the species "fruit fly." Many exotic forms of fruit flies are produced in these studies, but what is curiously missing is any leap to biological structures that would be considered novel to fruit flies. The point is that there is only so much information available in the gene pool of the fruit fly. One cannot expect that a random reconfiguration of the raw parts of DNA will produce additional information, especially the kind and quality necessary for constructive and coordinated mutative steps forward in development.

The last glaring assumption of evolutionary science is the notion of naturalism itself. I have also discussed this elsewhere, but it bears repeating that there is no way to scientifically demonstrate the God does not exist. It is philosophical position. To say that "everything has a naturalistic explanation" is self-contradictory, for surely the statement that "everything has a naturalistic explanation" does not itself have a naturalistic explanation. It is philosophical, which means it is an interpretation of the facts and not a fact itself. But those principles by which we interpret facts are not facts themselves and are not even discerned from the facts. The problem of course is that the assumption of God's non-existence is passed off as though it is fact, which is absurd.

The Factual Problems with Naturalism:

4. Mutations: Observationally they are bad or neutral and not beneficial in a substantially creative or emergent sense. Fruit flies with four wings are cool looking and fun to produce through cross breeding, but they die even more quickly than other fruit flies. X-Men is a great movie, but it is after all just a movie!

5. Fossil Record: There are significant glaring gaps in the fossil record. And not only that, but abundant and multiple complex life forms all appear together in what is known as the Cambrian rock layer, and in other explosive events. There are no common ancestors in the fossil record for most of the animals that come into existence in these "explosions," which seems to indicate that multiple creatures of different genetic trajectories came into existence simultaneously.

Darwin himself noted that if his theory were to be vindicated, there would have to be multiple transitional forms scattered throughout the fossil record. We should see literally millions of transitional forms between sea-mammal and land-going mammal, much less the rest of the fossil record. And that is not what we find. Scientists claim that the reason for this is that the conditions required for laying down fossils are exceedingly rare. But apparently the problem is significant enough to prompt a new theory championed by Harvard biologist Stephen J. Gould. His theory suggests that the genetic changes that create new species happen much more abruptly than previously thought, so that perhaps setting down a fossil record would be compromised. Rapid coordinated changes happen and thus no record is left between groups. This theory is called "punctuated equilibrium" to suggest that the evolutionary periods are rapid, followed by long periods of evolutionary calm.

The curious thing about this new theory is that it seems to suggest that evolution is happening so rapidly that one won't find a fossil record. Of course, the argument has been that evolution is happening so slowly that we can't see it now either. So what that means is that it is invisible both to our observations now and in the fossil record historically, but we must trust that it is happening--after all, how else are we going to explain the facts of our experience?

6. Irreducible Complexity: Michael Behe, in his book, Dawrin's Black Box, discusses this idea. He illustrates by discussing the various parts of a mousetrap. To be functional, a mousetrap requires that all five parts function symbiotically. Another way of saying this is that each of the parts of the mousetrap were created anticipating the necessary relationships between the various parts. The whole is the reason for the parts, so to speak. But surely if we find things like this in nature, then we will be led to conclude that certain structures in nature cannot go through an unguided developmental process and that perhaps they were intentionally arranged in the ways that they are. A mousetrap missing even one of the essential five parts is wholly non-functional. It is questionable whether it can even be referred to as a mousetrap. Is this also true of the bacterial flagellum or the first cell or other irreducibly complex structures in nature? Behe says yes, and many scientists agree with him.

7. Time and Probabilities: Remember Dr. Stenger offered a "low-probability argument," essentially stating that low probability events happen all the time (people win the lottery, people are hit by lightening, etc.), so one should not rule out that naturalistic evolution has occurred since we see low probability events every day.

I suggested to you that this is a dreadful argument, for the following reasons:

One, it is a logical fallacy (called Affirming the Consequent).

If evolution occurred, the improbable is possible.
The improbable is possible.
Therefore, evolution occurred.

But clearly it is ridiculous to make the leap from some improbable events to all improbable events, or from one class of improbable events to the class of improbable events to which evolution belongs. To illustrate,

If dogs are typing Shakespeare on the moon right now, then the improbable is possible.
The improbable is possible.
Therefore, dogs are on the moon right now typing Shakespeare.

The other response to Stenger would be that of Aristotle. Aristotle notes that chance events do occur, but within ordered boundaries. If that is true, then chance occurrences do not in the least threaten the Christian position. We can simply state that God's ordered design includes parameters wide enough to allow for chance events. The lottery is instructive here. From the perspective of the designer of the game, it is assured that someone will win it. From the perspective of the players, the winner is wholly random. No thinking person would conclude that because a chance event took place within the game that the game itself is a chance event.

8. 2nd Law of Thermodynamics: Christians are fond of citing the second law against evolution, but to do so requires that we accurately address the arguments of our opponents. Scientists note that the second law does not preclude evolution on this planet because the second law only dictates that entropy will occur in a closed system. The earth is not a closed system. It is constantly irradiated by a primary energy source, our sun. The sun is the engine that drives evolution.

But is this response adequate? If entropy occurs in a closed system, we must ask if the universe is a closed system? It seems that most would either say yes, or would be led to conclude that we can make no other assumption given the evidence. As such, it seems clear that the second law is a serious obstacle to evolution on a universal scale. One could perhaps state that what we experience is global evolution amid universal devolution. The solar system is in decay. One day, perhaps many millions of years hence, it will unravel, the sun will explode or burn out its fuel, and nothing but diminished (less useful) matter will exist.

Another interesting thought is this: If the universe is devolving from some organized original state prior to the big bang, wouldn't that state be the most "evolved" state? Can we meaningfully think of the present state as more evolved than the big bang itself? Why arbitrarily conclude that living matter is more evolved than supremely organized non-living matter? What gives us that right--that is, what gives us the epistemological right to assess matter along a scale? No river can rise higher than it's source, and so the state just before the big bang is the most evolved state--that is, if evolutionary theory is to be consistent.

9. Law of Biogenesis: All our observations of nature indicate that creatures contain set parameters of genetic information that they invariably pass down to successive generations. And while mutations occur, they only manipulate this information and do not generate new and more complex information from it. That is where centuries of scientific observations have led us.

10. Big Bang Cosmology: The residual echo of the big bang is evidence of an absolute beginning, get this, not merely of motion in the universe, but of matter, time and space itself. Now that we know the atomic structure of matter, it seems impossible to conceive of matter locked in complete inactivity. And if the matter of the big bang was excited into motion, how was it so excited? Could it have provided for its own atomic motion by itself if it was frozen motionless at the beginning?

But matter in motion cries out for a creator or an absolute beginning to motion because of the Kalam argument. If there was no beginning to this motion, then the past is an infinite series of movements, or events. But this is rationally absurd because if the past is infinite, then the present could not have arrived.