Why I Am Not an Evangelical, Part I

American culture has proved fertile soil for a form of conservative Christianity that calls itself 'Evangelicalism'. As my readers (you brave few) know well, I am no Christian (though I find myself strongly attracted to Christianity). Perhaps I will become Christian some day. I find peace and enlightenment at Catholic mass. Among the priests I know are men of great wisdom and spiritual depth. Perhaps a day will come when they will convince me of what they preach. But I cannot imagine that I will ever become an Evangelical. Its errors are multifarious and manifest. I do hope that its influence wanes in the decades to come, for it is both culturally and religiously corrosive.

In this post and ones to follow, I explain why I take such a critical view of Evangelicalism. This is the first of seven posts. In each, I explain why I reject some central doctrine or stance of contemporary Evangelical Christianity.

Let's first have a list of them. After I'll turn to the first deadly sin.

1. The Doctrine of Substitutionary Attonement
2. The Doctrine of Biblical Inerrancy
3. The Doctrine of Sola Fide (Salvation by Faith Alone)
4. The Viciousness of the Evangelical God
5. Evangelical Disdain for Science
6. Evangelical Alliance with the Republican Party
7. Sexism of Evangelicals (Extraordinarily, both men and women evangelicals!)

Before I begin, let me say that not all Evangelicals are guilty of each of these sins. Do not suppose that "Evangelicalism" has a precise definition captured by some or all of the sins on my list. Rather each sin is characteristic of Evangelicalism. Exceptions can be found, but they are just that - exceptions (quite rare exceptions, I am sure).

Let us turn, then, to the first of the deadly sins.

First Fault: The Doctrine of Substitutionary Atonement

First let's have a statement of the doctrine (hereafter SA). After I'll attack it.

The doctrine concerns the death of Christ. It is an answer to the question, What was the point of His death? The answer that SA gives is multipart. (i) We are all sinners. (ii) We ourselves cannot remove the taint of that sin. We ourselves cannot atone for it. (iii) Christ, since perfect, could pay the price of our sins. He, since perfect, could atone for them by His death. Indeed in His death He did precisely this. (iv) Thus in His death Christ justifies us before God. In His death, he makes possible the forgiveness of our sins and a life eternal in God's bosom.

Thus we come to understand why 'Substitutionary Attonement' is the proper name of this doctrine. Christ, in His death, substitutes for us and bears the penalty of our sins; and in this way is atonement made for our sins.

(Of course most Evangelicals will add that our sins are forgiven only if we put our trust in Christ and ask His forgiveness. But strictly that is not part of SA, so let's say no more about it here. But I will take up the issue when I turn to the topic of The Viciousness of the Evangelical God.)

The Attack

1. No atonement is necessary for forgiveness. I can forgive you the wrongs you've done to me even if you do nothing to atone for those wrongs, even if you do not ask forgiveness. This makes Christ's death unnecessary for the forgiveness that God gives. If the only point that Christ's death can have is that it made possible forgiveness of sins, His death was pointless.

2. But my opponent might dig in her heels. She might say some such thing as this:

God's justice cannot be trumped by His mercy. Rather His justice requires that a price be paid for human sin.

My reply is two-part. (i) To suppose that a price must be paid for sin is to make God a hostage to His justice. Is to make Him unable to forgive if the price of sin is not paid. But any such limitation is inimical to God's nature. God can do as He pleases (so long as what He does involves no absolute impossibility - not even God can square the circle). But to forgive when the price of sin has not been paid is surely possible. Thus God can do it. (ii) God is a merciful god. But if of necessity the price of sin must be paid to God before He can forgive, He never extends His grace to us. To extend grace is to forgive, is to treat as righteous, when the price has not been payed. Thus the supposition that God is a god of mercy contradicts SA.

3. As said, no atonement is necessary for forgiveness. But that of course does not imply that atonement is not sufficient for forgiveness. So let us then suppose that it is sufficient.

But now let us ask whether another can atone for my sins. The answer is clear. My sins are mine alone. Only I can atone for them. You can of course help to alleviate the harm that I did when I sinned. But you do not thereby atone for my sin.

Let's make the point in another way. Defenders of SA often say that Christ bore the burden of our sins and by his death pays the penalty for them. But now we must ask a question like the one asked before. Can another pay the penalty of my sins? The answer is clear. Let us say that I've killed a man in a jealous rage. I am tried, convicted and sentenced to prison. Now, what would we say if someone were to offer to do my time? Might the price of my sin by thereby paid? Of course not. If I were let go free, that would be one injustice. If another innocent man were imprisoned in my place, that would be a second injustice. My sin, my crime demands that I and I alone suffer the penalty of its commission. If we suppose that Christ, when nailed to the cross, did so to pay the price of our sins, we suppose a double injustice. The first is that we, the guilty ones, did not suffer as we ought. The second is that an innocent suffered for a crime He did not commit.

But SA, we know, supposes that substitutionary atonement is possible; it supposes that another can suffer and thereby atone for sins that I've committed. Thus we must conclude that the Doctrine of Substitutionary Attonement is at bottom conceptually incoherent. It betrays a deep error about the nature of sin and its atonement. Whatever account we give of the point of Christ's death, it cannot be that of SA.

The Mystery of the Incarnation: Fully God, Fully Human

I wish to take a moment to draw a certain conclusion out of one of the central dogmas of Christianity. The dogma is that Christ was both fully human and fully divine.

From this we can draw the conclusion that Christ's humanity is such that it can be united in a single person with divinity. Let me be clear. I mean to draw a conclusion not about this or that human being but rather about Christ's humanity itself. I do not say merely that a certain human, viz. Christ, was divine. Rather I say that Christ's humanity was united to divinity and thus that Christ's humanity is such that it can be united in a single person with divinity.

But of course qua human, Christ and I differ in no way. His humanity was no different than mine. He became as us; He became human. Thus humanity in me is such that it can be united with divinity. But of course this is to say that I can become a god. Thus we are led quickly and easily from a central Christian dogma to an extraordinary claim not often remarked upon with Western Christianity. (Orthodox Christianity seems to admit the truth of what I say.) Indeed to many in the West it will seem like heresy.

Let me put the point in this way. The body of Jesus the Christ was human, as is mine and yours. Thus there is nothing in the humanity of this or that body that prevents its union with the Logos. Thus any of us humans might have been the Christ. Since the Logos became as we, any of us might have been the Christ.

Indeed I suspect that if we assume the doctrine of the Incarnation, some (or perhaps even all, if as I believe in the end all are saved) of us will become as Christ was. For our salvation entails that will take on that perfection which is appropriate to beings of our kind. But the very existence of Jesus the Christ proves that that perfection is the same as His perfection. Thus at the end of history, there will be a world with God above and the many Christs below. It is an extraordinary thought.

Each time that I run through the argument in my mind, I find it absolutely unassailable. It is compressed, but it is worth study. Indeed I would say that if it seems obviously mistaken to you, you have not yet understood it.

Questions for Christians, Part III

In the past, I have quite consciously resolved in The Philosophical Midwife not to take up issues that are narrowly political. I have no plan to change that, but before I pass over to the topic of this post, I think it helpful to make reference to recent events in Iraq. Iraqi Shias, in retaliation for Sunni crimes committed against them, have begun to hunt, capture, torture and kill Sunnis in Baghdad and elsewhere. Details of such events can be found here. Here's a bit from the start:

Mohannad al-Azawi had just finished sprinkling food in his bird cages at his pet shop in south Baghdad, when three carloads of gunmen pulled up. Mohannad al-Azawi, 27, a Sunni, was dragged from his pet shop on March 12. His mutilated body was found the next day. In front of a crowd, he was grabbed by his shirt and driven off. Mr. Azawi was among the few Sunni Arabs on the block, and, according to witnesses, when a Shiite friend tried to intervene, a gunman stuck a pistol to his head and said, "You want us to blow your brains out, too?" Mr. Azawi's body was found the next morning at a sewage treatment plant. A slight man who raised nightingales, he had been hogtied, drilled with power tools and shot.

Imagine what this young man must have suffered in his last days. The holes were surely drilled into him before he was killed, for the intent was to make him suffer. But of course he would not have sat still for such a thing. He must have been strapped down. He must have seen the drill near his head. He must have felt it begin to bite into his skull. His screams would have filled the room. His tears would have streamed down his face, and mixed with the blood that coursed down. He likely had no idea, as most of us have no idea, that life could become so terrible.

Other Sunnis have had their fingers and toes sawed off before their execution. I do not say amputated. I say sawed off. Each hand and foot must have been strapped hard to the edge of a table. Each man must in terror have seen the saw brought near. Each must have felt the first bite of the blade. A finger or toe would fall off and yet the terror would continue. They would scream until they could scream no more.

Each man forced to endure such a thing no doubt called out to God as he was tortured. But God did not come. God forsake them all. When I read of such events, I find it impossible to believe that God exists. Surely a perfectly good, all-powerful God would have intervened and saved Mr. Azawi from his travail!

I do not mean to insinuate that all Sunnis are innocent. Some have perpetrated crimes equal to the worst done by the Shias. Moreover, instances of such things are found throughout human history. Doubtless millions have undergone deaths as bad as Mr. Azawi's.

(Before I consider how the Christian might respond, let me take a moment to dismiss a certain common Christian view of the afterlife. It is that all those who do not accept Christ as Messiah will, after death, spend an eternity in torment. If this is true, Mr. Azawi passed from a few days of torment at the hands of men to an eternity of torment at the hands of God. If this is true, he passed from merely human torturers to the Divine Torturer. (How much more perfect and thus how much more painful would be torture meted out by God!) If this is true, he passed from the hands of human beings whose thirst for blood can perhaps be quenched with time to the One whose blood-thirst burns eternally. This of course is absurd. Good men do not torture others. How then can a God who surpasses all in goodness Himself torture His creatures? Was Mr. Azawi an evil man? Likely not, at least no more evil than many who pass for good. Did he deserve torture at the hands of men? Of course not. How much less, then, does he deserve torture at the hands of God! The belief that Mr. Azawi now suffers in hell is moral perversion. Moreover, it is blasphemy. One should never attribute such wickedness to God. What of those who say that Scripture tells us that all who die outside Christ suffer eternally and that as a consequence we must believe that this is so? I say this to them: Either Scripture, properly interpreted, says no such thing, or, if it does, it is in this regard surely false. Shame on you if you accept as true a text which asserts such absurdities!)

How might the Christian respond to my charge that a omnipotent and omnibenevolent God, if He existed, would not have forsaken Mr. Azawi? I know of three types of response.

The Value of Free Will

Most Christians (indeed I would suspect very nearly all) hold that the exercise of free will (i) exceeds in value the evil that men do and that (ii) no world of great value is devoid of free beings. (To simply asssert i is not enough for the Christian. The Christian God, since all-good, does not merely create a world that is on balance good. Rather He creates a world that is exceeded by no other in value.) On this response, though what was suffered by Mr. Azawi was a great evil, it and all other evils are more than balanced by a certain good, viz. free will, whose existence entails the very real possibility of such evils.

Let us grant that free will is a very great good, indeed a good so great that it far exceeds the evil that men do. Moreover let us grant that the best of all worlds must contain free beings. But now let us ask this: might God have intervened in Mr. Azawi's torture and still left his torturers, and the rest of us, free? The answer is an obvious Yes. God might have had Mr. Azawi come down with a mild cold that would have kept him from work for a few days and thus saved his life. If God had done this, would anyone be any less free? I would not. You would not. Mr. Azawi would not. (No one is any less free simply because they stay home with a cold.) Mr. Azawi's torturers would not. They would simply have had one less target, and that does not render them one iota less free.

I conclude that nothing about the importance of free will could have justified God's decision to forsake Mr. Azawi.

The Christian might respond that if God were to intervene in Mr. Azawi's travail, He would have to likewise intervene in the lives of all who suffer greatly. God, since perfect, is nothing if not consistent in His actions. But this, the Christian might say, would entail that the exercise of free will is a kind of sham. We would be shielded from its misuse and thus, in a sense, it would not be we who by our free acts make our world as it is. Rather it would be God who by his continual oversight and continual correction insures that the world goes as He wishes.

My response is two-part. (i) The Christian holds that God does intervene in the world at times. He does at times help those who need help. The Bible tells of many such events. But He does not always do so. Thus He seems inconsistent in His actions. Might it be that he intervenes when those in danger deserve help? This is indefensible. Some who are in danger of death, some who near a time of great pain, are but children. Do they not deserve help? What could they have possibly done to justify God's decision to forsake them? (ii) I simply do not see why God's intervention in times of the most terrible pain would render the exercise of free will a sham. Such times are relatively rare and thus even if God were to intervene in them, the exercise of our freedom would be mostly untouched by Him. Moreover, might He not intervene in a way undetectable by us? Might His touch not be very light, so light that it would seem that He had not touched the world at all?

Greater Future Goods

Might God's failure to end Mr. Azawi's travail be justified by some greater good that would (i) thus be brought about, and (ii) could not have been brought about in any other way? (It is not sufficient to merely describe some good or goods that Mr. Azawi's torture brought about, for if these goods could have been brought about in a way that involved any less evil, God's decision to forsake Mr. Azawi could not possibly be justified. God, since omnibenevolent, brings about the goods that He does in a way that involves the least evil.) If this were so, i.e. if there we some great good thereby brought about that could not have been brought about in any other way, we must ask for whom this good would be achieved. There are two possible responses. ('God' is not one of them. There is no good that God lacks, no good that God needs to reach complete goodness. God's goodness is sufficient unto itself.) (i) The goods would accrue to Mr. Azawi. Mr. Azawi died soon after his torture, and thus if some good accrued to him, it must have done so after his death. But what can this good be? What might Mr. Azawi's torture have gained him in the next life that he could not possibly have otherwise had? (a) Moral virtue? I simply do not believe that moral virtue can be achieved only after a time of great pain. Neither, I think, do you. We wish to instill moral virtue in our children. Must we then torture them to achieve this? Of course not. (b) Strength of character? (This seems related to a. Moral virtue requires strength of character. But they are not identical. One can be strong in vice.) If this were so, strength of character could be achieved in no way but through a travail of the sort Mr. Azawi underwent. But many who have not undergone such a thing are yet strong in character. My mother is an example, as was my grandmother. (c) Sympathy for the pain of others? I do not see why Mr. Azawi must suffer to gain that; and even if I am wrong, I do not see why he must have suffered so much to gain this capacity for sympathy. Might he not have suffered less and yet achieved the same sympathy? Surely. (d) Communion with God? Could God not have granted such a thing to Mr. Azawi even if He had never been tortured? God can let those that He wishes into His presence. To claim that one must be tortured to be given this grace seems at once both bizarre and repugnant.

But if his torture could not have gained Mr. Azawi moral virtue, strength of character, sympathy with others or communion with God, I am at a loss to say how it might have been good for him.

If the Christian demurs here, we might make a change of example. Some young children, indeed some neonates, have been tortured to death. Did this make possible some advance in moral virtue for them? No, it did not. Neonates, no matter what happens to them, are not ready to begin to develop virtue. Did they thereby grow in strength of character? Of course not. Ones so young as yet cannot begin to develop strength of character. Did they gain a power of sympathy? Of course not. Such a thing lies beyond the ability of one so young. Was their torture the only way to make possible communion with God? What a wicked God that would be! "Child, depart from my presence, and do not return until by the hands of men your body is ruined!" Can we suppose that God would say such a thing?

(ii) The good would accrue not to Mr. Azawi but to others. So, then, we can be used in just any way at all so as to achieve some good for others. We can be mere things, things to be used in the most terrible of ways so that others might benefit.

This is moral absurdity. For if we are mere things to be used however our Creator likes, so too are all others. But if all others are mere things too, why would God choose to harm us so as to benefit them? It makes no sense.

But if you yet think it possible that God would so use Mr. Azawi, do you think that He might so use an innocent child? Many children have undergone deaths as terrible as his. Did God use their death to benefit others? Would you let your child die in horrible pain so that some other might benefit? What a horrible parent you would be if you did!

Mr. Azawi Deserved It

This should come as no surprise to those with any knowledge of the Christian world-view. For the Christian, we are all and one sinners and thus we all and one fall short of the perfection of God. Some Christians hold that, as a consequence, we are all justly condemned to death and to torment. Only God's mercy, they say, a mercy by us completely unmerited, are we saved from such a fate.

I do not know how to respond other than to say that such a view as this is morally repugnant. Every human being has a certain dignity that cannot be abrogated by either god or man. (For me, part of the allure of the Church of Rome is its staunch defense of this view.) Torture abrogates this dignity.


So then, my charge that a truly omnipotent and omnibenevolent God would not have forsaken Mr. Azawi stands. But forsaken Mr. Azawi surely was. Thus there is no omnipotent and omnibenevolent God.

Of course the issues (issues collected under the head of 'The Problem of Evil') that I've raised are large. Much has been written about them and I've not done justice that body of work. One could plunge into it and spend one's whole life there. I do plan to return to these issues. But I have said why the case of Mr. Azawi presents what seems to me an impenetrable barrier to my conversion to Christianity.

Things I Know But Cannot Prove

I will argue in what follows that much of what we know we cannot prove to ourselves.

The argument of this post is of great significance to the issue of the rationality of religious belief. When the argument is complete, I will turn to that issue.

I will begin with a set of definitions. The last will be a definition of 'proof'. (No doubt these definitions are a bit rough, but they will do.)

1. An argument is an ordered set of propositions. One is the conclusion. The rest are the premises. The premises are offered in support of the conclusion. (They need not actually give it any support. We do no wish to define 'argument' in such a way that all arguments are good arguments. Some arguments are evidently quite bad and do not lend any support to their conclusions.)

2. Arguments must have at least these two virtues if they are any good at all. (a) They must have all true premises. (b) The premises must be such that, if true, they do lend support to the conclusion.

These two properties of good arguments are independent of one another. An argument can have all true premises and yet not support its conclusion at all. Here's an example:

3 is odd.
My son is 3.
Thus my son is odd.

Both premises are true, but the conclusion (no matter how we understand the word 'odd' within it) quite obviously does not follow from them.

Moreover, an argument some (or all) of whose premises are false can be such that, had the premises been true, they would have lent support to the conclusion. Example:

5 is even and greater than 2.
No prime greater than two is even.
Thus 5 is not prime.

Clearly if the premises had been true, that truth would have been 'transmitted' to the conclusion. But of course one of the premises is false and thus the argument is no good.

Call an argument valid just if it is such that had its premises been true, they would shown the conclusion true, or at least likely true.

Call an argument sound just if it is valid and has all true premises.

3. Not all sound arguments prove that their conclusions are true. By definition the conclusions of sound arguments do follow from true premises, but this does not imply that they have been proven. Example:

2 is prime.
Thus 2 is prime.

The one premise is true, and the relation of conclusion to premise is such that the premise cannot be true and yet the conclusion false. Thus the argument is both valid and sound. But it does not prove that its conclusion is true. Rather it assumes the truth of its conclusion within the premises and thus cannot possible prove its conclusion. No proposition can be both assumed true and yet, at the same time, proven true. Merely assumed and proven are inconsistent.

We might attempt a definition of 'proof' based upon this insight. Call an argument 'circular' just if its conclusion is assumed true within the premises. What then do we say of this attempt at a definition of 'proof'?

A proof is a sound, non-circular argument.

Unfortunately this definition will not do. Some sound, non-circular arguments do not prove their conclusions. Example:

The only prime that lies between 7902 and 7908 is 7907.
Either it is not the case that the only prime that lies between 7902 and 7908 is 7907 or 2 is prime.
Thus 2 is prime.

A quick google of 'prime list' will verify the first premise. The first of the parts of the second premise ('it is not the case that the only prime that lies between 7902 and 7908 is 7907') is false. But the second part ('2 is prime') is true. 2 is the first prime. Thus the whole of the second premise is true, for any propisiton of the form:

Either p or q.

is true if one of its constituent propositions is true.

Moreover, the conclusion of the argument does follow from the premises. The form of the argument is this:

p
Either not-p or q.
Thus q.

If the premises of an argument of this form are true, the conclusion must be true as well.

So then our argument is valid and has all true premises. This of course means that it is sound. Moreover, it is not circular. The conclusion is assumed nowhere in the premises. (It is part of the 'Either-or' we find in the second premise, but that it is does not imply that it is assumed. Rather what is assumed is the whole of the 'Either or ', and that could be true even if the second of its parts was false.) But is our argument a proof of its conclusion? It cannot be. Before we considered this argument, we were more certain of the truth of its conclusion than we were of the truth of either of its premises.

4. This will lead us to the proper definition of 'proof'. A proof begins with what is more certain and leads us to that which is less certain. Of course if the argument is successful, we will thereby become more certain of the conclusion than we were before. (How much more? That will depend upon the strength of the argument. We cannot become more certain of the conclusion that we were of the least certain premise. Moreover, not all arguments give the same degree of support to their conclusions. The degree of certitude of the conclusion will depend both upon the degree of certitude of the premises and upon the degree to which the premises lend support to the conclusion.) But before we examine the argument, its conclusion must be less certain to us than its premises if it is to constitute a proof of its conclusion.

So, then, let us say this:

A proof is a sound argument the conclusion of which was less certain to us than any of its premises before we began our examination of it.

Let me make a few comments about this definition. (i) It entails that proofs are not circular, for in a circular argument the conclusion is just as certain as the premises, for in a circular argument the conclusion is assumed within the premises. So then we do not need to add to our definition the condition that proofs must be non-circular. (ii) The definition quite explicitly relativizes the notion of proof to the degree of certitude that a certain person has of its premises and its conclusion. Thus what constitutes a proof for me will not in all cases constitute a proof for you. This on reflection should be obvious. An innocent man needs no proof of his innocence. But if his wife and children were brutally murdered and the police have as yet no reason to rule the husband out as a supsect, the police do need proof of his innocence. If the police find that proof, it will be a proof for them but not for the husband. He knew all along that he did not kill his family and cannot in any sense have it proven to him that he did not. In what follows, I will not simply speak of proofs but of proofs for this or that person. (iii) The definition just as explicity relativizes the notion of proof to a certain time, viz. the time at which the argument is considered. This leaves open the possibility that what was for a me a proof at one time will not be a proof at a later time. (iv) Might we need to add some other condition to the argument? Perhaps we do. But even if so, we have identified a property that must be had by all proofs. This property is all that I need for the argument to follow.

5. I know that I love my wife and children. I know that I now sit in my study and write about the nature of knowledge. I know that I like red wines much better than whites.

But I cannot prove any of these things to myself. I can, of course, produce sound non-circular arguments for each of these. But any such argument will contain at least one premise that is antecedently no more certain for me than the conclusion, for I am as sure of these things as I am sure of anything.

Perhaps I ought to attempt a proof of the first to drive home my point. So, then, how might I prove to myself that I am a father of three children? Here's one way:

I recall the birth of each of my three children.
None have died.
Thus I am a father of three.

The argument is sound and non-circular. But it doesn't really prove anything to me, for I was just as certain of its conclusion as I was of its premises before I constructed the argument. The argument did not proceed from the more certain and upon that as basis proceed to the less certain. Rather, the three propositions within the argument were equally certain to me before I constructed the argument. The argument fails as a proof.

Moreover, no amount of ingenuity will produce an argument that for me constitutes a proof of the proposition that I am a father of three. For I am as certain that I am a father of three as I am of anything. Thus no set of propositions could possible prove to me that I am a father of three (though of course many sets of true propositions non-circularly entail that I am a father of three).

6. Quite obviously, then, much of what we know we cannot possibly prove to ourselves - my three examples could be added to quite easily. The reason for this is simple: many of us believe a large set of propositions that for us are at least as certain as anything else we believe.

Might someoneone object here that if I cannot prove, for example, that I have three children, I do not really know it? No doubt some will. My response is two-part. (i) Surely reflection on the nature of knowledge and of proof should never lead us to doubt those simple truths that we believed before reflection began. I do know that I have three children, and no amount of philosophizing can ever cast even an iota of doubt on it. But can I prove that I have three children? I can produce nothing like a proof of this belief. (I can produce sound, non-circular arguments ad infinitum for this belief. But none are proofs; none begin in the more certain and proceed to the less certain.) (ii) The objector seems to assent to the proposition that if a thing cannot be proven, it cannot be known. Let us then ask for the proof of this proposition. (The proposition is meant to apply universally and thus must apply to itself.) I for one know of no argument with any prima facie plausability that looks anything like a proof of this proposition. Indeed I think it likely that no such argument exists. Thus the proposition that knoweldge requires proof is, if true, false. But no proposition can be both true and false, and thus it is false. There can be knowledge without the possibility of proof.

7. What relevance has this to the issue of the extent of religious knowledge? Often the believer is asked by the skeptic to produce proofs of her beliefs, and if she is unable to do so the skeptic often assumes that the believer does not really know what she claims to know. Lack of proof is often assumed by the skeptic to undermine the rationality of belief. But as should be clear, mere lack of proof by itself does nothing to undermine the rationality of what we believe, for much of what we know we cannot prove.

For the skeptic to make her case, she must prove that religious belief is among the class of beliefs that do require proof if they are to be known. (Surely this class is not empty. Much of what we know we know only because we can prove it, or at least by argument show it quite likely. Much of science proceeds in this way.)

Let me here say that I for one know of no way to prove that no religious belief can be known if it is not proven. Indeed I suspect that some religious beliefs have a prima facie right to claim of themselves that they are in the class of known but unprovable propositions. If the skeptic believes otherwise, it is incumbent upon her to show otherwise. The ball is in the skeptic's court.

8. Of course there's much that remains to be said on the subject. (It seems to me that what remains is much more difficult than what has been said.) If we were to continue to philosophize, the first question that we must answer would of course be this: how do we distinguish a belief that requires proof from one that does not? Others would follow soon thereafter. It seems that those that do not need proof are know directly, or immediately. But what does this mean? Moreover, what are those cognitive faculties that directly, or immediately give rise to knowledge? I have little insight into how to answer these. But that in no way undermines the conclusion of this post: much of what we know we cannot prove.

Human Origins and Divine Providence

I wish to take a moment and discuss a common misconception in the debate about human origins. It concerns the concept of the random. As is so often said in this debate, both by the defenders of the Darwinian account of human origins ('D' for short) and by its detractors, the Darwinian account posits a certain kind of randomness in its account of the origin of species, both human and non-human. But what kind of randomness does it posit? (When we speak of the random, we sometimes mean one thing and sometimes mean another.) At times we say that a thing is random because it lacks a cause of any kind. Quantum mechanics, at least in its canonical interpretation - the so-called 'Copenhagen interpretation' - locates such randomness in the subatomic realm. For instance, on the Copenhagen interpretation when a radioactive nucleus decays, no cause was operative sufficient to make it decay then and not before or after. The fact that it decayed just when it did is, on the Copenhagen interpretation, random.

The kind of randomness posited by D is not of this sort. Rather it is the same in kind as, for example, the randomness of the path of a tornado. We say that the path of tornado is random not in the sense that it lacks a cause of any kind but rather in the sense that its path is non-purposive. What does this mean? It means this: the tornado's path is not a product of choice but rather comes about by the operation of 'blind' forces. One in the path of a tornado should not think that she has been singled out for retribution. Nor should she think that the tornado was sent her way by some malevolent agent. Rather the tornado's path, though perfectly predictable if one had but enough finely detailed information about it and the weather in its vicinity, was not the product of choice. On the contrary, its path and indeed its formation were the product of forces that operated with no knowledge of what they would bring about. These forces were in this sense 'blind' and 'non-purposive'.

The same point can be made another way. Even after a complete meteorological explanation of the formation and movement of the tornado is given, one might be tempted to ask why the tornado hit one's home and not some other. This is the question of what the damage caused by the tornado means. The answer is that it means nothing. It is meaningless.

Now, what place does this notion of the random, viz. the random as non-purposive, have in D? Many seem to hold that D assumes a kind of absolute non-purposive randomness. This is a mistake. D, insofar as it science and not metaphysics, assumes merely a relative non-purposive randomness. Let me explain. The mechanisms by which D explains genetic mutation do not act so as to bring about certain biological forms. Rather they in themselves act with no regard to what they will bring about. They are for this reason 'blind' and non-purposive. Take for example an instance of genetic mutation caused by the radioactive decay of a bit of natural uranium. The uranium does not make itself decay at the moment and in the manner that it does so that it might cause the mutation and so give rise to biological novelty. Rather the uranium decays in accordance with the law that governs such events, laws which act in perfect disregard of what they will or will not bring about.

So, then, the physical causes of mutation in themselves act blindly and non-purposively. But this does not imply that there exists no force outside the physical that chose to make a world in which such intrinsically non-purposive forces act so as to create biological novelty. This is our distinction between absolute non-purposive randomness and relative non-purposive randomness. Merely relative non-purposive randomness is the sort found in the causal mechanisms at work in the physical world. It is the non-purposive randomness intrinsic to the physical world. But this sort of non-purposive randomness is perfectly consistent with a creator God who chooses this world over all others precisely because the non-purposive randomness it exhibits will give rise to the kind of biological diversity we see about us.

To sum up: D assumes only a relative non-purposive randomness and thus is silent about the possibility of a creator God who acted so as to bring about a world of the sort in which we live. God can exist and exercise a perfect providence over all things and yet D be true.

The Darwinian theory of evolution and theism ('T' for short) are simply not of a type. They are, as it were, at different levels. The former concerns merely the physical world and implies nothing of interest about the latter. The latter concerns a world beyond the physical and is perfectly consistent with the claim that, if one restricts oneself to the operation of physical causes, one will find there no purposiveness in the generation of biological novelty.

Don't confuse what I've said with a view that goes by the name of 'Theistic Evolution'. I've not endorsed theism; nor have I rejected it. I have simply said that it is perfectly consistent with Darwinian evolutionary theory.

I'll end with a few words about a certain objection to this. Some say, if T and D are consistent and as a matter of fact both true, God must have directed the processes of evolution so that He might achieve His desired result. This overlooks a certain possible model of creation. On this model, God surveys the entire set of all possible worlds and among them chooses that which He thinks it best to make. When He makes that world, He knows all that will happen within it. But after He has made it, He lets the basic physical mechanisms within it work in accordance with the laws that govern them. In time, these mechanisms give rise to life. On this model, God does not meddle in the world so as to direct evolution at a goal He wishes to achieve. Rather the world will of itself achieve that goal, and for that reason it was chosen. God need not meddle to choose.

Don't confuse the view I've endorsed with a deistic conception of God. The God I have described need not be hands off. On the contrary, He might be quite active in the world. But His activity is not necessary to achieve those biological forms that He wished to exist.

Questions for Christians, Part II

I do not know how to read Scripture as Christians read it, for I do not know in what way I should treat it as authoritative. (Of course the Christian must treat Scripture as authoritative in some way. Christians differ among themselves about how to do this, but none deny that God in some way speaks through Scripture.)

I. The Way of the Fundamentalist

Might we say that Scripture is inerrant? To my mind, this is not a live option. I have given reasons of various sorts to reject the inerrantist view in prior posts, but let me here give a novel reason. Consider the proposition that expresses the inerrantist view. It is this:

BI: Scripture is through and through wholly without error.

Let us ask the inerrantist by what right does she assert BI. If she replies that Scripture itself asserts BI, her opponent has absolutely no obligation to agree. For to assume the veracity of Scripture to justify BI is just to assume veracity to justify veracity; and circular arguments of course prove nothing. So then the justification for BI must lie outside Scripture. But where if not Scripture can we find reason to hold BI? In history? History can at best verify bits and pieces of Scripture; it cannot verify the whole of it. In science? Much of Scripture is non-scientific in character; moreover, science contradict parts of Scripture. Genesis 1 provides the best-known example, but others can be found. Might we look to tradition to justify the inerrancy of Scripture? We cannot, for much of what tradition says about Scripture itself derives from Scripture, and so again we would have attempted to prove the veracity of Scripture based on the assumption of the veracity of Scripture. But if not in tradition, science, or history, there is nowhere that we can find reason to hold BI. BI is then unjustified and so, if held, held only irrationally.

Let me stress this point: BI must look outside Scripture for its justification. It is in this sense extra-Scriptural. This should trouble the inerrantists, for many hold that the sole source of true religious belief is the Bible.

In sum: in the attempt to find a way in which to read Scripture as if it is authoritative, we cannot side with the inerrantists.

I should say as well that I find BI not only unjustified but false as well. The Bible is full error, scientific, moral and other. The world was not created in six days. (Genesis 1) The world is not thousands of years old; it is billions. (The Biblical chronology culled from a multiplicity of verses.) One surely should not kill a child that curses his or her parents. (Leviticus 20:9) (To say otherwise is to allow that a thing most certainly evil today was not evil in the past, but such a temporal ethical relativism is surely repugnant.) Sinners most certainly are not banished to an eternity of torment as Christ says that they are. (Matthew 13: 47-50) (Torture has always been, is now and will always be evil.) Imagine my difficulty then when I attempt to read Scripture as does the Christian.

II. The Catholic Way

But how then might we read Scripture as authoritative? Might we hand it over to some church hierarchy and trust their opinion? This is the course recommended by the Church of Rome. If we do this, we the laity substitute the authority of Scripture for the authority of the Church. So let us ask what reason we have to believe that the Church speaks authoratatively. Here I can only report that I have deep disagreements with the Church about certain moral questions. Thus I have little or no inclination to say that the authority I seek lies in the Church.

III. The Way of Luther

Might we find the authority in Scripture if we allow ourselves to be lead by the Spirit as we read it. (I take Luther to have suggested such a thing, contra the Church of Rome.) I am doubtful that this suggestion can be of much help. Men and women of good faith, careful readers of Scripture all, deeply disagree about how to read it. (There's no need for me to chronicle such disagreements. Doubtless my readers can provide many examples of their own.) Is the Spirit present to some of these but not to all? If so, the Spirit shows an unjustified preference for some subset of Christians; it favors that subset with the grace to arrive at proper translations but withholds from others equally sincere and equally assiduous a similar grace. Such partiality is not worthy of God and should not be ascribed to Him.

Moreover, when I sit and read the Bible and attempt to open myself up to divine guidance (I'm not sure how to do this, but I have given it a try) I find that I'm often presented with texts that are either almost surely false or completely inscrutable. The Spirit has failed me.

But if none of these three ways, I do not know how to treat Scripture as an authoratative source. I do not know how to read Scripture as do Christians. This is a second barrier to my assent to the Christian world-view.

Questions for Christians, Part I

Over the past decade, I flirted with Christianity. I had some wish to become Christian and sought a reason, or a way, to become Christian. I spoke to Christians, both Catholic and Protestant. I attended Mass. I read.

I failed. I found that I could not become Christian. Indeed when I look back on my flirtation, I now think that I never really wanted it.

I did not decide that I could not become Christian. Rather I simply found that I could not, much as I find that I cannot believe that my head is made of glass, or that I am now asleep and in a dream. Belief for me now seems impossible.

The occasion of this was Roman Polanski's The Pianist. It tells the story of a young Polish Jew who endures the years of the Nazi occupation of Warsaw. As I watched, I thought this to myself: "This young man was a Jew. God had made the Jews His people and had promised them His protection. Yet He did absolutely nothing to spare his people the hell of Nazi persecution. Moreover, nothing the Polish Jews had done could have merited what happened to them at the hands of the Nazis. Thus there can be no God, at least no God of the sort in which the Christians believe."

I do not mean that you should find this a persuasive argument. It has numerous gaps of course, and I plan to return to it in a later post. Rather all that I intend is to report what I thought. (The argument, of course, is a version of the so-called 'Problem of Evil.')

From the time that I saw The Pianist, Christianity was no longer a live option for me. In the posts that follow, I will explain why this is so. Each post will consist of a question or questions for which the Christian must have an answer, and although I have attempted to answer each for myself I have an answer to none. Thus at present I cannot be a Christian.

Before I ask my first question, let me say this. In some of what I will say I will presuppose the objectivity of moral principle. I have found that many Christians think this tantamount to the assumption that God exists, or that the dogmas of Christianity are true. I simply do not follow. Perhaps the objectivity of moral principle presupposes the existence of something greater-than-human, of something outside the world in which we live. But why it should presuppose the God of Christianity I do not know. The Christian God is triune. How do we derive that from the objectivity of moral principle? The Christian God became flesh in the form of Christ. How do we derive that from the objectivity of moral principle? Many such questions can be answered, and I have no idea how to begin an answer to any of them.

Here, then, is my first question:

As said, the Christian God is triune. Indeed this is a core dogma of Christianity.
The trinity of God does not imply that God is three gods. (Christianity is a variety of monotheism, not polytheism.) Nor does it imply that God is tri-partite. (This would ruin the unity of God; it would split him into three distinct things.) Rather in its orthodox formulation it means that God encompasses three persons with one God.
I have no idea what this means, and indeed I can think of no reason why I should even believe such an assertion coherent.
The upshot of this is that I cannot become a Christian until I have a good answer to the question, What do we mean when we say that God is triune.

Put another way, I cannot fix in my mind what idea 'the Trinity' is meant to convey. Thus I can associate no proposition with 'God is triune' and so simply cannot believe it. But then I cannot believe one of the core doctrines of Christianity and so am not Christian.

Perhaps others do understand what 'the Trinity' is meant to convey (though a study of the relevant literature on the question makes me doubt it). I do not say that they do not. Rather all that I say is that I do not understand it, and conclude that Christianity is not a possibility for me.

Let me end with discussion of a possibility that I at present but dimly understand. It is that true Christianity is marked not by assent to this or that set of propositions but rather by a form of life that has as it essential character moral rectitude. Of course many Christians will deny this; they say rather that Christianity is, in part at least, a matter of assent to certain propositions. But what if it is not? What if Christianity is rather a life lived a certain way? If so, I could yet be a Christian and yet have answers to none of my questions. If so, I could be a Christian and yet not know it. If so, I could be a Christian and deny that I am a Christian.

If one adopts this possibility, it makes little or no difference that one call oneself a Christian. Rather all that matters is that one live rightly.

How Do I Know Who I Am?

I am Franklin Mason, born September 8th, 1968 in Columbus, Ohio. If I had committed a crime and my identity was a mystery to you, you would need nothing more than what I just now told you. In some sense, this is who I am. It is my identity. But from a certain point of view, it is of little significance. If you wish to know the quality of the man, what at bottom he is like, you must know more.

Last night as I lay awake and reviewed the events of the day (I often do this) I realized that for the whole of my adult life I have labored under a certain illusion. It is that to know not who I am but what at bottom I am like, I need only look inside and find what I happen to think or feel. My timbre, I thought, was open to immediate and direct introspection. Thus I would often look to how I felt or what I thought at a certain time and would judge myself based upon this. Sometimes I would judge myself harshly if I did not feel or think as I thought I should. I read of the pains endured by another and did not feel what I thought was the proper sympathy. I upbraided myself for my insensitivity. I read a bit about the U.S.S.R. under Stalin and began to project myself into the point of view of Stalin and began to think for a moment as did he. When I had realized what I had done, I thought myself to have begun to have a taste for the cruelty in which Stalin so evidently delighted. I condemned myself.

What I realized is that one cannot know one's self in this way. Rather one must come to know oneself in the way that others do. One must observe how one behaves. What we wish to know when we seek after the quality of a man is the make-up of his character. But we can know our own character only if we have observed its expression in our behavior; and this cannot be introspected directly and immediately but is rather an external process that all can observe.

How do I know that I tend to petulance? I have seen myself act petulantly. How do I know that I am quick to anger? I have seen myself become angry quickly. And so on for the rest.

So when you catch a glimpse of an errant thought that you wish had not entertained, do not yet self-flagellate. Do you ever act upon that thought or its kin? If not, do not worry. If you do, worry not about the thought but about the behavior. If the behavior is brought in line, so too will thought.

If you do not feel that warm sympathy you imagine other better people to feel when in the face of the pain of another, do not yet condemn yourself as cold and cruel. Rather ask yourself how you behave when others are in need. Do you help? If so, don't fret about how you happen to feel. If you do not help, change the behavior, for that is your primary sin and not your momentary lack of sympathy.

I do not wish to say that what we happen to think or to feel at a time is of no importance. Rather it is of secondary importance. What matters most is what we do. I hope of course that I will feel and think in those ways that seem appropriate to me. But I hope that in the future I will not much concern myself with them. Rather I will seek to look to what I do. Will I someday feel and think always in the proper way? I hope that God will grant me that grace.

On reflection, this is no surprise to me. For I am what I will, and what is most important about me is that which will immediately controls. But will has no immediate control over what I feel or think (perhaps it has less control of the former than of the latter, but thought still often slips through its fingers). Rather, will immediately controls action. It is the spring of action, it is the guide of action, it is that which ends action.

So look then at what you do. For there you will see your will made external and thus will see yourself.

This is why the man who leaves his wife because he no longer feels the passion he once felt is deeply mistaken about what is of value. What he happens to feel at a certain time pales in comparison to what he does. But if he betrays his wife because he does not feel as he thinks he ought, he has placed emotion over quality of character and thus revealed himself as stupid and selfish.

Process and Product

I find that I have little interest in the debates between defenders of so-called 'Intelligent Design' and defenders of Darwin. The former claim that processes of evolution, if unguided, can never produce genuinely new forms of life. Scientific concensus speaks against this claim, and in these matters, as in all matters where I have not the expertise to judge and the scientific community speaks with near unanimity, I defer to it. It seems as absurd for me, a non-expert, to deny the theory of evolution as it does for me to deny the atomic theory of matter. Why do I believe the latter? Certainly it is not because I have the means myself to verify that theory. I am a poor experimentalist, and my knowledge of the theory in its detail is severly atrophied. Why then do I believe it? Concensus has been reached by the scientific community. Thus it seems that consistency forces me to accept the theory of evolution as well.

But let us pass this issue by. I am not so much concerned with the processes whereby the great diversity of species came about. Rather I am concerned with the products of that process, whatever the form that it takes. In particular, I am concerned with Homo sapiens. It seems to me that the view that one takes of its nature is not independent of the view one takes of its origin. Rather the latter will determine the shape of the former.

How so? Let us assume that a view often called 'naturalism' is true. (This is the view that the natural world is a closed system. The only causes operative upon it are within it. Thus naturalism denies that existence of supernatural and so divine interevention in or guidance of the natural world.) On this assumption, Homo sapiens did not come about so that it might serve any purpose. Rather it was the product of 'blind', i.e. non-purposive and unguided, natural processes. But if Homo sapiens was not created so that it might serve some purpose, it cannot fall short of its purpose.

So, then, if naturalism is true, we cannot believe that an end exists after which we should all strive. Perhaps some of us (perhaps all) will create for ourselves temporary and local purposes. But we were not in any sense required to do this, and we do not fall short of the end that we have qua human if we do not pursue this or that end, for there is no end that we have merely in virtue of the fact that we are human. On the assumption of naturalism, I can say of myself that I am fine as I am.

This why I reject naturalism. It gets me wrong and you wrong too. For I am not fine as I am. I become angry with my wife and children and snap at them. I should not do this. I tend to lethargy and selfishness, but I should not. Nor are you fine as you are. (I have heard reports that some at death say they have no regrets. This is moral stupidity. We all fall short, and we should regret it.)

Moreover, the goal after which you should strive is the same as that after which I should strive. It is to love perfectly. (If we do this, all else will fall into place. Perfect love leaves no room for lethargy or selfishness. It never becomes angry.) This is the goal that all of us share merely in virtue of the fact that we are human.

Might the naturalist interject here that love is but a trait or a set of behaviors selected for because it is conducive to reproductive success? Is this reason to say that love in some sense is part of the proper function of human beings? This misses the point. First, the naturalist has no reason to suppose that the tendency to love is equally present in all human beings. Nor does she have reason to suppose that it ought to be in all human beings. For perhaps in certain situations, a hardened selfhishness serves better than does an other-directed love; if it does, the naturalist has no reason to condemn it.

The point is that the processes of natural selection, as conceived by the naturalist, don't 'care' a bit about love or any other such thing. Rather all they care about is reproductive success. If concern for others helps in this regard, perhaps it will be selected for. But if it does not, it will not. In either case, there is nothing to either praise or to condemn. It is simply what is.

A last note for those who are confused that, given my acceptance of the theory of evolution, I reject naturalism. Some will think this incoherent. I do not think that it is. Here's one very simple model of divine causality to prove the coherence of my view. (I do not endorse the view. I simply mean to say that I can think of no reason to reject it.) God made a world that was very likely to give rise to life. He made it, moreover, so that the processes of natural selection would 'get hold' of the first simple life forms and make out of them an ever greater diversity of forms of life. At those places where evolution has so progressed that it has raised up forms of life 'near' rationality, God steps in bridges that final gap. He takes, say, an ape and makes out of it a human.

The Interpretive Animal

Aristotle famously said of Homo Sapiens that its definition is this: it is animal by genus, rational by specific difference. We are, he said, the rational animals.

I suggest another definition. It is that we are the interpretive animals. We are the animals that interpret.

This is nowhere more evident than in Christianity. The Christian has a text, and a tradition, and each new generation takes and interprets them in a way characteristic of its time.

But curiously Homo sapiens often denies that it interprets. Rather it often speaks as if its mind is a perfect mirror of God's will as expressed in revelation. It speaks as if it merely reflects that divine will and so knows it perfectly, without possibility of error.

It holds that revelation is crystaline in its clarity and that a mind unfettered by prejudice can perceive precisely, without error and without omission, what is there.

But this cannot be. The human mind, at least in its present state, cannot have any such perfect access to the divine will. For consider each of those sects that proclaims the inerrancy of the Bible. Do they all speak with a single voice about God's will? Of course not. Some hold that the laws of the Old Testament, unless explicitly rescinded in the New, are still in force. Others reject this. Some hold that the power to work miracles ended with the disciples died. Others reject this. Some hold that signs now visible point to the fulfillment of divine prophecy of the end-times. Others reject this and say that we can never know when the end-times will come. Examples could be multiplied.

So, then, we have many versions of the Bible, each produced by a group that declares the inerracy of the Bible. Of course if one is within one of these groups and has given one's loyality to it, it might seem quite clear that one's own verison is true. (Indeed one is likely to deny that it is a version of the Bible. One is likely to say that it just is the Bible.) But how will it seem to one who is not within any such group? It will seem that all are unjustified and that their differences as it were nullify one another. They cancel each other out and leave is unable to determine just where the truth lies on matters of dispute.

One cannot, it seems, reject the version of one or another of these groups because its adherents lack critical acumen, are morally corrupt, etc. Each group has its own scholars, extraordinarily learned, morally upright and with the requisite knowledge to have the right to render a judgment about what is meant by Scripture. Thus if they differ about what Scripture says, it must be that we humans cannot be certain about what it says. To say otherwise and insist on the truth of one's own version thus seems hubristic, for it is to insist that one is somehow elevated over others who are no less intelligent than you, and no less and serious in their adherence to the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy.

The situation is the same within science. When do we, scientific non-specialists, take a certain scientific result as proven? When the scientific community reaches concensus. But when we apply this same standard to the question of what is meant by Scripture, we must conclude that we do not know that this or that version is the true one.

What if one were to say at this point that, though one cannot perhaps know where the truth lies when the community of Biblical scholars who hew to the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy disagree, one can know the truth when they agree? Perhaps this standard is right, but its likely to be little consolation to my opponents here. For they wish to say that no part of Scripture is in shadow. It is all clear, they wish to say.

My diagnosis of the situation is this. When we have before us a text as difficult and as complex as the Bible, a text that deals with matters moral and spiritual, it is quite inevitable that those who make a serious study of it will disagree about what is means. For when one interprets, one fills in. But when the question arises of how best to fill in, one must always rely upon background beliefs about what is plausible and what is implausible. But always and everywhere people will not share the same background beliefs. Thus they will fill in differently.

Thus it seems to me that when someone produces an intepretation of Scripture and insists that it is complete and without possibility of error (and many do this) they have in effect said that they are incapable of error, for much of them is in that interpretation. Claim that the Bible is inerrant if you like. (Perhaps in some sense it is.) But do not write a book in which you give your interpretation and then demand that I believe it because the Bible is inerrant. I will dismiss the claim out of hand. Indeed I will take it as a prideful claim. I will take it as the insistence that one cannot be guilty of error.

If, on the other hand, you recommend the book for consideration, I will quite happily do so.

A Child's Questions

I do four things. I raise my children. I teach and write philosophy. I cook.

This is my little boy, Curtis.

He and his twin sister Katie often engage in theological disputes. They're quite interested in the relation of Christ to God. I truly don't know what to tell them. I suppose that one has no choice when they are young but to mislead them, if only a bit. My wife and I tell them that Jesus is God's son. But this cannot be the literal truth, for son is a biological concept. But it does point to an important truth.

My twins are also quite interested in the so-called problem of evil. My daughter firmly believes that one prays so that God will protect you. But she well knows that some people die, some suffer horribly. When she ask us whether they prayed, we can't simply lie to her. We tell her that some who come to harm do pray. But of course she then asks why God didn't protect them. I know the outlines of the most important kinds of theodicy. But I don't think she yet is able to fully comprehend what I say about them.

Wifely Subordination

Here we have an argument, an argument that assumes the perfect inerrancy of Scripture on all matters moral, for wifely subordination to her husband. I've explained why I have little patience for Biblical inerrantism. My reasons were of a general sort and had to do with the nature of interpretation of texts and justification of belief. But before us is an example of its pernicious consequences.

Wives, we are to assume, are to defer to their husbands on all matters that pertain to the family. If husband and wife disagree on such a matter, the husband has the authority to make the decision he thinks best and enforce this decision upon is wife (and his children).

This is a divine right, it is said, a right bestowed upon the man by God.

Now, I wish to ask, what is the reason that God would make the man ruler over his wife? A reason must exist, for God does nothing without reason.

I assume that it is not a greater competence, a greater ability to rule the family well. For plain experience teaches that some wives excel in this ability over their husbands. Do husbands perhaps in general excel their wives in this ability? I can think of perhaps two dozen families that I know well enough to form some judgment about the respective leadership abilities of husband and wife; and it seems to me in each that the husband does not excel the wife. Indeed I'd give the women the edge here. Now of course this kind of antedoctal evidence cannot prove a thesis that concerns many billions of people. But I do find it curious that in my experience I can find no evidence at all of the putative leadership superiority of men.

Moreover, if men are in general better able to lead their families, they are better able as well to lead outside the family; and if women should defer to them in the home, they should defer to them outside the home as well. But this seems to me to mean that women never should have been given the vote. For if they fall so far short of men in matters of political discernment (and this, after all, is what has been said) that they should defer to men if ever they disagree with them, they cannot be allowed an independent voice that can possibly serve to counteract to male wishes. But this is precisely what is allowed when women are enfranchised. In sum: if women should defer to men in the home, they shouldn't have the vote.

But this is pernicious sexism. Women should most certainly have the vote, and thus should defer to men neither in the public nor the private sphere.

I have heard said that women must bow to men's leadership for the simple reason that a family must have a leader. I have two replies. (i) Even if we assume that a family must have a leader, what gives us reason to hold that it must be the man in all cases? Why not give that role to the one best suited to play it? In some cases, this is the woman. (ii) Why should we believe that the family must have a leader, a leader with a kind of absolute veto power over all others within it? Why not have co-leaders who negotiate all matters of contention and reach, either by compromise or change of mind, consensus about what must be done? Certain political entities work in this way. Why not the family? Indeed it seems to me that this is the ideal after which we should strive.

Conclusion: women should not defer to men; and the bit of Scriptural exegesis that purports to show that they should serves only to undermine a dogged adherence to Biblical inerrancy.

The Dilemma of the Fall

Recently Tom Gilson of Thinking Christian made a comment to me about human freedom. I wish to follow up on it now. I'll pose my response as a dilemma.

First let me make my assumptions explicit. They are quite explicity Christian and thus the dilemma, if real, is a worry for Christians only.

1. We human beings were created by a God in a state of perfection, for all that God makes, all that God does, He makes or does perfectly.
2. We human beings were created free. Indeed our freedom was essential to that perfection we enjoyed before the Fall, i.e. a creature not free that is yet as much like us it can be is not as good as we.
3. We human beings brought about the Fall through a misuse of that freedom God bestowed upon us. So, then, responsibility for the Fall lies with us, not God. God acted as perfectly as He might, but we rebelled and brought evil into the world.
4. God, through Christ, will heal the breach created in the Fall. Through Christ He will raise we human beings to a state of perfection. (Whether it will be some or all that are perfected is irrelevant.)

Now, the dilemma is this. Human perfection, i.e. the greatest good that we human beings can exemplify, requires that we be free. But the possibility of the Fall was entailed by our freedom. Thus when the breach is healed, a new Fall is possible, for the perfected ones then alive will no less free than the ones who first fell.

Why then should we not expect that the history of the world will be a repetition of the sequence Fall, Incarnation and Redemption repeated ad infinitum?

Of course something must have gone wrong here. The saints in Heaven cannot fall again.

But why can't they? What virtue do they have that the pre-Fall human beings did not have? Why couldn't God have bestowed this virtue upon those who lived before the Fall? Surely He would have had to do so if that virtue is necessary to human perfection.

Again, if the saints in Heaven are not free, how can they be perfect? Do they merely have a certain measure of freedom but have been so transformed by God that they cannot rebel as did the first humans? But surely such partial freedom is an imperfection, for the highest expression of our freedom is to love God. How can a freedom be perfect that is free to choose only the small things but cannot help but choose the large, i.e. to love God? Musn't it be the case then that the saints in heaven have a complete freedom and so can both freely choose to love God and freely chose to rebel? But if this is so, the Fall can happen again.

At present I see only dimly a way out of this. It is to say that the first human beings could not have been created in a state of full perfection. Rather they had to first be as children. The world, then, is their school, and heaven is their full maturity.

But why couldn't God have created humans fully mature? Surely this does not lie outside His power. Perhaps, but might it be better to ourselves reach after perfection than to have it simply bestowed upon is?

One consequence of this line of thought it likely to disturb my Christian readers. It is this. On this line, 'The Fall' refers not to a certain event wherein we rebeled against God. Rather it refers to the moral and spiritual infancy of humanity. Moreover, on this line of thought Christ and Christ's death have a pedagogical role, not a redemptive one. Christ did not come so that sins might be forgiven. (Sin is an inevitable outgrowth of spiritual immaturity and thus is not to be condemned but corrected.) He did not come so that He might balance the scales of justice by His death. Rather He came so that He might provide a perfect example and so lead us to perfection.

Samuel's Argument

I believe that many in the United States are quite convinced of their own moral rectitude. I doubt that this belief is justified.Of course many exemplify a measure of virtue. They love their families and try to do what is best for them. They take their professions with at least a measure of seriousness. They think their communities important and, at times, help them to flourish. These and the other common virtues are commendable. But they mask, I think, a deep moral flaw that mars the souls of most.

I was convinced of this some time ago by a student of mine. He name is 'Samuel' and I call his argument 'Samuel's argument'. (The idea is his. The details are mine.)

Assume that you and I sit for a cup of coffee and a bite to eat.
A small child wonders into the room in which we sit. She is obviously malnourished. Indeed such is her plight that it seems she will soon die if we do not help her now.
What is our obligation? Assume that we have more than enough money to feed her both today and months into the future. Assume as well that we know that, very likely, if we do not help her, no one will and she will die.
Our obligation is clear. We must feed her. If we were to simply turn away from her and continue our conversation, we'd be, for lack of a better term, moral monsters. We would be as depraved as a human being can be.
Now let us assume that the child did not wonder into our room but simply wondered by it, and we saw her and recognized her plight.
Again our obligation is clear. We must feed her.
Assume now that we did not see the girl but were simply told that she had collapsed on a sidewalk outside.
Our obligation has not changed. We must feed her.
What if she were not near to us but in the next town? We must feed her. In the next state? We must feed her. Half a world away? We must feed her.
The point of this is clear. Mere physical distance by itself cannot diminish strength of moral obligation.
Thus this conclusion seems unavoidable: if (i) we know of someone anywhere who is in such dire straits that, if we do not step in to help them, they will likely die, (ii) we have the ability to give the help that is needed, and yet (iii) we choose not to give that help, we are deeply morally depraved.
But we all do know that some people are now in such great need that if help is not given to them they will die. Starvation is very much a reality in some places. Moreover, the need is so great that almost certainly it will not be met; thus we can be certain that if we do not help, some of those in need will die.
Of course almost all of us have the resources to help; and we know of NGOs that have the ability to funnel money quite quickly to those places where it is needed most. Thus we really do have the ability to help.
And yet many of us do not help; and of those who do, most give much less help than they might.

Thus I say that most of us are wicked. We are wealthy and yet knowingly let others starve or otherwise die needlessly. We are, from the moral point of view, no better than the monster who momentarily pauses to stare at the starving girl and then turns and goes back to his meal.


What follows are the responses to Samuel's argument that I've encountered.

I. Do you mean to say then that we should give until we ourselves are impoverished and so end up no better off than those we wish to help?

I do not mean to say this. Rather I mean to say that almost all of us can give much more and suffer little hardship as a result. This is surely true.

II. But if we simply feed those who are hungry, they will be hungry tomorrow and will have to be fed again; and they will likely propogate and create more mouths to feed. Thus to simply feed them is no real solution to the problem.

I did not say that to merely feed those who are hungry is itself a complete solution to the problem of hunger. Of course it is not. We must find a way for help those who are hungry find a way to feed themselves. But this insight in no way undermines the claim that we have an obligation to those who will starve today, or tomorrow, to make sure they are fed. Part at least of our resources must be devoted to this.

III. Those who are hungry are so through some fault of their own and thus we have no obligation to help them.

Many who are hungry are children and they bear no responsibility for their plight. Moreover, even if the adults around them are at fault (a claim that in general is surely false) still we must help, for if the adults in a place die the children there will inevitably suffer horribly.

IV. Where starvation is epidemic, so too is overpopulation. Harsh though it might seem, starvation is the natural way in which populations are kept in check. We should not attempt to step in and change this process by which balance in achieved.

Here is introduced a certain kind of holistic ethic. It elevates the community over the individual, and says of the individual that she can be treated in any way so long as this is necessary for the community of which she is part to flourish.

One form of this ethic, the form on which the primary community is the nation-state, is fascism. (I am quite aware of that fallacy wherein one simply labels a view and thereby takes it as refuted. I have no intent to do such a thing. Rather all I mean to do is give the view its proper name. English has a name for this kind of ethic, and it is 'fascism'.) Another form, the form on which the primary community is this or that ecosystem, or perhaps the whole of the biosphere, is what Tom Regan has called 'ecological fascism'.

I do not think that I can covince the commited fascist that he is wrong. But I still think it an impossible view. Would you let your child starve to advance some community ideal? Would you let her be tortured? Would you let her be killed? If not, you are not really a fascist.

On Interpretation, or Why I Am Not a Biblical Inerrantist

I'm afraid that I must begin with two apologies. First, some of what I say below will seem autobiographical and thus perhaps will not seem applicable to others. If this is so, I am sorry. I am sorry as well about the length of the post. But I thought it important to at least sketch what I believe should be said about this issue, and when I was done with this task the post was quite long.

First I need a rough definition. By 'biblical inerrantism' (BI) I mean the view that the Bible, in its canonical form, is, if interpreted at each point as intended by its authors, in all cases true.

My intent is to show that the purpose BI is meant to attain, the hope that it is meant to fulfill, must remain out of our reach. BI presents a false hope, an impossible purpose.

What is the purpose of BI? What hope is it meant to fulfill? A sure and complete knowledge of God's will for us. (Call this hope 'S'.) BI hopes to make scripture into a kind of guide for life. But the intent is that the guide be not merely partial. It is meant rather to guide us in all matters that pertain to our moral and spiritual welfare. Moreover, it is meant to be a guide that cannot lead us astray. If we will but follow it, do as it says to do, we will have achieved that degree of moral and spiritual health, of moral and spiritual maturity that is possible for us to attain in this world.

Thus my intent is to show that BI is no route to S.

One way that to do this is argue directly that this or that Biblical command is, in fact, immoral or, if not immoral, at least not obligatory. (Perhaps one ought to lie in certain cases.) I will not argue in this way. (Arguments of this sort tend to get bogged down in questions about the proper interpretation of texts and I am a novice Biblical exegete.) Rather I will argue that certain truths to do with the nature of interpretation and of justification shows us that BI cannot be a route to S.

I. Let me first dispose of one little argument that purports to prove that BI
is a route to S. The argument is this:

Scripture says of itself that it is the perfect (i.e. complete and without error) guide that we seek.
For this reason it is the perfect guide we seek.

The premise does seem true. Claims of this sort can be found in Scripture. But is the conclusion proven by the premise? It is only if we assume that those passages in which Scripture attests to its own moral and spiritual virtues are true. But to assume this is to assume, at least in part, that the conclusion of the argument is true. Thus the conclusion of the argument is proven only if we assume that its conclusion is true. Arguments of this sort never prove the truths of their conclusions. They are viciously circular and thus prove nothing.

I do not mean to say that I reject either the premise or the conclusion. Nor do I mean to say that the conclusion does not follow from the premise. (If I did mean this, I would have assumed that which I wish to show.) All that I mean to say is this: even if both the premise is true and the conclusion follows from that premise, the argument yet does not amount to a proof of its conclusion. For again its conclusion is proven only if its conclusion is assumed and thus it is viciously circular.

II. A second little argument that BI is a route S is like the first:

Scripture says of itself that it is a perfect life-guide.
Scripture is the word of God and thus, if interpreted rightly, is true at every point.
Thus Scripture really is a perfect life-guide.

Note that BI is asserted in the second premise and S in the conclusion.

As before I do not dispute the first premise.

But what of the second premise? Is it true? Let me here simply register the complaint that many deny it. They hold that scripture is the word of God but deny its inerrancy, for they do not mean the same by 'word of God' as is meant by the inerrantist. They hold that it is the word of God in that it is God-inspired. But they deny that the authors of Scripture were, as it were, human stenographers who simply recorded what was said to them by God. Rather they will say some such thing as this: God made use of the whole man when He inspired the Biblical authors, and much of their personality and much of their world-view is retained in what they wrote.

But I will not take up this line of argument. I do not have the requisite historical, exegetical or theological expertise.

My objection to the second premise begins with the question, What reason do we have to believe that Scripture is the word of God? I can think of three possible answers. (i) God has directly revealed himself to someone and has imparted to her the knowledge that Scripture is the word of God. (ii) Scripture is the word of God, for it itself says that it is the word of God. (iii) We human beings have discovered certain truths, moral, spiritual and otherwise. These truths accord with what we find in Scripture. Thus we have proof that Scripture is the word of God.

I will consider each of the three answers in turn.

(i) Here is broached the quite extraordinarily difficult issue of the way to discern the truth of what is conveyed in mystical experience, for direct divine revelation is a variety of mystical experience. This issue divides into two sub-issues, viz. (a) if I have an experience that seems mystical to me, how do I know that it is really such and how do I know what seems to have been conveyed in that experience is really true?, and (b) if another reports a mystical experience, how do I know that it is really such and how do I know that their report of what was thereby conveyed to them is true? I have little idea how to answer these questions. But mystical experience seems rare to me; and the sort of mystical experience in which what seems imparted is an assurance that Scripture is through and through the word of God even rarer. Thus I doubt that we have here what might serve as a justification open to more than a precious few of the claim that the Bible is the word of God.

Will you say to me that when you read Scripture, you feel certain that it is the word of God and that this certainty has its source in God and thus cannot lead you astray? I am uncertain how to reply. I do not feel any such thing as this and am far from sure that you have interpreted properly what you have felt. What will you say in response to these questions? Can anyone ever feel certain about a thing and yet be mistaken? (The answer must be 'Yes', must it not?) Has anyone ever felt certain that God had instilled in them a certainty of belief and of purpose and yet been mistaken? (Again it seems that the answer must be 'Yes'.) Can you then be absolutely certain that what you feel is from God and God thereby intends to impart to you the quite specific message that Scripture is, through and through, the word of God? If you cannot, S is our of your reach.

(ii) The claim that we can know that the Bible is the word of God because it says that it is seems to render the argument of II victim to vicious circularity. For we have reason to believe this claim only if we have reason to believe that the Bible speaks truly when it says that it's the word of God. But why believe that it speaks truly when it says this? I can think of no reason but this: the Bible is the world of God and thus is true throughout. Thus the claim 'We can know that the Bible is the word of God because it says that it is' presupposes that the Bible is the word of God. But we were to conclude that the Bible is the word of God, not presuppose it. Thus we have a very tight circle. Nothing has been proven.

(iii) Here we presuppose that we human beings have an access to important moral and spiritual truths that does not come by way of simple belief in Scripture. (I will call that human power of moral and spiritual discernment ‘the moral sense’.) But if this is so, the inerrantists' hope that BI is a route to S seems undermined. Even if we assume that the moral sense gives some evidence in favor of the inerrantist thesis, it does not prove that thesis beyond a shadow of a doubt. But if it does not, we cannot have an absolute assurance that Scripture is a perfect life-guide. Simply put, if the possibility of error infects BI and we are to derive S from BI, the possibility of error infects S as well. Will someone reply that the moral sense can give a complete confirmation of Scripture? I think that this cannot be the case. The moral sense does not operate so as to deliver up such a wealth of moral dictums that Scripture contains. Nor is the moral sense such that it is itself is immune from error. So the confirmation it gives to Scripture is partial and, to a degree, unsure. The moral sense is not the tie that will bind BI and S.

III. Let me now dispose of a third little argument for the claim that BI is a route to S. It is this:

If we admit that the Bible, if interpreted rightly, will at any point lead us astray, we have no choice but to reject it is a life-guide. If it goes wrong anywhere, it is reliable nowhere.

This seems much too harsh, much too stringent a standard for any text. We do not reject a book of actuarial tables as unreliable because it contains error. Rather, if current, it is quite likely highly useful. It does of course follow that, if a text has shown itself in error at some point, we cannot place absolute trust in it anywhere. But that we cannot does not imply that we cannot
trust it at all. Rather it can still be a quite useful, perhaps even irreplaceable guide.

Will someone say here that either the Bible is divinely inspired throughout or it is human
creation throughout; and that, if it contains any error it is surely of the latter sort and thus plagued with the same sorts of errors that seems to run through all purely human moral and spiritual texts? But surely this is a false dichotomy. The Bible can be a bit of both. Moreover, as noted above, the fact that it is divinely inspired does not by itself prove that it is without error.

What now of the complaint that if we admit that the Bible is partly human and partly divine, we cannot possibly know which part is which and thus must reject the whole of it? Here I answer that the moral sense is our guide. Not of course an immature or corrupted moral sense but rather one that is mature and uncorrupt. Nor a moral sense that has ignored Scripture as it has grown, for Scripture is not only vouchsafed by the moral sense but educates it. The mature and uncorrupt moral sense, raised up in the meditation on Scripture, is that guide whereby we determine what in Scripture is of God and what is of man.

IV. So far, I have attempted to undermine various attempts to begin in BI and end in S. This of course leaves open the possibility that another attempt might succeed.

Let me explain why I think that this will not happen. The negative moment in my
argument is done. I now begin the positive.

Perhaps when we are young, we don't choose our religious beliefs but rather find them bequeathed upon us by the adults who have a hand in our education. But a time comes when we make our religious beliefs truly our own. We either deliberately reject them or deliberately accept them. When we do this, it is not any God who makes the choice but rather we, and like any human choice to believe a thing about not this world but another, it is perilous. It might lead to error small or great. The hope of course is that we will seize upon the true religion, and no doubt if we do we will receive guidance both human and divine. Perhaps this guidance will serve to further entrench, further confirm our belief. But this will never remove all possibility of error. For our religious belief is human religious belief and thus is never immune from error.

Will the inerrantist say that, though human belief is fallible, divine belief is not? Will she take this as reason to place absolute trust in Scripture? No doubt some will. But this does not answer my point. For our decision to trust Scripture absolutely is a human decision and thus can be in error. God knows all. We do not, and when we say of this or that text that it contains a complete and wholly true account of God's will for us, our finitude makes the possibility of error unavoidable.

Let me put the point in this way. There are many voices, many texts that claim to speak the most important religious truths. We must decide which among these to trust. It is not God who makes the decision for us, for if He did we would but be puppets on a string, neither praiseworthy for a right decision nor blameworthy for a wrong one. Rather it is we and the possibility always exists that we will have chosen wrongly.

All religious belief, since it concerns matters that are not seen, begins with a leap into the unknown, a leap that outstrips evidence of the senses and of reason. Perhaps after the leap is made a path will begin to appear under our feet. But at least in this world, the path will never provide the certainty that its destination exists; it will always remains at least partly obscured,
partly in shadow. Perhaps in the next world we will be given the gift of a continual beatific vision that will render doubt impossible. But few if any are given given that gift in this world. I have not, and I expect that my readers have not.

Doubt can never be eradicated in this world. It is our constant companion. It fades, no doubt, as we grow in the spirit; it does not grip the mind as perhaps it did in our youth. But it never leaves us.

Thus Biblical inerrantism cannot give us a sure guarantee against moral/spiritual error. But this is its purpose. This is what gives it life. This is what attracts its defenders to it. I conclude then that biblical inerrantism is pointless and should be abandoned.

I do not conclude, mind you, that the Bible is anywhere false. That was not my purpose. Rather it was to show that we cannot possibly have a perfect assurance of its truth and thus cannot think it the perfect life-guide that the Biblical inerrantist wishes it to be. The Bible may be wholly true (or at least it may be for all I've said or assumed); yet this would make no difference to my argument.

Why I Hope

I cannot easily say what I believe about myself and my relation to God. I am familiar with many of the Confessions and cannot with conviction state any of which I know. But I do find that when I am in church and recite one or another I stirs something within me. I hope that what I say is true.

For if what I say is true, I and those I love will in the next life achieve a perfect security that cannot be had in this world. I, my wife and children can now be hurt. We can now be killed. We can now fail to achieve that which we set out to do. We can now live well for a time and yet have what measure of peace and security we have achieved taken from us either by sin or by accident.

I sometimes feel that I'm always on edge in this world. I never really let go. I am never fully calm, fully at peace.

I don't believe that I can ever feel at ease in such a world. But I hope that another exists, a world in which a being both all-powerful and all-good will shelter us from all harm.

Of course a defender of naturalism will say that this angst is simply the animal in me aware of the potential dangers that surround it; and that of course evolution favors this ever-present fear of a hostile, or indifferent world. I have no sure refutation of such a view. But I hope that it is false, and I hope that there is a God.

Materialism

By 'materialism' I mean the view that all that exists exists within space and time (or if we adopt an Einstienian idiom, 'space-time'.) Thus materialism denies the God of orthodox Christianity, Judaism and Islam. It perhaps leaves room for a heterodox God. For all that I know, Spinoza's pantheistic God was simply space-time and its inhabitants. But of course most materialists deny even this heterodox God, and it is to them that I wish to speak. This atheistic materialism I will call 'modern materialism', or 'mm' for short.

mm relies upon a certain assumption that is not often remarked upon. The assumption is this: space and time, and the matter within it, have within themselves the power to maintain themselves in existence, i.e. they have what we might call 'existential interia'. It should be clear that mm does make this assumption. Matter, and the space and time that contain it, are all contigent beings. (By 'contingent' is meant 'able both to exist and not to exist'.) To this even the defender of mm must assent, for modern cosmological theory tells us that matter and space-time came into existence, and a thing that comes into existence is of course able not to exist.

Is this assumption of existential inertia reasonable for a defender of mm to make? I for one can think of no reason why it is. (As a matter of fact, I think that it is false. But the reason that I think it is false derives from my theism, and since I wish to undermine a variety of materialism that denies God's existence I am not free to simply introduce any theistic assmuptions.) When I think myself into the materialist point of view (a feat that I sometimes can carry out), I can think of no reason to hold that space-time and its contents could not easily 'wink' out of existence at any point in time.

Thus mm is not simply beset by its inability to explain the origins of the cosmos. It is beset as well by its inability to explain why it is that the cosmos continues to exist.

At one time I thought it not implausible for a materialist to deny that the principle of sufficient reason fails to hold at the origin of the cosmos but holds for all time thereafter. (This principle says that for every fact there is a sufficient reason or cause for its being as it is and not some other way.) But now I think that the situation is much worse for mm than this. For it seems to me now that the materialist has no reason to deny that the principle of sufficient reason fails at every moment the cosmos exists. This would be a continually ongoing violation of the principle of sufficient reason. That hardly seems reasonable to me.

Freedom and Evil

In 'Why be Free?' I concluded that freedom, genuine freedom, should not be desired and indeed is not real.

But if this is so, I think it likely that theodicy becomes impossible. Theodicy is the attempt to explain why a God that is both all-good and all-powerful allows evil to exist. One such attempt begins with the claim that we human beings (and perhaps other kinds of being too) are free and have moreover misused that freedom in such a way as to introduce evil into a world that before was perfect. This has seemed to me for some time the best kind of theodicy to pursue. But if freedom is an illusion, any free-will theodicy is doomed to failure. Indeed, if freedom is an illusion, God could have made a world with the perfect assurance that none of its inhabitants would ever sin.

But if the best of the theodicy strategies fails, belief in God becomes impossible, for His existence will come to seem plainly incompatible with the existence of evil.

So, then, we have this dilemma. We should not wish that we are free. But we should wish that we are free, for we should not wish to be forced to deny God's existence. I do not at present see a sure way out of this dilemma.

Should we say that our freedom is temporary, and that it comes about as a result of sin? This has promise. To be free is to be able to sin. But to be able to sin is to fall short of perfection. Thus we should not expect that humans were free before the Fall, when they existed in the full perfection bestowed on them by God, and that their Fall made them free.

But this response flounders. How do we explain the Fall if we do not presuppose that humans before the Fall were free? It seems we cannot. Thus we must presuppose that pre-Fall humans were free. But this is to assume that they were created in a state far short of perfect. But how can we say such a thing of God? How can we say that God brought a thing into existence in an imperfect state?

One last thought: perhaps we should say that God created us not in an imperfect state but in an immature state and that He will, in time, bring us to perfection. This does not seem absurd to me. If this can be made to work, freedom is a sign of, or perhaps constitutive of, immaturity. Do I have reason, then, to accept that freedom is real?