The Maverick Philosopher on human wretchedness

Over at the Maverick Philosopher‘s blog, there’s a great new post inspired by Blaise Pascal. It’s short, so I’ve reproduced it in its entireity, go here for the original.

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Blaise Pascal (1623-1662):

“Man’s greatness is so obvious that it can even be deduced from his wretchedness, for what is nature in animals is wretchedness in man, thus recognizing that, if his nature is today like that of the animals, he must have fallen from some better state which was once his own.” (Pensées, Penguin, p. 59, #117, tr. Krailsheimer)

“What is nature in animals is wretchedness in man.”  That is a profound insight brilliantly expressed, although I don’t think anyone lacking a religious sensibility could receive it as such.  The very notion of wretchedness is religious.  If it resonates within you, you have a religious nature.  If, and only if.

Man’s wretchedness is ‘structural’: man qua man is wretched. Wretched are not merely the sick, the unloved, and the destitute; all of us are wretched, even those of us who count as healthy and well off. Some of us are aware of this, our condition, the rest hide it from themselves by losing themselves in Pascalian divertissement, diversion. We are as if fallen from a higher state, our true and rightful state, into a lower one, and the sense of wretchedness is an indicator of our having fallen. Pascal writes that we “must have fallen from some better state.”  That is not obvious.  But the fact remains that we are in a dire state from which we need salvation, a salvation we are incapable of achieving by our own efforts, whether individual or collective.

How do we know that?  From thousands of years of collective experience.

Meditations on Mark 7

The essential element of Christianity is a personal relationship with Jesus. Last week I participated in a study of Mark 7, and was reminded just how personal Jesus’ interactions with people were during his ministry on Earth.

There are three major segments to Mark 7, and at first glance they don’t seem to have too much in common (at least, they didn’t to me). I strongly encourage you to read the whole chapter yourself (use BibleGateway if you don’t have a Bible handy), but I’ll give a brief overview of each section:

In the first section (verses 1-23), some Pharisees arrive to see Jesus and complain that his disciples aren’t doing the full ritual washing that would usually precede dinner, and Jesus responds by teaching them that holiness is more about what’s in your heart than what’s in your stomach. He also rebukes them for elevating the mechanics of ritual above the intent.

The second part (verses 24-30) takes place in Tyre, a predominantly Gentile town, where a Gentile woman comes to Jesus and begs him to heal her demon-possessed daughter. Jesus responds with what, at face value, seems like a pretty offensive remark, but the woman is undeterred and Jesus responds to her faith by healing her daughter.

Finally, we have the account of Jesus healing a deaf mute (verses 31-37). He takes the man away from the crowd, and heals him by touching his ears and tongue… with his spit.

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Clean hands and dirty hearts (Mark 7:1-23)

There are a few things to note about this passage. The first is that the Pharisees don’t seem to be concerned on hygiene grounds, this is all about performing the appropriate rituals for cleanliness. Jesus cuts right to the heart of the matter, criticising their concern with appearance before people over seeking to do God’s will. He quotes Isaiah 29:

“These people honor me with their lips,
    but their hearts are far from me.
Their worship is a farce,
    for they teach man-made ideas as commands from God.” (Mark 7:6-7, NLT)

He follows this with detailed teaching on holiness, specifically that our sinful nature is really about what is in our hearts: “evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, wickedness, deceit, lustful desires, envy, slander, pride, and foolishness”. And equally importantly, true holiness is in having a heart that is right with God, and not about whether we perform the “right” rituals, or use the “right” words in prayer.

Afterwards, when instructing his disciples in private, he gives the first indications here that he, the promised Messiah of the Jewish people, has actually come to redeem the whole world. His comments on the acceptability of food are a presage of Peter’s vision (Acts 10:9-22), in which concept of “clean” and “unclean” food is used to tell Peter to go and preach to Gospel to the Gentiles.

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Of Dogs and Children (Mark 7:24-30)

After the encounter with the Pharisees, Jesus heads off to Tyre, a coastal city in the predominantly Gentile province of Phoenicia. He’s probably gone there for a bit of a rest, as he’s specifically avoided attracting attention. But a woman comes to the house where he’s staying, and begs him to heal her daughter, who is possessed by evil spirits. This itself isn’t too unusual (in the context of Jesus ministry, anyway!); in Mark 5 he casts a number of demons out of a possessed man. Based on previous encounters, we might expect Jesus to immediately go out and heal the daughter, but instead he says to this woman, “First I should feed the children — my own family, the Jews. It isn’t right to take food from the children and throw it to the dogs” (Mark 7:27, NLT).

The implication seems to be that Jesus, as the Messiah, is the fulfillment of Jewish prophecy, and should primarily minister to the Jews. But the striking thing for me is that the woman is not offended. Instead, she turns his challenge straight back to him, and points out that dogs can eat the children’s leftovers. Jesus responds to her expression of faith by healing her daughter.

There are two things to note here: one is the suggestion in the metaphorical word-play that there is an excess of food: there is more than enough for both “children” and “dogs” to eat. But also, Jesus challenges the woman in a way that allows her to express her faith and humility. Although we may see the text as offensive, she didn’t think of it that way: Jesus spoke to her with personal knowledge of how she would understand what he said.

Also, following on from the teaching about clean and unclean foods, Jesus confirms that he has come as a saviour to all people, not just the Jews.

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Healing … with spit? (Mark 7:31-37)

The final part of the chapter is an account of healing which is superficially similar to many healing accounts, but subtly different in important ways. A deaf-mute man is brought to Jesus, and he leads the man away from the crowd and then heals him in private. (This is important, we’ll come back to it). Specifically, he touches the man’s ears, and then spits on his fingers and touches them to the man’s tongue.

Now in other cases, Jesus simply speaks to people whom he heals. “Take up your mat and walk.” (Mark 2:11) “Your faith has made you well.” (Mk. 5:34) But this time he’s a lot more hands-on, because the man is deaf! How would he understand what was happening if Jesus just spoke to him? The poor guy is probably already pretty confused, it’s not clear how much he understood about what was going on. So Jesus takes him away from the bustle and mess of the crowd, and makes it clear: “I’m doing something to your ears and your tongue”. So when the man was then able to hear and speak, he could also understand what had just happened. Jesus healed him in a way that was very personally tailored to his specific needs.

There’s another element at work in this story: Jesus leads the man away from the crowd to do all of this, and then uses spit in the healing process. Remember the teaching back in the first section? Well, this is basically the reverse. Under the same ritual laws that describe the appropriate hand-washing procedure, we also see that if a man spits on another man, he is unclean for the rest of the day. But here, the holiness that is the very essence of Jesus leads to blessing and holiness in the man who is healed. The crowd would probably not understand this distinction, but Jesus has deliberately done this away from the crowd. As with the Gentile woman, what could seem offensive is instead intended – and understood – to bring healing and blessing. Both the Gentile woman and the deaf-mute understand completely what Jesus is doing, and respond with faith and rejoicing to his personally-designed ministry.

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Jesus understands us and interacts with us at a deeply personal level. He knows the depths of our hearts, and desires an intimate relationship with each of us.

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Some thoughts on the redefinition of marriage

Several countries are currently discussing (or are already in the process of) redefining marriage. With that in mind, there’s a new paper by Ryan T. Anderson entitled: Marriage: What It Is, Why It Matters, and the Consequences of Redefining It. Although there are obvious religious considerations to this issue, Anderson isn’t actually discussing those issues in any detail in this paper.

The abstract expands:

Marriage is based on the truth that men and women are complementary, the biological fact that reproduction depends on a man and a woman, and the reality that children need a mother and a father. Redefining marriage does not simply expand the existing understanding of marriage; it rejects these truths. Marriage is society’s least restrictive means of ensuring the well-being of children. By encouraging the norms of marriage—monogamy, sexual exclusivity, and permanence—the state strengthens civil society and reduces its own role. The future of this country depends on the future of marriage. The future of marriage depends on citizens understanding what it is and why it matters and demanding that government policies support, not undermine, true marriage.

There are a few key points that come up throughout the paper. The first is that redefining marriage does not simply expand the existing understanding of marriage. It would actually contradict the traditional concept of marriage. Raising kids – and thus sustaining society – happens best in a stable home with both parents present. Marriage as an institution is primarily about bringing up the children that are produced by the husband and wife. As Anderson wrote in another paper on the same topic:

In recent decades, marriage has been weakened by a revisionist view that it is more about adults’ desires than children’s needs. This view reduces marriage primarily to intense emotional bonds.

If marriage were just intense emotional regard, marital norms would make no sense as a principled matter. There is no reason of principle that requires an emotional union to be permanent. Or limited to two persons. Or sexual, much less sexually exclusive (as opposed to “open”). Or inherently oriented to family life and shaped by its demands.

Redefining marriage would further distance marriage from the needs of children and deny the importance of mothers and fathers. It would deny, as a matter of policy, the ideal that children need a mother and a father.

Redefining marriage would also diminish the social pressures and incentives for husbands to remain with their wives and their biological children and for men and women to marry before having children. It would be very difficult for the law to send a message that fathers matter once it had redefined marriage to make fathers optional.

The traditional definition of marriage (one man, one woman, monogamous) does not restrict consenting adults from forming whatever other relationships they like.

The paper is presented in three sections. Here’s an outline of the major points:

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I. What Is Marriage?

1. Marriage exists to bring a man and a woman together as husband and wife to be father and mother to any children their union produces.
2. Marriage is based on the anthropological truth that men and women are complementary, the biological fact that reproduction depends on a man and a woman, and the social reality that children need a mother and a father.
3. Marriage as the union of man and woman is true across cultures, religions, and time. The government recognizes but does not create marriage.
4. Marriage has been weakened by a revisionist view of marriage that is more about adults’ desires than children’s needs.

II. Why Marriage Matters for Policy

1. Government recognizes marriage because it is an institution that benefits society in a way that no other relationship does.
2. Marriage is society’s least restrictive means of ensuring the well-being of children. Marital breakdown weakens civil society and limited government.
3. Marital breakdown costs taxpayers.
4. Government can treat people equally—and leave them free to live and love as they choose—without redefining marriage.
5. We reap the civil society benefits of marriage only if policy gets marriage right.

III. The Consequences for Redefining Marriage

1. Redefining marriage would further distance marriage from the needs of children and deny the importance of mothers and fathers.
2. Redefining marriage would put into the law the new principle that marriage is whatever emotional bond the government says it is.
3. Redefining marriage would weaken monogamy, exclusivity, and permanency—the norms through which marriage benefits society.
4. Redefining marriage threatens religious liberty.

Check out the whole paper here.

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Related posts:

A legal defense of marriage

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Infallibility: a user’s guide

I received the following piece via email from the Jesuit Institute of South Africa.

I didn’t write it, but I think that it is a useful discussion of what the Catholic concept of “papal infallibility” actually entails.

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Infallible? by Raymond Perrier

Infallible must be one of the most misunderstood terms in Catholic vocabulary.  Reflecting on the Papacy of Benedict XVI we can remind ourselves what Papal infallibility is and most importantly what it is not.

The origins of the idea of infallibility started not with Popes but with the Church.  The notion is that the whole body of the Church gathered together – for example a council of the worldwide college of bishops – must be inspired by the Holy Spirit and so cannot make an error.  Thus, the bishops assembled with the Pope (as at the Second Vatican Council 50 years ago) can invoke infallibility.

However, 150 years ago, faced with the prospect of being isolated in the Vatican City by the newly united Italy, the then Pope Pius IX was worried that he would not be able to call a Council of the Church if he needed to.  He thus proposed that infallibility applied not only to Councils but also to the Pope acting on his own; this was declared by the First Vatican Council in 1870.  Thus, every Pope since has in theory been able to invoke infallibility.

But this is the key: infallibility must be invoked.  It is not automatic.  The Pope has to be speaking from his office as Bishop of Rome (the Latin term for this ‘ex cathedra’ is the source of the word ‘cathedral’); it must be on a matter of faith or morals; and it must be in keeping with Scripture and the tradition of the Church; it is held to be ‘divinely revealed’.  So you can’t go and ask the Pope to tell you the location of the Holy Grail or the weather forecast for next April or the winning numbers of the Lotto and expect his answer to be infallible.

In fact, infallibility was never invoked by Pope Pius IX nor by Paul VI nor even by John Paul II.  It has only been used explicitly once which was in 1950 when Pope Pius XII proclaimed the dogma of the Assumption – which had actually been widely since at least the 4^th century.

When a Pope teaches it is – outside of a General Council – the highest teaching of the Church but it is not automatically infallible.  Benedict knew that very well.  Furthermore, he knew that he had to distinguish between his authoritative teaching as Pope (his extraordinarily beautiful and thoughtful encyclicals or his weekly Angelus address) and his writings as a theologian, even the ones that came out while he was Pope.

He was also able to admit a mistake.  One example of this was when, in an attempt to build bridges with a right-wing breakaway group of bishops, he unwittingly engaged with a man who turned out to be a holocaust denier.  Pope Benedict came as close to any Pope ever has in saying – whoops, we got it wrong; we didn’t do our homework.

It is worth remembering the answer he gave just before the conclave that elected him in 2005.  A journalist asked if the Holy Spirit would be electing the new Pope.  The then Cardinal Ratzinger replied: “No, the cardinals will elect the new Pope.  However, we hope that the Holy Spirit is not absent from the process.”

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Raymond Perrier is Director of the Jesuit Institute of South Africa

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Related posts:

Vale, Pope Penedict XVI

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Reading the story of Nature

So, in a previous post I talked about how Nature doesn’t have a voice, and that this makes it difficult to ask it questions. Today I want to talk about an alternative way of interpreting nature.

Francis Bacon talked about reading “both books” in order to gain insight about God. By this he meant that God is revealed in scripture, because the Bible is God’s Word to us, and God is also revealed in nature, because he is the Creator of the universe. It seems to me that asking questions of nature can be very similar to asking questions of Scripture, which in turn is very similar to asking questions of a novel. Let me explain:

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Les Misérables by Victor Hugo.
© Penguin Publishing (2012)

Victor Hugo had a lot of big ideas about life, death, love, honour, justice, duty, sin and redemption, and social inequality. Now, he could have written a series of essays on each one of those, but instead he wrote a book called Les Misérables, which deals with all those topics (and more). It also provides a host of unforgettable characters, some beautiful prose, and an epic story spanning several decades (as well as a few fascinating diversions into the Battle of Waterloo and the history of the Parisian sewer system).

A series of essays might have clocked in at about 50-100 pages, in total. The book is anywhere from 1500-2000 pages, depending on the imprint and/or translation that you read. So why did he make life so difficult for himself?

The simple answer is that people are much happier to read 1000 pages of novel than 100 pages of essay. The far more important answer is that you can say things that are far more nuanced, insightful, and challenging within a story than you can in an essay. This is because the story does not speak directly, and thus it requires active involvement from the reader to understand what the message is.

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Now consider scripture. If you read through the Old Testament, you’ll find that a great deal of it can be classified as narrative. That is, it tells the story of stuff that happened to God’s people. It’s not always a happy story: there is death and betrayal and revenge killing and adultery and idolatry and lots more besides. In some places, that sort of wickedness is explicitly condemned (such as in 2 Samuel 11:1 – 12:12), but in other places the Bible itself makes no obvious judgement on things that seem wicked. However, it is naive to say that if something is in the Bible and isn’t explicitly condemned, it is therefore condoned. These sorts of passages are a challenge to the reader: what does the history of the nation of Israel tell us about God, about human nature, about the world in which we live, about the short- and long-term consequences of our decisions and our actions?

These are not simple issues, and a simple set of bullet points cannot capture the scope of human experience. There is a great rule of cinema: “Show, don’t tell.” This concept is equally true in novels, although it is less pithy to phrase it for a writer: “Tell implicitly through the narrative, not explicitly through commentary”. This is not just an issue of artistic expression: we understand things far more deeply when they are told through a story.

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So what about Nature?

The messages of nature, understood as God’s creation, are also less direct than a set of bullet points. We see the majestic beauty of the stars, and also the beauty of a tiny flower. We feel insignificant against the unimaginable scale of the universe, and yet we know that Jesus loves us so much, and sees us as so precious, that he was willing to suffer and die for us. We know that God made the world, and that He is immeasurably loving and good, and yet we see the relentless and brutal struggle for survival that seems to define all living things.

Many of these issues are challenging and thought-provoking. There are few simple answers. But they are all chapters in the greatest story ever told.

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Related posts:

Questions to Nature

On reading both books

The power of narrative

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Vale, Pope Benedict XVI

Pope Benedict XVI announced today that he will be stepping down from the papacy. As he wrote in his resignation letter:

“After having repeatedly examined my conscience before God, I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry.

“I am well aware that this ministry, due to its essential spiritual nature, must be carried out not only with words and deeds, but no less with prayer and suffering.

However, in today’s world, subject to so many rapid changes and shaken by questions of deep relevance for the life of faith, in order to govern the bark of Saint Peter and proclaim the Gospel, both strength of mind and body are necessary, strength which in the last few months, has deteriorated in me to the extent that I have had to recognize my incapacity to adequately fulfil the ministry entrusted to me.”

I, for one, salute him for his dedication to his ministry, and the courage and humility that it took to do this. It’s an extremely demanding job, but it’s also a very high-profile one, and as such it must be difficult to keep viewing it as an act of love and service. But as in all things, not through our own strength.

He is the 265th person to hold the position, and the first of the Internet Age. Among the virtues that he brought to the office were a keen academic mind and intellectual rigour. In particular, his rejection of relativism is insightful:

“Today, a particularly insidious obstacle to the task of education is the massive presence in our society and culture of that relativism which, recognising nothing as definitive, leaves as the ultimate criterion only the self with its desires. And under the semblance of freedom it becomes a prison for each one, for it separates people from one another, locking each person into his or her own ego.”

He has also masterfully combined a commitment to orthodox Christianity with an emphasis on “friendship with Jesus”:

“Are we not perhaps all afraid in some way? If we let Christ enter fully into our lives, if we open ourselves totally to Him, are we not afraid that He might take something away from us? … No! If we let Christ into our lives, we lose nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing of what makes life free, beautiful and great. No! Only in this friendship do we experience beauty and liberation… When we give ourselves to Him, we receive a hundredfold in return. Yes, open, open wide the doors to Christ – and you will find true life.”

Ave atque vale, Benedictus XVI.

Science as ideology

A couple of good discussion pieces by Chris Mulherin that were published recently:

Christianity, science and rumours of divorce talks about the misunderstandings that lead to the perceived “conflict” between science and the Christian faith. In particular, he emphasises the distinction that Christianity is a worldview, whereas science is a methodology.

The second article, Science as ideology betrays its purpose, discusses the hazards which arise from conflating the methodology of science with the worldview of Naturalism.

Both articles can be downloaded from the ISCAST website.

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Related posts:

Grainge Clarke on the assumptions of science

Where God meets physics

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Creationism ≠ Christianity

One of the biggest contributors to the idea that science and Christianity are somehow at odds, is the idea that Young-Earth Creationism is the same thing as Christianity. We really need to clarify this point.

Young-Earth Creationism (YEC) describes a belief structure that has made a literalistic interpretation of Genesis 1 the core article of faith. This position seems difficult to reconcile with science. (Of course, a hermeneutically sound – and thus more truly literal – interpretation of Genesis 1 is wholly reconcilable with modern science).

But this YEC doctrine is not representative of Christianity, it’s a strange late-19th-century offshoot with little theological or biblical support. The implications of this unfortunate conflation of YEC with Christianity are covered well in a recent blog at the British Centre for Science Education. The following graphics may help to illustrate the relationship between YEC and Christianity, and are inspired by that blog post:

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*note: I’m using the term “creationist” in this post to refer mostly to the YEC position. This term would not apply to someone who, for example, believes that God created the universe ex nihilo, but that Big Bang cosmology and evolution describe some of the processes of Creation.

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Related posts:

“Creation Science” isn’t.

Conflict myths: Bishop Ussher

Intelligent Design: dodgy science, worse theology

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Intelligent Design: dodgy science, worse theology

Electron micrograph of H. pylori bacterium, with flagella clearly visible. Image by Yutaka Tsutsumi.

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First, some clarification. We’ll start with what Intelligent Design is not:

Christian doctrine teaches that the universe, life, and human beings are created by God. That is, Creation was a deliberate act. Also, God is omniscient and omnipotent, and chose to exercise creation in a particular way. This is not the definition of Intelligent Design.

The teleological argument refers to a philosophical argument for the existence of God based on apparent design and purpose in the world around us. The universe and our place in it appear to be purposeful, and a purposeful creation suggests a purposeful Creator. Variations on this line of thinking can be traced back to before Plato, and it also features in the work of St Thomas Aquinas as one of his rational arguments for God’s existence. This is also not the definition of Intelligent Design.

So what is it?

Intelligent Design (or ID) maintains that “certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection. Through the study and analysis of a system’s components, a design theorist is able to determine whether various natural structures are the product of chance, natural law, intelligent design, or some combination thereof.” (from intelligentdesign.org). In short, ID proponents claim that scientific inquiry can identify the intervention of intelligence in the evolutionary process.

The major feature of ID theory is the concept of “irreducible complexity”, specifically the idea that there exist structures and systems in nature that are so irreducibly complex that they could not have evolved step-wise via evolutionary theory.

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In general, if we talk about trying to discern God’s influence in the universe scientifically, we have two major problems:

• There is no control group. Because God is omnipresent and not subject to human will, he can’t be excluded from part of an experiment to try and see what would happen “without” God’s intervention.
• More generally, science lacks the tools for investigating the supernatural. If we are suggesting that this “Intelligent Designer” is in fact God (and thus supernatural), then it is not clear that his influence could be discerned by scientific inquiry. If we’re thinking of aliens (or anything else non-supernatural), then I am not sure that “intelligence” would be the most easily identifiable evidence.

There are major theological issues with ID because it argues that God’s involvement in the universe is only necessary for stuff that we can’t explain by natural law. This is a classic “god of the gaps” argument, and it is lousy theology. Christianity teaches that God is involved everywhere. That God is the author and sustainer of the natural laws. ID suggests that God mostly lets the universe tick along by itself, but every now and then he steps in to design a bacterial flagellum, or whatever the latest example of irreducible complexity is.

Philosophically, the entire premise of ID seems doubtful. The central claim of ID is that the intelligence of the “designer” can be discovered scientifically. But if the designer used normal physical processes in any way, it is not clear that the influence of “intelligence” could be discerned.

Let us consider: I put a kettle on the stove and the water boils. By studying the stove and the kettle and the water (or steam if you wait too long), you can discover exactly how the chain of events unfolded. But it is not clear that the intelligent involvement and motivation could ever be discoveredin this way. Did I want a cup of tea? Was I acting on instruction from someone else (in which case my actions involve no intelligence of my own)? Even if we look at the all physical actions that I undertook to make the kettle boil, it is not clear that the “intelligence” involved could ever be identified scientifically.

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A note on irreducible complexity:

As a side note, I believe that irreducible complexity itself is an important avenue of study. But it is an avenue of study that involves evolutionary theory, not Intelligent Design. It is a challenge to see if there are limits to current understanding of evolution, and whether there are aspects of biological development that seem to argue against it. In the same way that dark matter and dark energy have forced us to reconsider a lot of what we thought about cosmology and gravity, it is possible that there could emerge a parallel biological paradigm which works in concert with evolutionary pressure to guide the development of life. But that is something for biological science to explore.

An argument against one theory is not an argument for another. So we have a theory (such as gravity), and we can make observations and conduct experiments that support or refute it. But refuting that theory does not support another: the two processes are independent.

The problem with ID is that it tries to argue against evolutionary theory, but gets a bit fuzzy on the details of what it is arguing for. ID proponents try to identify things in nature that can’t be explained by evolution, and then use such things to argue for ID. But what exactly is the unifying theory of ID?

“Sometimes, intelligence is involved rather than pure selective pressure based on reproductive fitness and survival. Other times, evolution just does its thing.”

But why was “intellegent design” applied in the case of a bacterial flagellum, and not elsewhere? For any explanatory power, a motivation for ID influence to appear in a particular biological feature would have to be clear prior to the knowledge that the specific feature appears to be irreducibly complex. This lack of a clear alternative theory means that, at most, irreducibly complex biological features can be seen as a challenge to current evolutionary theory. They cannot possibly be a positive argument for ID.

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Related posts:

“Creation Science” isn’t.

Hypothetically speaking

Two evolutionists walk into a bar…

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Aren’t all disasters natural?

What does God have to do with hurricanes?

According to secular society, both nothing and everything:

Nothing, because God’s existence is denied, and everything, because calling a natural disaster an “act of God” allows us to implement special insurance clauses.

According to orthodox Christianity, both everything and nothing:

Everything, because God is sovereign over everything, but nothing, because He does not go around specifically creating every specific giant storm system for a specific purpose.

Importantly, God does not send “natural disasters” as punishment. This probably needs emphasising, because every time a major disaster strikes it seems that some nut-job gets onto a camera and starts saying ridiculous things like “[affected place] was full of sin, and that’s why God has punished them with this earthquake/hurricane/flood/drought/etc”. So if you’ve ever been on the receiving end of that kind of message, let me reiterate: that’s not Christianity; that’s the words of a crazy person. We’re ALL full of sin, that’s the nature of humans, but God in His grace allows us a way to be reconciled to Him. The whole “floods as punishment” thing has no place in Christian theology.

It’s not just floods and earthquakes, though. Despite Jesus spending lots of his Earthly ministry healing the sick and precisely none of it making people sick, many Christians still seem to be stuck in a mindset of illness as divine punishment. Theologically, this is is equally wrong. But it does bring up an interesting paradox in our thinking:

When we ask why God allows natural disasters to happen, why do we distinguish between hurricanes and malaria? Why is illness discussed as a theologically distinct issue from large-scale environmental disasters?

Are “natural disasters” just bigger illnesses?

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Lawsuits among believers

In 1 Corinthians 1-6, Paul admonishes the church in Corinth because church members have been suing each other. In this age of incessant litigation, it’s a passage with a great deal of application.

Here’s how it reads in the NIV:

“If any of you has a dispute with another, do you dare to take it before the ungodly for judgment instead of before the Lord’s people? Or do you not know that the Lord’s people will judge the world? And if you are to judge the world, are you not competent to judge trivial cases? Do you not know that we will judge angels? How much more the things of this life! Therefore, if you have disputes about such matters, do you ask for a ruling from those whose way of life is scorned in the church? I say this to shame you. Is it possible that there is nobody among you wise enough to judge a dispute between believers? But instead, one brother takes another to court — and this in front of unbelievers!”

First, some context: the kind of disputes that Paul is talking about are minor. He’s talking specifically about civil suits, so this is not about murder or grand larceny, it’s more like someone damaged your car. What constitutes “minor” is pretty flexible depending on your stage of life, income, etc., but if you imagine a situation where someone in the church wrongs you to the tune of about one month’s rent, that’s a decent guideline. It’s the kind of amount that hurts, but you’re not going to be destitute as a result.

Paul’s main point is that being in relationship is central to living a Christian life. When we bring a lawsuit against someone, we are saying that we are willing to destroy our relationship with them in order to win the suit. Even if you’re clearly in the right, and the other person is being unjust, you have a duty to try and build that relationship – and maintain peace within the church – that is more important than getting whatever financial outcome you “deserve”. Take a longer view, realise that the things of this world are transient, and move on. If you obsess over “winning” this kind of battle, you’re focussing on the wrong things. In a minor civil case between friends and family, the lawyers may win but both parties are going to lose.

Is there a better way? Well, Paul says that there should be wisdom enough in the Church to solve these kinds of disputes through arbitrage and mediation. Ideally, both parties will be interested in reconciliation, and will abide by the advice of the elders in the church. But this also has implications for the status of God’s law in relation to civil law. Jesus is very clear on obedience to civil authority as a general rule, and that civil (secular) rulers should be respected in their appropriate areas of authority. But in our personal lives, God’s word is more important, and there are usually points at which civil law and Church guidance differ. Paul is saying that you subvert the authority of the Church when you take your dispute to a civil court – particularly if you seek a ruling that you would not get from the Church.

Paul’s final point is that taking your fellow Christian to court over a minor dispute is a bad witness to the rest of the world. As Christians, we need to be aware of how our actions may influence the attitudes of non-Christians around us.

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Related posts:

Revisiting the Law

Matters of interpretation

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Grainge Clarke on the assumptions of science

There’s an excellent article by W. Grainge Clarke on the philosophy of science and how it relates to the Christian worldview.

On the topic of the underlying assumptions of the scientific method, he writes:

“These presuppositions are, by their nature unprovable, and some philosophers would consider them unacceptable. Behind the acceptance of these presuppositions lies the fact that modern science developed when the dominant worldview in Europe was Christian. If the Christian worldview is accepted they all make reasonable sense. However, on the atheistic worldview, that all is the product of matter-energy, time and chance, then none of these presuppositions are justifiable. To consider just one case: ‘The human mind is capable of rational thought’. If the human mind has been developed solely by non rational forces then there is no reason to believe that it can be rational and certainly it is not to be relied upon. Consider two computers one of which was designed and assembled by the IT staff at the local university and the other by the local kindergarten. Which is most likely to function well? Yet the kindergarten children have much more intelligence than blind chance.”

You can find the whole article here:

“Wrong fight, wrong concepts, wrong everything” by Grainge Clarke

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Related posts:

Hypothetically speaking

Maths, science and abstractions

Where God meets physics

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Book Review: Healing is a Choice, by Stephen Arterburn

Healing Is a Choice

Ten Decisions That Will Transform Your Life & Ten Lies That Can Prevent You From Making Them

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by Stephen Arterburn

Published by Thomas Nelson, paperback edition

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I picked up Healing is a Choice with some serious reservations – I’m afraid that the title really sounded like it was saying, “If you’re not getting better, it’s your fault”. I was delighted to find as I read through it that the author’s central message is quite the opposite: as he re-iterates at the end of every chapter, healing is a choice, but it is God’s choice. What Arterburn focusses on is the decisions we can make and actions that we can take to remove the barricades that can hold us back from experiencing that healing.

He does not say that “If you follow these steps you’ll experience healing”. The message of the book is rather, “These things can hold back what God wants to do in your life, and even if it is not his will to heal you physically, these are things that you should do anyway.”

The book is broken into ten chapters, each looking at an aspect of the healing process. The chapters are framed around a choice that we can make, and a corresponding lie that runs counter to that choice. So the chapter on reflecting on our painful experiences and dealing with past hurts is paired with the lie that “Time heals all wounds”; and the chapter on getting help and support from others is paired with the lie that “I can just figure this out on my own.” It’s a good structure in that it promotes a healing choice and simultaneously warns of the dangerous cultural myth that keeps us from making that choice. There is a limited degree of overlap between some of the chapters, but I found that to be a useful re-inforcement rather than repetitive.

Reading the book for review purposes was interesting:the format of each chapter is based around teaching and activities to help the reader work through their pain and hurts. Not currently being at a point where I needed healing, the activities were less appropriate for me, but I think that they would be very useful in a group or individual therapy setting. This emphasis on practicality runs throughout the book. In the chapter on forgiveness, there are sample letters that the reader might like to use as a structure for asking forgiveness from someone. In the chapters on reflection and drawing from the past, there are guided journaling activities. There are prayers at the end of each chapter, though which the reader can ask God for help with the particular issue under discussion.

It is common for authors to include stories from their own past in any self-help book, but they are generally limited to the past tense: “I used to have problems, but now, thanks to my secret formula, my life is blissful and perfect!” Arterburn does not go down that path. He is willing to include recent disasters from his own life, personal experiences of pain and failure and be open about the process of healing that he had to go through – and is still going through. I found this openness refreshing.

Importantly, the book is very God-centred. There is a clear and consistent message that healing is what God does, and the decisions and actions that Arterburn recommends are all backed up by appropriate and well-interpreted scripture and biblical principles.

I enjoyed Healing is a Choice, and I would recommend it to people who are struggling to work through their own hurts or who are helping others to work through theirs. I think it would be particularly useful in a group-therapy context, and while I can’t claim any personal experitise in grief therapy or similar fields, I believe that working through the book over the course of months with fellow travellers would be a healing and rewarding journey.

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Full disclosure: I received this book free from the publisher through the BookSneeze®.com book review program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

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Children of God: the awkward teenage years

Just a quick update – I recently published an article on the journal Christian Perspectives on Science and Technology, entitled “Children of God: The awkward teenage years“. The abstract below will give you something of the flavour:

In this essay I explore some of the manifestations of ‘teenage rebellion’ in matters of faith and society: how disillusionment with God can manifest and impact our lives. As we grow from infancy to adulthood, an early childish optimism towards our idealised vision of life often gives way to dissatisfaction, cynicism and disillusionment in our teenage years. This is a natural by-product of a youthful idealism based on unrealistic notions, and hopefully as we continue to mature to adulthood we understand life more deeply and regain our satisfaction, enthusiasm and sense of wonder with all that this life and universe have to offer. In general, I believe that this disillusionment is rooted in our early failure of understanding. The core of the Christian faith is a personal relationship with God through the person of Jesus. A person who believes in God but does not have a relationship with him may find that this level of faith is insufficient to withstand the additional pressures, responsibilities and difficulties that adulthood requires. On a broader perspective, I also look briefly at disillusionment with science from the Enlightenment to the present day.

Get the whole article here:

http://www.iscast.org/Smith_M_2012-04_Children_of_God

Music for the soul

Music, and indeed any art form, involves striving to express that which is recognised but cannot be fully put into words, that which is unknowable and yet known more deeply than anything else. It is this striving for expression that produces great art, it is the acknowledgement – without complete understanding – of the intangible Other that drives creative work.

This is not unique to Christian cultures, it is a universal feature of art. We do not express artistically what we could simply describe succinctly and fully, in a sentence. The intangible natures of love, of the soul, of our deeply felt and yet deeply fractured relationship with God, these are the things which give flight to the mad impulses of the artist.

Of course, the passionate exploration of a question does not necessarily result in finding an answer. Rock music, for one, would scarcely exist without eschatological and spiritual angst (although a vapid and commercially-manufactured boy-band could probably get along just fine…). Whether expressed explicitly via a specific religious framework in such bands as U2 and Live (Christianity and Hinduism respectively), or raging against unresolved religious issues (Meatloaf, Guns ‘n Roses, The Rolling Stones, Nirvana), these are the yearnings that push musicians to greatness.

In Christianity, music is often an integral part of the act of worship. We acknowledge God’s glory and majesty, but are unable to express it in ordinary words – hence the Psalms, in which the poetic construction allows us to come closer to true expression of our feelings.

Attempting to deny this extraordinary wellspring of inspiration would be monstrous. The passionate yearning for the inexpressible Divine and the artistic expression of it is an essential part of what constitutes the human experience.

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Related posts:

Psalm 30

Improving Graces

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Nicolas Steno: bishop and scientist

Today marks the 374th birthday of Nicolas Steno, a pioneer in geology and anatomy in the 17th century. Steno (Neils Stensen in the original Danish) was born in 1638 in Copenhagen, and after completing his university education in Denmark he spent the rest of his life travelling throughout Europe and collaborating with prominent physicians and scientists.

While the common approach of scientists at the time was to appeal to the ideas of Aristotle and Pliny, Steno was determined to examine evidence for himself and draw his own conclusions. He was guided in this by his religious convictions about God as Creator of the natural order.

Stressing the importance of investigation and observation, he wrote:

“One sins against the majesty of God by being unwilling to look into nature’s own works and contenting oneself with reading others; in this way one forms and creates for oneself various fanciful notions and thus not only does one not enjoy the pleasure of looking into God’s wonders but also wastes time that should be spent on necessities and to the benefit of one’s neighbor and states many things which are unworthy of God.”

Steno made important advances in anatomy and physiology, most notably in muscle research. He determined that the heart was a muscle (it was thought by many at the time to be a generator of heat), and also demonstrated geometrically that muscles under contraction do not increase in volume (they just change their shape).

But his biggest contribution to science is in the fields of geology and paleontology. After studying the similarities between living sharks and fossilised shark teeth, he decided that the fossils were actually the remains of once-living sharks, now buried in rock. He was not the first to make this connection, but he did go on to define the fundamentals of stratigraphy, the branch of geology that studies rock layers (stratification).

Considering the question of how a shark tooth (or anything else) could become encased in rock, he decided that it must at one time have been surrounded by liquid while the layer below it was already rock. Known in stratigraphy as the law of superposition, this ultimately means that every layer of sedimentary rock must be younger than the layer below it, and this observation is the basis for all fossil dating today. Steno’s theory that the fossil record could be chronologically ordered by the rock layer in which each fossil is was found is fundamental to modern evolutionary theory.

As a follow-up, he also studied crystals and determined Steno’s Law of constancy of interfacial angles, which basically says that the angles between corresponding crystal faces are the same for the same mineral. Steno’s geological work was published in De solido intra solidum naturaliter contento dissertationis prodromus, or Preliminary discourse to a dissertation on a solid body naturally contained within a solid in 1669.

In 1675 he was ordained into the priesthood, and in 1677 was made a bishop apostolic in the north of Germany. After 9 years of devoted ministry to the poor, he died in 1686.

Happy birthday, Nicolas – you are yet another great example of Christian faith informing ground-breaking scientific advances.

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Related posts:

Where God meets Physics

Faith is a part of life

Believing and understanding

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On the relative efficacy of cathedral demolition strategies

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I do not believe there is an atheist in the world who would bulldoze Mecca – or Chartres, York Minster or Notre Dame.

- Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

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Cathedrals are too high for bulldozers. In the Soviet Union under Stalin and the German Democratic Republic under Ulbricht they used explosives instead.

        – Richard Schröder, Professor of Philosophy in Berlin

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Where God meets physics

This article is reproduced from the University of Cambridge – the original can be found here.
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Eminent thinker and commentator Revd Dr John Polkinghorne, Fellow of the Royal Society, will be giving a public talk – titled A Destiny Beyond Death – tomorrow lunchtime at St Edmund’s College, Cambridge. It is part of a series organised by the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion. Here he gives an overview of his understanding of the relationship between what are generally considered to be two opposing schools of thought.

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Science and religion are two of the most powerful influences in contemporary society. Some see them as competing alternatives but, as someone who is both a former Cambridge science professor and an Anglican priest, I want to take them with equal seriousness. I am proud that Cambridge was the first university in the UK to endow a post in theology and science: the Starbridge Lectureship is held by Dr Fraser Watts.

The possibility of fruitful interaction between science and religion arises from the fact that both are concerned with the search for truthful understanding, to be attained through motivated beliefs. Of course, this is a philosophically contested claim, but my scientific experience encourages me to adopt the stance of ‘critical realism’ in relation for the insights of both science and religion. The term ‘realism’ signifies the belief that we can gain actual insight into the nature of reality, while the description ‘critical’ signals that this knowledge is never complete or absolutely certain, though sufficiently well supported by evidence to make commitment to it a rational act.

Science and religion look at different domains of encounter with reality. Sciences deals with an objective dimension, in which things can be manipulated and events repeated, thereby affording it access to the great weapon of experimental verifiability. Yet we all know that there are many levels of encounter with reality – both personal and, I would say, the transpersonal encounter with divine reality – in which neither manipulation nor repetition are possible without doing violence to the reality encountered. We never hear a Beethoven quartet the same way twice, even if we replay the same recording. In this personal realm, testing has to give way to something like trusting.

The difference in domains means that science and religion ask different questions of reality: in the former case how things happen; in the latter whether there is meaning, purpose and value in what is happening – issues that science tends to rule out of its discourse. Science and religion, therefore, complement each other, rather than being rivals on the same turf. For full understanding, we need both sets of insights. To take a homely example, the kettle is boiling because gas heats the water (process) and because I want to make a cup of tea (purpose). Some people have argued that these differences are so completely separate that they have nothing to say to each other, but I believe that this view is mistaken. Their questions are different but the answers given must be mutually compatible. Returning to the homely example, putting the kettle in the refrigerator would cast doubt on my intention to make a cup of tea.

The common quest for truth makes science and religion friends and not foes, with gifts to offer each other. Science can tell religion what the nature and history of the universe is actually like, a gift to be received with gratitude as theology seeks to understand the cosmos as a divine creation.  It makes me sad to see some religious people refusing to take seriously the truth that science has to offer. The gift that religion has to offer to science is not to answer its questions – for we have every reason to expect that scientific questions will receive scientific answers – but to take science’s insights and set them within a broader and deeper context of intelligibility.

The metaquestions that arise from the experience of doing science take us beyond science’s ability to answer. One example must suffice: ‘Why is science possible at all in the deep way that it has proved to be?’ Of course, evolutionary process must have shaped human brains so that we can understand the everyday world in which our ancestors had to survive. But why are we also able to understand the cloudy and fitful world of quantum physics, which appears so far removed from the everyday world? Why is it that mathematics – the most abstract of disciplines – which furnishes the key to unlock the deep secrets of the physical world?

It is an actual technique of discovery in fundamental phyics to seek theories which are expressed in terms of what mathematicians can recognise and agree to be beautiful equations. This strategy is no act of aesthetic indulgence, for time and again it has proved to be the case that it is just such theories that provide the long-term fruitfulness of explanation which persuades us that they describe the way the physical world is. The universe has proved to be astonishingly rationally transparent and rationally beautiful. Is this just a random piece of luck or is it a fact of great significance?  Science exploits this fact, but is unable to explain it,

I have been describing a world which in its deep intelligibility could fittingly be described as shot through with signs of mind. I believe that it is wholly reasonable to believe that it is the divine Mind of the Creator that lies behind the wonderful order of the cosmos.  I like to say that I am ‘two-eyed’, viewing the world through the view of science and religion, a binocular vision that enables me to see further and deeper than I would with just a single eye. I need to take science and religion with an equal seriousness.

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Photo: Sunbeams spectacle - Copyright Gordon Richardson

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Desecrating the Temple: The challenge to literalists

I really think that those who endorse a “plain reading”, strictly literalist interpretation of the Bible are missing out on some of the most awesome stuff that God has given us the Scripture. Let me give a bit of background to explain what I mean:

I was recently asked to preach on Mark 13, in which Jesus describes the end times (and also some more imminent times). It’s a complex chapter and I’m not going to try and unpack all of it here, but I was particularly struck by his description of the Temple desecration. Jesus starts by saying that the Temple will be destroyed, torn apart block by block, and also says that the fulfillment of this prophecy will give the listeners confidence in what he tells them about the end times. The destruction of the Temple will happen soon, in the lifetimes of his listeners, and then they will know that what he says about his second coming is also true.

So why do I say that this is a challenge to a literalist reading of Scripture? Well, let’s look at what Jesus says. He warns the listeners to flee from the destruction, and he does it using these words:

“When you see ‘the abomination that causes desolation’ standing where it does not belong—let the reader understand—then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains.” (Mark 13:14, NIV)

The bit that I want to focus on is is expression, “the abomination that causes desolation”. The abomination that he’s talking about is a perversion of a holy thing: in the simplest sense, it’s the referring to an incident shortly after the Romans broke the seige of Jerusalem in 70 AD, and the Roman general Titus placed an idol on the site of the Temple. So that seems easy enough to understand with a plain reading of the text.

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But there is more to it: Jesus follows up that expression by saying, “let the reader understand”, which seems a very odd remark. Why does he say “reader” instead of “listener”? Note that this is not an editorial insertion from the writer of Mark, this is a quote from Jesus speaking to his disciples. Jesus’ reference to “reader” is his way of pointing out the historical parallels with his prophecy: his expression “the abomination that causes desolation” is in fact a direct reference to the book of Daniel, which his disciples – being dilligent readers of the Hebrew scriptures – would understand. Daniel wrote in about 536 BC, and one of his prophecies foretold the invasion of Israel by Antiochus IV Epiphanies, who sacked Jerusalem in 168 BC and sacrificed a pig to Zeus on the altar of the temple. Nearly 400 years before this event, Daniel prophesied about it thus:

“His armed forces will rise up to desecrate the temple fortress and will abolish the daily sacrifice. Then they will set up the abomination that causes desolation.” (Dan 11:31, NIV)

Now, this is the textual allusion that Jesus is making to “the reader”, but he is also talking about the end times and his return as described in the Revelation. In the apocalyptic setting of Mark 13, where Jesus is also warning against false prophets and false claimants to the second coming, the “the abomination that causes desolation” can further be taken as a description of the ultimate exemplar of its type, the Antichrist. In Revelation the Antichrist is a perverted version of the Christ, the ultimate false prophet, the abomination that causes desolation for all who follow him.

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There are many more layers to this passage, but I hope that is sufficient to illustrate my point. There are at least three levels to what Jesus is saying here, and his remark “let the reader understand” indicates that he was intending his prophecy to be understood on multiple levels. This is a powerful and important passage, it’s not simply a foretelling of the Roman destruction of the Temple. But if we restrict ourselves to a rigidly literalist reading of the text, we cannot possibly unravel the full extent of what Jesus is telling us here.

Of course I’m not advocating any silly post-modernist “every viewpoint is equally valid” rubbish. But it’s vital to realise that the Biblical texts were written on multiple levels, and usually have multiple layers of meaning.

A literalist reading risks losing much of the richness that God has given us in his Word.

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Related posts:

The power of narrative

Revisiting the Law

Matters of interpretation

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Revisiting the Law

Recently, I’ve been reading through the Old Testament. I haven’t read the latter books of the Pentateuch for a while, so it was an interesting experience. The Pentateuch makes up the first five books of the Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, and also comprises the Jewish Torah. This collection is also referred to as the Books of the Law, which is what Jesus is talking about when he mentions “the Law and the Prophets” (e.g. Matt. 5:17, Matt. 7:12).

Genesis and the first half of Exodus are largely composed of narrative, but from that point on there are indeed large chunks of detailed instruction from God which dominate the books of Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. And when you hear people talking vaguely about “all those crazy rules and stuff in the Bible”, it’s generally the last three books of the Pentateuch that they have in mind. So as I worked my way through these books, I was expecting to find an endless list of obscure and arbitrary prohibitions.

In contrast, I was delighted at just how sensible all the laws are. But there are a few important things to bear in mind as you read them.

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The Laws of Moses were given to a people who had been slaves in a foreign land for 400 years, and were now being moulded into a new nation. The Law is not there to restrict the Israelites’ freedom, it is God’s gift to them to help them live in harmony and build a successful society. Also, as God’s chosen people, they need special instruction on how to worship God. So most of the laws are focussed on teaching the nation how to interact with each other and with God.

But even with that proviso, there are a few laws which seem a little odd. There are two more things that we need to understand about the function of the Law:

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Firstly, as God’s people, chosen to be set apart for Him, it was important that the Israelites did not become corrupted with the religious practices of other nations.

The principal concern in this regard was keeping them separate from the influences of Canaanite religion, which was rife in the country to which God was leading them. Canaanite religious practices centred around worship of Baal, the god of thunder and fertility, and the bringer of rain; and Asherah (also called Athirat), who was the mother – and also consort – of Baal. (Another of the regulars in the Canaanite pantheon was Anat, the virgin goddess of war and strife, who was both wife and sister of Baal). A large part of Canaanite religious practice involved trying to increase fertility by bringing together objects associated with Asherah and those which represented Baal, so that their “sympathetic magic” would simulate Baal having sex with Asherah and thus increase the harvest.

Kinky, I know. But the point of this whole deviant diversion is that the laws which seem most arbitrary to us are ones like “Don’t wear clothes made of wool and linen” (Deut. 22:11), or “Don’t boil a young goat in its mother’s milk” (Ex. 34:26). The modern response to those passages is, respectively, “Why not?”, or “Why on earth would anyone do that in the first place?”. In each case, the principle behind those sort of injunctions is all about avoiding the idolatrous Canaanite religious practices centred on Baal and Asherah.

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Secondly, the laws are not like a modern penal code; they are not meant to be exhaustive. Instead, they function paradigmatically, by giving examples of the kind of behaviour that God wants from His people.

This is why the Israelites are instructed, for instance, to “Build a parapet around the roof of your house” (Deut. 22:8). The custom among the Near Eastern civilisations was for guests to sleep on the roof of the house (which was flat), and the instruction here is to make sure that they may do so safely without worrying about falling off if they roll over in their sleep. It is a paradigmatic example of the kind of concern for others that God wants us to show. Instructions about leaving gleanings in the field (Lev. 19:9-10) are an example of offering welfare and charity to the poor and destitute, but they also illustrate a principle of charity that is equally relevant even if we are not farmers.

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For a more thorough treatment of reading the Law in context, I strongly recommend Chapter 9 of How To Read the Bible For All Its Worth, by Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart.

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Related posts:

The power of narrative

Matters of interpretation

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Doing a little mythbusting…

Hard to believe that in such an intellectually advanced age there are still some who cling tenaciously to the notion that “Jesus was not a real historical figure”, but apparently the light of education has still not penetrated all the deep corners.

Should be unfortunate enough to find yourself accosted by denialists, you may find this essay series by James Hannam useful. Hannam writes in his introduction:

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“The thesis that Jesus never existed has hovered around the fringes of research into the New Testament for at least a century but it has never been accepted as a mainstream theory. This is for good reason. It is simply a bad hypothesis based on arguments from silence, special pleading, and an awful lot of wishful thinking. It is ironic that certain atheists will buy into this idea and leave all their pretensions of critical thinking behind…

In this four-part series, it is not my intention to study the minutiae of the various arguments. Instead, I will focus on three central contentions often advanced in discussions about Jesus. These are 1) the lack of secular references,  2) the alleged similarities to paganism, and 3) the silence of St. Paul.”

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Hannam deals with each of these contentions in a highly readable and well-researched series of essays. Read the rest of Is Jesus Christ a Myth? here:

Part 1  |  Part 2  |  Part 3  |  Part 4

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Hannam holds degrees in physics and history from Oxford and London universities, and his doctorate in the history of science from Cambridge University, and recently published God’s Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science, the first history of medieval science written for the layperson. (You can also read more from him at Quodlibeta).

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Related posts:

Faith: reflecting on evidence

A theoretical faith

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Happy Birthday, KJV

This year marks the 400th anniversary of a momentous event in the English-speaking world: the first publication of the Authorised Version of The Bible, commonly known as the King James Version.

The translation project was instigated by King James I as a way of reconciling some of the theological disagreements between high-church Anglicans and Puritans. The transition from Latin Vulgate texts to early English bibles had not been a smooth one, and in 1604 James called for a completely new translation, “as consonant as can be to the original Hebrew and Greek.” Published in 1611 after 7 years of diligent work by 47 different scholars, the Authorised Version was not just the most influential version of the Bible, it was one of the most influential works in the history of the English language.

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I should probably put in a brief caveat here: strictly as a translation of Scripture, the KJV isn’t my personal favourite. The task of converting the original Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic texts into a serviceable English equivalent is a continual challenge for each generation of translators, and the KJV tends more towards formal over functional equivalence than several more modern translations. Opinions will differ on this point, and that’s ok.

But as a work of literature, the KJV sits on the loftiest peaks in the English language. Seriously, this is the book that gave us all these expressions:

• How are the mighty fallen (2 Samuel 1:19)
• A still small voice (1 Kings 19:12)
• Eat, drink, be merry (Luke 12:19)
• By the skin of my teeth (Job 19:20)
• The root of the matter (Job 19:28)
• Be horribly afraid (Jeremiah 2:12)
• A fly in the ointment (Ecclesiastes 10.1)
• A drop in the bucket (Isaiah 40:15)
• A house divided against itself cannot stand (Matthew 12:25)
• Like a lamb to the slaughter (Jeremiah 11:19, Isaiah 53:7)
• A law unto themselves (Romans 2:14)
• A man after his own heart (1 Samuel 13:14, Acts 13:22)
• A thorn in the flesh (2 Corinthians 12:7)
• Pride goeth before a fall (Proverbs 16:18)
• Put words in his mouth (Exodus 4:15)
• A broken heart (Psalm 34:18)
• Baptism of fire (Matthew 3:11)
• Feet of clay (Daniel 2:31-33)
• Let there be light (Genesis 1:3)

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Great orators such as Winston Churchill and Abraham Lincoln were powerfully influenced by the KJV for both idiom and cadence. The majestic structure of Martin Luther King Jr’s 1963 “I have a dream…” speech at the Lincoln Memorial draws heavily from passages in the King James Version. The sentence:

“I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.”

…comes directly from Isaiah 40:4-5 in the KJV.

Likewise, the beautiful imagery of:

“No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

…is drawn from Amos 5:24, “But let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream.”

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In his 2001 book, In The Beginning, Alistair McGrath documents the creation and impact of the KJV Bible. He writes:

“The King James Bible was a landmark in the history of the English language, and an inspiration to poets, dramatists, artists, and politicians. The influence of this work has been incalculable. For many years, it was the only English translation of the Bible available. Many families could afford only one book—a Bible, in whose pages parents recorded the births of their children, and found solace at their deaths. Countless youngsters learned to read by mouthing the words they found in the only book their family possessed—the King James Bible. Many learned biblical passages by heart, and found that their written and spoken English was shaped by the language and imagery of this Bible. Without the King James Bible, there would have been no Paradise Lost, no Pilgrim’s Progress, no Handel’s Messiah, no Negro spirituals, and no Gettysburg Address. These, and innumerable other works, were inspired by the language of this Bible. Without this Bible, the culture of the English-speaking world would have been immeasurably impoverished. The King James Bible played no small part in shaping English literary nationalism, by asserting the supremacy of the English language as a means of conveying religious truths.”

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“Paradoxically, the king’s translators achieved literary distinction precisely because they were not deliberately pursuing it. Aiming at truth, they achieved what later generations recognized as beauty and elegance. Where later translations deliberately and self-consciously sought after literary merit, the king’s translators achieved it unintentionally, by focusing on what, to them, was a greater goal. Paradoxically, elegance was achieved by accident, rather than design.”

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There’s probably no Dawkins…

…now stop worrying and enjoy Oct 25th at the Sheldonian Theatre.

So read the signs on buses in the Oxford area at the moment, lamenting the sudden failure of courage from New Atheism’s leading apologist.

It seems that while Richard Dawkins is happy to have the occasional televised cup of tea with an English archbishop who is too polite to respond to his bombast, he is not quite so bold when it comes to debating religion with any serious Christian apologists. After lengthy prevarication, Dawkins has retreated securely into his shell and refused to debate William Lane Craig at the Sheldonian.

As the proposed debate was in his hometown, I don’t think travel costs were the issue. It’s really hard to see this as anything other than cowardice on Dawkins’ part.

Read more on the story here in The Guardian.

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Scaling the Mountain of Truth

One of the many areas of overlap between science and Christianity is that they are both seeking the Truth.

The attainment of truth is often likened to climbing a mountain, and any hiker or climber can immediately understand why. Not only is it hard to do, but once you’re at the top you can suddenly see everything. What was previously obscured is now laid out clearly; what you saw in part from the plains you see in full from the heights. It’s a powerful metaphor, so let’s extend it a bit.

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How exactly should we go about scaling a mountain? We know that we want to reach the top, but we have never climbed this mountain before and we can’t see a route to the top – or even the top itself – clearly from where we stand.

Well, one method could be to employ an algorithm. If we examine the ground at our feet , we will notice that it is inclined in a particular direction. If we head off in the direction of steepest incline for a little bit, we will have a different patch of ground higher up. Again, examine the ground, find the steepest incline, and go in that direction. Keep doing this and you should slowly tend towards the summit of the mountain.

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In many ways, this is how Science seeks the truth.

We look at the known, the previous discoveries, we hypothesise, we test, we repeat. Slowly, incrementally, we rise.

There are a few potential problems, though. We may find that we reach a minor peak, or what mathematicians would call a “local maximum”, which is not truly the top of the mountain. The ground slopes down in all directions, but we aren’t yet at the true summit. We know this because there is still a part of the mountain higher than us: our current theory can explain much, but some things are still above us and beyond our understanding. By this we know that our theory is incomplete; it needs revision. At this point, we need to retrace our steps back down into a valley and try again.

Alternatively, we may run into an incline that is too great, an impassable cliff. Our algorithm points us up the rock face, but the limitations of observation, or of experimental possibility, or whatever, make it impossible to proceed in that direction.

So the scientific mountaineering method is useful, and allows us to build on previous experience, but it clearly has limits. It may take us to false peaks first, it may get stuck, but in theory it should bring us closer to the summit with every iteration.

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Of course, as any mountaineer knows, this isn’t how we actually climb. So let’s think about some alternatives.

What about a path? Not every path is guaranteed to lead to the summit, but some might. What if there are signposts? What if we meet someone who says he has been to the top, and tells you which path he took? What if other people have gone before us, and drawn a map for those who follow?

Should we not investigate those alternative, indirect, less rigorously scientific methods of reaching the summit?

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Related posts:

On Spherical Cows and the Search for Truth

Maths, science and abstractions

Faith: reflecting on evidence

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What is man, that thou art mindful of him?

Atheism as manifest in the West is an odd phenomenon – in many ways, it’s very much an off-shoot of Christianity. It’s essentially the result of taking Christ out of Christianity and trying to hang onto the rest if it. So we see widespread support for the “loving your neighbour as yourself” commandment, but a willful disregard for its other half (loving God with your all). There is plenty of acknowledgement of Jesus as a teacher, but not as Lord. “He said some good things, but he’s was just this guy, you know?”

The best description that I’ve heard for this condition is “cut-flower morality”. We think that we can remove the teachings and the wisdom from the divine root and still enjoy their beauty. We deny that humans are made by God, and still expect that humans have intrinsic value.

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I’ve heard the phrase “lucky mud” used to describe humans – it’s a description born from a rigidly materialist mindset that sees us as the current phase of a random and unguided evolutionary process. But the “lucky” part still acknowledges that there is value in human life, and yet the materialist worldview has no place for such value. If we are arbitrary evolutionary byproducts then we are no more special than the coal that we use to heat our homes or the rocks that we crush to make roads. Being alive has no value in such a mindset: how can it? Life is just a temporary arrangement of some chemical elements which displays certain unusual properties.

To quote Dr Manhattan, “A live human body and a deceased human body have the same number of particles. Structurally there’s no difference.”

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Of course, this causes conflict. To actually deny the value of human life is quite literally psychopathic, so instead we try to justify the value of human life from a materialist worldview. So we see silly ideas from people like Richard Dawkins (in The Selfish Gene, for instance), claiming that we have a moral imperative to fight against evolution, even though evolution is the only thing that Dawkins seems to hold sacred. Despite the fact that all of humanity (other than the truly psychopathic) accept the existence of good and evil, in a materialistic worldview these words are meaningless.

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King David, writing in about 1000BC, asked:

“What is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?” (Ps. 8:4, NIV)

In a materialist worldview, there is no answer to the first question. But the missing piece is hinted at in the second part: in Jesus, God became man to reconcile us to Him. The title “Son of Man” was Jesus’ favourite way of referring to himself, and it strongly emphasises the unique place that we have in God’s creation.

There is value in an artistic work because it was created with purpose. We too were made purposefully, and our continual and universal acknowledgement of our worth bears a powerful testimony to our Creator’s handiwork.

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Related posts:

The timidity of New Atheists

Seeing the gardener

Non-moral nature

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King of Kings and Lord of the Rings

Frodo, Gandalf and Aragorn (all images copyright New Line Cinema).

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I realise my posts have been sporadic of late, what with getting married and going on honeymoon and now slowly getting back into work. I’m gradually returning to writing – loads of ideas, but putting figurative pen to figurative paper has been pretty sporadic thus far. (Somehow ‘putting finger to keyboard’ just doesn’t have the same alliterative punch). In the meantime, I’ll give a shout out to a great piece of writing from Decent Films Guide, exploring the Christian philosophical backdrop of what I consider the greatest novel ever written, J.R.R. Tolkein’s The Lord of the Rings.

Tolkein, like his close friend and regular drinking buddy C. S. Lewis, was a Christian, but unlike Lewis he was skeptical of the use of allegory in narrative fiction. In contrast to The Chronicles of Narnia, Tolkein’s sagas of the Middle Earth do not contain any direct allegory of the Christian doctrine. However, the author’s own philosophy and worldview are very much apparent in the fabric of the stories.

For myself, I would further argue that the extraordinary power of Tolkein’s novel comes from its ability to convey fundamental truth about the world in which we live, so it’s no surprise to me that such resonance with the true state of the world has very close parallels with the truth of the Christian doctrine.

If you’re a fan of The Lord of the Rings, you should definitely check out the full article:

Faith and Fantasy: Tolkien the Catholic, The Lord of the Rings, and Peter Jackson’s Film Trilogy.

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As a brief sample, consider the echoes of Christ in the three central heroes of the story:

Frodo, Gandalf, Aragorn: Priest, prophet, king

In fact, Frodo Baggins, Gandalf the Grey, and Aragorn each in a remote way embody one of the three aspects of Christ’s ministry as priest, prophet, and king. Each also undergoes a kind of sacrificial “death” and rebirth.

The priestly role belongs to Frodo, who bears a burden of terrible evil on behalf of the whole world, like Christ carrying his cross. Frodo’s via dolorosa or way of sorrows is at the very heart of Tolkien’s story, just as the crucifixion narratives are at the heart of the gospels accounts. As Christ descended into the grave, Frodo journeys into Mordor, the Land of Death, and there suffers a deathlike state in the lair of the giant spider Shelob before awakening to complete his task. And, as Christ ascended into heaven, Frodo’s life in Middle-earth comes to an end when he departs over the sea into the mythical West with the Elves, which is as much to say, into paradise.

Gandalf is the prophet, revealing hidden knowledge, working wonders, teaching others the way. Evoking the saving death and resurrection of Christ, Gandalf does battle with the powers of hell to save his friends, sacrificing himself and descending into the nether regions before being triumphantly reborn in greater power and glory as Gandalf the White. As with Frodo, Gandalf’s sojourn in Middle-earth ends with his final voyage over the sea into the West.

Finally, there is Aragorn, the crownless destined to be king. Besides being a messianic king of prophecy, Aragorn also dimly reflects the saving work of Christ by walking the Paths of the Dead and offering peace to the spirits there imprisoned, anticipating in a way the Harrowing of Hell. (The oath-breaking spirits Aragorn encounters on the Paths of the Dead, who cannot rest in peace until they expiate their treason, suggest a kind of purgatorial state.)

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Anyway, that’s enough from me – go check out the article already.

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Related posts:

Chesterton on Nature

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It’s not the “what”, it’s the “why”

I’m currently reading “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay” by Michael Chabon. The book is set in New York during the late 1930s and ’40s – the Golden Age of comic books – and the titular heroes of the novel are budding comic book creators.

In an early scene they are discussing a potential hero for their own story: Should he fly? Should he be super-strong? Should he be invisible? (A little hard to draw that one, perhaps, but anyway…) Various combinations of superpowers are discussed, until Clay, the writer, has a sudden moment of revelation:

It’s not the what, it’s the why.

The character will not be interesting because of what crazy super-power that they give him, or even because of how he uses that remarkable talent. Readers will be far more interested in why he chooses to act in that way. Why does Batman not just lounge about in his luxurious mansion, but instead go out at night and battle against the criminal underworld? Those are the questions that drive the story and the readers’ interest in the character.

As with art, so too with life.

All people have the capacity for selfishness and for self-sacrifice, for nobility and for malice, for good and for evil. But why do we choose to act in one way or another?

I believe that all people are created in God’s image, and I therefore strive to love them as children of God. I often fail, but that’s the why. If I take care of someone who’s sick, if I feed someone who’s hungry, if I donate my time and energy to trying to show others some of God’s love in action, that’s why I do it. Because I want to be obedient to the God who created me and gave me life.

What’s your “why”?

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Related posts:

Living a good and/or Christian life

The timidity of New Atheists

A theoretical faith

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These goats are awesome

I realise that yesterday’s post spent a long time dwelling on unpleasant aspects of the animal kingdom, but I don’t take a negative view of nature. On the contrary, I am continually astounded by the splendour of the natural world. As but one example of just how awesome Creation is, let me offer a set of pictures of goats.

This is the wall of Cingino Dam in the Italian Alps:

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Zooming in a little closer, we see several dark marks on the wall:

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Still closer, the dark marks resolve more clearly:

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Goats! Standing on a near-vertical wall!

I mean, these guys don’t even have fingers and they can climb better than us!

The goats (or more properly Alpine Ibex, Capra ibex) are wild and live in the nearby mountains. They scale the wall to lick salt off the rocks, and also to nibble on the lichen and moss that grows in cracks.

And they’re very cute.

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Non-moral nature

I’m visiting some colleagues in Hobart at the moment, so I have a new route that I walk to work each day. It’s a tranquil and tree-lined avenue with some lovely gardens, especially now when all the spring flowers are in bloom.

Running alongside the path is a stream, and this morning, in that stream, were some ducks. Mostly they were doing normal duckish things – paddling about, quacking and nibbling the odd bit of water vegetation. But it’s spring, so they were also pretty frisky. In particular, there were two drakes which both seemed very keen on a female duck, which in turn was doing her best to paddle away from them. But the drakes were not to be discouraged. They held her head under the water and had their way with her despite all her struggling and flapping.

Just another day on the river. A light breeze, the delicate scent of flowers in the air and avian gang-rape in the water.

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We often see grand claims to the effect that morality is just a by-product of evolution, but the reasoning is usually circular and the arguments poor. Dawkins, for example, while claiming that everything to do with anything can be explained by evolution, is predictably all over the place when he ventures into ethics. While he has said: “I don’t believe that there is hanging out there, anywhere, something called good and something called evil”, he also claims that our morality is seen when we rise above the selfishness of our genes:

“I am not advocating a morality based on evolution. I am saying how things have evolved. I am not saying how we humans morally ought to behave… Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish. Let us understand what our own selfish genes are up to, because we may then at least have a chance to upset their designs, something that no other species has ever aspired to do.” (The Selfish Gene)

But this is just ridiculous: Evolution produced everything, including our sense of morality, but it is objectively “good” to act in a way that counteracts evolution. But the concept of “good” doesn’t actually exist objectively, it’s just an evolutionary product…

We can identify certain patterns of behaviour in the animal kingdom, and infer an evolved tendency towards particular behaviours. But we cannot ascribe moral value to actions based on evolutionary criteria. Stephen Jay Gould, in his 1982 essay “Nonmoral nature” (from which I shamelessly borrowed this title), wrote:

“Our failure to discern a universal good does not record any lack of insight or ingenuity, but merely demonstrates that nature contains no moral messages framed in human terms. Morality is a subject for philosophers, theologians, students of the humanities, indeed for all thinking people. The answers will not be read passively from nature; they do not, and cannot, arise from the data of science.”

Some animals mate for life, others are wildly promiscuous and indiscriminating in their sexual behaviour. In Bonobo apes about 75% of sexual activity is non-reproductive, and often involves infants. Sexual cannibalism is common in insects. In several species of mammals, including stoats and hyaena, sexual activity between adults and infant cubs has been observed (with the mother of the infants declining to interfere). Male bottlenose dolphins regularly engage in what appears to be forced intercourse, both within their species and towards other species. Female penguins exchange sexual favours for nest-building materials. Killing and eating infants (within a species, even within family groups) is common in many mammals.

But it is a very human peculiarity to look unfavourably on this sort of behaviour. Human child molesters are not tolerated: in fact they are generally perceived as the most abhorrent of people. We are outraged by such behaviour in our own society because we recognise an objective morality by which we can judge different actions.

This idea of “evolved ethics” is not new, of course, and the difficulties of trying to extrapolate morality from evolution have long been recognised. T. H. Huxley wrote in 1893:

“The propounders of [the evolution of ethics] adduce a number of more or less interesting facts and more or less sound arguments, in favour of the origin of the moral sentiments, in the same way as other natural phenomena, by a process of evolution. I have little doubt, for my part, that they are on the right track; but as the immoral sentiments have no less been evolved, there is, so far, as much natural sanction for the one as the other. The thief and the murderer follow nature just as much as the philanthropist. Cosmic evolution may teach us how the good and the evil tendencies of man may have come about; but, in itself, it is incompetent to furnish any better reason why what we call good is preferable to what we call evil than we had before.” (Evolution and Ethics)

Huxley makes a vital point here. Our understanding of morality and our application of moral principles to society (in our systems of justice, for instance) are far removed from the evolutionary perspective. All societies believe in the existence of objective morality, and we all live our lives accordingly. This leads us to the possibility that absolute moral standards, like the laws of mathematics, are written into the universe and await discovery. In his excellent pair of articles on evolving morality over at the blog Engineering Ethics (see here for part 1 and part 2), Karl Stephan notes five principles which psychological research has found to be widely accepted throughout different societies:

(1) Harm—don’t hurt other people and help them if you can.

(2) Fairness—people in comparable situations should be treated comparably.

(3) Group loyalty—other things being equal, take care of your own (family, friends, city, nation) first.

(4) Authority—there are rules, rulers, and rulemakers who should be respected and deferred to.

(5) Purity—Saintliness, cleanliness, and being without spot or blemish are good things, and grubbiness, filth, and disorder are bad ones.

Stephan also observes that the concept of morality as a Natural Law was also espoused by Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century, so the while the psychological research is new, the idea has a long pedigree.

Looking even further back,  St. Paul wrote a letter to the newly-established church in Rome in the first century AD. In it, he described how people who had not been instructed in Christian morality nonetheless acted in accordance with that morality, because God has written His law on the hearts of all people:

“Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law.  They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them.” (Rom 2:14-15, NIV)

All of our human experience declares that objective morality exists, but an objective morality cannot possibly be ascribed to evolution. Are there laws of  morality written into the fabric of the universe? Do they await discovery?

Or can they be discovered more readily from looking within?

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Related posts:

Secular (in)Humanism

Chesterton on Nature

Two evolutionists walk into a bar…

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The power of narrative

I’ve been reading Richard Swinburne’s Revelation, and it is a remarkable book. The first couple of chapters deal in great depth with analysing what the “meaning” of a sentence actually is, how (and if) it can be falsifiable, and how to discern exactly when such devices as metaphor, analogy and so on are being employed. (And yes, this really does need multiple chapters. Fortunately, Swinburne is an eminently readable philosopher and communicates so well that even this dry subject matter becomes fascinating in his hands).

Reading the book has gotten me thinking a lot about different literary genres: not just the reality of their existence, but rather the reasons that an author might choose to employ them.

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I think it is worth observing that certain messages are better suited to certain styles of communication. Let us consider the novel as an example. We are familiar with novels that simply tell an entertaining story: Steinbeck’s Cannery Row and Tolkein’s The Hobbit are books that I would suggest are overwhelmingly story-driven. On the other extreme, we have books that are making deliberate and specific commentary by means of a story: Orwell’s Animal Farm, Golding’s Lord of the Flies and Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress are all obvious examples. And in between we have a broad range of novels which tell a story and also make philosophical/political/social commentary on the side: Tolstoy’s War and Peace, Hugo’s Les Miserables and Hemmingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls all make important and incisive statements as well as telling great stories.

Which brings us to the question: if Hemmingway decided he had something important to say about death, suicide, Fascism and the nature of duty, why did he write For Whom the Bell Tolls instead of just expressing himself more clearly in an essay? Why resort to imagery and a great big framing narrative to communicate what you want to say?

An obvious reason is multitasking. Hemmingway wasn’t just trying to make socio-political commentary, he was also describing some of the history of the Spanish Civil War and trying to entertain his readers with interesting characters and a good story. Doing all of these things independently would be fragmented and weak. Perhaps more importantly, if he had just written a dry academic paper on Fascism, how many people would ever read it? Or having read it, remember it? Or having remembered it, care about it?

This is a vital function of the narrative-as-framing-device: it connects with us on a human level and gives the message much more impact. An abstract description of psychological tendencies which can manifest in people contemplating their own probably-impending death would lack any emotional impact and be difficult to absorb. Describing Robert Jordan’s last few days in the Spainish mountains is vivid and accessible, and at the same time it gives a much greater and more nuanced expression of the same subject.

In short, the narrative carries us along and holds our interest as we absorb the grand themes that the author is trying to express. A well-written novel also resonates with the reader: we recognise the characters and events as credible, and thus the message has greater authority.

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Biblical narrative

The Bible is not fiction, and does not contain anything which really corresponds to a conventional novel (understandably, since the novel as a literary style only dates from the 17th century). However, I believe that it is important to use what we have learnt from reading prose fiction in reading and interpreting the Bible.

It is hardly revolutionary to note that the Bible is neither an instruction manual nor a straightforward theological treatise. It is not, as Gordon Fee and Douglas Stewart note, simply a collection of “Sayings from Chairman God”. Not only does its subject matter cover the full breadth of human experience, it does so in a confusing blend of genres and writing styles. Why make things so complicated? I won’t try to give a comprehensive answer here, but I will at least look at the use of narrative history in the Old Testament.

The “novel with a message” approach works because people respond more readily to messages framed in stories. Consider King David, whose story of “humble shepherd to mighty king of Israel” is recounted in 1 Samuel 16 – 1 Kings 2.  When we read the history of David’s reign, we see a tangible and powerful picture of a flawed human living with overwhelming dedication to God. Many of the key teachings of the story could be summarised in point form:

• People are flawed. Even the greatest of us will fail to live up to our own standards, and will certainly never meet God’s.
• The first step in dealing with our mistakes is to honestly admit them.
• God loves us. He is faithful and ready to forgive our wrongdoing.
• Our sin carries consequences in this life. Forgiveness does not remove these consequences.

…and that’s nice and neat. But which resonates more powerfully: the single line “People are all flawed and prone to sin”, or the story of David lusting after the married Bathsheba and arranging to have her husband killed (2 Samuel 11)? Which is more memorable? And is there not much greater authority and impact in the message when it comes in the context of an historical narrative?

There are dangers of framing a message in the context of a narrative, of course: it can be misinterpreted more easily than a set of bullet points. But there are strong safeguards against this in the Bible, as long as we actually read it in context. Let’s consider the same story: could we not say, “David was God’s chosen king and a really great guy, and he committed adultery, so it’s clearly ok!” But if we read the passage in context it is easy to see that David’s action was offensive to God. In the very next chapter, the prophet Nathan provides God’s perspective on the story and rebukes David for his actions. The Old Testament prophets often provide  a sort of commentary from God on the events which are taking place.

There are many other advantages to the use of historical narrative in the Old Testament, such as the multi-tasking mentioned earlier: recounting the history of the people of Israel is important in its own right. But this post is probably long enough already and I’m still working through a lot of these ideas, so I’ll unpack more thoughts on genre and hermeneutics in another post. To close, consider that some genres allow a writer to express things which are impossible (or at least difficult) to adequately convey in simple declarative statements. We have seen that the narrative form allows us to convey an over-arching message in a more compelling and accessible way; likewise, the poetic form allows an author much greater use of metaphorical imagery to convey emotions and ideas not easily captured in prose.

“Genre is not a restriction on an author. Rather, it provides him with a set of conventions, all ready to use, to express his message.” (Richard Swinburne, Revelation: From metaphor to analogy)

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Related posts:

Matters of interpretation

On reading both books

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