International Hot Tub: Round 4 part 4

(For newcomers, this is a debate between myself, a Christian, and my best friend Andy Snyder, a former Christian who is now an atheist. For a fuller introduction to the intent and explanation of the name of this series, please see the introduction. Though this is presented as a two party debate on one level, comments and responses are still fully welcomed to all posts in the comments section as a way to help extend the debate and bring other voices into it.)

I realize that by this point I've pretty much totally killed this discussion by cutting up my response to Andy's last argument into a bunch of pieces, making responding to me a laborious task. Let me here briefly respond to the last two paragraphs of Andy's last post, and then make a proposal for how to go forward.

First I'll deal with Andy's second to last paragraph:

“Of course there are other ostensibly plausible interpretations of these events. You've offered a common and compelling one, the one of the linear evolution of human understanding where we go from mythology, to religion, to naturalistic science. This story is forceful and persuasive, except for the fact that it offers no proof of itself. It is just as liable to the charge of total fabrication as is any meta-narrative of human or cosmic history.” So what do you make of the microwave background, Hubble’s constant, the fossil record (the Neanderthal, Lucy), spontaneous mutation, etc? These things certainly seem to be proof or at least evidence that the development of the universe proposed through the modern scientific worldview is valid.

I make no comment on any evidence for any theory of the development of the universe - that isn't really our topic. I'm fairly open minded and willing to listen to arguments for either young earth creationism (which I am admittedly not inclined toward for some of the reasons you've mentioned) or evolution over the course of billions of years, either through stable progression or intermittent leaps of mutation. However, the gradual evolution of the human species (which, again, I'm not married to) does not necessarily imply the evolution of world views from primitive (less true) to advanced (more true) states. Plenty of people are able to understand the universe scientifically on both the theist and atheist presuppositions, clearly debunking the idea that a scientific mind is an evolutionary step beyond the religious mind. Getting back to the issue at hand in this paragraph, your interpretation of people's claims of experiences of God along the lines of the human impulse to find patterns, and this evolving through mythology, to religion, to science, remains at rest on an untested presupposition of God's non-existence. The evidence for natural evolution offers no evidence for God's non-existence. Approaches to dealing with the question of God's existence by looking at theories of human biological evolution or psychology or sociology are all radically unscientific - they assume their conclusion, analyse totally irrelevant data according to this assumed conclusion, and then announce their victory. Its all a dodge. The validity of Christianity's claim that God reveals himself cannot be tested by appeals to any data outside of God (which is rather like testing Hubble's law by conducting Rorschach tests); God can only be known through God, and this only through repentance and faith in Christ by the power of his Spirit.

And, Andy's final paragraph:

On the final issue of worldviews being neutral, I propose there is a common underpinning in all cultural perspectives. Although it’s not neutral, it’s at the foundation of the human experience and is therefore a universal beginning point to evaluate any and all worldviews we might hold: humans are pattern-seeking. Whether it is Native Americans noticing the migration routes of the buffalo, ancient Athenian astrologers noticing the same shapes in the heavens reoccur year after year, or even a modern theologian looking for patterns in TF Torrance’s thought, our species universally takes notice of phenomena reoccurring and gives explanations for them. I propose that a worldview should be judged on how internally consistent its patterns to understand the world are. I not going to post my criticisms on the Christian perspective, but only want to offer this as a beginning point for comparative discussion of worldviews.

Indeed, humans are pattern seeking. As a Christian, however, I have to say that this pattern seeking activity is one of the many ways humanity seeks to evade God. The world views we construct are ways of keeping God at arms length, to be dealt with conceptually rather than personally. The more internally consistent my world view, the better insulated I am from God. This is the problem. There are several world views that are entirely internally consistent - how are we to measure them against each other? World views can really only be understood internally, so how are you, a proponent of scientific/naturalistic world view which values world views according to their utilitarian function of organizing data, going to evaluate the Buddhist world view? It too can only be understood internally and has its own set of values for world views (or so it appears from the outside). I fully grant that the "Christian world view", if such a thing there be, has the same problem - it insulates us from other ways of thinking and even from God. The answer must come from beyond humanity and all its pattern seeking; it must come from God, and it has. The cross of Jesus Christ is the final judgement on all insulating pattern seeking, revealing humanity's final inability to understand God through its own intellectual efforts and exposing all such efforts as fraught with ignorance and hostility toward God. To this end I do not propose any real or imagined "Christian world view" but only Jesus Christ as the total revelation of God, complete with patterns of thought that do not need to be sought, but are freely given by Christ in his teaching ministry as recorded in the Gospels. I am thus not interested in comparing world views but only in proclaiming Christ.

Now, as to how to go forward in this series, feeling that I might have killed it with the length of these last several arguments, let me propose the following options:

1) We consider these first 4 rounds (everything we've done so far) as our opening arguments and now proceed to pester each other with direct questions, one at a time. For instance, you pose a question briefly and succinctly; I answer it as briefly and succinctly as I can; you respond to my answer, commenting on whether or not I have adequately dealt with the question from your point of view; and then its my turn to ask you one.

2) We continue on as we have and you deal with everything I've said in my last four part response in whatever way you see fit and we just see if anyone keeps reading.

3) We proceed to final arguments.

I favour option 1 myself, but I'm open to any further suggestion you might have.

International Hot Tub: Round 4 part 3

(For newcomers, this is a debate between myself, a Christian, and my best friend Andy Snyder, a former Christian who is now an atheist. For a fuller introduction to the intent and explanation of the name of this series, please see the introduction. Though this is presented as a two party debate on one level, comments and responses are still fully welcomed to all posts in the comments section as a way to help extend the debate and bring other voices into it.)

Andy, your third argument is made in three paragraphs. Here they are:

Third, even if I consider Christianity on its own terms, I would argue its subjects (God/Yahweh/Jesus/The Holy Spirit) have been suspiciously absent for quite some time. Simply put, theophanies have a shelf life and the resurrection of Jesus has long past its expiration date. There is biblical president for this: In John it is written,

“ ‘Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.’ Thomas said to him, ‘My Lord and my God!’ Then Jesus told him, ‘Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.’ ” (John 20:24-29)

Here Jesus reveals two things: the need for humans to experience tangible proof of his divine claims and the difficulty to marshal belief when humans don’t have that first hand experience. Most scholars date this gospel only 60 years after the time of Jesus. That the author included this saying of Jesus implies his audience, only two or three generations removed from the life of Jesus, was struggling with his claim to be God. It is infinitely harder to believe now, as we are thousands of years and generations removed from the last significant theophany Christianity attests to. Experiencing the story, the gospel, and Christ’s ethics expressed through his church 2000 years later is not a meaningful substitute for an unequivocal biblical theophany of God. You won’t apologize for this tension and that’s fine, but neither will I for claiming a victory here.

It is undeniable that the apostles were given a gift few others received by spending intimate time with Christ, hearing not only the teachings he gave to the masses, but also his interpretation of them, speaking explicitly about his identity and mission, and appearing to them in his resurrected body. I would wish for that as much as anyone.

I'll say only two quick things in response and in denial of your assumed victory. First, your argument here is entirely subjective. Theophanies have a shelf life? How long is that? You can only appeal to what feels like a long time. For me and plenty of other Christians, the resurrection of Christ is not a theophany but the unrepeatable and eternally significant Day of the Lord, his coming in judgment and forgiveness. Yes, he has ascended, withdrawn his bodily presence, but you know ,if you did truly consider Christianity on its own terms, that this is the gracious will of God to allow an interim before his final coming for the sake of the preaching of the gospel and repentance.

Second, you are not without tangible evidence and experience of God in this interim period. God is present in his church through the Spirit as he was present in the flesh of Christ. He is as perceivably real now in us, the church, as he was then in Christ's flesh. Your judgement against Christ is truly your judgement against us, against our truthfulness, clear mindedness, will against self-delusion, and faithfulness. You can certainly make this judgement, there is no lack of warrant for making it, but in making it you must certainly also make it against yourself. Do this. Judge me a self-deluded liar, but only if you are willing to judge yourself to the same degree. Then, in that state of solidarity in judgement with me and the church, tell me if God is not real in me and in the church in spite of, through, and above our weakness and sin. Put your fingers in Christ's wounds as you see them in us - are they not there? Do you truly see nothing of the Spirit of the risen Christ in me? I don't appeal to my own righteousness, but of the visible and tangible presence of God in me and in all the church despite our total unrighteousness. You are not without evidence.

I'll give the last word here to Peter:

2 Peter 3:3-18 3 First of all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. 4 They will say, "Where is this 'coming' he promised? Ever since our fathers died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation." 5 But they deliberately forget that long ago by God's word the heavens existed and the earth was formed out of water and by water. 6 By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed. 7 By the same word the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men. 8 But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. 9 The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. 10 But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare. 11 Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives 12 as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming. That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat. 13 But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness. 14 So then, dear friends, since you are looking forward to this, make every effort to be found spotless, blameless and at peace with him. 15 Bear in mind that our Lord's patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. 16 He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction. 17 Therefore, dear friends, since you already know this, be on your guard so that you may not be carried away by the error of lawless men and fall from your secure position. 18 But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and forever! Amen.

One more post to come and then I'll hand it back to you.

International Hot Tub: Round 4 part 2

(For newcomers, this is a debate between myself, a Christian, and my best friend Andy Snyder, a former Christian who is now an atheist. For a fuller introduction to the intent and explanation of the name of this series, please see the introduction. Though this is presented as a two party debate on one level, comments and responses are still fully welcomed to all posts in the comments section as a way to help extend the debate and bring other voices into it.)

Now lets tackle your second paragraph. Here it is:

Second, even if I’m open to the supernatural, I see no reason why Christianity should be given special consideration above all other claims of the supernatural. Couldn’t your second paragraph just as easily ended with “Enter the prophet Muhammad” “Enter Buddha” “Enter Apollo” etc? All religions are realities presented as both sensible and intelligible; I don’t understand why we should skip straight to Christianity and ignore other major claims to the supernatural.

Why should Christianity be given special consideration? This seems at first a daunting question because it implies a few corollary problems. Either we should give full consideration to each and every religious claim in the history of mankind, which no one has time for, or we should consider none. After all, if one was right, shouldn't it stand out in an obvious way so we don't have to waste our time with all the others? We might devise some kind of filter to thin it down a bit, like only deal with religions which claim at least 10 million adherents; this would reduce it to about 6 religions, but that standard arbitrarily presuppose that a true religion will be big and modern. Why shouldn't the one true religion be ancient and forgotten? But then, what exactly is a religion anyway? We all assume we mean the same thing when we say the word so that statements like "All religions are realities presented as both sensible and intelligible" can have meaning, but do they?

I am convinced that the word "religion" is useless and basically meaningless (Steve Holmes, lecturer in Systematic Theology at the University of St. Andrews, has a great discussion of this here). It seemingly allows us to assert that different "religions" can be held parallel to one another and compared, but these comparisons, at least when comparing Christianity to something like Buddhism, invent and impose alien categories that neither Christianity nor Buddhism holds internally, In the hands of post-modernism, the notion of a daunting plurality of religions has created a smoke screen where Christ doesn't have to be dealt with because there are so many other Christ's applying for the same job that to pick just one would be totally random. I think this is basically what you're doing with this question. You have to deal with Christianity because you have been raised as a Christian and because I and tons of others around you testify to the truth of Christ. Deal with the claims of Buddhism when the lives and wisdom of Buddhists around you compel you to, rather than take on a seemingly infinite set truth claims which all exist merely 'out there'. Is this an arbitrary standard? I don't think so. It just means that we don't deal with abstractions of concepts, but the beliefs of people we can know and walk alongside and ask. However, even though I think the question you pose here is a fabricated dodge of the real issue, I'll deal with it anyway.

Assuming such a plurality of supernatural claims, why should Christianity be given special consideration? First, I'll throw my hat in with C. S. Lewis and others who are careful to insist that to be a Christian does not mean one thinks all other religions, if such a thing there be, are necessarily wrong about everything. I myself do find some of the teachings of the Buddha, Lao Tzu, Confucius, Ghandi, Malcom X, and even Carl Sagan to be helpful and true; however, they offer truths revealed by human insight, observation, and intuition, rather than the Truth of God's self-revelation, found only in Christ.

Second, and this may seem a technical point but its important, it is not Christianity per se but Christ, who reveals himself as Lord over all humanity and thus all religions, including Christianity, that must be given special consideration.

So rephrasing the question, why should Jesus Christ be given special consideration over possible christs? Could the second paragraph of my last post just as easily end with "Enter Muhammad, Buddha, or Apollo"? Only by blindly assuming the legitimacy of the word "religion" and thus ignoring what makes Christ totally different from the rest. For the sake of argument, I can see 5 categories of what we'll call religious figures, though I remain convinced that these categories are of seriously limited usefulness. In the first category are those like Moses, John the Baptist, Muhammad, Buddha, Lao Tzu, Confucius, Joseph Smith, and Tom Cruise. None of these men ever claimed to be God. Actually, all were insistent that they were not God. They presented themselves as mere men who either brought a message from God or had discovered something true about the supernatural somehow. Much of what some of these men has taught is true and good, but it doesn't make them a replacement for Christ.

In the second category are those like Apollo, Ra, Thor, and Ganesha. These are mythological figures who fill a perceived gap between some higher, prior god who is their ancestor, and our world. Their significance to those who believe in them is not historical, that is, they are not seen as coming into human affairs within history and substantially changing anything, but explaining certain cosmic, agricultural, political, or personal cycles in a distinctly timeless way.

In the third category are those like Gilgamesh, Hercules, Romulus and Remus. These are demigods, or supposedly historical figures who are born of the union of a human and a god. Some have made comparisons here to Christ, but they are ridiculous. None of these presents himself as the final union of God and man; they are better spoken of as half-man, half-god than as fully man and fully God as is true with Christ. There is also the serious deficiency of historical testimony to be considered in these cases. They are myths that you don't believe in any more than I do and for totally different reasons than you don't believe in Christ.

In the fourth category are the Hindu avatars of Vishnu, particularly Krishna and Rama. The literature telling of these heroes, the Mahabharata and Ramayana respectively, give us plenty of reasons to assume these figures are not historical or if they were, their memory has fallen prey to the exaggerations and fabrications of myth and legend. (palaces with millions of windows, armies with millions of elephants, and monkeys that talk, fight, and can leap from India to Sri Lanka). There are significant theological differences between them and Christ, such as their not taking the curse of human weakness and death on themselves to free us from it, and their not accomplishing a once and for union between God and humanity in their flesh, but the similarities seem more important here. They represent a recognition that gods are unhelpful to humanity if removed from us in some metaphysical realm, something the Buddha recognized too, though he concluded that we just don't need them. Instead, the Hindu stories of these avatars represent the need and longing of humanity for the gods to get off their clouds and come among us.

Enter Jesus Christ, uniquely, supremely, and gloriously among all of the other so-called religious figures. He belongs with those in the first category as one who is unquestionably historical, but against them as one who sets himself over them as not merely bringing a message about God or the supernatural but as one who is God among men and women, the Supernatural invading the natural. Unlike those in the second category, he is not remote but near to each one of us. Unlike those in the third and fourth categories, he is not the product of human imagination or longing, but of God, seen above all in his resurrection from the dead into an incorruptible body, ascended and sitting at the right hand of the Father, a claim made of no other figure. The combination of these historical claims with the remarkable historical proximity of the documents recording the events, their publication coming within a generation of Christ's life, testifies to Jesus Christ's uniqueness against other supposed christs. He alone has brought God into the intelligibility and sensibility of our human sphere by being God in his very flesh, making the imperceptible perceptible to us, and speaking as God of himself in human words, making the transcendent and inconceivable conceivable to us. There is no other like Christ.

Let me say a bit more about sensibility and intelligibility. By the sensible I mean realities that are approachable through sense perception, and by the intelligible I mean realities that approachable through reason or intellect. Thus the chair I'm currently sitting in is sensible while 'chairness' is a solely intelligible concept. Deism presented God as wholly intelligible, not sensible. There is some good reason for this; God is totally beyond the physical universe he has created and therefore it is faulty to search for him within it. Rather, its lack of inherent explanation for itself ought to point our minds, not our eyes, beyond it. The problem here is how do we know that the god we thus come to believe in does not exist only in our minds? This seems to be the god you're attacking, the god of the gaps, the god who is arrived at through questions like "how did we all get here?" or "do you know where you'll go when you die?". Christianity cannot have this god (though it often does); the God of the Bible created everything, the sensible AND the intelligible out of nothing and therefore cannot be arrived at through the use of either faculty. The God of the Bible is only known because he has by grace alone chosen to reveal himself to humanity, to make himself both sensible and intelligible by taking human flesh and human reason on himself through Incarnation (again, I see no other "religions" making this claim). When his disciples beheld his physical human presence and heard his voice, they beheld and heard the voice of God in a unique unity of the sensible and intelligible mediating knowledge of the imperceptible and unintelligible. That is to say, God actively makes himself known within our sensible and intelligible sphere, though he himself is neither sensible nor intelligible, being totally beyond our reach.

One final point. Everything I have said about the uniqueness of Christ above takes for granted the legitimacy of "comparative religions" which I previously denounced. As a Christian, that is as a believer in Christ, I am bound to say that these comparisons are all shaky at best and the real reason Christ should be given special consideration is that he alone is Lord. I have given you some distinctions between him and central figures of other so-called religions according to the assumptions of the field of study known as comparative religions or cultural anthropology, but this cannot ultimately be why he is Lord and the others are not. He is Lord because he is Lord. That is the only way it could be. We can only know him as he reveals himself to us, and in revealing himself through grace he judges all of our attempts to find him on our own terms apart from his grace by constructing comparative criteria and setting him alongside other christs. He reveals himself to us all as King of Kings and Lord of Lords. He has to be dealt with because he presses himself upon all of us to be dealt with as no one else does. He knocks on the door of our hearts even now.

More to come. Next time I'll deal with what the unity of the sensible and intelligible in the historical Jesus means to us now, removed from him by two thousand years.

International Hot Tub: Round 4 part 1

(For an introduction to the intent and explanation of the name of this series, please see the introduction. Though this is presented as a two party debate on one level, comments and responses are still fully welcomed to all posts in the comments section as a way to help extend the debate and bring other voices into it.)

There is simply too much here to deal with in a single post, at least one anyone would want to wade through. So I'll do a few separate posts. On with the first.

Openness to the supernatural ought to be the natural result of recognizing our limitations. By supernatural we mean what is beyond nature, or more explicitly, what is beyond the physical universe that we are all contained within and a part of. Within the universe we can describe all kinds of relationships and experiences, tangible experiences that indicate objective realities. But the universe gives no explanation for itself. It can't. No self-contained field of relationships can explain its own existence; it can only explain the realities within it. To explain the field itself, reference must be made to something beyond it. As I understand it, this relationship is reflected in the fact that arithmetic, while working fine internally, can not be used to prove its own legitimacy but must defer to algebra to validate it, which then must defer to calculus to validate it. Thus each self-contained field of math is open upwards to levels of reality beyond its nature (super-natural) for its own justification. Likewise, it is the fact that your tangible experiences and the universe they rely on offer no explanation of themselves that ought to lead you to a profound sense of their limitations, which in turn ought to produce an openness upward to a reality beyond the physical universe from which it must derive its meaning. (To clarify, this is NOT the classic cosmological or 'first cause' argument for the existence of God because I'm not here arguing the existence of God, only a basic openness to allow God to reveal himself.)

On the other hand, I think abstract arguments like this are a bit of a dodge and a waste of time. What ought to produce openness to the supernatural is your personal experiences of your limitations, the struggle with your personal nature which we all endure, our inability to fully determine ourselves, to do what we know is right and not do what we know is wrong. It is in our sin that God really finds us, not in our intellectual recognition that he might actually be there.

But even here there is a problem; ultimately it should not be either our abstract reason or personal experience that leaves us open to God, but God himself that opens us up to him. The attitude that demands a reason to be open to this is the very pride and arrogance God must save us from, and judge in the saving. This attitude reduces God to a concept to be considered rather than the Almighty who must be faced. Accordingly, I cannot give you an argument for why you ought to be open to God; the only alternative is to be closed and no truth can come from that.

The claim that taking Jesus' teachings seriously is anachronistic and fails to take seriously the modern scientific world view is faulty because this very claim fails to take seriously the fact that the modern scientific world view changes nothing about Jesus' teaching. Let me say that another way: Jesus' teachings had to do with the relationships of humanity to God, to each other in their personal, political, economic, moral, and familial dimensions, and to the world God has placed us in; he didn't teach physics except the scientifically foundational principle of creation out of nothing, ex nihilo. The progress of modern science can make no judgement on Jesus' teachings because it does not and cannot address them; they have entirely different subject matter, methodology, and authority; the progress of modern science has no corollary in something like a progress of modern morality or civility or culture.

You are formally correct in saying that Jesus never directly addressed himself to atheism; however, materially, Jesus was constantly addressing himself to those who had no real experience of God, giving true objective experience of God in his very presence and address as God. As I've said earlier, he taught his disciples the reality of the kingdom of God and poured out his Spirit on them, enabling them to do the same for others. I am hopeful to do the same for you. In my presence (being on another continent not withstanding) and friendship in the Spirit of faith in Christ, it is my hope that God will open you up to his presence and activity in your life and yours in His. Either way, the reality of millions upon millions of lives who have been changed and brought into contact with the living God up to this very day through the teachings and deeds of Christ read in the Gospels overwhelms your claim of their irrelevance and anachronism.

More to come...

International Hot Tub: Round 3

(For an introduction to the intent and explanation of the name of this series, please see the introduction. Though this is presented as a two party debate on one level, comments and responses are still fully welcomed to all posts in the comments section as a way to help extend the debate and bring other voices into it.)

Guest Post by Andy Snyder:

Sorry this is so late; life happened. I’ll try to get the following responses up within a week of Adam’s posts.

My first issue here is why my complaint should be expressed “openly” at all. You said, “By ‘expressed openly’ I mean within the limits of human finitude but without excluding the possibility of the objectivity and freedom of God beyond those limits.” I understand you to mean the argument for Christianity can proceed if one is open to the possibility of the supernatural. I see no argument presented here which would make me open to the supernatural or any concept of God. The argument that I need to consider Jesus’ claims on his own terms is anachronistic and doesn’t take seriously the modern scientific world view. Jesus presented himself to a culture that assumed theism of one sort or another. This gave an inherent shape to the presentation of his message, as the majority of the ancient world believed in the divine. Back then the question was not, “Do you believe in God?” but was instead “What God do you believe in?” My problem of struggling with the existence of God was not something Jesus addressed in his message; therefore his gospel cannot be considered meaningfully until the bigger abstract issue of the existence of God is dealt with first.

Second, even if I’m open to the supernatural, I see no reason why Christianity should be given special consideration above all other claims of the supernatural. Couldn’t your second paragraph just as easily ended with “Enter the prophet Muhammad” “Enter Buddha” “Enter Apollo” etc? All religions are realities presented as both sensible and intelligible; I don’t understand why we should skip straight to Christianity and ignore other major claims to the supernatural.

Third, even if I consider Christianity on its own terms, I would argue its subjects (God/Yahweh/Jesus/The Holy Spirit) have been suspiciously absent for quite some time. Simply put, theophanies have a shelf life and the resurrection of Jesus has long past its expiration date. There is biblical president for this: In John it is written,

“ ‘Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.’ Thomas said to him, ‘My Lord and my God!’ Then Jesus told him, ‘Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.’ ” (John 20:24-29)

Here Jesus reveals two things: the need for humans to experience tangible proof of his divine claims and the difficulty to marshal belief when humans don’t have that first hand experience. Most scholars date this gospel only 60 years after the time of Jesus. That the author included this saying of Jesus implies his audience, only two or three generations removed from the life of Jesus, was struggling with his claim to be God. It is infinitely harder to believe now, as we are thousands of years and generations removed from the last significant theophany Christianity attests to. Experiencing the story, the gospel, and Christ’s ethics expressed through his church 2000 years later is not a meaningful substitute for an unequivocal biblical theophany of God. You won’t apologize for this tension and that’s fine, but neither will I for claiming a victory here.

“Of course there are other ostensibly plausible interpretations of these events. You've offered a common and compelling one, the one of the linear evolution of human understanding where we go from mythology, to religion, to naturalistic science. This story is forceful and persuasive, except for the fact that it offers no proof of itself. It is just as liable to the charge of total fabrication as is any meta-narrative of human or cosmic history.” So what do you make of the microwave background, Hubble’s constant, the fossil record (the Neanderthal, Lucy), spontaneous mutation, etc? These things certainly seem to be proof or at least evidence that the development of the universe proposed through the modern scientific worldview is valid.

On the final issue of worldviews being neutral, I propose there is a common underpinning in all cultural perspectives. Although it’s not neutral, it’s at the foundation of the human experience and is therefore a universal beginning point to evaluate any and all worldviews we might hold: humans are pattern-seeking. Whether it is Native Americans noticing the migration routes of the buffalo, ancient Athenian astrologers noticing the same shapes in the heavens reoccur year after year, or even a modern theologian looking for patterns in TF Torrance’s thought, our species universally takes notice of phenomena reoccurring and gives explanations for them. I propose that a worldview should be judged on how internally consistent its patterns to understand the world are. I not going to post my criticisms on the Christian perspective, but only want to offer this as a beginning point for comparative discussion of worldviews.

Thus endeth the response…what say you?

International Hot Tub: Round 2

(For an introduction to the intent and explanation of the name of this series, please see the introduction. Though this is presented as a two party debate on one level, comments and responses are still fully welcomed to all posts in the comments section as a way to help extend the debate and bring other voices into it.)

Your position, "God is not real because I cannot sense God as I sense the rest of reality," is quite well and boldly expressed. As an open question, it brings us as humans right to the point at which the gospel speaks. As a final conclusion, it blindly assumes victory after having slain only a straw man.

By "expressed openly" I mean within the limits of human finitude but without excluding the possibility of the objectivity and freedom of God beyond those limits. We can't intelligently say, "God doesn't exist because I can't touch him", while you could say that apart from Christ "God is not real to me because he has not made himself real for me within the limitations that my knowledge is necessarily bound to." For me as a human to know something or someone is real, that reality must present itself as both sensible and intelligible. Enter Jesus Christ.

The Gospel tells us that God, who cannot be touched or fully comprehended, has condescended to make himself known to us within the physical and intelligible limitations of human life and speech by becoming incarnated in Jesus Christ. God made himself knowable by presenting himself within our touchable and intelligible realm. However, even this is still not on the terms you describe. To touch Jesus' skin and hear his words was not to touch God directly or hear him directly, but to touch and hear that in which God had made himself fully present and through which he made himself known. In other words, one can take a position of doubt, saying Jesus was merely a man, his words merely human words. No overwhelming logical argument can fully refute this doubt. But for those, as Jesus said, "with ears to hear", God made and continues to make himself fully knowable in the sensible and intelligible reality of the man Jesus Christ.

"Did you just say 'continues to make'? Jesus isn't walking the earth today!" Yes, but God's taking human form and human speech in Jesus Christ as the Incarnation of his eternal Word has forged a new knowledge of himself in humanity that perpetuates itself through those who know it, the church. You can see and hear the church, understand its proclamation of the risen and everliving Christ; these are sense experiences you cannot deny having, it is just a question of your willingness to receive them as communicative of knowledge of God. How do we know God is communicating himself through the church's proclamation? You must approach God through them and see if he is there to be found. How? Through the means appropriate to him: prayer and worship.

This is the message of Christianity. Your fundamental argument, "God is not real because I cannot sense God as I sense the rest of reality," has met a counter claim. If you have made your argument "openly", you must consider the church's proclamation of Jesus Christ, God come among us in our sphere of observability, and make your judgement. As it is, your argument, if expressed in a closed way, is a rejection only of a straw man, something other than the Christian God who is defined by untouchability but has nevertheless taken on touchability for you and for me. This seems to be your complaint though: God is too untouchable in his eternal nature and too touchable in his human mediation. This is just complaining that God is too God.

At this point, the first two categories of tangible experiences of God you mentioned I would consider dealt with. Christians, having heard the voice of the eternal God in the proclamation of the gospel and thus having learned to correlate events and realities in this world, both fantastic and mundane, with their source and meaning in the eternal love and will of God for us in Christ, interpret both fortuitous synchronicity and pretty sunsets as the Creator speaking in his creation. Of course these things cannot prove the validity of this theological interpretation; that can only be validated by a prior encounter with God in his gospel. Of course there are other ostensibly plausible interpretations of these events. You've offered a common and compelling one, the one of the linear evolution of human understanding where we go from mythology, to religion, to naturalistic science. This story is forceful and persuasive, except for the fact that it offers no proof of itself. It is just as liable to the charge of total fabrication as is any meta-narrative of human or cosmic history. Just as the Christians' interpretation works perfectly well if God exists, so does yours if God doesn't exist. But this does nothing by way of offering any evidence for or against God's existence. Lets come back to that shortly.

Your point about Christians not believing in the God of the Bible I found totally compelling and convicting. You're right; most Christians don't really believe in the God of the Bible. The Bible presents us with something quite alien to our experiences, what Karl Barth called "a strange new world". Liberal Christianity explains all this away and repackages the Christian message as human progress, or social or personal enlightenment (God-lite). On the other side, fanatical Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity seems to deny the tension and convince themselves that they see pillars of fire and so on. Really, though, both are doing the same thing; reducing the Creator to the sphere of the created. The rest of us fall feebly somewhere in between. For myself, I seek to believe and be faithful to the God of the Bible, but I'm constantly faced with my incompetence in this regard; I can't help but feel a serious conflict between the world the Bible depicts, one in which God is seemingly ever present, active, and articulate, and my own world which feels much less spectacular. But this tension is necessary. If the Bible and the God whose revelation it mediates to me weren't so wholly other from the world of my experiences and expectations, it could not call me out of myself to a faith whose center is another Being entirely. It is a tension that seizes me, calls me to repentance for trying to resolve, and produces faith and hope in the man at the center of that tension. If the story of that man were pure mythology, I could easily dismiss it and there would be no tension. If it conformed to my experience and expectation, it would reveal nothing to me. This tension you have so well named here I will not apologize for leaving unresolved. God speaks in that tension and moves to resolve it himself in the fulfillment of history yet to come in Christ's return.

Let me finish by coming back to the issue of the equal footing of internally consistent worldviews. Both Christianity and atheism provide ways of looking at the world that accord fairly well within themselves. Their starting points, however, cannot be arrived at neutrally, but are bound up with the view of the world they provide. You have spoken of the experience of others from a worldview of unbelief; you answered Jesus' "who do they say that I am?" from a standpoint hostile to faith. Now he asks you "who do you say that I am?" This question cannot be answered neutrally. It calls your self and everything you think into question. You cannot evade the question with appeals to presuppositions about sense or evidence. If Christ confronts you, it is he and he alone on whom your answer must be based. Is Christ a liar? Is the proclamation and fellowship of his church a fraud? If you would answer yes, it cannot be because you can't touch God. You need to reject the actual message as it presents itself to you, not a caricature of it.

International Hot Tub: Round 1

(For an introduction to the intent and explanation of the name of this series, please see the introduction).

EDIT: Though this is presented as a two party debate on one level, comments and responses are still fully welcomed to all posts in the comments section as a way to help extend the debate and bring other voices into it.

Guest Post by Andy Snyder:

Like Adam said in the intro, we are starting from the beginning here. I’ve moved on since we’ve started this discussion and would not call myself an atheist, agnostic, theist, or a Christian; confused is the best word to describe me these days. At any rate, I hope this discussion can bring more clarity to me and anyone else who reads it. For now I will play devil’s advocate and put forward the argument I originally brought to Adam a year and a half ago. That said; let’s begin with my basic complaint.

Here is my foundational argument: the existence of God is suspect because I don’t have experience of God; I have not seen, heard, touched, tasted, or smelled the thing called God. Given that the senses are the tools I posses to bring reality to my mind, and that none of these senses have brought me unequivocal information of the reality of God, the existence of God is doubtful. Simply put, God is not real because I cannot sense God as I sense the rest of reality. This is the same line of reasoning I would put to the existence of Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, or the tooth fairy; I don’t experience them, therefore they are not real. Nonetheless, three arguments are often put forward for peoples’ tangible experience of God: supernatural provision, natural revelation, and direct revelation. Let’s deal with each in turn.

We’ve all heard accounts of God’s supernatural provision, stories of synchronicity and the miraculous. If you’ve attended an Evangelical Church for any length of time you’ve heard these sorts of tales (money provided at the right time, an illness cured, etc.) all of which are understood as divine provision. These claims seem to be nothing more than a theological mode of interpreting reality rather than divine experience. I believe this because the same people who attribute the good in life to God have a similar theological understanding when bad things happen. When someone dies it was God’s time to take them, or when a family loses their home God is opening new doors for them. What’s more likely, that a supernatural being arbitrarily blesses some and denies others, or that good and bad things happen to everyone and those that assume God’s existence have a theological understanding for both situations? The occurrences of so-called supernatural provision are nothing more than attributing the good that happens in life to God, not tangible experiences of God.

Another argument put forward as experience of the divine is natural revelation: the encounter of the divine through the natural world. Sam, a surfer friend of mine, told me he experiences God when he is out on the ocean among the waves, taking in the seemingly infinite horizon, and in general being in awe at the size and beauty of nature. We’ve all had similar experiences. Whether we were taking in the immensity of the Grand Canyon or staring open mouthed at the uncountable stars in the night sky, we’ve all been made to feel small and been humbled by the immensity of the natural world. I argue the appropriation of this bigness to God finds its cause in the human inclination to categorize and give meaning to the world around us; what I mean is our species doesn’t deal well with ambiguity and has a natural tendency to give fanciful explanations when truth is not self-evident. For example the old Norsemen needed an explanation of this awe inspiring thunderous sound that came from the sky, so they told each other it was the god Thor smashing his hammer in the heavens. We now know that the exchange of electrons between the atmosphere and the earth happens in the event of a lighting strike, which sends pressure through the air making thunder; the explanation of a seemingly incomprehensible event has been given language through science and thus we discarded the theological explanation. Likewise the Jews gave us a story of the origin of humanity in the first chapters of Genesis where Yahweh created the heavens and the earth, fashioned mankind from dirt, and breathed into them life. We now know that Yahweh had nothing to do with our origins, the world exploded into existence through the big bang, and we evolved slowly and painfully over millions of years. As science continues to give us language and empirical truth about reality, fewer and fewer humans will have a need to attribute the awe-inspiring complexity of the world to God. Theological explanations are reflexive and traditional, meaning it’s what we’ve always said; as science more completely permeates our culture with its explanations, we will eventually abandon the theological explanations all together. Simply put, natural revelation is not evidence of God, but rather evidence of the great lengths humans will go to make sense of a complex world.

The final category of divine experience is direct revelation: this is the category where people claim to have directly seen, smelled, tasted, heard, and/or touched God. We can subdivide this into two smaller categories: direct revelation of the bible and direct revelation of today. In the bible we read of a God who from time to time would reveal himself to humanity in extremely tangible ways: as a the pillar of fire in the desert, as blinding glory revealed to Moses on Mt. Sinai, as risen from the grave bearing mortal wounds, as tongues of fire descending on the early church, etc. The only point to make here is the most obvious: God doesn’t do this sort of thing anymore. How many people reading this post have seen Yahweh, the risen Christ, or had tongues of fire descend on them? I think it’s very telling that Pentecostals (the denomination that claims to receive direct revelation from the Holy Spirit in the form of prophecy and divine utterance) are generally treated as a crazy sect by the rest of Christianity. Why? Because, unlike the Pentecostals, most followers of God don’t believe in the God they read about in the bible; they believe in a mitigated God, or “God light”. “God light” behaves much differently than the God of the bible: God of the bible parted the Red Sea, “God light” gives fuzzy warm feelings when the lighting and music are right; God of the bible sent fire from heaven burning water soaked bulls proving he was the one true god, “God light” helps us make decisions in a way that is hardly distinguishable from our own autonomy, morality, and common sense. The point is Christians’ expectation of the reality of God has lessened considerably from the God expressed in the bible because they know he is not real in the way they read in scripture. This is a step in the right direction; I’m simply taking it a bit further and saying he never manifested himself in any way whatsoever, because he was never real in the first place.

On the issue of direct revelation of today, it’s fairly commonplace to hear the phrases, “I think the God is telling me…” “The Holy Spirit is teaching me…” in Evangelical circles. On the surface this can sound like God is whispering in his followers’ ears. From my own experience, when I pressed people making this claim to explain what they meant (including a couple prominent pastors of a local churches) all they really mean is they are following a gut-feeling, or an intuition. Like I said before this so-called “leading of the Holy Spirit” seemed hardly discernible from what these people knew to be right anyways. On the issue of those who have claimed to have seen, smelled, tasted, touched, and/or felt God through some theophanic encounter: most of them are locked up in padded rooms or are the lead pastors of Pentecostal congregations. That is all.

Introducing International Hot Tub!

My friend Andy Snyder and I are starting a new series here on Draw Nigh in which he and I will debate the existence of God. The title I have (unilaterally) chosen for this series is International Hot Tub. Allow me to explain:

Andy and I have been friends for about 12 years, since I joined a punk band he helped start called Craig's Brother. Since then, he and I have been in two other bands together, Too Bad Eugene, and Thrush. Thrush practiced at my parents' house and after practice we would often hang out in my parents' hot tub (in a totally platonic and hetero way). As Andy and our drummer Kyle started questioning the Christianity of their upbringing, and actually belief in God in general, this topic began to be a dominating theme of our hot tub conversations. These hot tub sessions ended up outlasting the band. But now, alas, I have moved to Scotland to pursue my possibly deluded understanding of God and the hot tub has gone cold...

This series is intended to internationalize and digitalize the hot tub. We want to open our discussion up to others to participate so we will basically start the debate over, which is pretty much what we did every time we got in the hot tub. Please join in with comments if you resonate with either position, if you want to further an argument, or if you think both of us are missing something.

Andy will go first sometime in the next day or so and then I'll post a response in the following couple of days, and then we'll proceed back and forth this way until we feel like stopping. Though both of us have a background in biblical and theological studies, we're aiming to keep this readable and understandable for anyone no matter what their background. Neither of us intend to make our entire case all at once; hopefully we'll build through the ongoing discussion to our full arguments over time. The reason for this is that I think it would put a lot of people off to read a comprehensive argument from either one of us all at once, so we'll try to make it like a live debate, keeping our opening statements and responses to reasonable lengths. Maybe we can get some of the other guys in the band to chime in once the conversation gets going. I can just picture us all in our underwear, I mean bathing suits, drinking Pacificos and getting philosophical. Ah, memories.

So get ready for some lively discussion. Round 1 coming soon.