Job Searching Advice

Well, it is that time of life again where I must look for employment. First, before I go into my job search plans I should mention some caveats that make my situation unique. The first is that I am currently going to grad school for a master’s degree in library & information science. So job-searching isn’t the main thing I am doing in life at the moment though it is pretty important nonetheless. My last job was library-related and I hope that my next job is also in a library environment. Since I am a student I can perhaps get a job through either working for my school or through an internship in a few months. Also, because of my school work a part time job would probably better suit me than a full time position, though I’d gladly go full-time again if such a position was offered to me. All this factors make my situation unique.

When it comes to searching for work, having specific goals is a big help. To use a political science concept, try to use checks and balances to make sure that you are focused on the particular kinds of jobs you want and open enough to take on something that’s less desirable if need be. Do this by writing down in hierarchal order the kinds of jobs you want to obtain. Decide on a minimum of applications that you’ll send in each day. This second piece of advice will not only keep you in the official unemployment stats but will ensure that even when you have applied for all the jobs that you are interested in applying for you are still out there trying to find some work. You can always keep looking for work while you toil away at that dead-end job. Sometimes the economic benefit of just having any job outweighs the hardship of having a job you don’t really like.

Using a variety of sources for your job search is very important. I suggest that job seekers should read the first few chapters of Dick Bolles, What Color is Your Parachute? Basically, he says that you should use multiple sources for job searching, though no more than four since studies show that juggling more than four methods decreases one’s effectiveness. And, no, multiple methods does not mean multiple websites (I’m quite Internet-centric in my past thinking I admit since most of the jobs I’ve held came from applying online). It means using the Internet, phone book, newspaper ads, using your network to find jobs, using temp agencies, etc. He does not mention this but asking a reference librarian at a public library might be a good idea too. I know for myself that I’ll probably rely mostly on the Internet (it’s just my nature) but I will pursue other methods as well.

Write down your specific sources and keep track of your ‘luck’ with each of them. By this I mean list specific websites, newspapers, etc. that you use. Append these sources to your earlier list of the kinds of jobs you are looking for. Thus, if government jobs are on the top of your list put government websites there, etc.

Try to organize your time in such a way that you stay focused on things that matter rather than on things that don’t such as becoming a zombie in front of the TV or a mindless web surfer or gaming addict. True recreation is good but as Aristotle said, all things must be done in moderation. Always be willing to modify your strategy or your time-management schema. I know that I modify these things a lot in my own life. Despite what a million self-help books will tell you, there is one size fits all solution to these quandaries. One must explore and use trial-and-error to discover for him or herself. Above all, do not be discouraged away from the search but always contemplate new possibilities and adventures in the spirit of entrepreneurship that has made our country great.

Christianity for Modern Pagans: Pascal's Pensees, Edited, Outlined & Explained, by Peter Kreeft and Blaise Pascal

This book feels like two books in one since it is essentially Pascal illuminated by Peter Kreeft. Both are profoundly insightful writers. What is attractive about Pascal’s Christian apologetic is that he gets down to the existential issues facing us as human beings rather than just offering arguments for the existence of God and evidences for the Christian faith. He does do some of the latter but his main contribution is a unique approach to the human plight.

What is the ‘human plight‘? It is that we are both wretched and glorious. Man is a mere reed , but he is a thinking reed and though the universe can swallow him up, he alone can wonder and comprehend the universe. This wonderful ability to reason, create and wonder can be lost by the presence of a mere fly or something as terrible as malice or pride. We have infinite potential as well as infinite means by which we can squander our potential.

One cannot speak of the human plight and not mention death, which is our foremost plight other than sin. We do not die like the other animals die. Animals try to avoid death and struggle against it, but they are not scandalized by it like humans are. Stoics and pop psychologists tell us to accept death as a natural part of life but the inner prophet in us screams “Do not go gentile into that good night/ Rage, rage against the dying of the light” (Dylan Thomas).

Pascal goes on to delineate two contradictory parts of our nature: our metaphysical greatness and our wretchedness. Any religion that claims to truly diagnosis the human condition has to deal with these two realities.

I could go on and summarize all of Pascal’s (and Kreeft’s) insights but that would take far too long. The greatness of this book is that it contains Pascal’s best notes from the Pensees and good exposition/commentary by Kreeft. Pascal was the first thinker to really bring apologetics down to the nitty-gritty practical level by speaking on the human condition and the need to find a solution to our plight. His talk about human vanity, the pseudo-solutions of diversion and indifference, along with his proposal on how to find the real solution, is stellar. In the past, I could only make limited sense of Pascal’s wager but now that I’ve read him more I can see how it rationally fits into his whole apologetic approach. The only regrettable thing about this book is that Pascal never got to use his Pensees or ‘Thoughts’ in writing an actual book himself.

Reasonable Faith, by William Lane Craig

This was an excellent book on Christian apologetics. By far, it is the best book on the subject by a contemporary author. In this book, Craig argues for the Christian faith using what has been called the “classical” method of apologetics. That is, he argues first for the existence of God (theism) and then for the truth of the Christian faith.

The first chapter deals with religious epistemology, or how we know that our religious knowledge is true. Here, Craig makes a distinction between showing that Christianity is true and knowing that Christianity is true. The Holy Spirit testifies to us of our sin before God, God’s judgment on us and the world, and the forgiveness offered in Christ. In contrast we can show that Christianity is true by arguing for the existence of God, the historical claims to divinity made by Jesus and ultimately Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. Notice that none of these by themselves or even taken together necessarily leads to Christian faith. It is the inner witness of the Spirit that convicts us of our sins, tells us that we are accountable to God, and that Christ died for us to forgive us. Apologetics can help someone come to faith but it is ultimately God who brings that person to saving faith. Craig correctly states that apologetics is a servant of the gospel and as such it is the gospel that deserves ultimate priority in our discourse with nonbelievers.

The second chapter departs from the broad classical outline a bit, veering in an existential direction by arguing that life is meaningless/absurd without God and immortality. Basically, this apologetic is designed to get the nonbeliever to care about the question of God’s existence and possible revelation. One thing that is interesting about reading Craig is that he gives historical overviews of his present topic. In this chapter he discusses Pascal, Dostoyevsky, and Kierkegaard who are the greatest existentialist (in Pascal’s case proto-existentialist) thinkers. For those who have not read any of these men, Craig’s short discourses on their thoughts definitely provides an impetus for that endeavor. The main weakness I can see with this chapter is that it posits a choice is between Christianity and atheism only. In the West, this may largely be true but it does not encompass all the metaphysical options such as Buddhism, Islam or the other religions/philosophies. This apologetic doesn’t by any means get one to Christianity but it at very least it gets one to ask the right questions and be sincerely interested in the things of God. That is, it outlines the human predicament and argues that without God there is an utter absence of ultimate meaning, value and purpose.

Now we get to the first chapter on the existence of God. In this chapter Craig gives an interesting historical overview of the various key figures behind the traditional theistic arguments along with an elaborate defense of the kalam cosmological argument. This is a very simple argument: 1) Everything that begins to exist has a cause. 2) The universe began to exist. 2) Therefore, the universe had a cause. With Craig, I believe that this is a sound argument from both philosophical and scientific perspectives. Craig goes into much detail defending the Big Bang theory which lends to the interpretation that the cause of the universe was timeless, immaterial and personal. He also gives two philosophical arguments for why the universe could not be eternal. Of them I find the first argument persuasive but I think that the second argument fails on its own because it is dependent on the first for the reasons given by the philosopher Wes Morriston.

The second chapter on the existence of God begins with an excellent exposition of the fine-tuning design argument. Before reading this I admit to being more skeptical of the argument than I am currently. Next, Craig gets to the moral argument which he does a decent job of defending, although I much prefer C.S. Lewis’ formulation of the argument. Craig does little to argue against the modern skeptic who denies the objectivity of moral values. Again, Lewis did a better job of challenging the moral relativist there. The last part of the chapter is really the only silly part of the book. Here Craig drops the ontological argument but is both too brief and not very convincing, even if you agree with all his points. As with the Leibnizian cosmological argument, Craig refers to other theistic arguments to bolster the case for the ontological argument which basically renders it less convicting on its own. Also, he did not devote near enough space to defend the argument as he should have if he was going to bring it up. Craig ought to have cut out the discussion of this argument and focused more on the others.

Chapters 5 and 6 are really good defenses of historical realism and the possibility of miracles. Craig does a service by getting at the historical roots of the modern bias against miracles and argues persuasively that this philosophical predilection is without merit. Chapter 7 is a decent portrayal of Jesus’ divine self-understanding. I wished that Craig spent some time countering a widespread notion is scholarship that Jesus was a failed apocalyptic prophet as evidenced by him allegedly predicting the imminent end of the world, at least according to some New Testament critics. I know of one scholar who takes this route in arguing against the proposition that, “God raised Jesus from the dead,” and I admit that this is the best objection to the faith that I’ve come across.

The last chapter deals with Craig’s favorite topic, the resurrection of Jesus. Craig does a good job here and mentions other scholars like N.T. Wright and Gary Habermas that have done great work on the topic. Craig weaves into the chapter a reasonable criterion of historicity that he expounded earlier in chapter 5. The only complaint I have about the chapter is that Craig sometimes gets so excited making his points that he fails to fully explain some things that he brings up. I genuinely value depth more than breadth which is probably why I objected to his use of the ontological argument earlier. That being said, this was an awesome book which I recommend to anyone interested in learning more about the rational warrant for Christian belief.

Critique of Richard Carrier’s Essay “Why I Don’t Buy the Resurrection Story”

Carrier opens up the essay describing an account of the life of St. Genevieve in which she is reported to have done many Chris-like miracles by a monk writing ten years afterward. He then asks Hume’s question “Why don’t such things happen now?” Right off the bat, I’d like to challenge the notion that miracles occurred in the distant past but do not occur today. Throughout Christian history up to the present day, there have been many reports of miracles. Now, they could all be mistaken or all be created by liars, but that is different from the claim that they are not reported to happen anymore. The heart of it is that Hume and Carrier haven’t seen miracles. That is far different from them not being claimed to happen.

Carrier also claims that the gospels are in the same genre of literature as the likely tall tales about St. Genevieve, hagiography. This is clearly mistaken. The gospels are hard to classify easily, but as the 20th century literary critic, C. S. Lewis said, the gospels read like historical accounts, not fiction. Lewis’ sentiment seems to be backed up by the closeness the gospels come to the Greco-Roman genre of bios, which we get our word ‘biography.’ Luke even says in the beginning of his gospel that he sought out all the sources available to write a well-researched account. What Are the Gospels?, by Richard Burridge aims at proving this point.

Next, Carrier criticizes the fact that only a few pro-Christian sources report the resurrection. Since Jesus appeared first to his disciples and to two people who were not his followers (James and Paul), it makes sense that it would come from Christian sources. To expect non-Christian sources to report it at the same time would be like claiming that a football game didn’t happen because no one who didn’t watch it ended up reporting on it. Also, few documents survive from that era. Survival of written records was sporadic and in general people assumed that oral tradition was more reliable. Young Jews would learn how to memorize oral traditions accurately in school. Very few people were literate.

Carrier notes a Christian apologist who claimed that Jesus’ resurrection is as well attested as Caesar crossing the Rubicon. The first thing Carrier notes is that we have written evidence from Caesar himself about this while we lack this about Jesus. I suppose Jesus should have written something down to satisfy people like Carrier before he ascended! Something tells me that even if Jesus did exactly this, Carrier would still have reason to doubt since dating 1st century documents is no easy task. It is true that we do not know who the authors of the gospels were, but we do know someone who was an eyewitness to the resurrection, spoke with the original apostles and received from them an early Church creed confessing the resurrection belief. His name was Paul.

Secondly, Carrier notes that Caesar’s crossing the Rubicon was noted by his enemies, namely Cicero. Carrier states that we have no hostile or neutral records “of the resurrection until over a hundred years afterward.” This is an odd statement since belief in the resurrection of Jesus would preclude one by definition from being an enemy, or neutral. Anyone who believed in that event would be drastically changed, as Paul was. But, if we won’t count Paul can we count James? James was a leader of the early church as stated by Paul and Luke in the Acts of the Apostles. According to two or possibly three sources, James was not an early follower of Jesus (Mark13:21, 32; 6:3-4; John 7:5; arguably implied by Matthew). The veracity of this is attested by multiple sources and by the criterion of embarrassment. Since James was very powerful in the early church, it is doubtful that such a terrible lie about him would be produced and sustained in and by the early church. In other words, Mark and John reported it because it was probably true. It should also be noted that there is a sufficient condition for the resurrection claim that is admitted by those hostile to Christianity; namely the empty tomb. In Matthew 28:12-13, the high priests claim that Jesus’ disciples stole the body. This is an indirect admission that the tomb was empty by critics of Christianity. As N.T. Wright said, it is unlikely that the early Christians would just make this up whole cloth without rumors circulating. If the empty tomb were a late legend, it is also difficult to see why such rumors about body-stealing would arise in the first place. Depending on one’s position on Paul and James, we may or may not have enemy attestation of the appearances of Jesus, but we do have enemy attestation for a precondition for the resurrection belief; the empty tomb.

Next, Carrier states that we have inscriptions and coins about the Rubicon crossing from the time period while we have no such evidence for the resurrection. Here, Carrier is absolutely right. We have no physical evidence for the resurrection. However, neither Jesus nor his disciples had a physical empire, which Caesar did. Though there are legends about Peter’s digital camera. ;)

Next, he mentions that all the historians of the period covered the Rubicon crossing. Nothing like that exists for the resurrection. As far as this goes, this is true. However, Tacitus, Josephus and others mention Jesus and the existence of Christians. It was known that Jesus was a miracle-worker. The crossing of the Rubicon was a more public event of the resurrection. Jesus didn’t appear to the historians, he appeared to the Eleven, James, Paul and the 500. This is what the Christians claimed caused their faith. This is the reason why the historians noted the rise of this new religious movement. They didn’t see the resurrection but they did very much see the effects of it.

Now, we get to the last point. Caesar needed to take his army across the Rubicon to control Rome and its empire. He couldn’t have just made up a belief that he did that would have the same effect. He needed it to actually happen. For the rise of Christianity all that is needed is the resurrection belief, not the actual event, according to Carrier. This is puzzling. The historian ought to ask, where did this belief come from? Why would the disciples believe it in the first place?

After talking a lot about the differences between that superstitious age and our advanced scientific civilization, Carrier attacks the claim that the disciples were willing and did die for their belief in Jesus’ bodily resurrection. He is right to claim that Stephen didn’t die for this explicitly but for the claim that Jesus was the Messiah. The obvious question is, why did Stephen think that a dead man was the Messiah? Why did James, who in 62AD was martyred believe that Jesus was the Messiah? It is splitting hairs to say that these people died for the messianic belief rather than the resurrection belief because the later was the only reason backing up the former.
The next more serious claim is that perhaps the first Christians believed only in a spiritual resurrection, not a physical one and if they did for their belief in Jesus it was for this belief. As happens now, people back then did have visions of dead people. The question is, would they have used the term “resurrection”? The answer is that they would not. That word was reserved for bodily rising. This was understood both by both Jews and pagans of the time, as N.T. Wright documents well in his The Resurrection of the Son of God. If they saw visions of Jesus, they would have stayed Second Temple Jews, just with the belief in a new prophet and martyr. Claiming that Jesus really was the Messiah who ushered in the kingdom of God wouldn’t have made any sense. As did happen with messianic pretenders before and after Jesus, the movement would have either faded away or tried to find another messiah. Being Messiah meant rescuing Israel from their pagan overlords in a very political way, not dying ignominiously at the hands of them.

It is interesting that Carrier claims that the belief in spiritual resurrection was the earliest belief and that the gospels show signs of this along with a corrupt bodily resurrection view. Since Carrier also believes that the gospels were written to combat proto-Gnosticism, it is odd that they’d include both features. Unless of course, Jesus was bodily raised but had a different sort of body then we do. Walking through walls, disappearing, etc. are hardly something you’d want in your gospel if you are writing a polemic against a more spiritualized view of Jesus’ resurrection. Wright argues forcefully that Paul’s experience was considered by himself to be a subjective vision, but in order to avoid the whole rabbit hole of the exact nature of Jesus’ resurrection body, it is enough to say that the tomb was empty and everyone knew that was a necessary condition for any resurrection claim.

Amazingly, Carrier thinks that Mark supports the theory of a spiritual resurrection because his gospel ends at 16:8 with the empty tomb and the angel who tells the women that Jesus has been raised and is not in the tomb. It is debatable whether Mark really ends at 16:8 or if he wrote more but it was later lost. The longer endings seemed to show that scribes thought there was more to it and since it was lost they had to improvise. The foreshadowing in the gospel seems to indicate that Mark intended to write more. Let’s ignore this for now and assume that Carrier is right. Mark ends with 16:8. What we have here are women visiting an empty tomb. Since women were not considered reliable witnesses in the first century, it is likely that this story was not just made up. Nor was it just a symbol like in the Greek myths. Mark strongly foreshadows Jesus’ bodily resurrection throughout the gospel. For example, in Mark 9:9 Jesus tells his disciples not to tell anyone about the Transfiguration until after he is raised from the dead. It should be noted that Carrier doesn’t come up with any examples of a wholly ‘spiritual’ resurrection claimed in history. That is the case because the concept was never used in that way.


Carrier finally lays out what he thought actually happened. Jesus died and was buried. One of his disciples saw a vision of him ascended to heaven and that started a the Christian sect though in time the idea became confused with bodily resurrection. The gospels and later literature attempt to lend credence to this developed belief. The problems with this are numerous as I’ve mentioned above. Paul and James would still have no reason to convert and if one postulates that they had visions (really hallucinations or delusions) then it becomes more improbable. Also, it wasn’t just one disciple but the Eleven and even 500, according to the creed Paul gives in 1st Corinthians in which he says some are still alive. In addition, there is the empty tomb. Gary Habermas did an in depth study finding that 75% of critical scholars believe that the tomb was empty and counted twenty-three arguments for it propounded since 1975. This does not make it true but it should convince one that it is at least worth considering. Women were the first to see the empty tomb. An invented story would have put the male disciples there. According the Acts, the faith was preached in Jerusalem fifty days after the crucifixion. Without an empty tomb, the preaching would have been shown false by the facts (which the authorities wouldn’t hesitate to bring up).

Richard Carrier ends the essay on a silly note. He thinks God should have made the evidence better. When he gets to how God would do this he mentions science. This is silly because God acting in history is not a repeatable event. All events in history are one time events. Since god acts in history though, it is implicit that he acts now and our faith in Him is not solely based on what happened long ago but on the agency of the Holy Spirit in our lives today. True faith takes risk. It takes seeking and not sitting safe in on some atheist internet community. As Kierkegaard said, “The objections to Christianity may be dismissed with one single comment: Do these objections come from someone who has carried out the commands of Christ? If not, all his objections are nonsense. Christ continually declares that we must do what he says - and then we will know it is the truth.”

Why Good Arguments Often Fail, by James W. Sire

This book is not about the specific arguments of Christian apologetics, but about the weaknesses in human nature that prevent the apologist from making his case. This happens both on the side of the apologist and the his or her audience. Most of the book is pretty basic, in terms of stating and giving examples of both informal and formal logical fallacies. Sprinkled throughout are good quotes and bits of wisdom about the philosophy of apologetics. By far, the best section of the book are his reading recommendations, which I always appreciate given my love of books. Overall, this was a very basic book, one which I’d only recommend to Christian apologetic beginners.

Out of the Salt Shaker & into the World, by Rebecca Manley Pippert

This is a great book on evangelism that I wish I could put into practice. Someday, I hope to do so. Right now, I am at a point in my life where I need to see more ‘fruits of the Spirit’ before I go around trying to evangelize unbelievers. Obviously, I don’t think I need to be morally perfect in order to do this, but I do think that part of conversion, perhaps the main part, is manifesting a transformed life; a transformed will. If Christianity is just a worldview (as listening to many evangelical apologists could lead one to believe) than it is just a subject of ideological debate. Faith is supposed to be so much more than that. Now, let’s get to the book itself.

The author rightly points out that in evangelism we should be ourselves. By communicating our true selves to others, they can see that we are not being fake, not hiding something. Given the general suspicion that Western people have of Christianity, this is very important. Through mirroring the Jesus, we must be bold, willing to challenge people to make a clear choice, while also being compassionate. Religion isn’t something just for the scholar or the theologian, but for the poor and downtrodden. Jesus brought it to them by reaching out to them. The woman at the well was one example of this. In our society, it is easy to surround oneself with wholly like-minded people on every subject from religion to politics. Jesus challenges our tendency to barricade ourselves in comfortable environments.

“Jesus is Lord,” is a phrase that identifies Jesus as the one in charge. If he was about the poor, the marginalized in society, then we cannot call ourselves Christians unless we are also concerned about the people society has forgotten about. The children starving in Africa, the millions of children dropping out of school in America, or the plight of the unborn, are just some examples. It is easy to be self-consumed, thinking only about your own satisfaction and happiness. Jesus reminds us that we are mortal and that we are ultimately accountable to God at the end of the day.

Pippert asks us to ask ourselves, “Does my life reflect only religious activity or does it bear the mark of profound love?” This is a key question that separates the religion of Jesus from that of the Pharisees. Do we really care about people in our lives? Jesus is clear that how we treat and think of others reflects what we think about God. Jesus balanced being radically identified with the world with being radically different as well. We must not wait for stimulating intellectual answers or the right feelings before we obey Christ.

The author notes that we tend to either over-identify with the world ensuring that we are no different from them or we separate ourselves from the world. Since we are called to be salt and light, we must both not hide and not give in to the ways of this world. Pippert writes, “We must ask ourselves, How do I interpret the needs and lifestyles of my friends? Do I look at their messy lives and say ‘That’s wrong’ and walk away? Or do I penetrate their mask and discover why they are in such trouble in the first place? And then do I try to love them where they are?” For me, I definitely fall on the side of a ‘whatever floats your boat’ mentality. As stated in the first paragraph, I don’t think I’ve fully converted yet to Christianity. Just because I have a Christian-type worldview does not make me a Christian. Doctrine is essential to Christianity, but doctrine alone isn’t the full picture. “The Creed does not belong to you unless you have lived it,” Pippert quotes the Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow as saying.

Pippert goes into three models of trying to bring the evangelism into our conversations with friends and strangers. The most attractive one for me is controlling the conversation by asking probing questions. Socrates was the exemplar of this. By asking ‘why,’ one can get to the heart of things. The value judgments and basic view of life that the person has. By digging deeper, their values and beliefs can be compared with those of Christ. Another method that goes back to Christ is to provoke a person’s curiosity. This means sharing what you believe in such a way that isn’t conversation ending, but thought-provoking. Jesus’ ‘living water’ statement to the woman at the well is a good example of this.

Looking over where I underlined in this book really brings out the obvious fact that apologetics serves evangelism, rather than existing for its own sake. Since I love intellectual things, I tend to forget this. This book is a great call for Christians to be more serious in the faith and thus in their witness to the world.

Death as a Salesman: What’s Wrong With Assisted Suicide, by Brian P. Johnston

This very succinct book illustrates what is wrong with euthanasia. There are many things wrong with it, but the core problem is not just a debate over the facts, (i.e. what is going on in the Netherlands, the realities of pain management, etc.) but a spiritual struggle. Since the dawn of history, humans have always had dependents in their midst who are infirm through age or sickness. How societies have treated such people is a good measure of the moral health of that society.

How is this the case? Well, those that kill the weak implicitly are saying that the value of human life is dependent on what a person can do. If a person can move about, communicate, think rationally, than they are worth helping. If they lack any of these (or a combination of these) than their lives are meaningless. Death would be a mercy for such human non-persons. Oftentimes such individuals are deemed a nuisance since they don’t contribute anything to society but drain resources. Implicit in this statement is that being a cog in the larger social wheel is the key measure of a life’s value. Absent from all this, is the notion that human life is valuable in and of itself. This Christian notion is fundamentally democratic while euthanasia represents the absolute opposite in both Christian and democratic terms. As Belgian physician Philipe Schepens puts it:

“Euthanasia constitutes a major breach against the laws of humanity. It could in fact signify the abandoning of the very concept of democracy and relegate us to a new world and society which will be totalitarian. A society in which people may dispose of the very lives of others, where you have to be declared fit by others to receive from society the right to live. A society in which the individual can exist only if he is wanted by others, and who therefore ceases to have absolute value. A society in which the weak must yield to the stronger. This is more than decadence. This is a gradual return to the law of the jungle, to an animalistic society where the survival of the fittest is the rule.”

The ancient Greeks condemned suicide and even the Greek term ‘euthanasia’ which means ‘good death’ is a neologism which was never used by the ancients in the same way we use the term. This tradition is summed up in the Hippocratic Oath, “I will give no deadly medicine, even if asked, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect.” Hippocrates, the Greek doctor who first really deserved the name, as he separated the practice of medicine from magic, knew that a physician who could kill as readily as he could heal, would have a trust deficit with his patients to say the least. Killing the weak is not a new enlightened concept, but an old and rejected one.

The rest of the book discuses the horrors of the euthanasia experiment in the Netherlands, the realities of pain management, and good hospice care. The other major topic are those vulnerable to euthanasia. The poor, elderly, depressed, disabled and infirm are obvious targets. Such people deserve love and care, rather than encouragement to commit suicide. Ultimately assisted suicide is for those that society no longer cares for. It responds to the human need for love in times of distress with the coldness of intentionally taking such people out of this world an out of our lives.

“The man who kills a man kills a man. The man who kills himself kills all men. As far as he is concerned, he wipes out the world.” G.K. Chesterton

“Hold back those who are being drawn to death,” Book of Proverbs

The Rise of Christianity, by Rodney Stark

This is a fascinating book on the rise of Christianity from an obscure backwater province of the Roman Empire to the dominant faith of Europe. Stark makes the case that the Christian faith succeeded for a variety of reasons. Since this is the first book on the subject that I’ve read, I can’t honestly evaluate his case that the mission to the Jews probably succeeded (more on this later) and that early Christianity wasn’t wholly confined to the poor. The other parts of his case seem to be more traditional and intuitive.

To address the issue of the class basis of early Christianity, Stark looks both to historians and the NT documents themselves. Since Marx and Engels, it has been popular to assume that the early Christians were all from the lowest classes of society; slaves and the poor. Against this notion, Stark quotes a recent historian, E.A. Judge, who was one of the first to deliver a major dissent to this opinion. According to Judge, from what we know from the documents of the first several centuries, early Christians were most likely urban dwellers, and dependents in city households. In other words, it was a largely middle class movement. I am skeptical of Stark on this point. Celsus, a second century critic of Christianity, noted that Christians tended to be illiterate slaves and women. He could have been overstating this, but I tend to trust him more than Judge. Also, the evidence would under-report lower class Christians since they are not literate and thus do not write. Stark is basing his thesis here on his modern observation that new religious movements tend to be based in the privileged classes. While this is true of contemporary America, it seems unwarranted to generalize these findings to the first several Christian centuries.

Stark, however, does make a better case that Christianity did better than most people assume with the Jews. This is particularly true of the Hellenized Jews who were looking to hold to their traditional faith but were slowly becoming more like their pagan neighbors. Christianity brought together both Gentiles and Jews in a new faith that combined aspects of both cultures. Hellenized Jews tended to be urban just as the growing Christian was. Just as there were Jews who wanted to both retain their culture and become closer to the Gentiles, there were Gentiles called ‘God-Fearers’ who had an affinity for the ethical monotheism of Judaism but who didn’t want to take the final step of obeying the Law. Pauline Christianity fit the bill for both these groups. Stark does a good job of arguing this point.

The rest of the book focuses on the fascinating reasons why Christianity supplanted paganism as the religion of the Empire. In an era of epidemics and huge natural disasters, Christians had a faith that gave hope and meaning to a world filled with vast suffering and death. It also gave prescriptions for action. While pagans fled the cities in the face of deadly plagues, Christians cared for the sick; those forgotten and left for dead by society. Christians funded charities to help people, pagans did not. This not only built up antibodies in the Christians who survived the plague but also made the surviving pagans who were helped by Christians more likely to convert. So effective were these charities, that the pagan emperor Julian tried to set up pagan charities in an effort to save the declining religion. Alien to paganism, was the idea that because God loves humanity, demonstrated through the sacrifice of his Son, he wants us to demonstrate the love to one another.

Another factor that spurred Christian growth was the role of women. Women in the Greco-Roman world weren’t treated very well to say the least. Their status in Christianity was better. By prohibiting infanticide and abortion, Christians had a far higher ratio of women to men than in the larger Roman society. In a recent excavation of a villa in the port city of Ashkelon, archaeologists discovered a ancient Roman sewer that was clogged with the refuse of nearly a hundred murdered babies. Philosophers supported abortion on demand, as evidenced by Tacitus who even supported infanticide. This combined with a pagan culture that held marriage in low esteem, created space in which a Christian church that honored children would be much more fertile.

Christianity succeeded because it stood head and shoulders above a culture that was spiritually thirsty and dying. The proliferation of pagan mystery religions, where religion was more like a commodity bought for a price, was vastly different than a religion that had a strong ethical teaching. Hyper-pluralism created an atmosphere of ‘cheap religion’ that became increasingly meaningless to those seeking something real from religion. In a culture where watching people getting torn apart is a spectator sport, infanticide was something recommended by philosophers, coupled by brutal divisions between ethnicities and sexes, Christianity gave converts nothing less than their humanity.

New Blog

Hello All,

I have started a new political blog here: http://ronsresistance.blogspot.com/

It is my pledge and goal to post on each blog at least once a week.

-Ron

The Evidence for Jesus, by R.T. France

This was a mildly interesting book that could have been better if France’s discussion of the New Testament itself was more illuminating. This is a popular level book written in the mid-eighties so it is kind of dated. He emphasizes the important point that a lot of the writing from the 1st century have not survived. He then goes on to discuss the non-Christian evidence for Jesus. This analysis, like his analysis of the New Testament, is critical and evenhanded. After reading so much blatant Christian apologetics, this approach is both more honest and credible.

Tacitus is the main Gentile writer who mentions Jesus. There are others but to France, Tacitus is the most important. Tacitus states that Jesus was a Jew from the Roman province of Judea who was crucified under the procurator Pontius Pilate during the reign of Tiberius. Interestingly, France does not take this as ‘independent testimony’ since Tacitus could just be getting his information from what the Christians thought about their own origins. He gets this opinion from G.A. Wells who argues that Jesus was a mythic creation and not a historical figure. I tend to think that while Wells might be correct on Tacitus, I find it hard to believe that this information is not from some credible source since Tacitus was no friend of the Christians and would probably not accept whatever they claimed uncritically. However, Wells could be right.

The Jewish historian Josephus also mentions Jesus. France notes that the martyrdom of James, the brother of Jesus, as a Christian leader in 62 A.D. is generally agreed upon as historical. It is true that this mentioning of Jesus was embellished by Christian scribes, but most scholars believe that Josephus really did mention Jesus, but without the obvious Christian sympathies. Thus, the debate is about how Josephus mentioned Jesus rather than if he really did. The later Rabbis also referred to Jesus in a very veiled manner in the Talmud. Basically, the claim that he was a heretic that led Israel astray.

France spends far too much time on the non-Christian evidence. His discussion of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Gnostic second to third centuries writings are thorough but pretty much irrelevant since they were written much later than the NT documents and don’t really contain any apparent real historical evidence about Jesus.

Finally, when we get to the NT, France does a decent job of defending the fact that the claim that Jesus rose from the dead dates to very early from the crucifixion. The creed of 1st Corinthians 15 is key here. When the discussion turns to the gospels, he notes the bias inherent in the form-criticism of Bultmann who a priori discounts miracles. The rest of the discussion of the NT is pretty conservative and predictable. Since I’ve heard it all before I didn’t think it was that interesting. Overall, the book was informative but quite dry.

Orthodoxy, by G.K. Chesterton

This book, which Chesterton, an English journalist, novelist and all around early twentieth century public intellectual, is described by him as a “slovenly autobiography.” While he engages much with competing views of the world prominent in Western culture of his time (and still ours), he is not writing apologetics per se though he is arguing for the truth of Christianity. Religion, like politics, is something deeply personal and intuitive. I enjoy rational argument, but I also enjoy his deeply personal touch which keeps it real.

Chesterton is more of a mystic than a rationalist. He observes that insanity is often induced from seeing too much causality in everything. A determinist, who sees only material causation has a worldview that doesn’t really encompass our world. It can give the impression of explaining everything, but on second thought it also seems to miss everything. A man who thinks that only material causes exist is like the man who believes that everyone is conspiring against him. The facts gathered from the senses are interpreted to support this narrow conclusion. Every one who glances at him is secretly plotting his demise, everyone who accidentally touches him are planting tracking devices, etc. While both the determinist and this insane man both have explanations that coherently explain everything around them, both also leave out so much. Such minds need to see more possibilities, to have the windows and fans in their minds opened and turned on. They need fresh air.

After this rejection of materialism/determinism, Chesterton moves to the reasons why he gravitated towards Christianity. He states that he made these observations before he even considered Christian theology. It is fascinating that he connects Christianity with democracy and practical politics so extensively. The Christian’s respect for tradition is very democratic at heart because it extends the principle that we should listen to all people no matter where they are in life by accident of birth, to the notion that we should listen to all people despite the accident of death. “It is the democracy of the dead,” Chesterton said. The unpopular doctrine of original is also democratic at heart. Evil is not caused primarily by men’s environment, nor is it an illusion or hopelessly triumphant. Evil is in the heart of humanity, something that is in each one of us. The one who sees a good God in heaven is philosophically free to turn and see a bad president in Washington. In contrast, most other philosophies are either unconsciously or explicitly complacent in the fact of oppression. It is difficult to justify a rebellion if you are a monist Hindu living out the life of an ‘untouchable’ due to sins you’ve committed in previous lives. The giant monuments to the ancient states of Egypt and Babylon show us that when these various deeply pessimistic philosophies and religions are dominant, state power over the individual becomes absolute.

Another flaw of materialism is that it rests on a false assumption. If the universe was really personal wouldn’t we see more variation in terms of biological laws and physical laws? Isn’t that more theistic? Reminding me of Hume, Chesterton notes that really these observations are probabilistic, there is nothing really law-like about them. Three and two must always make five but it is not the same with the color of grass or the rising of the sun. We know that monotony is something that only the young can truly enjoy. The child often says: “Do it again,” to the adult. Maybe because we have sinned and grown old, our Father is younger than we are. Maybe he says to the sun: “Do it again,” every morning. Chesterton is wise to point out all of this and more.

This book is a gold mine of wisdom and insight that hits home much more than any apologetic text ever has for me. Like Chesterton, I believe in Christianity on the basis of evidence, though I also agree with him that all of life can be mentioned as evidence. As C.S. Lewis said, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” Christianity is an answer to a riddle. Like every answer though, one has to first discover what the riddle is. Just as in our day, far too many have forgotten the riddle. In short, this riddle is, how are we to live in a sinful world?

Chesterton’s answer to this won’t convince everyone but to those who see the same things in the world as he does and wants the same things in his heart, will agree with him or at least empathize with him. To give a full description and defense of his answer would take too long and be a complete rehashing of this entire book which is beyond the scope of this review. In closing, I will affirm though that Chesterton’s answer is also my answer.

Time Enough for Love, by Robert A. Heinlein

Of all the science fiction novels I’ve read, this one was the worst by every measure. The plot was slow-moving, predictable and boring. The characters were uninteresting and the ‘moral of the story’ was immoral. This is the first and last book I’ll read by this author. If I didn’t buy this book, I don’t think I would have finished it.

The author of this book is very narrow-minded in his beliefs which make the book rather tedious since he hits you over the head with the same point over and over again. Even if I agreed with the author’s social Darwinism, I would have wanted him to stop hammering home the same point. Basically, the core message of the story is that sex is never wrong, except if you create a ‘defective’ child. All the taboos about sex are stupid. People should have as much sexual fun as they can. The main character violates many human taboos concerning sexual relations. Note that I say ‘human,’ not ‘cultural.’ He does things that ought not be done, and which if the author was more complex would illustrate the ill effects of. Religion is perceived as an irrational roadblock to sexual pleasure. Social Darwinism is the only real moral obligation. Creating children with good genes and weeding out those with bad genes are what colonization of other planets is all about. The main character at one point in his life even advocated killing off ‘defective’ people at birth since it would help the clean up the genetic pool in the long run. Eugenics anyone?

I could have gone on about the other perversities in this book which are gross and I will not mention.

Book Review: Faith Has Its Reasons: An Integrative Approach to Defending Christianity, by Kenneth D. Boa & Robert M. Bowman Jr.

This was a pretty long book that grew tiresome at times but which covers a lot. The intent of the book is to lay out the four main apologetic approaches and attempt to integrate them into a cohesive approach. These four approaches are called the classical, evidential, Reformed and fideist apologetics. Each seeks to defend Christianity in a unique way. To various extents they can be combined but they are also exclusive in that they disagree on very important meta-apologetic issues such as the relation between theology and apologetics.

In what follows I am going to answer a set of questions posed in the book to the various apologetic systems. I think that in all matters of Christian faith one ought to be as honest as possible with themselves and non-believers. Developing a nice castle in which you can’t live in is tantamount to building a castle in the air. So in thinking about apologetics one must not ‘bite off more than one can chew’ so to speak. Here goes:

Metapologetic Questions

1. On what basis do we claim that Christianity is the truth?

My take is a combination of the evidentialist and fideist approaches. Christianity is unique in that it can be verified by external evidence. The Eastern philosophies, Mormonism, and Islam all appeal to subjective experience to justify their claims. Christianity does too in a way since it is the Holy Spirit that convicts us of sin and leads us to a relationship with Christ. But the difference is that Christianity can be tested by someone from the outside. That is its greatest strength and why I think it to be true. The Resurrection of Christ and the general reliability of Scripture is key here in this. The evidence cannot compel faith but bring one who is seeking for transcendent truth in this life to the brink where she will have to decide either to chase after Christ or back away. The walk is the real proof in the pudding but evidence is what can bring one to that decision place.

2. What is the relationship between apologetics and theology?

I disagree with Karl Barth that the best apologetics is a good theology. I do agree however with Kierkegaard that the best apologetic is a life lived in accord with the truth known through theology. The apologist is one who defends the truth of Christianity through induction (I am taking a notably evidentialist approach here) while the theologian explicates what Christianity means through that same method. In this regard, apologetics does precede theology (contra Barth) because one has to believe first that Christianity is true before one gets into theology. The last statement should be qualified in that it is from the point of view of one outside. For the Christian, the practice of one’s theology in her everyday life is the most ultimate test of its truth.

3. Should apologetics engage in the philosophical defense of the Christian faith?

Yes. I leave open the possibility of the constructive use of philosophy in the traditional theistic arguments but I am skeptical of many of these to various extents. Christianity is based upon factual claims which concerns history, not philosophy per se. Philosophy is a good servant in examining the presuppositions and conclusions of people studying history or science but when it is on its own, it is only speculative.

4. Can science be used to defend the Christian faith?

Here, I depart from the evidentialist fold. Science and faith are opposed in that the first is concerned with things seen while the second is concerned with things unseen. I do think that science can be used to show that Christianity is believable but anything more than that gives science too much priority over faith. To combine science and faith is to depart from Christ because it takes the emphasis away from Him.

5. Can the Christian faith be supported from historical inquiry?

It can, but only after a certain point and up to a certain point. What I mean by this is that one must be interested first to even want to go there. A hostile atheist or a someone who just doesn’t care will not respond to any historical evidence. One has to go up to a certain point in curiosity and desire for the truth for this to work. ‘Don’t through your pearls before swine,’ Jesus said. After that point where one is open and seeking, then historical inquiry can support Christian faith, or the possibility thereof. It should also be remembered that this does not bring one all the way to faith. Only by their own choice and through the work of the Spirit can someone come to saving faith.

6. How is knowledge of Christian truth related to experience?

One cannot fully know that Christianity is true through the intellect alone. For saving faith, experience is necessary. By ‘experience’ I don’t mean seeing miracles but in seeing one’s life be transformed by God’s Spirit. Kierkegaard said rightly that in the New Testament faith is tested not by reasons but by one’s life. Experience may not be the first ground on which one knows that Christianity is true but it is definitely the last ground.

Apologetic Questions

1. Why should we believe in the Bible?

We believe the Bible because we believe in Christ. For those who need evidence, this is provided by arguing for the reliability of the Bible and for the resurrection of Jesus. Another primary means of knowing this is through one’s personal encounter with Christ. Not everyone who has lived or lives currently is privileged with having easy access to the historical record, although that record does bear witness to Him. What ultimately unites all Christians in the personal experience of God acting in our lives.

2. Don’t all religions lead to God?

No. Religions make conflicting truth claims which entails that they cannot all be true. They all may have some true elements or assumptions that have some truth behind them but they cannot all be true.

3. How do we know that God exists?

I do not reject the traditional theistic arguments of the classical apologist and may be inclined towards using some of them. The problem with much of these arguments is that they are tedious and eminently debatable. So are the arguments pertaining to the resurrection of Christ, one can claim. The difference though here is that the resurrection can get one both theism and Christianity while the others may get only a generic theism. This is not to say that the theistic arguments shouldn’t be used but that they should take a less prominent place in apologetics. Again, the last ground for knowing that God exists is a personal relationship with Christ. All arguments are a means to this end, which in itself is the greatest argument.

4. If God exists, then why does he permit evil?

I do not think we have a full answer to this. The Free Will Defense is classic but it leaves something to be desired. The paradox of Christianity is that the infinite God died. The cross changes how we ought to perceive this problem. As Kierkegaard said, “That God could make creatures free over and against Himself is the cross that philosophy could not bear and on which it has remained hanging.” In the face of evil one can bow out and accept life trying to avoid it as much as possible. One can also ignore it and optimistically go about life. Or one can accept the paradox of Christianity, believing both that evil is the grave threat to every person and that one must zealously struggle against it. As Chesterton said, the Christian is alone a combination of the extreme pessimist and the extreme optimist.

5. Aren’t the miracles of the Bible spiritual myths or legends and not literal fact?

The legacy of Hume and modernism is an a priori rejection of miracles. This is simply begging the question. One must look at the evidence and not decide before one looks that miracles are impossible. Even if one does not believe in God, the evidence for Christ’s resurrection from the dead ought to be enough for one to accept both theism and Christianity.

6. Why should I believe in Jesus?

You should believe in Jesus because he claimed to be divine (this is true even if one disregards John and takes only the words ascribed to Jesus in the Gospels and believed to be authentic by the Jesus Seminar) and rose from the dead. This is the bedrock of the faith.

Book Review: Written on the Heart: The Case for Natural Law, by J. Budziszewski

I really looked forward to reading this book and wanted to like it. The title implies that a strong case will be made that all humanity has a natural moral sense that unites most people no matter where they lived or how isolated they were throughout history. This is a hugely important topic because it is under attack by many in the secular world who do not see this law written on their hearts. It is too bad that this book is not more focused on that main issue. Instead it deals more broadly, discussing the ideas of natural law philosophers like Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas and John Locke, while also dealing with the challenge posed by John Stuart Mill in the 19th century. The book ends with a brief discussion of contemporary philosophers in the natural law tradition or in its immediate orbit.

What this book lacked was a focus on the main issue which the title raises. Dealing with Aristotle’s and Aquinas’s conception of the ideal government is interesting but it doesn’t immediately address the issue in the title. So while one may be still questioning what natural law is and if it exists, we are treated a discussion on the nature of government by philosophers who are already assuming that natural law exists. Given our current cultural climate and the title of the book, defending the claim that there is a natural law should take precedent.

Despite this complaint, I found that the book was well written. If I hadn’t already studied Aristotle, Locke and Mill in college I would have found it much more fascinating, as I found the part about Aquinas (whom I don’t know much about) fascinating. Since this book is more wide-ranging than I wished it to be, I will keep the rest of the review focused only on the narrow topic of the existence of natural law. (I did study political philosophy in depth in college but I will refrain from speaking of government.)

J’s (his last name is just too long) defense of natural law begins at the beginning, which happens to be Aristotle. The natural law for Aristotle could be accessed through the data we have from our sea of moral intuitions which are expressed in common opinion. Just as I have to measure the desk in front of me to find out its dimensions, I have to look to inner data to discover moral truth. Of course, he didn’t just assume that common opinion or everyone’s inner intuitions are true but uses these to ascend to truth by questioning and applying logical reasoning. Aristotle’s method here seems so commonsensical to me that I find that it hardly needs to be said. This goes to show either how much Aristotle has influenced me or how much I have come to the same conclusions as him in this respect.

Unless one is interested in political philosophy one shouldn’t read this book. To get more into the topic of the title, perhaps a sampling the world’s religious and moral texts would help. Reading C.S. Lewis’ The Abolition of Man. Peter Kreeft, a Catholic philosopher, recommends (shockingly) the Pope. To be quite honest most of this book builds castles in the air based on heavily disputed foundations. They are good looking castles, built by the most awesome philosophers like Aristotle and Aquinas, but they are castles in the air nonetheless. I guess I was hoping for something more substantial from this author.

Book Review: C.S. Lewis’ Dangerous Idea: In Defense of the Argument from Reason, by Victor Reppert

I found this to be a great defense of C.S. Lewis’s argument against naturalism. To state briefly, Lewis’ argument is that naturalism is self-refuting because it denies the very reasoning capacities that are needed to conclude that naturalism is true. How does it do this? In short, it collapses all reasoning into mere Cause and Effect, denying Ground-Consequent reasoning. Every state in the universe, including mental states, is just a result of the previous state and so forth. Person A votes for Barack Obama because of all the physical matter interactions in her brain and her environment, relegating rational inference to being only a smokescreen hiding these true physicalist explanations. What if Person A states that she is voting for Obama because she thinks his healthcare plan will greatly reduce unnecessary suffering in America? She may be thinking to herself, if I vote for Obama, then suffering will decrease. At hearing this the naturalist would have to jump up and look to evolutionary genetics, sociological theory, and the other ‘soft sciences’ for clues to the real explanation. The decision was perhaps due to her genes and/or environment. This in turn breaks down to the purely physical interactions of the ‘hard sciences,’ which turn from psychological explanations to purely physical ones. ‘She grew up in a very liberal Democratic area and her parents are Democrats’ turns to ‘These neurons in her brain fire when she thinks of Obama…‘ The chain of cause and effect, like a long line of dominoes, has been falling since the Big Bang ensuring from the beginning of the universe that she’d support Obama.

You can see the problem now for the naturalist who holds to a set of metaphysical beliefs such as, 1) The physical order is causally closed. 2) atheism, etc. Under the naturalist’s own schema though, these beliefs cannot be held up. Any rational justification could be debunked just as he debunked the Obama supporter above.

Theism can account for both Cause-Effect and Ground-Consequent relationships. Being created in the image of God we are endowed with reason. Person A could really be supporting Obama at bottom because of her rational beliefs. If one is to contend against her belief, one must do so on the Ground-Consequent level, as is usually (or perhaps one should say ’hopefully’) done in political debate. They must either show that her reasoning is invalid or unsound. If this argument is correct than basic explanations must include reasons as well as what Reppert calls, “the blind operation of nature obeying the laws of nature.” (Pg. 53)

Now that this argument is stated and expounded a bit I will move onto Elizabeth’s Anscombe’s criticism. There is obviously more to Reppert’s book than this but I want to touch only upon what I think to be the most significant/interesting ideas.

One significant criticism Anscombe employs is what Reppert calls a “paradigm case argument.” She basically asks why one should take Lewis seriously if they are a naturalist since if naturalism is true then Lewis’s distinctions between valid and invalid reasoning would be meaningless. By asking, what if all our reasoning is invalid is really to ask a meaningless question because in the naturalist paradigm such ideas of ‘true’ and ‘false’ are defined differently than the definitions Lewis used. In essence such people are playing a different language game. It would be like if a believer in Descartes’ Evil Deceiver tried to convince someone not of that belief that everything they believed was false. There would be communication difficulties to say the least.
Reppert gets around this by claiming that as a skeptical threat argument, the paradigm case objection would be valid, but if one changes the argument to a more modest argument to the best explanation then one gets around this objection. Rational inference must be assumed to exist for any discussion to take place. This conflicts with naturalism because under naturalism reason explanations are always reduced to physical explanations which are nonrational. Therefore, naturalism should be rejected as false.

Anscombe’s last line of attack claims that reason-explanations are noncausal. Lewis is quite correct here to object. If Person A votes for Obama because he gives him warm feelings inside than that shows that her claimed rational reasons for supporting him are if not untrue in themselves, then untrue when it comes to her own decision-making. A person cannot be thought of as rational unless their rational claims are causal over and against what is happening psychologically. Reppert states, “For example, if a prosecutor were to believe that the defendant was guilty on the basis of DNA evidence, what would we think of him if it turned out that he hated the defendant so much that he would believe in his guilt regardless of the DNA evidence?” (Pg. 64)

I would go onto Reppert’s six arguments from reason but I am tired and I frankly do not have a sufficient understanding of the philosophy of mind to consider them critically. After reading most of Lewis’ works and Reppert’s defense of him, I am confident that this argument is sound. Now, I am curious about what the ‘other side’ would say in response the Argument from Reason.

Provocations

Instead of reviewing the anthology of Kierkegaard quotes I have read, I will just produce the ones that touched me most right here.

"If one who lives in the midst of Christendom goes up to the house of God, the house of the true God, with the true conception of God in his knowledge, and prays, but prays in a false spirit; and one who lives in an idolatrous community prays with the entire passion of the infinite, although his eyes rest upon the image of an idol: where is the most truth? The one prays in truth to God though he worships an idol; the other prays falsely to the true God, and hence in fact worships an idol."

"Christ says: Do according to what I say - then you shall know. Consequently, decisive action first of all. By acting, your life will come into collision with existence and then you will know the reality of grace. Nowadays we have turned the whole thing around. Christianity has become a worldview. Thus, before I get involved I must first justify it. Good night to Christianity! Now doubt has surely been conquered. And this doubt can never be halted by reasons, which only nourish doubt. No, doubt can only be halted by imitation."

"That Jesus Christ died for my sins certainly shows how great his grace is, but it also shows how great my sins are."

"The anguished conscience alone understands Christ."

"Is this the test: to love Christ more dearly than mother and father, than gold and goods, than honor and reputation? No, the test is this: to love the Savior more than your sin."

"That God could create beings free over against himself is the cross that philosophy could not bear but upon which it has remained hanging."

"The greatest danger for a child, where religion is concerned is not that his father or teacher should be an unbeliever, not even his being a hypocrite. No, the danger lies in their being pious and God-fearing, and in the child being convinced thereof, but that he should nevertheless notice that deep within there lies a terrible unrest. The danger is that the child is provoked to draw a conclusion about God, that God is not infinite love."

"Today's Christianity is a matter of being elevated for an hour once a week just as in the theater. It is now used to hearing everything without having the remotest notion of doing something."

"We can flee evil either out of fear for punishment - like slaves, or out of hope for reward - like hirelings, or out of love of God - like children."

"That a person wants to sit and brood and stare at his sin and is unwilling to have faith tht it is forgiven is itself a further guilt. It simply ignores what Christ has done."

"Only through the consciousness of sin is one admitted; to want to enter by any other road is high treason agains Christianity."

"A person sins out of weakness, then out of despair. In the strict sense the latter alone is the sin. Here, also, is the cross. You doubt that the sin you have committed out of weakness can be forgiven. All is lost, you think and thus you sin. But the cross can bring you to a halt, if you let it."

"What sin cries to heaven? The very one that hides most secretly and most quietly within. What the adulterers, murderers and thives do cries out already here on earth."

"It is not dreadful that I have to suffer punishment when I have acted badly. No, it would be dreadful if I could act badly - and there were no punishment."

"The opposite of sin is faith. And this is one of the most decisive definitions of all Christianity - that the opposie of sin is not virture but faith."

"The intensity of suffering is greatest when you have the power to free yourself from it. I must use my energy to force myself out into the suffering and then use it to endure the suffering."

Quotable Kierkegaard

"If there is no eternal consciousness in a human being, if at the bottom of everything is only a wild ferment, a power that, twisting in dark passions, produces everything great or inconsequential; if an unfathomable, insatiable emptiness lies hidden between everything, what would life be then but despair? If this is the way life is, if there is no sacred bond uniting mankind, if one gerneration rises up after another like the leaves of the forest, if one generation succeeds the other as the songs of birds in the woods, if the human race passes through the world as a ship through the sea or the wind through the desert, a thoughtless and fruitless whim, if an eternal obivion always lurks hungrily for its prey and there is no power strong enough to wrest it from its clutches - how empty and devoid of consolation life would be!" -Soren Kierkegaard

Book Review: Dare We Hope "That All Men Be Saved"? With a Short Discourse on Hell, by Hans Urs Von Balthasar

This was a great book which helped me clarify my position on this important doctrine which directly bears on the issue of salvation, eschatology, and the Gospel itself. In this book the notable Catholic theologian Balthasar outlines his position on hell in which he takes issue with much of church tradition, especially Augustine, the Scholastics and Calvin. According to Balthasar their egregious error was their certainity that most or much of humanity was and is damned. How do they know this? Is this the unassailable conclusion received from the Scriptures?

Balthasar argued that it is not. Yes, the Scriptures speak about eternal damnation and Jesus himself gives grave warnings that damnation is a real threat that may befall individuals. It would be improper to try and explain away these passages in scripture with a universalistic picture in mind. Where Balthasar differs from most conservatives (both Protestant and Catholic) is that he also claims that it would be improper to explain away the universalistic texts with an Augustinian view of hell in mind. In the New Testament there are two series of texts which are irreconcilable in one large scale interpretative framework without using one set to undermine what the other is saying. Since the 'hell-fire' texts come more easily to mind to me (and probably many Christians) I will quote below some of the universalistic texts:

"God...desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and there is one Mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all." (1st Tim. 2:4)

"[Christ is] the Savior of all men, especially of those who believe." (1st Tim. 4:10)

"Now shall the ruler of this world be cast out; and I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself." (John 12:31)

"The grace of God has appeared for the salvation of all men." (Titus 2:11)

"God has consigned all men to disobedience, that he may have mercy upon all..." (Romans 11:32)

I could keep quoting but I think that I communicated the point. Throughout most of Church history this part of Scripture has either been ignored or interpreted through the lens of the 'hell-fire' passages so that they no longer have their true universalistic meaning applied to them. Since Augustine, the threats about hell hardened to actualities about the non-Christian other. An us vs. them mentality was spawned instead of a true Kingdom mentality. The tension between grace and judgment in Augustine (which goes back to Paul) was decided on the side of (punitive) 'judgment.' This tension in the writings of the Apostle Paul was abolished by Augustine and from him through the medieval era, through the Reformation and all the way down to many Christians today, the issue was decided.

The alternative view, embraced by Balthasar (and tentatively, me) is that a Christian can and should hope for the salvation of all, meaning the hope that God's grace reaches even the hardest of hearts in the end. Unlike universalists we do not state this hope as a certain fact. We live under judgment and we do not know. Neither can we state the Augustinian converse. It is not our place to judge but Christ's. The threat of hell is not spoken primarily about others but about me. It is placed to each individual reading Scripture or this blog entry. "...whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me." (Matt. 25:40)

Balthasar provides this quote from Josef Pieper at the end of his book Dare We Hope:

"In theological hope the 'antitithesis' between divine justice and divine mercy is, as it were, 'removed'- not so much 'theoretically' as existentiall: supernatural hope is man's appropriate, existential answer to the fact that these qualities in God, which to the creature appear contradictory, are actually identical. One who looks only at the justice of God is as little able to hope as is one who sees only the mercy of God. Both fall prey to hopelessness- one to the hopelessness of despair, the other to the hopelessness of presumption. Only hope is able to comprehend the reality of God that surpasses all antititheses, to know that his mercy is identical to his justice and his judtice with his mercy."

A Hell of a Problem: Part 1

I am realizing more now than ever before that my deepest doubts about Christianity revolve around the issue of Hell. It is especially the alleged eternal nature of the torment that is bothersome to me both emotionally and intellectually. As much as I disagree with atheists and the like I can’t bring myself to believe that they will be separated from all that is good for all eternity while experiencing unending torment.

I’ve had many email discussions with friends on this topic and have spoken with many Christians about it, but nothing has been resolved. It never came to a satisfying conclusion where I could honestly say to myself, “So that’s the answer.” So I am hoping against hope that I can resolve this on my blog. :)

Below are ten propositions on Hell from this blog: http://faith-theology.blogspot.com/2006/09/ten-propositions-on-hell.html

I’ll mull these over for the next few days and post my thoughts on them on Saturday.

1. What is hell? Hell cannot be known in and of itself. As a negative to a positive, hell can only be known as the antithesis of heaven. Heaven is life with God, hell is existence without God.

2. Or, again – because God is love – hell is lovelessness. At its centre, hell is not hot; hell (as Dante saw) is cold, ice-cold. Or if, with most of Christian tradition, hell be aflame, “Yet from those flames / No light, but rather darkness visible” (Milton, Paradise Lost, 1.62-63).

3. The opposite of love is not so much hatred as fear. The wilted tree of hatred has terror for its roots. Hell is the war of terror.

4. And hell is despair, utter despair. Dante again: “Abandon hope, all you who enter here.”

5. And hell is power, absolute power – potestas absoluta. “The devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendour; and he said to him, ‘All these things I will give you…’” (Matthew 4:8-9).

6. Heaven is communion, hell is isolation. Sartre was wrong: hell is not other people, hell is me, myself and I. Milton’s Satan: “Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell” (Paradise Lost, 4.75).

7. But more: “I can speak of hell only in relation to myself, precisely because I can never imagine the possible damnation of another as more likely that my own” (Hans Urs von Balthasar). Of one thing we can be sure about anyone who knows the population of hell: he himself will be in the census.

8. Hell is not about what God does, hell is about what we do, about the horrendous evils humans commit. We trivialise these evils and betray the world’s victims if we deny the reality of hell.

9. Yet hell is not a datum of faith in the creeds. “I believe in the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting” (Apostles’ Creed). “We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come” (Nicene Creed). We do not believe in hell.

10. Therefore while hell is real, we may pray and hope that hell will finally be empty. “This much is certain, that we have no theological right to set any sort of limits to the loving-kindness of God which has appeared in Jesus Christ.” Thus the church will not preach hell – “the gospel at gunpoint” – “it will preach the overwhelming power of grace and the weakness of human wickedness in face of it” (Karl Barth). “For the Lord will not reject for ever” (Lamentations 3:31).

The Conversion of John C. Wright

One of my newly favorite science fiction authors is a man by the name of John C. Wright. Wright was once an atheist but has converted to Christ through a combination of philosophical discovery and religious experience. His conversion story has profoundly touched me. Here it is:

“My conversion was in two parts: a natural part and a supernatural part.

Here is the natural part: first, over a period of two years my hatred toward Christianity eroded due to my philosophical inquiries.

Rest assured, I take the logical process of philosophy very seriously, and I am impatient with anyone who is not a rigorous and trained thinker. Reason is the tool men use to determine if their statements about reality are valid: there is no other. Those who do not or cannot reason are little better than slaves, because their lives are controlled by the ideas of other men, ideas they have not examined.

To my surprise and alarm, I found that, step by step, logic drove me to conclusions no modern philosophy shared, but only this ancient and (as I saw it then) corrupt and superstitious foolery called the Church. Each time I followed the argument fearlessly where it lead, it kept leading me, one remorseless rational step at a time, to a position the Church had been maintaining for more than a thousand years. That haunted me.

Second, I began to notice how shallow, either simply optimistic or simply pessimistic, other philosophies and views of life were.

The public conduct of my fellow atheists was so lacking in sobriety and gravity that I began to wonder why, if we atheists had a hammerlock on truth, so much of what we said was pointless or naive. I remember listening to a fellow atheist telling me how wonderful the world would be once religion was swept into the dustbin of history, and I realized the chap knew nothing about history. If atheism solved all human woe, then the Soviet Union would have been an empire of joy and dancing bunnies, instead of the land of corpses.

I would listen to my fellow atheists, and they would sound as innocent of any notion of what real human life was like as the Man from Mars who has never met human beings or even heard clear rumors of them. Then I would read something written by Christian men of letters, Tolkien, Lewis, or G.K. Chesterton, and see a solid understanding of the joys and woes of human life. They were mature men.

I would look at the rigorous logic of St. Thomas Aquinas, the complexity and thoroughness of his reasoning, and compare that to the scattered and mentally incoherent sentimentality of some poseur like Nietzsche or Sartre. I can tell the difference between a rigorous argument and shrill psychological flatulence. I can see the difference between a dwarf and a giant.

My wife is a Christian and is extraordinary patient, logical, and philosophical. For years I would challenge and condemn her beliefs, battering the structure of her conclusions with every argument, analogy, and evidence I could bring to bear. I am a very argumentative man, and I am as fell and subtle as a serpent in debate. All my arts failed against her. At last I was forced to conclude that, like non-Euclidian geometry, her world-view logically followed from its axioms (although the axioms were radically mystical, and I rejected them with contempt). Her persistence compared favorably to the behavior of my fellow atheists, most of whom cannot utter any argument more mentally alert than a silly ad Hominem attack. Once again, I saw that I was confronting a mature and serious world-view, not merely a tissue of fables and superstitions.

Third, a friend of mine asked me what evidence, if any, would be sufficient to convince me that the supernatural existed. This question stumped me. My philosophy at the time excluded the contemplation of the supernatural axiomatically: by definition (my definition) even the word "super-natural" was a contradiction in terms. Logic then said that, if my conclusions were definitional, they were circular. I was assuming the conclusion of the subject matter in dispute.
Now, my philosophy at the time was as rigorous and exact as 35 years of study could make it (I started philosophy when I was seven). This meant there was no point for reasonable doubt in the foundational structure of my axioms, definitions, and common notions. This meant that, logically, even if God existed, and manifested Himself to me, my philosophy would force me to reject the evidence of my senses, and dismiss any manifestations as a coincidence, hallucination, or dream. Under this hypothetical, my philosophy would force me to an exactly wrong conclusion due to structural errors of assumption.

A philosopher (and I mean a serious and manly philosopher, not a sophomoric boy) does not use philosophy to flinch away from truth or hide from it. A philosophy composed of structural false-to-facts assumptions is insupportable.

A philosopher goes where the truth leads, and has no patience with mere emotion.
But it was impossible, logically impossible, that I should ever believe in such nonsense as to believe in the supernatural. It would be a miracle to get me to believe in miracles.
So I prayed. "Dear God, I know (because I can prove it with the certainty that a geometer can prove opposite angles are equal) that you do not exist. Nonetheless, as a scholar, I am forced to entertain the hypothetical possibility that I am mistaken. So just in case I am mistaken, please reveal yourself to me in some fashion that will prove your case. If you do not answer, I can safely assume that either you do not care whether I believe in you, or that you have no power to produce evidence to persuade me. The former argues you not beneficent, the latter not omnipotent: in either case unworthy of worship. If you do not exist, this prayer is merely words in the air, and I lose nothing but a bit of my dignity. Thanking you in advance for your kind cooperation in this matter, John Wright."

I had a heart attack two days later. God obviously has a sense of humor as well as a sense of timing.

Now for the supernatural part.

My wife called someone from her Church, which is a denomination that practices healing through prayer. My wife read a passage from their writings, and the pain vanished. If this was a coincidence, then, by God, I could use more coincidences like that in my life.
Feeling fit, I nonetheless went to the hospital, so find out what had happened to me. The diagnosis was grave, and a quintuple bypass heart surgery was ordered. So I was in the hospital for a few days.

Those were the happiest days of my life. A sense of peace and confidence, a peace that passes all understanding, like a field of energy entered my body. I grew aware of a spiritual dimension of reality of which I had hitherto been unaware. It was like a man born blind suddenly receiving sight.

The Truth to which my lifetime as a philosopher had been devoted turned out to be a living thing. It turned and looked at me. Something from beyond the reach of time and space, more fundamental than reality, reached across the universe and broke into my soul and changed me. This was not a case of defense and prosecution laying out evidence for my reason to pick through: I was altered down to the root of my being.

It was like falling in love. If you have not been in love, I cannot explain it. If you have, you will raise a glass with me in toast.

Naturally, I was overjoyed. First, I discovered that the death sentence under which all life suffers no longer applied to me. The governor, so to speak, had phoned. Second, imagine how puffed up with pride you'd be to find out you were the son of Caesar, and all the empire would be yours. How much more, then, to find out you were the child of God?

I was also able to perform, for the first time in my life, the act which I had studied philosophy all my life to perform, which is, to put aside all fear of death. The Roman Stoics, whom I so admire, speak volumes about this philosophical fortitude. But their lessons could not teach me this virtue. The blessing of the Holy Spirit could and did impart it to me, as a gift. So the thing I've been seeking my whole life was now mine.

Then, just to make sure I was flooded with evidence, I received three visions like Scrooge being visited by three ghosts. I was not drugged or semiconscious, I was perfectly alert and in my right wits.

It was not a dream. I have had dreams every night of my life. I know what a dream is. It was not a hallucination. I know someone who suffers from hallucinations, and I know the signs. Those signs were not present here.

Then, just to make even more sure that I was flooded with overwhelming evidence, I had a religious experience. This is separate from the visions, and took place several days after my release from the hospital, when my health was moderately well. I was not taking any pain-killers, by the way, because I found that prayer could banish pain in moments.

During this experience, I became aware of the origin of all thought, the underlying oneness of the universe, the nature of time: the paradox of determinism and free will was resolved for me. I saw and experienced part of the workings of a mind infinitely superior to mine, a mind able to count every atom in the universe, filled with paternal love and jovial good humor. The cosmos created by the thought of this mind was as intricate as a symphony, with themes and reflections repeating themselves forward and backward through time: prophecy is the awareness that a current theme is the foreshadowing of the same theme destined to emerge with greater clarity later. A prophet is one who is in tune, so to speak, with the music of the cosmos.

The illusionary nature of pain, and the logical impossibility of death, were part of the things I was shown.

Now, as far as these experiences go, they are not unique. They are not even unusual. More people have had religious experiences than have seen the far side of the moon. Dogmas disagree, but mystics are strangely (I am tempted to say mystically) in agreement.

The things I was shown have echoes both in pagan and Christian tradition, both Eastern and Western (although, with apologies to my pagan friends, I see that Christianity is the clearest expression of these themes, and also has a logical and ethical character other religions expressions lack).

Further, the world view implied by taking this vision seriously (1) gives supernatural sanction to conclusions only painfully reached by logic (2) supports and justifies a mature rather than simplistic world-view (3) fits in with the majority traditions not merely of the West, but also, in a limited way, with the East.

As a side issue, the solution of various philosophical conundrums, like the problem of the one and the many, mind-body duality, determinism and indeterminism, and so on, is an added benefit. If you are familiar with such things, I follow the panentheist idealism of Bishop Berkeley; and, no, Mr. Johnson does not refute him merely by kicking a stone.

From that time to this, I have had prayers answered and seen miracles: each individually could be explained away as a coincidence by a skeptic, but not taken as a whole. From that time to this, I continue to be aware of the Holy Spirit within me, like feeling a heartbeat. It is a primary impression coming not through the medium of the senses: an intuitive axiom, like the knowledge of one's own self-being.

This, then, is the final answer to your question: it would not be rational for me to doubt something of which I am aware on a primary and fundamental level.

Occam's razor cuts out hallucination or dream as a likely explanation for my experiences. In order to fit these experiences into an atheist framework, I would have to resort to endless ad hoc explanations: this lacks the elegance of geometers and parsimony of philosophers.

I would also have to assume all the great thinkers of history were fools. While I was perfectly content to support this belief back in my atheist days, this is a flattering conceit difficult to maintain seriously.

On a pragmatic level, I am somewhat more useful to my fellow man than before, and certainly more charitable. If it is a daydream, why wake me up? My neighbors will not thank you if I stop believing in the mystical brotherhood of man.

Besides, the atheist non-god is not going to send me to non-hell for my lapse of non-faith if it should turn out that I am mistaken.”

Posted by John C. Wright on Catholic Answers Forums on Wednesday November 23, 2005 at 11:21 AM. Reprinted with permission.