The concept of substitution is nearly universal in human religious thinking. This is strikingly true in the religions mentioned in the Bible.
But it shows up in other religions as well. Let's deal with them first.
In tribal religions some animal, plant, or celestial object is venerated as the source of a tribe's existence. For northwest Indian cultures this may be made visible in a totem pole that shows the tribe's source of life and well-being. The raven, the salmon, the bear are some of the objects thought to bring life to a tribe. In a special ceremony one Northwest Indian tribe eats the totem representing the life of the tribe: the salmon, whose offspring come to provide life for the tribe in the annual fish migration.
In the polytheistic religions of some advanced civilizations this concept is even more pronounced. In either case, the gods demand something from us. Why?
Because the higher powers, however conceived, are not happy with us.
We do not please them properly. Or perhaps, in the case of Greek and Roman mythology, they are just taking out their anger on us. In Greek lore Agamemnon sacrifices his daughter, Iphigenia, to the goddess Artemis, to procure favorable winds on his journey to do battle at Troy. The Aztecs sacrificed living humans, often by the thousands, to the gods in order to set things right. The Canaanites offered their first-born into the fiery mouth of Molech. The Carthaginians, and many other ancient peoples had something similar.
Even in eastern religions, such as Hinduism, the gods are demanding, putting humans through their paces in order to liberate souls from this illusory world of pain and suffering.
The monotheistic religions also assume that there is something out of joint. The relation of humans to the divine is seriously flawed. And this must be fixed if we are to reach fulfillment. But the monotheistic religions advanced the idea of substitution: that a person could be saved from a well-deserved damnation by obedience that required a substitutionary sacrifice. In Crete evidence has been found of ancient human sacrifice in a temple. A youth appears to have been bound up ready for the ritual knife that would spill his blood to appease the gods. An earthquake entombed the scene until recent excavations.
Even secular people, though a tiny minority among the world’s billions, have a sense that some acts are worthy of some sort of punishment, even death. Offenders must pay for their sins by being locked away from society and denied their liberty or even by being executed. No matter how one looks at it, every normal human knows there is a gap between what ought to be and what is. And this gap must be addressed in some fashion.
This shows up in the Bible, too. Abraham is asked to sacrifice his son, Isaac. (The Quran claims it was Ishmael, Abraham’s other son and the ancestor of the Arabs.) But an angel stays Abraham’s hand and a ram is substituted instead. God was satisfied with Abraham’s willingness to give what he most treasured—his son—to atone for his sin and prove his fidelity to God.
In Christianity this all comes to an unusual culmination. Rather than demanding the life of sinful human beings, God comes into human life to sacrifice himself for humans who deserve death. Jesus is the incarnation of God. Having no sins that need remediation, his willing substitution for humans is enough to set things right with a holy God. All who put their trust in this remedy have no marks held against them and are granted entrance into the presence of God. Since God has done the work of atonement humans need not fear rejection should their efforts to appease the gods be found wanting. Salvation is a gift of God’s grace, not the result of our own efforts to please the gods or buy them off.
In conclusion, let us note that in any view of the world it is admitted that something is amiss or wrong. The world is not as it should be. And we are the ones who make the mess. How to fix it? Secularists say it cannot be fixed, only ameliorated to some degree by education and improving human nature. Most religions say it is up to us to impress the divine powers through something we do in the hopes that it is enough to secure our eternal happiness. Christian theism says it is completely accomplished by the action of the One offended, who takes upon himself our rebellion, our failure (sin), and who offers us assurance of eternal life in His presence as a gift. This gift, once truly received, changes the believer so much that his or her highest desire is to live in joyful obedience to God.
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Does a free society need God?
Here is an article by Dennis Prager from the Washington Times, Weekly Edition, of August 25, 2008. Give a critique, using concepts learned in the course.
Monday, March 9, 2009
Do we have freewill?
Jonathan Edwards took a walk in the woods, looking for spiders, when he tripped over a question. It’s a question many of us have encountered.
If God has ordained everything from before the foundation of the world, how can my choices make any difference? If a name is either written in the Book of Life or not written there long before that name was given to a newborn boy or girl, how can he or she be held accountable for not making it?
The conundrum has been around along time—how to reconcile the freewill of man and the sovereign will of God.
Those of us who stand in the Reformed tradition know some powerful minds that wrestled with this—Augustine and Jonathan Edwards among them.
In what follows I do not pretend to untie the Gordian knot but merely to suggest that a lot has changed in our understanding of the world since these giants engaged the subject. I believe this new understanding requires a paradigm shift that may send us in a new direction as we seek to answer this question often posed by new believers.
To do this we must back up and search for some tools that can help us talk about this. In my dissertation on freedom of the will I found that Edwards was classified as a soft determinist. Let me explain what that means before I argue that his view, though brilliant for his time, needs revision.
Return now to the woods near Northampton, Massachusetts.
Story I: The dilemma
Edwards does not see any spiders this morning. But he does see a young man approaching along the footpath.
“Good morning, Mr. Edwards! I hope you do not mind my interrupting you, but I watched you walking about here in our hills for some hours now and was afraid you might be distraught over something that burdens you regarding the church situation.”
“Oh. Good morning, Christopher. No, not at all. Ever since my jottings about the habits of the spider, done when I was but a boy of 12, I come often to meditate and to praise the Creator of these wonders here in the woods—quite forgetting the passage of time! I am quite well, actually, just caught up in the glories of our God!”
“ I am glad of it! But if you don’t mind, Sir, I have been waiting to pose a question for you.”
“Yes—speak on and I will answer as best I can.”
“If God is the cause of all things and truly knows the future actions of all men, how can he hold me accountable for my choices? Has he given us freewill or no?”
“An excellent question, my lad. I will attempt to give you insight as God helps me.”
At this juncture Edwards goes on to make several salient points.
Foundational are these: First, God is sovereign over all of creation and has pre-ordained all that comes to pass. Second, God knows everything that has occurred and ever will occur in the universe he has created. This means that a person who chooses to do X could never have done Y in its stead. This is known as determinism.
Edwards continues on to derive from these first principles the only concept of freewill that accomplishes the two things needed in a Reformed theory of human life. The first is that everything is pre-ordained, even in the minutia of each human life. The second is that God justly holds us accountable for actions that have moral elements.
By the first, Edwards comes under the category of determinism as we have said. Whatever happens is completely determined by its causes. Given the fact that Cain was angry with Abel and that opportunity presented itself in the field, his killing his brother was the only act that could have come to pass. That is determinism. Whatever happens is the only thing that could happen because the causes make it happen.
But Edwards is a soft determinist. That means he must provide a basis for moral accountability. Even though Cain’s act was determined, Cain is still morally responsible for it and can justly be punished for it.
At this point, Chris cannot keep silent. “But he couldn’t help it! How can God punish him if he couldn’t have dropped the rock or just walked away or done some alternative act? He had to do it. God foreknew it. God fore-ordained it!”
Edwards explains that as long as Cain wanted to do what he did, he is accountable and can be punished. It was his act, after all. If Satan had come along and moved Cain’s hand against Cain’s wishes so that he killed Abel, then it would not be Cain’s fault because it would not be Cain’s act. But since the act flowed out of Cain’s heart—it was something he wanted to do—he is accountable.
We sin because we want to. It flows out of our own nature. Sure, our nature is perverted. But our wills express what is in our hearts. Our actions are our actions.
“But that doesn’t seem to agree with my experience,” objects Chris. “Many times I sense that I can as easily put this pebble into my pocket as throw it down to the ground. I can do either one. It’s up to me, isn’t it?” says he, tossing it in the air.
“Yes,” replies Edwards, “it seems so. But many things are not as they seem to the casual observer. For example, the sun seems to set, but since the work of Copernicus we know that it does not. So also it seems that we can do X as easily as Y. But that does not make sense in moral situations.
“For example, if Cain could have stayed his hand, despite the rage in his heart, how do we explain that he killed Abel? If his inclinations could have gone either way, then it seems there is no reason why Cain killed him rather than not—a capricious act. But how can God, or anyone, blame someone for a capricious act that has no definable cause? We cannot say ‘because Cain chose to do it.’ We need to know why Cain chose to do it instead of doing some other act. Only then could we hold him accountable. If either X or Y could come about with the causes being exactly the same, then we have no basis for blaming Cain for what he did. We blame Cain because the causes foaming in his sinful heart necessitated his brutal murdering of his brother.”
“I suppose you are right, Sir, but it seems strange nonetheless, to my way of thinking.”
“That may be,” replies Edwards, “but God knew Cain would murder Abel long before creation began. And Cain is justly accountable for what he did, even though it was all determined ahead of time according to the way the Grand Scheme was designed to play out.”
Analysis
Let’s stop here and evaluate Edwards’ response to Chris.
Do you think Edwards gave a satisfactory answer? Unsatisfactory?
I will argue for unsatisfactory on the following grounds.
In doing so I do not fault Edwards for his answer. I think he did the best he could with what he had to work with. And I don’t mean his intellectual firepower. Edwards is arguably still the most brilliant mind America has produced. I refer to the reigning paradigm of the Newtonian era. Edwards, as all intellectuals in the European tradition, was imbued with the new conception of the world so brilliantly conceived by Isaac Newton a generation earlier.
Newton conceived nature as working according to fixed scientific laws—gravitation, thermodynamics, entropy, etc. It’s pretty much what Donald McKay said in his Inter-Varsity Press booklet, Clockwork Image. God made the clock, set the clock, and watches the clock. It’s a paradigm of celestial mechanics.
But since Einstein and Heisenberg, a new paradigm has informed our understanding of nature and hence of ourselves as created beings within nature. Being a pastor and philosopher (as Edwards was) I am no expert in science and will not pretend to make more than suggestions to be taken forward by others with more knowledge than I have.
Story II: A Way Out of the Dilemma
I was walking in my forest in Vermont not long ago and saw a man coming along the skid road. In our conversation, after I told him I was a philosophy professor, he asked if I had any knowledge of Jonathan Edwards.
“Actually I do, having written a dissertation that included some of his ideas.”
“Great!” he replied. “You see, one of my great-great-etc-grandfathers knew Edwards when he was minister in Northampton. Since then some of us have wandered north, and we now live in Vermont.”
“You’re kidding! One of your ancestors knew Edwards?” asks I. “That’s fantastic!”
“Yes, it is. And we have this story written by one Christopher about his questions concerning freewill that Edwards answered one day when they met out in the woods. But none of us have been any more satisfied with it than Christopher was in 1738.”
He recounted the episode I related to you earlier. He wondered if anything had come to light in the last several centuries that might be a more satisfactory answer to the freewill conundrum.
“Actually there is,” I replied. “If you have a some time, let’s go up to the cabin where we can sit on the glider with some iced tea and I’ll tell you what I think Edwards might say now.”
So we sat down to swing, iced tea in hand, while enjoying the dappled sunlit foliage.
“Edwards did the best one could, given the thought forms of the era,” I began. “You see, in the days of Newtonian physics, brilliant at the time, the universe was thought of in mostly mechanical terms—potential and kinetic energy, the laws of the conservation of energy, and all that sort of thing. Edwards tried to explain human action using that paradigm. But now we have had a paradigm shift, one that I find a bit baffling, to be honest with you. But since most physicists accept it, I think we can use it. And it provides new ways of thinking about freewill.
“What in particular?” asked Chris.
“For example,” I replied, “Einstein says that time is relative to the observer. If one could move fast enough, time would stand still. I have no clue what that would be like. But maybe it can explain how God, if he is faster than the speed of light, can see what we do as we do it, even though we, in the tunnel of slow time, are not even there yet to do it!”
“Oh. Wow!” said Chris XII, “that’s a cool way to think about it!”
“Yes. And Heisenberg said that the principle of indeterminacy allows some events that would seem strange to Newton. For instance, you cannot measure both the velocity and the location of a particle at the same time. Now Newton never had any idea of these particles—these gluons and bosons and morons—whatever they are. Anti-matter. String theory. The world God has created has a lot of things that don’t fit a mechanical model at all.”
“OK, but go on. How does this relate to Cain killing Abel and all that?”
“Well,” said I, “the human self may not be just another piece of the clockwork.
“A human self, like God, does not exhaust itself when doing an act. The person may be able to select among the causal influences present in a given situation and bring about any one of several outcomes. For persons, there may be a degree of indeterminacy. Maybe Cain could have walked away. He had a choice. He chose to shape the influences within him in a certain way, and so he killed his brother. He may have been able to shape those same influences in another way had he chosen to do so. That does not mean his act is capricious or unexplainable. A self is a super-causal agent, unlike a stick of dynamite where everything is predictable in Newtonian terms.
“Our moral accountability is grounded in this special capacity that we have as persons made in the image of God.”
“Would you also apply this idea to God?” asked Chris. “He is a person, too….”
“Good question!
Perhaps we can assume God also had real options; he did not have to create this world because of some inner necessity. Do you agree?”
“Seems logical,” replied Chris.
“God has super-capacities. When God touched off the Big Bang, God did not exhaust all his potential into kinetic energy as happens when dynamite explodes. So we, made in his image, have the same super-capacity on a smaller scale. When we choose to do something, we do not have to expend all our potential any more than God does. This is called super-abundant causal agency.”
“Does this mean that God is morally accountable for choosing to touch off the Big Bang and everything that would follow from it?” asked Chris.
“I don’t know about that—although it does seem reasonable, remembering that God would only be accountable to Himself,” I replied. “But it certainly applies to us.”
“Thus we are held accountable for what we choose to do because we are not necessitated by causes that are beyond our shaping. Within the parameters of our finiteness we have real open-ended choices. God sees us doing those actions that are future to us because he is outside of time and is already there to see what we will have chosen. Just as he saw what Cain would freely choose to do.
“Maybe this is an aspect where God’s thoughts are higher than our thoughts, as Edwards surely admitted. We know that Edwards revered the mysteries of God—mysteries not because they are absurd but because they are infinite. And if he had lived today, might he have answered differently than he did then? I am suggesting that there are categories beyond soft determinism and indeterminism that open to us new ways of thinking even within our Reformed tradition. Maybe the new paradigm can help us in other debates between Calvinists and Arminians.”
“Well, that is something to ponder,” he said, sucking on the last ice cube in his tumbler of tea. “I consider myself in the Reformed wing of Christian theology, as were my forebears. It’s nice to have a new window to look through. Maybe it illustrates what another of our fathers-in-the-faith said: “There is yet more light to break forth from God’s Word.”
“Keep me in your prayers, Chris,” I asked, shaking his hand. “I plan to say something along this line to our Congregational brethren at an upcoming conference. Maybe I can start a dialog that will help us as we try answer these perennial questions.”
“Sure thing,” he replied. “And thanks for the iced tea!”
If God has ordained everything from before the foundation of the world, how can my choices make any difference? If a name is either written in the Book of Life or not written there long before that name was given to a newborn boy or girl, how can he or she be held accountable for not making it?
The conundrum has been around along time—how to reconcile the freewill of man and the sovereign will of God.
Those of us who stand in the Reformed tradition know some powerful minds that wrestled with this—Augustine and Jonathan Edwards among them.
In what follows I do not pretend to untie the Gordian knot but merely to suggest that a lot has changed in our understanding of the world since these giants engaged the subject. I believe this new understanding requires a paradigm shift that may send us in a new direction as we seek to answer this question often posed by new believers.
To do this we must back up and search for some tools that can help us talk about this. In my dissertation on freedom of the will I found that Edwards was classified as a soft determinist. Let me explain what that means before I argue that his view, though brilliant for his time, needs revision.
Return now to the woods near Northampton, Massachusetts.
Story I: The dilemma
Edwards does not see any spiders this morning. But he does see a young man approaching along the footpath.
“Good morning, Mr. Edwards! I hope you do not mind my interrupting you, but I watched you walking about here in our hills for some hours now and was afraid you might be distraught over something that burdens you regarding the church situation.”
“Oh. Good morning, Christopher. No, not at all. Ever since my jottings about the habits of the spider, done when I was but a boy of 12, I come often to meditate and to praise the Creator of these wonders here in the woods—quite forgetting the passage of time! I am quite well, actually, just caught up in the glories of our God!”
“ I am glad of it! But if you don’t mind, Sir, I have been waiting to pose a question for you.”
“Yes—speak on and I will answer as best I can.”
“If God is the cause of all things and truly knows the future actions of all men, how can he hold me accountable for my choices? Has he given us freewill or no?”
“An excellent question, my lad. I will attempt to give you insight as God helps me.”
At this juncture Edwards goes on to make several salient points.
Foundational are these: First, God is sovereign over all of creation and has pre-ordained all that comes to pass. Second, God knows everything that has occurred and ever will occur in the universe he has created. This means that a person who chooses to do X could never have done Y in its stead. This is known as determinism.
Edwards continues on to derive from these first principles the only concept of freewill that accomplishes the two things needed in a Reformed theory of human life. The first is that everything is pre-ordained, even in the minutia of each human life. The second is that God justly holds us accountable for actions that have moral elements.
By the first, Edwards comes under the category of determinism as we have said. Whatever happens is completely determined by its causes. Given the fact that Cain was angry with Abel and that opportunity presented itself in the field, his killing his brother was the only act that could have come to pass. That is determinism. Whatever happens is the only thing that could happen because the causes make it happen.
But Edwards is a soft determinist. That means he must provide a basis for moral accountability. Even though Cain’s act was determined, Cain is still morally responsible for it and can justly be punished for it.
At this point, Chris cannot keep silent. “But he couldn’t help it! How can God punish him if he couldn’t have dropped the rock or just walked away or done some alternative act? He had to do it. God foreknew it. God fore-ordained it!”
Edwards explains that as long as Cain wanted to do what he did, he is accountable and can be punished. It was his act, after all. If Satan had come along and moved Cain’s hand against Cain’s wishes so that he killed Abel, then it would not be Cain’s fault because it would not be Cain’s act. But since the act flowed out of Cain’s heart—it was something he wanted to do—he is accountable.
We sin because we want to. It flows out of our own nature. Sure, our nature is perverted. But our wills express what is in our hearts. Our actions are our actions.
“But that doesn’t seem to agree with my experience,” objects Chris. “Many times I sense that I can as easily put this pebble into my pocket as throw it down to the ground. I can do either one. It’s up to me, isn’t it?” says he, tossing it in the air.
“Yes,” replies Edwards, “it seems so. But many things are not as they seem to the casual observer. For example, the sun seems to set, but since the work of Copernicus we know that it does not. So also it seems that we can do X as easily as Y. But that does not make sense in moral situations.
“For example, if Cain could have stayed his hand, despite the rage in his heart, how do we explain that he killed Abel? If his inclinations could have gone either way, then it seems there is no reason why Cain killed him rather than not—a capricious act. But how can God, or anyone, blame someone for a capricious act that has no definable cause? We cannot say ‘because Cain chose to do it.’ We need to know why Cain chose to do it instead of doing some other act. Only then could we hold him accountable. If either X or Y could come about with the causes being exactly the same, then we have no basis for blaming Cain for what he did. We blame Cain because the causes foaming in his sinful heart necessitated his brutal murdering of his brother.”
“I suppose you are right, Sir, but it seems strange nonetheless, to my way of thinking.”
“That may be,” replies Edwards, “but God knew Cain would murder Abel long before creation began. And Cain is justly accountable for what he did, even though it was all determined ahead of time according to the way the Grand Scheme was designed to play out.”
Analysis
Let’s stop here and evaluate Edwards’ response to Chris.
Do you think Edwards gave a satisfactory answer? Unsatisfactory?
I will argue for unsatisfactory on the following grounds.
In doing so I do not fault Edwards for his answer. I think he did the best he could with what he had to work with. And I don’t mean his intellectual firepower. Edwards is arguably still the most brilliant mind America has produced. I refer to the reigning paradigm of the Newtonian era. Edwards, as all intellectuals in the European tradition, was imbued with the new conception of the world so brilliantly conceived by Isaac Newton a generation earlier.
Newton conceived nature as working according to fixed scientific laws—gravitation, thermodynamics, entropy, etc. It’s pretty much what Donald McKay said in his Inter-Varsity Press booklet, Clockwork Image. God made the clock, set the clock, and watches the clock. It’s a paradigm of celestial mechanics.
But since Einstein and Heisenberg, a new paradigm has informed our understanding of nature and hence of ourselves as created beings within nature. Being a pastor and philosopher (as Edwards was) I am no expert in science and will not pretend to make more than suggestions to be taken forward by others with more knowledge than I have.
Story II: A Way Out of the Dilemma
I was walking in my forest in Vermont not long ago and saw a man coming along the skid road. In our conversation, after I told him I was a philosophy professor, he asked if I had any knowledge of Jonathan Edwards.
“Actually I do, having written a dissertation that included some of his ideas.”
“Great!” he replied. “You see, one of my great-great-etc-grandfathers knew Edwards when he was minister in Northampton. Since then some of us have wandered north, and we now live in Vermont.”
“You’re kidding! One of your ancestors knew Edwards?” asks I. “That’s fantastic!”
“Yes, it is. And we have this story written by one Christopher about his questions concerning freewill that Edwards answered one day when they met out in the woods. But none of us have been any more satisfied with it than Christopher was in 1738.”
He recounted the episode I related to you earlier. He wondered if anything had come to light in the last several centuries that might be a more satisfactory answer to the freewill conundrum.
“Actually there is,” I replied. “If you have a some time, let’s go up to the cabin where we can sit on the glider with some iced tea and I’ll tell you what I think Edwards might say now.”
So we sat down to swing, iced tea in hand, while enjoying the dappled sunlit foliage.
“Edwards did the best one could, given the thought forms of the era,” I began. “You see, in the days of Newtonian physics, brilliant at the time, the universe was thought of in mostly mechanical terms—potential and kinetic energy, the laws of the conservation of energy, and all that sort of thing. Edwards tried to explain human action using that paradigm. But now we have had a paradigm shift, one that I find a bit baffling, to be honest with you. But since most physicists accept it, I think we can use it. And it provides new ways of thinking about freewill.
“What in particular?” asked Chris.
“For example,” I replied, “Einstein says that time is relative to the observer. If one could move fast enough, time would stand still. I have no clue what that would be like. But maybe it can explain how God, if he is faster than the speed of light, can see what we do as we do it, even though we, in the tunnel of slow time, are not even there yet to do it!”
“Oh. Wow!” said Chris XII, “that’s a cool way to think about it!”
“Yes. And Heisenberg said that the principle of indeterminacy allows some events that would seem strange to Newton. For instance, you cannot measure both the velocity and the location of a particle at the same time. Now Newton never had any idea of these particles—these gluons and bosons and morons—whatever they are. Anti-matter. String theory. The world God has created has a lot of things that don’t fit a mechanical model at all.”
“OK, but go on. How does this relate to Cain killing Abel and all that?”
“Well,” said I, “the human self may not be just another piece of the clockwork.
“A human self, like God, does not exhaust itself when doing an act. The person may be able to select among the causal influences present in a given situation and bring about any one of several outcomes. For persons, there may be a degree of indeterminacy. Maybe Cain could have walked away. He had a choice. He chose to shape the influences within him in a certain way, and so he killed his brother. He may have been able to shape those same influences in another way had he chosen to do so. That does not mean his act is capricious or unexplainable. A self is a super-causal agent, unlike a stick of dynamite where everything is predictable in Newtonian terms.
“Our moral accountability is grounded in this special capacity that we have as persons made in the image of God.”
“Would you also apply this idea to God?” asked Chris. “He is a person, too….”
“Good question!
Perhaps we can assume God also had real options; he did not have to create this world because of some inner necessity. Do you agree?”
“Seems logical,” replied Chris.
“God has super-capacities. When God touched off the Big Bang, God did not exhaust all his potential into kinetic energy as happens when dynamite explodes. So we, made in his image, have the same super-capacity on a smaller scale. When we choose to do something, we do not have to expend all our potential any more than God does. This is called super-abundant causal agency.”
“Does this mean that God is morally accountable for choosing to touch off the Big Bang and everything that would follow from it?” asked Chris.
“I don’t know about that—although it does seem reasonable, remembering that God would only be accountable to Himself,” I replied. “But it certainly applies to us.”
“Thus we are held accountable for what we choose to do because we are not necessitated by causes that are beyond our shaping. Within the parameters of our finiteness we have real open-ended choices. God sees us doing those actions that are future to us because he is outside of time and is already there to see what we will have chosen. Just as he saw what Cain would freely choose to do.
“Maybe this is an aspect where God’s thoughts are higher than our thoughts, as Edwards surely admitted. We know that Edwards revered the mysteries of God—mysteries not because they are absurd but because they are infinite. And if he had lived today, might he have answered differently than he did then? I am suggesting that there are categories beyond soft determinism and indeterminism that open to us new ways of thinking even within our Reformed tradition. Maybe the new paradigm can help us in other debates between Calvinists and Arminians.”
“Well, that is something to ponder,” he said, sucking on the last ice cube in his tumbler of tea. “I consider myself in the Reformed wing of Christian theology, as were my forebears. It’s nice to have a new window to look through. Maybe it illustrates what another of our fathers-in-the-faith said: “There is yet more light to break forth from God’s Word.”
“Keep me in your prayers, Chris,” I asked, shaking his hand. “I plan to say something along this line to our Congregational brethren at an upcoming conference. Maybe I can start a dialog that will help us as we try answer these perennial questions.”
“Sure thing,” he replied. “And thanks for the iced tea!”
Saturday, October 13, 2007
For the Lovelorn
This is Dr. Gus, erstwhile successor to King Solomon’s wisdom, as in the slicing of the disputed infant in halves. I enter with some confidence into the realm of advice for the LOVE-LORN—namely yourself, I presume.
It is unfortunate that you have yet to bag the love of your life. But before tragedy and gloom o’ertake you, let me offer a ray of hope.
Having had some success in this matter (some would say phenomenal success), I venture to suggest to you a course of ACTION, which perchance may prove to be efficacious in your case, as it was in mine many blissful years ago.
Naturally, I realize that times have changed. (What a silly expression, since the essence of time is change anyway.) Nevertheless I propose to you that, as the French put it, “plus sa change, plus la meme chose!”
To the beginning then—always the best place to start.
In my youth, there was never any question in my mind (where all questions begin) that I would perforce find a wife, marry, and have a family of my own. A half-century ago few questioned the common template for life, expressed in song long since vanished from the charts: “first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes Mary with a baby carriage.”
As a graduate-to-be from the oldest prep school in North America (1645), I was on track to go to Harvard as most of the school's graduates have done for over three centuries. However, an older graduate and friend from the Swedish Congregational Church we grew up in (our church was located in Boston but the denomination has ties to North Park College in Chicago and all that) had chosen to go to Wheaton College to prepare for a career in diplomatic service. He came home for Christmas in his senior year with a “daughter true” of the Orange and Blue—his intended. Immediately I decided that I intended to go there and try my luck fishing in the pool of beautiful women who love Jesus.
And the rest—as they say—is history. Yes, I found such a one for myself. As far as I am concerned, history works every time it is tried.
Today—alas and alack—times have indeed changed. Young men in college seem to think that marriage and family is in the hazy future. Perhaps you want a companion to bring to a campus event or to sew a button or the like. But these guys are not serious shoppers as were we in our college days.
So the lovely ladies see the finish line approaching where they will say fond goodbyes to the halls of ivy and the clinging vines thereof and move on—ALONE—into a cheerless future. The bloom of their youth has attracted no bees willing to make honey with them and thus secure the future of the species.
What to do….?
My considered advice is that you (should the situation described heretofore be yours) search for the soul mate on the Internet. E-harmony.com will do the trick for you.
Case in point.
Recently a good friend was dumped by his wife of 8 years after many months of tough sledding and heartbreak. Within weeks of the divorce decree he had found a Christian divorcee (with two children, to boot), conducted a whirlwind romance (cutting to the bottom line with dispatch), and is now married and living happily ever after.
Final word: Go and do thou likewise!
A word to the wise is sufficient.
My sincerest best wishes for your future,
Dr. Gus
It is unfortunate that you have yet to bag the love of your life. But before tragedy and gloom o’ertake you, let me offer a ray of hope.
Having had some success in this matter (some would say phenomenal success), I venture to suggest to you a course of ACTION, which perchance may prove to be efficacious in your case, as it was in mine many blissful years ago.
Naturally, I realize that times have changed. (What a silly expression, since the essence of time is change anyway.) Nevertheless I propose to you that, as the French put it, “plus sa change, plus la meme chose!”
To the beginning then—always the best place to start.
In my youth, there was never any question in my mind (where all questions begin) that I would perforce find a wife, marry, and have a family of my own. A half-century ago few questioned the common template for life, expressed in song long since vanished from the charts: “first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes Mary with a baby carriage.”
As a graduate-to-be from the oldest prep school in North America (1645), I was on track to go to Harvard as most of the school's graduates have done for over three centuries. However, an older graduate and friend from the Swedish Congregational Church we grew up in (our church was located in Boston but the denomination has ties to North Park College in Chicago and all that) had chosen to go to Wheaton College to prepare for a career in diplomatic service. He came home for Christmas in his senior year with a “daughter true” of the Orange and Blue—his intended. Immediately I decided that I intended to go there and try my luck fishing in the pool of beautiful women who love Jesus.
And the rest—as they say—is history. Yes, I found such a one for myself. As far as I am concerned, history works every time it is tried.
Today—alas and alack—times have indeed changed. Young men in college seem to think that marriage and family is in the hazy future. Perhaps you want a companion to bring to a campus event or to sew a button or the like. But these guys are not serious shoppers as were we in our college days.
So the lovely ladies see the finish line approaching where they will say fond goodbyes to the halls of ivy and the clinging vines thereof and move on—ALONE—into a cheerless future. The bloom of their youth has attracted no bees willing to make honey with them and thus secure the future of the species.
What to do….?
My considered advice is that you (should the situation described heretofore be yours) search for the soul mate on the Internet. E-harmony.com will do the trick for you.
Case in point.
Recently a good friend was dumped by his wife of 8 years after many months of tough sledding and heartbreak. Within weeks of the divorce decree he had found a Christian divorcee (with two children, to boot), conducted a whirlwind romance (cutting to the bottom line with dispatch), and is now married and living happily ever after.
Final word: Go and do thou likewise!
A word to the wise is sufficient.
My sincerest best wishes for your future,
Dr. Gus
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Lectures on Humanism #1 Emerging from Tribalism
Lectures on Humanism
James W. Gustafson, PhD
I want to center these lectures on humanism on the autobiography of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, "Infidel", published in 2007 by Free Press.
I find her story both fascinating and compelling. Fascinating because in a single lifetime she has recapitulated the historical development of humanity from ignorant tribalism to sophisticated enlightenment humanism. Compelling, because her story puts a vivid face on the implications of various worldviews. Negatively it shows the repression of the human mind and spirit by unenlightened dogmatism. Positively it shows how the human spirit can flourish when blessed by the light of reason guiding the warmth of selfless love.
Ali grew up in Somalia in a tribal setting that Europeans began to outgrow over a thousand years ago. Her worldview centered on the interaction of clans, fostering feelings of "us" versus "them." One tribe is superior to another, or inferior as the case may be, due to ancestry and their place in the pecking order of society. Its values centered on honor—everyone must act in ways that preserve the honor of the clan. Since tribalism is usually male-dominated, this meant that women and girls had no life they could call their own.
There may be tribal societies that are matriarchal. But Somali tribalism is embedded in the Islamic worldview, where women are subservient to males. A wife or daughter must be protected by her husband, her father, her brother, or a male relative within the clan, no matter how distant the relationship may be.
One of the values of tribalism is a sense that one belongs. There is a strong organic connection. As Somalis relate their ancestry back ten or more generations, they find a connection that makes them cousins and therefore qualified for care and protection. This is a significant benefit when disaster or displacement uproots someone. If they can find a clan connection, one is taken care of. It’s matter of honor.
On the other hand, such Islamic women must stay at home unless accompanied by a male. Daughters are expected to marry a person selected by the father, though some refuse. To go off on one’s own, especially into non-Islamic relations, is to disgrace the family and the clan.
Since Islam is fixated on sexual sins, Somali clans blame females for lustful responses in males. Thus women must cover their skin and not even look men in the eye as this can inflame desire. This also explains the common African practice of excision of female genitals. Females are thought to be wanton and unable to control their sexuality. By cutting off either the clitoris or in some cases the entire gentalia, then sewing up what remains into a kind of tissue-based chastity belt, husbands can have proof a bride is a virgin.
Ali and her sister and cousins, in fact all Somali girls, suffered this mutilation and were supposed to be proud of it as an honored tribal custom. When the adolescent Ali asked an ma’alim (teacher of the Koran) why men didn’t have to cover up since they can arouse passion in females, she was basically told to shut up and not challenge Islamic dogma.
This is standard for tribal cultures. And religions often take a long time to emerge from the cocoon of dogmatism, wriggling out into the light of reason. Judaism and Christianity began to become self-analytical millennia ago and its mainstream branches are comfortable with self-criticism. This is due to the influence of Greek philosophy as it is has influenced European thought since the renaissance. But this is not yet true for Islam. Islam is still in a tribal stage of development in that it accepts its worldview and Koranic dogma without question. In fact, it is usually antagonistic to any challenge to the truth of its claims.
In tribal cultures, questioners simply are told: It’s the ancient way of our ancestors. Dogmatic religions likewise appeal to authority. “God punishes those who doubt and who persist in asking skeptical questions.”
Now while this still persists at some level in Christianity and Judaism, scholars in these traditions have largely come to examine the foundations of their respective worldviews in term of rational criteria. Is the Bible the Word of God? Did the events foundational to faith (such the Exodus of the Hebrews from Egypt or the life, teaching, and resurrection of Jesus actually take place? What is fact and what is fiction? What is coherent and what is incoherent? These are questions getting major attention in religions that have evolved beyond tribalism and dogmatism. But Islamic tribalism has not yet attained to this level of maturity.
When Ali found herself in Europe in the 1990s, she found herself in a world beyond her comprehension. She was shocked by it; she was enthralled by it.
People In Holland, where she applied for asylum as a refugee from the bloodshed going on in Somalia, were helpful to her. She was not of their clan. She was not of their religion. There was no tribal precedent for their treating other than as dirt—such as she had encountered in Kenya and Saudi Arabia where her family had briefly been located. The tribal mindset had no explanation for this in its worldview.
Ali was later to understand that this came from the influence of enlightenment ideas and the example and teaching of Jesus Christ. All people were created by God and should liove one another, even enemies. She found that police were not enemies out to hurt you if you did not give bribes. She was given housing, food, and even cash pocket money while she awaited her interviews. Government workers were solicitous of her feelings and showed genuine concern for her as an individual. When she dared to wear western clothes, showing her neck, arms and ankles, no one took notice. Men did not ogle her and pounce upon her with uncontrollable lust as she expected from her religious training and from the way unprotected girls were treated in Somalian culture.
Ali did not know it at the time, but she was enjoying the benefits of humanism. What humanism is and where it came from will the subject of our next lecture.
James W. Gustafson, PhD
I want to center these lectures on humanism on the autobiography of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, "Infidel", published in 2007 by Free Press.
I find her story both fascinating and compelling. Fascinating because in a single lifetime she has recapitulated the historical development of humanity from ignorant tribalism to sophisticated enlightenment humanism. Compelling, because her story puts a vivid face on the implications of various worldviews. Negatively it shows the repression of the human mind and spirit by unenlightened dogmatism. Positively it shows how the human spirit can flourish when blessed by the light of reason guiding the warmth of selfless love.
Ali grew up in Somalia in a tribal setting that Europeans began to outgrow over a thousand years ago. Her worldview centered on the interaction of clans, fostering feelings of "us" versus "them." One tribe is superior to another, or inferior as the case may be, due to ancestry and their place in the pecking order of society. Its values centered on honor—everyone must act in ways that preserve the honor of the clan. Since tribalism is usually male-dominated, this meant that women and girls had no life they could call their own.
There may be tribal societies that are matriarchal. But Somali tribalism is embedded in the Islamic worldview, where women are subservient to males. A wife or daughter must be protected by her husband, her father, her brother, or a male relative within the clan, no matter how distant the relationship may be.
One of the values of tribalism is a sense that one belongs. There is a strong organic connection. As Somalis relate their ancestry back ten or more generations, they find a connection that makes them cousins and therefore qualified for care and protection. This is a significant benefit when disaster or displacement uproots someone. If they can find a clan connection, one is taken care of. It’s matter of honor.
On the other hand, such Islamic women must stay at home unless accompanied by a male. Daughters are expected to marry a person selected by the father, though some refuse. To go off on one’s own, especially into non-Islamic relations, is to disgrace the family and the clan.
Since Islam is fixated on sexual sins, Somali clans blame females for lustful responses in males. Thus women must cover their skin and not even look men in the eye as this can inflame desire. This also explains the common African practice of excision of female genitals. Females are thought to be wanton and unable to control their sexuality. By cutting off either the clitoris or in some cases the entire gentalia, then sewing up what remains into a kind of tissue-based chastity belt, husbands can have proof a bride is a virgin.
Ali and her sister and cousins, in fact all Somali girls, suffered this mutilation and were supposed to be proud of it as an honored tribal custom. When the adolescent Ali asked an ma’alim (teacher of the Koran) why men didn’t have to cover up since they can arouse passion in females, she was basically told to shut up and not challenge Islamic dogma.
This is standard for tribal cultures. And religions often take a long time to emerge from the cocoon of dogmatism, wriggling out into the light of reason. Judaism and Christianity began to become self-analytical millennia ago and its mainstream branches are comfortable with self-criticism. This is due to the influence of Greek philosophy as it is has influenced European thought since the renaissance. But this is not yet true for Islam. Islam is still in a tribal stage of development in that it accepts its worldview and Koranic dogma without question. In fact, it is usually antagonistic to any challenge to the truth of its claims.
In tribal cultures, questioners simply are told: It’s the ancient way of our ancestors. Dogmatic religions likewise appeal to authority. “God punishes those who doubt and who persist in asking skeptical questions.”
Now while this still persists at some level in Christianity and Judaism, scholars in these traditions have largely come to examine the foundations of their respective worldviews in term of rational criteria. Is the Bible the Word of God? Did the events foundational to faith (such the Exodus of the Hebrews from Egypt or the life, teaching, and resurrection of Jesus actually take place? What is fact and what is fiction? What is coherent and what is incoherent? These are questions getting major attention in religions that have evolved beyond tribalism and dogmatism. But Islamic tribalism has not yet attained to this level of maturity.
When Ali found herself in Europe in the 1990s, she found herself in a world beyond her comprehension. She was shocked by it; she was enthralled by it.
People In Holland, where she applied for asylum as a refugee from the bloodshed going on in Somalia, were helpful to her. She was not of their clan. She was not of their religion. There was no tribal precedent for their treating other than as dirt—such as she had encountered in Kenya and Saudi Arabia where her family had briefly been located. The tribal mindset had no explanation for this in its worldview.
Ali was later to understand that this came from the influence of enlightenment ideas and the example and teaching of Jesus Christ. All people were created by God and should liove one another, even enemies. She found that police were not enemies out to hurt you if you did not give bribes. She was given housing, food, and even cash pocket money while she awaited her interviews. Government workers were solicitous of her feelings and showed genuine concern for her as an individual. When she dared to wear western clothes, showing her neck, arms and ankles, no one took notice. Men did not ogle her and pounce upon her with uncontrollable lust as she expected from her religious training and from the way unprotected girls were treated in Somalian culture.
Ali did not know it at the time, but she was enjoying the benefits of humanism. What humanism is and where it came from will the subject of our next lecture.
Friday, March 2, 2007
Friday, December 1, 2006
Madrassah Mentality in the West
Madrassah Mentality in the West
OK, I agree with you.
This title is a stretch.
We all know what madrassahs are: religious schools that teach the Koran, the whole Koran and nothing but the Koran to young boys in Islamic countries. I am aware that madrassah education includes broader Islamic studies also. But I am referring to those schools in some Islamic nations that are in the news lately that have a narrow focus. The shame of it is that these schools often indoctrinate a fervent hatred of people of other faiths, notably the Jews. There is no broader context given out that would provide an understanding of Islam, how and why it arose and it’s history as a religion with blemishes. Many madrassahs are indoctrination centers that are not far removed from brainwashing.
What concerns me is trend I have observed with my own ears over the last few decades in our enlightened Western societies.
Not too many decades ago we used to pride ourselves on knowing how to conduct heated but respectful debates on hot topics such as science, religion and politics. It was the model of the old debate teams colleges (and even high schools) used to promote. You would marshal facts on your side and on your opponent’s side, mount razor-sharp criticisms of where the facts would lead us, and make your presentation. If you were successful, your opponents would go down in flames and have to revise their position. If not, you would have to more homework on your side. But that is how progress was made in the search for truth. Every one in the process respected and even honored their opponents because the idea was to gain knowledge and your opponents played a valuable role. I still admire and hold to this model.
What dismays me now is this. The former gentlemanly quest for more light and truth has shifted to a grab for power and control of the hearts, minds, and wills of people—all done in a crassly ungentlemanly fashion.
Postmodern sentiments have reduced the search for truth and knowledge to an irrational ploy for power and control. Since there is, they say, no truth to be discovered, the goal now is to annihilate your opponents so that you and your party can be in control.
The result is an increasing vilification of one’s opponents. Instead of them needing enlightenment by finding a more rational understanding of things, opponents are now evil people trying to oppress others. The goodwill is gone. Respect for opposing views is often submerged in heated rhetoric that demonizes all opposition.
I see this in articles readily found on the Internet where opposing viewpoints are attacked, not assuming the good intentions of the other party, but assuming the opposition is sinister, backward, under-handed, and malevolent.
Someone said that people used to criticize Christianity (to take favorite target of many) as being untrue. If truth is considered to be a non-existent construct of the human imagination, Christianity must now be attacked as being evil. The tone of condescension and even at times hatred is disturbing to me. Are we on the way to a madrassification of discourse?
Perhaps not. The drift of postmodern non-rational thinking is leading many of the younger generation to ask, “Who is to say what is good or what is evil?” Not only is there no truth to be discovered, there is no good to be concerned about. Good is merely a private definition of what you desire.
So the question now is this: "What will enable you to fulfill your dreams?
What are possible candidates for my “dreams?”
For one it may be to make money and live a life of happy consumerism.
For another it may be to make a difference for posterity by saving the rain forests or fighting the oppression of women in Africa or Afghanistan.
For another it be tuning in to some spiritual experience and living non-violently.
For others it may be taking over the world’s governments to achieve some utopian vision.
Now it is obvious to me that some of these dreams are going to prove mutually exclusive. For example the dream of some versions of Islam is to bring every nation under the rule of Islamic law, either by political takeover or by military conquest. For Christianity the dream is to give every person an opportunity to hear about Jesus and to have the freedom to embrace that way of life or to reject it. Obviously these two dreams are irreconcilable. One removes individual freedom of choice and the other promotes it.
The consumer dream (more stuff and playthings) and the environmental dream (simpler living) are also probably on a collision course given present resources.
Eventually some dream is going to dominate when the current western liberal dream of free people living within societies structured along democratic ideals collapses. It is not hard to see how that collapse could take place in this century.
My concern about madrassah mentality highlights a trend that I think could help bring down western liberal civilization. For me, that would be a dream transformed into a nightmare.
OK, I agree with you.
This title is a stretch.
We all know what madrassahs are: religious schools that teach the Koran, the whole Koran and nothing but the Koran to young boys in Islamic countries. I am aware that madrassah education includes broader Islamic studies also. But I am referring to those schools in some Islamic nations that are in the news lately that have a narrow focus. The shame of it is that these schools often indoctrinate a fervent hatred of people of other faiths, notably the Jews. There is no broader context given out that would provide an understanding of Islam, how and why it arose and it’s history as a religion with blemishes. Many madrassahs are indoctrination centers that are not far removed from brainwashing.
What concerns me is trend I have observed with my own ears over the last few decades in our enlightened Western societies.
Not too many decades ago we used to pride ourselves on knowing how to conduct heated but respectful debates on hot topics such as science, religion and politics. It was the model of the old debate teams colleges (and even high schools) used to promote. You would marshal facts on your side and on your opponent’s side, mount razor-sharp criticisms of where the facts would lead us, and make your presentation. If you were successful, your opponents would go down in flames and have to revise their position. If not, you would have to more homework on your side. But that is how progress was made in the search for truth. Every one in the process respected and even honored their opponents because the idea was to gain knowledge and your opponents played a valuable role. I still admire and hold to this model.
What dismays me now is this. The former gentlemanly quest for more light and truth has shifted to a grab for power and control of the hearts, minds, and wills of people—all done in a crassly ungentlemanly fashion.
Postmodern sentiments have reduced the search for truth and knowledge to an irrational ploy for power and control. Since there is, they say, no truth to be discovered, the goal now is to annihilate your opponents so that you and your party can be in control.
The result is an increasing vilification of one’s opponents. Instead of them needing enlightenment by finding a more rational understanding of things, opponents are now evil people trying to oppress others. The goodwill is gone. Respect for opposing views is often submerged in heated rhetoric that demonizes all opposition.
I see this in articles readily found on the Internet where opposing viewpoints are attacked, not assuming the good intentions of the other party, but assuming the opposition is sinister, backward, under-handed, and malevolent.
Someone said that people used to criticize Christianity (to take favorite target of many) as being untrue. If truth is considered to be a non-existent construct of the human imagination, Christianity must now be attacked as being evil. The tone of condescension and even at times hatred is disturbing to me. Are we on the way to a madrassification of discourse?
Perhaps not. The drift of postmodern non-rational thinking is leading many of the younger generation to ask, “Who is to say what is good or what is evil?” Not only is there no truth to be discovered, there is no good to be concerned about. Good is merely a private definition of what you desire.
So the question now is this: "What will enable you to fulfill your dreams?
What are possible candidates for my “dreams?”
For one it may be to make money and live a life of happy consumerism.
For another it may be to make a difference for posterity by saving the rain forests or fighting the oppression of women in Africa or Afghanistan.
For another it be tuning in to some spiritual experience and living non-violently.
For others it may be taking over the world’s governments to achieve some utopian vision.
Now it is obvious to me that some of these dreams are going to prove mutually exclusive. For example the dream of some versions of Islam is to bring every nation under the rule of Islamic law, either by political takeover or by military conquest. For Christianity the dream is to give every person an opportunity to hear about Jesus and to have the freedom to embrace that way of life or to reject it. Obviously these two dreams are irreconcilable. One removes individual freedom of choice and the other promotes it.
The consumer dream (more stuff and playthings) and the environmental dream (simpler living) are also probably on a collision course given present resources.
Eventually some dream is going to dominate when the current western liberal dream of free people living within societies structured along democratic ideals collapses. It is not hard to see how that collapse could take place in this century.
My concern about madrassah mentality highlights a trend that I think could help bring down western liberal civilization. For me, that would be a dream transformed into a nightmare.
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