keep the faith

One of my seminary professors had a true story that he would tell in order to illustrate the false humility of postmodern relativism. While he was a professor at a state university, he had a student who was an evangelical Christian. One Sunday, this student was visiting a liberal church in the downtown area of a big city. The pastor, who had embraced relativism with enthusiasm, was preaching a sermon that began with the statement “all religious beliefs are true,” and it went downhill from there. Minute by minute, the preacher told the congregation that all faiths were equally valid and that salvation was available to all, no matter what his or her belief system was. The student who was visiting the church could not take such nonsense and got up to leave as the pastor was bringing his sermon to a conclusion. As the student was leaving, the pastor called out to him. Desiring to use the young man to illustrate his point, he asked the student what his religious beliefs were. The student turned and said “Sir, I believe you are preaching another gospel, and that you are in danger of going to hell.” Needless to say, the pastor was incensed at the student and began mocking and berating him. So much for all religious beliefs being equally valid.

I cannot tell you how many times I have heard “It does not matter what you believe, as long as you believe it.” “All paths lead to salvation.” “No one who is sincere will be left out of the kingdom.” The pastor in the above story clearly held this view, and it is the prevailing sentiment in American culture. It is yet another example of the postmodern emphasis on the relativity of truth. All sincere beliefs are true, no matter if they contradict the beliefs of another.

These ideas are promoted in the guise of tolerance: “We cannot judge another person.” “We must accept anything another person believes.” “We cannot tell them they might be wrong because to do so would be intolerant.”

But it is laughable to suggest that these ideas are tolerant. As the story above demonstrates, all religious beliefs are tolerated, as long as they do not claim any exclusivity for themselves. As soon as someone holds to a religious belief that claims exclusivity, that person’s belief is no longer accepted. The moment someone claims truth or universality for their belief system, that person loses all credibility in our culture.

When people say “it does not matter what you believe, as long as you believe it,” they are displaying false humility. They do not really hold to this statement. They certainly do not accept it in “non-religious” settings. No one lives their life consistently believing that the only thing that matters is sincerity. If they did, they would encourage others to drink poison if those others sincerely believed it was not poison. They would tell others to go ahead and run red lights if those others sincerely believed a red light meant go. They would not make fun of scientists who held to intelligent design as opposed to Darwinian theory if it really did not matter what a person believes.

No, to say “it does not matter what you believe, as long as you believe it,” applies only to religious matters. But as we have seen, even that idea applies only to certain religious beliefs. Tolerance only goes so far.

This statement is the height of arrogance. Mankind will do whatever it can to avoid the claims of an exclusive God. They will ignore the logic they use in “non-religious” areas of life and attempt to violate the law of non-contradiction by assuming that the contradictory beliefs of Christians, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs, atheists, et al. are all mutually compatible. But when they denounce the exclusive claims of Christianity for the sake of tolerance, they embrace the law of noncontradiction in order to uphold their real allegiance to the god of religious relativism. For them it is exclusively true that all religious beliefs are true. If this were not so, they would not hate us for claiming otherwise.

It is easy to see how the god of religious relativism permeates the secular culture. For example, we often hear the claim that Islam is a religion of peace, while judges who claim that there exists a universal natural law by which all societies should be governed are immediately held suspect. Less readily apparent, however, is that the god of religious relativism is making inroads into the church. Since Vatican II, some Roman Catholics teach that sincere belief is adequate to get into heaven. Even some “evangelical” churches are filled with people who think unbelievers who have not heard of Christ will be going to heaven.

Our age is filled with those who would try to downplay the laws of reason. We encounter people everyday who live their religious lives as if the law of noncontradiction does not matter. But the God of Scripture is an exclusive God; there is none other beside Him. And Jesus is the only way to Him (John 14:6). But when the culture embraces postmodern relativism, these claims are set aside. And if the church does the same, she too will deny her Lord.

- Robert Rothwell, Intolerable Tolerance

In this postmodern culture we have witnessed a fascinating revival of ancient Gnosticism. The Gnostics of antiquity were called by that name because they asserted that they had a superior type of knowledge that surpassed the insights found even in the apostles of the New Testament. They maintained that the insights of the apostles were limited by the natural limitations suffered by human beings tied to rationality. True knowledge, according to these heretics, was found not through reason or sense perception, but through a highly developed mystical intuition. In like manner, in this postmodern world we’ve seen a wide spread rejection of rationality. This rejection of rationality has infiltrated the church with a vengeance. We see frequent attempts to remove the Christian faith from all considerations of rationality. It is being argued today that biblical revelation is only intelligible by intuition or by a particularly sensitive poetic imagination. This carries with it the idea that biblical revelation is unintelligible through reason. 

For good cause, the church in recent centuries has had to reject rationalism in its many faceted forms. There is no monolithic philosophy of rationalism; rather, rationalism wears various faces. On the one hand, we think of rationalism as distinct from empiricism with respect to how we come to know what we know. Second, Enlightenment rationalism contrasts reason not with sense perception but with revelation, arguing that revelation is unreasonable and the only truth that can be known is that which can be known by natural reason. The third and most complex form of rationalism is Hegelian rationalism, which defines reason with a capital R, and reality is the unfolding in space and time of ultimate reason. None of these philosophies represents historic Christianity. Christianity is not based on rationalism. However, the rejection of rationalism in the modern church often carries with it the rejection of rationality. This rejection is itself irrational. When we reject humanism, we don’t reject being human. If we reject existentialism, we don’t reject existence. So, if we reject an “ism” attached to reason, it does not mean that we are to reject reason itself. 

Any discussion of faith and reason has to ask the question, “What is faith?” The biblical answer, according to the author of Hebrews, is that faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen (11:1). The author goes on to say that by faith we understand that the world was formed by the Word of God. The first thing we notice in this assertion is that faith is something that is substantial, not ephemeral. Secondly, faith represents a type of evidence. It is the evidence of the unseen. At the heart of the concept of New Testament faith is the idea of trust, namely, that faith involves placing one’s trust in something. In this regard all human creatures are subject to depending at one point or another on faith. I am not an expert in medicine, so I must give a certain trust to the diagnoses offered to me by experts in the field. That trust may be provisional until I find that it is not based in substance or evidence. But in the meantime, to trust what we do not see is not necessarily a matter of being irrational. Without reason, the content of biblical faith would be unintelligible and meaningless. So we say that biblical faith is not the same as reason, but that faith is rational and reasonable. The first assertion that faith is rational means that faith is intelligible. It is not absurd or illogical. If biblical revelation were absurd and irrational, it would be utterly unintelligible and meaningless. The content of the Bible cannot pierce the soul of a sentient creature without first going through the mind. It was Augustine who declared that faith without evidence is credulity. At this point we understand that though faith is rational, it is also reasonable. Biblical faith does not call people to crucify their intellect or take irrational leaps of faith into the darkness with the hope that Christ will catch us. Rather we are called to leap out of the darkness and into the light. 

When the Scriptures say that faith is the evidence of things not seen, what are we to understand that to mean? The example given is that by faith we understand the world was formed by the Word of God. None of us was an eyewitness of the action of God in creation. Yet we trust that the universe has come into being by the act of God’s divine work of creation because we have come on reasonable grounds to believe that God’s Word is trustworthy. Because we are convinced that God’s Word is trustworthy and that that conviction is a reasonable conviction, we can trust God’s Word even for those things that we cannot see. John Calvin also argued the point that true faith is not believing against evidence. Rather, true faith involves trusting in the evidence that God has amply provided in and through His Word. That faith is not without what Calvin called evidences; rather, it is a faith that surrenders to or acquiesces to the evidences. 

We must be on our guard and vigilant at every moment against the intrusion of irrationality coming from existential philosophy, neo-orthodox theology, and the resurgence of mysticism set forth in neo-Gnosticism. What is at stake is the coherence and intelligibility of God’s divine work.  

- R.C. Sproul, Faith and Reason

I was thinking about this issue of the problem of evil. I’ve read a number of books on it. I’ve done a whole teaching on suffering, evil and the goodness of God. I wrote an article called Sophie’s Dilemma which we’ll have in our journal coming out in July called Clear Thinking . We had Doug Geivett on four weeks ago, who has written a whole book on the problem of evil and we talked about the ins and outs of the issue.

I was thinking more about this the other day. I often try to think through some of these issues to see if there is a shortcut to the solution that won’t undermine the argument, that won’t rip the guts out of it.

When we talked to Dr. Geivett, he spelled out the classical objection to the problem of evil, the most damaging objection, potentially, to Christianity. That objection is this: there is something inconsistent in what Christians believe about the nature of the world and the nature of God. In other words, the Christian belief is contradictory. As Dr. Geivett pointed out, having an argument that is contradictory is the worst thing that could happen to you, because it means your view is false. Period. So if it can be shown that the Christian view is contradictory then at least at that point the Christian world view is false.

Here’s how the objection is usually stated: If God were all good, as you say, He would want to deal with the problem of evil. And if God were all powerful, as you say, then He would be able to deal with the problem of evil. Obviously, evil exists, therefore He is either not all good or He is not all powerful, or maybe He is neither. In any case, the presence of evil in the world disproves the Christian view of God.

See how that argument works? It is called a defeater. This observation of an apparent contradiction defeats the Christian’s view of God.

Now of course if the argument is sound, then Christianity has been defeated. I think that is fair to say. I don’t think the argument is sound, though. And we’ve talked in different ways about how Augustine has argued and C.S. Lewis has argued and others have unfolded this particular argument and for some it might have been complex. Well, I’m going to give you a short cut, because what Doug Geivett said really stuck in my mind. In his response Dr. Geivett questioned both of the premises. His question was, “What makes you think that taking away evil in the world has anything to do with God’s strength?”

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Steve often witnesses to his coworkers. But when he mentions something directly from the Bible, someone frequently responds: “Wait! That was written by men, and it’s full or errors just like any other book.” The following letter to the editor in our local newspaper expresses a similar thought: “Believers cite that the Word of God is infallible, but I see no apparent reason to believe that the words written in the Bible by man are any more infallible than the words written in a science journal by man.” How do we respond when the Scriptures are so readily dismissed as being just man’s words with errors? Most of us aren’t biblical scholars and may not have an answer. But if we do some reading (2 Tim. 2:15), we’ll find the evidence that it’s God-inspired (3:16) and therefore trustworthy. For example, consider this: Over a period of 1,600 years, 40 different authors wrote the 66 books of the Bible there were 400 silent years between the 39 books of the Old Testament and the 27 of the New Testament. Yet, Genesis to Revelation tell one unified story. While we accept the Bible by faith, there’s plenty of evidence that it’s true. Let’s be diligent to study and share what we learn with others.

- Anne Cetas, Truth or Error? 

In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus caused a stir when He forgave the sins of a paralytic.  As the scribes noted, forgiving sins was God’s privilege, not man’s.  Further, how could anyone know if Jesus was telling the truth?  It’s easy to make claims about an invisible realm that can’t be tested.

Jesus understood this, so He gave the people some tangible evidence.  He said, “‘In order that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins’—He said to the paralytic—‘I say to you, rise, take up your pallet and go home.’” (Mk. 2:10-11) 

This supernatural healing was an historical event, what Jesus’ biographers called an “attesting miracle.”  Jesus gave them something they could see in the physical realm to substantiate a claim He was making about something they couldn’t see in the spiritual realm.  History proved religion.  Facts substantiated faith.

The historical record in the Hebrew Bible serves the same purpose.  The great redemptive act in the history of the Jews was their escape from slavery in Egypt.  In the writings of Moses we find an historical record of the events leading up to this exodus. 

If we could show that these events took place largely as described in this account—that ten plagues culminating in the death of the firstborn of Ramses II shook the foundation of the greatest nation on earth at the time, and that the Hebrews then escaped across the Red Sea with the Egyptian army destroyed in its wake—wouldn’t it be fair to say this history has “religious” significance.

The record itself claims as much.  In Exodus 9:14 we find this statement:  “For this time I will send all My plagues on you and your servants and your people, so that you may know that there is no one like Me in all the earth.” Once again, a series of observable, historical events (plagues) were meant to verify unobservable, spiritual truths.

There’s a reason the Bible is a record of history and not merely a list of religious beliefs.  God has tied religious claims—which can’t easily be tested—to historical events—which can be verified to a significant degree. 

By their very nature the events of the Bible have ramifications for transcendent truth.  If Jesus rose from the dead as a point of historical fact, intellectual honesty requires we not dismiss it as an interesting but meaningless fact of history.  Instead, we are forced to concede with the apostle Paul that Jesus of Nazareth was “declared the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead.”

Archaeology—along with recorded history, science, philosophy, etc.—gives our faith a real purchase point, a secure footing.  We are not just guessing; we’re not making this up; we’re not merely emoting.  The truths of history and the truths of Christianity are linked together, both part of the real world.

- Gregory Koukl, History & the Bible

The old atheists maintained that belief in God is not true. The new atheists maintain that belief in God is not good. The atheists’ problem, though, is that however much they attack belief in God, their own worldview lacks all appeal. They get hung up on the last remaining absolute: Atheism is not beautiful. It is so depressing .

If there is no God and this physical realm is all there is, life is pretty much pointless. A person might believe such a bleak worldview, but no one is going to like it. The old atheists, to their great credit, usually faced up to the implications of their disbelief. Walter Berns, writing in The Weekly Standard (February 4, 2008), sums up the worldview of Albert Camus, as expressed in his novel The Stranger :

Meursault, its hero (actually, its antihero), is a murderer, but a different kind of murderer. What is different about him is that he murdered for no reason — he did it because the sun got in his eyes, à cause du solei — and because he neither loves nor hates, and unlike the other people who inhabit his world, does not pretend to love or hate. …As he said, the universe “is benignly indifferent” to how he lives. It is a bleak picture, and Camus was criticized for painting it, but as he wrote in reply, “there is no other life possible for a man deprived of God, and all men are [now] in that position.

But although Camus may have aniticipated the mindless, non-reflective godlessness of our culture, his world-view has little to commend it. By his own admission, throwing out God also throws out meaning, joy, and everything that makes life worth living.

Enter Philip Pullman, the British author of children’s stories. Out of his hatred for C. S. Lewis’ “Chronicles of Narnia,” Pullman resolved to write a fantasy series that would do for atheism what Lewis’ fantasy series did for Christianity. Thus was born the trilogy “His Dark Materials.”

The first volume, The Golden Compass, was recently made into a movie, which, despite its elaborate and expensive special effects, bombed at the box office, illustrating what he is up against. But the trilogy is enormously popular, especially among teenagers and young adults, having sold some fifteen million copies.

The story has to do with multiple worlds, marvelous adventures, and an epic conflict between good and evil. Except that, in line with the new atheism, God is the evil one and Satan is the good guy.

Pullman, as in the old Gnostic texts, portrays God the creator as a cruel, tyrannical “Authority”; Satan is the liberator; and Adam and Eve were right to eat the forbidden fruit. In Pullman’s fantasy, the church, headed by Pope John Calvin, is all about black-robed clerics sneaking around establishing inquisitions and spoiling everyone’s fun.

The books, though, are imaginatively stimulating. The fantasy is exciting, well-written, and pleasurable. And, as with other fantasies, the story is idealistic and even inspiring.

Here, in a quote from the second volume of the trilogy, The Subtle Knife, is how Pullman portrays the virtue of Satan’s rebellion and of the cosmic struggle against the Authority:

There are two great powers…and they’ve been fighting since time began. Every advance in human life, every scrap of knowledge and wisdom and decency we have has been torn by one side from the teeth of the other. Every little increase in human freedom has been fought over ferociously between those who want us to know more and be wiser and stronger, and those who want us to obey and be humble and submit.

The prose evokes a stirring heroism — again, like traditional fantasies — but the enemy of knowledge, wisdom, and decency in this anti-Narnia is God and His evil minions in the church!

The central image of the Pullman books is the “dark materials,” a term taken from Milton, whose Paradise Lost the author turns upside down. This “dust” is the stuff of love and consciousness. In fact, it turns out that everything is made out of this dust, which is the essence of both spiritual and physical existence. This is true even of the Authority, who turns out to be just another physical being, an old, senile relic who dissolves back into dust once he is dragged into the light.

This is nothing more than classic materialism, of course, which insists that matter is all there is, so that everything that exists is made out of particular tiny bits of matter called atoms. Pullman glorifies and mystifies this “dust.” How wonderful it is to have evolved into so many wonderful things! And when we die, we go back to dust. As Pullman puts it in the last volume, The Amber Spyglass, when people die “all the atoms that were them, they’ve gone into the air and the wind and the trees and the earth and all the living things. They’ll never vanish. They’re just part of everything. And that’s exactly what’ll happen to you.”

Pullman mystifies materialism and turns atheism into an actual religion. In doing so, however, he does what the old atheists have always falsely accused believers of doing: indulging in irrational wish-fulfillment and constructing an escapist fantasy.  

- Gene Edward Veith, Making Atheism Enchanting

I think the attacks on the resurrection of Jesus are always troubling because they strike at the very heart of our faith. The Apostle Paul said, “If the resurrection isn’t true, then our faith is futile because we’re still in our sins” (Cf. 1 Corinthians 15:17). The resurrection is the lynchpin of our faith. One theologian said, “Christianity without the resurrection is not Christianity without its final chapter; it’s not Christianity at all.”

Everything depends on Jesus rising from the dead. Anyone can claim to be the unique Son of God, but Jesus proved it by conquering the grave. So whenever there are attacks on the physical resurrection of Jesus, we have to take them seriously and provide adequate and thoughtful responses to demonstrate once more that the historical case for Jesus returning from the dead is powerful, persuasive and cogent. As an atheist I found the evidence convincing that Jesus did indeed return from the dead, thus proving that He is the Son of God.

- Lee Strobel

Recent scientific discoveries have once again demonstrated the glory of God in the heavens. Perhaps the greatest example of this is the discovery of the fine-tuning of the universe. The consequences of this are phenomenal — either one believes that we are incredibly “lucky” or that someone designed our designed universe, or, if you are really desperate to avoid God, you invent the “multiverse theory,” which speculates, without any empirical evidence, that the universe is one of billions of universes that just happens to provide the fine-tuning for life.

Finally, I would point out that it is the philosophy of scientism rather than the practice of science that is the problem. The philosophy of scientism, that only the material exists, is anti-Christian and, ironically, it is also anti-scientific because it is not an empirically provable scientific theory. The Bible is not a scientific textbook and it would be foolish to look for things to prove in the Bible from science (as though the Bible were subject to our current limited understanding). But the presuppositions and teachings of the Bible are, as we would expect them to be, completely compatible with the practice and knowledge of science.

- David Robertson, “Science” vs. Science

Far from science having buried God, not only do the results of science point towards his existence, but the scientific enterprise is validated by his existence. Inevitably, of course, not only those of us who do science, but all of us, have to choose the presupposition with which we start. There are not many options — essentially just two. Either human intelligence ultimately owes its origin to mindless matter; or there is a Creator. It is strange that some people claim that it is their intelligence that leads them to prefer the first to the second.

- John Lennox, God’s Undertaker: Has Science Buried God?