And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us (John 1:14a)
On the scale of crazy, this claim is tops. There’s no doubt that the Gospels trade in the extraordinary throughout Jesus’s earthly ministry. Walking on water, multiplying fishes and loaves, and even raising folks from the dead are all incredible, amazing and miraculous. We’d all be mystified and compelled to worship if we witnessed any of these events. However, the original Christmas events, when we stop to reflect on them, are on a whole different level. Consider this: the transcendent, all-powerful and self-existent one, the creator of all reality, the one who literally holds all things into being was born human in a common manger!!
The idea of the incarnation is so big and seems almost paradoxical that it makes us pause and consider whether or not it is even a coherent thought. Is it even logically possible that God becomes man? Though the notion is difficult and merits some serious reflection, the short answer is yes, or so it seems to me. To be sure, this idea is as big as it gets, and when we try to grasp all that is involved in the incarnation of Christ, we all too quickly hit the limits of our ability to understand. But being unfathomable is not the same as being logically inconsistent. And there are no obvious contradictions in the idea.
I won’t here say a lot about the doctrine of the incarnation. My purpose rather is, in this holiday season, to challenge us to consider both the bigness and the attractiveness of this idea.
A claim such as this is, to be sure, a major stumbling block for the “secular” person. The person I have in mind is the one who thinks that the physical universe, as discoverable by science, is all there is. On this view, God and the supernatural are mere holdovers from a prescientific, more superstitious time and, today, we should know better. This worldview is known as Naturalism. The naturalist in view here believes that there is nothing beyond the natural world. This view is nicely summarized by Carl Sagan who said, “The Cosmos is all that is or was or ever will be.” The idea there is a supernatural (or perhaps supra-natural) God is already ruled out from the start. So this view is, in a way, automatically atheistic. Thus, the idea of miracle, any miracle, sounds to secular ears like a fairytale or a myth.
Now so far, this really isn’t an objection to the miraculous. To assume naturalism, have an ultra-high view of science, and then say that Christian theism is therefore false or a fairy tale is not an argument or a true objection. The naturalist would need to say why naturalism best explains the world as we find it. The problem is that there are a variety of features of the world that go unexplained on the thesis of naturalism. These include the universe itself (how did nature come to be?), the fine tuning of the universe (if there is nothing beyond the cosmos, then the way the universe works is nothing more than extraordinary good fortune), moral facts (human value, meaning and purpose), human consciousness (this seems to involve far more than physical brain states), and even things like emotion. The naturalist can tell me what my typical brain chemistry is like when I’m experiencing overwhelming love for, say, my wife and children. However, this does not seem to even be close to what it is to be deeply in love with another. It seems to many of us that our rich human experiences are prime counterexamples to the naturalist worldview. If one takes naturalism seriously, all we have recourse to in describing our emotions are neural firings and brain chemistry. How do you write a compelling love song or poem about that? I wouldn’t try that at home!
Thus, the world of Carl Sagan is not a world any of us should wish for. It is an ugly world. It is a world without purpose, moral goodness, and genuine love. The only goods in this world are natural ones and these amount to fleeting pleasures.
But a world that includes the virgin birth of Jesus Christ, the God-man, the incarnation of God, is an enchanted world. It’s a world with purpose and meaning. It’s a world where caring for someone means something beyond the warm fuzzy it produces. It’s a world where fighting the good fight has eternal significance and is not done merely as a matter of the survival of our species. It’s world that offers genuine hope.
Ultimately, love itself is an otherworldly value. And here’s the thing as we move into this Christmas season. Love was born in a manger. It was out of love for you that God took on flesh. For God so loved you(!) along with the rest of the world, to the extent that he gave his one and only son. This is big. It’s appears virtually incomprehensible but it is so very good.
Let’s be clear, I’m not here providing arguments for these claims. That’s a much longer conversation and one I would love to be a part of. I’m simply pointing out the attractiveness of these claims.
Given the bigness of all this, I don’t blame a person for doubting. I know I have along the way. But I believe it. In fact, I believe every single aspect of the Christmas story as presented in the Gospels, and I think I do so for good reasons. How can I believe that there was a large star in the East, Jesus was born to a virgin, there were a multitude of angels, groups of wise men, shepherds, and so on? How can I believe this in our contemporary age? It is because, on the basis of a variety of compelling evidence, I believe in a supernatural and all-powerful God. This automatically clears the way for believing in the unusual and extraordinary. I have no problem believing these things because I think it’s God’s prerogative of how He works in the world. If he wants to lead with a star in the East, then I don’t see why a supernatural God can’t do that. If God wants to impregnate a virgin, then so be it. These may read to our modern ears as quirky and strange, but quirky and strange does not mean false. Moreover, it is in the quirkiness that we find rich significance. It seems to me, given a belief in a supernatural God, we shouldn’t be put off by extraordinary claims. We should expect them.
The Christmas claims are big and they are beautiful. I rest comfortable in the hope they provide.
(A version of the article was first published on www.theologicalmatters.com on 12/22/2015)
Doubt that doesn’t matter much
Some of our beliefs are mundane and they really don’t matter too much. It’s a big yawn, in these cases, to be corrected. I believe I have a dental appointment coming up on March 18. If my wife turned to me with her calendar in hand, a certain look on her face, and said that my appointment is on April 18, I would shrug my shoulders and believe her. I also believe that if I leave campus after 4pm today, it will add 10 minutes to my drive. I believe that I save money shopping at Costco (please tell me I’m right). Any time I’m asked to consider joining a business venture that resembles a pyramid scheme, I believe it is not worth trying (FYI for all you schemers!!). I believe all these things, but I could give them up without much counter evidence. In consequence, they are minor.
Doubting important beliefs
There are other beliefs in which we find ourselves much more deeply invested. I am, for example, deeply invested in beliefs about my children’s health and well being. I believe that my kids are, on the whole, healthy and well. But something happens to me intellectually when they, as it sometimes happens, come down with some sickness or health issue that is a bit unusual. My mind begins to play out various scenarios about what the future could look like in case this is the beginning of some serious health issue. I sometimes lose sleep. I pray…a lot. And I can begin to seriously doubt that my child is okay.
So far, when this has happened, our kids have thankfully been fine and the doubts were, to some degree, unfounded or at least premature.
Christian doubt
This is similar to the experience of Christians when they doubt. Christianity is not a set of ordinary beliefs. It is a set of deep beliefs about the world, and our purpose and place in it. It involves beliefs about how we should live every moment of our lives. And it also involves a belief about eternal hope.
Sometimes we may encounter a challenge to our Christian beliefs and we worry that we may be wrong. We worry that what we’ve believed in and given our lives to is a big lie. We sometimes think we may have stumbled over the smoking gun of Christianity- the objection that cannot be answered that others have either ignored or missed.
What should we do when we doubt?
I’m convinced that we sometimes allow our doubts to have their way with us too much. That is, we let our imagination run too far in front of the evidence. When I’m worried about my kid’s health, I’m letting my “what ifs” cause me to lose sleep and worry about something that is not yet warranted.
What should I do in these times of struggle? I’m probably always going to have concern for my children. That’s just the deal. But intellectually speaking, I need to be reminded there’s not yet reasons to doubt my beliefs. In other words, I shouldn’t stop believing that they are okay until I have reasons and evidence for this.
[share-quote author=”Travis Dickinson” via=”travdickinson”] Our doubts don’t win by default…We should, in a way, doubt our doubts. [/share-quote]
Likewise, when it comes to our Christian faith, it’s perfectly okay and normal to doubt from time to time. But we shouldn’t let those doubts simply have their way with us. Our doubts don’t win by default. We need to investigate the doubts. We must, in a way, doubt our doubts. We need to hold our doubts up to the fire and determine whether these doubts are genuinely a problem.
The injustices of the church
Here’s an example:
Let’s say someone comes up to you and says Christianity is a terrible view because Christians have done terrible things. Let’s say this hits home for you and you are challenged by it. You certainly do not want to align with a terrible view and you agree that Christians have done terrible things in the past.
But instead of letting this doubt have its way with you, you should doubt the doubt. You should begin to reflect on this challenge and read what others have said on both sides.
For me, what I find helpful on this issue is to realize that any crackpot can call themselves a Christian and do things in the name of Christ that are horrific. And this is true of any and all views. But this doesn’t mean the views are thereby wrong or terrible.
A genuine injustice is only a problem for the Christian view if this injustice is specifically supported by the teaching of the Bible.
One way to get at this is to look to the life of Jesus. He is, by all accounts, the exemplar or model for all Christians. If the injustice is supported by the life of Jesus, then it is a problem. If not, then it’s most likely not. It would just be someone acting unlike Jesus; acting unchristian.
There’s of course a lot more to be said, but I find that this provides a blueprint for resolving this sort of issue. The typical injustices that are cited, it seems to me, are always out of step with Jesus. I think we need to recognize there have been many injustices perpetuated in the name Christ and we ourselves have all probably acted poorly in front of those who know we are Christians. But in these times, we and they act contrary to Christ.
A stronger faith
Now what we’ve done is doubted the doubt and found that it does not defeat our Christian beliefs (or so it seems to me). Other challenges may be more difficult. Some of my doubts along the way have of course caused me to revise my view. But so far, I haven’t found a smoking gun objection that defeats the reasonableness of Christianity.
What I have found is that I come out the other side of this process with an even stronger faith. I’ve not only resolved an intellectual challenge to my beliefs, but I am more confident as a result of it. And that’s a very good thing. My doubts have led me to a stronger faith.
(This article is an updated repost)
Logic, it seems to me, can only be explained by the existence of God.
By far, most people in the history of the world have believed in the existence of God. But some of course come to believe that God does not exist. Now I think it is painfully clear that people who reject God never do so only on the basis of arguments and evidence. I can say this confidently because we humans never come to our core worldview beliefs without emotions, desires and past experiences figuring in in significant ways. It is certainly true of people who come to Christian belief and it is equally true of those who come to deny those beliefs.
Though we may be, in some ways, driven by emotions or desires, there is still always a logic to our beliefs. That is, there are always reasons why we believe what we do. These reasons may be good or bad and they may or may not be formed in a very reflective way. But there is logic there whenever we form a belief.
But what is logic? If you think about it logic is a bit odd. We believe things on the basis of reasons. The reasons we have provide logical support for our beliefs (again, good or bad). We will even base our very lives on the logic of our core beliefs.
Suppose you have a big decision to make. You need to decide whether you will go to college. You take out a piece of paper and list out all of the reasons for and against going to college right now in your life. Let’s say there are clearly more and much stronger reasons for going to college than reasons against it. So you now believe, quite rationally, college is a good idea for you right now in your life.
What happened in that process?
Well it seems you (knowingly or unknowingly) used the principles of logic to come to a decision. In other words, you went with the reasons that accorded with the principles of logic.
An example of a principle of logic is the principle of non-contradiction (PNC). According to Aristotle:
…opposite assertions cannot be true at the same time (Metaphics IV 6 1011b13–20)
Put somewhat differently, this principle says…
for any statement A, it can’t be the case that A and not A at the same time.
This is necessarily true for any statement you want to plug in for A.
It can’t be the case that the Boston Red Sox won the World Series and did not win the World Series at the same time.
The Red Sox could win and not win the World Series in different years (and this true for this year and last year). But they could not, at the same time, both win and not win. To assert something like this is to assert something necessarily false and not even sensible.
The truth of the principle of non-contradiction isn’t a matter of mere opinion (try denying the principle of noncontradiction without using it!).[1]
It is widely held that the PNC and all logical principles are objectively and universally true. Many philosophers will say they are true in all possible worlds! This means that logic is not tied to the way our world is. Whatever it is, it exists as a feature of reality that couldn’t not be the case and it is used every time we make and support a claim.
If logic is this real thing that exists outside time and space, then this entails that the natural world is not all there is. In other words, the supernatural (as in supra-natural) must exist.
Now how do we explain this? It seems to me one has to say either that logical facts exist as brute facts or they are explained by God. If one says they are brute facts, then this just means they are unexplained. So this means that for logic to be explained, one is lead back to God as its explanation.
I’ll leave the technical issues aside here, but my own view is that the eternal truths of logic are grounded in the mind of God. Being aware of the principles of logic is us literally being aware of features of God’s mind. Help me out Chris Pratt?
Okay, so here then is the irony. People use logic to argue against the one thing that grounds their ability to make that very argument. And this is God.
I’m convinced that without God we are left without an adequate explanation of life’s most important aspects.
Check out my book Logic and the Way of Jesus: Thinking Critically and Christianly
[1] To deny the truth of the PNC, you’d have to say the principle is not true and we are only able to say this by the PNC. This makes the denial self-refuting.
In my last post, I argued that God as the bearded guy in the sky should be rejected. I have no interest in God as the bearded guy in the sky or any deity who is fundamentally human-like or finite. So this means I have no interest in a God who is an exalted man who has populated the planet with his spirit children, as in Mormonism. I also don’t have an interest in a God who extends mercy and the reward of 72 virgins only to those who follow his legal system, as in Islam. Allah is certainly a bigger conception of God than the bearded guy in the sky conception but it still falls very, very short.
I am interested and do affirm the existence of God as the greatest conceivable being. This is a God who has all great making properties in a maximal way. Being moral is a great making property and God, on this conception, has this property maximally. This means not only that all and every action is morally perfect, but also that God is the very ground of morality. Having knowledge or creative power and being everywhere present are also great making properties that God has maximally.
This is a God truly worthy of worship and our devotion.
What is more, the existence of God as the maximally great and perfect being is eminently defensible and reasonable. God, on this view, stands behind reality and all that exists. God is the first cause (in the broadest of senses) of all that exists. God then explains the existence of its peculiar features such as the universe itself, the design and fine tuning of the universe, moral facts, consciousness, beauty, human value, etc. In fact, I believe God is the best explanation of the most important facts aspects of life.
I am a Christian theist precisely because I believe the God of the Bible is that being.
Now I can already envision the memes and GIFs being readied that highlight how heinous and morally reprehensible the God of the Bible is, especially the God of the Old Testament. If I thought the God of the Bible was heinous and morally reprehensible, then I would not believe in him either. I don’t. In fact, I don’t think there is anything in all of Scripture that contradicts thinking that the God described is the greatest conceivable being, perfect and maximal in all of his ways.
Let me first say, I definitely do see why some people think the God of the Bible should be rejected. When certain passages of the Old Testament are taken in isolation, it can be very difficult to see a morally perfect being. I get this and I don’t make light of these passages. They are difficult.
But this issue, for me, comes back to how we see God. Let me illustrate.
Is it wrong to physically assault someone?
Well, it depends actually. Boxers physically assault each other all the time, but that’s not morally wrong. I may physically assault (or try to) someone who is breaking into my house with intent to harm my children. But that would not be morally wrong. In fact, it would be morally praiseworthy. There are lots of scenarios in which it would be completely wrong to assault someone, but it depends one who is in view and the context of the action.
How about this? Is it wrong to cut someone open with a knife?
Well, again, it depends. If it is a surgeon performing a lifesaving operation, then it is morally appropriate. If it is a sociopathic deviant, then it is, of course, morally wrong.
Is it wrong to order the killing of someone?
If it is a judge vested with the legal authority to do so and does it in a legally just way, then it seems morally appropriate. If it is a mob boss looking to take out a business owner who hasn’t paid his dues, then of course it’s very wrong.
An important question one has to ask in considering whether the God of the Bible is morally perfect is whether he has the authority, especially as judge, to order or to cause the death of people. It seems very difficult to see any reason that God, as the bearded guy in the sky, would have this authority. However, God as maximally great and perfect being who stands behind the universe as the metaphysical first cause would indeed have the authority to move in judgement on people. It seems clearly part of the notion of moral perfection to bring about justice on lawbreakers and those who do evil. On the Christian view, that’s all of us. God has the right to move in judgement against ALL OF US.
I don’t think this solves all issues, of course, as we grapple with various Old Testament passages. But, for me, it goes a long way in working out the apparent tension between seeing the God of the Bible as the maximally great and perfect being.
Sometimes people change their minds and come, for a variety of reasons, to reject belief in God. What has always been very surprising to me is how often the God they are rejecting is not the God I believe in either.
For example, suppose someone says:
“I just got to the point where I could no longer believe in the bearded guy in the sky.”
Okay, but the only problem is neither do I. And neither does any thoughtful Christian I know.
Now I realize that the “bearded guy in the sky” moniker may just be shorthand or a kind of tongue-in-cheek way to refer to a more robust conception of God. However, the point is this conception, or anything that it may refer to, is radically different from the biblical conception of God. The biblical conception of God is one where God is wholly other, eternal, maximal in all perfections, knows and intends the end from the beginning, the creator of all, the self-existent being and upon whom all other being depends. So if we imagine a spectrum of concepts where the bearded guy in the sky is at one end and the very rich biblical conception of God at the other, I want to suggest many times people are objecting to something closer to the bearded guy in the sky rather than the biblical understanding of God. Said somewhat differently, the biblical God can withstand many of the objections the bearded guy in the sky cannot.
We can see this with discussions about the problem of evil. The key premise in an argument from evil is to say there is evil for which God would have no justifying reasons. On this version of the argument, it is conceded that the concept of God is not logically contradictory with just any evil. Rather it is evil that has no justifying reason that is inconsistent with the existence of God. It unlikely that every ounce of evil in the history of the world has a justifying reason, the atheist claims, thus, this implies a good and all powerful God does not exist.
I can’t help but think there is something like a bearded guy in the sky in view in the key premise of the argument (namely, that there is evil for which God would have no justifying reasons). It’s true there’s a lot of evil, pain and suffering in the world. But is it really plausible that God could have no justifying reason for allowing it? Well this seems plausible only if we are talking about God as the bearded guy in the sky. But it doesn’t seem at all plausible (at least to me) if we are talking about the biblical God. Why couldn’t the eternal, self-existent God who sees the end from the beginning have justifying reasons for allowing the evil we see in the world? We need not know what those reasons are specifically to reasonably believe that the infinite God of the Bible could have them.
It’s important to see that this isn’t a dodge or an appeal to mystery. It is more of an appeal to the bigness and holiness (in the technical sense) of God and to say that many times perhaps we struggle because we have a much smaller and less interesting view of who God is.
I recently heard a former Christian say the turning point for him came one night while camping out under the stars. He asked God, if he was there, to give him a sign. He hoped to hear an audible voice or see a shining light. But nothing happened. He moved to looking for something out of the ordinary like a shooting star or a big wave to crash. Nothing happened. He got desperate and asked for anything, a fuzzy feeling or the wind to pick up. But nothing happened. He subsequently walked away from the faith.
I can certainly relate to having the desire to see God show up in obvious ways to help assure me he is truly there and he loves me. But doesn’t it seem a little unreasonable to demand that God relates to us in the way we want him to? Maybe the way we want him to doesn’t serve God’s purposes and maybe, just maybe, God’s purposes are far higher and far better than mine.
I close with a passage from a very insightful essay confronting the issue of the silence of God by Mike Rea. In the essay, he stresses the need for us to approach God on his terms and not the terms we set for him. He says:
You might be tempted to object that, on this view, God is like a father who neglects his children, leaving them bereft and unloved while he sits in stony silence thinking “I just gotta be me.” But to object like this is to fail to take seriously the idea that God might have a genuine, robust personality and that it might be deeply good for God to live out his own personality. One odd feature of much contemporary philosophy of religion is that it seems to portray God as having a “personality” that is almost entirely empty, allowing his behavior to be almost exhaustively determined by facts about how it would be best for others for an omnipotent being to behave. But why should we think of God like this? God is supposed to be a person not only of unsurpassable love and goodness but of unsurpassable beauty. Could God really be that sort of person if he’s nothing more than a cosmic, others-oriented, utility-maximizing machine? On that way of thinking, God—the being who is supposed to be a person par excellence—ends up having no real self. So, as I see it, silence of the sort we experience from God might just flow out of who God is, and it might be deeply good for God to live out his personality. If that’s right, and if our suffering in the face of divine silence is indeed unreasonable, the result of immaturity or other dysfunctions that we can and should overcome anyway, then I see no reason why even perfect love would require God to desist from his preferred mode of interaction in order to alleviate our suffering.[1]
So I think we should be very careful when we say a good, all powerful God would (or wouldn’t) do _____________________. Maybe God is bigger and richer and far more confounding than that.
[1] Rae (2011) “Divine Hiddenness, Divine Silence” in Philosophy of Religion: An Anthology, 6th edition, edited by Louis Pojman and Michael Rea (Boston: Wadsworth/Cengage). See here for a copy of the full article.
About 4 years ago, Paul Gould, Keith Loftin and I were at a restaurant planning out an online apologetics course. A comment was made that we should write a book with this material. So we did! And that book comes out in 1 month (11/1)!!
There are a number of great apologetics texts out there. Here are a few notables about our book for those who may be interested.
The book is intended as an up-to-date book informed by current scholarship without the reader requiring any specific training in apologetics. Between the three of us, we have roughly 50 years of combined experience teaching Christian apologetics at all different levels of expertise. So our hope is that it can serve someone who is brand new to the area of study as well as be interesting to an intermediate student of apologetics.
Here’s the table of contents:
Many apologetics textbooks are, let’s just say, a wee bit lacking in creativity. We included original artwork in every chapter. Judith Dickinson (a.k.a., to me, mom) sketched pictures of, among others, C.S. Lewis and Alvin Plantinga. Check these out:
Wayne Miller, a PhD student at SWBTS, drew some great cartoons for illustrations:
We also including a few graphs and charts.
Beyond all of these things, the heart of the book is to defend the idea that the gospel is brilliant!! I love this term ‘brilliant’ in this connection. It has, for us, a double meaning. First, the gospel, as idea, is brilliant since it is smart. It is, in fact, the biggest idea I know. This is to say the gospel is profound, rational to believe, and eminently defensible. Much of the heavy lifting in the book is to defend this.
But the second sense of the term ‘brilliant’ is that the gospel is beautiful and desirable. We try, in each chapter, to connect the rational defense with the desirability and attractiveness of Christianity.
Here’s an excerpt from our introduction:
…what we find in Christianity is a perfect blend of reason and romance. Nowhere in Scripture is there a call to separate head (reason) and heart (romance) in our love of God and man. This is good news! Christianity does not require us to abandon the intellect or emotions. Christianity is both true and satisfying. Consider C. S. Lewis’s description of his pre-conversion mind:
The two hemispheres of my mind were in the sharpest conflict. On the one side a many-island sea of poetry and myth; on the other a glib and shallow “rationalism.” Nearly all that I loved I believed to be imaginary; nearly all that I believed to be real I thought grim and meaningless. (Surprised by Joy, 170)
Lewis discovered that it was only in Christianity that his two hemispheres could be brought together into a coherent whole. In Christianity he had found a place to stand and a story that understood his longing for both how things are (truth) and how things ought to be (goodness and beauty). Christianity is true myth.
Our publisher, B&H, will be supplying the reader with a variety of supplements on their website. Among other material, we shot 2-3 videos per chapter that help introduce and augment the material in the book. This will be made available via Word Search from B&H Publishing Group.
The book is currently half off for preorder at Lifeway.
The book will work for a classroom, church small group, or for anyone looking to go deeper in the defense and desirability of the faith.
I have been frequently asked, over the years, about apologetics resources for kids. Parents and children’s ministers are sometimes desperate to find resources that take these important concepts that are often extremely complex and translate them in a way they can be presented and taught to kids. For a long time, there honestly wasn’t much that did this. We are thankfully beginning to see this situation change. One of the best writing in this area is Natasha Crain (her blog is christianmomthoughts.com) . I recently read her Talking with Your Kids about God: 30 Conversations Every Christian Parent Must Have and thought it was terrific.
Talking with Your Kids
To be clear, Crain’s is not a book for your kids to read. It is a book for parents (or grandparents or anyone who interacts with kids) to help their kids better understand God. There’s of course a place for books that are written for kids to read. However, those books should never take the place of a parent taking the time to be intentional in leading, guiding and preparing their children for the challenges they will face. The aim of Crain’s book is to provide content and strategies that will equip parents to have meaningful conversations specifically about God (30, in total) with their kids.
Each chapter is devoted to setting up a substantive conversation between a parent and child on a variety of topics about God. The chapters are relatively brief (around 8 pages). They first lay out the case for a Christian perspective on a particular topic. This serves as the meat and potatoes of what will be discussed. The parent gets good and hard-hitting content that he or she will need to confidently discuss the particular issue on his or her child’s level. After this case is developed, the details are helpfully summarized under a heading of “Key Points” for easy reference. Each chapter concludes with a “Conversation Guide.” The conversation guide has suggestions to start the conversation, suggestions to advance the conversation, and suggestions to apply the conversation.
So imagine you would like to help your kids think about and have reasons for believing in the existence of God. Crain provides 6 chapters for having 6 different conversations on this topic! What, for example, can we learn about God and his existence from nature? In this particular chapter, Crain gives a biblical basis for how God has revealed himself in nature and then offers a very substantive run through of what we see in nature that points us to God (which is further elaborated in subsequent chapters). The chapter concludes with suggestions for your conversation with your kid and this is of course what it is all about. A parent is given a framework and very helpful suggestions to have a meaningful conversation about seeing God in the world around us.
Highlights
Some highlights for me in reading the book were the fact that the content of the book is not simply to have apologetics-style conversations with your child, but also theological ones. You can’t talk about God without doing some theology, or so it seems to me. One of the five major sections focuses on the nature of God and even takes on such issues as the doctrine of the Trinity. Each of my kids have, at a relatively young age, wondered about how to understand this difficult concept. I quickly realized that having this conversation haphazardly had the tendency to create frustration. But it is, of course, an absolutely crucial conversation to have. Crain’s helpful suggestion in having this conversation is to walk your child through the provided passages of the Bible that describe the oneness of God, the distinctness of each of the persons of the Trinity, and that each person of the Trinity is fully God. What’s nice about this is that before jumping into the concepts such as essence and personal identity (as some of us may be a bit apt to do), a kid can see the Trinity on display in the pages of Scripture. There’s going to be some mystery here and that’s okay, but a child is building a foundation for doing good systematic theology (probably) without even knowing it.
Beyond covering the fundamental issues such as the existence and nature of God, Crain also focuses on relevant issues as well. This is helpful since if you are not up on the current topics you may not know how a flying spaghetti monster serves as an objection to the belief in God. But there’s a good chance your kid will eventually run into this sort of objection. Crain has a whole chapter devoted to it. Or for many of us, we haven’t exactly stayed current on trends in science as it relates to Christian faith. This is a real problem since, especially on college campuses, science reigns supreme. Crain spends 6 chapters covering issues related to God and science with very interesting and insightful suggestions for discussing these issues with your kids.
Hard-hitting Accessibility
I think Crain strikes a really good balance between having hard hitting content and making it accessible throughout the book. This is one of the most difficult challenges in writing on these sorts of topics for a general audience. On my view, not everything can be made perfectly accessible without sacrificing some accuracy. Some concepts, I think, are irreducibly complex. Crain’s target is a very general one: parents. So her task was to take these very difficult concepts and translate them in understandable ways without sacrificing accuracy. The result is a good blend of challenging material with helpful and relatable illustrations. But the reader should be forewarned. Some of this will strike as difficult material and Crain’s chapters are intentionally brief. She does a terrific job of making it as accessible as it can be, but I suspect many will want and need to look to other resources for some further help understanding all of what is going on.
This leads me to the only real criticism I have with the book. What would have been helpful is to have listed resources for further study right there when a parent needs more. This is of course a rather minor criticism since it is not difficult to find resources these days. But for a person who is very new to these topics and may not be familiar with the authors who do good work in these areas, it can be difficult to go further without a guide.
3000 Conversations!
The reality is that there are 3000 conversations (and probably lots more!) that you need to have with your child about God, but Crain gives a terrific guide to get into some of the most fundamental and relevant. There are countless number of insights, anecdotes, and analogies that I plan to use with my own children as I talk with them about God.
There’s considerable debate on just what apologetics is or at least what it’s supposed to be. A typical definition is something along the lines of this:
Apologetics is the defense of Christian beliefs.
But the problem with this definition is this doesn’t uniquely pick out the discipline. After all, the systematic theologian seems to be defending Christian beliefs when he or she defends a particular doctrine. A Sunday morning sermon even seems to be a defense of Christian beliefs. The pastor provides reasons for how to understand a passage and how it should be applied in our lives. So this definition isn’t going to work.
I want to suggest that what uniquely picks out apologetics is that, in doing apologetics, one defends Christian beliefs in an unassuming way. That is, we think about and formulate reasons for believing that do not, in making the case, assume the truth of Christianity already. This doesn’t mean that one doesn’t believe Christianity is true, in making this unassuming case, and it doesn’t mean that we aren’t obviously arguing for the truth of Christianity, in making the case. It is simply that we don’t only cite a passage or some belief from Christian theology and call it a day.
Think about how easy it would be to give a case for the existence of God if all we had to do was cite a passage. Genesis 1:1 says “In the beginning God…”…and we’re done here! We’ve proven God’s existence.
Citing Scripture as a way to justify our Christian beliefs is of course a very fine practice. In fact, I think this is precisely how it should be when we are having discussions about Christian theology amongst Christians and how your pastor should do it when he is preaching to the church on a Sunday morning. The pastor certainly cannot be burdened with proving the general reliability of Scripture before he ever begins to give an exposition.
The problem, of course, is that, outside of Christian circles, people do not believe Genesis 1:1 is true. Or someone may be doubting the existence of God and they already know what Genesis 1:1 says. Or (and this is important) we might just wonder whether there are other reasons outside of Scripture that point to the existence of God. According to the Psalmist, the world declares, pours forth speech, and provides knowledge about God (Ps. 19:1-2). Paul says, in Romans 1:S19-20, that God’s attributes (including presumably his existence) can be clearly seen and understood in what has been made. If this is right, it is thoroughly biblical for Christians to reflect on and consider (what I’m calling) the unassuming reasons for the existence of God. This extends also to our other Christian beliefs as well.
What I mean by unassuming reasons is just that these reasons are not controversial. There are, for example, facts about the universe that no one really denies. Unless you are insane you believe the universe exists. There’s a wee bit of consensus on this fact! But how do we explain the existence of the universe? The Christian answer says the universe points to the existence of God as creator. Or take the so-called fine tuning of the universe. There may be quibbles about calling this “fine tuning,” but no one really denies that there exist certain contingent conditions of the universe that have to be just so for life to exist in the universe. Again, this seems to point to the existence of God. The point is the consensus gives us an unassuming reason to believe that God exists. Said differently, a person does not need to already be a theist (Christian or otherwise) to affirm these reasons. In short, they are unassuming.
Now, one can argue that the existence or the fine tuning of the universe do not point to God, but one cannot simply dismiss these as Christian propaganda. One must grapple with these reasons and what they provide reason for believing. This shows the great value of apologetics both for the believer and the unbeliever. For the believer, it helps us to address our doubts and to lean in to a deeper and fuller knowledge of God as we love him with our minds. For the unbeliever, it shows what reasons there are for believing in Christianity and, it seems to me, he or she must contend with these reasons without simply dismissing them as beliefs without evidence.
So…
Apologetics is the unassuming defense of Christian beliefs.
Christians have always been extremely wary of holding anything, such as philosophy or “reason” or evidence, as an authority over Scripture. It is sometimes argued that if one appeals to something as a reason to believe Scripture, then that thing becomes one’s authority. But, for the Christian, nothing can stand in authority over Scripture. Thus, we cannot use reason and evidence as our basis for believing the claims of Scripture.
The very prominent theologian, Wayne Grudem, has said:
Since the words of Scripture are “self-attesting,” they cannot be “proved” to be God’s words by appeal to any higher authority. If we make our ultimate appeal, for example, to human logic or to scientific truth to prove that the Bible is God’s Word, then we assume the thing to which we appeal to be a higher authority than God’s words and one that is more true or more reliable. Therefore, the ultimate authority by which Scripture is shown to be God’s words must be Scripture itself.[1]
Though it is a common phrase in the history of theology, it seems difficult to know exactly what is meant by saying Scripture is “self-attesting.” Grudem himself goes on to explain this as the persuasiveness of Scripture in the actual experience of the world. But if this is right, then Scripture doesn’t seem truly self-attesting. It is seems to be the experiences of the world that attest to its truth in persuading us. Grudem goes on to even more explicitly contradict his initial claim (so it seems to me) by saying we can have evidence for the authority of scripture without that evidence becoming a higher authority. He says:
This is not to say that our knowledge of the world around us serves as a higher authority than Scripture, but rather that such knowledge, if it is correct knowledge, continues to give greater and greater assurance and deeper conviction that the Bible is the only truly ultimate authority.[2]
I would agree. It looks like he is suggesting here we can make appeal to what we know about the world and see that it (the evidence) points to Scripture’s authority. This seems to concede (despite what Grudem said above) that something can play an epistemological role in believing and recognizing a thing’s authority without itself becoming the ultimate authority.
The real epistemological issue we face in believing that the Bible is the authoritative Word of God is what we do when the question is “is the Bible the Word of God?” This question, it seems, can’t be answered merely by looking to the claims of Scripture attesting to this fact, at least not without vicious circularity. To avoid circularity, we’ll need to use reasons and evidence to come to the belief that Scripture is authoritative. But our coming to know that Scripture is God’s revealed word doesn’t take away from its authority in our lives. Once we come to know that it is God’s word, then we recognize and submit to its authority (the authority, by the way, it possessed all along). How do we recognize it is God’s Word? I am extremely broadminded as to what counts as evidence for this claim.
Consider the following example. Suppose Al is standing before a complete library of the world’s great religious texts. The Bible is there alongside the Quran, the Bhagavad Gita, Book of Mormon, the Upanishads, etc. Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that each of these claim, in effect, to be divine revelation. Standing there before all of these options, how could Al decide which one is correct? It can’t be the mere fact that the Bible claims to be God’s word. This is because, again, they all make this claim. How is Al going to decide?
Let’s suppose someone, whom Al has reason to think is trustworthy, tells him that the Bible is God’s divine word. Al now has one (i.e., a preacher) testifying to the Word of God (Rom. 10:14). Let’s also suppose the Holy Spirit stirs in Al’s spirit confirming that the Bible is God’s divine word. In this, Al hears and recognizes the voice of God (See Jn. 10:27). Al now, it seems, has epistemological reason to think the Bible is God’s authoritative word. Though Al now has reasons to believe, he can and should improve the epistemic status of his belief. He can engage in an intentional study of the text itself and begin to see how Scripture accords with the world. He will also no doubt notice the consistency and harmony of the message throughout the biblical text. Let’s also suppose he begins to read Scripture as a guide and, as he internalizes its claims, it begins to change his heart and life. Al now possess an even stronger epistemological basis for his belief in Scripture’s authority.
Many don’t think of the preacher or the Holy Spirit as providing evidence. But it is not clear why we shouldn’t. Much of what we believe is on the basis of testimonial evidence. This is where a person, whom we have reason to trust (this is important!), reports something as a fact. It seems we thereby have some reason to believe the account. It is defeasible evidence, but it is evidential in nature. This may include testimony of our parents, our teachers, books we read, etc. But again, a trusted person telling you something has some evidential value. Again, I am employing a notion of reason in an extremely broad sense.
No one will be surprised that I think Al should also turn to topics in apologetics related to the authenticity and authority of Scripture. One should come away with the distinct impression from this study that this is no ordinary book. None of this, as I’ve argued, should take away from the authority of Scripture. Indeed one has reason upon reason (I would argue) to yield one’s life to its authority.
(This is comes from a journal length article that will be published in the Southwestern Journal of Theology).
[1] Wayne Grudem, Bible Doctrine: Essential Teachings of the Christian Faith (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1999), 37.
[2] Ibid., 39.
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