God can sometimes seem far away. In fact, there are times when we feel like we really, really need Him and yet he is not there, or so it seems. This has caused many to struggle deeply with whether God exists at all, since, after all, he could be more obvious, or so it seems.

This is a deep area of struggle, for some, and not one that I will minimize at all. I’ve been there too. And I suspect I will be there again.

But it is also an area of scholarly interest. The scholarly discussion can often feel like it is heartless. And, well, it is heartless. In the scholarly discussion, we are asking questions of a theoretical and technical nature, asking whether there is an intellectual problem here for the intellectual belief that God exists. The scholarly discussion doesn’t turn at all on your (or my) feelings about how obvious we want God to be. It only turns on whether God’s degree of obviousness is a logical problem, broadly construed, for the belief in God.

This is not to say that the scholarly discussion is not incredibly useful and even downright pastoral for our emotional struggles. Philosophy has helped me tremendously to be more grounded as a person and especially in my faith. It can seem heartless, but it is (or, at least, can be) good for our hearts and our minds!

The problem of Divine Silence (sometimes called the problem of divine hiddenness) is that there appears to be a logical tension with the following three claims:

1. God is not completely obvious
2. If God is all powerful, he could be completely obvious
3. If God is all good, he should be completely obvious

It seems that, at most, two of these could be true, but you cannot have all three. For example, one may say that (1) is false and think that (2) and (3) are true. That is, God is as obvious as he possibly can be. There is nothing he could possibly do to be more obvious than he is. This would be consistent, but one wonders if this is plausible.

A Christian may think that this is plausible on the basis of Romans 1:20. Paul says here that God has revealed himself such that he can be “clearly seen” in what has been created. But it is one thing to say that God can be clearly seen and it is another to say he is as obvious as he can be. Even if one thinks that God is abundantly clear, the logical problem is there so long as God could be more obvious.

And it seems that he could. Couldn’t he reveal himself to you and me the way he did to Moses in a burning bush? Couldn’t it be the case that every time one walks by a bush, it bursts into flames and one hears the deep voice of God? Or couldn’t we have an experience like the apostle Paul’s on the road to Damascus? Paul was literally blinded and verbally talked to. God could arrange the stars to say: “Believe in me. Sincerely, God”. It will seem to most of us that God could do these things. But if so, then (1) is true. So we have to deny one of the other claims.

What if one denied (2)? One could say that God is not completely obvious ((1) is true), and God is good and should be completely obvious ((3) is true). It’s just that he lacks the ability to be more obvious. I won’t spend much time on this option since anyone who thinks that God is all-powerful will think that God can do anything that is logically possible. So if God cannot be more obvious, then the sort of God we are interested in (i.e., an all-powerful one) does not exist.

So let’s consider denying (3). Here we ask if God is obligated to be completely obvious. The idea that God is obligated in this way is often, it seems, assumed to be true in many discussions of hiddenness.

But why think this is true? Why, we might ask, would God be obligated to make himself more obvious than he is? What would establish an obligation? Many people seem to think God has commanded us to believe in him and then he punishes us for eternity if we don’t. If God is going to justly punish us for disbelief, then God would be obligated to be more obvious to. But this is not the gospel! We are not condemned and punished for our disbelief. We are condemned and punished because we have broken the moral law and the moral law is sufficiently obvious to all.

Perhaps one could say that God is obligated to make himself more obvious out of his love for us and his desire for all to be saved (1 Tim. 2:4). But this again bears on the nature of the gospel. In desiring salvation for all is God merely desiring intellectual assent? Think about this for a minute. Consider James 2:

You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that–and shudder (v. 19).

I want to suggest that mere intellectual assent is not what God is after. There are passages that call us to believe (e.g., John 3:16), to be sure. But in the context of these passages these are best read as being called to give our whole lives in faith. There were many erstwhile followers of Jesus that seemed to believe in him when they got to see him multiply fishes and loaves or heal people, but the moment he began describing the call of discipleship (taking up one’s cross, etc.), they departed. In fact, at times it seemed that the miracles and the healings almost worked against Jesus’s goal of true discipleship.

So if God is after whole life faith and discipleship and he is not after mere intellectual assent, then it seems God could be more obvious ((1) is true), but it wouldn’t achieve his plans and purposes for us.

Thus, God is not obligated to make himself more obvious. God need only be as obvious as it achieves genuine faith.

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There is one argument for the existence of God that is revered and loved by atheists and theists alike: the Ontological Argument for God’s existence. This is not to say that it is loved and revered by all. This argument has certainly had its enemies along the way. However, many, even those who don’t believe the conclusion, think it’s an exceedingly interesting argument. Ironically, it is also, by far, the least used argument in Christian apologetics. In this post, I try to show why it’s so terrific while attempting to make it (somewhat) more accessible.

The Greatest Conceivable Being

The ontological argument is an old argument. It was first developed by Anselm of Canterbury in the 11^th Century.

One thing I love about Anselm is that he couches the discussion in a devotional exercise. In reflecting on and praying to God, Anselm comes to see that his concept of God is a being “that than which nothing greater can be conceived.” What he means by this is that God is perfect in every way, in every aspect. As a matter of concept, God, in all of his properties, is the greatest in every conceivable way.

Now I think that this already is an extraordinary accomplishment. What Anselm has done is clarified a proper understanding of the term God. In other words, one could call Zeus a god. But Zeus is clearly not the greatest conceivable being. Though he was very powerful, he had limits of all sorts, both in power and in moral shortcomings. Or an ancient Egyptian can think of the Pharaoh as a god. But clearly he is not God in this rich sense. I mean he’s really just some dude with a fancy headdress. When we reflect on this, we see that these limited gods are really more like super-humans than they are gods.

Anselm clarifies that something limited is quite simply not what he and many others mean by the term “God.” Anselm (and I) is not really all that interested in something finite or a God with limits. The God of interest (and our devotion) is the God who could not possibly be greater.

I actually think this is the very conception a typical (informed) Christian has in mind when the Christian affirms God’s existence. It also therefore informs Bible study, as well as theology and apologetics. For example, when an unbeliever argues that for God to wipe out whole people groups at a few points in the Old Testament as a problem, the Christian doesn’t simply concede. By contrast, if one claimed that Zeus does evil things, from time to time, a follower of Zeus would presumably simply agree and say that’s why one should make sacrifice to Zues. However, the Christian will argue that God is good even in light of these passages of extreme judgment and bloodshed (see Paul Copans excellent book for a defense of this).

Or, for an example from theology, many Christians reject open theism (the idea that, given human freedom, God does not know the future) precisely because it seems to make God limited. God doesn’t know (i.e., has a limited view of) what free creatures will do in the future. But how can God have this sort of limit, this sort of lack?[1]

The Argument

Okay, with this conception of God in hand, Anselm considers what he takes to be some logical implications. One sort of rough and ready way to interpret what Anselm claims in this argument is that God as the greatest conceivable being (the GCB for short) must have all great-making properties. That is, the GCB must be greatest in every respect. If there is a property that makes a being great, then the GCB must have it. So, for example, if it is greater to be all powerful than being limited in power, then the GGCB must be all powerful. If it is greater to be all knowing rather than limited in knowledge, then the GCB must be all knowing.

Now ask yourself this question: is it greater to exist or not exist? Is it greater to be a figment of one’s imagination or actually existing in reality? Anselm seemed to think that existence itself is a great-making property. If that’s right, then God as the GCB must have the property of existence because if he didn’t there would be something greater than the greatest conceivable being and this is a contradiction. Thus, we’ve got ourselves an argument for the existence of God on the basis of understanding him as the GCB. Here is Anselm:

Even a fool, when he hears of … a being than which nothing greater can be conceived … understands what he hears, and what he understands is in his understanding.… And assuredly that, than which nothing greater can be conceived, cannot exist in the understanding alone. For suppose it exists in the understanding alone: then it can be conceived to exist in reality; which is greater.… Therefore, if that, than which nothing greater can be conceived, exists in the understanding alone, the very being, than which nothing greater can be conceived, is one, than which a greater can be conceived. But obviously this is impossible. Hence, there is no doubt that there exists a being, than which nothing greater can be conceived, and it exists both in the understanding and in reality (Proslogium as quoted here) .

Let’s try to formalize this:

1. Everyone can understand God as the greatest conceivable being
2. If God exists as only a figment of the imagination, then I can conceive of something greater than the greatest conceivable being, namely, things that exist in reality.
3. But it is a contradiction to think I can conceive of something greater than the greatest conceivable being.
4. Therefore, God cannot be simply a figment of the imagination.
5. Therefore, God exists in reality.

Here’s another formulation that’s a bit simpler:

6. God is the greatest conceivable being (by definition)
7. The greatest conceivable being must have all great-making properties (by definition)
8. Existence is a great-making property. (premise)
9. Therefore, God has existence.

Gaunilo’s Objection

The immediate push back for Anselm was a Benedictine monk named Gaunilo. He was a contemporary of Anselm. Gaunilo argued that if this works for God, it can work for anything so long as we understand it as the greatest conceivable x. But it is absurd to think that we can argue the existence of anything so long as we prefix it with the greatest conceivable x. And therefore, by parody, the argument for God must be flawed as well. He gives an argument for the greatest conceivable Island. If we map it onto the argument above it might go something like:

10. Atlantis (a hypothetical island conceived in our minds) is the greatest conceivable island.
11. The greatest conceivable island must have all great-making properties.
12. Existence is a great-making property.
13. Therefore, Atlantis exists.

Now the problem with this argument is that premise 5 looks to be logically incoherent. More specifically, the notion of a greatest conceivable island seems to be incoherent. Plantinga has said:

…it’s impossible that there be such an island. The idea of an island than which it’s not possible that there be a greater is like the idea of a natural number than which it’s not possible that there be a greater, or the idea of a line than which none more crooked is possible. And the same goes for islands. No matter how great an island is, no matter how many Nubian maidens and dancing girls adorn it, there could always be a greater—one with twice as many, for example. The qualities that make for greatness in islands—number of palm trees, amount and quality of coconuts, for example—most of these qualities have no intrinsic maximum…So the idea of a greatest possible island is an inconsistent or incoherent idea; it’s not possible that there be such a thing.[2]

But what about the notion of a greatest conceivable being? Here it looks as if, unlike an island, a being can be genuinely the greatest—especially in the sense of being maximal. So a being can be maximal in knowledge. That is, the being can know all truths. A being can be maximally powerful. That is, the being can have the power to realize all logical possibilities. A being can be maximally good where all of the being’s actions are morally righteous.

So when it comes to things like islands, there is no maximal properties that constitute great making properties. But not so, when it comes to beings whose properties can be had maximally.

Kant’s Objection

The second historical and much more persuasive (at least for many) objection that is often brought up in connection with Anselm’s argument comes from Immanuel Kant. Kant says:

“Being” is obviously not a real predicate; that is, it is not a concept of something which could be added to the concept of a thing…Logically, it is merely the copula of a judgment. The proposition “God is omnipotent” contains two concepts, each of which has its object—God and omnipotence. The small word “is” adds no new predicate, but only serves to posit the predicate in its relation to the subject. If, now, we take the subject (God) with all its predicates (among which is omnipotence), and say “God is,” or “There is a God,” we attach no new predicate to the concept of God, but only posit it as an object that stand in relation to my concept (Critique of Pure Reason).

Kant’s push back then is that existence is not a predicate or a property. Why? Kant thinks that saying that something exists doesn’t further fill out a concept of something (i.e., doesn’t provide a genuine property of that thing). Imagine conceptually what it is to be a unicorn. If I know my unicorns, it is for a thing to be a horse with a single horn (and perhaps rainbow colored and whatever else). Though I believe that unicorns do not exist, it doesn’t seem the concept includes nonexistence as a property. If you were to be in the woods and a unicorn ran by you, you wouldn’t think that you now have to change the concept you previously had in mind. There’s the concept of a unicorn, on one hand, and then the question of existence, on the other. Or let’s say squirrels suddenly went extinct (i.e., squirrels no longer exist). You wouldn’t think that the concept of a squirrel has now changed. Rather we would simply believe that there are no instances of the squirrel concept (or something less nerdy).

If existence is not a property, then it can’t be a great-making property. That is, premise 7 of Anselm’s argument is false.

The Modal Version

Now this does seem to be a problem for the way the argument is stated above.[3] But contemporary defenders of the argument have given a fuller expression to thinking of God as maximal. That is, so far all we have talked about is God’s being maximal in properties. But there is, in a way, a richer sense of God as the greatest conceivable being. This is where we turn to a modal version of the argument (i.e., one that talks in terms of possibility and necessity). The crucial piece, it seems, of the modal version is to say that maximal greatness would be to exist as maximally great in all possible worlds. That is truly the greatest conceivable being. If this notion of a maximally great being that exists in all possible worlds is possible, then it follows that the maximally great being exists in the actual world (if that just blew your circuits, take the formal version slowly).

Here is one formalized version of the modal argument:

1. A being is maximally great in any possible world only if it is maximally great in every possible world.
2. It is possible that a maximally great being exists.
3. If it is possible that a maximally great being exists, then a maximally great being exists in some possible world.
4. If a maximally great being exists in some possible world, then it exists in every possible world. (Given 1, 2 and 3)
5. If it is possible that a maximally great being exists in every possible world, then it exists in the actual world.
6. Therefore, a maximally great being exists in the actual world.

Notice that this is formulated without making existence a property. So Kant’s objection is, in a way, sidestepped.

The most controversial premise here (at least in my mind) is premise 1. But when I ask myself what it would mean for a being to be perfectly maximal, then I find it very plausible that this being must be maximal in all possible worlds, not just some possible world or the actual world.

There’s of course a lot more that needs to be said but, at minimum, this makes an interesting case for the existence of the maximally great being.

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[1] Open theists have of course answered this sort of objection and the discussion is far more sophisticated than what I’m presenting here. However, I’m suggesting that OT has, for many, this intuitive drawback.

[2] Alvin Plantinga (God, Freedom and Evil), 90-91.

[3] Plantinga doesn’t think it is a problem for the way he formulates Anselm’s argument. This is because Plantinga does not construe it in terms of great-making properties.

You’ve probably noticed along the way that there is a wee bit of disagreement when it comes to religious issues. Christians disagree with nonchristians on a host of fundamental issues, and (I know this will come as a shock) but Christians disagree with other Christians too. In fact, we disagree with great variety, creativity, and regularity!

What are we to make of this disagreement?

This can be seen as a challenge to religious belief. The rough idea is that religious belief is unjustified given the wide, varied, and regular disagreement amongst people who are all equally competent in forming their views.

Let’s unpack this. The first point is, no matter how smart and educated I am, there seem to be adherents of other faiths who are equally smart and educated. These are, what are called, my epistemic peers. According to Thomas Kelly, epistemic peers, as it relates to some specific question, are “equals with respect to their familiarity with the evidence and arguments which bear on that question.”^[1] It is also often added that peers are, on the whole, equals in terms of intellectual ability. So the epistemic peer in view here is one who has considered all the same evidence as us, is equally intelligent, and yet rejects the truth of Christianity.

The objection is that, given the radical disagreement among epistemic peers, the evidence for Christianity cannot be  compelling. If epistemic peers are looking at the same evidence and coming to radically different views, then the evidence must not be definitive. The Christian has a broad set of defeaters then for her claims. What are the defeaters? The defeaters are all the epistemic peers across all the different religious views. That’s a lot of defeaters!

In response, it is important to point out that the diversity of opinion is not simply a phenomenon of religious inquiry. There is incredible diversity among epistemic peers in disciplines, such as philosophy, science, economics, morality and politics. Most people don’t seem to mind holding a minority position in these areas. That is, it is common for there to be epistemic peers looking at the same evidence and deciding to affirm a different position and we don’t lose sleep about this. Why should it be different for religious topics?

Moreover, one will be hard pressed to find beliefs for which there is no dissent whatsoever from someone who looks to be an epistemic peer. For example, suppose that Smith believes that white supremacy is false and a morally abhorrent view. Let’s say that Smith has arrived at this view as a matter of careful reflection and it is a matter of strong conviction. However, suppose one points out that there are white supremacists out there, some of whom are presumably epistemic peers. Should this diminish Smith’s conviction that white supremacy is false? Hardly! He might (as I am) be at a loss to understand why someone would find white supremacy plausible. But it would seem to be intellectually irresponsible of him to lesson his conviction on the mere fact that there are white supremacists.

What seems unclear is whether there are clear epistemic peers, those who are truly looking at the same evidence in the same way as I am. There are many who I encounter who have clearly not worked very hard to fully appreciate the Christian arguments. There are definitely some who have carefully and thoughtfully considered some of the evidence, but even these are few and far between. The writings of the so-called New Atheists are a good example of this. In fact, atheist philosopher Michael Ruse makes this very point:

I have written that The God Delusion made me ashamed to be an atheist and I meant it. Trying to understand how God could need no cause, Christians claim that God exists necessarily. I have taken the effort to try to understand what that means. Dawkins and company are ignorant of such claims and positively contemptuous of those who even try to understand them, let alone believe them. Thus, like a first-year undergraduate, he can happily go around asking loudly, “What caused God?” as though he had made some momentous philosophical discovery…There are a lot of very bright and well informed Christian theologians. We atheists should demand no less.^[2]

The point here is not to return the favor and merely ridicule Dawkins and company. It is to say that there are few who take the time and care to understand the opposing view. If that’s right, then my rationally justified belief shouldn’t suffer at all from existence of someone who disagrees in an uninformed way.

But what about those who thoughtfully reject Christianity? Michael Ruse says that he has given effort to understand what Christians are claiming and why they are claiming it. And so he doesn’t simply dismiss in the way of Dawkins, but he still definitely disagrees.

Are these who carefully consider Christianity epistemic peers? I think there is reason to say no, not at least in a strict sense of being an epistemic peer. This is of course not to say that unbelievers are epistemically inferior to Christians. Rather the point is that there is so very much that goes into forming our fundamental beliefs that it is at least plausible that no two people share a strictly identical epistemic situation. To see this we should first emphasize our limitations as knowers. There is only so much one can carefully consider in a lifetime. So though Ruse has given effort to understand certain Christian claims (and this is commendable), when I have heard Ruse speak, it seems clear to me that he has hasn’t fully considered all of the nuances of the Christian position. We have a limited bandwidth and no single person can carefully consider all alternative view. This is especially true when we consider the complex but important subtleties of arguments.

There are also many non-epistemic factors that affect our belief formation. We are not mere logic machines. Our upbringing and prior experiences certainly figure in to our belief formation, as does our hopes, fears and desires. The atheist philosopher Thomas Nagel has said:

I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God and, naturally, hope that I’m right in my belief. It’s that I hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that. My guess is that this cosmic authority problem is not a rare condition and that it is responsible for much of the scientism and reductionism of our time.^[3]

Now I don’t think that Nagel is irrational in his atheism just because he wants it to be true. As a world-class philosopher, he still presumably holds to his atheism on the basis of evidence. But the point is I don’t share his desire for atheism to be true. Thus his approach to the world is very different from mine.

These kinds of factors undoubtedly affect how we form our beliefs. I grew up at a Christian addiction recovery center. I grew up seeing the gospel change the life of guys who were so thoroughly broken by their addiction that if the recovery center didn’t “work,” then suicide was the only other legitimate option. I’ve also seen the gospel affect the lives of many, many people (including my own) during the course of my life and ministry. Presumably Nagel lacks this sort of experience. But I can’t shake its effect on me. Given this, could we ever be considered epistemic peers on this issue? It seems not.

Where does this leave us? I’d like to suggest that given the subtlety of the evidence and the way that we bring our desires and background to bear on what we believe, there are no identical epistemic peers. We might be equals in our general ability to discover truth, but this need not mean that we are identical epistemic peers. Rather it seems we all have a limited but nonidentical view of the world. Does this leave us condemned to skepticism? No because skepticism, as a view, has the very same issues! The skeptic has a limited view of the world too.

The point of all of this is to say that we can do no better than doing our level best to believe in accord with our evidence. After careful inquiry and reflection, we should believe those things that are best supported by the evidence that we have. If our best evidence points to atheism, then we should be atheists. If our best evidence points to Christianity, then we should so believe. I myself have a hard time seeing how one can look at this world and not see a wide variety of evidence for God. However, presumably my atheist friends think similarly about their atheism.

This brings up one last point in closing, the radical diversity of the world should, it seems to me, foster an attitude of intellectual humility in the realization that we may be wrong about some of what we believe. If I’m right, we have a very limited view of the world and so our engagement with others should reflect our limitations (i.e., treating others with respect, having genuine curiosity about what they believe, etc.). However, it seems to me to be an over-correction to think we cannot rationally believe something in the face of disagreement.

^[1] Thomas Kelly. “The Epistemic Significance of Disagreement” in Oxford Studies in Epistemology (New York: Oxford, 2005), p. 174.

^[2] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2009/nov/02/atheism-dawkins-ruse

^[3] Nagel, Thomas, The Last Word, pp. 130–131, Oxford University Press, 1997.

I’ve argued (here) that doubt has instrumental value  since, when handled properly, it leads to truth, knowledge, and (since I think Christianity is true) to a greater faith. Though it seems a bit ironic, confident faith is, in my view, the result of asking deep and difficult questions.

One worry here is that this all sounds a bit risky. Is it wise to tell people, people young in the Christian faith, that they should doubt their faith? Admittedly this sounds a little crazy. And you should know that the last thing in the world that I want is to find out that someone walked away from the faith given my suggestion to doubt. It feels a whole lot nicer and safer to just have them remain as they are.

But here’s the problem, kids are walking away from the faith in droves! The statistics are not good. The most conservative numbers say that 3 out of 5 (60% of) Christian kids walk away (Barna). Other studies have it up to 75-80%. One study of Southern Baptists puts it as high as 88% of kids walking away by the age of 18 (SBC Family Life Council). I have four children. And I can do math. So this stat keeps me up at night.

It may be a bit risky to encourage some doubts. But let’s just be honest, what’s riskier? Having them consider deep and difficult questions that may cause them to struggle a bit or just loading them up with all the “right” answers and never have them seriously consider opposing beliefs? The current statistics suggest that the “let’s hope for the best” strategy is far riskier.

Now we’d be fools to think that these kids walk away from the faith only for intellectual reasons. There are a lot of things going on in college, and let’s just say it’s not all studying. You put a few thousand 18-22 year olds on a campus with little moral supervision and we can all guess what’s going to happen. For some students, it is a never ending party with a few papers and exams sprinkled in from time to time. Students, of course, find this tempting and choose the party over their faith. That happens and I’m not sure more apologetics will address what’s going on here.

But there are some (and many who this is true, at least, in part) are confronted with ideas contrary to their Christian faith and, lacking any satisfying answer, walk away for intellectual reasons.

These students often feel betrayed. They grew up in church learning about Christianity week in and week out. They were given the impression by pastors and parents that there were no legitimate challenges to the belief in God, the biblical claims about Jesus, the reliability and accuracy of Scripture, etc. They thought it is only the fool who denies the existence of God, or that there’s not a shred of evidence for Darwinian evolution, and that Scripture can withstand any and all tests. And then they find themselves amongst some of the smartest individuals they’ll ever meet in their lifetimes who defend each of these ideas in compelling and thoughtful ways.

I’ve got to be honest here, I think that our kids have been betrayed if they were told only idiots believe these things. Since many adults haven’t wrestled with the deep and difficult questions, it seems they try to get their kids into the same cognitive place of making the Christian assumptions. But it’s not working. It is a different world with our kids. It is not enough to assume its truth and hope for the best. Our kids are pummeled with hostility towards a conservative Christian faith. I believe that apologetics will cease to be just some hobby discipline for only the heady few. It will be the way of intellectual survival for the next generation!

But there’s an alternative.

We can help our kids, and those to whom we minister, feel the weight of the objections to Christianity. Will it cause them to doubt? It probably will, at least, a bit. But would you rather them have doubts while in your care or when they’re surrounded by thousands of hedonists pressuring them to all things unchristian? Here’s the beautiful thing, when they are in your care, you can walk with them through their doubts.

To be clear, I’m not recommending that one should be a mere skeptic, asking “But why?” for every claim that is made no matter what it is. It is of course great to ask why, but it is not great when the person is doing this only to be stubborn and deflect from really engaging in the reasoning.

I believe that apologetics will cease to be just some hobby discipline for only the heady few. It will be the way of intellectual survival for the next generation!

What I am recommending is that, together with our kids, we seek…I mean really and genuinely seek after…the truth by asking the deep and difficult questions. We take it slow and we do it together, but we begin to allow our kids to feel the force of the hard objections to Christianity. They are going to feel it at some point and so let’s have them feel it with you in the room. We also allow our kids to ask any question and push on any claim they don’t understand or find satisfying. We are seeking the truth and so we are not afraid of any question whatsoever. We show them the best answers we can for those questions. When (not if but when) a question comes and we don’t know the answer, we look into it together. We show our kids how to resolve, as best we can, these tensions. I want my kids to experience that. I want them to feel the force of an objection but then I want them to feel what it’s like to resolve that tension with robust answers. This is the way of confident faith.

Now it may seem like I’m just assuming that everyone will find every answer to every issue and everything is going to be super great. To the contrary, I think that this is hard and messy work. This is where there is indeed a risk. But I just have to speak from my own experience. I have found that Christianity’s resources to be deep wellsprings. I have devoted most of the last 20 years to this exact pursuit and I’m continually blown away by Christianity’s ability to provide an answer to the deepest and most difficult problems. This is not to say that everything is a slam dunk. There are a variety of issues where I find myself, in a way, minimally satisfied by the Christian answer even though some tension may remain. But there are apologetic slam dunks and when I consider the cumulative force of the case for Christianity, I find myself deeply satisfied intellectually (despite having a few questions that lack, so far, a deeply satisfying answer) and I know many others who would say the same thing.

Christians stand in a long and rich tradition of considering the hardest objections and offering thoughtful responses. In fact, there are many objections to Christianity historically that were best articulated by Christians! The shame of it all is that many Christians today think that this is somehow contrary to faith. But asking these questions was done historically as an effort for the purpose of a greater faith. The thought is that if Christianity can address our hardest questions, we come out with a deeper and more abiding faith. It can be a difficult process and almost certainly will include some doubts along the way. But we come away with truth and a deep faith. And that’s a great value indeed!

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