Properly basic beliefs

If you have hung around philosophical discussions about God and Christianity, then at some point you’ve likely heard someone bring up the notion of a belief’s being “properly basic.” It can often sound like the Christian who employs this concept is simply helping him or herself to some wild claim without offering any reasons to believe it. That is, it can sound like a cop out. And, frankly, it may be a cop out. I’m guessing well-meaning Christians do use this as way to not have to give actual evidence. But if they do, they have misused the concept.

Let me explain.

Let’s first say what it is for a belief to be properly basic. In short, a basic belief is one that is based directly on a fact and not another belief. A properly basic belief is one that is based directly on a fact where the fact justifies the belief.

[If this is satisfactory, then you can skip to the next section. I explain things more fully below, but please note there are many technicalities of this discussion that will be completely left out.]

The basis of a belief

Some beliefs are based on other beliefs. Let’s say I watch the evening news and the weather man reports that tomorrow it will be 70 degrees and sunny. Call this belief B1. I believe B1 and I infer B2: that “tomorrow will be pleasant.” Since I inferred this belief, we say B2 is based on B1. B1 is my rational basis for believing B2. What we should notice is if I were to report B2 to my wife, she may appropriately ask why I think B2 is true. I would answer with B1. But here’s where it gets interesting. If she was in an uncharacteristically meddling mood, she could ask why I think B1 is true. In order for B1 to be rational, it seems I would need reasons for believing it.

Beliefs, by their very nature, are such that they are always either true or false. When we believe, we represent the world as being some such way and this is either how the world is or it is not how the world is. Again, this is simply a matter of the nature of a belief. Thus, one ALWAYS needs a reason for thinking the belief is true if one is going to assent to it. That is, if one lacked all reasons whatsoever for some belief, then it isn’t rational to hold that belief.

But not all beliefs are based on other beliefs. Some beliefs are, for example, based directly on an experience of some sort. Let’s say you stub your toe and experience a sharp pain and form the belief “I am in pain.” Remember, beliefs need reasons. So what’s your reason for this belief? Here it seems it is the very fact that you are in pain! We should notice we’ve based our belief directly on a fact and facts don’t need further reasons because they are, well, facts. Facts just exist. In other words, there are not true or false facts. There are just facts. This is a basic belief since its reason doesn’t involve any beliefs that would require further reasons. It’s based directly on a fact.

If a (nonbasic) belief is inferred from a prior belief, the prior belief must have justification for it to be rational. This is either some fact or another prior belief. The foundationalist believes that all inferential beliefs must ultimately lead, at some point, to a properly basic belief from which these beliefs were inferred. The thought is that an inferential chain cannot go on infinitely. It must ultimately terminate in a belief that is based directly on some fact or facts that generate justification without itself needing to be justified.

Consider the following:

Belief: “I should go to the doctor.”

Why think this is true?

Belief: “I am in pain.”

Why think this is true?

Experience: the pain itself

We should notice that the belief that “I should go to the doctor” is justified by the belief “I am in pain.” This is inferential. There is undoubtedly more going on with this inference than just this, but it seems we could sufficiently fill this picture out and, if we did, we’ll clearly see that it is a rational inference. But since the belief “I am in pain” is a belief, it makes sense to ask whether it is justified. If it is not justified, then the belief “I should go to the doctor” is not justified. Here the belief is basic. It is based directly on the experience of pain itself. The experience justifies the belief “I am in pain” which in turn justifies (by inference) the belief “I should go to the doctor.”

Are Christian beliefs properly basic?

There’s a legitimate discussion in Christian philosophy about which beliefs should be considered basic. To say that a belief is properly basic is not a cop out (or at least it need not be). It’s merely to assert that a belief is based not an inference from other beliefs, but on some fact or facts. So if a belief is to be properly basic (and not used as a cop out), one must come up with some justifying fact upon which it is directly based.

I’m an unabashed evidentialist in the sense that the rationality of a belief has only to do with what evidence one has.[1] It’s a big debate in epistmeology, but my own view is that a belief cannot be made rational by things of which one is unaware. But I think of evidence in a very broad sense. Though arguments can be evidence, it is not only arguments that can be evidence. Evidence includes both empirical and philosophical considerations. But we can have evidence of the direct sort. We can, for example, base a belief directly on an experience. When one is in pain, the evidence one has for believing one is in pain is the experience of pain itself. We also seem to know such things as mathematical and logical facts on the basis of intuition. I rationally believe that 2+3=5 not on the basis of an argument. I grasp this fact directly via my intuitive awareness of the relevant mathematical fact.

On what facts can we base our Christian beliefs?

What about our Christian beliefs? It seems clear we can have a direct encounter with God and thereby rationally believe that God exists on the basis of this encounter. It also seems we can know certain things about God on the basis of our intuitions similar to the way in which we know mathematical facts. Most Christian philosophers will agree that, when it comes to our Christian beliefs, we can minimally have these as properly basic beliefs.

But I think philosophers would agree that not ALL Christian beliefs are properly basic. There are very fine grained theological claims that seem to be the result of careful reflection and inferences from other claims. One cannot have direct experience of the facts of, say, eschatology, or so it seems to me. These will be inferred from prior beliefs.

So if there are some beliefs we know in the basic way and some that are clearly inferred, where is the divide? Again, there is considerable disagreement on this issue. I tend to be less permissive than others in what we can know in the basic way. For example, it is not clear to me one can know Jesus rose from the dead in a properly basic way. One can perhaps know that Jesus is real, given a direct encounter. But to know that in AD 30 (or thereabouts), Jesus of Nazareth was crucified and 3 days later rose from the dead seems clearly inferential given its historical nature. One will need to infer this from other beliefs about the Bible, history, God, etc. I’m also doubtful one can believe that Scripture is God’s revealed word in a properly basic way.[2] Again, it is difficult to know what facts on which one could base this belief for it to be basic.

We should keep in mind that just because something is not properly basic doesn’t mean it is any less rational to believe. Perhaps the structure the relevant beliefs will be a bit more complex and complexity may bring more opportunity for error. But as long as the belief is inferred in the appropriate way from a justified belief, then the belief can be rational for someone.

One last point is a person can have a properly basic belief that is also, at the same time, justified inferentially. One can have a direct encounter with God and believe that God exists on that basis. But one can also consider the dozen or more plausible arguments for God’s existence and have this belief also supported by them. This would be, for one, a well justified belief indeed.

[1] A non-evidentialist, like Alvin Plantinga, would say that a belief can be made rational by things of which one is unaware. Plantinga’s epistemological view is a version of externalism whereas evidentialism is typically construed as an internalism.

[2] Much of this turns on whether testimony is a source of properly basic beliefs.

Apologetics, Apologetics for kids, Christian Faith, Doubt

4 Steps to Help Kids Ask Questions Stuck in their Heads

November 2, 2017

Every survey and researcher says that students have a lot of questions about their faith. This seems to essentially define Millennials and Gen Y from older generations. Whereas older generations were content with certain presuppositions about faith, youth today are suspicious and often doubtful of these things. But here’s a funny thing. I get the privilege to speak regularly to students about faith and apologetics. At these events, there will occasionally be a Q and A time. When it is thrown open for questions, it’s very often the case that there is…awkward silence (crickets in the background). (whispering) Psst, where’s all the questions? What’s going on?

What is going on here? Well I don’t think the researchers have it wrong. I do think students have questions and they can, often times, be burdened by these. I think it is that the questions haven’t always coalesced in their minds into English language yet.

This can be a really rough place to be. One has a question that’s bothering them and creating cognitive dissonance, but they cannot even ask the question that’s there. It can be especially rough since that question may continue to nag them and even create further doubts. If they could just ask the question, it may be there’s a really good answer waiting in the wings. But it’s currently stuck and, thus, they are currently stuck.

We must get our kids asking their questions and seeing the resources of the Christian faith. An important role for youth leaders and parents to play is to help their kids articulate the questions they in fact have. To be clear, this isn’t telling your kids what to think. It is not telling them what questions they should have. It is helping them surface and articulate their questions.

Here are 4 steps to help kids ask the questions stuck in their heads.

Enter into their world.

The first thing is to enter their world. This is perhaps the most difficult step, especially if you haven’t done this much to date. But we’ve got to meet them where they are at. We need to notice what they like, what bothers them, what repulses them, what do they tend to emphasize, what sorts of things change their mind on issues, etc. Every generation is different. There is said to be one of the greatest generation gaps that has ever existed today. I’m not sure if that’s right or even how that is measured, but it seems clear the world they move in is substantively different and you need to get to know it to help the ask their questions.

Listen and affirm them in the questions they ask.

I want to also suggest you create a safe space for them to ask any question at all. This is perhaps the scariest part. My wife and I have always told our kids they can ask us any question in the world and we’ll do our best to answer it (always in age appropriate ways) without any condemnation. There is, for us, no question that is off limits.

Now you have to cultivate the art of listening in these situations. Listen to them. Listen to what they are saying on their terms. Listen especially to what they are not saying. It’s often that the good stuff hangs just behind what they say.

Now it’s not my view that every question is a good one. There are dumb questions. But any question, insofar as it is a genuine question, is good to ask. And again, ill-formed questions will often stand just on the outside of a great question. Thus I think we should always affirm our kids in the questions they ask. If it is interesting to my kids, it is thereby interesting to me. If you make them feel bad in asking a question, they will start going elsewhere for answers.

Ask clarifying questions and push them to dig deeper.

If they’ve begun to ask some questions, great. But it may not be the question that’s bothering them. Clarify what they are saying. State their question back to them in different words to make sure you’ve got it. “I hear you asking…” and be ready to have missed their point.

If they still don’t know what to ask, give them some prompts. I find that I can typically start in talking about God or the Bible and the questions often come. By pushing them to dig deeper, they’ll find things that don’t make sense to them.

Walk together in dialogue as you search for answers together.

Chances are you will get thrown for a loop. I know I do all the time with students. I often have to give my best stab at something and then apologize and promise to get back to them. But I make it a point to get back to them. And this is the good stuff. Walking together in a dialogue (rather than preaching at them in monologue form) will draw you closer together and help both of you to clarify your thoughts and believe in more rational ways.

Apologetics, Christian Faith

Martin Luther’s Appeal to ‘Scripture and Plain Reason’

October 31, 2017

A revolution

Just over 500 years ago, Martin Luther helped begin a revolution when his Ninety-Five Theses were nailed to the wall of Wittenberg chapel. I proudly stand in that theological tradition along with many other protestant reformers and revolutionaries. It is a tradition that values the Bible as a unique authority for our Christian beliefs. Luther threw off, among other things, the pronouncements of the papacy as equally or (perhaps functionally) more authoritative than Scripture.

I’m no Luther scholar. Let’s just get that out of the way. But I know enough to know he faced down fierce opposition at a time when one’s theological views could cost one one’s life and livelihood all because he became convinced Scripture was the authoritative Word of God.

When called upon to recant his revolutionary idea about the Bible, Luther gives one of his most famous lines:

Unless I am convinced by Scripture and plain reason—I do not accept the authority of the popes and councils, for they have contradicted each other—my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not recant anything for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me. Amen.

Philosophy as the devil’s whore

I’m certainly not on board with all of Luther’s beliefs, especially towards the end of his life when he expressed strong anti-Semitic sentiments.

When it comes to philosophy, let’s just say Luther also did not have the highest regard. In fact, he once called philosophy the “devil’s whore”! I’m not exactly sure what it means to be the devil’s whore, but he’s clearly not a fan. In light of this, many have argued that Luther believed philosophy was contrary to Christian faith. However, others have argued that Luther had not a low view of philosophy and reason, in general, so much as a low view of “secular” philosophy (i.e., philosophy that is not informed by Scripture and theology) standing as arbiter over revelation. On this view, philosophy played an important role, even though it would be, in a way, secondary to revelation as a handmaid in doing Christian theology.

Now we won’t settle Luther’s view on this issue here, but what’s worth noticing is Luther’s reference to reason in this famous passage. Luther couples Scripture and plain reason as his (epistemological) basis for his being captive to the Word of God. He seems to be saying that plain reason is as at least a possible source for what would cause him to change his views about Scripture’s unique authority. Notice too he points out that the deficient position of “the popes and councils” is that they have contradicted each other. He seems to be emphasizes the fact that he could not accept the authority of the popes and councils because when taken in whole, it was an irrational (i.e., contradictory) position. Here again his appeal is to reason.

Knowing that Scripture is authoritative

Sometimes Christians act as if they have simply received their view straight from Scripture and that reason plays no role. However, this is quite impossible. There is no way to read and interpret Scripture itself without the exercise of our reason in deciding on what the passage says and what it means. It takes reason to construct a coherent doctrine and systematize the various things we believe on the basis of Scripture. And it takes reason to apply these doctrines to our lives. Reason plays a role for all of our intellectual pursuits. Reason, for Luther, was able to lead us to what is and what isn’t a divine authority.

Does conceding the role of reason here take away from the authority of Scripture, etc. and put the authority instead on reason? No, I want to suggest it puts the authority of Scripture on a solid rational basis! Through reason we are arguing for the authority of Scripture. Let’s assume that Scripture is the divine authority. The problem is that a person doesn’t automatically know that it is the divine authority even when it is. It seems we’re going to need reasons to know it is the Word of God. Some of these reasons can come within the text, but this has a circularity worry if this is all we have. In other words, it can’t be authoritative only because it says so. The pope was also claiming to be authoritative in Luther’s day. All religious texts claim to be authoritative, in some sense or other. It seems we need to turn to matters outside of scripture that may provide support and a case for this belief.

Now once we come to the belief that scripture is authoritative, we have presumably figured out what this thing is. It is the divine revelation of God! It is the Word of God. It is a source of knowledge sufficient for all matters of life and godliness. Once we know what it is, we then make appeal to scripture as our ultimate authority…full stop. And we can say along with Luther, “Unless I am convinced by Scripture and plain reason…my conscience is captive to the Word of God.”

Apologetics, Christian Faith, Doubt

Jesus Thinks Evidence Helps Address Doubt

October 20, 2017

A Question

As John the Baptist sits in a jail cell, he sends a few of his students to ask Jesus a question. Here it is:

“Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?” (Matt. 11:3; see also Lk. 7:20)

It’s a striking question since, well, it’s John the Baptist asking the question. This is the one who, in his ministry, prepared the way for Jesus. At their first meeting (ex utero!), John the Baptist himself, in effect, confesses that Jesus is the one who is to come just before John baptizes him (John 1:29-34). One would have thought if anyone was confident Jesus was the promised Messiah, it would have been John the Baptist. But he’s not sure and he’s asking.

Embarrassing

It’s interesting that both Matthew and Luke record this story. It’s might be thought to be a bit embarrassing that not even John the Baptist is sure that Jesus is the Messiah. If the Gospel writers were trying to get people to believe Jesus is Messiah, then it would have made sense for them to leave this one out (just think how odd this story would have been to include if the Jesus mythicists are correct that Jesus never existed). But, as is usual (I would argue), the Gospel writers don’t attempt to avoid what’s embarrassing and there’s so often a deep lesson to be learned.

What’s going on?

What was going on here for John? What we know is that John is sitting in prison for publicly criticizing Herod Antipas and he will be beheaded soon enough. Given these dire circumstances, many have speculated John is at a very low point in his life. He is struggling. Despite the fact that he did the right thing, he is unjustly suffering for it. So the inference is this is causing John to doubt who Jesus is.

Now I’m not sure we can know the psychological states of John the Baptist. Is he downtrodden and struggling? The text doesn’t say. I know I’d be downtrodden and struggling in his situation. What we know is he’s asking. We know that he is unsure about Jesus. He’s clearly having some intellectual doubts.

Intellectual Doubt

What is intellectual doubt? It is when we experience an intellectual tension in our beliefs. What seems to happen is we begin to suspect a belief of ours may be wrong. Put another way, we feel the force or pull of some objection to one of our beliefs. It’s clear, by John’s earlier confession, he believed Jesus was the Messiah. At some point, he began to feel the pull of the idea that Jesus was not the guy and that perhaps they should be expecting someone else.

I have argued there is great value in experiencing times of intellectual doubt since, as we press in and investigate, we can be led to a greater faith. What becomes really interesting in this passage is Jesus’s reaction to John’s question.

Two Aspects of Jesus’s Reaction to John’s Doubt

First, he does not rebuke John’s questioning of him. This is important. I don’t recall one time when Jesus turns down an honest question. With John the Baptist, Jesus even goes to commend him as, in one sense, the greatest who has ever lived (Matt. 11:11; Lk. 7:28)! This is in the face of his doubting who Jesus is. So it seems okay to wonder. It’s okay to not be sure. There are other sorts of questions, often posed by Jewish religious leaders, where Jesus does rebuke. However, these are not genuine seekers and their questions aren’t designed to even get answers. When it comes to genuine seekers, Jesus welcomes.

Second, Jesus points at evidence as the answer to John’s question. The passage goes on:

[Jesus] replied to them, “Go and report to John what you hear and see:The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, those with leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor are told the good news,and blessed is the one who isn’t offended by me.” (vs. 22-23)

Notice Jesus does not merely tell John “the answer is, yes, I am the Messiah.” Who knows, this might have satisfied John. He also doesn’t tell John to just drum up more faith. He offers actual evidence to address John’s doubts.

What seems clear is that evidence helps our intellectual doubts. It may not solve everything going on in our hearts. I’m convinced that, for some, no amount of evidence is ever going to satisfy. This is because they are, like the Jewish religious leaders, not genuine seekers. I’m also convinced that if we approach open to have our questions addressed, there is a compelling case to be made.

Apologetics, Christian Faith, Dialogue, Doubt

The Importance of an Open Mind that Closes

October 13, 2017

Minds Were Made to Shut

We typically think having an open mind is a good thing. And in certain situations, it certainly is a good thing. For example, we should have an open mind when we are beginning an inquiry. If we have no settled views on some matter, then it would be quite foolish to hold strongly to a particular view. We should be open to a variety of voices of authority on the matter as begin our inquiry.

But once we have settled our views about some matter, it seems our minds should shut. That is, once we have surveyed and evaluated the most plausible views on some matter, we need not and should not stay completely open minded any longer.

G.K. Chesterton once said:

An open mind is really a mark of foolishness, like an open mouth. Mouths and minds were made to shut; they were made to open only in order to shut. (Illustrated London News. October 10, 1908)

Open Mindedness as a Virtue?

When we begin to think carefully about open mindedness, we see that open mindedness, without qualification, is not a virtue. To remain completely open minded about p when we have good reason to believe p is, say, false is not acting with intellectual virtue. As evidence comes, then we should, in a sense, become more and more close minded.

Is it really okay to be close minded at times? Yes, because not all views are equally plausible, especially after some reasonable inquiry. If a view proves to be false or irrational, then it seems to be a good idea (and very normal) to foreclose on that view as a genuine possibility. After we have looked into the matter, we may not know exactly what view to hold, but we often know which views are clearly false.

Should We Ever Be Absolutely Close Minded?

Do we ever come to shut our minds completely and absolutely? Though it isn’t really implied by the Chesterton quote, my own view is that it should be very rare for our minds to shut completely and absolutely. That is, we should shut our minds on things we have reason to believe are true, but be willing reopen when countervailing evidence presents itself. This is because it is at least possible to be wrong about the things we believe. Again, we need not be completely open to any and all views given the evidence we possess, we should still listen to the most plausible opposing views in case we need to reopen in light of new evidence.

My Mind is Shut on Christianity

It was really important for me, in my Christian journey, to have an open mind about alternative views. I came to doubt my faith and the truth of Christianity. Consequently, I systematically considered as many relevantly different worldviews as I could. I had an open mind and tried to approach these without bias. In complete honesty, I found myself surprised at how badly supported nonchristian worldviews are compared to the support and evidence for Christianity, including atheism and even agnosticism. Most other worldviews do not even think in terms of evidence and objectivity. For example, one is hard pressed to find Buddhist apologetics these days! And it seems this is for good reason. There isn’t much for evidence for Buddhism as a worldview. When it came to atheism and agnosticism, there were far too many questions that these left unexplained. In fact, it has always seemed to me that atheism fails to explain the most important aspects of life.

My mind came to shut on Christianity. It would take quite a lot, at this point, to unseat my Christian intellectual commitments. It’s possible, but I don’t think it is likely. If Christianity is false, there should be plenty of evidence that presents itself in which case I would reconsider my commitments. But I’ve been at this pursuit for almost 20 years and the counter evidence is lacking. There are objections, but I find satisfying answers to these objections and then some.

So here I am, I have been completely open minded along the way and I’m willing to reconsider, but, at this point, I am shut on truth of the Christian way.

Apologetics, Christianity

Religious Pluralism and the Myth of Inclusivity

October 4, 2017

Perhaps the most attractive part of Religious Pluralism (RP)—the notion there are many ways to God—is its supposed inclusivism. Religions are not exactly known for coming together on almost anything. If the major religions can come together under the big tent of RP, then this would be, it seems, a good thing. But is RP a big tent? Does it include a diversity of views? I think RP is no more inclusive than the exclusively exclusive Christian exclusivist.

Prof. John Hick

There are a variety of ways to understand RP. The most plausible version, I think, is John Hick’s.[1] It has the benefit of being logically coherent unlike many of the more simplistic forms of RP that say (literally) all religious views are correct (which is literally incoherent). By contrast, Hick actually argued that all religious views are strictly speaking false in terms of the particulars they defend. Religions, for Hick, attempt to describe the indescribable. Though he thought all religions are false, he wasn’t an atheist. He thought there was a terrific value in the major ancient religious traditions in that they each provide a way to God, or what Hick calls the Real. The Real is that indescribable transcendent reality all religions point us to. So when the Christian says that Jesus died on the cross and this provides the way to God. The Christian is wrong that it is Jesus’s death that provides the way to God. For Hick, Jesus is not God and nothing happened on the cross other than someone died. But being a follower of Jesus is a way the Real. It is the way that Christians get to the Real, but so do the practices of Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, etc.

Some people seem to think this lack of exclusivity is refreshing. But is this really inclusivism? The problem is that it is only inclusive in the sense we are all inclusively wrong in our particular narratives about salvation despite the fact it’s going to end up okay. But when we think carefully here, we’ll see that Hick’s beliefs are a set of exclusive truth claims themselves. There is not much that is truly plural about Hick’s pluralism.

To see this, consider the fact that Hick’s pluralism asserts that all of us religious folks are wrong in what we assert. That’s a lot of disagreement and falsehoods for a view labeled as pluralistic. Hick clearly believed that his view about the world was the one true view and he defended that view for decades. Pluralistic? No, it isn’t. Tolerant? Not really. Exclusive claim? Bingo! If you disagree with the pluralism, the pluralist will say that you are wrong. The pluralist believes that it is only she who has the full view of reality, and the rest of the world, both now and historically, is just simply wrong about what they believe religiously.

As it turns out, inclusivity is impossible. This is a consequence of the nature of a truth claim. Whenever we make a claim, we are claiming that it is true, and this implies that its contraries are all false. One can try to be perfectly inclusive, but it will always exclude whoever holds the contrary view. Imagine we assert the following view: “everyone, no matter what they believe, is right.” If anything is inclusive, this is it. But doesn’t this exclude everyone who says there are only some who are right? This extremely inclusive statement excludes all those who disagree (which, by the way, is almost everyone on the planet since probably no one believes this). The claim, though it seems inclusive, actually excludes everyone!

Anyone who makes a truth claim, given the nature of truth, is an exclusivist. Thus, if being exclusive is a problem, it is a problem for everyone! But there’s no reason to think that being exclusive, all by itself, is a problem. There seems to be no way to have meaningful dialogue without it. Let’s just stop pretending like we don’t disagree and then we can have thoughtful, loving and tolerant-but-sharp disagreement. This is very possible and far more meaningful.

[1] John Hick. An Interpretation of Religion (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989).

Apologetics, Christian Faith, Doubt

Doubt That Is Toxic for Faith

September 25, 2017

Doubts

Over the last few years, I’ve been known to say things like “doubt is a good thing for Christian faith” and I go on to explain that doubts can lead to truth and an even greater faith. But about 1/3 of Christians initially react to my saying this with a distinct look of horror on their face. If I have enough time, I can typically explain enough that the look of horror goes away (at least on the outside!). What I say is, in doubting, there’s a real value in getting our hands dirty with objections to Christianity precisely because there is a robust case for Christianity. My experience and the experience of many I know is when we genuinely pursue these matters, Christianity provides deeply satisfying answers to our doubts. When we get these answers, we secure a greater faith.

But these are doubts of the intellectual variety. It is where we are wondering or are curious about some fact or other. To be sure, it may be a pronounced struggle, but (and this is really important) this form of doubt is entirely consistent with faith. We can have a variety of questions about Christianity and still maintain faith.

I often use the example of flying on an airplane. I have a lot of questions about how it is possible for a craft made of mostly metal to safely cruise 6 miles off the planet. I have some unanswered questions about this, but I can quite rationally get on board my next flight. I can place my faith in the air plane in the face of my doubts. Similarly, I can have questions—a lot of questions!—and still place my faith in Christ.

Toxic Doubt

But there’s another form of doubt (that seemingly 1/3 of people I talk to have in mind). It is a bit more complicated and is, in a way, toxic for Christian faith and relationships, in general. This is where we lack trust and doubt a person him or herself. It’s not propositional here. It is personal. Perhaps we’ve lost our trust in their character or integrity. This happens in marriages from time to time. For a variety of reasons, one can no longer trust his or her spouse. One is in this unfortunate place of doubting him or her. This is really toxic for a marriage since faith in the other is lost. The survival of the marriage, it seems to me, depends on regaining this lost trust.

The parallel for Christian faith should be obvious. When we lack trust in God, this is of course a bad place to be as it relates to our Christian faith. In fact, if Christian faith is a state of trust (as I argue here, here, and here), then this form of doubt just is to fail to have faith. One cannot doubt (in this sense) and have faith.

Sometimes we are completely justified in lacking faith in someone. Spouses and other people in our lives are sometimes unfaithful and it is completely appropriate to doubt them. I of course do not think that this is the case with God, but I won’t take the space here to defend this claim. I will say, however, I am more certain about God’s fidelity, then just about anything of my Christian beliefs. But for the sake of this post (and I know not everyone reading this agrees), I’m going to assume that when we doubt God in this way, we aren’t thinking rightly about God.

Addressing Toxic Doubt

What should we do then when we doubt (as in lack trust in) God? We are, it seems, “like the surging sea, driven and tossed by the wind…being double-minded and unstable in all [our] ways” (Jm. 1:8-9). It seems to me the answer is the same as it is for all doubts: we’ve got to pursue truth and knowledge. If one is doubting one’s spouse in a possibly inappropriate way, one should pursue the truth about one’s spouse. One needs to figure out whether he or she has in fact been unfaithful.

On the God front, apologetics may prove helpful here, but it is not the full answer. It seems one must also press in relationally (true of marriage too!) to taste of God’s fidelity. One should dive in devotionally and allow God to provide evidence of his character. This is coming face to face with God, confessing our doubts, and opening our hearts and minds to his corrective. It’s not easy but, in the process, there’s rest for your soul.

Consider the words of Jesus:

Come to me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take up my yoke and learn from me, because I am lowly and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. (Mt. 11:28-30)

It’s a standing invitation.

Apologetics, Christianity

The (Morally Appropriate) Jealousy of God

September 12, 2017

The Bible in no uncertain terms describes God as jealous. In fact, God himself proclaims:

You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God (Exodus 20:5)

This, it seems, is grist for the New Atheist hostility mill. What?! You think God is jealous? In the words of Bill Maher, in his not-so-much interesting movie Religulous, “Your God is jealous? That seems so un-godlike that God would have such a petty human emotion. I know people who have gotten over jealousy, let alone God.”

The problem with this response is the problem with much of the New Atheist content, which is it treats superficially a notion embedded in a very specific tradition and a context. Virtually absent from their critiques is any attempt to understand what Scripture or Christians mean by this sort of claim. If Scripture was predicating of God a petty human emotion, I too would react with disdain. But maybe, just maybe, there is a bit more subtlety here and if we dive into the context, we’d see something actually quite profound and interesting. Fingers crossed!

Is Jealousy Wrong?

Let’s first ask whether jealousy is always morally wrong. There’s certainly a way of being jealous that is morally inappropriate. In this case, one is strongly desiring something one lacks or to which one has no right to possess. So if you strongly desire your neighbor’s car, your co-worker’s house, or your friend’s good looks, then you are jealous of them in a way that seems overall inappropriate. The moral virtue is to be content with what we possess and to moderate our desires accordingly.

Is this what the Exodus passage is referring to? Well, no, of course not on the Christian view. For the Christian, God is without lack and so it’s suspect from the start to think that Scripture is picturing God as desiring something he lacks. Perhaps Christian theology gets the Bible wrong here…or (said with emphasis) perhaps we shouldn’t see this as God’s desiring something he lacks and there’s a better reading of what’s going on.

It’s also worth noting the Bible goes on to explicitly prohibit an attitude of jealousy in Galatians 5:20. This is (since it is prohibited) the morally inappropriate sense of jealousy. So perhaps Galatians is prohibiting something that Exodus is ascribing to God…or (said with emphasis) perhaps there are different senses of the term and there’s a morally appropriate sense of jealousy.

I want to suggest there is a morally appropriate sense of jealousy.

Appropriate Jealousy

What would be a morally appropriate sense of jealousy? The term seems to have enough flexibility to include strongly desiring something that is in fact rightfully ours. On the Christian view, the world is rightfully God’s. We, in particular, are his. So for him to desire us and our affections, for him to be jealous in this sense, is not morally inappropriate.

Perhaps an analogy is when someone’s spouse has, in a way, wandered from the marriage. It is completely appropriate for one to be jealous after one’s spouse in this scenario. In fact, if there’s any hope for the marriage, then one will desire and seek to win one’s spouse back.

For God to be a jealous God, he desires our affections and worship, not because he lacks in some way, but because he is the appropriate object of our affections and worship. Other gods, even if they existed, are not worthy of worship. They indeed, without fail, lack in various respects. The gods are to be appeased and placated, but not worshipped. We flourish best when we turn our affections and worship to God. It’s our telos, it’s our design. Being religiously plural–in giving our affections to other “gods”–is ultimately harmful to our wellbeing.

Rather than this being some expression of a petty emotion, this is a quite beautiful picture of God’s attitude towards us.

Apologetics, Christian Faith, Christianity

Are atheists committed to a world without moral facts?

September 6, 2017

Christian Apologists often say that without God there would be no such thing as morality. But the obvious counterexample to this is the many moral philosophers who are not theists but are moral realists (that is, they posit the existence of moral facts).

What’s going on here? Are all these professional philosophers just blind to their incoherence?

It’s important to see that the primary reason to posit God’s existence is because of the many features of the world that would be radically unexpected if God did not exist. For example, the way the universe is fine tuned for human existence is rather unexpected if God did not exist. However, if God does exist and God had planned intentions for humans to occupy a smallish piece of dust in the universe, then one would expect to see a world tuned for the realization of those intentions. There are many such features, and there’s no doubt moral facts are an important example of these.

Mackie’s argument from queerness

It seems exceedingly odd that the world has moral values that govern the actions of human beings. This very point is made by the eminent philosopher of religion, J.L. Mackie, who was one of the most famous atheists of the 20th century. Mackie argued against the existence of moral facts, in part, on the basis of what he called the argument from queerness. He says:

If there were objective values, then they would be entities or qualities or relations of a very strange sort, utterly different from anything else in the universe. Correspondingly, if we were aware of them, it would have to be by some special faculty of moral perception of intuition, utterly different from our ordinary ways of knowing everything else. (Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong)

Mackie concludes, given their queerness, there actually are no moral facts and defends an Error Theory, according to which all of our morally normative claims are, strictly speaking, false. However, this is a steep price to pay and many (perhaps most) subsequent atheist philosophers haven’t been willing to deny the existence of morality. Moral facts seem too obviously part of our world despite their queerness.

Moral facts are expected on theism

But moral facts are queer (or strange or unexpected) only on the atheist’s worldview. Moral facts are at home on a theistic picture. Theists have thought God, as the ground and source of morality, makes good sense of morality. This of course gives way to the moral argument for God’s existence.

But notice this doesn’t yield the claim that without God, there’s no such thing as morality. That’s overstated. Moral facts are queer (or strange) on atheism. They are not logical incoherent.

Atheist morality

What can the atheist say to account for morality? The atheist can say moral facts exist as brute facts of the world. That is, the world just is this way. Moral principles are necessary truths such that it isn’t possible for moral facts to fail to exist in a world with human agents. And the atheist can say we can apprehend these truths via our reflective (i.e., non-empirical) reasoning in coming to have moral knowledge.

An atheist, on this view. would not be a materialist or a naturalist, but something of a atheistic platonist. There seems to be logical space for this sort of view.

Is this ad hoc? Yes, yes it is. It leaves moral facts as posited, but not explained. But perhaps some entities of the world need not have an explanation. We all have to posit some brute facts at some point. Theists will think that God needs no reason or explanation for his existence. Rather, he is the explanation of the world. God exists in a brute way. Perhaps moral facts are like this. They explain the moral domain without themselves being or needing to be explained.

Who wins?

Now I think that theism wins hands down here. God is perhaps not entailed by moral facts but he is a far better explanation. God’s existence also explains a host of other features of our world (e.g., that there’s a world, the fine tuning of the world, the intrinsic value of human beings, logic/math, the regularity of nature, etc.). The atheist seems to have to say all of these things just are and this strikes me as extremely implausible. On the whole, I find atheism to be an impoverished worldview since it actually explains very little.

But are atheists committed to a world without moral facts? No, I think that’s overstated.

Apologetics, Christian Faith

CS Lewis and Believing in the Sun Rise

August 31, 2017

C.S. Lewis once said:

I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.

Even though this is one of my all-time favorite C.S. Lewis quotes, I’m a bit embarrassed to say I’ve never looked closely at the context of the quote. It doesn’t come from any of his more popular works. Rather it comes as the closing line in an invited paper presented to the Oxford Socratic Club, entitled “Is Theology Poetry?”

This is a wonderful essay. We get in it a nod towards a number of arguments for which Lewis is famous. For example, he gives a version of his argument from reason and his trilemma, at least sort of (he only mentions lunatic or God). Having not chosen the title question himself, he, like a good philosopher, begins by clarifying the question. He takes the question to be asking:

Does Christian Theology owe its attraction to its power of arousing and satisfying our imaginations? Are those who believe it mistaking aesthetic enjoyment for intellectual assent, or assenting because they enjoy?

In other words, is Christianity such a compelling story that we assent primarily because of the story and the myth (in the technical sense) it affords? This is interesting because Lewis has inspired a generation of apologists to consider a person’s imagination and deep longings in doing apologetics. Today people are talking about “imaginative apologetics.” So if we’d expect anyone to say that it all turns on the imagination, it would be Lewis. But he doesn’t. In fact, he says as mere poetry or mere story, Christianity isn’t the top of his list of best stories. Moreover, the idea that people come to Christianity primarily because of its attractiveness is, for Lewis, completely far-fetched. He says:

The charge that Theology is mere poetry, if it means that Christians believe it because they find it, antecedently to belief, the most poetically attractive of all world pictures, thus seems to me unplausible in the extreme.

Instead, what sets this story as unique, for Lewis, is its historicity. It’s being grounded in evidence makes it like no other view in all the world. Now I don’t think Lewis would say the story is uninteresting or completely vapid. It’s a big story. It’s an even bigger idea (see my post Christianity is the biggest idea I know). But as a pure story, for Lewis, there are bigger and better.

But it is not just its historicity that leads us to embrace Christianity. Lewis goes on to identify the importance of the Christian worldview for making sense of the reality. At one point, with full Lewisian wit and charm, he says:

The picture so often painted of Christians huddling together on an ever narrower strip of beach while the incoming tide of “Science” mounts higher and higher corresponds to nothing in my own experience.

Now the reason Lewis wasn’t bothered by current science was that the naturalistic and scientistic worldview that reigned in his day and still is, in many ways, alive and well rules out Christianity, but it also rules out science itself. This is Lewis’s argument from reason. The gist of the argument is that there is a radical inconsistency in this naturalistic worldview. It holds reason in its highest regard and yet its ontology doesn’t allow for reason to exist. Lewis says:

If minds are wholly dependent on brains, and brains on biochemistry, and biochemistry (in the long run) on the meaningless flux of the atoms, I cannot understand how the thought of those minds should have any more significance than the sound of the wind in the trees.

In fact, it seems that science and reason makes better sense on a Christian theistic picture. On the Christian view, we are not mere atoms in flux. We are embodied souls. Thus, we can make sense of mind (which has immaterial mental states like thoughts) over and above the brain (which only has physical states like biochemistry and neural activity). Now there may be other views in the philosophy of mind that can make sense of reason. However, if we are embodied souls, then we have a plausible framework for explaining mental reasoning. The Christian worldview also makes sense of such things like existence and fine tuning of the universe, moral and other objective value claims, consciousness, intrinsic human value, our sense of cosmic purpose, our fallenness and our deepest longings. Thus, we may believe in Christianity not just because we’ve had a direct encounter with the Trinitarian God, but also because it allows us to understand the world in which we live.

Thus, Lewis concludes:

“I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”

Are Christian Beliefs Properly Basic?