apologetics – Page 11 – Christ the Truth

Questions of Faith 3

GlenNovember 23, 2010Leave a comment

Continued from here.

Should there be blasphemy laws? Who should they protect?

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Sometimes when people find out I’m a clergyman halfway through our conversation they clap their hand to their face and say something like, “Sorry for the swearing.” And honestly I don’t care one little bit if you’ve turned the air blue with a tirade that would make a sailor blush. Really, I could care less. But if you use the name of my Lord who bled and died for me as a swear word – that pains me a great deal. I don’t care about your morality, I don’t care about ‘clean language’, but I do get offended when the Prince of Peace is dragged through the mud. I think blasphemy matters. I think it’s wrong. But what should be my response? Call the cops? Sue you? Take you to court? When you speak against my God, to whom should I appeal? The state?

While other Christians may disagree with my position, I think it’s one thing to call blasphemy a sin, it’s quite another to call it a crime. Yes it’s wrong. But it’s not wrong because it’s against the laws of the land. And I’m not an advocate for getting the state involved here.

How should we react when Christ is blasphemed? Well Romans 2:24 is an eye-opener. Paul (a former blasphemer himself, 1 Tim 1:13) reflects on both Isaiah and Ezekiel and says: “God’s name is blasphemed among the nations because of you [people of God!]” Why is there blasphemy? Not because of those blasphemers – those wicked heathen. Because of you – God’s own people. It’s the way God’s people have acted that’s led to the blasphemy. So perhaps our first response to blasphemy should be to come before Jesus and confess our part in bringing dishonour to His name.

Secondly we should respond with Christ-like grace. In the face of a false portrayal of Christ, answering that with cheek-turning Christians will be the best portrayal of Christ possible. This rarely happens though. When Stewart Lee and Richard Herring wrote Jerry Springer the Opera they portrayed Jesus in breath-takingly and deliberately offensive ways. Of course Christians can get offended by that (they’re meant to!). Of course they can complain when their license fees are used to fund it. But from the hate mail Lee and Herring received from Christian protestors, there was another false and offensive Jesus being portrayed. The way the blasphemy was answered by some Christians was not Christ-like and was therefore itself blasphemous.

At this point some Christians will complain that I’m advocating a soft policy that will make Christianity an easy target for ridicule. But of course the same argument is always used against ‘turning the other cheek.’ Yet still, it’s what Jesus commands.

The whole world was waiting to see how the Muslim world would react to the Danish Mohammed comics. Those who reacted violently confirmed every fear the comic was based upon.

The whole world also looks to Christians to see how we will respond. Undoubtedly the blasphemies which Christians have to put up with are hugely greater than anything Muslims have to endure. But the world is watching. And there is, on some level, an expectation that Christians will react differently. There is an expectation that forgiveness will be part of our response. And that’s a good thing. I realise that some Christians say “That’s the problem, these iconoclasts target Christianity because they know we’ll put up with things others never would.” Well yes. But that weakness is precisely our strength. May we go on being the only group on the planet that can actually handle ridicule and answer with grace. Because that’s how Jesus handled the blasphemies that were hurled at Him. And the only way to answer false portraits of Christ is to show them true Christ-like grace.

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Once again, I'd love to hear your thoughts, corrections, additions...

Questions of Faith 2

GlenNovember 22, 2010Leave a comment

Following on from here.

How should 'faith schools' be treated in a multi-cultural, multi-faith society?

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Every school is a faith school. Every school will communicate an ethos, a grand vision of what makes for ‘the good life’, what is valuable, what is worthless, what we should aspire to, what we should reject. Every school is a faith school just as every person is a person of faith. We all have some object of hope and desire to which we look. We all give ourselves to ‘something greater’ which becomes our life-shaping object of devotion. We all have a ‘heaven’ we day-dream about and a ‘hell’ we seek to avoid. We all hold ourselves and others to account using some particular measure. We all have faith commitments that shape our lives.

In our particular culture, we think nothing of sending off our children aged 5 years old to be educated by the state. This is just one more example of how we unthinkingly trust in the state from the cradle to the grave. When there is a social ill, we ask “What will the government do to sort it out?” Everyone’s looking for a Saviour, and for many people, the State is it. We trust in the state to feed us, to clothe us, to heal us, to protect us and to educate us.

So for many it’s just a no-brainer to send their children from the age of 5 to be educated by the state. And for the next decade and more, we trust the state to inform our children’s minds for a very great proportion of their waking lives. The government approved curriculum will educate them on matters including religion, family, sex and relationships. A good education should encompass all these things. But there is no neutral way to teach such subjects. For instance, to present all religions as equally valid is itself a religious view – it’s called religious pluralism. And it is a religious view intolerant of billions of people on our planet. (It’s ok to disagree with billions of people, but it’s good to be up-front that you’re doing so).

So it turns out that teaching from a faith perspective is inescapable. All schools are faith schools. It's just that state schools are a lot more clandestine about it. Usually people worry that the 'faith schools' are covering something up. Actually, they are the ones coming clean that they do and they must teach according to certain faith commitments.

Which means all schools should be transparent about the what and the how of their teaching. 'Faith school' should certainly not be a cloak for secrecy. If there’s anti-semitism or racism or the glorification of war in the syllabus, it needs to be exposed to public scrutiny. But we should not bring everything to the bar of secular pluralism, for that turns out to be a faith position of considerable intolerance.

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To be honest, I don't know what else to say on this topic. Thoughts anyone?

The (mine)fields are white for harvest

GlenNovember 18, 2010Leave a comment

I don't know how many hands this poisoned chalice has passed through before it's reached me, but...

On Wednesday I'll be a panelist for a public event called "A Question of Faith". It will be modelled on BBC's Question Time and will be chaired by Peter Owen Jones - he of Around the World in 80 Faiths fame.

Members of the public will ask questions in four areas:

Faith and Community Wellbeing
Family
God
Prayer

The other panelists will represent Muslims, Jews, Mormons and Pagans.

Please pray that I'd have the wisdom, clarity and courage to negotiate any number of potential minefields!

To help me prepare, I'd love if you could pose any curly questions you think might be asked in the comments. Over the next few days, I'll have a go at answering and we'll see if we can hone my responses before Wednesday.

So... hit me with your best shot(s)...

More examples of faith seeking understanding

GlenNovember 10, 2010Leave a comment

John Richardson alerts us to this this article on mathematics:

[...] For more than 100 years, mathematicians have known that there are different kinds, and sizes, of infinity. This was first shown by the 19th-century genius Georg Cantor. Cantor's discovery was that it makes sense to say that one infinite collection can be bigger than another. Infinity resembles a ladder, with the lowest rung corresponding to the most familiar level of infinity, that of the ordinary whole numbers: 1,2,3… On the next rung lives the collection of all possible infinite decimal strings, a larger uncountably infinite collection, and so on, forever.

This astonishing breakthrough raised new questions. For instance, are there even higher levels which can never be reached this way? Such enigmatic entities are known as "large cardinals". The trouble is that whether or not they exist is a question beyond the principles of mathematics. It is equally consistent that large cardinals exist and that they do not.

At least, so we thought. But, like gods descending to earth to walk among mortals, we now realise their effect can be felt among the ordinary finite numbers. In particular, the existence of large cardinals is the condition needed to tame Friedman's unprovable theorems. If their existence is assumed as an additional axiom, then it can indeed be proven that his numerical patterns must always appear when they should. But without large cardinals, no such proof is possible. Mathematicians of earlier eras would have been amazed by this invasion of arithmetic by infinite giants. Read more

And Paul Blackham in recent comments, speaks of the mode of enquiry that drove Galileo and Francis Bacon:

Galileo’s notebooks... are not full of the rigorous, hard-nosed observational data that the mythology depicts. In fact, he can’t see the things that he is convinced he could see if he had better telescopes. Some of the drawings of what he sees through his telescope do not support his arguments. He marvels that Copernicus persisted with his argument even when his observations were so inaccurate. When we compare Galileo’s drawings of the moon with photographs of the moon, it is hard to find similar features. The point is that Galileo was FIRST convinced of the heliocentric view and then began to develop telescopes that would enable him to observe what he was convinced was there. Kepler who wanted one of these new telescopes was disappointed by the results. He found them to be accurate for earthly observations but misleading for heavenly. Yet, the quality of the observations was not the critical factor here. It was the development of a new paradigm for viewing the cosmos, one whose benefits were only unfolded as time went on.

In Galileo’s letter to Leopold of Toscana of 1640, he specifically says “I am unwilling to compress philosophical doctrines into the most narrow kind of space and to adopt that stiff, concise and graceless manner, that manner bare of any adornment which pure geometricians call their own, not uttering a single word that has not been given to them by strict necessity…”.

In other words, Galileo knows full well that his argument is not a matter of pure observation [whatever that may mean] but a philosophical perspective first. Francis Bacon, whose scientific arguments were so vital to the foundation of the entire tradition, argues that we need to view the world with “unbiased senses” – by which he means that our senses need to be rebuilt with a new way of perceiving that mirrors the world rather than ourselves – “For man’s sense is falsely asserted to be the standard of things; on the contrary, all the perceptions, both of the senses and of the mind bear reference to man and not to the universe, and the human mind resembles those uneven mirrors which impart their own properties to different objects from which rays are emitted and distort and disfigure them.” [Novum Organum, Aphorism 41]. He speaks of a need to demolish the way we think and perceive so that a new way of seeing/thinking can be built. In the preface to the Novum he says “Our only hope of salvation is to begin the whole labour of the mind again… after having cleansed, polished and levelled its surface.” Preconceived notions, opinions and even common words all need to be “renounced with firm resolution… so that access to the kingdom of man, which is founded on the sciences, may resemble that to the kingdom of heaven, where no admission is conceded except to children.”

Copernicus wrote in the preface to ‘De Revolutionibus’ that the astronomical tradition of Aristotle could only solve the classic problems with great complexity and that a new paradigm was needed.

The point of all this is to simply note that our philosophical/theological convictions do not only shape and colour our observations, but they also determine what and how we observe. There is no escape into geometry or any other simple observation/calculation that is free from the theological and philosophical arguments.

What do you think about the age of the universe? 75

GlenNovember 5, 201075 Comments

Gav once asked me what I thought about a 13.7 billion year old universe. I gave him an answer which lasted almost as long. Came across it in comments recently and thought I'd repost it...

The 13.7 billion year old story is told with some very important background assumptions. These assumptions are that all reality has come about through chance and time. (Even if a scientist believes that there is more to the universe, as scientists they operate as though this were the case). But those are the only two ingredients – time and chance.

Now given the astronomically small odds of such an astronomically complex cosmos arising by chance then you’re going to have to have astronomically long periods of time to give rise to it. This is the only real option when time and chance are the only two factors. Small chance must mean big time. The smaller the chance, the bigger the time.

And, to be honest, the story still has immense problems. For one thing, you can give nothing as much time as you like – ‘nothing will come of nothing’ as King Lear once said. And you might also want to ask in a universe characterized by entropy and the overwhelmingly *negative* effects of genetic mutations, whether ‘time’ is really on our side?? But perhaps all those other problems are for another time.

My main point is to say that the ‘time and chance’ story could never be anything other than cosmically long-winded! If time and chance is all there is then the story *must* posit inconceivably long periods of time – there is no alternative.

The Christian story looks very different. This is because time and chance are not the main players in this story. The Christian story begins with a purposeful Creator Father who makes all things in and through and for His Son, Jesus, in the power of His eternal Spirit. Already you can see that the Christian’s story of the world will be very different. You simply don’t need to invoke ‘time’ as the explanation for the world’s complexity. The universe is as weird and wonderful as it is because it’s the love gift of the Father for His Son. It’s as broken and vandalised as it is because of our rebellion against Christ – the Logic of the universe. Time’s just not a big player in this story.

Many Christians (myself included) say the earth is 6000 years old (many others say 10 000. Many also go with the billions of years story as well as the Christian story, though I think there are problems with this). But this comparatively ‘young’ earth position is the result of doing good science. Not, first of all, the empirical observation kind (though that may well come in later.) First the Christian will be a good scientist of the word.

All science operates according to methods that are appropriate to the object of study. If you think the speaking God made the world then listening to His word seems an extremely fruitful line of enquiry. So good science will mean good bible study.

The bible itself gives us genealogies from Adam all the way through to the time of Christ’s incarnation – the first Christmas. The bible is extremely keen to trace this through for us (I’ll say why in a second). But what it means is that the evidence is there for all to see. Good science means taking the evidence seriously and on its own terms. Doing so yields an age of 6000 years (or 10 000 if you think some of the genealogies leap-frog generations, which is possible).

Now why is this important?

The bible tells the story of the universe as the story of two men. Adam and Christ. In Adam the creation fell into frustration and death. In Christ, the One who made the world – the eternal Logos (the Logic, the Word) – He enters His world, takes it to Himself and redeems it, bringing glory and immortality. And just as Adam was a real man who really rebelled and really took creation with Him – so Christ is a real man who really obeyed God and really redeemed us. Ever since Adam rebelled the promise of Christ coming to save echoed on down through the Old Testament. The genealogies are carefully recorded to cultivate hope and to show the path from death (in Adam) to life (in Christ). Unsurprisingly, as soon as Jesus is born the bible doesn’t bother with genealogies ever again. But whereever there are genealogies they are emphasizing for us the concreteness of the bible’s story. This isn’t a mythic tale about some heavenly bust-up. In the real world the real man Adam really rebelled. And in the real world, the real man Christ really redeemed.

The Reason for everything is not hidden in dark matter or found in a 'God particle'. And neither is He unattainably beyond our world. He has entered in to be known – really entered as a real man. You really can know the heart of the universe – and it’s not a sub-atomic particle. The real explanation for reality is not an equation or an explosion, it’s a Person. And because He’s a Person, He can be known. And His story is a story you can enter.

In a sense you can enter it by being a good scientist. Not running off to the Large Hadron Collider (although I’m sure it’d be great fun to go!). But the science I’m talking about is picking up the bible and asking God to show you His Face who is Jesus Christ. When you see Him walking around planet earth like He owns the place you know you’ve come to the real heart of the matter. To understand and know Him is to have your finger on the pulse of reality.

It might mean leaving behind the old stories - but Jesus gives us a better world to inhabit.

Christian Cosmology [a repost]

GlenNovember 4, 2010Leave a comment

A real mish-mash of thoughts...

Everyone - theologians, scientists, historians, philosophers, etc - we all follow a method of enquiry summed up by Anselm's motto faith seeking understanding. This is not simply how Christians do theology, science, history and philosophy, it's how all creatures must proceed. We believe certain axiomatic truths, we have heart commitments to certain ways of viewing reality, and we move out into the world on these bases, finding confirmation as we go.

Here's an older post on how the Large Hadron Collider is a great example of this.

Here's another post arguing that all scientists are believers.

And below is a sketch of some things a Christian can positively say about cosmology.

I'll just jot down three thoughts on the multiverse, two quotes from Barth and then a suggestion about how to proceed with Christ at the centre of our thinking.

The multiverse

1) The Bible teaches a division of creation into invisible and visible - the heaven and the earth. There is a non-observable realm - and it's vitally important and related to the seen realm. But this is not the same as the observable universe versus the non-observable multiverse. For the bible, the heavenlies are a counterpart to earth in a way analagous to the unseen Father's correspondence to His visible Image, Jesus.

2) The seen and unseen realms are reconciled to one another in the decisive, once-for-all event of the crucifixion. (Col 1:20)

3) There simply is no room in a Christian cosmology for multiple incarnations or multiple atonements. And this is really the downfall of the multiverse - its relation to Christ. Christ does not bridge multiple universes in multiple incarnation, He bridges heaven and earth in His singular incarnation.

Two Barth Quotes from Dogmatics in Outline

“‘Heaven and earth’ describe an arena prepared for a quite definite event, in the centre of which, from our standpoint of course, stands man.” (p60)

“…heaven and earth are related like God and man in the covenant, so that even the existence of creation is a single, mighty signum, a sign of the will of God. The meeting and togetherness of above and below, of the conceivable and the inconceivable, of the infinite and the limited – we are speaking of creation. All that is the world. But since within this world there really exist an above and a below confronting one another, since in every breath we take, in every one of our thoughts, in every great and petty experience of our human lives heaven and earth are side by side, greeting each other, attracting and repelling each other and yet belonging to one another, we are, in our existence, of which God is the Creator, a sign and indication, a promise of what ought to happen in creation and to creation – the meeting, the togetherness, the fellowship and, in Jesus Christ, the oneness of Creator and creature.” (p64)

How to proceed in Christian cosmology

Beginning from 'the Cosmic Fine-Tuner' would be like beginning with heaven alone. Beginning from the standpoint of the anthropic principle would be like beginning with earth alone. The Christian can refuse both options. We begin with the heavens and the earth - the theatre of God's Glory. Of course God's Glory is His Son, dying to save. The cross is the crux of creation (Col 1:20). When we begin with this in mind we are able to relate the unseen and seen coherently.

The Christian knows that not only is there a Word (Logos) to make sense of the world - not only an explanation beyond. That Word became flesh, taking our world to Himself. Therefore the Word from beyond has become a Word in our midst. The Christian can simultaneously be in touch with this world and with its Explanation - they are one in Christ.

While we ought not to approach Christ 'according to the flesh' (2 Cor 5:16), still according to the Spirit there is a way of examining this earthed Logos. Now 'according to the Spirit' means 'according to the Scriptures' and therefore this will be a thoroughly theological enquiry. And yet it will not for that reason be a groundless, ethereal investigation. This world in its this-world-ness has been taken up into the life of God and proven to be, beyond any question, a realm fit for God (Col 2:9).

Now that we have seen the creative Word in the world and now that we have seen Him - the visible Image - reconcile the world to the invisible Father in the creative Spirit, we have seen a triune dynamic that is inherent to all creation. Interpenetration of spirit and flesh, then and now, unseen and seen is at the heart of reality. This will lead us to expect similar perichoretic dynamics in the created order. As we move on from what the bible strictly says about creation, we will wear these bible-glasses to investigate creation. This conceptual framework will help us to understand the inter-related-ness of space and time, of waves and particles etc etc.

Just some sketches of thoughts...

Environmentalism – the new religion

GlenOctober 6, 2010Leave a comment

For the Church, the problem is clear. Environmentalism can offer all the upsides of faith – the sense of community, of certainty, of moral superiority – with none of the nagging doubts. The idea that Jesus died for your sins can be hard to get your head around. How much simpler, and how much more appropriate for our age, is the idea that you can save your soul, and the world, simply by shopping in the organic aisle.

Read the whole of this insightful little piece here.

And the Onion, as always, nails the issue:

[youtube="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYbR7os_q9k"]

More from the blog religious environmentalism here.

My mind's made up by the way that I feel

GlenOctober 5, 2010Leave a comment

Last month the Times' front page screamed: "God did not create the universe" - reporting on the new book co-authored by Stephen Hawking in which he asserts a spontaneous creation. What I most enjoyed about the piece was a ringing endorsement from Richard Dawkins. Among other things he made this revealing comment:

“I know nothing of the details of the physics but I had always assumed the same thing.” (ht)

Isn't that brilliant?!

Actually that's how we all reason. All of us. All the time. But it's hilarious to see it so plainly in Dawkins.

Here's a guy who claims to be a child of the Enlightenment, he doesn't know the details, he's in no way qualified to pass judgement, it's not even remotely his field, but he'd always assumed something like this must be right because it fits with some other stuff he also believes and is very much committed to... so... it floats his boat and he gives it his full assent (whatever it is, he's not entirely sure) and, carried away by the necessity of its truth, he wants you to be carried away by it too, that we might all give allegiance to this grand vision (whatever it is, let's not get too hung up on the details).

But you know what? That's how we all "reason".

And it's not just inconsistent atheists. It's just how human beings work. Our hearts are captured by a bigger vision and our minds catch up.

Christians tend to hate the Wet, Wet, Wet line "My mind's made up by the way that I feel" - even as much as the song itself. Many times I've heard preachers denounce such an idea - Our minds aren't made up by our feelings! Or at least they shouldn't be. Feelings don't boss us around. Our minds need to tell our feelings where to get off.

Really?

Now "feelings" are indeed fickle things. Perhaps even as fickle as thoughts! So let's substitute "heart" for feelings. And let's also acknowledge that our hearts should not be given free rein. Something certainly needs to control our hearts. But that the something is God's Word. That's what shapes the heart. And the heart shapes the thinking. (Gen 6:5ff; Prov 4:23; Matt 12:34; Matt 15:19; Heb 4:12).

That feels right to me anyway. What do you think? And why?