Geoff's Miscellany

Miscellaneous Musings

Thoughts

Mike Bird and the Arguments for God’s Existence

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I recently bought Mike Bird’s Evangelical Theology. It has been a marvelous read so far, but when I read the section entitled “Traditional Proofs for the Existence of God (pp 180-183)” I was left a bit frustrated. Now, please take the following comments with the understanding that the book, over all, has been edifying. I especially appreciate Bird’s attempt to make the gospel message itself (as described in the New Testament) the focal point of each traditional loci of theology. So it looks like this, “How does the gospel inform the doctrine of the church and how do traditional understandings of this doctrine illuminate the gospel.” It’s a very helpful approach. 

 

Enough gushing. Here’s why I was frustrated in outline format:

  1. The Ontological Argument

    Bird notes on page 180, concerning the ontological argument, “One cannot help but get the impression that the ontological argument is little more than a game of words with “God.” But, his homeboy, Alvin Plantinga notes that the argument is actually not all that bad. His version of the argument runs thus (Plantinga, The Nature of Necessity, 108):

    1. It is possible that there be a being that has maximal greatness.

    2. So there is a possible being that in some world W has maximal greatness.

    3. A being has maximal greatness in a given world only if it has maximal excellence in every world.

    4. A being has maximal excellence in a given world only if it has omniscience, omnipotence, and moral perfection in that world.

    This version of the argument, which I take exception to for other reasons, is a restatement of Anselm’s argument in modal terms. It clearly isn’t a word game. Even Anselm’s statement of the argument which Bird uses is very abbreviated. He mentions Aquinas’ objection to the argument and it is pretty good, but ultimately, Bird’s own objection is not the same. Aquinas didn’t see it as a word game, but rather, he bought into Aristotle’s metaphysical presupposition that all knowledge must come from the senses. Incidentally, Aquinas’ forth way is actually very, very similar to the Ontological argument, but does not fail for the same reasons because of sensible gradations within reality.

  2. The Cosmological

    Bird’s understanding of the Cosmological argument is fairly standard, though he narrows it all down to the Kalam version which has been revived most recently by William Lane Craig. His main objection to the argument is “Establishing…a first cause is one thing. To demonstrate that this first cause is God, a personal God, or even the God of Jesus Christ is quite another thing (Bird 181).” It is another thing, but that doesn’t make the effort worthless. Not only is it not worthless, but Aquinas’ Summa Contra Gentiles spends pages after page establishing why a first cause does have the attributes of the God of revelation.

    Imagine if I objected to his historical Jesus work by saying, “Establishing that Matthew’s gospel was written by a Jewish believer in Jesus is one thing, but demonstrating that his sources were accurate is quite another.” The same could be said in geometry, “Demonstrating that a triangle’s angles add up to 180 degrees is one thing, but demonstrating that the squares of a right triangle’s legs add up to the square of the hypotenuse is another.” I would argue that the if you can demonstrate a first cause as a matter of logical necessity, along with other aspects of Aquinas’ arguments, and then establish the resurrection of Jesus as an historical event then the first cause must be the Father of Jesus Christ or more robustly, the Triune God.

  3. The Teleological Argument

    Bird, is again, wide of the mark here too (Bird, 182) This is an important one exactly because of certain debates raging today. He gives the full text of Aquinas’ summary of the argument in the Summa Theologica, but he then equates it with the argument of Paley, whose precis he also quotes. Both quotes are the quotes in William Lane Craig’s book, Reasonable Faith. Craig and Bird are both brilliant (as were Paley and Aquinas), but the arguments are only similar to one another on the surface. They are not the same argument. One of them is based upon the appearance of design to the mind of those familiar with design (Paley). On the other hand, Aquinas’ argument is actually about the very nature of causality (which most of the five ways are). Aquinas elsewhere argues about the importance of Aristotle’s four causes for understanding nature (see http://dhspriory.org/thomas/english/DePrincNaturae.htm ). The “final cause” is the form of causality that refers to the finality towards which things, events, and existence tends. Aquinas argues that the existence of “if-then” or efficient/instrumental causality depends upon the existence of end goal causality and that since all of nature (intelligent and non-intelligent) tends towards goals/ends, then it can be said that God directs things towards their ends. This is not the same as saying “God made complicated things.” It is the argument that even the most complicated things have natural explanations precisely because an intelligence, nay an intelligent Being, directs these natural things towards their end. This is a common mistake. There may be something to Paley’s argument in the end, but it is not Aquinas’. I, personally, am and have been skeptical of it, but if it turns out to be true, my skepticism is what must give way to the truth. Thomist and Greek Orthodox folks alike have pointed out the error of equating the arguments (Edward Feser, Christopher Martin, Brian Davies, and David Bentley Hart come to mind).

  4. The Moral Argument

    Bird gets this pretty much right on the head (Bird, 183). If ethics is to be a science (in the sense of a body of knowledge) then it must postulate a divine law maker. The moral argument is more nuanced than that and it has wonderful rhetorical force as well as dialectic rigor in its best forms. Bird utilized Kant and Lewis’ version of the argument. I take that as wise.

 

Mike Bird, Evangelical Theology: A Biblical and Systematic Introduction.  Zondervan 2013.

Edward Feser, Between Aristotle and Paley: Aquinas’ Fifth Way (Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 11, No. 3, 2013), 707-4.

Edward Feser, Thomas Aquinas (a Beginner’s Guide) One World Books, 2009.

David Bentley Hart, The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss Yale, 2013.

Christopher Martin, Thomas Aquinas: God and Explanations  Edinburgh University Press, 1997.

Alvin Plantinga, The Nature of Necessity Oxford University Press 1974.

Davis, Stephen T.Publication Information:In God, Reason & Theistic Proofs.Edinburgh, [Scotland] : Edinburgh University Press. 1997

Recently I’ve discovered Dr. Feser whose understanding of Aquinas is actually context based rather than based on caricatures. See his article Between Aristotle and Paley: Aquinas’ Fifth Way (Nova et Vetera, English Edition,Vol. 11, No. 3, 2013), 707-4. My comments will mirror his own, though they are a bit different. I hope the deficiencies in my brief presentation are taken as evidence I studied Feser’s article with my own understanding of the difference between Paley and Aquinas, not as deficiencies within his presentation. Anyhow, Bird should read his article. It is, as they say in Australia, “Gucci.”

 

Tyson and Religious Scientists

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Something I’ve been saying for years has apparently also been said by Neil deGrasse Tyson:

This is important to me. When people have repeated the old canard that religious people are necessarily opposed to science and progress I usually point to the fact that I’m not opposed to science and I’m religious. That piece of hard, personally observable date usually never sufficed. I’d quote statistics. That also never seems to work. So I began trying pointing out how religious people, even profoundly religious people like Leonard Euler, Isaac Newton, Rene Descartes, Roger Bacon, Francis Bacon, Galileo, and others were scientists and mathematicians and logicians. Heck my landlord is a Christian and a Coral Reef biologist who is doing ground breaking work in preserving, observing, and cataloging rare specimens of coral in Hawaii. I also would try to explain how it was actually the rise of monotheistic religion on an empire wide scale that lead to advancements in scientific knowledge, method, and metaphysical assumptions about reality (like the nature of cause and effect). But it never worked. Hopefully this video will and does help. But since empirical, historical, and testimonial evidence from surveys of scientists didn’t work for me, maybe it won’t for Tyson.

Also see this article from the NCSE: http://ncse.com/rncse/18/2/do-scientists-really-reject-god

Thoughts and Observations

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  1. When a leader offers you delicacies, be careful what you eat. You can end up owing a rich man things you could never afford to repay.
  2. When somebody claims to “love science” they almost always do not know what it is, how its done, or anything about its history. In fact if somebody uses the phrase, “My science sense is tingling,” or talks about how they deny some religion, some ethical axiom, or refuse to utilize basic logic in their arguments because “science,” the more likely they know nothing about science at all.
  3. Insulting somebody after you dismantle their argument isn’t ad-hominem it is just good old fashion insulting. Ad-hominem is insulting the person to discredit his ideas. Insulting somebody after demonstrating their ideas to be false is just icing on the rhetorical dessert.
  4. The friends I have most in common with are a Coastie, an Army Ranger, some missionaries, a New Testament scholar, a harrier pilot, an Army Ranger, some engineering majors, nurse, a lawyer, and a couple of pastors. Our commonality is either our sarcasm or the gospel. I hope it is the latter.
  5. My wife wrote a post for young women about refusing to date cads and misanthropes. In my spare time I’ve been studying social-psychology studies about human pair bonding. The science is telling. Women potentially tend to prefer cads and idiots if they do not try to use things like reason or obedience to Christian principles in their sexual/romantic decisions. I may make a post in the future summarizing the findings, but here are some. Please see the studies cited in the articles. The third link is to the study itself. As it turns out, some times women are attracted to men who exhibit appetitive aggression (read as violent tendencies). Note: I typically think that evolutionary psychology is simply silly, but these are studies of traits. You can accept the data without accepting what the authors think it means about ancient human history. Just-so stories are for fairy tales, not academic journals.

Batman, Coheed, and Intertextuality

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Most of my friends know that I really like comic books or at least that I used to. I don’t buy them often or collect them. So I’m not a “nerd” in the technical sense. I’m more a fan. Nevertheless I like them. I also like the band “Coheed and Cambria.” So when, about two years ago, they released a song titled, “Deranged” about the Batman’s conflict with the Joker from the Joker’s point of view I was excited. They did not disappoint. The song is excellent. Claudio Sanchez (the lead singer of Coheed) has a great capacity for singing in the voice of the characters beside himself because of the fact that his whole musical project is a fictional story of quite epic proportions (a novel, a series of comics, back story albums, and seven disks of albums in the main story).

The song captures the idea that the Joker thinks that Bruce Wayne, who often longs to kill the Joker but refuses to do so on principle, in a twisted way, needs the Joker to motivate and justify his crusade against crime in the eyes of less committed people (like the police who fight crime for a pay check).

Here are some of the lines that summarize the Joker’s diagnosis and capture not only the Joker’s interpretation of Bruce Wayne, but Joker’s own sociopathy and psychopathy.
Joker: “There is no me, without you…I will be an afterthought, your make believe, your darkest day, and your friend in need. Who will be your pretty little enemy, when I’m gone? Your world will prove empty. I promise, you will always remember me! The joke’s on you, poisoning. While you clean the streets of misfortune, I pick the innocent from my dirty teeth, we’re one and the same, deranged.”

This song, which was written long after the Dark Knight film, nevertheless gives a potential new perspective to Batman’s interrogation of the Joker. The Batman, Joker notes, wants to be like a police officer, but he isn’t.

The people, Joker replies with a sense of triumph, only do what’s right when it suits them. The Batman sticks to principle. Because of this principled way of life, the people will reject Batman.

The interesting thing that the Coheed song brings up is that the Joker sees the Batman’s righteousness as a malaise that is just as sick as his own. The difference is that the Joker’s point of view is, at least, philosophically coherent. Batman, because he continues to believe in good (which Joker thinks is a non-existent quality), is as deranged as the Joker who sees that goodness is a farce and does evil (which is no different than good) for fun. Everybody else, as I noted above, only acts for the good when it suits them.

In summary, the song allows for a different interpretation of the events of the film. Joker’s pathology is such that he sees that Batman’s principled refusal to do a deal with the devil and kill him as, in reality, a need to have somebody to vilify because the average person will reject Batman himself when Batman destroys the obvious enemies to the good. They will do this because Batman’s own commitment to principle reveals the evil in their own lives.

In conclusion, have a listen:

Aristotle, Feser, Aquinas, and Finality

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Ever since the days of Bacon and Newton philosophers and scientists have bothered themselves with determining the material and efficient causes of various objects and events. They, as a matter of course neglected, ignored, and repudiated the use of the concepts of formal and final causality. That was a brief summary of a truncation of thinking about nature that occurred during the Enlightenment era. This truncation, because of its laser like focus on determining what things are made of (material causes) and what events precede others and lead to them (efficient causes). Edward Feser, in his excellent intro to Aquinas’ thought notes a lame duck critique of final causes (the idea that something either has a function, tendency, or goal in its nature):

Perhaps the most famous criticism of Scholastic metaphysics on the part of the early modern thinkers is the one represented by Molière’s joke about the doctor who claimed to explain why opium causes sleep by saying that it has a “dormitive power.” The reason this is supposed to be funny is that “dormitive power” means “a power to cause sleep,” so that the doctor’s explanation amounts to saying “Opium causes sleep because it has a power to cause sleep.”*

 

This critique of final causality, as a concept, is wrong headed (as Feser himself notes). To claim that a thing has a final cause is to claim that, as a matter of its nature, it tends towards something. So finding the efficient cause (the chemical reaction that takes place in the human physiology) of the sleepiness when an opiate is taken is dependent upon first recognizing that the opiate itself is the cause of the sleepiness. Claiming the opiate has a dormitive power is claiming that the opiate makes somebody sleepy not some combination of factors incidental to taking the opiate. So, though it isn’t saying much, answering the question, “Why am I sleepy when I use opiates?” with “Because opiates, in and of themselves make human bodies feel tired.” is not a tautology. It is answering a question about what the opiates do, in general, to human bodies to the man wondering why the drug affects him specifically. 

Why does this matter? Because the alternative vision of scientific inquiry that only seeks two kinds of causes is approaching a precipice that must be avoided by a change in direction of the collapse of the current system entirely. Aristotle’s system of causes was never refuted (as Feser notes) and as those who study the history of science are aware. I’m not against the science, I just think that even for scientists, a historical prejudice against a more holistic way of thinking (Aristotelian causality) that is implied by your whole job is a silly way to live. 

*Feser, Edward; Edward Feser (2009-09-01). Aquinas (Beginner’s Guides) (Kindle Locations 696-699). Oneworld Publications (academic). Kindle Edition.

Advice Sermons and the Gospel

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Below is an exercise, not in critiquing the author’s post, per se, but rather critiquing a set of assumptions he makes that lead, inexorably, to the material in his post. His assumptions about what constitutes gospel, what it means to preach Christ, and what “the law” is in the New Testament are disputable on the grounds of reading a few more paragraphs of the very book of the New Testament he quotes the most (Romans). 

In a post titled, “How your preaching might increase sin in your church,” author Jared Wilson makes a partially great point:

When we preach a message like “Six Steps to _______” or any other “be a better whatever”-type message — where the essential proclamation is not what Christ has done but what we ought/need to do — we become preachers of the law rather than Christ. (And it is not rare that this kind of message with barely any or no mention of Christ(!) at all gets preached.)

He’s right that sermons that never mention Christ are spiritually dangerous. The point of Christian sermons is, ultimately, the glorification of God the Father in Christ among the people of God. He correctly diagnoses the problem of a great deal (certainly not all, hopefully not even most) of the practical preaching in our churches. But, he’s wrong on several other counts:

  1. He misunderstands (or miscommunicates) the distinction between the Law and Gospel in the New Testament.
  2. He seems to misunderstand the content of the gospel in the New Testament.
  3. He takes the phrase, “preaching Christ” as a cipher for preaching the five solas of the reformation.

What do I mean?

He misunderstands (or miscommunicates) the distinction between the Law and Gospel in the New Testament. 

I want to be charitable here, but here’s what he says:

Preaching even a “positive” practical message with no gospel-centrality amounts to preaching the law. We are accustomed to thinking of legalistic preaching as that which is full of “thou shalt not”s, the kind of fundamentalist hellfire and brimstone judgmentalism we’ve nearly all rejected. But “do” is just the flipside to the same coin “don’t” is on. That coin is the law. And a list of “do”‘s divorced from the DONE of the gospel is just as legalistic, even if it’s preached by a guy in jeans with wax in his hair following up the rockin’ set by your worship band.

This is not quite right. Preaching positive sermons amounts to giving advice, which is a useful skill for a gospel preacher to have (Paul advises people to remain single prior to/during a famine). But giving positive advice is not the same thing as preaching “law.” Paul himself contrasts law and gospel praeching by contrasting the mode of justification preached: by faith or by works.

You’re preaching “law” when you’re telling Christians to live as though Moses’ law were still ultimate rather than fulfilled. On the flip side, I suppose you’d be preaching law in a derivative sense if you told Christians to live up to some standard (aside from those set by Christ) to be justified. In other words, “dos and don’ts” are not “the law.” In any case, Paul and Jesus both note that there is a right way to preach “the law.”
Jesus:

Mat 5:17-19 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. (18) For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. (19) Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

Note: Jesus says to do the commands of which he speaks (probably the fulfillment of the law he gives in the rest of the Sermon on the Mount), not just preach them to show people their sin.

Paul:

Rom 3:31 Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law.

Rom 8:3-4 For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, (4) in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. (Weird thing to note, Wilson misquotes this verse on his post…maybe some translation has it the way he does, but its a fairly uncommon way to read it.)

Note: Paul says that the law is fulfilled in those who walk by the Spirit. It is a positive feature in the Christian life when seen as fulfilled. Paul later notes that love of neighbor is the fulfillment of the law. In fact, Paul refers to the love command as thought it were a part of the gospel he delivers in general (1 Cor 13, 1 Thess 1:1-10, Galatians 5:1-6:10, etc). His very defense of his apostleship rests on the fact that he preaches the law, but that he preaches it fulfilled by Christ. This is the point on the fruit of the Spirit, “against such things there is no law.”

The point is that if the fulfillment of the law is taught as a result of living by faith in Christ/as Christ’s disciple/by walking in the Spirit as a positive command it is good. But that is not opposed, in the Bible to giving advice or giving commands positive or negative, but it is opposed to treating Moses’ law as an end in itself, rather than has something which finds its end or τελος in Jesus Christ.

He seems to misunderstand the content of the gospel in the New Testament. 

I do not mean to say that brother Jared is not a Christian. I mean to say that he understands the gospel as, apparently, a message without imperatives (dos and don’ts). Wilson notes:

The message of the law unaccompanied by and untethered from the central message of the gospel condemns us. Because besides telling us stuff to do, the law also thereby reveals our utter inability to measure up.

On his understanding of law (dos and don’ts) the emboldened sentence means that the preaching of commands is categorically not the gospel. While I agree that one of the functions of the commands in the New Testament and of the Law in the Old Testament is to reveal our sin, the main function thereof, is to guide our lives. In fact, I’ll even go further, I’ll say that the commands of the New Testament are a part of the gospel. Wilson calls the commands of the New Testament, “…the practical implications and exhortations of Scripture…” But what do the New Testament authors refer to when they say gospel? Do they see it as a set of facts about Christ’s death, the atonement, and grace with a lifestyle that is only a series of confusing logical implications? Or do they see it as a broader message about Jesus of Nazareth?
Examples:

Mark:

Ἀρχὴ τοῦ εὐαγγελίου Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ [υἱοῦ θεοῦ]. (Mar 1:1 BGT)
The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ [God’s Son]. (Mark 1:1)
So the rest of what follows in Mark is, by his lights, the gospel.

14 ¶ Μετὰ δὲ τὸ παραδοθῆναι τὸν Ἰωάννην ἦλθεν ὁ Ἰησοῦς εἰς τὴν Γαλιλαίαν κηρύσσων τὸ εὐαγγέλιον τοῦ θεοῦ
15 καὶ λέγων ὅτι πεπλήρωται ὁ καιρὸς καὶ ἤγγικεν ἡ βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ· μετανοεῖτε καὶ πιστεύετε ἐν τῷ εὐαγγελίῳ. (Mar 1:14-15 BGT)
After John was handed over, Jesus went into Galilee preaching the gospel of God and saying, “The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God has drawn near; repent and believe in the gospel.” (Mark 1:14-15)
Jesus’ gospel is the gospel about God’s kingdom and it includes commands: repent and believe.

Acts:

τὸν λόγον [ὃν] ἀπέστειλεν τοῖς υἱοῖς Ἰσραὴλ εὐαγγελιζόμενος εἰρήνην διὰ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ, οὗτός ἐστιν πάντων κύριος,
37 ὑμεῖς οἴδατε τὸ γενόμενον ῥῆμα καθ᾽ ὅλης τῆς Ἰουδαίας (Act 10:36-37 BGT)
You yourselves know the word which came all over Judea, which he sent to the sons of Israel, preaching the gospel of peace through Jesus the Messiah, who is Lord over all… (Acts 10:36-37a)
Here, the gospel of peace, is the message that was preached through/by Jesus the Messiah. So, whatever Jesus preached is the gospel.

Luke:

 ὁ δὲ εἶπεν πρὸς αὐτοὺς ὅτι καὶ ταῖς ἑτέραις πόλεσιν εὐαγγελίσασθαί με δεῖ τὴν βασιλείαν τοῦ θεοῦ, ὅτι ἐπὶ τοῦτο ἀπεστάλην. (Luk 4:43 BGT)
Then he said to them, “It is necessary for me to preach the gospel about the kingdom of God, because I was sent for this purpose. (Luke 4:43)
In the prequel to Acts, Luke describes Jesus’ gospel as, “the gospel about the kingdom of God.”

So, here’s my beef with Wilson then.  If the early Christians saw that gospel as the whole message about Jesus, including what Jesus preached and taught, then the early Christians understood and taught that Jesus’ commands were part of the gospel. Jesus’ commands are not in conflict with the good news. They aren’t a difficult to reconcile implication of the good news. They are part of the good news. This is because the goodness is not just good news about feeling forgiven, it is good news about God making the broken world right. That means the people who make is worse than it is (sinners we all are) need forgiveness, but they also need reform. The gospel is a summons to the true king of the world, not simply relief for guilty consciences (though it can be that). Also see how Paul describes his gospel in Romans 1:1-7. He never mentions forgiveness (though he does elsewhere), but he does mention the need for the apostles to bring “the obedience of faith” to the nations of the world. Sounds rather commanding to me.

He takes the phrase, “preaching Christ” as a cipher for preaching the five solas of the reformation. 

But let us not forget that the message of Christianity is Christ. It is the message of the sufficiency and power of salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. Let’s not preach works, lest we increase the sinfulness of our churches and unwittingly facilitate the condemnation of the lost.

Here, I think, is the crux of the issue. By preaching the gospel, Wilson means preaching “the finished work of Christ” as he says earlier in the article. This is a useful phrase, but it typically refers to the finished work of atonement of sinners or payment of sin-debt. So, the only proper way he sees to preach the gospel is to preach a message about what God does/has done in Christ for sinners. This is a useful topic for the church, no doubt. But is it, strictly speaking, what Paul meant by preaching Christ? I submit that the answer is, “No.” Rather, the sermons in Acts, the gospel summaries quoted above, and the four gospels tell us what Paul meant by “preaching Christ.” It means to tell the story of Jesus fulfilling the Old Testament in his life, teachings, death, and resurrection, what that means for believers, as well as what they are to do about it. It’s interesting that in Jared’s taxonomy of law and gospel, it appears that the gospel writers only ever implied the gospel (because they only implied the doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement), that Jesus hardly ever preached the gospel, and that the sermons in Acts are “law” because they don’t usually mention atonement but do include commands.  Preaching “Christ” very well could mean preaching the reformation solas, but in the Bible is seems to mean something else most of the time.

Wilson is right. Advice sermons should not be the meat and potatoes of Christian homiletic fare. Though Proverbs would do many of our young people well. We live in a world of people who barely understand cause and effect. But, the point is this: we should get our understanding of the gospel from the New Testament. If we take our favorite bits of the gospel (atonement, salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, etc) and oppose them to the things Jesus says we must do to be his disciples/to have saving faith then we are creating a system of cognitive dissonance and perhaps even a tremendous logical contradiction in the heart of our preaching.