Reconciling Faith and Science: A History Lesson, Part 2

Drawing from the foundations of Enlightenment philosophy and popular forms of Positivism, modern “Naturalism” consists of two underlying precepts: 1) nature is science’s domain and 2) nothing “exists” until it can be be proven by verifiable natural causes and events. And it’s that second part that gets us in trouble.  Naturalism hinges upon the assumption that everything worth proving can only be proven through naturalistic phenomena. Supernaturalism has no value in this worldview. Once again, it’s an “either/or” approach to life where only one explanation is possible. Belief, religion, perspective, and feeling have no place in naturalism, hence all the “prove to me that God exists and I’ll believe” pundits out there. Similarly, many feel that to choose religious meaning makes someone “unscientific” (which is why some reacted strongly to the “humanness” of science posts that start here). Unfortunately, most modern scientific disciplines were drastically affected by post-Enlightenment naturalism at the turn of the twentieth century. For many, evolutionary theory, chemistry, biology, psychology, social sciences, and physics all start with Naturalism.

A dark period in theology followed as theologians and philosophers attempted to remove the “supernatural” elements from the Bible to make it more palatable to the Positivistic age. For example, Thomas Jefferson, believing he was doing Christianity a favor, edited and released a new Bible for the modern thinker. What did Jefferson edit out? All the “supernatural” events in the Gospels. My favorite book title from this period is John Toland’s Christianity Not Mysterious. Toland’s point was that Christianity was a “reasonable” and rational moral choice when released from the shackles of religious superstition. For you history buffs out there, this all coincided with the rise of Scottish Common Sense philosophy, Moral philsophy, and the rise of the academic freedom movement in higher education.

Though progress seemed to be supporting the advances of science, something in the 1940s changed all of that: World War II. People began to realize that no matter what technological advances were made, they could not free the world from evil. Popular forms of positivism crashed and burned as we entered the Postmodern phase of history. However, “fundamentalists” in the area of science still assert that there is no other option for understanding our world other than Naturalism. The most recent form of Naturalism is particularly nasty and many atheists find themselves in this category. Here are some quotes:

Richard Dawkins (Oxford biologist) (The God Delusion) wrote this: “It may be that humanity will never reach the quietus of complete understanding if we do, I venture the confident prediction that it will be science, not religion, that brings us there.” See, for Dawkins, it’s “either/or.”

Christopher Hitchens (God Is Not Great) states: “Religion has run out of justifications. Thanks to the telescope and the microscope, it no longer offers an explanation for anything important.” Let me point out that Hitchens, a journalist, is thanking inanimate objects here…

 These guys, though highly trained and quite knowledgeable, suffer from something called “explanatory monism.”  Explanatory monism assumes (believes) that there is only one explanation available for anything. The same “either/or” scenario in Rene Descartes’ view of the world. They choose naturalism and therefore feel they must reject supernaturalism of any sort. So, they overreach for natural explanations to religious issues or merely dismiss religion altogether. What’s so sad about this (other than the fact that their mothers should’ve taught them not to be so intolerant of opinions outside their own) is that this singleness of assumption is not necessary for pure scientific inquiry. Yet, it plagues our view of popular science today…and it’s the sole reason that many people believe that science and faith are incompatible. So, we’re not really talking about faith vs. science, are we? We’re actually talking about the technical discipline of science vs. the philosophical system of “scientific naturalism.” Science vs. Scientism.

Here’s that G.I. Joe quote again: “Emotions are not based in science, and if you can’t quantify or prove something exists…well, in my mind it doesn’t.” Anyone can choose to believe this way…so far as they recognize that it’s truly a belief system crafted from of our Western post-Enlightenment milieu. And those who do will never be able to reconcile faith and science. Scientific naturalism keeps them from doing so.

Reconciling Faith and Science: A History Lesson, Part 1

I went to see G.I. Joe two weeks ago. It was absolutely horrible. But one quote in the movie piqued my interest.  A supposedly really smart and highly educated soldier (played by Sienna Miller) said to another soldier “Emotions are not based in science, and if you can’t quantify or prove something exists…well, in my mind it doesn’t.” That quote is a great example of the popular understanding of why faith and science are incompatible to many people. I started this series of posts talking about the “humanness” of science. For some readers, that may have made you uncomfortable. Science should be as absolute as it was for the soldier in that movie. The reason we have this idea is from the historical event called the Enlightenment, a cultural paradigm called Positivism and their modern love child: something called naturalism.

Listen to a quote from Jim Collins’ book Good to Great. Collins describes the Enlightenment in one paragraph: “…the ‘God is the answer to everything’ perspective…held back our scientific understanding of the physical world in the Dark Ages…But with the Enlightenment, we began to search for a more scientific understanding – physics, chemistry, biology, and so forth. Not that we became atheists, but we gained a deeper understanding about how the universe works.”  Everything is so simple and neat isn’t it?  We’re not talking about a science book – it’s a business/management book for crying out loud!  But it’s not at all. What Collins gives us is actually naturalism’s triumphal take on the Enlightenment. God took a backseat once science explained things. Unfortunately, this ”Cliff’s Notes” view of history is the norm for many folks. So, let me unpack this idea for you so you won’t be enslaved by it.

So, how did the Enlightenment happen? Well, it wasn’t an overnight change like it’s often presented. The Enlightenment spans from the 1600s all the way into the 1800s. It was a slow gradual shift in perspective.  For me, the beginning of Enlightment thought started with Rene Descartes. He was a philosopher in the 1600s who came up with a unique way to view the world. Assimilating the discoveries of the Scientific Revolution (Copernicus, Kepler, etc.), he described a perspective in a way that would permeate science, religion, philosophy and politics to this day. The name is Cartesian Dualism: it’s the belief that the world can be artificially divided into two parts – the natural and those things above nature. The physical and the metaphysical. The term “supernatural” didn’t exist until the Enlightenment. Up until then, spiritual answers were acceptable to explain natural phenomena on earth. But Descartes came from the opposite direction. He said that we must approach everything with the assumption that nothing is proven until empirical evidence makes it so.

What’s funny about all of this is that Descartes, a religious person, was actually attempting to “save” God and religion from the onslaught of criticism that began when scientific discoveries began to “prove” the church wrong. Now, there was certainly nothing wrong with challenging the authority of the church…but people began to doubt the importance of religion, too. So, Descartes was attempting to remove God from the natural realm in hopes that critics would leave religion alone since God’s value was beyond empiricism’s grasp. But what this did on a popular level was create an “either/or” approach to our world. Feeling the unncessary need to prioritize different values, the second generation of Enlightenment thinkers pushed God out of the frame completely choosing to value what could be scientifically tested: the natural world order.

Rather than find solace and meaning in religion, something else took precedence in the 1800s: Positivism. Positivism is just a fancy word for choosing to believe that legitimate forms of knowledge are only gained through sense experience. But during that time, Positivism carried other cultural and intellectual connotations. Intellectuals and the general public fully believed that scientific progress was the key to the future. After all, they saw technological inventions and scientific discoveries left and right that confirmed this idea. God was no longer meeting society’s needs; science was. Progress became marked by a culture’s willingness to throw off the chains of religion (often relegated to ”superstition” by Enlightenment thinkers) and embrace the triumphs of science. Everything is supported by natural laws. If humans can learn those laws and utilize them in the lab and in mathematics, we can make a better world for ourselves.

We’ll pick up our history lesson next post…

Reconciling Faith and Science: The “Humanness” of Science, Part 3

More examples of the “humanness” of scientific inquiry…

When Albert Einstein created the General Theory of Relativity, he didn’t like what he discovered. His theory predicted that the universe was slowly expanding or contracting – the universe was moving, one way or the other. At the time, that was a completely unconventional idea. So much so, that Einstein did something very human: the thought that the universe may not be uniform or constant was so repulsive to him that he inserted a “fudge factor”  – a variable constant, retrofitted to keep the universe in a state of eternal equilibrium. Einstein’s theory told him what he didn’t want to accept…so he changed the formula to adapt to his beliefs.

In the 1920s, Edwin Hubble (Hubble telescope) further confirmed that the universe was in fact expanding. So, Einstein actually took a trip to see Hubble’s data with his own eyes. Both men believed in a static universe – but eventually conceded the point. The universe came into existence sometime in the past. Into the thirties and forties, scientists continued to rail against the implications of Hubble’s discovery. In 1938, when asked about the issue, chemist Walter Nerst angrily stated: “We cannot form a scientific hypothesis which contradicts the very foundations of science.”

The dissention continued through the forties, fifties, and sixties. Astrophysicist Arthur Eddington stated: “Philosophically, the notion of a beginning to the present order of nature is repugnant.” Rather than accepting the expanding universe and the beginning of existence, scientists spent their time coming up with alternate theories to contradict it. In 1948, Scientists Gold, Bondi, and Hoyle came up with the Steady State model while other scientists adhered to the “oscillating-universe” model. Both models stated that the universe had no starting point and remained in a state of equilibrium – Newtonian physics was safe. But eventually in 1965, two scientists in the Bell Telephone Lab provided data to support the “big bang”: cosmic microwave background radiation – a left over relic from the origins of the universe. 

 By the 1990s, based on mathematical computation and computer-generated models, most astrophysicists confidently stated that all solar systems in the universe behave in the same way as ours. In 1995, Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz discovered a planet with similar characteristics to Jupiter orbiting a star in the constellation Pegasus. Everyone assumed this planet with similar physical properties would behave just like Jupiter does in relation to our Sun. They were very surprised to learn that the planet behaved nothing like Jupiter. It hurries around its host star every 4.2 days. It takes the earth 365 days. The planet only measured 1/8 the distance from its star that Mercury is from our Sun. So, it was closer and faster. About these differences, Mayor said, “It was very strange to consider the attitude of people facing something completely in disagreement with theory…some astronomers said things like ‘Oh, this is not a planet because you cannot form Jupiter-like planets close to their stars.’” But obviously, you can. 

Once again, like last week – am I making a case against science? No. I like science. I’m making a case for the very real “humanness” of any academic discipline. Every discipline has stories like these in its history. Yet, though religious ones are paraded for a wide audience, you have probably never heard about these. Next post, I’ll explain why we feel that “humanness” in science is unacceptable.

Reconciling Faith and Science: The “Humanness” of Science, Part 2

If you remember from my last post, we are attempting to see that our humanness affects everything we do. Science is a human endeavor and all humans bring their personal beliefs to bear on their work. Until we see that religion and science are human enterprises, then we are incapable of determining if they fit together or not. Last post we looked at historical examples: Kepler, Newton, etc. You may think that modern science (with the separation between faith and science fully pronounced) is much more objective. Actually, it’s gotten worse! 

For example, listen to some of the following quotes for or against evolutionary theory (emphasis mine). Now, remember – we aren’t talking about the issue of evolution per se; we’re talking about the human reactions (positive and negative) that evolution evokes from different scientists:

Lynn Margulis (University of Massachusetts) calls neo-Darwinists “a minor twentieth century religious sect…they wallow in their zoological, capitalistic, cost-benefit interpretation of Darwin…neo-Darwinism is in a complete funk.”

Biologist Ed Wilson (Harvard): “The final decisive edge enjoyed by scientific naturalism will come from its capacity to explain traditional religion…theology is not likely to survive…”

Late astrophysicist Robert Jastrow (NASA, Princeton): “At this moment it seems as though science will never be able to raise the curtain on the mystery of creation. For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance…and as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”

Biologist Francis Collins (Human Genome Project): “Admittedly we cannot precisely outline the order of the steps that lead to [biological organization]. We may never be able to do so, because the host organisms of many predecessors are lost to history. Yet Darwinism predicts that plausible intermediate steps must have existed, and some have indeed already been found.”

 Here are some modern examples of “humanness” in scientific experiments:

 By the late 1800s, physicists knew that light traveled as a wave, but didn’t know the medium through which it travelled. The greatest physicist of that time, James Clerk Maxwell stated that the answer was “ether”: “…there can be no doubt that…space is not empty but is occupied by [ether], which is certainly the largest and probably most uniform body of which we have knowledge.” Not only did Maxwell declare ether’s existence, he precisely calculated its density and coefficient of rigidity. But in 1887, Michelson and Morely conducted an experiment that showed that ether did not exist in space. For roughly 25 years, other scientists along with Maxwell had been calculating the density of something that didn’t exist.

 In 1952, University of Chicago’s Stanley Miller attempted to create the primordial environment from which the origins of life sprang. He combined the chemicals he believed to have been present at the beginning of life. With a little perseverance, Miller hoped to produce amino acids – the building blocks of life. And that’s exactly what he did – the scientific community rejoiced when Miller was able to detect various amino acids in his experiment. However, in hopes of producing them, Miller jiggled the apparatus around to create more interaction among the chemicals.

More examples next post…

Reconciling Faith and Science: Are They Compatible?

Based on the limited amount of research I’ve recently completed for my Sunday school class, I plan to post about the relationship between faith and science over the next two months (along with other topics). I hope the information is interesting to you and helps those struggling with this topic find some answers.

I must confess that this is new territory for me, personally. I was raised in a conservative, Southern, evangelical home. The only model I knew (at least for the origins of life) was the creationist model (before you turn your nose up at that idea, realize that presently 44% of Americans believe this way. That’s roughly half of the nation) . I took chemistry, biology, and physics in high school but I found little relevance to my faith. The conservative Christian model has often taught that science and faith are basically enemies. But eventually, I began to notice that there were a large number of scientists who embraced Christianity and had strong personal devotional lives. Of course, that’s the opposite of what I had assumed. I thought that science eradicated all faith in God for the sake of rationalism and logic. And for some scientists, that’s true. But for many, it’s not. Several surveys state otherwise. One survey found that while 80% of the general public believes in God, only 33% of scientists do. U.S. News and World Report described this information as “A Huge God Gap…” However, a similar survey in the 1920s found that 33% believed in God back then, too. Another survey including social scientists upped that number to almost 66%. Among those surveyed, biologists are least likely to believe. A recent University of Chicago survey found that 76% of doctors believe in God and 60% believe in an afterlife. If possible compatibility between faith and science did not exist, then rest assured that number would be zero.

However, my approach to science really began to change for me as I continued to study historical theology. That may sound strange to you, so let me explain. As a young adult, I assumed Christian doctrine appeared on the scene fully formed without complications. But the reality is that it took centuries to hash out the details of the faith. I also began to notice how “human” an undertaking theology was. Church history is full of people making horrible mistakes, treating each other badly, making doctrinal blunders that wouldn’t be corrected for years. People have been starting crazy cults since the inception of Christianity. Faith healers have been around that long, too. Even the “pillars” of the faith are not immune to their own humanness. John Wesley’s wife used to beat him up and throw him out of the house. John Calvin had a rival named Servetus beheaded for not towing the line in Geneva. And our culture has constantly pointed out the mistakes of runaway fringe sects, bombed abortion clinics, and the Crusades. That human element makes Christianity look “unscientific” – for many, that’s synonymous with unimportant.

Like theology I also assumed that science had emerged fully formed and placed in our high school textbooks. But as I studied historical theology, I noticed that up until the Enlightenment, science and theology were not held apart at all. In fact, scientists were also theologians, philosophers, medical experts, herbalists, and occultists of the day. The idea of holding any of these disciplines apart did not exist until recent history. What I found was that science was just as human: riddled with stories of prejudice, subjectivity, and inaccuracy - just like theology or any other area of study. Why? Because humans are involved. And no matter what is said otherwise, humans are incapable of complete objectivity. They believe. They have opinions. They have life histories. And all of these things determine much about how we approach the world.  

I know you have been told differently. We are told science is objective. Certain. Definite. Scietific naturalism teaches us that technical aspects of science are superior to all other forms of knowledge. And once science approves a theory, that theory rarely comes under fire and is never overturned. After all, there’s data, proof, evidence! But the history of science is full of the opposite: squabbling scientists believing strongly in their position despite large amounts of data to the contrary. Even when a scientific theory is overturned by new evidence, many scientists throughout history have had trouble adapting. Why? Because they are human. Somehow, we believe that though other areas of our life are riddled with the weaknesses of emotion and faith, scientific research is somehow capable of being performed in an intellectual vacuum. No outside influences affect the science lab. So, before determining the compatiblity of science and religion, I need to spend time telling you some stories – stories about the “human” element of science. Because until we can agree that our humanness affects everything we do, we won’t be able to see how faith and science are compatible. In the following two posts, I am going to challenge the paradigm you were taught in high school – that science is always an objective process and theology is not. Enjoy the next two posts about the “human side” of science…

I Like Atheists

I came across an atheist site the other day and read for a while. Most of what I saw was standard atheist fare. But I perked up when a well-meaning Christian on the site asked the others for proof from the Bible that God wasn’t perfect. The atheists happily obliged with several answers, two of which interested me.

I like atheists. They are usually good people. And many of the questions they pose concerning Christianity are valid. I have had some of the same questions and have aggressively searched for good answers to them. But in the end, religion requires faith. Even if I could “prove” ninety-nine percent of Christianity to a person, they would still have to believe in one percent. That one percent is whopper though – it encompasses things like the existence of God and the problem of evil.

Most atheist writings I’ve seen are deeply concerned with the character of God. What makes God worth following? Good question. I have found that most atheists are not full atheists. Actually, some would like to believe in deity. But most atheists reject a particular view of God. They see him as controlling of all events, yet unwilling to take responsibility when bad things happen or refuse to alleviate human suffering. Any “educational” lesson humans could derive from a God ordained disaster is immediately swallowed up by the horror of death, famine, disease, etc. Is the death of thousands worth any morality lesson? Honestly, I don’t blame them for rejecting that view of God. That’s not what I’ve come to understand about God anyway.

I have chosen to answer two objections of God given in response to the Christian on that site. The first is biblical and the second philosophical. These answers are out there for anyone to read. Unfortunately most atheists are too busy reading very angry books by Hitchens, Dawkins and Harris that reinforce their predetermined assumptions. And we know everything in those books is “spin-free,” right? Christians often do the same, refusing to interact with people who disagree with them and reading only Christian material for the sake of “strengthening their faith.” But our books aren’t spin-free either.

Response #1: God is not good because Jesus cursed the fig tree (Mark 11).

The gospel of Mark doesn’t tell us why Jesus did this. And it does seem kind of mean – what did that fig tree do to him anyway? Mark says that Jesus looked at the tree and only found leaves. What Jesus actually saw is that there were no taqsh on the fig tree. No what? Taqsh - the Palestinian word for little nodules that appear on a fig tree in early Spring, six weeks before the real figs start to grow. When Jesus saw only leaves (no taqsh), he knew the tree would never bear fruit again. It was barren and taking up ground where a perfectly good fig tree might bear fruit to feed the people. So Jesus cursed it, not because he was being rude or showing off to his friends, but because he was being eco-friendly. Jesus, the environmentalist. How about that? The misunderstanding occurs when people don’t look for the context that informs the biblical passage. How many more of those do you think we might have missed?

Response #2: God is not good/violent because Jesus got angry at the merchants in the temple (Matthew 21).

This response philosophically assumes certain things about God, mainly that a God who gets angry can’t be perfect. God must be free of all passion since passion denotes weakness. If you believe that, you’re not worshipping the God of the Bible, you’re more into what the Peripatetics and the Stoics were into. Atheists often assume (because Christians who don’t any different have told them so) that the Judeo-Christian God is calm, serene, and unaffected by the actions of human beings. The big fancy word for this is impassibility. People who believe this way allegorize the passages in the Bible where God gets angry, changes his mind, and expresses distress over the actions of humans. Unfortunately, to do this (and everyone from Tertullian to Luther has) is to cheapen the biblical view of God. Jesus was angry because the merchants were exploiting the worship of the Jews for money – people made in God’s image. That made him very angry and he did something about it. If anything, by acting out of emotional response similar to that recorded in the OT prophets, anger supports the divinity of Jesus, not dismisses it. And that’s the reason God is so great – he cares enough about you to get angry over injustice.

I’m not against atheism in the least. Most of them (not all – those who have made atheism their religion) are open to honest discussion as to why God does the things he does. They’re inquisitive and honest and authentic in their search. Christians should run to dialogue with them. If they ask something you don’t know, please don’t tell them they are going to hell. Go look it up and answer their question! They are on a journey…just like you.

Did God Kill My Friend?

I had a friend pass away this past year unexpectedly. The initial shock was overwhelming – I didn’t cry for a couple of days until I overcame the numbness. This guy was older than me and was influential in my understanding of the Christian faith as well as what is appropriate within a ministerial setting and what may not be.  For that reason, I looked up to him alot. Sometimes when people pass away unexpectedly and they were particularly “good” people, you feel like the planet was robbed in some way – like we’re all gonna be worse for his absence and, in many ways, the town I live in will be.

However, in the course of all the eulogies and funeral stuff, there are bound to be people asking questions about why such a saintly man would pass away, someone who seemed to be significantly impacting his community for God. Most people assume that God in his omnicausal deterministic theocentric bliss - if he didn’t cause the tragedy - certainly allowed it for reasons unknown to the rest of us. As a pastor I used to have a sick feeling in my stomach as I attempted to explain why God didn’t save someone’s life. Honestly, theology has not produced any satisfactory answers and any answer I supplied a family member would have logical “holes” that they would discover if they thought long enough about it.

Some theologians believe that God is his sovereignty has ordained every single detail of life (including the bad parts) for his mysterious purposes. I know, I know…even writing it down makes it look ridiculous. That viewpoint is quite laughable and never makes any practical sense to anyone.  All it does is make people hate God silently when honestly they probably would fare better by hating him out loud. Peripatetic influence upon Christianity certainly played a large role in defining the attributes of God, but what really strikes me about such a position is that it runs cross-grain to the supposed goodness of God. If God is good, why does he cause or indirectly sanction evil? Others endorse the free-will model yet still believe that God “knows” everything that will occur in the future.  Atheists (for good reason) say, “If God knows about bad stuff but still lets it happen, where’s the love in that?” Good point – I certainly don’t blame them for asking. Process theologians emphasize the dependence of God upon humanity to the point where God is basically helpless in the face of potential tragedy. Obviously that belittles the sovereignty of God, which is not acceptable either.  Open theism attempts to rid Christianity of its Hellenistic presuppositions but still allow God to “be God.” It’s probably the healthiest theodicy available (and the one I most readily subscribe to), but it takes too long to explain to people when they are crying in your office.

So, what do you do? I think the best thing to do is to tell them you don’t know the answer. Because no one really has the answer. Wrangling over compatibilism or levels of omniscience does jack squat for everyday people.  As much as I would like for them to care, they just don’t. I’m finding myself, after seriously studying methods of theodicy, adopting the same position.  There’s something refreshing about saying, “I don’t know.” In the particular case of my friend, there were circumstances of free-will that led to his demise. Why were they not cancelled out by some other natural complexity within temporality? Beats the heck out of me! If God didn’t ordain the event, why didn’t he respond to prayers of loved ones for protection “quick enough” to save his life?  I have no clue. Sometimes, it’s appropriate to say, “It wasn’t the devil, and it wasn’t God, it was (in this case) a traffic accident and that’s all.” In previous years I would have shied away from that comment because I would not have defended God in saying it. As if saying “I don’t know” leaves God exposed in some way. But God really doesn’t need me to defend him, does he? 

All theology (including atheism) is speculative and informed by the personal experiences of the theologian. The theologians who fail to grasp this are the scariest ones. Once you determine that theology doesn’t have to be objective in order to be valid, you’re well on your way to finding answers to some difficult questions. Chances are that in the process, you’ll aggressively pursue God to understand your relationship with him as well. And the answers to questions like, “Did God kill my friend?” lie in a relationship, not in a system.

Come on, Just How Bad Is Calvinism?, Part III

Let’s turn to the pastoral implications of Reformed theology. At the beginning, even Calvin underestimated just how many people would react strongly against his theology. His first draft of the Institutes barely developed a full understanding of predestination. The practical implications of his views came under such severe attack that by his third revision, his defense of those topics comprised the majority of the Insititutes. And as we’ve seen, plenty of people in history have rejected that view of God. Interestingly, some of the most important Reformed theologians have found that the only way to adopt predestination is to believe that God predestines everyone for salvation except a few reprobates – basically, what amounts to universalism. So what makes Reformed theologians so uneasy? The practical/pastoral implications of their theological system.

The pastoral obstacles in Calvinism are staggering. Though the Reformed belief system in a theological setting seems somewhat reasonable, in a popular/church setting, it quickly gets misconstrued and misinterpreted. Calvinists usually roll their eyes at those who misinterpret Reformed doctrine, but who’s to blame for this? The average Christian attempting to make sense of life’s tragedies or Reformists who assume that most people are simply unable to understand the mysteries of God? As a pastor, I have serious problems with that. To dismiss the average Christians concern over God’s nature is to dimiss someone made in the image of God. Any system that refuses to address life’s questions in that way that most accurately meets the needs of average Christians is not practical. It’s theoretical – useless to a caring pastor. Calvinism’s inability to translate into a feasable model for practical Christianity is its main drawback.

In a popular setting, Reformed answers to tragedy and misfortune sound terribly inhumane. Secularists constantly bring this up with good reason. Why would anyone choose to believe that God would ordain miscarriages to allow a time of spiritual reflection for a mother?  The implications are there. Though I personally don’t know why miscarraiges happen, my lack of an answer would never compel me to blindly adopt an explanation that assaults the character of God or crushes the spirit of another human, no matter how neat and tidy it may seem.  Christians lose the respect of others when we say things like the accidental death of a two year old can do more for Jesus than that child’s life could have. We see more popularized versions of this idea in congregational prayers that end all requests with “if it be thy will” or in church marqee signs that say: “Drive Carefully. Cars aren’t the only things recalled by their Maker.”

More importantly, Reformed solutions to tragedy rarely help relieve and emotional suffering. Make no mistake – people who receive answers like, “God is in control of everything” and “This is all part of God’s plan” continue to have questions. They just put those questions on hold until one day “all things” will be revealed. Sorry people, though this sounds spiritually valid, it makes absolutely no sense. Similarly, popular notions of Calvinistic thinking affect the efficacy of prayer. Prayer becomes merely a spiritual discipline with little bearing on life circumstances.

If we take Calvinistic theology to its logical consequences on a practical level, we end up with questions like: why do you protect your children from harm? Or, why do you lock your doors at night? If all events are ordained, you would think people would do better to assist the hand of God in such matters. I actually had someone tell me that exposing children to hazzardous consequences actually helps them learn proper boundaries. That’s fine to believe that but if you start on that slippery slope, which hazzards are appropriate: a fall down the stairs, a hot stove, or drowning in a swimming pool? Are pain and heartache God’s choice means of correction for adults as well? Once again, Calvinists are rolling their eyes at me. They would claim such objections to Reformed theology take the theological system beyond its intent. Exactly. If that’s the case, then theology has no practical value and Calvinism is something trivial to tinker with – like a model airplane or a doll collection.

All that to say this. The popular lesson derived by common Christians from Reformed theology is this: God doesn’t care and I am powerless to affect my circumstances for the better in any way. Calvinism breeds passive resignation in life. Most people walk away thinking “why try?”

Also, as a “charismatic” Christian, Reformed theology has always carried cessationist tendencies. The primacy of the Word is protected against prophetic inspiration. I simply cannot under any circumstances agree to that. People desperately need power to confront the obstacles they face in life. I’m not sure how Reformed “charismatics” can justify their adherence to a doctrine that flatly disputes their own spiritual experiences.

Presently, there is a movement back to Reformed doctrine (mostly riding on the wings of John Piper). Choosing to reject ”seeker-friendly,” superficial models of Christianity, mosaic and emergent traditions are looking for spiritual depth. Many are returning back to Reformed theology. But for a generation that has questioned and created new roles for itself in the Christian world, I find their willingness to settle for Calvinistic views of God to be unsettling. Piper isn’t even apart of your generation. For a generation marked by creativity, that’s not very creative, is it? There are other choices.

Those Christians and secularists who reject Reformed doctrine are not rejecting a system. They are rejecting the view of God that system requires. Pastoral objections abound to Reformed theology because it’s not what theologians assert that is important. It’s what people take from it to interpret their world that determines the validity of any theological system. Pastors understand this and see the merit of it.

I’d rather not have an answer to some questions than find encouragement in a wrong one.

Come on, Just How Bad Is Calvinism?, Part II

So, from my first post, it’s easy to see that Reformed theology doesn’t have everything wrapped up any more than other doctrinal systems. Yet as Chris said in his comment, there seems to be a feeling that Reformists base their conclusions on “scripture alone” and they have more scriptural support than any other group. After all, they are the majority tradition, right?

Could this be because they keep telling you that’s the case? Let’s cover some philosophical and historical ground here…

Actually, Reformed theology leans very heavily on classic philosophical foundations that have little to do with the Bible. These philosophical foundations describe the character of God. Philosophers and theologians have always struggled to define appropriate attributes for God to possess. Xenophanes despised the Greek gods’ inappropriate behavior and proposed a criterion of “decency”: traits that he believed deity should possess.  God should never behave as human do.

Plato’s version of God is perfect, needing nothing, and is sufficient in every way unto itself.  God maintains his state of perfection by experiencing no “joy or sorrow” – nor does he love since he needs no relationships.  Because of God’s perfection, he “mingles not with man.”  Plato also takes a deterministic slant to the cosmic order stating that all human affairs are predetermined, yet how this happens is a divine mystery (I heard that before).  Even God is subject to fate – “Not even God can fight against necessity.” Aristotle believed there must be an “unmoved mover” who is the first cause of all motion in the universe.  In order to remain unmoved and independent of all forces, God must also remain completely separate from the world. 

Augustine, the father of Latin theology, emphasized Hellenistic traits of God as well.  He maintained the traditional divine attributes the Greek philosophers did: “Whatever is changeable is not the most high God…that is truly real which remains immutable.”  Therefore, neither God’s knowledge nor his will ever changes.  Along with these beliefs, Augustine adopted the concept of foreordination or predestination – humans cannot thwart God’s will for “the will of the omnipotent is always undefeated.”  Scriptures showing God changing his mind were written for “babes” and do not reflect God’s true nature.  Augustine also believed that natural events on earth were designed by God at the beginning of time and hidden within the natural order of life (sound familiar?).  With Augustine’s endorsement of these philosophical attributes, the transcendent, unknowable and inaccessible nature of God became permanently etched into Western theology. 

Now, stick with me here – I’m going somewhere. When the Reformers attempted to develop a new system of theology, they merely fell back on the same familiar philosophical assumptions Augustine had found so useful.  This also included philosophical attributes of God like immutability and simplicity.  So, while making slight changes, the Reformers only reinforced the inherited view of God’s unavailability.

Calvin was even more structured in his understanding of God’s nature and interaction with creation.  He also characterizes God as immutable, simple, impassible and self-existent.  Echoing Luther’s view of sovereignty, Calvin stated that God does not will something because it is good; rather, an event in life is good simply because God willed its occurrence.  The mysteries of God’s will should remain a mystery: “Let us then willingly leave to God the knowledge of himself.”

Understandably, Calvin’s opponents had trouble reconciling his belief that “nothing takes place by chance” with the idea of God as a loving father.  But Calvin helps us understand his line of reasoning: the perils and tragedies of life’s existence at that time would have been intolerable if all events in life happened as a result of arbitrary chance.  Submitting to God, the Christian could at least believe that the miseries of life were intended to for his own good. So, Calvin’s view of God was a product of his times, not ours.

Okay, what does all that mean? It means that though Reformed theology is well developed (and that promotes security), it sacrifices the practical elements of God’s goodness. Rather than accepting God because he is good, we are told to accept God’s goodness simply because He wills it. Though Reformists say that they are the majority tradition, historically the majority of people have rejected at least part of their concept of God.

Here are a few quotes from across the spectrum to illustrate. Commoners during the Reformation turned to folk magic to bridge the gap between themselves and a remote view of God. In 1594, Lutheran inspectors in Germany reported that “the use of spells is so widespread among the people here that not a man or woman begins…or refrains from doing anything…without employing some particular blessing, incantation, spell, or other such heathenish means…” They weren’t exactly “leaning on the everlasting arms,” were they? Enlightenment philosophers wholly rejected the same view of God as well. Since God had already distanced himself from humanity, the rationalists merely pushed him further out of the frame into a state of inactivity. They finished the job classic theism had started centuries before. Voltaire questioned the character of a deterministic God and his foreordination of a disastrous earthquake in Lisbon in 1775. The philosophes’ underlying motivation became liberating the Western mindset from what Voltaire called a “religion that believes in a cruel God.”  

In the 1840s, Andrew Jackson Davis, prior to his conversion to Spiritualism, struggled with his Christian upbringing.  A member of the Presbyterian church, he rejected the “God clothed in Calvinist attributes, also in His eternal decrees of election and reprobation and also in many other points of faith ascribing unamiable qualities to the Deity.”  Protestant Liberalism was also a reaction to this view of God. Lyman Abbot, looking back upon his Puritan upbringing, loathed the view of God as a “kind of awful omnipotent police justice” and himself as “a scared culprit who knows he is liable to punishment but does not clearly know why.”  In the twentieth century, Carl Jung, the son of a Reformed pastor, had experienced the demoralizing aspects of Western Christianity.  He wrote, “I am aware of my unconventional way of thinking and understand that it gives the impression that I am not a Christian.  But I regard myself as a Christian…but I am at the same time convinced that…the present situation seems to me to be intolerable; therefore I think that a fundamental further development of Christianity is absolutely necessary.”

Now, we can pretend all these people are stupid and delusional and backwards…or we can really look at what they are saying. People from Christian, occult, and secular traditions are all hinting at the same thing: that view of God is unacceptable. Though they disagreed on basically everything else, they certainly agreed on that! Maybe a theological system that implicitly undermines the character of God isn’t the best way to go.

Next, practical implications for everyday Christians.

Are Christians and Occultists the Same?

I’m gonna delve into something radical here. Let me post a few quotes first and then I’ll explain…

Example one: 

Catholic mystic St. Teresa (1515-1582) basically describes the spiritual gift of words of knowledge that she often received in prayer as “…very distinctly formed, but by the bodily ear they are not heard. They are, however, much more clearly understood than if they were heard by the ear.”

Crossreference Jane Roberts, a classic New Age trance channeler, who described a similar experience in 1963: “…a fantastic avalanche of radical, new ideas burst into my head with tremendous force…I felt as if knowledge was being implanted in the very cells of my body so that I couldn’t forget it – a gut knowing, a biological spirituality. It was feeling and knowing, rather than intellectual knowledge.”

Example two: 

Gottfried Arnold (1666-1714) described a life of union with God where believers became a participant in the nature of God.  Along with ecstatic experiences including spiritual gifts, “He who has reached this high grade of love …will be overcome and almost drunken, indeed, swallowed up” in the presence of God. 

Spiritualist James Martin Peebles wrote revivalist Dwight Moody in a letter concerning the similarities between Spiritualism and Moody’s proto-Pentecostal beliefs in experience: “Yes, my brother, with you I want to see a revival of religion, a return to Pentecostal times, a return to that Christianity which gladdened and glorified the first three centuries after Christ.” Peebles glibly suggested a joint revival circuit with Pentecostals and Spiritualist mediums displaying the power of God together: “…what a power, what a mighty power, under the good providence of God, we should be evangelizing the world.”  To Peebles, the Pentecostal experience merely confirmed his own views.

Example three: 

A Methodist parishioner, after participating in a Mesmeric trance, was described by an observer: “…she appeared to be in a state of ecstatic joy, when she grasped [the Mesmerists] hand and said: ‘O, Brother Sunderland, this is the happiest state I was ever in. It is heaven…Yes, Brother Sunderland, and this is the same heaven – the same as when my soul was converted and filled with the love of God.’” The Mesmerist was also a Methodist minister.

Theologian Harvey Cox recounts attending a Pentecostal service in Boston.  After an inspiring time of worship, singing and dancing, the minister praised the presence of the Holy Spirit with these words: “Yes, this is the way it ought to be. Yes.  This is the way it’s going to be in heaven.  Yes, and we don’t have to wait for heaven because here at Holy Tabernacle tonight this is the way it is now.” 

 Okay, I’m sure you can see the similarities here. I pulled just a few quotes from hundreds to give an idea of just how similar experiences felt in Christian and alternative religious groups are. Now don’t freak out, just listen. Christians have always had a tendency to reject all such occult experiences as counterfeit and demonic. Modern occultists although valuing the role of experience, usually assign it to the fringes of the unconscious mind. But what if our spiritual history, full of countless examples of people chasing experience, were saying the same thing?

Pentecostalism and Roman Catholicism are the largest Christian groups in the world. Why do you think that is? Pentecostalism is 500 million strong – bigger than all other denominations combined. I think it’s because of their willingness to value experience and the supernatural. Similarly, why do you think Wicca and the New Age movement are so big? Same reason – they value personal experience and the supernatural.

I am a Pentecostal (don’t laugh – you’re the minority, not me) and proud that my Christian heritage includes the quotes of the Christians above. You may have Martin Luther, but we have Tertullian, Symeon the New Theologian, Bernard of Clairvaux (and a host of other mystics), Jacob Boehme, Valentin Weigel, the Pietists, and Horace Bushnell. But I also deeply sympathize with the quotes of occultists above who were disillusioned by the Christianity of their youth and went elsewhere to find spiritual experience. As a Christian, though I feel occultists are misdirected, I also believe their innate desire to seek out spiritual experience is dead on. That’s why they supplemented their formal religion with, say, Spiritualism. They are looking for the level of spiritual vitality that has made Pentecostalism the largest Protestant grouping in the entire world.

There’s a trend in Christian ecumenical circles nowadays: embrace Pentecostalism but relegate spiritual gifts to soteriological functions. Unfortunately, the trend is catching on since people like contemporary music but think spiritual gifts are freaky. Listen up ecumenists – you are destroying the single most important bridge to evangelize other religious groups. Pentecostalism has spread because of its power, not its ritual. You should be bending over backwards to accommodate individual experience in the church, not dismissing it as self-indulgent or immature. Individual experience is what anchors people to the faith. If you remove it from Christianity, you create an environment for people to go searching elsewhere for what you have minimized for the sake of achieving doctrinal consensus.

So what are occultists and others looking for? The same thing Christians are looking for. I think they are looking for the power of the Holy Spirit. In this way, Christians and occultists are the same. All of us are internally “wired” to seek after an experience (praxis) that accompanies our faith (dogma). To deny that experiential element is to reject part of what makes religion effective – a point of spiritual connection that bridges a pathway towards relationship with God.