The World As Creation

The God of nature, and the origin of all beauty, is my God

Elizabeth Rowe, Devout Exercises of the Heart

Broadly speaking, the secular scientist understands the material world as nature, as a system of cause-and-effect interlocking laws. A Christian, whether scientist or not, sees this world as creation.

What is the difference? Not that believers grasp beauty and the others don’t. It’s just that there is no source for that beauty. It just is. The existence of the world is a final brute fact. Put another way—and more philosophically—nature is eternal and bears no reason for its existence. The Christian sees nature as contingent and based on God’s necessary existence, the God who created for the purpose of joy and beauty.

The elders in John’s Revelation (4:11) sing this:

You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.

Since God is Beauty itself, when God decides to create, the world will be filled with beauty. Being contingent on God, it is by nature (as it were) beautiful.

Last week, I taught a course on spiritual life and the particular topic of visio divina (divine viewing, related to lectio divina, or “divine reading,” which I describe in an earlier post). Since I don’t know much about the topic (I was substituting for my wife Laura), I will tell you what I know: visio divina involves the use of our eyes as a means of perceiving God.

Usually this spiritual practice involves art, but what if we took this stunning version of spirituality—the one that the Puritan poet Elizabeth Rowe points to—and used the natural world as visio divina? I think we would begin to fulfill at least two things: 1) the reason we were created, and 2) a perception of the world as it truly is. We would see the world as creation in a way that satisfies our souls.

Seeing Nature as Creation

I'm working on a chapter from a proposed new book, Worshipping God in an Age of Science, and I'm compelled by two different quotes, with two antithetical views of nature--one as simply a physical system and the other as God's creation.

First from Harvard astronomer Margaret Geller, who believes that it is pointless to mention purpose in nature, which is another way of describing that there was a Creator who created this world for a reason:

Why should [the universe] have a point? What point? It’s just a physical system, what point is there?

(Certainly, not all scientists express similar nihilism about creation. I remember a graduate seminar on genetics and ethics with the Berkeley biochemist David Cole. He showed us pictures of polymers and exclaimed—“Aren’t these beautiful! Look at the wonder of God’s creation!” I had never thought of polymers that way... I actually had really ever paid much attention to them at all.)

Second, William Shakespeare who, during the great flowering of modern science in the seventeenth century, found insights from the Book of Nature. It evokes, pays homage to, its Creator.

And this our life,

           Exempt from public hands, 

Finds tongues in trees,

            Books in the running brook,

Sermons in stones,

            And good in everything.

Science, as the study of the interworkings of the natural world, will never carry us directly to seeing nature as creation. But it doesn't necessary draw us away either. What do you think makes the difference? 

Anscombe, Lewis, and the Dangers of Apologetics

I’m still striving away at an article—or perhaps, chapter of a book—on C. S. Lewis and science. On the way there, I just worked through an essay (from Light on C. S. Lewis) by the brilliant Oxford philosophical theologian, and friend of Lewis, Austin Farrer, on Lewis as an apologist. His insights as friend and philosopher offer stunning insights and revealing quips.

One of the latter is that, at the Oxford Socratic Society, where debate on theological topics transpired for several years and of which Lewis was president, Farrer comments that “nobody could put Lewis down” because he was such a fierce and effective debater. I’m sure it was meant as a general comment, but I couldn’t help but recall the famous, or infamous, encounter with the brilliant Oxford philosopher, and believing Catholic, Elizabeth Anscombe, in which Lewis was indeed “put down” in his arguments that naturalism is self-defeating. By most accounts he left the debate dejected, though it seems clear, not destroyed. As a result, Lewis revised his argument and continued his work. For her part, Anscombe, though not convinced, appreciated the seriousness with which Lewis took up the philosophical dialectics and revised his argument.

Despite the experience of defeat in the heat of debate, I for one am convinced that Lewis’s argument is decisive. But my mind moves elsewhere—to a reflection on what it meant for Lewis to be a consistent intellectual winner. Lewis was indeed exceedingly brilliant, and I wonder if this brilliance and debater’s acumen sometimes imperiled his soul. To defeat the opponent of Christian faith is not coterminous with promoting the cause of the Gospel. One can defeat by destroying. It is a reverse Pyrhic victory. The work of the apologist ultimately should lead to conversion. And for the opponent (to even use that word belies a certain mistaken starting point) to slink away in intellectual ignominy hardly serves that greater purpose.

Perhaps this is simply the dangers of apologetics. It is a danger that Lewis himself pondered... no, better, feared. His poem, “The Apologist’s Evening Prayer” contains these piercing lines of self-reflection:

From cleverness shot forth on Thy behalf

At which, while angels weep, the audience laughs

Maybe that debate with Anscombe served therefore a more profound, providential purpose. It brought forth that critical Christian virtue—not invincibility, but humility.

A. N. Wilson on materialism

I've been working on this piece, "C. S. Lewis and Science" (or whatever it'll eventually be called), and I ran across a somewhat recent quotation from A. N. Wilson, the brilliant, but cranky biographer of Lewis and, for quite a while, committed atheist. Just a few years ago, he changed his mind. Wilson points to "great saint Thomas More, Chancellor of England":

Our bishops and theologians, frightened as they have been by the pounding of secularist guns, need that kind of bravery (like Sir Thomas More’s) more than ever. Sadly, they have all but accepted that only stupid people actually believe in Christianity, and that the few intelligent people left in the churches are there only for the music or believe it all in some symbolic or contorted way which, when examined, turns out not to be belief after all. As a matter of fact, I am sure the opposite is the case and that materialist atheism is not merely an arid creed, but totally irrational. Materialist atheism says we are just a collection of chemicals. It has no answer whatsoever to the question of how we should be capable of love or heroism or poetry if we are simply animated pieces of meat.

I think that's fairly provocative stuff. What do you think? 

An Interlude on "Lectio Divina"

This entry accompanies my July 31 message at Bidwell Presbyterian Church, "The Savor of Scripture." (Click here to hear the message.) It's an entirely brief overview of the ancient spiritual disciple of lectio divina or “divine reading” of the Bible. 


As writer and Presbyterian pastor Marjorie Thompson presents in her fabulous book on the spiritual life, Soul Feast, reading the Bible is like savoring a letter from a good friend. (There was a time when we used to write letters instead of whip off an email?) And in this case, our friend is God, who wants our best. It is therefore reading for formation over information. (By the way, a good form of literature for this practice is poetry, which forces us to slow down.)

         

The Benedictines (a monastic movement that began in the early 500s) have developed a four-step spiritual reading called lectio divina that works well for those who want to practice biblical meditation.

•  lectio (reading): Start with silence. Quiet yourself. Then read the passage several times, being careful to read slowly. Using other translations is helpful in this step.
• meditatio (meditation): Think hard about the passage. Ask questions. Look up difficult words in an English or Bible dictionary. Mull over a verse or phrase that has arisen from the first step. Let it percolate.
•  oratio (prayer): Pray through the themes that God is bringing to your attention. This step may engage a wide range of emotions.
• contemplatio (contemplation): Simply enjoy the place that God has led you through this reading, perhaps even simply being in God’s presence. You may also want to think through the action to which God is leading you.

Try this and see how it transforms your life.

C. S. Lewis on “the Scientific Outlook” and its Contrast with Science

(This is the next installment of the chapter I'm working....)

Ultimately, C. S. Lewis was a professor of literature and therefore in the humanities and not the sciences. Most of his arguments for faith take place in philosophy or the arts. Yet, this may be a strength because many arguments against Christian faith are presented by scientists as scientific, but are really philosophical in character.

            

We come then to a confusion—or maybe the shell game—that exists, as well as a nexus for misunderstanding. Science commits itself to methodological naturalism quite rightly. Science, at its core, looks for the interactions, interrelations, and thus cause and effect in the natural world. It does not ask the question, “What is the boiling point of water?” Science keeps testing, hypothesizing, testing, and hypothesizing, until the conclusion is made that, when water at sea level is heated to 100 Celsius, it begins to boil. No god or spirit is needed for that specific phenomenon of nature (other than that a Creator God who put together nature itself, by I will return to that theme below).

            

The issue is when this method of looking for natural causes elides into philosophical naturalism—that all there exists is nature. Just because science cannot test or number something does not mean it does not exist. It is here—not as a field of study, but as an understanding of the world or sense-of-life, where science often intersects--or even collides with--theology. Many evolutionists see a mindless, “pitiless indifference” (to quote Richard Dawkins) against the entirely purposeful creation by the hand of God. “Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted,” as Albert Einstein once quipped. Though many scientists, and atheistic philosophers, link methodological naturalism with philosophical atheism, there is no sound reason to do so.

            

At this point, it might be worthwhile to delineate the difference between theology, which is the study of God, and science, which is the study of the natural world based on the distinction between primary and secondary causation. God is the primary cause—God undergirds and establishes all being. As the great medieval philosopher Thomas Aquinas taught, the nature of God as Creator is that being is always flowing from God. That fact defines primary causation. God is the Cause that undergirds all other causes. Secondary causation is what human beings, and all other agents in the natural world, are given to do. Shakespeare created Hamlet and Ophelia—that is the nature of authorship. They would not exist without him, but within the story they have real interaction. The analogy is not perfect because once the book is written, the real interactions between Hamlet and Ophelia are fixed in a way that ours is not. Nonetheless the central point of the analogy lies here: if Shakespeare were to have stopped writing Hamlet in the midst of its creation, the entire story would have ceased. And so too it is with God. God is the primary cause, but we are the real secondary causes. If God were to stop creating, we would no longer exist.

            

Returning to our text at hand: “Is Theology Poetry?” is a fascinating lecture—as Lewis is wont to create—not on science per se, or even strictly evolutionary science, but on the use of evolution to create a worldview, one that challenges orthodox Christian accounts of the world. To repeat: This atheistic challenge confuses methodological naturalism (tbe basis of evolution) with philosophical naturalism. Or, in this essay, Lewis juxtaposes science and the Scientific Outlook. Therefore, when scientists grasp this distinction, no conflict between science and God need arise prematurely. Now there may be discoveries about creation and raise questions about the Creator, but science by its nature does not have the power and right to say that all that exists is what it studies. It is as if sculptors were to assert that painting does not exist because they have never touched paint.

            

Therefore, Lewis held out great hope for science and faith. As he puts in the mouth of the devil, Screwtape, in the first letter of the Screwtape Letters, the imagined correspondence between a senior devil and a junior devil, Wormwood, on how to tempt a human soul.

Above all, do not attempt to use science (I mean, the real sciences) as a defense against Christianity. They will positively encourage him to think about realities he can't touch and see. There have been sad cases among the modern physicists (Letter One).

Notes Toward a Future Post

I'm working on an article--as preparation for a class on the same topic I'm teaching this winter--of C. S. Lewis and Science. I'll simply put three key citations in juxtaposition on the way to a future post.

The prominent Harvard neuroscientist Stephen Pinker has laid down the gauntlet in this way:

The neuroscientific worldview—the idea that the mind is what the brain does—has kicked away one of the intuitive supports of religion. So even if you accepted all of the previous scientific challenges to religion—the Earth revolving around the sun, animals evolving, and son on—the immaterial soul was always one last thing that you could keep as being in the province of religion. With the advance of neuroscience, that idea has been challenged.

It seems that materialism has won the day with scientists and that, according to many, it represents the crucial argument against religious faith today.

Then from the famous mid-20th century geneticist and evolutionary biologist--and atheist--John Scott Haldane, 

It seems to me immensely unlikely that mind is a mere by-product of matter. For if my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true. They may be sound chemically, but that does not make them sound logically. And hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms.

And then finally from C. S. Lewis (who was a contemporary of Haldane's), as he presents why Christian theology, reason, and science all come together.

Christian theology can fit in science, art, morality, and the sub-Christian religions. The scientific view [such as in H. G. Wells or Pinker] cannot fit in any of these things, not even science itself. I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.

Any thoughts? (This is especially helpful as I pursue this topic further.)

Some Assorted Thoughts on Freedom

I've been thinking about freedom recently--perhaps because our country is just about to celebrate our Declaration of Independence. I've been meditating particularly on the way our search for freedom in the United States connects with Jesus's words in chapter 8 of the Gospel of John:

Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. 

I'll keep my blog entry unsystematic, but two things have come to mind. First of all, although we can hear this as a generalizable promise about abstract truth, it's really about a  relational truth. It's the truth of relationship, not of mathematics. Put in a question: how do we relate to the living God? Jesus offers us freedom when we are in relationship with the Living God.


Secondly, freedom here is not what we so often think as liberty or independence. It is not freedom from; instead it is freedom for. It not solely to be independent from external constraints, but the capacity to do what is right. Two citations help me on this, first from the ever-witty, G. K. Chesterton, who reminds us that being only free from may, in the end, make us less human:

Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel.

And the second from Peter Marshall, who, I think, sets the the right tone and direction. It's a fitting summary statement, fitting enough that I think I'll just close with it.

May we think of freedom, not as the right to do as we please, but as the opportunity to do what is right.

Jottings on C. S. Lewis, Science, and the Argument from Beauty

C. S. Lewis’s famous apologetic argument from desire is simple, yet powerful:

We have a desire for something that cannot be satisfied by this world. But our hunger demonstrates that we need something beyond this world. The object of that desire is God.

(This argument can be found throughout his writing, but he summarizes it in his profound sermon, “The Weight of Glory." Lewis himself finds the resolution of this desire most poignantly in his autobiography, Surprised by Joy.)

            

Another way to describe this apologetic approach is that it is an argument from beauty. We all desire beauty, and beauty, I contend, has been a motivating force for all human endeavors. It is, for example, a point of common interest for scientists and theologians. Here’s how my argument from beauty goes.

            

Beauty occurs when we perceive reality rightly. It arises for both theologians and scientists through rightly grasping and theorizing about their objects of study. Beauty thus leads to truth, and beauty provides a lure for study. In this sense, it is telic, leading human beings toward a preferred future. For theologians, it means grasping God’s true nature, God’s creation, and our ethical life. For scientists, it is rightly perceiving, and theorizing about, nature. When this perception is made there is discovery, which is accompanied by a sense of completeness. Therefore, the disciplines and vocations of theology and of science can be particularly beautiful. In these and other ways, beauty represents a common value for scientists and theologians.

In this post, I will highlight science. The great early 20th century physicist, Werner Heisenberg, reflected ont the connection between discovering the nature of quantum reality and its beauty. One should note the relationship between beauty and Heisenberg’s “coherence,” which is parallel to my formulation of rightly perceiving nature. Beauty for Heisenberg is surprising and objective. As he describes it, he did not impose beauty, but discovered—or perhaps better, un-covered—this beauty in the midst of looking at energy at the quantum level:

The energy principle had held for all the terms, and I could no longer doubt the mathematical consistency and coherence of the kind of quantum mechanics to which my calculations pointed. At first, I was deeply alarmed. I had the feeling that, through the surface of atomic phenomena, I was looking at a strangely beautiful interior, and felt almost giddy at the thought that I now had to probe this wealth of mathematical structure nature had so generously spread out before me.

This pursuit and discovery of beauty has certainly motivated key scientists. I could multiply quotes, but will simply note Einstein’s use of beauty in formulating both the special and general theories of relativity. Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffmann summarized Einstein’s work: “The essence of Einstein’s profundity lay in his simplicity; and the essence of his science lay in his artistry—his phenomenal sense of beauty.” It was that sense of beauty that led him to reformulate our understanding of the cosmos.

I close with a summary from Lewis on this quest for the beautiful. In his sermon, "The Weight of Glory," he reflected on glory, and the related value of beauty, as the goal of human life:

We do not want merely to see beauty, though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else that can hardly be put into words—to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it.

Because I'm working on these topics right now, there will be more on this, I hope, in future postings...

Alister McGrath, Surprised by Meaning

Alister McGrath is a compelling writer on science and theology. While pursuing a Ph.D. in chemistry, he initially set out to bolster his atheism, but in the process, became a Christian instead. He then received a doctorate in theology and is now a major voice in that field and in the theology-science dialogue. His Surprised By Meaning, though a slim, unpretensious book, surprised me with its insights. Below are a few from chapters 4, 5, and 10. 

Science, McGrath asserts, seeks to make sense of nature in three significant ways:

1. Casual explanation: If A causes B, then A explains B.
2. The Best Explanation: How can these phenomena best be explained?
3. Explanatory Unification: Powerful theories bring together ideas once thought to be unrelated.

Nevertheless, ultimately, human beings seek a deeper order, a deeper level of intelligibility. McGrath writes that science cannot satisfy this deeper search; it is a search that only belief in God satisfies.

When McGrath pursued a Ph.D. in chemistry, he wanted to support his atheism with the insights of natural science (something like the contemporary "New Atheists" do). Instead he discovered that his atheism was not well established intellectually. In that process, McGrath came to make a distinction between "scientism" as a totalizing worldview (my words) and legitimate scientific theory. That seems accurate by my lights. For example, what Richard Dawkins proposes as the conclusions of scientific study are actually metaphysical conclusions dressed up with scientific decoration. 

McGrath also concludes that, contrary to Jacque Monod and Richard Dawkins, some notion of teleology emerges from study of evolutionary processes itself. I agree with McGrath’s point—that nature, even with its random events, ultimately points toward a goal, a telos. The claws of a crab point toward the goal of grabbing prey. Nonetheless, in my experience with scientists, the word “teleology” brings significant resistance, probably because of the way previous philosophies employed the term. Still that resistance has intrigued me because science, and even evolution, does move in certain directions. "Such teleology," McGrath writes, "is empirical, grounded in a posteriori discernment, not a priori imposition."

These are all good points, which merit discussion. So I'll just leave you with some questions from these chapters...

• Stepping back to the bigger issues of science and theology, how do the two fields come together in McGrath’s view?
• What is the relation between the ways science and religion “make sense of things”?
• How do you evaluate McGrath’s assertion that the case for atheism rests on “rather shaky foundations”?
• Is the “warfare” thesis, as a way of understanding the relation of science and religion, increasingly discredited?
• How do you evaluate McGrath’s statement, “Within a Reformed theological framework, for example, ‘random’ can be translated as ‘non-predictable,’ and thus contextualized within a generalized doctrine of divine providence”?
• Does teleology naturally arise from the study of biological systems?

How Harold Camping Got Me on CNN

As I type this entry, the Rapture hasn't yet occurred, as Harold Camping predicted. But I'm not entirely unhappy with Camping. He was responsible for my shot on TV. This is a brief excerpt from my book, Creation and Last Things, in which I comment on how many times I've heard that Jesus was going to return in my life. (At that point, Camping was third on the list.)

In summer 1994, I received a call from New College, Berkeley. CNN had contacted this school of theology to request a commentator on a current end times scenario. And so, in just two hours, unprepared and therefore dressed in shorts and a cotton sweater, I found myself on camera, interviewed by a rather congenial Craig Heaps about the engineer and radio commentator, Harold Camping. From Camping’s Oakland “Family Radio” ministry headquarters, he predicted the strong possibility of the Second Coming of Christ in 1994. (I was at least heartened by Camping’s realization that our Gregorian calendar had a serious flaw. He believed that Jesus was born in 6 BC.) Heaps asked me, “What do you think is the danger of this type of speculation?” My answer: that it would distract us from the task of preaching of Gospel and bringing about the Kingdom of God on earth. And that remains my concern.

So thanks for the break, Harold Camping, but let's hope that today's (apparently) mistaken prediction doesn't distract us from what God really wants us to do.

St. Clive, Science, and Theology

I’ve been wondering how to bring together three of my favorite subjects: C.S. Lewis, science, and theology. (Or, counted another way, it becomes two topics: Lewis with science and theology.) Recently, I came across Lewis’s essay—really an oral presentation to the Oxford Socratic Club—from 1944 in which St. Clive takes up the question: “Is theology poetry?” And he refines the question to become to whether theology is merely poetry (which it isn’t), and then analyzes the poetry of the “Scientific Outlook” presented by evolution (and especially H. G. Wells) as a philosophy of progress that gradually and painfully overcomes obstacles. 

It’s a fascinating lecture—as Lewis is wont to create—not on science per se, or even evolutionary science, but on the use of evolution to create a worldview, one which challenges orthodox Christian accounts of the world.

And I want to lean on this point just for a moment. It is here—not as a field of study, but as an understanding of the world or sense-of-life, where science often intersects--or even collides with--theology. Many evolutionists see a mindless, “pitiless indifference” (to quote Richard Dawkins) against the entirely purposeful creation by the hand of God.

The reason Lewis rejected the “Scientific Outlook” was this: it asserts the truth and reasonableness of its claim without thereby providing a place for reason. Or as he put it:

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

The Scientific Outlook tries to fit in reason in an irrational—or maybe arational—world. Belief in a Creator God who endows humanity with reason makes entirely more sense. Lewis concludes that’s why he does not believe in the “Scientific Outlook,” but instead believes in Christianity, which includes reason and science.

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

I suppose that’s where St. Clive, science, and theology all come together for me and why I subscribe to both the affirmation of Christian theology and the insights of science, including those of evolution through natural selection.

How about you? What do you think?

Something Still Worth Living For

As I come to preaching at the final 545 worship service at Bidwell Pres and ponder what I'll tell the college students before they head off to summer or to life beyond the classroom, I remember the amazing quote (one of my favorites) from "St. Clive," aka C. S. Lewis

If we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling around with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in the slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by an offer of a holiday at sea. We are far to easily pleased.

The reward C. S. Lewis envisions is the "weight of glory," and for me, this pairs beautifully with Paul's description of what he lives for in his letter to the Philippians, chapter three:

Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.

Following God's upward call to glory--that makes life worth living. What does that look like for you?

Science, Time, and Eternity: A Meditation on the Way to Easter

(This entry is excerpted and adapted from my book, Creation and Last Things: At the Intersection of Science and Theology. Look right or click here.)

Time—one of the most fascinating topics for human reflection—arises from God’s creation. It was the brilliant fourth century North African rhetorician and philosopher, Augustine, who presented the question,

What, then, is time? There can be no quick and easy answer to that question, for it is no simple matter even to understand what it is, let alone find words to explain it. Yet, in our conversation, no word is more familiarly used or more easily recognized than “time.” We certainly understand what is meant by the word both when we use it ourselves and when we hear it used by others. 

What then is time? I know well enough what it is, provided that nobody asks me; but if I am asked what it is and try to explain, I am baffled.            

And so time is a puzzle, but also a gift. Without creation—and scientists would remind us that without matter—there is no time. God continues to relate to creation as the eternal God, as the One who is not limited by time, but encompasses time. To grasp this relationship with the temporal world, we have to look at God’s entering human history in Jesus Christ. There time is “baptized” so-to-speak—God touches time and surrounds it with eternity. Thomas Oden, a theologian who has done much to demonstrate the importance of classical insights from ancient thinkers, summarizes the connection between Jesus Christ and time this way:

The decisive Christian analogy concerning time is that between the eternal indwelling in time and the incarnation. Brilliantly, the classical exegetes taught that the creation of time is analogous to the incarnation in this way: The Father inhabits time, just as the Son inhabits human flesh.         

In this light, God’s eternity surrounds our time-bound world. God is before all, in the present moment, and the One at the end of time. The Bible clearly presents God’s ability to act “before” all now exists. 1 Timothy 1:9—where on would never expect to find a metaphysical thought about time—describes God’s grace as “given to us in Christ Jesus before the ages began…” (my italics). In a similar vein, God comes “after” our current temporal sequence. God is described in Revelation 6:12 as the One “who was and is and is to come” (my emphasis). 

God’s eternity therefore is not timelessness, but the fullness of time. You can imagine a piece of paper with a long, thin line written on it. In this analogy, time is the line, God is the surface on which it is written. One has to advance along the line to get from point A to point B. Yet using the paper, you can move between A and B without moving along the line. Or try another analogy: an author writing a play. The author can write in Act Two, then step back to Act One, then jump to Act Five, without any difficulty. She can even be writing more than one play at a time. God, whose eternity encompasses time, is not bound by a chronological sequence.

            

This understanding of time is reflected in the language of biblical Greek. Its two words for “time” create a distinction that instructs powerfully. Chronos is clock-time, the rhythmic advance of minutes, hours, and days, which surprisingly, I am told, has only dominated Western thought since public clocks became prominent in the late Middle Ages. “Does your watch keep good time?” That is the question of chronos. The other word for time, kairos can be translated as “opportunity,” or more literally “a decisive point in time,” and in it is contained the sense of divine appointment, a “God incident.” An event is kairos not because a watch says that it is five minutes before six on a Friday morning, but because all is in place and God is ready to speak. So God is not confined by the chains of time (chronos), but can fill any moment with divine Presence (kairos). We long for this fullness of time. We crave a ripple of Eternity in the waters of time.

            

The Oxford scholar and twentieth-century Christian apologist, C. S. Lewis, offers an electrifying analogy for this longing as a sign of our eternal life. Our constant surprise at the flow of time (which scientists call “the arrow of time”) means God created us not for temporality but for eternity. Lewis comments on the insight from 2 Peter 3:8 that for God, not only is a thousand years like one day (Psalm 90:4), but also “one day is like a thousand years.” He reminds us that the Eternal can meet us at any moment, “but we have touched what is not in any way commensurable with lengths of time, whether long or short.” Our hope then is to be removed from the sequence of time.

For we are so little reconciled to time that we are even astonished at it. “How he’s grown!” we exclaim, “How time flies!” as though the universal form of our experience were again and again a novelty. It is strange as if a fish were repeatedly surprised at the wetness of water. And that would be strange indeed; unless of course the fish were destined to become, one day, a land animal.

This “fish” is meant to swim in the waters of eternity. Doesn't that lead us right to the heart of Easter, the promise of resurrection to new life through Christ?

C. S. Lewis and the Humanity of Spirituality

One of the persistent temptations for those who write about Christianity spirituality is to be too triumphant—to act as if, once we profess faith in Christ, life is “all kitties and bubbles,” as one friend put it. Or to quote another, “I once was bad and, sad and now I’m good and glad.” This impulse even led to an early heresy that has amazingly persisted in various forms: Jesus didn’t really walk on this troubled, trodden, earth, but he somehow managed to float above it. (I mean literally, he walked, but his feet never made prints.) Consequently, if we want to follow Jesus, we need to move above this earthly existence whenever possible. That concept, however, strikes me as singular inhuman. 

Of course, there are great, amazing, ecstatic days of faith. But we know this unmitigated sugar-rush spirituality doesn’t last. Thankfully, C. S. Lewis agrees. And that’s what distinguishes his writing from the rest of the pack. In his imagined correspondence between a senior and junior devil on how to tempt a human soul, The Screwtape Letters, Lewis reminds us that life, by nature, has its highs and lows. Merely the fact that we are bodies, that we are physical means that we will experience waves these waves.

Their nearest approach to constancy, therefore, is undulation—the repeated return to a level from which they repeatedly fall back, a series of troughs and peaks.

And so a trough becomes not a point for despair, but for reaching to God and for God to develop our wills in the process. The prayers in dryness “are those that please Him best.” Why? Because we are freely choosing God. He closes the eighth Screwtape letter with a stunning allusion to the life of Jesus on the Cross, only too appropriate to mention as Good Friday looms in front of us: the senior tempter, Screwtape, writes to his junior apprentice,

Do not be deceived Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.

So Lewis will not have an unreal spirituality, nor will he have it entirely other-worldly. God in Everyday Life. God in the Quotidian. God has given us true, good pleasures on this earth, and when we find those, we thankfully forget ourselves. Screwtape writes to Wormwood,

On your own showing you first of all allowed the patient to read a book he really enjoyed, because he enjoyed it and not in order to make clever remarks to his new [worldly] friends. In the second place, you allowed him to walk down to the old mill and have tea there—a walk through country he really likes, and taken alone. In other words you allowed him two real positive Pleasures.”

And those real pleasures come from God who created them, the One that Screwtape complains is “a hedonist at heart.” Pleasures have to be twisted for them to be of use as temptations—that is, put in the wrong context, or for the wrong motives, or wrong ends. But pleasures with the right context, motives, and ends are pathways to God and they connect us to God. The gifts lead us back to the Giver.

And so when we find pleasure in doing what we are created to do, we lose ourselves and the stinking self-centeredness that stifles joy. There a deep paradox emerges:

When He talks of their losing their selves, He means only abandoning the clamour of self-will; once they have done that, He really gives them back all their personality, and boasts (I am afraid, sincerely) that when they are wholly His they will be more themselves than ever.

So this is the theme in Lewis I’ve named the Humanity of Spirituality. Human comes from a root that means “earth.” And we are certainly tied to this creation. Our feet are firmly planted in this earth. Even, it’s true, when God’s finger touches our human life we never entirely leave it. I commend then this rule: Let’s be cautious about anyone who writes otherwise—who believes we can lift our feet off the ground, leaving no prints when we follow Jesus—and calls it Christian spirituality.

Fare Well, Rob Bell

Rob Bell, being hip and optimistic

Hearing the controversies about Rob Bell’s new book, Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived, and then actually reading the book, I’ve been struck by how much better Bell would fare in a mainline congregation. (I’ve also been struck by how popular the book is—I think Love Wins hit #4 Amazon #4 last week and hovers at #7 as I type.) Why would Rob Bell fare better as a mainliner? It’s not because we mainline types are “libbed out” and don’t care about the Bible any more, it's certainly not because of the infallibility of the mainline, but because the questions he asks can find honest engagement without rancor here. And really, mainliners here just engage (at their best) with the whole of the Christian church in time (reading not only Calvin and Luther, but also Gregory of Nyssa and Thomas Aquinas) and in breadth (taking in the insights of Roman Catholics and Orthodox, for example). It’s simply a way of engaging what C. S. Lewis penned as “mere Christianity." 

Bell clearly writes from a contemporary American evangelical context. He talks about praying the “sinner’s prayer,” “accepting Christ” and therefore of “getting saved.” Good concepts, but very particular, coded language—as Bell points out, “personal relationship” with God is not found in the Bible. I have so much good to say about evangelicalism—and have been duly nurtured myself—but there’s simply a mean spirit that has emerged in response to Bell from some evangelical commentators (but certainly not all) that I’ve found neither beneficial for me or for Bell. So back to party-line evangelicals… Bell also asserts that the church is too often seen as “antiscience”? Yes… in certain circles. But I’ll speak personally: I’ve been in the mainline (in my case, Presbyterian) church and am working on engaging science with faith, first through my book Creation and Last Things, and more recently through a grant program particularly designed to engage scientific insight in local congregations, Scientists in Congregations. Have I met with disagreement? Yes. Outright dismissal? Never. And those are just my experiences and only two of them at that. It just seems a little better than what Bell’s experiencing. (But admittedly, who knows what would happen if my books hit the top ten? I’m willing to find out….)

Admittedly, Bell is a little too optimistic. As many other commentators have noted, he interprets Scripture in a particular direction. It’s a kinder, gentler Bible. For example on God’s condemnation, he seems especially concerned that Ghandi—Ghandi was so good; should go to hell? He was particularly annoyed by a response on a slip of paper to quote from Ghandi displayed at his church’s art show: “Reality check: He’s in hell.” Bell seems to infer that Ghandi could never be in hell. This makes certain sections of the Christian church go ballistic, but as I read Bell, and watch the promo video for Love Wins (which these days is more important than actually reading the book), his point is a little more subtle: Do we know for sure Ghandi’s in hell? No, we can’t say with absolute certainty. When Ghandi saw the full light of God's presence, how did he respond? As C. S. Lewis wrote so poignantly (which, incidentally, is one suggestion to Bell: include the chapter on hell in The Problem of Pain): the gates of hell are locked on the inside.

More can be written, of course, but I’ll close this post here: To understand the book we should take in the citation that alludes to the title: “God says yes, we can have what we want, because love wins.” Even in ultimate judgment, God gives us the dignity of rejecting the gospel. One of the most notorious responses to Bell has been John Piper’s tweet “Farewell Bell.” How interesting that judgment has been declared on a book that itself rethinks God’s judgment and emphasizes that God only says “Farewell” when we have shut the door on him. I say, keep it up Bell, but listen to the wider community of Christ. There you can fare well.

P.S. If you want a fresh perspective on Love Wins, read Donald Miller's review.

Heaven and Hell

I've been reading--and enjoying--Rob Bell's book, Love Wins. Here's my review of Bell. Before I blog about the latter, I thought I'd lay out my own ideas, which appeared in the final chapter of Creation and Last Things: At the Intersection of Science and Theology. Find out more here. (One other thing: Since this blog post has proven to be, by far, my most popular, I started a series of prequels here.)

At times, I've remarked that the gruesome portrayal of the damned in Michelangelo's "Last Judgment" reveals a common human desire for our enemies’ demise. Maybe that is not the whole story. Perhaps we can find another thread. When I first typed “hell” into my laptop a moment ago, “heal” came out. Significant? Perhaps. I—like many of us—hope that God will heal Hitler, and Stalin, and the obnoxiously loud next-door neighbor, and the rabid atheist professor so that they all would turn to the Light. In a word, I hope for a life with no hell.

            

The Bible is much more interested in the new heavens and earth than in hell. So we ought to start there. It is the direction creation has pointed from the beginning. In fact, with the consummation of creation in mind, Genesis 1-2 receives new light. The Lord calls the world  “good,” not only in its initial form, but because God will remain faithful to creation and lead it continually toward perfection. Put in a different way, we fully understand the goodness of the first act of creation in light of the final act of new creation.

            

In the prophets, Isaiah stands out describing of the promise of the future and insights into creation. As Israel experienced increasing national trauma after its defeat and subsequent occupation by the hated and indomitable Babylonians in the sixth century BC, several prophets looked with hope to a coming day—the day of the promised victory by God’s Messiah. Several passages in the second part of Isaiah (chapters 40-66) link eschatological hope with the creation at the beginning. For example, Isaiah promises a new day of hope for the exiled people in which the natural order will return, subduing chaos as in Genesis 1, and restoring creation in some form to Eden:

For the Lord will comfort Zion;

he will comfort all her waste places,

and will make her wilderness like Eden,

      her desert like the garden of the Lord;

joy and gladness will be found in her,

      thanksgiving and the voice of song. (Isaiah 51:3)

The final chapters of the Bible, Revelation 21 and 22, provide a vision of another city, the City of God. In it ceaseless praise of God continues. Beautiful music--I'd like to think it's jazz--fills the heavenly city. And there is continual activity. We are not simply given rest in the new creation, but work without the curse of futility. (“By the sweat of your brow you shall eat bread until you return to the ground,” Genesis 3:19). The final words offer two great promises: “Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they will have the right to the tree of life and may enter the city by the gates” (22:14). In this vision of cleansing and glory, we can take hold of the tree that Adam and Eve were forced to avoid after their disobedience (Genesis 3:24).  As a final act of triumph, Jesus will return to right our turbulent world, where God’s people face persecution:

The one who testifies to these things says, “Surely I am coming soon.”

      Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!

The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all the saints. Amen. (Revelation 22:20-21)

In 1994 the author (and now speaker) Betty Eadie sold boatloads of her book, Embraced by the Light, which describes her near-death experiences. Shortly after the book was published, I studied Eadie’s revelations with a church adult education class. We were struck by the specific and comforting details she described about heaven. In many ways, we simply wanted  to believe them. On the other hand, we know the difficulty of assessing the truth of these descriptions by Eadie or other similar authors. Broadly, they confirm some type of afterlife. Nevertheless, the interest in Eadie’s book reveals that Americans crave to know precisely what happens “on the other side.” Will I see my mother again? Will I understand why my son died of cancer at age nine? Will my dog be in heaven? The Bible offers both a more profound answer, but does not satisfy every speculation. The Bible concerns itself foremost with God’s justice to right a world distorted by sin and secondly with God’s salvation of a people. We are left without exhaustive detail of what happens to each of us individually. God will create a fully just world where the people of God will—for the first time—live fully human lives, thereby glorifying their Creator.

            

And so we arrive at the unpleasant doctrine of hell. I would be glad to forget it all about it. It is not only unpopular (“There you Christians go again with your judging!”), but personally repelling (Remember I want everyone to be healed). But unfortunately we hear it in Scripture and particularly on the lips of Jesus. It also makes sense of free will (what if some continue to resist God?) and God’s sovereignty (can a good God allow the unrepentant to exist forever?). Some biblical scholars—notably the prominent English evangelical, John Stott—have taken a fresh look and determined that hell cannot be everlasting, conscious punishment. His work demonstrates the need to re-look at this terrible doctrine. My hope is that we will be able to put aside any notions we have read in Dante’s poetry or seen on The Omen and listen patiently to the Scripture.

            

First of all, what does hell mean? Beginning with the key words is often a good approach. Sheol and Hades are transliterations of Hebrew and Greek words respectively that simply mean the abode of the dead, not necessarily a place of punishment. In the New Testament, hell translates a Greek term, geenna, which originated as a garbage dump in the valley of Hinnon, in which children ritually were later killed and dedicated to the god, Molech and dumped as refuse. This pit burned day and night. At the time of Christ, it had became a symbol for a place of end times punishment.

            

C. S. Lewis, in his brilliant book The Problem of Pain, exercises his skills as a literary critic, by analyzing the key texts on hell in the Gospels. He demonstrates that there are three primary images: punishment (the “eternal punishment” of Matthew 25:46), destruction (Matthew 10:28’s “fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell”), and finally privation and banishment (“the outer darkness” where the slave who hid his talents in Matthew 25:30 is sent). Lewis comments, “it is not necessary to concentrate on the images of torture to the exclusion of those suggesting destruction and privation.” He continues by looking again at the conclusion of the parable of the sheep and goats (especially Matthew 25:34, 41). 

[T]he damned go to a place never made for men at all. To enter heaven is to become more human than you ever succeeded in being in earth; to enter hell, is to be banished from humanity. What is cast (or casts itself) into hell is not a man: it is “remains.” 

If there is existence in hell, it is a shadowy one. Lewis adds one final reflection on the biblical texts: Jesus emphasizes finality, not duration in these texts. “Consignment to the destroying fire is usually treated as the end of the story—not as the beginning of a new story.”

            

I must add one note to Lewis. There is also a tension in Scripture between final exclusion and an ultimate healing. 1 Timothy 2:4 affirms that God “desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” A note of universalism also finds its way in the stirring conclusion to 1 Corinthians 15, “for all of us die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ.” And a cryptic verse in 1 Peter describes Christ preaching to perished souls. Verse 19 says that after his death, he “went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison, who in former times did not obey.”

            

So in the end, will all be saved? Will “hell” finally end up in “heal”? John Calvin notoriously saw two rooms into which we were born and elected by the sovereign God—either heaven or hell. The doors are looked, and the decision irrevocable. But what if look specifically to the God we know in Jesus Christ? What if we begin with Christ as the elect Representative for all humanity? By his work, we begin in the embrace of God’s love and therefore in the party room of election. The room is, however, not locked. It is of course our choice to move out into the outer darkness. Will God’s ultimate plan for salvation triumph even over our bad decisions? Perhaps this question cannot be solved theoretically, but through prayer—that we are to pray for a redemption far beyond what we could imagine. Perhaps we are to pray for an embrace that includes our cynical co-worker, the rapist who terrorized our streets, and even the most hated and cruel, like the Emperor Nero and Adolf Hitler.

Incredible Foresight

What makes a great author? Among attributes like winsome style and insightful content remains the uncanny ability to see cultural trends, the seeds of which are being sown now, but that won’t bloom for decades.

Read this and tell me if this isn’t today’s “postmodern,” pluralistic world?

Your man has been accustomed, ever since he was a boy, to having a dozen incompatible philosophies dancing about together inside his head.

Written seventy years ago in a religious newspaper called The Guardian, C. S. Lewis sought to describe the environment in which a devil-tempter tries to draw a human being, “the Patient” away from God. This is the environment Lewis brilliantly, poignantly described in first entry in a set of newspaper articles later published as The Screwtape Letters.

What do you think? Does that describe the world you live in?

Friendship, Just Friendship

I've been thinking about friendship this week. 


The precipitating cause is this: Philip Yancey (the quite well-known Christian author) is preaching at Bidwell Presbyterian this Sunday morning. But he's not bringing the word at our evening worship service, the 545. So that leaves a gap. And I need to fill that gap and preach in the evening. So I scoured the book of Philippians to find a text we hadn't used yet in our series and came across the beautiful section in chapter 2 where Paul describes his relationship with Timothy and Epaphroditus.

It's raining outside in Chico as I type.
Probably why I chose this image

The second inspiration is this: Eugene Peterson, as he led the consultation last weekend, reminded us that Jesus finished his teaching with his disciples by calling them friends in the gospel of John (chapter 15). "I'm no longer calling you servants because servants don't understand what their master is thinking and planning. No, I've named you friends because I've let you in on everything I've heard from the Father." As Eugene puts it, that's a relational way of describing God--the God we know who exists as a relationship among the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I find that an excellent reminder about God and about a truly good life.


And it's a reminder that brings me back to Philippians 2:19-30 and these two friends of Paul, who supported him as he journeyed around the ancient Roman Empire, shared the message of Jesus, and eventually got imprisoned. When you do that kind of thing, you need some friends!


Let me focus on Timothy, particularly three characteristics that make him a good friend: Paul calls him isopsychos (literally, “same soul,” “equal”), which is an echo of Psalm 55.13, “But it is you, my equal, my companion, my familiar friend….” Timothy is also one who is "anxious" for the well-being of his fellow Christians in Philippi... which they need during a particularly poignant time. (It's the same Greek word as in Philippians 4:6, so “being anxious” as a general case is not a problem--we just have to decide what we're going to be "anxious" or "concerned" about.) His conclusion about Timothy? And I love this: “But you yourselves know that Timothy’s the real thing.” Timothy is authentic--the inside and the outside match. He's the kind of friends we all love to have.


So I go back to last weekend, and the consultation with Eugene Peterson and Albert Borgmann on technology. Here's the problem technology presents: it can take us away from real human relationships. We'd rather text than talk, or check Facebook than get together, let alone define "friends" as "Facebook does. When technology enhances what we do face-to-face, that's a different story, but we are created to have friends, and I'm grieved to see a society that has become increasingly lonely and separated, sometimes because it's technologically proficient.


Because the nature of God is relational, because God has called us friends, and because we are designed to have good friends. That's one thing the God's community, the church, at its best, can offer--real relationships.


I think I'll just post this and maybe revise it later... leaving it for now as essentially some random musings...

Jesus and Eugene Peterson Aren’t that Impressive. But Tech Is. That’s the Problem.

One of the things about Jesus is that he’s not very impressive.

Now please don’t get me wrong—I (almost) never fail to marvel at Jesus’s stunning insights into our nature as human beings. Because of course Christ the Word became flesh, became human.

Somehow that brings me to the consultation on technology and faith I just took part in at beautiful Laity Lodge in the Hill Country of Texas. In truth, the speakers were a little bit disappointing. Or maybe better simply human. And the element of humanity is always a bit disappointing in light of the dazzle of technology. Like the new iPod--it's better than the first generation… the one I own. It’s faster, thinner, and doesn’t require any of that irritating boot-up time (like 2 seconds). That’s cool and exciting.

So, yes, it was in some ways disappointing. Borgmann was really nice and quite thoughtful. But I didn’t feel my heart pump faster when he lectured. Peterson’s voice is gravelly and a little underwhelming. I reported on Facebook that I received the Lord’s Supper from him. But I’ve had better celebrants. I’ve definitely heard more impressive speakers. In fact, one of his major themes is the unimpressive in the quotidian.

I learned that we need to be careful of technology because it so often promises immediacy and thrill and obscures the ordinary and the human. Borgmann rightly calls us back to “focal practices” based on the Latin word focus or “hearth” where we gather together for warm, for meals, and for human companionship. Peterson brought us back to Jesus’s language of “friends” in his last night on earth—an entirely relational language, where ordinary human beings relate to one another. He reminded us that Jesus took significant time in the last week of his life—as recorded in Luke’s Gospel—to spend hours and days with the Samaritans, those “bastards” of faith (to use Peterson’s language), those half-siblings of the Jews. He closed with the parable where the farmer doesn’t give up on the plant that doesn’t grow, but decides to add more manure. Manure—something that doesn’t impress. Or even attracts. But in this parable, manure offers the possibility of growth and new life. I heard a testimony from another participant who, in a time of deep personal crisis was riding a horse and saw a pile of manure with a tomato plant growing in it. (I’m not kidding.) At that moment, God spoke: “I can do much more through a pile of manure than I can do through you all your best efforts.” I hope I can capture how powerful a testimony that was.

And what was most significant at the conference? The human interactions with some people who subtly impressed me. People who listened. People who cared about God’s mission in this world. Some liked technology (the technophiles); others were more restrained, or even fearful (techophobes). But above all, they cared about people.

Do you know what was best? The musicians. It all began with singing the hymns—those great collections of faith that have sustained Christians in worship for decades. And then I heard from Andy (and later, his wife Jill) Gullahorn. The latter opened with a song that seemed to open a place in my heart, “Someone to You.” He sang, “I can be nobody as long as I’m someone to You.” Tears came to my eyes. There it was—in the end, we can be human (and, so often, unimpressive) to one another because we belong to God. That’s when we become someone. I can only paraphrase at the moment, but one of my great mentors of faith, Karl Barth, started the Barmen Declaration with something like this: Jesus Christ, as he is attested in the Scripture, is the one Word of God we have to hear and obey.

I wonder if all this is actually quite significant. Was Jesus’s voice unimpressive as Eugene Peterson’s? Might the center of life be as mundane as having the focal practice as sharing a meal together? Might technology bring us nice toys, which at their best enhance our work and life as we respond to God, but nonetheless represent some things—because they dazzles and impress—that we might tempted to worship as idols?

I close with this: I’m in the process of completing my forties, and I’m getting less and less willing to waste time in things that aren’t important and life-giving. May I be ready to find the truly significant. May I find something growing right in the midst of what is entirely unimpressive.