Faith + Reason, Logos and Logic

Last updated on: December 1, 2019 at 8:30 pm By Gene Veith

Faith and reason need each other. Faith without reason can degenerate into superstition and fanaticism. Reason without faith can degenerate into tyranny and meaninglessness.

So says Samuel Gregg in his book Reason, Faith, and the Struggle for Western Civilization. He argues that Christianity solved this problem in a unique way, one that would prove to be foundational to Western civilization, making possible its greatest achievements. Christianity takes the Logos of the philosophers–which refers to the rational order built into existence and is the root of the word “logic”–and identifies it with God Himself, incarnate in Jesus Christ.

In the beginning was the Word [Logos], and the Word [Logos] was with God, and the Word [Logos] was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. . . .

And the Word [Logos] became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:1-5, 14)

Thus, says Gregg, faith and reason–revelation and logic, the spiritual and the material, the divine and the human–are reconciled and put into relationship with each other. Which, in turn, made possible the West’s legacy of freedom, science, and enlightenment.

Rachel Lu explains further in her review of Gregg’s book in Law & Liberty entitled Reuniting Faith and Reason:

To help his readers grasp this point, Gregg goes back to the beginning, explaining how remarkable it is that the Judeo-Christian tradition was able to identify the God of Israel with the logos of the philosophers. Far from being evident, this identification is in many ways deeply counter-intuitive. Across the ages, the religiously devout have always recognized that humans, in their pursuit of natural excellence, may find themselves competing with the divine, pridefully grasping at power that is not rightfully theirs, in an effort to further their own ends. While the prophets fret about this problem, the philosophers tend to have the opposite concern. In their anxiousness to explore human potential, they are wary of the possibility that a jealous God or gods may punish human excellence, as part of a bid for absolute sovereignty. Ancient, mythical deities (like Zeus) were sometimes inclined to punish over-ambitious underlings whose excellence threatened their own divine rule. The obvious way to avoid this danger is by jettisoning God entirely, and declaring man an end unto himself. If God is dead, men will be free to develop their rational potential to the highest possible degree.

Insisting that Israel’s God simply is the logos, Christians argued that this conflict is illusory. The God who made us is Truth itself, and our capacity to reason is what most clearly marks us as bearers of His divine image. Faith can help us to unfold our natural abilities. Meanwhile, developing the gift of reason is a fitting way to honor the Creator who bestowed it.

On paper, this may look like a mere philosopher’s trick. Gregg shows that it is not. This idea has tremendous consequences; socially and politically it is transformative. Gregg illustrates this by discussing the consequences both of faithless reason, and of ungrounded faith. Without reason, he explains, faith descends into fundamentalism. The slavish missionaries of an opaque deity may end up committing atrocities “in God’s name,” as part of a desperate effort to force the created world into their preferred narrative arc. This is potentially terrifying, but faithless reason can be just as destructive. Without its natural partner, reason lacks the transcendent horizon that allows human beings to unfold their real potential. It turns back on itself, becoming tyrannical in its own way as it fruitlessly seeks fulfillment on a natural plane.

Misreading Our Opponents

It’s critically important to understand both of these hazards. It can be hard for us to remember that, since we live in an age when the religiously devout are regularly skirmishing with the militantly secular. We want to choose sides, and countless books, articles, and popular media creations have indulged this impulse, explaining how the evils of modern life can be traced back either to fundamentalism or to a warped secularism that has made itself into a godless faith.

Deftly walking this fault line, Gregg keeps faith with his subject by offering robust analysis of both categories of error.

[Keep reading. . .]

This is an intriguing analysis. But does it overstate the theological role of reason in Christianity at the expense of faith?

Gregg begins with a discussion of Pope Benedict XVI’s lecture at Regensburg, Germany, “Faith, Reason, and the University,” in which he stirred up controversy by contrasting Christianity’s integration of reason with Islam’s repudiation of reason, as manifested in jihadist terrorism. The scholastic theology of Roman Catholicism, grounded as it is in Aristotelian philosophy, does indeed integrate faith and reason, but how about the Reformation critics of that theology who insisted instead on “faith alone”?

I think Luther does affirm both faith and reason, in Gregg’s sense, but he also explains how they should be related to each other. Our citizenship in God’s eternal kingdom comes by faith in Christ alone. But in our citizenship in God’s temporal kingdom we are to employ reason. Thus, Luther calls reason “the devil’s whore” when human beings make it their spiritual authority at the expense of God’s Word (that is, God’s Logos, as opposed to man’s logic). And yet, in his explanation of Creation in the Small Catechism, Luther describes reason as a gift of God, who “has given me. . . my reason and all my senses.”

Problems come, according to Luther, when God’s Two Kingdoms are confused and usurp each other. Faith and reason each has its place. Faith has to do with the spiritual realm, and reason has to do with the earthly realm. Luther contended, in effect, that medieval Catholicism confused those realms: It made reason the authority in the spiritual realm (enshrining Aristotle’s abstract deity over against the God of Scripture) and made faith the authority in the earthly realm (resulting in the superstitions of the relic trade and the fanaticism of the crusades). In particular, Luther opposed theocracies, both the Pope’s claim to exercise political authority over temporal rulers and, on the Protestant side, the “enthusiasts'” various attempts to set up the Kingdom of God on earth as in the Peasants’ Rebellion.

We cannot reason our way to faith, which is a gift of the Holy Spirit, created in us by Word [the Logos] and the Sacraments. The same section of the Small Catechism, the explanation of the Apostle’s Creed, which says that reason is one of God’s gifts of creation, says in the article on Sanctification and the work of the Holy Spirit: “I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to Him; but the Holy Spirit has called me by the Gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith.” Whereupon God sends us back into the world, where we live out our faith in our multiple vocations in the family, the workplace, the church, and the society. In those vocations, we love and service to our neighbors, among other ways, by exercising our reason.

For Luther, faith and reason are not integrated, as such. That is a formula for confusing them, leading to some of the problems Gregg documents. Rather, faith and reason complement each other, with each in its place, carrying out its God-given function.

Image via Wikimedia Commons

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Politics of the Promethean Self

Last updated on: November 23, 2019 at 2:27 pm By Gene Veith

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We’ve blogged about Josh Hawley, who is not only a U.S. Senator (at 39, the youngest member of that body) from Missouri but a trenchant Christian cultural critic. Known for his attempts to bring the big tech companies under anti-trust law and his efforts to make the Republican party more populist, Hawley gave a speech that is attracting attention. In it, he develops the concept of the “Promethean Self” and its cultural, political, and governmental manifestations.

Conservative writer Michael Brendan Dougherty in discussing the speech says that Hawley “might be the most interesting thinker the U.S. Senate has seen since Daniel Patrick Moynihan.”

For basically my entire adult life, the default mode of Republican speechifying has been a kind of reheated “optimism” with lots of waxing poetic about the great reserves of American can-do waiting to be tapped. These attempts to recapture “Morning in America” have been delivered through clenched, Prozac-like smiles by men who promptly enter black SUVs to be hurried off back to their gated communities. I’ve always accepted that this is the way of electoral politics, which doesn’t have much to do with a conservative intellectual disposition that tends to be more dour, or at least skeptical.

But Hawley’s speech went from. . . baleful statistics [about inequality, the loss of community, the struggles of the working class, and the soaring suicide rate] to a prophetic critique of a cult of the individual and self that is “so thoroughly ingrained in American culture.”

I’m going to quote the speech at length. Notice too the theme of vocation, which I’ll draw your attention to by bolding. From Senator Josh Hawley’s Speech at the 6th Annual American Principles Project Gala (Nov. 20, 2019):

For years we have been told that to be truly free is to be without the constricting ties of family and place, without the demands of faith or tradition.

We’ve been told that liberty means release, separation. And this view has had its effect. . . .

This is the individual as creator, as self-creator, maker of meaning and author of reality—rather like Prometheus who in the ancient myth created all mankind. So call this view of the human person the Promethean self.

As it took hold in twentieth-century America, the Promethean ideal taught that the individual self exists apart from all social ties and relations. Our family, our religious society, our neighborhood and town—these communities don’t constitute one’s identity, because who one truly is exists separate from all of them.

Instead, the Promethean self creates her own reality, her own truth. She forges her own meaning. And this effort at self-creation is a solitary business. The demands of community too often get in the way.

For the Promethean self, the only time community is truly worthwhile is when it is freely chosen, and then only on the individual’s own terms. For the claims of community must never inhibit the individual’s powers of self-expression. Or so we are told.

This Promethean idea has by now become so thoroughly ingrained in American culture, so ubiquitous in our public life, it’s impossible to escape it.

It is preached in our universities, celebrated in our music, rehearsed in our literature and film. It’s even the stuff of judicial decisions.

Remember this? “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” That’s Justice Anthony Kennedy in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 1992. I doubt you needed the citation.

And you can see how this idea of the Promethean self, the self-creating, self-sustaining person, suggested a particular kind of politics—a politics centered on the solitary individual.

In this kind of politics, individual choice, and even more, individual achievement are what count. And that makes sense: if our personhood is something we create and not discover, if it is something we assemble entirely for ourselves, then personhood is an achievement; it is something we do.

And place and home don’t matter much. And civic participation is beside the point. And church, synagogue, family—these are fine, but only as groups of individuals, and only if they don’t have too much say in society and don’t control too much of your life.

The Promethean vision has an economic side as well. It gives us an economic policy focused on individual advancement, where advancement means making more money and consuming more stuff. So in popular culture billionaires become heroes, and the everyday working man becomes just some guy who never realized his potential.

Both major parties have embraced some version of this Promethean politics. And both have made it central to their agenda, for decades.

But if you want a life built around home and family; if want to live in the place where you grew up, with the people you love and know; if your ambition is not to start a tech company but to serve on the PTA, well, this politics doesn’t have much to offer you.

And that’s the problem with the Promethean self. It’s an idea that rewards the privileged and entrenches the powerful. And here’s why.

If freedom is about creating your own reality, then those with the greatest access to power will be the most free. And in today’s society, that means those with the most money, the most credentials, with the most influence.

And let’s be honest, a society that prizes the self-creating and the powerful will prize fame and fortune and status, and look down on, or just ignore, those who don’t have them.

And if this sounds like 21st century America, it should. Because our society increasingly rewards credentials and degrees, it lionizes wealth and the size of your social media audience, and it calls these things “merit.”

As if getting them makes you more valuable than anyone else. As if success is a matter of what we can amass.

And where does this leave those without power or money? On their own.

If you’re a worker with a high school degree in the urban core who can’t get a good job, you’re told it’s your fault and you should work harder, get more education, stop being lazy.

If you’re a farmer or working a trade in the middle of the country and can’t support your family on what you bring home, you’re told you should move, that smart people live in cities, and you should have made better life choices.

It’s no wonder so many Americans feel so unappreciated and unheard.

It’s no wonder so many young people feel desperate to get another credential, another good grade, another like on Instagram—so that they can matter.

It’s no wonder so many of our fellow citizens feel so desperately alone.

Because here’s the reality. The Promethean self, splendid in his isolation, needing nothing from others but the space to create, doesn’t exist. The Promethean ambition leaves us lost and unmoored. And the market worship and cultural deconstruction the Promethean vision has inspired have failed this country.

The collapse of community in America has been underway for decades now, and as it accelerates, it threatens our common liberty.

Our families and farm cooperatives, our churches and labor unions—they bring us together, they relate us to each other, they tell us what we have in common. And they tell us a story about ourselves, as Americans.

They tell us that what unites us is not race or ethnicity or religious confession. What unites us is the deep conviction that every life matters, that you matter, that every person is uniquely called and uniquely gifted.

They tell us that you don’t have to be rich or famous to be important, that ordinary life—the life of work and marriage and family and worship—that life is valuable, it’s wonderful, it’s what we were meant for, it’s what changes the world.

Our communities of home and worship and labor tell us all this because they draw us into living these convictions together. And this country is built on those convictions. Which means the future of this country depends on rebuilding the communities that make us who we are.

Because in the end, it is community that makes authentic individual life possible.

It’s community that gives individuals strength. It’s community that helps us find moral purpose. It’s community that joins us together to exercise control over our lives.

And so as it turns out, our cherished belief in the liberty of every individual, and the dignity of every person, is rooted in the life we share together.

For in the words of an old theologian, “We do not exist in isolation, [but in] a world of love and hate, blessing and curse, service and destruction . . . where nobody, fundamentally speaking, belongs to himself alone.”

That’s something the Promethean vision has never understood. But then, the Promethean vision never really understood the individual—or love, or liberty. And it is time now to leave Prometheus where he belongs, in the myth of the past. . . .

We must forge in this century a new politics of family and neighborhood—a new politics of love and belonging—a new politics of home.

Photo: Josh Hawley by Natureofthought [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)] via Wikimedia Commons

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Marriage as Enforceable Contract

Last updated on: November 22, 2019 at 5:16 am By Gene Veith

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Many conservatives and Christians are responding to the same-sex marriage laws by saying that the government should just get out of the marriage business. Since marriage is essentially a religious commitment, we should just leave marriage to the church. Or, for the non-religious, just let marriage be a personal commitment between individuals however they want to do it. Get rid of marriage licenses, divorce laws, custody courts, and family law. Things like love, sex, and having kids should be matters of individual liberty and are none of the government’s business!

Well, it was the Protestant Reformation that wrest control of marriage away from the church’s canon law and turned over its regulation to the secular state. Yes, marriage has a spiritual dimension, a vocation from God that images the relationship between Christ and the Church. But it is also a secular contract, which establishes the fundamental unit of society: namely, the family. As such, marriage is arguably one of the relatively small number of matters that actually is the government’s business.

To speak of a “marriage contract” did not necessarily require a “piece of paper.” Couples who lived together over a period of time without benefit of a ceremony or a marriage license were considered to have a “common law” marriage, with all of the financial and parental obligations as any other marriage, dissolvable only by divorce.

Jonathan Lange, a pastor in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, has published a provocative article in The Federalist arguing that many of our problems today in marriages, families, and the society as a whole have arisen because the government has essentially stopped enforcing the marriage contract. From 10 Years Later, The Manhattan Declaration’s Defense Of Marriage Is Even More Needed:

When a woman enters motherhood, (Latin: “matrimony,” French “marriage”), her energies are refocused in fundamental ways. The physical, psychological, and emotional demands of pregnancy and child rearing affect every area of her life. Marriage serves as a legal contract to guarantee her the support of the child’s father both during these affected years and beyond.

When a man enters fatherhood, his life changes as well. His chromosomal connection to the child creates a legal and social obligation that is enforceable by law, whether he is married to the mother or not. Marriage seals his obligations to the mother while obliging the mother to cooperate with him in raising the child. . . .

When a couple files for a marriage certificate, they have every expectation that those issuing the certificate will enforce the contract. But so-called “no-fault divorce” laws changed that. As governor of California, Ronald Reagan signed the first one in 1970. Years later, he counted it among his biggest regrets.

Before long, every state was reneging on its promise to enforce marriage contracts. Knee-jerk calls to “get the government out of people’s lives” resonated with libertarians and libertines alike. Free love culture reasoned: If they want to get a divorce, they should be free to get a divorce.

The problem is that married couples never want a divorce—at least not initially. Rather, typically one party to the marriage wants a divorce while the other does not. “No-fault divorce” laws do not make the government neutral. They put it on the side of whoever values the marriage least.

The injustice is felt by the woman or man who accepted the up-front economic disadvantages of child-rearing relying on a promise of future fidelity. The person is defrauded when the promise is broken. A government that fails to hold people to their promises becomes party to that fraud.

Even worse, the children who ought to be protected from the loss of life, emotional support, education, and inheritance are completely disregarded. Divorce courts should admonish parents to work it out for the sake of their children. Instead, they usually rubber-stamp the breakup. All that remains is for the welfare state clumsily to micromanage the broken home and throw money at the child, as though that could substitute for losing a parent.

[Keep reading. . .]

Rev. Lange is not talking about outlawing divorce. Secular marriage laws have always had provisions for dissolving the contract. But that used to require one of the parties to have broken the contract–by adultery, abuse, etc.–and the “guilty party” had fewer rights, such as child custody, after the dissolution. But “no fault” divorce, in setting aside the necessity to assign blame, made dissolving marriages easier, less stigmatizing, and thus more common. In effect, Rev. Lange is arguing, the state stopped holding couples accountable to the legal obligations they entered into when they got married. Since the state is not enforcing marriage contracts any more, what is supposed to be the strong pillar of society–the family–has become shifting sand, making the rest of the social order unstable and dysfunctional.

Furthermore, Rev. Lange says, the government’s refusal to protect children by working to keep their parents together is part of a larger anti-child agenda:

Those trying to intimidate Christians into silence have . . .passed laws that strip infants of legal defense both before and after birth. They continue to press a radical agenda that allows embryonic children to be bought and sold on the open market, and do precious little to halt the trafficking of older children. All the while, there is a never-ending parade of government-sanctioned indoctrination aimed at destroying the marriages of generations to come.

Rev. Lange concludes by making the case for the Manhattan Declaration, a manifesto on marriage issued 10 years ago, which made the connection between protecting marriage and the pro-life cause and which calls on Christians to defend the family at every level.

What do you think of this analysis?

How would this apply to same-sex marriage? It seems to me that although traditional marriage law is oriented to the protection of children, as Rev. Lange details in his article, the laws encouraging the permanence of marriage could be applied to same-sex couples as well. Churches could still insist on their Biblical, covenantal view of marriage. (Just as the government has been remiss in enforcing the marriage contract, churches have been remiss in enforcing the marriage covenant.)

What do you think are the prospects of restoring legal protections for marriage? How might that be done?

If our government refuses meaningful involvement in enforcing marriage contracts, is it, in effect, “getting out of the marriage business” of its own volition, giving marriage back to the church and individuals by default? Are there ways that churches and individuals could make marriage into a permanent, foundational institution for the society as a whole? Or must we reconcile ourselves to social chaos with churches as islands of stability?

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

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The Belief that Being Alive Is Always Bad

Last updated on: November 20, 2019 at 8:28 am By Gene Veith

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Way back in 2007 we blogged about Anti-Natalism. It started as an opposition to having children for environmentalist reasons. But now some anti-natalists are going further than that, positing that being alive is itself a bad thing. It really is the opposite of “pro-life.” It’s very intentionally “anti-life.”

An extreme case hit the news recently when a 27-year-old man from India filed a lawsuit against his parents for conceiving him and bringing him into the world without his consent. But there is much more to the movement than this.

From Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow in the Guardian (UK), I Wish I’d Never Been Born: The Rise of the Anti-Natalists:

In February, a 27-year-old Indian man named Raphael Samuel announced plans for an unusual lawsuit. He was going to sue his parents for begetting him. “It was not our decision to be born,” he told the BBC. “Human existence is totally pointless.”

Samuel recently told me over Skype from Mumbai that his is a good life, and he is actually close to his parents. His complaint is more fundamental: he believes it is wrong to bring new people into the world without their consent. He wanted to sue his parents for a symbolic amount of money, such as a single rupee, “to instill that fear among parents in general. Because now parents don’t think before having a child,” he told me.

Samuel subscribes to a philosophy called anti-natalism. The basic tenet of anti-natalism is simple but, for most of us, profoundly counterintuitive: that life, even under the best of circumstances, is not a gift or a miracle, but rather a harm and an imposition. According to this logic, the question of whether to have a child is not just a personal choice but an ethical one – and the correct answer is always no.

The article goes on to describe the anti-natalist movement as a whole in its various strains, including an outgrowth of environmentalism called the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement (VHEMT), whose goal is “Phasing out the human race by voluntarily ceasing to breed,” and a YouTube channel, “The Friendly Antinatalist.”

But the key figure in the movement and its intellectual leader is David Benatar, a philosophy professor at the University of Cape Town, South Africa and the author of Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence. From the Guardian article:

The objective of anti-natalism, as Benatar sees it, is to reduce human suffering. Since life inevitably involves some amount of suffering, bringing another person into the world introduces the guarantee of some harm. He argued that “the quality of even the best lives is very bad – and considerably worse than most people recognize it to be. Although it is obviously too late to prevent our own existence, it is not too late to prevent the existence of future possible people.”

This book, first published in 2006, is currently the #6 bestseller on Amazon in the category of Medical Ethics, which tells us the direction that field is going. Among other things, Benatar develops an argument in favor of abortion that he calls, quite honestly, “pro-death.” And yet he manages to be against suicide because it causes suffering to the friends and family of the deceased. Since it can cause suffering to end the lives of people who already exist, the best way to end suffering is to not bring anyone into existence. That is, to stop having children.

Anti-natalism strikes me as the logical conclusion of a number of strains of contemporary thought–the pro-abortion mindset and radical environmentalism, of course, but also existentialism. As Mr. Samuel said in his lawsuit against his parents, “Human existence is totally pointless.” Such a sentiment has become a cliché of modernist and postmodernist thought and expression. Existentialists go on to say that because existence is meaningless, each individual must create his or her own meaning through acts of the will, in order to make existence bearable. Anti-natalism gives up on that admittedly strenuous project, acknowledging that those constructions are themselves meaningless, concluding that existence is not bearable. As such, anti-natalism is a symptom of the exhaustion of contemporary thought.

Notice, though, the remnant of existentialist ethics, at least in Mr. George. In the absence of objective moral truths, postmodernists make the human will the only determinant of moral value. Advocates of abortion describe themselves as “pro-choice,” meaning that whatever the woman chooses about having nor not having her baby is right “for her.” Only attempts to restrict her “choice”–that is, to make her have a child without her consent–are morally wrong. Similarly, what makes sexual encounters moral is not the action but the mutual “consent” of both partners. Conversely, if there is a lack of “consent,” the sexual activity is morally wrong.

But here, though the man and the woman might have consented to having sexual relations, the child they conceived did not consent to being brought into existence. Therefore, that conception is morally wrong. Now I suspect that a study of the child’s behavior in the womb–yes, the fetus does exhibit behavior–one could find evidence that he or she does want to be born, for example, the way the unborn child fights the abortion procedures. But “consent” cannot be the only criterion to consider. And, in this case, it is impossible for an entity to consent about coming into existence, because before that point, there would be no entity to consent. In such a case, it isn’t that the lack of consent would be some kind of coercion (since there would be no one to be coerced); rather, the concept of consent cannot apply.

The even bigger problem with anti-natalism is the notion that any suffering takes away all of the value of life. How can non-existence be better than suffering? Someone who does not exist can neither suffer, nor benefit from not suffering. And how can suffering negate the good in life?

I went to the dentist last week. It hurt. But the rest of that day–in which I spent time with my grandchildren, got some good work done, enjoyed my meals, read a fascinating book, reveled in the beautiful fall colors–was very enjoyable and satisfying. The time in which I was squirming in the dentist’s chair did not take away from any of that. Much less would that painful moment spoil my whole life.

Suffering is not always bad. The dentist who hurt me was not harming me; rather, he was helping me. Loving someone is a good thing, but it nearly always entails suffering, as when we worry about those we care about. Empathy–when we share in someone’s suffering–is good, though feeling it is painful. Suffering is certainly not the worst thing there is, as the anti-natalists make it to be. Pride, greed, selfishness, lying, stealing, hatred–in a word, sins–are immoral, but suffering is not immoral. The anti-natalist mindset, which shrinks from any kind of suffering, repudiates the virtues of courage, fortitude, and compassion. Murder would become a virtuous act, as long as it could be carried out painlessly.

Why is suffering the sole criterion for evaluating life? Instead of saying that a single experience of suffering makes life not worth living, why not say that a single experience of joy does make life worth living?

I recognize that some people whose lives are completely taken over by suffering may feel that it would be better if they were never born. Yes, the Bible sometimes talks that way: Solomon in his moment of pleasure-surfeited despair. Job in his torment. Judas in his damnation. But these texts do not deny the goodness of God’s creation or of His gift of life.

What puzzles me the most about the anti-natalists is their alliance with environmentalists. Surely to oppose reproduction is to oppose nature, as Darwinists would agree. Suffering, in the struggle for survival, is endemic in the natural order. And Benatar accepts the implication of his theory. “Taken to its logical conclusion,” says the Guardian article, “it implies that not only humans but all sentient beings should be spared from life. As Benatar writes toward the end of the book, ‘it would be better if humans (and other species) became extinct.”

If the goal is to turn the earth into a barren planet like Mars, why wouldn’t anti-natalists hope for and work towards an environmental catastrophe that would wipe out not only human beings but all life forms?

Why are so many anti-natalists vegans, as the article reports they are? By their logic, killing animals should be considered a good thing, again, as long as they are slaughtered in a way that minimizes suffering.

Of course, we might believe that the anti-natalists are not serious, that philosophers like Benatar are engaged in a theoretical exercise. But I think anti-natalism may be the defining philosophy of our time, as it descends into decay, nihilism, and despair.

FURTHER THOUGHTS: The belief that the fact of suffering means that life is not worth living strikes me also as a secularized version of theodicy, the theological question of how a loving and all-powerful God can allow suffering. To many people today (though, curiously, not so much in the past), the reality of suffering in the world means that God cannot exist. But as Oswald Bayer has pointed out, if you eliminate God, the problem of suffering remains. How can life, how can existence itself, allow suffering? If suffering renders the existence of God immoral, it also makes life–and the existence of anything–immoral. And that is the conclusion of the anti-natalists.

I would argue the other way. Since the existence of suffering does NOT negate the goodness of life, it does not negate the goodness of God either. What we need today is a way to come to grips with suffering–not try to escape it at any cost or be paralyzed by it–but to recognize it as a part, not the whole, of the human condition and the nature of life. Moreover, as something that, as we try to alleviate suffering for ourselves and others, can actually give meaning to that life, through the evocation of compassion, love, strength, and faith in the Incarnate God who bears our griefs as well as our iniquities (Isaiah 53).

Photo: Surface of Mars, NASA/JPL/Cornell [Public domain] via Wikimedia Commons

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Service: Medal of Honor Citations for Veterans Day

Last updated on: November 11, 2019 at 2:08 pm By Gene Veith

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The purpose of every vocation is to love and serve your neighbor. Being in the military is a vocation. Notice how the vocational concept of “serving” is part of the very language of the military and of Veterans Day: “Military service.” “The military services are the Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, and Coast Guard.” “I served in the army.” “You veterans served your country.” “Thank you for your service.”

On this Veterans Day (which does not take an apostrophe) and in honor of all military veterans, I urge you to read these citations of recent recipients of the Congressional Medal of Honor. Note the themes of vocation, such as doing one’s duty and self-sacrifice for one’s neighbor.

Edward C. Byers, Jr.

Chief, U.S. Navy Born: August 4, 1979, Toledo, Ohio Place / Date: Qarghah’i District of Laghman, Afghanistan, December 8-9, 2012

Citation

For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty as a Hostage Rescue Force Team Member in Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom from 8 to 9 December 2012. As the rescue force approached the target building, an enemy sentry detected them and darted inside to alert his fellow captors. The sentry quickly reemerged, and the lead assaulter attempted to neutralize him. Chief Byers with his team sprinted to the door of the target building. As the primary breacher, Chief Byers stood in the doorway fully exposed to enemy fire while ripping down six layers of heavy blankets fastened to the inside ceiling and walls to clear a path for the rescue force. The first assaulter pushed his way through the blankets, and was mortally wounded by enemy small arms fire from within. Chief Byers, completely aware of the imminent threat, fearlessly rushed into the room and engaged an enemy guard aiming an AK- 47 at him. He then tackled another adult male who had darted towards the corner of the room. During the ensuing hand-to-hand struggle, Chief Byers confirmed the man was not the hostage and engaged him. As other rescue team members called out to the hostage, Chief Byers heard a voice respond in English and raced toward it. He jumped atop the American hostage and shielded him from the high volume of fire within the small room. While covering the hostage with his body, Chief Byers immobilized another guard with his bare hands, and restrained the guard until a teammate could eliminate him. His bold and decisive actions under fire saved the lives of the hostage and several of his teammates. By his undaunted courage, intrepid fighting spirit, and unwavering devotion to duty in the face of near certain death, Chief Petty Officer Byers reflected great credit upon himself and upheld the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service.

Florent A. Groberg

Captain, U.S. Army 4th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division Born: 8 May 1983, Poissy, France Place / Date: Asadabad, Kunar Province, Afghanistan, 8 August 2012

Citation

Captain Florent A. Groberg distinguished himself by acts of gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty while serving as a Personal Security Detachment Commander for Task Force Mountain Warrior, 4th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, during combat operations against an armed enemy in Asadbad, Kunar Province, Afghanistan on August 8, 2012. On that day, Captain Groberg was leading a dismounted movement consisting of several senior leaders to include two brigade commanders, two battalion commanders, two command sergeants major, and an Afghanistan National Army brigade commander. As they approached the Provincial Governor’s compound, Captain Groberg observed an individual walking close to the formation. When the individual made an abrupt turn towards the formation, he noticed an abnormal bulge underneath the individual’s clothing. Selflessly placing himself in front of one of the brigade commanders, Captain Groberg rushed forward, using his body to push the suspect away from the formation. Simultaneously, he ordered another member of the security detail to assist with removing the suspect. At this time, Captain Groberg confirmed the bulge was a suicide vest and with complete disregard for his life, Captain Groberg again with the assistance of the other member of the security detail, physically pushed the suicide bomber away from the formation. Upon falling, the suicide bomber detonated his explosive vest outside the perimeter of the formation, killing four members of the formation and wounding numerous others. The blast from the first suicide bomber caused the suicide vest of a previously unnoticed second suicide bomber to detonate prematurely with minimal impact on the formation. Captain Groberg’s immediate actions to push the first suicide bomber away from the formation significantly minimized the impact of the coordinated suicide bombers’ attack on the formation, saving the lives of his comrades and several senior leaders. Captain Groberg’s extraordinary heroism and selflessness above and beyond the call of duty at the risk of life are in keeping with the highest traditions of military service and reflect credit upon himself, 4th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division and the United States Army.

UPDATE: Captain Groberg did survive the blast, though he was seriously injured. According to Wikipedia, after dragging the man with the suicide vest away from the formation, the explosion threw him nearly 20 feet. He lost nearly half of his left calf muscle, blew out an eardrum, suffered a brain injury, and sustained serious nerve damage.

[Keep reading for posthumous awards for service in the Civil War and World War I. . . ]

Illustration by Circe Denyer, CC0, Public Domain via PublicDomainPictures.net

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Reforming Today’s Church

Last updated on: October 30, 2019 at 4:56 pm By Gene Veith

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Many Christians refuse to commemorate Reformation Day–which is today–because they think it is wrong to celebrate the break-up of the church. But the concept of “reformation” does not entail starting up something new from scratch. Rather, it means fixing what is broken.

Back in 1517 the church was in need of reformation, as even Roman Catholics came to admit. The break-up came only when the Pope refused to reform the church and instead excommunicated the reformers. Technically, there is still only one church–which exists in innumerable congregations, denominations, and affiliations–the Body of Christ consisting of all the faithful. But the tangible, visible manifestations of that spiritual reality are extremely important in building up that Body of Christ. A day to reflect on “reformation” can remind Christians of their responsibility to continually be fixing what is broken in their churches.

Is there any doubt that today’s institutional church has much that is broken and is thus in sore need of reformation?

Sexual immorality–from harassment to child abuse–on the part of both Catholic priests and evangelical ministers is scandalizing even the non-Christian world. Churches’ preoccupation with politics, whether on the right or on the left, makes them seem indistinguishable from the world.

Church leadership is all awry. Devout Catholics normally the most loyal to the papacy find themselves in conflict with the Pope. Meanwhile, in Protestantism, celebrity preachers seem to be trying to turn themselves into mini-popes. There is widespread confusion about the pastoral office–who can be a pastor (women? gays? a self-ordained entrepreneur? a man called and ordained?) and what pastors are (the congregation’s employee? the C.E.O. of the congregation? a psychologist and social worker? the shepherd of Christ’s flock?).

Theological confusion reigns. Different conceptions of God are proclaimed, with His incarnation in Christ hardly mentioned. Faith is reduced to a work. The Bible is reduced to a rule book or a manual for successful living. Worship has become a mashup of a pop-music concert and a TED talk. The sacred has been swallowed up by the profane, even in church. Instead of denying ourselves, as Jesus commanded (Matt 16:24), we are taught to fulfill ourselves. Everyone basically makes up their own theology according to their preferences.

Maybe you disagree with some of these criticisms, but I suspect you have others. Don’t you have the sense that all is not well with today’s churches?

Could it be that the decline of Christian influence that we keep hearing about, the secularization of the culture, could have something to do with our increasingly secularized churches? That when the non-churched say they are “spiritual but not religious,” that they reject “institutional religion,” that might be evidence that today’s church needs reformation?

So how can the church be reformed today? Reformation does not mean simply changing things. Throwing out the old, making things up-to-date, building something completely different–such strategies, though seemingly the most obvious approaches, do not constitute reform. “Form” is a philosophical term meaning “the active, determining principle of a thing as distinguished from matter.” It is related to the essence of a thing, the source of its characteristic shape and being. To “re-form” means to return something to its original form, to restore its essence.

So what distinguishes Christianity from all other religions? What is the essence of Christianity? Not belief in God or the promotion of morality, since other religions have that. The “determining principle” of Christianity and thus the church would have to center on Christ, what He has done to save us, and His revelation in God’s Word.

Thus, reforming the church today would involve a heightened emphasis on the Gospel and the Word of God. That is, the same emphases as in the reformation of 1517.

The good news “that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners” (1 Tim 1:15)–is agreed to by all Christians. But that Gospel of Christ is currently obscured in today’s churches by other “gospels”: the social gospel of the left; the social gospel of the right; the prosperity gospel; the psychological gospel; the positive thinking gospel. Churches today teach faith, and they would agree in principle that we should put our faith in Christ. But they also often teach that we should have faith in ourselves. Today’s churches often hold to the Gospel of Christ with great zeal, but they relegate it to conversion alone–either their own, long ago, or in gaining other converts–but they have stopped applying it to all of life, thus losing the transformative power in the Christian life. Recovering and applying the centrality of the Gospel and all that it implies can reform not only doctrine and practice but morals, relationships, vocations, and the entirety of the Christian life, as faith becomes active in love.

Recovering the Gospel goes hand in hand with recovering the Word of God. Not just as a collection of information but as God’s revelation of Himself in human language, the very voice of God who addresses us personally in its pages, by which the Holy Spirit creates faith in Christ. Indeed, the Bible preserves the “living and active” Word (Heb 4:12) by which the entire universe was created, which gave everything its “form,” the Logos that gave us logic, and that is identical with Christ Himself (John 1). Many churches today believe in the Bible, including its inerrancy, but they nevertheless seem to miss its true scope and power, reducing it to a self-help manual, a collection of principles for successful living, or a puzzle to interpret. Mainline Protestants, though, have largely excised the Bible from their churches, employing “higher criticism” to free them from its authority. In doing so, they have hollowed out their teachings and made themselves all but irrelevant. Restoring the centrality of God’s Word and giving it free rein is what brings reformation, which always, ultimately, is God’s work.

Illustration by Libby Levi via Flickr, Creative Commons License

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