Mark Galli Responds to Jeff Cook 2

This one is the final response, but we’ll give the last word to Mark Galli.

We Need a Better Question: A Response to Jeff Cook by Mark Galli

I love the force of Jeff Cook’s arguments, because they expose the shallowness of much popular Christian thinking.  And I’m glad for places like Jesus Creed where, even given the limitations of blog-size responses, we can try to take the conversation deeper.

When we look at the history of the church, one thing we quickly see is that this conundrum about God’s justice is but the tip of the philosophical iceberg.  This just happens to be the problem that strikes us as most interesting today. One can argue that the creation of a material world by an immaterial God, the dual nature of Christ, the Trinity, the Atonement, the Resurrection from the dead (!)–to name a few mysteries of the faith–are even more philosophically untenable ideas that “demand compelling answers.”  So other than current interest, I’m unsure why we should privilege the justice questions, when epistemologically, they are all of one cloth.

Because of their intractability, I tend to be skeptical about the possibility of finding answers that will allay all doubts and compel devotion.  This is asking too much of apologetics.

It is not asking too much of the Holy Spirit, however.  I mean that not in a shallow, pietistic sense, but in Jesus’ sense, that the Holy Spirit’s job is to lead us into all truth, more specifically, the core truth of Jesus himself.  This suggests a few things to me: That all our questions about God are always asked in the presence of God; that many of our questions are, in fact, prompted by the Spirit as a way to disturb and shake us out of our simple pieties on the way to a more robust faith; that the questions we ask of God are not nearly as important as the question he asks of us: Who do you say that I am?

It also suggests to me that we have to keep to the proper order. As Anselm put it, we believe so that we might know.

This does not mean we begin with “blind trust” or “the leap of faith.”  To trot out “God’s ways are not our ways” as a mantra, especially at the beginning of the conversation, is to be false to the God whose ways are really not our ways.  This is using “God’s ways are not our ways” as universal principle, a kind of magical axiom designed to end all conversation, when it very well may be a conversation that the Spirit has started.

It also usurps the real “axiom” of God: Jesus Christ. We know little of importance about God until we look at the person of Jesus Christ.  He is the Word made flesh, he is the revelation of God to us.  The really important things we know about God can only be discovered by looking at the person of Jesus Christ.

I wish I had a more space to explain what I mean, but here all I can do is repeat what Christians have found to be true in age after age: In Jesus Christ, we discover a God who is perfectly just and perfectly merciful.  What Christ does on the Cross, who Christ is on the Cross, is where all conversation about every question must begin.

If God has not come to us ultimately and finally in Christ—so that Christ is the fullest revelation we have of God’s action and character–then the question “Is God just and worthy of devotion?” is very much alive.  If God has not given us himself in death, to condemn the utter injustice of sin and evil and to offer forgiveness to unjust and evil people like us, then that question is very much alive. But if God has come to us in Christ, and died for us and for the whole world, and has risen for us and for the whole world, it seems to me we are on stable ground to begin every conversation with the assumption that God is perfectly just and perfectly merciful.

Now we can begin asking questions about Old Testament genocide, and about the relationship of the finite sinner and his infinite punishment, and so forth.  The question is not—Is God just?—but how do we understand these conundrums given that God has shown himself to be perfectly just and perfectly merciful? We’re not so much demanding that God show himself worthy of devotion, but in devotion, we’re trying to understand the God who has shown himself worthy of devotion in Christ.

At one level, then, I do not understand Jeff’s statements in this paragraph:

“Because it is by no means clear that the Biblical God exists. Because it is by no means clear that the scriptures display the true God, or that the Bible is inspired in any way. Because it is by no means clear that God is good, that Jesus is alive, or that we aren’t all just sustaining our sanity with the story of resurrection. There are plenty of reasons for doubt here. “

In fact, there is no apologetic known to humankind that can make these things clear to the point of compelling faith.  There are reasons that demonstrate the internal coherence of the Christian faith, but no reason that makes everything clear to everyone.  This does not preclude us giving reasons for the hope we have, but it suggests a very modest role for apologetics.  The one thing we are promised is that when we make the person and work of Christ as clear as we can, some will believe and some will stumble over the rock of offense.

In addition, as we study the history of theology and philosophy, we’ll find that the “compelling answers” to such questions have been wide and varied at times.  But here’s the interesting thing:  every answer ends up sabotaging God’s sovereignty or his mercy or his justice or his immanence or his transcendence—some vital characteristic of God as revealed in Jesus.  Again, space precludes demonstrating this. But whenever we try to justify the ways of God to man in areas in which he has not chosen to reveal himself, we end up creating a god who is not the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

I trust the reader can see that what I am proposing is not an abstract philosophical stance like fideism—which my friend Scot has accused me of :-)–but a very personal commitment and trust in God’s Son. Not as an idea. Not as the answer to an intellectual problem, but to one who really does have the words to eternal life. To whom else shall we go?  Because this is part of a very personal encounter with Christ thought the Holy Spirit, I hope it is also clear that I’m not arguing that our questions are a waste of time, but only must be grounded first in Christ’s question to us.

That is Jesus way: He always demanded first a response of trustful obedience to his word.  Those who wanted to say goodbye to their families or to bury their father were told first to follow him.  The answer to the man who asks about eternal life is “follow me.”  We have many issues we want settled before we commit ourselves in complete devotion to God, but Jesus recognizes that no fruitful conversation with him can begin without trust in him.

He—not the idea of Jesus or Jesus as a principle, but the real person of Jesus as he comes to us in the Holy Spirit–He is he the one and only compelling answer, the only answer that is self-attesting, the only “answer” that shows itself worthy of devotion.

In the end, the statement “God’s ways are not our ways” is merely another way of saying, “We don’t know.” It’s okay to not know. There is not a philosophy or religion that does not have large areas of mystery.  In fact, given the scope of our curiosity and our questions, there will always be much more that we don’t know than what we do know.  Indeed, “there are plenty of reasons for doubt here.”

But there is indeed an unshakable faith on the other side of doubt when the questions are but the stirring of the Spirit. After wrestling with these questions, after much prayer and doubt, after weighing our real options this side of the beatific vision—after being checkmated by God time and again, forcing us again and again to begin with Jesus Christ on the Cross—then we can say with Job “God’s ways are not our ways.”  Or better, “My Lord and My God.” Then it is not a piety that avoids the cross of doubt, but a profound wisdom, a kind of resurrection through the cross.

In the end—but only in the end, not at the beginning–there is really only one reason to believe, only one compelling answer. The life of the great saints of the church—from Francis of Assisi to Mother Teresa, from Paul of Tarsus to John Wesley, from Augustine to N.T. Wright–shows time and again that we know more than enough to give ourselves in heart, soul, mind, and strength to one who is already more than worthy of our devotion, even though we are not worthy of his devotion to us.

Mark Galli is senior managing editor of Christianity Today, and author of the forthcoming God Wins: Heaven, Hell, and why the Good News Is Better than Love Wins (Tyndale, July)