By Northern Seminary student, Ben Davis. Ben begins his post about this book by talking about our connection, how he experienced typical recruitment by Northern professors (I have stories about other professors like this), and how that has altered the landscape of his life (and ours at Northern for every student influences every classroom), and how that provokes him to ask if God planned all that.

A little over two years ago I had the opportunity to meet Scot McKnight. Scot was someone whose thought I had encountered through reading many of his books and his popular blog, Jesus Creed. Meeting him in person was meaningful for many reasons – and in the end it would prove fortuitous, as I’ll explain below. Our meeting had been occasioned by a residency program in Christian Spiritual Formation offered by a small college in my hometown. For years I had desired to go to seminary. I loved reading theology, biblical studies, and church history, and I thought a seminary education would suite my personality and already-acquired study habits well. But, circumstances being what they were – my wife had just discovered she was pregnant – and our finances strapped, going away to seminary was simply out of the question for me. The provision of this residency program, while not ideal, was the next best thing for me so I submitted my application and was accepted into the cohort. Shortly thereafter I was ecstatic to learn that Scot would be teaching in our first gathering on the nature of the gospel. I won’t bore you with the details of this time other than to say that my participation in the residency program afforded me the opportunity to have a handful of thoughtful conversations about books, theology, and everything Tom (N.T.) Wright. Through our conversations I was able to communicate my budding desire to go to seminary. He suggested that I look into Northern Seminary in Chicago, a place where he had been teaching for a few years. At that time, it would require me moving my growing family to Chicago, he said. After I explained my situation to him, we both agreed that moving for seminary was not likely the best decision. So, I left the idea alone and moved on, thinking little of it in the year to come

After that initial meeting, I kept in-touch through occasional emails, but I never mentioned seminary again. It would be an unrealized dream, I thought, so there was no point bringing it up. That is, until one day about eight months ago, I received an unexpected email from Scot asking if I was still interested in going to seminary. I replied, “yes, of course!” “But,” I added, “my situation hasn’t changed from the last time we spoke about it.” He then told me that Northern had unveiled a newly minted, state-of-the-art program designed specifically for distance learners. What’s more, he said, this program would be affordable and conducive for folks who had families and worked full-time. Astounded by his email, I talked it over with my wife, prayed, and submitted my application. Eight months later I can happily report that I am currently a student at Northern Seminary, pursuing a Masters of Arts in New Testament (MANT).

I’m telling you all this because I think my story illustrates an essential, if often misunderstood, theological idea: namely, it implicitly speaks about the providence of God. In this instance, God arranged circumstances in such a way that I was able to see my long-prayed-for desire of going to seminary become a present reality. God went before me, as it were, to chart a course by which I would arrive at the place I longed to be. Now, this begs an important question: If circumstances had been different, would I still be where I am? I don’t know. Counterfactuals are interesting to contemplate, but in the end they’re often little more than unhelpful speculations. If I had to guess, however, I think any number of different circumstances, occasions, and actions could’ve brought me to this place. What’s more, God could’ve aligned everything perfectly only to see me go a different direction entirely.

What I’m getting at is this. I don’t think God determined that I would go to seminary. Rather, his omniscience being what it is, God worked through secondary causes in the past to bring me to a set of options in the present that would in turn allow me to chose seminary or not. God paved the roads before me, in other words, but he enabled me to choose the one I was compelled to take – the back road or the Interstate. God gently nudges human action, he doesn’t coerce.

Many, however, see my situation differently. In their view, God is not guiding history to its ultimate end, intimately cooperating with humans for their good. Instead, God is controlling history moment-by-moment, leaving no room for human choices, good or bad. I’m sure you’ve heard it said, “God is in control.” While this little phrase is perhaps pastorally helpful, it lends undue credence to a larger idea that says God really is the one controlling every minute aspect of history, from the horrors of WWII to the seemingly negligible choice of which restaurant I’m taking my wife to for our weekly date night. Like Gepetto, the endearing puppet master who animated Pinocchio, God is pulling an intricate web of strings, tugging every human action toward his unsearchable, determined will. Conversely, I think it is better and more biblically responsible to say that “God is in charge.” This way of looking at things allows us to rest assured in God’s provision and fatherly care, while at the same time being chastened by the fact that our choices in life truly matter, not only to God, but to our neighbors as well. Humans are moral beings who invariably take the shape of that which they worship. Our decisions toward that end – wittingly and unwittingly – truly matter and should be taken seriously.

This brief, untutored meditation on God’s providence and human will is the circuitous route by which I want to arrive at the point of this post. For the question of God’s providence and human freedom is the stimulating subject of a new, undeniably important book by Bruce R. Reichenbach called, Divine Providence: God’s Love and Human Freedom. Reichenbach is a foremost philosopher of religion, who is Professor Emeritus at Augsburg College, where he taught philosophy for forty-three years. Thus he is a trusted guide on such matters, and his book will surely leave a significant mark on the fields of theology, philosophy, and philosophy of religion more generally.

As his subtitle intimates, Reichenbach puts forth the view that God cherishes human freedom and thus accommodates human choice under his providential care. Through his prodigious knowledge of Scripture, historical and systematic theology, and recent treatments in philosophical theology, Reichenbach sets before us the task of piecing together a complex puzzle: “The central topic of this book – divine providence – presents an intellectual and spiritual puzzle that is both magnetic and enigmatic.” He goes on to say, “Only the Puzzlemaker knows the finished masterpiece. We are thus limited to humanly determining how the joined pieces that we put together reasonably form a coherent picture.” That is, we are working with God’s revelation of himself – in Scripture and in nature – and the sharpest edge of human reason to better understand how God inexorably moves history to the fulfillment of his purposes while simultaneously accommodating human freedom, choice, and action to our own desired ends. A considerable undertaking, to be sure.

If, like me, you’re intrigued by this gargantuan topic, let this be your invitation. I want to take the next few weeks to examine the pieces of the complex puzzle as Reichenbach lays them out in front of us and I want to invite you to join me. Especially if you’re a pastor; this is a book you should read and a discussion you should be intimately aware of. Trust me: your people are thinking about this topic, and they’re looking to you for wisdom and sure-footed guidance along the way. I think this book will help you navigate the thicket. To close, I want to leave you with Reichenbach’s pastorally-wise words regarding the hope of God’s providence.

God acts in the world for our good, disciplines us to develop and grow in our moral and spiritual character, and ultimately patiently bids us to choose to enter into a personal, covenantal relationship with him. To make this possible God created us with significant freedom. Without significant freedom we can neither develop the qualities of character and spiritual maturity that enrich us as moral people, enter into a meaningful personal relationship with God and others in the human community, nor engage morally with our threatened and threatening environment. God does not force us to accept his providence, but lures, persuades, invites, seduces, and entices us to willingly accept him and his acts of goodness – the kingdom banquet – on our behalf. God is gracious, although at times the Lord of Severe Mercy. Providence is the theological way of talking about the ways in which God manifests his gracious love in our lives.

I’ll see you next week.

By John Frye

Beyond the Tiny Gospel

What if I said to you that the story of the movie The Sound of Music was about guitars? Would you disagree? What if I said the story of the movie Ben Hur is about chariot wheels? What if I said the story about the movie Titanic is about the north Atlantic ocean? You would think I was a little (or maybe hugely) short-sighted about these magnificent films. Why reduce the story of the von Trapp family to the topic of guitars? Are there, in fact, guitars in The Sound of Music? Is not the scene with Captain Georg von Trapp (Christopher Plummer) entering the room with a guitar singing a major turning point in the story? What about those Ben Hur chariot wheels? Aren’t those very wheels the source of incredible tension in the (1959 film) chariot race scene? Where did the Titanic sink? I rest my case. But I know you’re not convinced. Why? Because each of “my” views is a horrible reduction of those tremendous, expansive stories.

How you feel about my reductions of great stories is, I think, how Jesus and Paul would react to the contemporary reductions of the New Testament Gospel. The gospel is very simple in the minds of most people. A friend reported to me recently the gospel is obvious; it’s the pathway to salvation. Really? Did early Christians and Christians though church history die for a plan of salvation? Here is what other friends suggested the gospel is: John 3:16. This mind you even though this singular verse is in, wait for it, the GOSPEL of John! Another said “forgiveness of sins.” Is that the gospel or a wonderful benefit of the gospel? One suggested “an eternal home in heaven.” Again, that is a popular expression of the gospel—going to heaven when you die. Oh my. There is so much bad theology and reductionism in that view of the gospel. One person offered that the gospel is “God’s power to save.” I believe that idea is a reflection of Romans 1:16, but is that the gospel itself or the energy that the gospel has? What if Romans 1:1-5 is Paul’s succinct summary of the gospel and the rest of Romans unpacks its dimensions, implications and benefits?

I did a Google search of the question “What is the gospel?” In less than a second, I got 88,300,000 results! Eighty-eight million plus. You would think that on something as basic as the New Testament gospel there would be overwhelming unity. Well, think again. What startled me the most as I worked my way through many of the Google results was the observation that many local churches believe that it is their duty to define their “take” on the gospel. As if the gospel in Lubbock, TX has to be nuanced vis-à-vis the gospel of Charleston, SC or Kenosha, WI and Portland, OR. (No, I am not impugning contextualization.)

I’ve been reading Scot McKnight’s The King Jesus Gospel and N. T. Wright’s Simply Good News. As a pastor I recall the radical exposé of the reduced Western gospel by Dallas Willard in his book The Divine Conspiracy. Dallas coined the phrase “the barcode gospel.” In this gospel, Willard contends, the only thing any Christian really needs from Jesus is “a little blood for their sins.” That’s it. Even more telling about the reduced gospel, as McKnight observes, many Christians cannot imagine why we need to know anything about Jesus as Israel’s Messiah. We all know “Christ” is simply Jesus’s last name. What’s “Messiah” got to do with the gospel?

According to Paul’s own definition (description) of the New Testament gospel in 1 Corinthians 15, the gospel is the Story of Jesus the Christ bringing to completion and expanding the Story of Israel. Tom Wright contends that the more Jewish the gospel is, the more universal its impact on the dark powers resisting new creation. Even more, YHWH, in the resurrected Jesus of Nazareth, now reigns a King over all other powers in the universe. This is the good news! “Our God reigns!” This news must now more than ever be announced. It is the only news that saves this fractured universe by producing new creation.

The grand story of the New Testament gospel in the USA, with its deep roots in the Old Testament, has been reduced, like making guitars the story of The Sound of Music.

It has been awhile since the last post on Genesis, but it is time to step back and wrap up the story with the Joseph narrative, chapters 37, 39-50. The story is well known – long a Sunday School and sermon favorite.I brings the narrative of Genesis from the patriarchs to the opening situation in Exodus. The sons of Jacob move to Egypt where they become the people of Israel under bondage and in need of deliverance.

The story can be told in a variety of ways – Joseph, the epitome of virtue, is misunderstood by his father and brothers when he reveals his dreams. He is sent to his brothers who are tending sheep. They plot to get rid of him, first by murder, stopped by Reuben, the eldest, and then sold into slavery instigated by Judah of all people. Judah’s is the line of David and of Jesus the Messiah. In his virtue and wisdom, by God’s power, Joseph prospers in the house of Potiphar, captain of the guard, until Potiphar’s wife accuses him of attempted rape. Thrown into prison, he again prospers through his virtue and wisdom, by God’s power. Interpreting Pharaoh’s dreams (they are one) he suggests a course of action and again he prospers through his virtue and wisdom, by God’s power.

I’ve heard sermons preached along these lines – but they don’t ring quite true.

Another telling has Joseph something of an arrogant brat in his youth, spoiled by his father’s favoritism. His brothers scheme to get rid of him and through the experience he grows in wisdom and in the fear of the Lord. He is prepared through the grace of God for the leadership role he assumes. Walter Moberly comes down on this view in The Theology of the Book of Genesis. After dispensing with some extremes, concludes “there is surely still real value in seeing Joseph as a wise person who models important dimensions of what wisdom may entail – not only the transcending of youthful arrogance and egotism through allowing suffering to have a purifying effect under God but also having the ability to live with integrity under pressure, with a sense of accountability to God that dispenses with any kind of doctrinaire approach to living well.” (p. 236-237)

Joseph remains a role model without the artificial imposition of some kind of perfection. It is hard to find a hero in the Scripture who doesn’t exhibit a shortcoming or two (Daniel perhaps?). It makes them real and their example important for our everyday life.

There are two other issues raised by the Joseph narrative that have raised questions for many readers: his treatment of his brothers when they come for food during the famine and his claim after the death of their father: You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives. (50:20)

Joseph’s Treatment of His Brothers. Both Bill Arnold (Genesis (New Cambridge Bible Commentary)) and Walter Moberly dig into this question. The encounter starts when the 10 half-brothers of Joseph come to Egypt.

Although Joseph recognized his brothers, they did not recognize him. Then he remembered his dreams about them and said to them, “You are spies! You have come to see where our land is unprotected.” (42:8-9)

Did Joseph fail to acknowledge his brothers and identify himself out of a desire for revenge, teaching them a lesson, or acting in wisdom to test them?  Many commenters see a measure of revenge in what appears to be a cat and mouse game.  Demanding that Simeon stay behind and they bring Benjamin when they return; putting the money in their bags and then the cup in Benjamin’s. It seems rather cruel.

Both Moberly and Arnold prefer an interpretation that Joseph is testing his brothers. He wisely wants to know if they have truly matured and are acting honorably. Arnold summarizes the first encounter and Joseph’s initial delay:

I believe that we are to conclude that Joseph simply does not trust his brothers. And why should he? Perhaps Benjamin is not standing here with them now because they have sold him into slavery or worse. Perhaps Jacob too is dead. Joseph at first seems merely to stall for time while he sorts out what he should do. Then he seems intent to ensure that Benjamin and Jacob are not also mistreated by this lot, and wants only to discern whether these ten can be trusted. (p. 353)

The test seems strange but is fitting. “If you are honest men, let one of your brothers stay here in prison, while the rest of you go and take grain back for your starving households.  But you must bring your youngest brother to me, so that your words may be verified and that you may not die.” (42:19-20)  Would the brothers sacrifice Simeon, leaving him a prisoner in the land of Egypt never to return? Because the famine was severe Jacob was forced to let them return with Benjamin along. Now Joseph really puts them to the test – will they sacrifice Benjamin for their own freedom?

This trial of their character turns this time back to the original crime against Joseph himself, in which his half-brothers, working in solidarity, acted in hatred, vengeance and greed to inflict pain upon a son of Rachel. Has anything really changed? Have they come to terms with their father’s favoritism? Or now with Simeon released, will they take the food and extra money, and run, abandoning Benjamin forever? Perhaps they would simply tell their father that a wild animal attacked Benjamin on the journey home. Joseph has devised this test to determine their character, to know the truth. (p. 358-359)

Judah, the very brother who first suggested selling Joseph into slavery, this time rises to the occasion, concluding a long speech: “Your servant guaranteed the boy’s safety to my father. I said, ‘If I do not bring him back to you, I will bear the blame before you, my father, all my life!’ Now then, please let your servant remain here as my lord’s slave in place of the boy, and let the boy return with his brothers.” (44:32-33)  This is an important part of the story – and, Arnold suggests, an important part of the narrative history of Israel.

Judah has become a representative for the family. His willingness to sacrifice his freedom for the sake of his father and his brother Benjamin sets him justifiably in a place of honor among the sons of Jacob. Judah has changed; he is not the same individual we encountered in Gen 38. And the presence of all the brothers signals a new day. They are resolved to treat Rachel’s younger son differently than they did his brother, Joseph. (p. 360)

From Judah (and his offspring with his daughter-in-law related in Gen 38) comes the line of David.

God intended it for good. Finally, the passage in this entire narrative that raises the most serious questions (for me at least). After the death of Jacob, the brothers fear that Joseph will turn on them. He allays their fears with an off-quoted statement: But Joseph said to them, “Don’t be afraid. Am I in the place of God? You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.” (50:19-20) How are we to understand this statement. Did God orchestrate events, including the pain and suffering they entailed, simply to save the Israelites from a famine he could have prevented in the first place?  Perhaps a better interpretation is not that God orchestrated sin, but that humans cannot thwart his plans. Arnold calls this the “overarching theological conviction of the Joseph Novel: God’s purposes are not thwarted by human sin, but rather advanced through it by his good graces. The hand of God is seen, not only in clearly miraculous interventions and revelations, but also in the working out of divine purposes through human agency, frail and broken as it is.” (p. 361)  Genesis 50 makes this clear as the book wraps up the story.

Using emphatic syntax, “You certainly intended, …” Joseph does not deny their evil intent, but the word play, using the same verb with different idioms, highlights the way God has turned the evil intent of humans into an opportunity to accomplish his good purpose. They planned harm (hāšabplus preposition ʾal), but God reconfigured their evil and produced good from it (hāšab plus preposition lĕ). … Using the antithetic dyad “good and evil” as a paradigm, the text lifts even the wrong and unethical behavior of humans as something God is capable of comprehending as an opportunity for good. (p. 388)

Genesis 50:19-20 should not be used as a catch-all propositional truth thrown at people in times of pain. As though every evil and tragic occurrence is part of God’s divine plan. This just isn’t so, but the truth remains that God can work, even through the evil actions of humans. Humans cannot thwart his plans. The people of Israel will be formed and shaped in Egypt.

This is a fitting conclusion to the book, and to this short study of Genesis.

What questions are raised by the Joseph story?

What role does this play in the over-arching story of Israel?

If you wish to contact me directly you may do so at rjs4mail[at]att.net

If interested you can subscribe to a full text feed of my posts at Musings on Science and Theology.

Sean Palmer is the lead Pastor at the Vine Church in Temple Texas. You can follow him @SeanPalmer

I agree with those who feel that America is headed for uncertain times in our near future. According to a new Quinnipiac University Poll released last Tuesday, America’s President-Elect, Donald Trump, will enter the presidency with a historically low approval rating, only 37%.

Trump’s approval rating has actually declined since his popular vote loss and electoral college win last November. At present, his approval rating is comparable with George W. Bush’s when 43 left office.

These numbers shouldn’t shock us. Just under half of Americans didn’t vote at all. Trump only garnered 47% of the voters who bothered to make an effort and lost that total by nearly 3-million.

What does this mean? If just under half of eligible Americans didn’t vote and Trump didn’t win half of those votes, then, if my math is right, starting January 20th, America will have a President which roughly less than 25% of America voted for. Just over 1 in 4.

That’s no mandate. In no business is that even a quorum. Whichever way you slice it, most Americans either didn’t bother or didn’t vote for Donald Trump to be President.

He begins his term as a largely unwanted executive.

Nevertheless, we have an electoral college system and regardless of all the hashtags and protests, Donald Trump, whether you like him or not, whether you voted for him or not, whether you think for financial or personal reasons he will continue his stalwart defense of Vladimir Putin, Russia, and Wikileaks, or not, will be the 45th President of the United States.

This fact has sent some of my friends into elation.

They detest Hillary Clinton, decry Democratic policies, and think – at least a few – that Trump is the right kind of disruptive force at the right time. Other friends are experiencing darkness and despair. For them Trump is the worst kind of thin-skinned, reprehensible, uninformed, egotistical puppet that makes for a horrible person and a disastrous leader.

I have no idea what America and the world will look like after four years of Trump. Neither does anyone else. What I do know is that too many Christians have surrendered their hope to American politics and the allure and brightness of power.

This was the temptation for a prophet named Elijah, too.

In Elijah’s time, there was a ruler named Jezebel who had all the power while he had none. In the kinds of stories Christians like to tell at VBS, Elijah has a showdown between the prophets of BAAL – the prophets who served Jezebel’s god – and YHWH, Elijah’s God.

The question was whose god would show up. Which is the real God? Which God has the power?

The test was simple: Light an offering on fire.

The prophets of BAAL wailed and screamed and cut themselves to get BAAL’s attention. Elijah even mocked them and their god asking if he might be away relieving himself, as BAAL failed to ignite anything.

When Elijah got his turn, God sent fire from the sky and not only burned the offer but consumed the entire alter.

Game. Set. Match.

This is the kind of display Christians really want to see from God. Something dramatic. Demonstrable. Powerful. Indisputable. For the life of me, it’s the only reason I can think of that countless men and woman have spent thousands of hours and millions of dollars looking for Noah’s Ark rather than using those same resources to feed the hungry and clothe the poor.

We suspect that if there was some way of demonstrating the reality of God that was incontrovertible others would fall to their knees in praise to God and salute our rightness.

But Elijah’s victory doesn’t last, at least Elijah’s feelings about victory don’t last.

After God’s display of power, Jezebel puts a contract on his head. Elijah has to flee into the wilderness.

Elijah is forced to leave the kingdom and all human companionship. He enters into the wildness of the desert where he collapses mentally, spiritually, and physically. He is alone and hurting. He even asks for death. 

This is what victory looks like!

In this moment, God doesn’t give Elijah a 4-year plan or call-to-action. He doesn’t promise the prophet companions or comfort or ease. God simply tells Elijah to go stand outside the cave and wait.

If you know the story, you know all heaven breaks loose next. Wind. Earthquake. Fire. This is what we expect (and want) God’s power to look like. Strong. Relentless. Irresistible. We want God’s power to show up in the dynamic and demonstrable so badly that increasingly we’ve become people willing to deploy force to ensure God looks forceful.

But God is not in the wind, earthquake, or fire. Here, at the same place where Moses was given the Law, we’d expect something a touch more robust. But, nah!

After all the hubbub, God is revealed in the sound of sheer silence. The traditional translation is “a still, small voice,” which in literal Hebrew is “the voice of silence, thin.” The thin sound of silence.

I worry that Christians, on the Right and Left, have either lost or never developed the capacity to recognize the God of thin silences.

I mention Elijah’s story in connection to politics because, for whatever, politics has become the warehouse for our anxieties, desire for control and manipulation, and the arena we are most likely to lay aside Christian commitments in the service of our narrow and parochial desires.

Politics, it seems, is the greatest area of life where we defend and encourage behaviors within our favored politicians and parties that we would not accept from our children or friends.

In politics, it has become standard to stand with the morally disgraceful as long as the detestable woman or man agrees with us on our narrow and provincial politics. Worse, when our political side “wins” whichever battle is raging in the headlines, we foolishly chalk that victory up to God’s will.

If Elijah teaches us anything it’s that if we think victory always looks victorious we can easily be wrong.

As much as we’d like God to put on a show, rebuke the enemies of our agenda, and light the world aflame, God may not be interested in us proving something to our friends.

We want fireworks and sparkle. So, when our candidate wins, to us, that demonstrates the twinkle and glow we were hoping for. But when our candidate loses, we question what in the world God is up to.

Yet, in our lust for the dazzling, we miss something crucial: God can be in whatever God chooses to be in.

It’s simply foolishness to post, tweet, or speak that God’s will was in Trump’s win.

Victory, as Elijah reminds us, doesn’t look like we think it does. We are a people accustomed to end zone dances, but God lacks our need to spike the ball. God was victorious in the fire at the showdown against the prophets of BAAL.

God was equally victorious in the sorrow and silence of Elijah on Mt. Horeb. If we interpret God’s victoriousness based on our limited life experiences we will always identify God in the wrong places, like we have done, overwhelmingly, in politics.

Perhaps what we all need right now are thin silences. Maybe we need to lean in and press deeply to intonations we’re unaccustomed to. It could be that an unpopular President and the disruption many feel and fear are God’s opportunities to listen for new instructions and forge new pathways.

Maybe the thin silences can call us to a new way of being the creative, loving, and transformative force the church has always called disciples to be.

Perhaps for those of us feeling elated, thin silences reveal to us the cursory and fading nature of displays of power.

For those feeling despair, thin silences call us to remember God can show up in ways we’d never expect.

This post originally appeared last week at www.thepalmerperspective.com

In our last post (Are We Morally Obligated) on Tim Keller’s recent book Making Sense of God: An Invitation to the Skeptical we dug into the issue of the foundation for morals … with a rather vigorous discussion in the comments. In the next chapter Keller digs in deeper, and suggests an important role for religious belief in general and Christian faith in particular.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Most Americans will recognize this paragraph.  It comes from the Declaration of Independence passed by the 2nd Continental Congress on July 4th 1776.  Today many Westerners would strike the phrase “by their Creator” and simply affirm that all humans are endowed with certain unalienable Rights.  The UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights merely lists these as self-evident (Keller cites this document) .  The rights and freedoms described are given a practical motivation – to preserve the peace for the good of all – but other than this they simply “are” inalienable rights. Many of them are distinctly Modern and Western in focus. “Article 18: Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.“

Many countries and peoples around the world see this document as a form of Western Imperialism. Why should people have a right to change religion? Why should involuntary marriage be prohibited? Why isn’t torture a valid way to get information? (oh wait, maybe even some Westerners have problems with this one!) and we could go on. The more fundamental question is clear … why do humans have any “rights” at all?  Capacity arguments are often advanced, but these leave the very young, the very old, and the disabled at risk. Why do these people have rights?

Keller discusses two case studies for the foundation of human rights.  The first, advanced by Harvard Philosopher John Rawls is based on the notion that  rights should be “status blind.” That is, a rational society will base inalienable human rights on the best outcome for everyone no matter their station in life. If we had to set up a society and then were placed into it by a random luck of the draw, how would we arrange the structure of the society?  Keller, citing other writers, including a Harvard political philosopher, suggests that this is insufficient because all notions of justice involve judgments of one sort or another.  The argument that human rights are “rational” and trampling on rights “irrational” simply doesn’t work.

The second case study comes from Martin Luther King Jr.  His argument for desegregation wasn’t based on a rational argument. It was based on a deeply moral argument.  Human rights are only inalienable if they are real – endowed in the nature of the cosmos – rather than merely rational.

Drawing on the biblical teaching that every human being is created in the image of God (Genesis 1:26-27), he wrote that God’s image in us gives every person

a uniqueness, it gives him worth, it gives him a dignity. And we must never forget this as a nation: there are no gradations in the image of God. Every man from a treble white to a bass black is significant on God’s keyboard, precisely because every man is made in the image of God.

The Bible gives us the strongest possible foundation for the idea of inalienable human rights. Your neighbor comes into your presence with an inherent worth, an inviolable dignity (Genesis 9:6). Martin Luther King Jr. did not ask white America to make African Americans free to pursue rational self-interest, their own individual definitions of a fulfilling life. Rather, quoting Amos 5:24, he called them to not be satisfied until “justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.” The secular approach of Rawls pales before the Christian foundation for justice used by Dr. King. (p. 199)

After exploring modern and post-modern foundations (or lack thereof) for justice and human rights, Keller concludes that “without any belief in objective moral facts, there is no way to build a program of justice.” (p. 204)

A nonoppressive absolute. This isn’t to deny that religion has been used as a bludgeon of oppression rather than a tool for justice. Certainly the Christian church has used “biblical truth” to marginalize and demonize peoples. Other religions have been equally oppressive at times. Keller finds that Christian faith does offer a way forward.   He uses Richard Bauckham’s “illuminating essay” Reading Scripture as a Coherent Story in The Art of Reading Scripture to frame the discussion.

First, the Christian story does not give us “all the answers.”  Keller turns to one of my favorite books as illustration. “Job’s friends smugly think they have the ways of God figured out … However, at the end of the book of Job, they are condemned by God. God alone has the full perspective on things. We only see in part.” (p. 205) We should retain humility and realize that we do not have all the answers.

Second, the Christian story does give hope for justice, but also makes it clear that we do not establish this justice. “For a Christian, then, redemption cannot be a utopian hope in inevitable progress or in human ingenuity, but only in God, and in God’s time.” (p. 206)

Finally (and most importantly), the Christian story is a story of reversal. God repeatedly chooses the lesser person, second or later sons: Isaac not Ishmael, Jacob not Esau, Joseph and Judah not Reuben, Moses not Aaron, David not the older sons of Jesse, and so forth. The OT affirms justice for the poor, widow, the orphan, and the foreigner among you. The ultimate reversal is a Messiah who is crucified by the power structure for the sins of the people.

The Bible is not primarily a series of stories with a moral, even though there are plenty of practical lessons. Rather, it is a record of God’s intervening grace in the lives of people who don’t seek it, who don’t deserve it, who continually resist it, and who don’t appreciate it after they have been saved by it. (p. 209)

Keller may go overboard a little here, but there is no doubt that the Bible is the story of the work of God with his fully human people. The heroes in general have obvious feet of clay. David, a man after God’s own heart, failed miserably on occasion.

Justice for the poor and oppressed is at the heart of God’s story and the Christian story.  Keller is clear here.

Remarkably, then,  we can conclude that a professed Christian who is not committed to a life of generosity and justice toward the poor and marginalized is, at the very least, a living contradiction of the Gospel of Christ, the Son of God, whose Father “executes justice for the oppressed, who gives food to the hungry” (Psalm 146:7). Bauckham says, “Distortion of the biblical story into an ideology of oppression has to suppress the biblical meaning of the cross.” All of these characteristics of the biblical story make it “uniquely unsuited to being an instrument of oppression.” (p. 210)

If there is no Creator, if we are not all made in the image of God, then perhaps so-called “universal human rights” are simply another form of Western cultural imperialism.  Good for us, but no ground for imposing them on other societies in other situations.  But perhaps the framers of the Declaration of Independence (even those who were rather liberal in their belief) and Martin Luther King Jr. have it right. Inalienable human rights are universal because we are all, male, female, young, old, of all nations and races, created in the image of God.  Of course, even those who signed the declaration got it wrong in places … as many were slave holders and/or oppressive of other creeds or races. Nonetheless – the foundation is there.

What is the foundation for human rights?

Is a violation of human rights immoral or irrational?

Why are they universal (or aren’t they)?

If you wish to contact me directly you may do so at rjs4mail[at]att.net

If interested you can subscribe to a full text feed of my posts at Musings on Science and Theology.

I am doing a series on the blog about why I became Anglican, and last week I looked at the church calendar, and this week I want to dip into “worship,” by which I mean Sunday morning worship service. (I do not equate worship with Sunday morning worship, but Sunday morning worship is worship.)

Image used with permission.

If the church calendar shapes the church themes, the church liturgy for Holy Eucharist is shaped by a customary set of elements of the worship service. Each of these is needed, each is integrated into the other, and each is formative for Christian discipleship. To repeat from last week’s blog post, I don’t idealize or idolize Anglican worship, but I believe it is a mature, wise, and deeply theological tradition at work.

I have taken for my text this morning last week’s worship guide, or bulletin. Here are the elements of our worship and eucharist celebration: processional hymn, a call to worship, the Word of God, the proclamation of the Word of God, the Nicene Creed, prayers of the people, confession of sin, passing the peace, and then we move into Eucharist beginning with an offering, doxology, the great thanksgiving, breaking of bread, a prayer of thanksgiving and we close with a blessing.

Rather than break each of these down into bits and expositions, I want to make general observations.

First, the processional hymn tends to be more stately as our pastor/priest and others who will assist process in with the cross. This draws our attention to Christ our Savior and the processional creates solemnity. This is followed by a wonderful prayer connected to the call to worship, a prayer that puts us in the proper frame of mind in worship. This is then followed by three songs.

Celebrant: Blessed be God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

People: And blessed be his kingdom, now and for ever. Amen.

All: Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires known, and from you no secrets are hid: Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you, and worthily magnify your holy Name; through Christ our Lord. Amen.

We do a call and response here that begins with “The Lord be with you… And also with you” and the celebrant prays the weekly collect (or set prayer for that Sunday in the year). Those who pray are free to add words of their own.

Second, we read from four texts of Scripture assigned in the Revised Common Lectionary. Whatever failings there are in the texts that appear in the lectionary are more than made up for in this way: over a three year cycle our church hears selections from the whole Bible and, perhaps most importantly, the preacher does not (usually) choose the text. The text is chosen in accordance with the calendar so the life of Christ becomes central to the lectionary’s texts and the preacher’s sermon. The four texts come from the Old Testament, the Psalms, an Epistle, and The Gospel (a Gospel text). We respond to each reading: The Word of the Lord/Thanks be to God. For the Gospel the reader says “The Gospel of the Lord/Praise to you, Lord Christ.”

Third. After the Word of the Lord is read we have a sermon/Proclamation that draws on these texts, or one of them. Because the Sunday morning service has all the elements mentioned above, the focal point of the service is not the sermon. Our church seeks to keep the sermon at about 25 minutes. But we don’t go to church to hear the sermon; we go to church to worship and the sermon is part of our worship. When the sermon is done we recite the Nicene Creed — to remind us what we as classical Christians believe. At times Jay Greener reminds us that it also serves to correct anything said in the sermon that needs to be corrected.

Fourth, the prayers of the people come next. This is a set of prayers that takes the congregation through prayers for the world, for evangelism, for the nation and its leaders, for churches around the world, for the sick and suffering, and we close with a thanksgiving. The congregation utters public sentence prayers to fill in the details of each topic of prayer. I like this element of our church service: we are a people of prayer.

Fifth, in response to the sermon and the creed and prayers, we confess our sin in a customary prayer, and what can be more important prior to the Eucharist than confession of sin?

Most merciful God, we confess that we have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done, and by what we have left undone. We have not loved you with our whole heart; we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. We are truly sorry and we humbly repent. For the sake of your Son Jesus Christ, have mercy on us and forgive us; that we may delight in your will, and walk in your ways, to the glory of your Name. Amen.

It is at this point that some become uncomfortable because some see the absolution of sin by the priest to be some kind of priestly forgiveness rather than the pronouncement of forgiveness solely on the basis of what Christ has done for us and into which we will enter in our Eucharist celebration. This is what the celebrant is taught to say, and I love to hear these words as they assure us of God’s grace and forgiveness:

Almighty God have mercy on you, forgive you all your sins through our Lord Jesus Christ, strengthen you in all goodness, and by the power of the Holy Spirit keep
you in eternal life. Amen.

We then pass the peace, and this is the perfect time: we have heard the Word and we have confessed our faith and we have confessed our sin and now we are in the condition of being able to pass the peace of God through forgiveness to one another.

Sixth, since I will devote a blog post to the Eucharist, I will simply say that at this time we celebrate the Eucharist.

Finally, when the Eucharist is celebrated and we have all returned to our seats, we hear a Prayer of Thanksgiving, another prayer of deep theology and joy:

Eternal God, heavenly Father, you have graciously accepted us as living members of your Son our Savior Jesus Christ, and you have fed us with spiritual food in the Sacrament of his Body and Blood. Send us now into the world in peace, and grant us strength and courage to love and serve you with gladness and singleness of heart; through Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Blessing follows, and we take our Blessing from a liturgy in Africa. Then our Deacon Amanda says “Go forth into the world, rejoicing in the power of the Spirit” and we say back to her “Thanks be to God.”

We gather, not to hear something new, but to be reminded afresh of something old.

By David Fitch, professor at Northern Seminary

JAK Smith’s ‘You are What You Love’ (Part 1): Challenging the Everyday Assumptions About Desire

James K. A. Smith published a fabulous book earlier this year titled You Are What You Love. It is fabulous because he summarizes the important stuff in the first 2 books of his trilogy (Desiring the Kingdom and Imagining the Kingdom) in a way that is accessible, inviting and interesting. It exposits the challenges of the Christian life for the complexities of modern life. It maps a way for Christians to live in the world in a way the average college student can understand. It is a stunningly good piece of writing.

The book begins with the question “What do you want?” Smith says this is the first, last and most fundamental question of Christian discipleship.” (1) (I find it interesting that Slavoj Zizek basically says the same thing from quite a different angle via his famous ‘Che vuoi?’). What do you desire? Smith then unwinds the complex nature of the shaping of desire in the human being. How is desire shaped and how does it acquire an orientation? He assumes that transformation of human desire is possible but argues profusely that such transformation cannot come from getting our thinking right first and then our thinking telling our bodies to do what is right. There is no such thing as thinking our way to holiness.

Such an examination of desire, and its formation, is much needed for our times. The accounts of desire that drive our culture usually play on desire as purely biological and/or self-expressive. It’s part of the crass Romanticism that still dominates US culture. This goes on despite an abundant literature on the way the two-fold machine of American economy and culture produce images, roles, sexualization, that shapes desire in its subjects. This literature goes largely unnoticed in America’s captivity to romanticist ways of understanding the self. And so, desire and its formation goes largely unexamined in the American psyche but also, I would argue, in the protestant church. Smith’s book serves as a wakeup call to these kinds of churches. Through Smith, the fundamentalist learns you cannot didact your way to right desire and the liberal Romanticist learns that simply encouraging your self to follow your own innate desires without examination will lead you to become subjects of the “desire empire” of the United States of America.

To lead us into this discussion, Smith plays off Augustine’s opening line of his Confessions: “You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.” Smith asks us to take note of how Augustine makes a design claim: we are made by and for the creator. Augustine then locates the center of our human orientation in the heart, i.e. our longings and desires for the creator. According to Augustine, we will only find “rest’ when our loves are rightly ordered to God and His purposes. This then gets to the heart of Smith’s message of the book: “Discipleship is a rehabilitation of your loves.” (19) Discipleship is a rehabilitation of our desires.

We Become What We Worship

The core of this discipleship is summarized rather boldly in the sentence “we become what we worship because we worship what we love” (23). Discipleship, for Smith, is the participation in habit forming practices that shape our imaginations (and thereby our desires) towards God and His purposes in the world.

To see why this makes sense you have to gain an understanding of how the human being is shaped into desire. Smith recounts the common experience of driving home while thinking or obsessing about something else only to find that we have arrived at our destination and not remembering anything about the drive that got us here. Similar to that episode, humans do most of the work of living our lives subconsciously. We don’t think and then do. Most of our lives are lived doing what we’ve already gotten used to doing. This is vintage Smith, explaining the idea of his so-well-described homo liturgicus in his Desiring the Kingdom. Humans are liturgical animals. We are formed as bodily creatures by habits and the things we learn and do everyday that become part of who we are.

The problem for us Christians is that there are rival liturgies everywhere training us to desire and do things out of habit (23). Jamie describes for us the shopping mall as a liturgy (just as he does in Desiring the Kingdom) reminding us how the liturgies of consumerism, shopping, advertising shape us into ways that work against/bend our desires in other directions from our love as ordered towards God. He uses the ‘room scene’ in the movie Stalker to cast doubt on the idea that we really do know what we want and where those wants came from (28-29). He uses another classic piece of cinema (American Beauty) to illustrate how ‘following our passions,’ in the common everyday (mega church) lingo of our day, can lead to catastrophic fantasies exposed as lies and misperceptions (32). He does all this to deconstruct the assumption that we really do know where our desires come from and that they are natural to us. Instead, he argues that Christian discipleship requires us to be attentive to the formations we are immersed in (38). This is in some ways such a simple message. But it is delivered in profound ways by Smith that demand we pay attention.

All this leads to Jamie’s call for Christians to take a “liturgical audit” of our lives (53). Let us examine our lives for the formations that are shaping daily our desires, our emotions, our feelings, our identities, indeed everything we live by and accept as given. I cannot think of a book that does this work better and more accessibly than this one.

Where Did This Romanticism Come From?

The world seems to agree with Jamie Smith when he says “we are what we desire” (or what we love). There is a wide cultural ethos in America that affirms that we come by our desires naturally and our desires are who we really are. Follow your passions!! Remove the rules, the institutional restrictions, people telling us what to do, puritanism and old fashioned Christian Victorian sexuality and our desires can be freed to be fruitful and flourish and fulfilled. It is a strangely American mix of pure Romanticism with a touch of modern scientism (that sees the world as determined by biological drives to be fulfilled) that forms the backdrop behind modern American understanding of self (I do not see Europe as romanticist in this way as U.S.).

Jamie Smith’s book deconstructs much (but not all) of this. He helps us see that all is not what it seems. Appealing to David Foster Wallace’s famous Kenyon College commencement speech, Jamie Smith helps us see the water we are swimming in and that we are not aware of because, of course, we are breathing it in everyday.

But here’s where I wish for more. How did this happen? How did this version of American self expressivism become so powerful in N America that it is the air we breathe? It seems, in order to lead the average millennial (and boomer) to take a closer look at their desire formation, we need to see where their current construct comes from and why does it fails so bad to shape a robust life? We need to reveal how the current society’s culture leaves us adrift when it comes to the formation of desire. We need churches that disrupt our culture’s formations in a way that open space to be shaped into the Kingdom. Yet I find compelling the question: why is this naïve romanticism so resident in the incubators of mainstream evangelical church? I don’t expect Jamie to do this work in this book. But I see this issue as the source of so many struggles in our churches and their inability to engage with culture constructively. I believe we need a resource to unwind the modern sources of the self (in Charles Taylor’s terms) in a way that helps church leaders disrupt the overwhelming powerful formations we are all caught up in America. Smith seems well armed to do such a project, but perhaps this must wait for another time.

What do you think? How did American self expressivism become so powerful in N American protestant churches? How has this weakened or helped the protestant church?

Next post: Smith’s discipleship- A closer look.

I begin a series that will seek to shed some light on why I am Anglican.

Image used with permission.

More than twice a month I am asked “Why did you become Anglican?” The answer to the question is complex, and I want to answer that question in part by saying up front that I don’t believe in ecclesiastical superiority. I don’t think any single church or denomination is the one true church. I’ve heard more than a whiff of this from folks as varied as Plymouth Brethren, Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic (in spades, frankly), Baptist, Evangelical Covenant, and United Methodists. So in this series I’m not saying that the Anglican Communion is the one-true-and-always-faithful church in the world.

I became Anglican because of the church calendar. (Not only because of the church calendar but it was part of the process.) Non-calendar Christians usually observe Christmas (not always Advent, though it is growing) and Good Friday and Easter. That’s about it. The rest of the year is up to the preacher, the pastor, the elders and deacons, and up to the congregation. Many pastors wisely organize their churches to be formed over time through a series of themes — or books of the Bible (Martyn Lloyd-Jones and John Piper preached through Romans for almost two decades) — but none can improve on the centrality of Christ in the church calendar.

I begin with the church calendar, beautifully displayed in the graph at the top of this post. I love the church calendar, and here are my reasons:

1. God gave the children of Israel and calendar and a series of feasts that memorialized annually the story of God with Israel and the history of God’s redemptive work among Israel. Thus, read Leviticus 23.
2. A calendar like this served to divide the year into its parts on the basis of God’s redemption. Agriculture is folded into this redemptive calendar.
3. The calendar reminded Israel of what God had done and became the platform of hope for what God will do.
4. The spirituality of attentive Israelites was formed then on the basis of the major redemptive acts of God in Israel’s history.
5. Israelites knew their history and their story on the basis of this calendar

The church calendar is the Christianizing (to use a bad word) of Israel’s calendar. It reshaped that calendar around the central event of the Christian faith: the redemption in Christ.

From Robert Webber (see below).

Hence, the church calendar does what Israel’s calendar did for the Christians:

1. The church’s leaders provide a calendar commemorating the redemptive events in the life of Christ and these events memorialize what God has done in Christ.
2. A calendar like this serves to divide the year into its parts on the basis of God’s redemption in Christ.
3. The calendar reminds the church every year what God has done in Christ and becomes the platform of hope for what God will do in Christ.
4. The spirituality of attentive Christians is formed then on the basis of the major redemptive acts of God in the story of Jesus.
5. Christians can learn their history and their story on the basis of this calendar

Look at that calendar and you will notice how Christo-centric it is. The church’s calendar centers itself around Jesus himself and what God has done in Jesus. There is no better way to organize our life.

The church calendar itself does nothing for us apart from grace, apart from the work of the Spirit, and apart from our willing faithfulness to be open to what God does for us in Christ. But, with that work of grace and our openness the calendar can become a means of our formation.

The church calendar, especially in Ordinary Time, is the time where the most of adaptation occurs. Pastors may simply choose to preach through a book or a theme on the basis of discerning a church’s needs. Adaptation to the moment has always been a factor in church calendars, but over time the church calendar is a wise guide to the central themes of our faith and formation.

For a very good book on the church calendar, I recommend Robert Webber, Ancient-Future Time: Forming Spirituality through the Christian Year.

Are there any moral obligations on us as humans?

Is terrorism wrong?

Is incest wrong?

How old is the age of consent? (Is this concept meaningful?)

Are children (or wives) property?

Is gender equality always good?

Is racism always wrong?

Is infanticide wrong?

Why shouldn’t the powerful man demand sexual satisfaction?

The list could go on. The answer to each of these questions requires some kind of moral judgment or standard. Everyone has a context and standard for their judgment. Tim Keller digs into “the problem of morals” in the next chapter of his book Making Sense of God.

First, it is important to make a point that Keller generally makes when discussing this topic. Moral behavior (in the context of a culture) is not confined to religious or irreligious people. Atheism does not lead to moral bankruptcy or religious conviction to moral stability. “Anyone who tries to claim that atheists are either individually or as a whole less moral than others will run up against common sense and experience.” (p. 177) The key question isn’t “what makes people moral?” but “what is the foundation for our moral judgments?” Any argument that atheism leads to evil or religion leads to good (or vice versa) will run into some real historical complications. To begin with, both atheism and theism have been used to justify horrendous (in my judgment) evil.

The question that Keller addresses (and one that he has found central to many discussions with skeptics) centers on our foundation for moral judgments. Do we have a moral duty to some absolute definition of right and wrong, good and evil? Is there any reason to view morality as anything more than a (temporary) culturally defined set of functional values?  Our modern Western society places a significant value on the worth of every human life. If this defines morality, “it could be claimed that secular Western society is one of the most moral cultures in history.” (p. 179)  Keller suggests that many people have an intrinsic certainty that this kind of humanism is simply “right,” but no foundation for this certainty, no rational reason.

In accord with secular materialism, two reasons are commonly advanced for our moral convictions.

Evolution. Our moral convictions could be the result of natural selection enhancing the survival probability for our species. This has led to a number of discussions as to how altruism and concern for others (not only family, tribe, or race) could enhance survival probabilities. Although some (like one of the authors quoted by Keller) dismiss the evolution argument on this ground, I believe that this is premature. We really don’t understand the process well enough to completely determine why a specific complex social behavior such as altruism enhances or diminishes survivability.  These questions are an active focus of research across a number of different disciplines.

However, even if our moral convictions are the result of evolutionary pressure, this doesn’t make them objectively right or wrong. At best they were useful. Note, I didn’t say “are” useful. They brought us to the present, but they may be a hindrance rather than an asset moving forward. Keller makes this point – “Does the fact that this behavior was practical in the past constitute a moral obligation (not just a feeling) that we must do it now? Of course not.” (p. 182)   We can also point to behaviors found in other species, especially other primates. Geladas, for example, (see here, image source) live in units with a single dominant male. When a new male takes over all the infants are killed and the majority of pregnant females abort within weeks. Perhaps such strategies would enhance the survival of future human populations. Who is to say?

Social Constructionism. Moral values arise and are ingrained in a social community. We hold to certain values because our society has educated us in this value system. Values survive and evolve because they “work” in one form or another. But this, like biological evolution, doesn’t lead to moral absolutes or moral obligations. Our moral convictions are culturally relative. There is no ground to judge one system as superior to another. The role of women in Saudi Arabian and American society are both valid functional cultural systems.

Nonetheless, moral conviction remains strong. Keller alludes to an example from Philip Gorski of “academic social scientists, thoroughgoing relativists in their theory who nonetheless get moralistic and furious over “data fudging” by other scientists. … they insist that other people’s values are socially constructed but then they unavoidably act as if their own values are not.” (p. 183)

Purpose. Later in the chapter Keller introduces another idea. Moral obligation can only arise when there is a purpose or end toward which we are moving. The denial of purpose in secular Western society leads to an denial of moral obligation or absolutes. This brings me back to the example above. Scientists (including social scientists) become “moralistic and furious over “data fudging” by other scientists” because there is a purpose to the discipline – an end goal. The goal is to uncover truth about the world and data fudging undermines and sidetracks this purpose. It is intrinsically wrong because it defeats the agreed upon purpose. While the purpose of an object (like a watch or a house) can be defined in a straightforward manner, and the purpose of an academic discipline or pursuit can likewise be defined, many secular Western society will deny that humans have any identifiable purpose or goal.  This causes the problem.

All judgments that something or someone is good or bad do so based on an awareness of purpose. If you know what that purpose is, then your moral evaluation of something can be a factual statement, a truth that exists apart from your personal likes and dislikes. … If, however, you have no idea of the purpose of an object, then any description of it as “good” or “bad” is wholly subjective, completely based on inner preferences.

How, then, can we tell if a human being is good or bad? Only if we know our purpose, what human life is for. If you don’t know the answer to that, then you can never determine “good” or “bad” human behavior. If, as in the secular view, we have not been made for a purpose, then it is futile to even try to talk about moral good and evil. (p. 186-187)

Responsibility. Responsibility can provide a purpose that leads to moral obligation. A responsibility to care for the earth, to care for each other, to care for future generations, all of these lead to moral obligation. Responsibility implies relationship – we are responsible to others (including animal life), but not to objects. Keller suggests that this idea of responsibility can lead us to God, responding to a skeptic “I’d like you to consider that your moral intuition is sensing a relationship and responsibility to your Maker.”

The moral argument for God is not watertight. Moral obligations can be denied, and it is not clear that moral obligations require the existence of God. However, the conviction of moral obligation should lead us to consider the possibility that there is someone to whom we are responsible.

The next chapter will dig a bit deeper.

Are we morally obligated?

Is there an absolute right and wrong?

What is the purpose of humankind?

If you wish to contact me directly you may do so at rjs4mail[at]att.net

If interested you can subscribe to a full text feed of my posts at Musings on Science and Theology.

Recently Tim Keller was interviewed by Nicholas Kristof about Christian orthodoxy and Christmas. The oh-so-vigilant-and-sensitive crowd immediately set off a chorus of “yougottabekiddin’me” posts and ballyhoo articles, some of which came from the chorus of the Right and others from the Left. There was some crowdpounding and some lining up of “Who is on the Lord’s side?”

If Keller said Jesus was raised from the dead, some would say that’s insensitive and others would say “but he forgot ‘for our justification’!” Let ’em yap. Perhaps the yappers could learn something from Keller.

Here are some questions (italics) and some Keller responses:

But the earliest accounts of Jesus’ life, like the Gospel of Mark and Paul’s letter to the Galatians, don’t even mention the virgin birth. And the reference in Luke to the virgin birth was written in a different kind of Greek and was probably added later. So isn’t there room for skepticism?

If it were simply a legend that could be dismissed, it would damage the fabric of the Christian message. Luc Ferry, looking at the Gospel of John’s account of Jesus’ birth into the world, said this taught that the power behind the whole universe was not just an impersonal cosmic principle but a real person who could be known and loved. That scandalized Greek and Roman philosophers but was revolutionary in the history of human thought. It led to a new emphasis on the importance of the individual person and on love as the supreme virtue, because Jesus was not just a great human being, but the pre-existing Creator God, miraculously come to earth as a human being.

And the Resurrection? Must it really be taken literally?

Jesus’ teaching was not the main point of his mission. He came to save people through his death for sin and his resurrection. So his important ethical teaching only makes sense when you don’t separate it from these historic doctrines. If the Resurrection is a genuine reality, it explains why Jesus can say that the poor and the meek will “inherit the earth” (Matthew 5:5). St. Paul said without a real resurrection, Christianity is useless (1 Corinthians 15:19).