Randal Rauser's Blog, page 103

Christian Apologetics, Quality Control, and the Credibility Problem

My relationship with the wider Christian apologetics community can best be described as awkward. A big reason for that is because I aim to spend as much time critiquing bad Christian apologetics as seeking to do good Christian apologetics. The reason for this division of labor is simple: I believe that credibility with one’s target audience is arguably the single greatest commodity the apologist has. And bad apologetics eats through credibility like alien acid-blood through Ripley’s body armor.

As a case in point, consider a recent article featured at major Christian apologetics website crossexamined.org titled “4 Major Reasons Why People Become Atheists.” The article begins with a shameless proof-texting of Psalm 14:1:

“The psalmist David wrote, ‘The fool says in his heart, “There’s no God.” They are corrupt; they do vile deeds. There is no one who does good’ (Psalm 14:1, CSB) The psalmist claims that it is irrational for one to deny God’s existence whether it be by atheism or by alternative worldviews. Atheism has become popular in recent years. But, the pressing question is, why?”

As I point out in Is the Atheist My Neighbor?, this kind of proof-texting is a gross abuse of the biblical passage. Unfortunately, things get worse from there. The author, “Brian Chilton,” (who is currently enrolled in a PhD program in theology and apologetics at Liberty University) then makes the following claim: “Normally, people become atheists for four major reasons.” And the rest of the article is devoted to summarizing those four reasons:

The person desires moral independence.
The person holds emotive reasoning.
The person desires global unity.
The person desires intellectual neutrality.

I’m not going to bother analyzing any of these reasons. Instead, I’ll focus on Chilton’s claim that people “normally” become atheists for these reasons. While the range of normality is inevitably vague, it is safe to assume that for a state of affairs to be considered normal would require that this particular state of affairs obtain in the significant majority of relevant cases (e.g. perhaps north of 70%). By that reasonable interpretation, Chilton is claiming that in the significant majority of cases, people become atheists for one (or more) of these four reasons.

Okay, so here’s the obvious question: what evidence does Chilton provide that it’s so? Incredibly, he provides a single data point, i.e. his personal experience. He writes:

“I was influenced by some of these reasons to become a theist-leaning-agnostic for a period of time.”

Of course, a “theist-leaning-agnostic” is not the same thing as an atheist. Setting that point aside, Chilton would seem to be reasoning like this:

(1) I became a “theist-leaning-agnostic’ for a subset of reasons drawn from 1-4.

(2) Therefore, the significant majority of atheists become atheists because of one or more of the reasons in 1-4.

I’m not claiming Chilton literally reasons in that fashion. The point, rather, is that he provides us with literally nothing in terms of supporting evidence for his claim. More specifically, he fails to provide any relevant social scientific data (e.g. sociological surveys of atheists) which would support that claim. Presumably, his claim is based on nothing more than his intuition that these four reasons are widespread.

I know many atheists, and I can say emphatically that I rarely encounter individuals whose atheism can plausibly be attributed to those four factors. On the contrary, in my experience, some of the main reasons people become atheists include the problem of evil and suffering (often as personally experienced) along with the failure of Christians to act in a Christlike manner. To take an extreme case that I have talked about on several occasions, Bob Jyono was once a faithful Catholic but he became an angry atheist after discovering that his daughter was repeatedly raped by the family priest. Seriously, can you blame him?!

Imagine if the shoe were on the other foot so that an atheist wrote an article titled “4 Major Reasons Why People Become Christians.” And in this case, the article claimed that people “normally” become Christians due to one or more of the following reasons:

They fear death.
They hate science.
They want a god to damn their enemies to hell.
They like feeling superior to other people.

And then imagine that the only reason the atheist author of this article provided to support his claim is his own recollection that he once considered that Christianity might be true due to some of the reasons listed in 1-4.

You can bet that Chilton and his friends at crossexamined.org would be among the first to criticize this absurd bit of reasoning. And of course, they’d be right to do so. The same point applies to Chilton and his reasoning.

This fact leads me to ask: who vets the material that gets posted on a website like crossexamined.org? After all, this isn’t some mom and pop apologetics outfit: Crossexamined.org is among the main Christian apologetic websites; it is run by leading Christian apologist Frank Turek and it features many other leading Christian apologists like Bill Craig and Sean McDowell.

To sum up, articles like  “4 Major Reasons Why People Become Atheists” undermine the credibility of crossexamined.org and Christian apologetics more generally. That’s why it behooves all Christian apologists to up their game, apply consistent standards, and work to earn and then retain their intellectual credibility.

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N.T. Wright and the Universalist Strawman

Christian universalism is the doctrine that eventually all creatures will be reconciled to God and each other through the reconciling work of Jesus Christ. While universalism has been a minority report throughout the history of the church it has often been misunderstood and even caricatured by non-universalist Christians. This trend continues unabated into our own day, and not only among “fundamentalist preachers” but also among progressive, respected Chrsitian academics. As a case in point, consider this extended excerpt from N.T. Wright’s popular book Surprised by Hope:

“All this should warn us against the cheerful double dogmatism that has bedeviled discussion of these topics [of posthumous judgment] – the dogmatism, that is, both of the person who knows exactly who is and who isn’t ‘going to hell’ and of the universalist who is absolutely certain that there is no such place or that if there is it will, at the last, be empty.

                “The latter kind of universalism was the normal working assumption of many theologians and clergy in the liberal heyday of the 1960s and 1970s and has remained a fixed point, almost in some cases the fixed point, for many whose thinking was shaped by the period. I well remember, in one of my first tutorials at Oxford, being told by my tutor that he and many others believed that ‘though hell may exist, it will at the last be untenanted’—in other words, that hell would turn out to be purgatory after all, an unpleasant preparation for eventual bliss. The merest mention of final judgment has been squeezed out of Christian consciousness in several denominations, including my own, by the cavalier omission of verses from public biblical reading. Whenever you see, in an official lectionary, the command to omit two or three verses, you can normally be sure that they contain words of judgment. Unless, of course, they are about sex.

“But the worm has turned, theologically speaking, in the last twenty years. The failure of liberal optimism in Western society has been matched by the obvious failure of the equivalent liberal optimism in theology, driven as it was by the spirit of the age. It is a shame to have to rerun the story of nearly a hundred year ago, with Karl Barth furiously rejecting the liberal theology that had created the climate for the First World War, but it does sometimes feel as though that is what has happened. Faced with the Balkans, Rwanda, the Middle East, Darfur, and all kinds of other horrors that enlightened Western thought can neither explain nor alleviate, opinion in many quarters has, rightly in my view, come to see that there must be such a thing as judgment.” (177-78)

“But judgment is necessary—unless we were to conclude, absurdly, that nothing much is wrong or, blasphemously, that God doesn’t mind very much. In the justly famous phrase of Miroslav Volf, there must be ‘exclusion’ before there can be ‘embrace’: evil must be identified, named, and dealt with before there can be reconciliation.” (179)

Note first that Wright associates universalism with a naive “liberal optimism” which allegedly fails to appreciate the depth of the “horrors” that befall our world. The picture looks rather like what Christian Smith has called “moralistic therapeutic deism” according to which God is concerned only with individual human happiness and self-actualization, that he makes no demands of repentance, and that he shields us from all consequence or punishment.

There may be universalists that fit that description just like there are traditionalists who fit this description:

confidently counts himself among the righteous and relishes the agonies to which the reprobate are soon to be subjected in God’s fiery dungeon of horrors for eternity. 

But the fact that some traditionalists are nasty, self-righteous cruel misanthropes is not in itself a reason to reject eternal conscious torment. By the same token, the fact that some universalists are moralistic therapeutic deists is not itself a reason to reject universalism.

The fact is that no Christian universalism worthy of the name dispenses with judgment. Nor does it downplay the evils, horrors, and suffering of the world. On the contrary, what it does is posit that posthumous judgment has a restorative purpose

Rather than diminish the evil of the world, it magnifies hope that the same God who created the world can bring about a completed new creation free of any pockets of tortured resistance;

Rather than downplay pain and suffering, it insists that God is so infinitely resourceful that he can and will eventually bring healing to even the deepest wounds and bridge the deepest divides;

Rather than granting irrational, stubborn human wills the prerogative to conclude the final chapter, it hands God the quill so he may write “all will be well.”

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I Can Only Imagine: A Review

Yesterday a friend invited me to the new Christian movie I Can Only Imagine. (He even paid for my ticket because he’s generous and I’m cheap!)

The film tells the story of Bart Millard, how he grew up in an abusive home and went on to co-found the band MercyMe and then write the mega-hit song “I can only imagine,” a tribute to his deceased father which envisions meeting Jesus in heaven.

If you go to Rotten Tomatoes you will find that critics generally dislike the film (a 58% rating). But it’s worth noting that this is far from a terrible RT score (A Wrinkle in Time has a significantly worse 40% rating while the new film 7 days in Entebbe has a dismal 22%).

Moreover, the audiences enjoy it (96% liked it). So if you like Christian movies, and if you like the song “I can only imagine” (a song which, I confess, I have never liked), and if you are a MercyMe fan (I admit that I only know the one song), then you too will probably like this film.

While I found the film mediocre (more on that anon), I wasn’t bored. The casting was generally good: J. Michael Finley, the lead actor who played  Bart had the look and some of the charm of Seth Rogen; Dennis Quaid did a fine job as Bart’s drunk father; and the actress Nicole DuPort did a great job channeling Amy Grant.

Nonetheless, my enjoyment was hampered by period and chronology errors, clichés, and my own cynicism toward Christian movies.

Period and Chronology Errors

First, the movie has several irritating period errors. It opens in late autumn 1985 with Bart as a young boy. He acquires a cassette of U2’s The Joshua Tree and he begins listening to it. At least one of the songs is even played in the film. In other words, the album plays a significant role. The only problem is that it wasn’t released until March 1987. I know that and I’m not even a U2 fan.

That isn’t the only 1985 gaffe. In another scene, Bart passes the local movie theater and it lists two films currently showing: Goonies and Jaws 3-D. But Goonies came out in June of 1985: presumably it doesn’t take five months for new films to show in rural Texas. Even worse, Jaws 3-D played in the theaters two years earlier in 1983.

My next set of examples for period errors deal with the time of year. Still in late autumn, Bart’s mom decides to send him to a one-week church camp. But there’s no explanation as to why a one-week church camp is being run around mid-late November. What one-week church camp runs around the time of Thanksgiving?!

Obviously, it would make way more sense to have the camp occur during the summer. So why don’t the filmmakers do that? One possible explanation is that the production budget limited them to filming the Texas scenes all in around November. This is seemingly confirmed in a later scene when Bart graduates high school and then immediately moves away. While most high school graduations occur in late May-late June, when Bart leaves town right after graduation it is still late autumn. (Not surprisingly, when Bart returns to town years later it is once again in late autumn.)

Clichés

I Can Only Imagine is rife with clichés. Let’s start with the above-mentioned scene of Bart leaving town after graduation. Bart rides off on a motorbike while his girlfriend stands forlornly by. The only bigger cliché would be if he had got on a Greyhound bus. Years later, when Bart is out east touring with MercyMe, he suddenly decides that he needs to return home. The next scene shows him riding that same motorbike home. But where did it come from? It certainly wasn’t being stored on their tour bus.

For the next couple clichés we can return to that strange camp in November 1985. At one point, young Bart bumps into a girl and she drops her journal as a result. So you know that this is the girl that Bart will eventually date, break up with, and then reunite with before the film is over. Film critic Roger Ebert called this cliché the “meet cute”.

Soon afterward, young Bart and his future girlfriend/wife are talking on a bridge at night at that same summer camp when fireworks inexplicably begin erupting over their heads. Why fireworks at a camp in mid-November? Presumably, because a plot borne by clichés requires fireworks.

Years later as MercyMe is struggling to build an audience, there is the obligatory scene of record executives telling the band they will never make it. And Bart decides he needs to return home to rediscover his roots and unlock his true artistic potential. This cliché is found in everything from Rocky returning to the mean streets of Philadelphia to Lightning McQueen in Radiator Springs.

Then there is the scene of the father being diagnosed with cancer but keeping it secret from his son. And when Bart discovers his father’s illness, this leads to a reconciliation of relationship and the joint father-son bonding that comes as they together restore an old vehicle in the barn. (Yes, really!)

The most significant clichés are reserved for the pivotal scene after Bart has written “I can only imagine” and Amy Grant is about to perform it as Bart watches from the audience. As the music begins, Amy finds that she just can’t sing the song. The audience looks perplexed and begins to murmur. Then suddenly Amy realizes that only Bart can sing “I can only imagine” and so she invites him up on stage for an impromptu career-defining performance.

(Incidentally, Bart just published an accompanying memoir which recounts this pivotal night differently. In actuality, Amy sang the first verse and then Bart sang the second verse as planned.)

After Bart performs the song, the audience dissolves and Bart sees one person — his deceased father — standing in the audience giving a slow clap. This vision then dissolves into a manic eruption of applause from the original audience. The scene is capped by Bart spotting the girlfriend he hasn’t seen in years in the audience. (How did she know about this concert? How did she get from Texas to Nashville?) Bart then rushes out to embrace his ex-girlfriend and proclaim his true love like Rocky embracing Adrian.

End scene.

Conclusion

I said that I had three main problems with I Can Only Imagine: period and chronology errors, clichés, and my own cynicism. Having explained the first two, I trust it would now be redundant to bother explaining the third.

However, lest you think I’m the grinch who stole Christian movies, I will say that I left the theater glad I watched the film and impressed by the life of Bart Millard and the extraordinary success of his song. (However, I would not have chosen to end the film by relaying how Bart had the honor of speaking at President Donald Trump’s first national prayer breakfast. Talk about ending on a sour note!)

But the fact remains that while this film is a serviceable entertainment diversion, it remains a mediocre film. That contrast was made significantly more vivid last night after I had the serendipitous experience of discovering the 2017 film Columbus on Netflix. With excellent performances by John Cho and Haley Lu Richardson, Columbus is set in the archaeological mecca of Columbus, Indiana, and it beautifully weaves the story of architecture into a narrative of pain, loss, friendship, and the journey to adulthood. Columbus reminded me of a mashup between Before Sunrise, Paterson, and Ladybird (three more great films).

What if Christian audiences were no longer satisfied with cliches and in-your-face didacticism? What if they demanded challenging stories and gorgeous cinematography? What if they truly valued ambiguous and complex scripts and true-to-life characters?

I can only imagine.

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Does Calvinism offer a basis for the assurance of salvation?

Calvinism affirms a doctrine known as the perseverance of the saints according to which the truly regenerated disciple will persist in faith. In the words of the seventeenth-century Puritan William Secker, “Though Christians be not kept altogether from falling, yet they are kept from falling altogether.”

Calvinists insist that perseverance of the saints is a scriptural doctrine. As Paul says in Philippians 1:6: “he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”

In addition, Calvinists have also often argued that perseverance has a clear pastoral advantage in that it grounds our assurance of salvation in the faithfulness of Christ rather than our own unreliable human wills.

As Exhibit A, the Calvinist might point to the famous Arminian theologian John Wesley. In marked contrast to the Calvinist doctrine of perseverance, Wesley often warned that a saved and regenerated individual could lose their salvation. For example, in one sobering passage, Wesley observes,

“a man that believes now may be an unbeliever some time hence; yea, very possibly tomorrow; but if so, he who is a child of God today, may be a child of the devil tomorrow.”

A child of the devil tomorrow? Yikes! It must be admitted that this is a disconcerting thought! Reformed theologian Loraine Boettner drives the point home by asking the Arminian, if he believes this to be true, how can he know that he will persist and so be saved?

“He has seen many of his fellow Christians backslide and perish after making a good start. Why may not he do the same thing?”

The answer to the dilemma, or so Boettner would have us believe, is that the only real hope for assurance comes if we deny Wesley’s claim and conclude that the truly saved individual will not ultimately backslide and perish. In the words of Secker, though we are not kept from falling, we are kept from falling altogether.

So here is the question: are Reformed theologians like Boettner correct to suppose that perseverance of the saints provides a superior basis for assurance of salvation? The answer, or so it seems to me, is a resounding no. To be sure, particular individuals may find the doctrine of perseverance more comforting: that, I do not dispute. But as to the core epistemological question of whether one can know they will ultimately be saved, Calvinism offers no advantage.

The reason is this: while Arminianism cannot give you a guarantee that you will be saved tomorrow, Calvinism cannot give you a guarantee that you were ever saved (i.e. of the elect) to begin with. So return to Boettner’s statement:

“He has seen many of his fellow Christians backslide and perish after making a good start. Why may not he do the same thing?”

Boettner’s point is that there are individuals — we can probably all think of examples — who appeared to be Christians at one time but who later renounced their faith. But this is a common datum shared by Arminians and Calvinists. We are all familiar with such people who rejected a faith they once accepted. With that in mind, in principle, we must recognize the possibility that we could ultimately be counted in their numbers: we too could conceivably reject the faith at some time hence. The question is how we interpret that possible scenario.

The Arminian would interpret that outcome as a matter of an individual once saved coming to lose their faith (1 Timothy 1:19). By contrast, the Calvinist would interpret that outcome instead as a matter of the individual who at one time believed they were saved in fact never having had faith (cf. 1 John 2:19). To sum up, while the Arminian warns that you could be a child of the devil tomorrow, the Calvinist must admit that you could be a child of the devil today!

To conclude, while the Calvinist doctrine of perseverance of the saints may offer a particular subjective comfort of assurance for some, it offers no objective advantage over Arminianism as regards an epistemological basis for the assurance of salvation.

So how do we find assurance? We look for spiritual fruit in our lives (Galatians 5:22-23), testing ourselves to see that we are of the faith (2 Corinthians 13:5). And as we do, the Spirit testifies to our spirit that we are God’s children (Romans 8:16). But those answers are the same whether you are Calvinist or Arminian. Neither of these views offers any special objective advantage as regards the assurance of salvation.

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Hidden in Plain View: A Review

Lydia McGrew, Hidden in Plain View: Undesigned coincidences in the Gospels and Acts (DeWard, 2017).

Over the last few decades, Christian apologetic defenses of the historicity of the New Testament have typically pursued a minimal facts approach according to which one seeks to establish a basic set of core claims about the life and death of Jesus which are most widely accepted by biblical scholars (e.g. crucifixion; empty tomb; post-resurrection appearances). One then argues that the resurrection is the best hypothesis to explain those commonly agreed upon facts.

The minimal facts approach is helpful for justifying a basic commitment to the most important historical claims of Christian faith. On the downside, it offers no defense of the historical veracity of vast portions of the New Testament.

The fact is that there are other apologetic strategies which offer a more robust historical defense of the New Testament documents. And in her new book Hidden in Plain View, philosopher Lydia McGrew introduces one of those approaches. She calls it the argument from undesigned coincidences: rather than focus on minimal facts, it looks instead for evidence of broad historical reliability in New Testament documents based on the phenomenon of so-called undesigned coincidences.

The Concept of an Undesigned Coincidence

So what is an undesigned coincidence? Let’s begin with a simple example. Imagine that there are two eyewitnesses to a robbery in a café. Notably, while Smith describes the thief as a very tall male, Jones does not mention the thief’s height at all. However, Jones does mention in passing that as the thief ran out of the café, the hanging light fixture was left swinging.

That detail raises a question: what caused the light to swing? Since the thief would need to run underneath the light to exit the café, it is a reasonable supposition that his head brushed against it as he left. And given that the light is suspended 6’5” off the floor, that would imply that the killer was very tall. And so, Jones’ seemingly irrelevant observation actually dovetails nicely with Smith’s physical description of the thief.

The fit between Smith’s and Jones’ testimonies is notably different than if they had both simply described the thief as “very tall”. For one thing, a simple agreement in testimony would be liable to the interpretation of collusion: if Smith and Jones had given identical statements, it is possible that they might have intentionally coordinated their reports. The fact that their testimonies differ supports the conclusion that they are indeed independent witnesses. And the fact that those testimonies also dovetail on the question of height suggests that they are both reliable witnesses of the same event.

With this in mind, here is McGrew’s formal definition of the concept:

“An undesigned coincidence is a notable connection between two or more accounts or texts that doesn’t seem to have been planned by the person or people giving the accounts. Despite their apparent independence, the items fit together like pieces of a puzzle.” (12)

Just as an investigator looks for undesigned coincidences between testimonial witnesses as a means to corroborate the reliability of the witnesses, so McGrew points out we can evaluate the New Testament documents in like manner. Where differences may exist, she avers, they tend to be superficial: look deeper and one finds a reassuring connection between witnesses, often of a subtle, complex, and elegant sort which defies any easy dismissal as chance or collusion. Instead, the most plausible interpretation of these various examples is that we have independent and reliable witnesses of the purported events.

Two Examples of Undesigned Coincidences

Hidden in Plain View provides a survey of multiple such coincidences in the New Testament as part of a broad cumulative argument in favor of general historical reliability. The book consists of six chapters divided into two parts: Part One focuses on undesigned coincidences in the Gospels and Part Two focuses on undesigned coincidences between Acts and the Pauline Epistles. In this section, I will recount two examples from the Gospels that pertain to the same event, the feeding of the five thousand.

Example 1: The Green Grass (pp. 66-67)

McGrew points out that three Gospels mention the fact that the crowds sat down on grass. (This detail contrasts notably with the feeding of the four thousand which makes no reference to grass.) But only Mark observes that the grass was green (6:39). Why does this detail matter? Because grass is only green in that region in the spring just after the winter rains. Thus, that detail locates the miracle in the springtime.

Next, McGrew points out that the Gospel of John states that the miracle occurred at the time of Passover (John 6:4), and Passover occurs in the spring.

Note that neither Mark nor John directly states that the miracle occurred in spring. Rather, one says the miracle occurred when there was green grass and the other says the miracle occurred during Passover. But both of those details locate the event in the spring. McGrew observes, “here we have a perfect fit between John’s casual reference to the time of year and Mark’s specification of the detail of the green grass.” (66)

Example 2: Why ask Philip? (pp. 107-110)

Our second example begins with Jesus asking Philip where they can buy bread to feed five thousand people (John 6:5). To be sure, McGrew points out that Jesus’ question was not serious: he was simply setting up his anticipated miracle. Nonetheless, the question arises: why ask Philip in particular? After all, he was not one of the more prominent disciples (108).

The answer provides our second intriguing coincidence. McGrew observes that Luke places the feeding of the five thousand near the town of Bethsaida (Luke 9.10). Earlier in John 1:43-44 we learn that Philip is from Bethsaida (109). When we add these details together, we find a satisfactory answer to our “Why Philip?” question. Jesus directs his question to Philip because they are located near Philip’s hometown. Again, we find an elegant answer to a question which indirectly confirms the accuracy of two different Gospels (Luke and John).

The green grass and Jesus’ question to Philip are but two examples of such serendipitous coincidences: the book outlines close to fifty more connections between the Gospels, Acts, and the Pauline epistles. Some are simple but others are complex and nuanced. Add them together and one has a powerful cumulative case argument for the general reliability of the bulk of the New Testament documents.

Concluding Reflections

It is worth pointing out that McGrew’s argument is not new. As she observes, this style of argument had many defenders in the 18th and 19th centuries including William Paley (yes, the same William Paley who imagined finding a watch in the heath). As McGrew puts it, “There is no doubt that I am standing on the shoulders of giants–a fact that I freely and gratefully acknowledge” (24).

McGrew has done a very great service to the Christian community in writing this clear and engaging introduction to a fascinating and long-neglected line of argument. I’ve been teaching a seminary apologetics course for fifteen years and not many books challenge me to rethink my positions. But Hidden in Plain View has caused me to do just that as regards the minimal facts approach. I now have a much greater appreciation for the richness of reliability arguments for the details of the New Testament based on the fit between various undesigned coincidences.

So how might a skeptic respond? Since most of these points of agreement are too complex and/or subtle to be explained as intentional, I suspect the main skeptical response will be to dismiss these coincidences as exactly that: coincidences. In other words, in any eclectic collection of texts, one will inevitably find various points of surprising agreement. And by counting the coincidental hits and dismissing the misses, one gets a skewed sampling of the data. Or so the objection might go.

I disagree with that hypothetical skeptic’s response. The method that McGrew applies here is not different from that of any good historian … or forensic investigator. And the dozens of points of agreement that she identifies provide a compelling cumulative case for the historical care and reliability of the various writers. McGrew puts it well:

“The big picture is this: This is what truth looks like. This is what memoirs from witnesses look like. This is what it looks like when people who are trying to be truthful and who possess reliable memories of things that really happened have those memories put down in writing. This is evidence for the Gospels [and Acts and the Pauline epistles] hidden in plain view.” (129)

You can purchase a copy of the book here.

Thanks to DeWard Publishing for a review copy of this book.

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The Hyenas Did Not Touch Him: On Writing Creeds Today

In 2003 the great church historian Jaroslav Pelikan published his magnum opus, a book called Credo which gathers together more than 1000 creeds from the history of the church. The overall impact is powerful as one comes to terms with the fact that creeds are not simply a bygone occupation of the early church.

On the contrary, each one of those creeds represents the efforts of a particular Christian community in a particular time and place to rediscover anew that explosive message and transformative power of the Gospel, to be reminded anew what it means to say “I believe”. And I think it is a worthy exercise for any Christian to consider what it would look like to summarize their own deepest Christian convictions into a contextualized statement in their own day.

Here is one of the most impactful modern creeds recorded in Pelikan’s book. It is the beloved 1960 Maasai Creed of Nigeria which expresses the Gospel faith in the culture and thought forms of East Africa. And it follows the standard tripartite form of virtually all Christian creeds. As you read, I would invite you to reflect on what it means to retell this incredible story of common confession for our day:

We believe in the one High God, who out of love created the beautiful world and everything good in it. He created Man and wanted Man to be happy in the world. God loves the world and every nation and tribe on the Earth. We have known this High God in darkness, and now we know Him in the light. God promised in the book of His word, the Bible, that He would save the world and all the nations and tribes.

We believe that God made good His promise by sending His Son, Jesus Christ, a man in the flesh, a Jew by tribe, born poor in a little village, who left His home and was always on safari doing good, curing people by the power of God, teaching about God and man, showing the meaning of religion is love. He was rejected by his people, tortured and nailed hands and feet to a cross, and died. He lay buried in the grave, but the hyenas did not touch him, and on the third day, He rose from the grave. He ascended to the skies. He is the Lord.

We believe that all our sins are forgiven through Him. All who have faith in Him must be sorry for their sins, be baptized in the Holy Spirit of God, live the rules of love and share the bread together in love, to announce the Good News to others until Jesus comes again. We are waiting for Him. He is alive. He lives.

This we believe.

Amen.

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Failed Prayer Studies: A Response

The topic of scientific prayer studies recently came up on Twitter. As an outcome of that exchange, I committed to responding to the failure of one particular prayer study to establish a link between prayer and healing. The study in question is discussed in an article titled “Power of prayer flunks an unusual test” where it is described as follows:

Dr. Herbert Benson of Harvard Medical School and other scientists tested the effect of having three Christian groups pray for particular patients, starting the night before surgery and continuing for two weeks. The volunteers prayed for “a successful surgery with a quick, healthy recovery and no complications” for specific patients, for whom they were given the first name and first initial of the last name.

The patients, meanwhile, were split into three groups of about 600 apiece: those who knew they were being prayed for, those who were prayed for but only knew it was a possibility, and those who weren’t prayed for but were told it was a possibility.

And here is the deflationary outcome:

Results showed no effect of prayer on complication-free recovery. But 59 percent of the patients who knew they were being prayed for developed a complication, versus 52 percent of those who were told it was just a possibility.

Let’s focus on the fact that Christian prayer showed no effect on “complication-free recovery.” Does this provide a good reason to believe that Christian petitionary prayer is ineffectual?

I don’t believe so. And I will organize my response into three main reasons.

Is prayer analogous to treatment?

First, double-blind tests of particular treatments depend on the assumption that the same treatment is being applied to all members of the test groups. There is good reason to believe this does not occur in the case of prayer studies. Here I’ll note two important considerations.

To begin with, Christians have reason to believe that the effectiveness of particular petitionary prayers is informed at least to some degree by the relationship the one who is praying has to God (e.g. James 5:16: “The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.”(ESV)) If various people are praying as part of a study, it follows that the effectiveness of their particular petitionary prayers could be shaped by the prior relationships of the one praying. Needless to say, the precise nature of each individual intercessor’s relationship to God would not be available to those conducting the prayer studies.

Christians also have reason to believe that the power of particular prayers is informed by the specific degree of faith exercised during the praying of that particular prayer (e.g. “Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.” (Matthew 17:20)

To be sure, Christians have not typically drawn a simple correlation between the degree of faith exercised and the effectiveness of the resulting prayer. Nonetheless, the degree of faith is a factor. With that in mind, note that the same intercessor could exercise various degrees of faith as they pray various different prayers depending on a variety of factors. For example, Smith may find herself exercising great faith when she prays for Jones on Tuesay. But she may find that her faith is wavering when she prays for Chung on Thursday. The wavering degrees of faith in which these prayers are prayed could affect the ability of those prayers to achieve the desired outcomes.

These are but two factors — there could be several more — that would affect the power of various petitionary prayers. And these factors, in turn, undermine any simple attempt to measure the effectual power of prayer in comparison to the measurement of conventional invariant treatments.

What is an answered prayer?

Let’s now turn to the second problem. In the study, individuals prayed for “a successful surgery with a quick, healthy recovery and no complications.” The assumption is apparently that if there is not a quick, healthy recovery with no complications then the prayer was not answered.

But of course, this is false. If there was anybody ever in a place to get his prayers answered, it surely was Jesus. This is what he prays in the Garden of Gethsemane: “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me.” (Luke 22:42a) Of course, God did not take that cup –the cup of suffering — from Jesus. Thus, by the assumptions of a prayer study, this would come up as a miss rather than a hit.

However, note two things. First, Jesus immediately ends his prayer by stating “yet not my will, but yours be done.” Thus, Jesus, in fact, expresses two petitions. And that provides a general mandate for the Christian as well. When we pray, we also should be praying two petitions. In the present case, we pray for “a successful surgery with quick, healthy recovery and no complications”. And we should add (explicitly or implicitly), “yet not our will, but yours be done.”

Second, note that immediately after Jesus’ prayer we read: “An angel from heaven appeared to him and strengthened him.” So it follows that Jesus’ prayer was answered in two ways: first, the Father answered Jesus’ second petition by not removing the cup of suffering in accord with the divine will; second, the Father responded by sending an angel to strengthen Jesus for the journey ahead.

The lesson here is that any proper theology of Christian prayer needs to recognize that prayers can be answered in ways far beyond the intentions and expectations of the intercessors. Nor should this be surprising given that the one to whom we pray is infinitely more knowledgeable and wise than we are.

What is bad faith?

Let’s conclude by considering one final reason to believe prayer studies would be ineffectual at testing rates of answered prayer.

One essential function of prayer (including petitionary forms of prayer) is to build relationships between God and human persons and between particular human persons (e.g. those who give and receive prayer). If the power of petitionary prayer could be “corralled” in the manner that these prayer studies attempt, there is good reason to believe that would not be conducive either of facilitating relationship between God and human persons or between particular human persons. Rather, prayer could readily become perfunctory and impersonal and thus ineffectual at achieving the very relationships that God seeks to cultivate.

More modestly, we could claim at the very least that we don’t know that prayer wouldn’t become increasingly ineffectual at achieving the very relationships that God seeks to cultivate. And that is sufficient to question the significance of these studies.

Indeed, it could be that the relationship between prayer and statistical validation is a zero-sum game such that the degree to which answered petitionary prayer is statistically verifiable is the extent to which it becomes less effectual at cultivating relationships with God and other human persons.

You’re just saying that because the prayer studies failed!

In my earlier Twitter exchange, one respondent retorted that I’m only denying the value of prayer studies because they failed. Had they succeeded, I would be trumpeting this as evidence.

Such counterfactual speculation is false. But it is also irrelevant: the arguments I present should be considered on their own merits. And as I have shown, we have several reasons to repudiate the claim that failed prayer studies provide a reason to think petitionary prayer is ineffectual.

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We especially welcome applications from women and visible minorities

When I was looking for a teaching position in the early 2000s I repeatedly encountered a variant of this statement in countless job descriptions:

We especially welcome applications from women and visible minorities.

That was a bit discouraging, as you can imagine. To be sure, I understood the reasoning: society in general, and academic institutions in particular, have long especially welcomed applications from white guys. So how about redressing the balance?

At the same time, we should recognize that the stipulation was clearly discriminatory. To be sure, that doesn’t mean it was wrong: to discriminate v. to differentiate; recognize a difference. The logic was that prioritizing those who are not Caucasian males is a justified discrimination because it intentionally redresses societal imbalances that favor Caucasian males.

At the same time, this prioritization of diversity is far from a precise tool. Consider my Caucasian male friend Brad. He grew up in Japan (MK) and South Africa. As such, he speaks fluent Japanese and is at home in Japanese culture (indeed, Brad called himself an “egg”). Brad would bring a rich cross-cultural diversity to any community that would be lost by simply judging his sex and skin color.

But if the tool was at times rather blunt, the argument was that it was still on the whole useful. After all, not many white guys are like Brad.

This brings us to the next question. If discrimination of this kind is a valuable tool in fostering diversity on university faculties, then how discriminating can/should one be in intentional pursuit of diversity? Fifteen years ago a friend of mine was a professor in the history department of a major North American university. He was also the head of the search committee to hire a new faculty member. The committee decided that they wanted to hire not simply a female historian: they also wanted her to be black to enrich the diversity of the department.

The department prioritized one candidate based on her CV and particular assumptions about her name. And when they picked her up at the airport for her candidacy they were shocked and deflated to discover that she was Caucasian.

Ouch!

To sum up, I find myself conflicted about affirmative action policies. On the one hand, I agree that they redress systemic imbalances in society. But on the other hand, they can be a blunt tool that prioritizes particular forms of diversity over other forms. And ironically enough, attention to various forms of gender, ethnic, and class differentiation can marginalize the unique distinctiveness of each individual.

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YouTube and the Christian Persecution Complex

As a group, Conservative Christians in North America seem to be hypersensitive to persecution to the extent where they are susceptible to a persecution complex or persecutory delusion. As a case in point, consider an article posted just today by Michael Brown titled “Why YouTube’s Conflict With Infowars Should Concern Us All.” Brown raises a voice of protest against the prospect that YouTube might boot that deplorable conspiracy theorist Alex Jones off their platform. The problem, presumably, is that YouTube is getting sick-and-tired of providing a platform to this nutjob and his dangerous delusions. (For example, Jones has argued that the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was, in fact, a staged event using child actors.)

To be sure, Brown is no fan of Jones. But he does interpret this threat as the beginning of a growing “purge” of “conservative” voices from YouTube. He concludes with this ominous warning:

And so, whether you’re an Infowars fan or you find their work distasteful, their potential removal from YouTube should concern you. Otherwise, soon enough, we’ll have our own version of Martin Niemöller’s famous poem, which will now sound something like this:

First they came for Infowars, and I did not speak out — because I found them offensive.

Then they came for Geller and Spencer, and I did not speak out­ — because I found them obnoxious.

Then they came for Prager U, and I did not speak out — because I found them opinionated.

Then they came for a host of others, and I did not speak out — because I have my own life to live.

Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me.

I see things rather differently.

To begin with, YouTube is a private company. They are under no obligation to provide a continued platform for Mr. Jones to perpetuate his hateful bile. And if they do remove his conspiracy channel (and I can only hope that they do), he is free to launch a new platform — ConspiracyTube, perhaps — from which he can continue to shovel his verbal dung.

But what if Christian voices — and conservative Christian voices in particular — also are “purged” from YouTube, as Brown fears? What then?

First off, let’s be reasonable about the concern. Evangelicals make up more than one-quarter of the population of the United States. YouTube is a for-profit company which has little interest in alienating a quarter of their potential market en masse. Thus, if conservative Christian channels do get removed, it will presumably be for some specific reason particular to those individuals and not part of a mass “purge” of conservative Christians (still less of “conservatives” simpliciter) as Brown fears.

And if/when that ever happens then those Christians can go on over to another platform like Vimeo or perhaps  GodTube and let YouTube suffer the loss of their revenue-generating Christian channels. Heck, they can also organize a boycott of YouTube, if they like. It’s a free country.

Let’s go back to the question of why YouTube would bar particular individuals like Alex Jones in the first place. The action is borne of the recognition that YouTube is not merely a neutral purveyor of content. And as such, they have a responsibility to the general public to provide some minimal curatical oversight of their service.

The fact is that this idea of minimal curatical oversight is no different from the Christian bookstore manager who must decide whether to stock Christian kitsch he believes trivializes and commercializes the faith or bestselling books which contain heterodox but popular teachings. That Christian bookstore manager will inevitably allow some content she disagrees with. But she will also draw a line at some point and recognize that some products are irreconcilable with the principles and mission of the store.

That’s precisely the kind of socially responsible vetting process that YouTube is engaged in right now. If they decide that Alex Jones is beyond the pale, I will cheer on their decision. If they decide not to host a conservative Christian teacher like Michael Brown, I will disagree. But YouTube’s decision not to host a particular Christian channel would not provide justification to speak of a “purge,” still less to invoke the shocking specter of national socialism.

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Have you committed the Unforgivable Sin? A Devotional Reflection

I recently wrote a few devotionals for a forthcoming publication and I decided to publish them at my blog as well. This second devotional is based on a section of my most recent book, What’s So Confusing About Grace?

Mark 3:29: “But he that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost hath never forgiveness, but is in danger of eternal damnation.” (KJV)

John 3:16 was the first Bible verse I ever memorized as a child. Mark 3:29 was the second. And there’s a good reason too. The first time I read that verse it jolted me like a cattle prod. Here before me written in black and white was an incredibly dire warning that salvation could be lost in a moment. Once I grasped that shocking warning, I determined that I needed to do something to protect myself.

But what was this blasphemy? When I asked around at church people had many opinions about what Jesus might be referring to, but none of the suggestions inspired much confidence. One theme did emerge, however. Blaspheming the Spirit was a trap you could fall into by mistake, kind of like stepping on a landmine. One false step and … boom!

As you can imagine, that picture haunted my youth and left me perplexed as to why a loving God would act in such an arbitrary and capricious manner.

My journey toward a different understanding began years later when I finally took the time to consider the context of the warning. Jesus has just performed a miracle which provides evidence of his authority and status. But rather than consider that evidence, the Jewish leaders suggest he acted by the power of the devil. Jesus replies with this warning.

The lesson, so it would seem, is that blaspheming the Spirit is not a hidden danger that you stumble upon like stepping on a landmine. Rather, it is borne of an ongoing obstinate rejection of God’s presence and action in the world. And that’s what you see in the critics of Jesus’ ministry who stubbornly refuse to accept the testimony of his miracles, even to the point of attributing them to the devil.

To sum up, God is not arbitrary and capricious. Rather, he is perfectly loving, good, and desiring that all people be saved and come to know the truth (1 Timothy 2:4). Rather than look for landmines hidden in the ground, we should instead look inside ourselves, for the only unforgivable sin is that for which we refuse to be forgiven.

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