One of the biggest challenges for atheism is the origin of good, that is, if we all got here by the strong eating the weak in evolution, then why do we cry out when we see the strong eating the weak in society? If we accept Dawkins’ self gene theory, then when we see injustice and the oppression of those who aren’t in our family, a consistent atheist should just shrug their shoulders and recognise it as the survival of fittest. But we don’t. People have an inherent sense of right and wrong and we cry out against injustice and oppression, why? Atheism has no basis or explanation for the origin of a good conscience.
This is because science deliberately restricts itself to the objective. Science doesn’t talk about opinion or speculation, only cold hard facts. Ethics on the other hand, is subjective and open to debate. You can’t put right and wrong in a test tube and produce a scientific proof about what someone should do, scientific proofs are limited to what someone can do. This was famously observed by Hume’s Naturalistic fallacy which states that you cannot get an ought from an is, that is, scientific facts can never give you a basis for what people should or shouldn’t do. You can never get an imperative from an indicative.
Sam Harris has challenged this in his book The Moral Landscape. Harris claims that science can give you a basis for ethics because “well being” (his goal for ethics) is something that can be observed and improved by science. However this fails at a crucial point – the subjectivity of well being – what happens when people disagree about someone’s or some group’s best interests? How does science solve a disagreement about one’s well being? Harris writes off the naturalistic fallacy as a trick of language without actually dealing with it as an argument, he simply claims that “well being” is obvious and objective and then steamrolls his western idea of well being over eastern values about women and children.
After Harris promotes utilitarianism based on “common sense” while pretending it’s based on science, he hides this double standard in a medical analogy. If “good health” is hard to define but can be improved by science, then so can “well being”. Unfortunately for Harris, what you should do for “good health” is just as subjective and what you should do for “well being”. Scientific advances in medicine can tell you what you can do to save or to kill, but not whether you should save or kill. Science is completely silent on the issue of euthanasia, it can tell you how to kill someone, but not whether you should.
Hume’s naturalistic fallacy and Harris’ challenge of it is actually historically verifiable. If you can think of a single instance in history where science has changed human morality then Harris is right, if not, Hume is right. This doesn’t include areas of morality that science has opened up e.g. bioethics, but situations where people used to believe that A was right or B was wrong, and then a scientific discovery has proved that A was wrong or B was right. It has to be a scientific discovery that settles an ethical debate. I can’t think of a single one but Harris claims that science should be able to settle them all.
If there is no God and therefore no outside third party to dictate right and wrong, then our idea’s of right and wrong are nothing more than our ideas. Who am I to tell a con artist that what they are doing is wrong? If a group of pedophiles could somehow convinced the majority of a country’s population that pedophilia was ok then they would have no choice but to legalise it. Our rationality can function as a justification for our ethics, but it can never be an objective basis for ethics. We can rationalise our ethical decisions, but our rationality will never rebuke our morality, and neither will science.
This is more than just an argument for the attractiveness of faith, it’s an argument for its truthfulness because of our inherent sense of right and wrong. Why do we cry out against injustice? Why do we care when the weak are oppressed? Atheism has no basis or explanation for our morality, Dawkins’ selfish gene theory contradicts the evidence of our selfless concern for the marginalised. Atheism simply cannot account for the origin of the good in our morality.
Thursday, December 1, 2011
Sunday, November 27, 2011
The Origin of Evil
One of the corollaries of “the problem of evil” is its origin. If God created everything good (Gen 1:4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25) and together it was very good (Gen 1:31), then how does one account for the presence (and prevalence) of evil? This presents a major issue for the Christian theology of creation, if God created everything, then who created evil?
In an attempt to protect God’s sovereignty, some have suggested that God created evil in the short term to bring about ultimate good in the long term, expanding on Romans 5:20 – “the law was added so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more”. But only two chapters later, Paul defends the inherent goodness of the law – “so then, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous and good” (Romans 7:12). God’s will expressed in the law shows us how bad we are, it is not the source of our rebellion.
Realising that we can’t hide behind the law, some have even tried to hide behind God himself as the ultimate cause of evil. Calvin translates Isaiah 45:7 as – “I form the light and create darkness, I make peace and create evil. I, the Lord, do all these things” (Calvin, Institutes I.17.viii). The trouble is that the word translated evil here, can equally mean “distress”, moreover, distress is to peace as darkness is to light – translating “distress” preserves the obvious parallelism. Unlike creating evil, creating trials and suffering for God’s good purposes is supported by the rest of the Bible (Genesis 50:20, Job 1-2, Romans 5:3-5, 1 Peter 1:6-7).
The danger in attributing the creation of evil to God, is that one can easily conclude that if God creates evil, then God himself is evil. The law of works states that a person’s (or being’s) character is inseparable from what they do, if what they are doing is evil then they cannot be wholly good and vice versa. This is even made known in popular culture in the movie Batman begins – “It’s not who I am underneath, but what I do, that defines me.” If God is the ultimate author of evil then he himself must be partly or at least at certain times, evil (i.e. when he’s creating evil).
So then who created evil? There is a problem inherent in the question, for evil is not something that’s created, it’s something that’s chosen. God didn’t create disobedience, it’s something that originated in the human heart (Gen 3:6). God created people with the ability to choose good and evil (Gen 2:16-17), but we are the ones who chose, God did not force our hand. Evil is created by our desires (James 1:15). Contrary to what Buddhism teaches, our desires cannot and should not be completely eliminated. Some of our desires are inherently good desires – for relationship, for well being, for the enjoyment of creation – but sin twists our good desires so that they give birth to evil, e.g. a desire for well being (self-interest) can lead us to step on other people to get what we want (selfishness).
Once we stop desiring the one who gives us all good things and set our desires on the things themselves, they become idols, and we become ungrateful children who spend our efforts trying to get more from our parents rather than making the most of our relationship with our parents. Such a child can hardly blame their parents for the ingratitude and greed that they themselves chose. Though most of us think that we’re good, this is the reality of our relationship with God, the very thing that we were created for.
The world is not inherently evil, but ever since the fall, the human heart has been. This is not to say that people are as evil as they can possibly be, but that we cannot draw a line and say “We’re the good and they’re the bad”, for the line between good and evil runs through every single human heart. Christians don’t (or at least shouldn’t) claim to be good people, but bad people that know that they’re bad. When G.K. Chesterton was asked “What’s wrong with the world?” He replied “Dear sirs, I am”. Christians believe that we are the authors of evil and God is the author of good. The line isn’t between the good and the bad, but between those who are humble enough to accept God’s forgiveness and those who are too proud to be saved by anyone other than themselves.
In an attempt to protect God’s sovereignty, some have suggested that God created evil in the short term to bring about ultimate good in the long term, expanding on Romans 5:20 – “the law was added so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more”. But only two chapters later, Paul defends the inherent goodness of the law – “so then, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous and good” (Romans 7:12). God’s will expressed in the law shows us how bad we are, it is not the source of our rebellion.
Realising that we can’t hide behind the law, some have even tried to hide behind God himself as the ultimate cause of evil. Calvin translates Isaiah 45:7 as – “I form the light and create darkness, I make peace and create evil. I, the Lord, do all these things” (Calvin, Institutes I.17.viii). The trouble is that the word translated evil here, can equally mean “distress”, moreover, distress is to peace as darkness is to light – translating “distress” preserves the obvious parallelism. Unlike creating evil, creating trials and suffering for God’s good purposes is supported by the rest of the Bible (Genesis 50:20, Job 1-2, Romans 5:3-5, 1 Peter 1:6-7).
The danger in attributing the creation of evil to God, is that one can easily conclude that if God creates evil, then God himself is evil. The law of works states that a person’s (or being’s) character is inseparable from what they do, if what they are doing is evil then they cannot be wholly good and vice versa. This is even made known in popular culture in the movie Batman begins – “It’s not who I am underneath, but what I do, that defines me.” If God is the ultimate author of evil then he himself must be partly or at least at certain times, evil (i.e. when he’s creating evil).
So then who created evil? There is a problem inherent in the question, for evil is not something that’s created, it’s something that’s chosen. God didn’t create disobedience, it’s something that originated in the human heart (Gen 3:6). God created people with the ability to choose good and evil (Gen 2:16-17), but we are the ones who chose, God did not force our hand. Evil is created by our desires (James 1:15). Contrary to what Buddhism teaches, our desires cannot and should not be completely eliminated. Some of our desires are inherently good desires – for relationship, for well being, for the enjoyment of creation – but sin twists our good desires so that they give birth to evil, e.g. a desire for well being (self-interest) can lead us to step on other people to get what we want (selfishness).
Once we stop desiring the one who gives us all good things and set our desires on the things themselves, they become idols, and we become ungrateful children who spend our efforts trying to get more from our parents rather than making the most of our relationship with our parents. Such a child can hardly blame their parents for the ingratitude and greed that they themselves chose. Though most of us think that we’re good, this is the reality of our relationship with God, the very thing that we were created for.
The world is not inherently evil, but ever since the fall, the human heart has been. This is not to say that people are as evil as they can possibly be, but that we cannot draw a line and say “We’re the good and they’re the bad”, for the line between good and evil runs through every single human heart. Christians don’t (or at least shouldn’t) claim to be good people, but bad people that know that they’re bad. When G.K. Chesterton was asked “What’s wrong with the world?” He replied “Dear sirs, I am”. Christians believe that we are the authors of evil and God is the author of good. The line isn’t between the good and the bad, but between those who are humble enough to accept God’s forgiveness and those who are too proud to be saved by anyone other than themselves.
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Theological Aspect
While the Bible describes God as sovereign over everything that happens (Ephesians 1:11) and people as responsible for the choices they make (Romans 2:6), it makes no apologies for any perceived contradictions and offers no explanations of how these two truths hold together. They are essentially seen as different sides of the same coin, or better, the same events from different perspectives, that is, from different theological aspects.
In linguistics, the verbal aspect of an action performed is of great significance. A bird’s eye view of an action as a whole is called perfective aspect, and the street view of an action unfolding around the viewer is called imperfective aspect. This is the kind of difference that we see in the way that the Bible describes events in human history, with the hindsight of a bird’s eye view God’s sovereignty is clearly seen (Job 42:9-17), but from the perspective of those involved in the events as they happen, people are responsible for the choices they make (Job 42:1-8).
Therefore, from our perspective there is real evil that its perpetrators are held accountable for, a real imperative to repent and believe the gospel, and real warnings to heed against falling away. But from the perspective of God’s sovereignty (which we only catch glimpses of in his word), there is no such thing as evil (for God works all things ultimately for good), unconditional election (predestination), and irresistible grace resulting in the perseverance of the saints. From heaven we see that all of our days are written in the book of life (Psalm 139:16), but from earth we know that we are still writing our history.
Points of tension between God’s sovereignty and human responsibility are often derived from a confusion of theological aspect. If we paint the glimpses that we have of God’s perspective over the reality that we see on the ground, there are bound to be some discrepancies. When we try to force God’s absolute sovereignty (from his perspective) onto our experience of evil (from our perspective), we create the problem of evil – how can God be good and sovereign over evil? However this is like reading an imperfective action (evil) as having perfective aspect. As stated above, from the perspective of God’s sovereignty, there is no such thing as evil – all things are achieving their created purpose and will result in God’s glory (Romans 9:17).
From the ground however, evil is very real and those who do evil must be held responsible for it. Reading God’s sovereignty into this imperfective aspect often results in vain attempts to blame God for our sin. He is sovereign over it, but we are the perpetrators of it. We are the authors of our sin, but God is the author of his grace which uses, restrains and triumphs over our sin. Christians therefore live knowing that we are responsible, and pray knowing that God is sovereign. Both perspectives are needed for a complete picture, but when you put them side by side they are clearly different perspectives.
Some scientific illustrations may help. According to Einstein, if you could travel away from a clock faster than the speed of light, you would be overtaking the light reflected from the clock and so you would see the clock ticking backwards. From the perspective of the stationary clock you would be travelling back in time, but from the perspective of your wrist watch you would be travelling forward through time as normal. From the perspective of someone else on earth I may be standing still, but from space I’m spinning around the world at 10,000 kph and from outside the solar system I’m rotating around the sun at 100,000 kph.
Many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view. The truth from a bird’s eye view is different from but complementary to the truth from the perspective on the ground. Tension between God’s sovereignty and human responsibility arises when we confuse the theological aspects of human history from God’s perfective aspect and our imperfective aspect. Now we see in part, but it’s only from the perspective of the end that one can see the whole.
In linguistics, the verbal aspect of an action performed is of great significance. A bird’s eye view of an action as a whole is called perfective aspect, and the street view of an action unfolding around the viewer is called imperfective aspect. This is the kind of difference that we see in the way that the Bible describes events in human history, with the hindsight of a bird’s eye view God’s sovereignty is clearly seen (Job 42:9-17), but from the perspective of those involved in the events as they happen, people are responsible for the choices they make (Job 42:1-8).
Therefore, from our perspective there is real evil that its perpetrators are held accountable for, a real imperative to repent and believe the gospel, and real warnings to heed against falling away. But from the perspective of God’s sovereignty (which we only catch glimpses of in his word), there is no such thing as evil (for God works all things ultimately for good), unconditional election (predestination), and irresistible grace resulting in the perseverance of the saints. From heaven we see that all of our days are written in the book of life (Psalm 139:16), but from earth we know that we are still writing our history.
Points of tension between God’s sovereignty and human responsibility are often derived from a confusion of theological aspect. If we paint the glimpses that we have of God’s perspective over the reality that we see on the ground, there are bound to be some discrepancies. When we try to force God’s absolute sovereignty (from his perspective) onto our experience of evil (from our perspective), we create the problem of evil – how can God be good and sovereign over evil? However this is like reading an imperfective action (evil) as having perfective aspect. As stated above, from the perspective of God’s sovereignty, there is no such thing as evil – all things are achieving their created purpose and will result in God’s glory (Romans 9:17).
From the ground however, evil is very real and those who do evil must be held responsible for it. Reading God’s sovereignty into this imperfective aspect often results in vain attempts to blame God for our sin. He is sovereign over it, but we are the perpetrators of it. We are the authors of our sin, but God is the author of his grace which uses, restrains and triumphs over our sin. Christians therefore live knowing that we are responsible, and pray knowing that God is sovereign. Both perspectives are needed for a complete picture, but when you put them side by side they are clearly different perspectives.
Some scientific illustrations may help. According to Einstein, if you could travel away from a clock faster than the speed of light, you would be overtaking the light reflected from the clock and so you would see the clock ticking backwards. From the perspective of the stationary clock you would be travelling back in time, but from the perspective of your wrist watch you would be travelling forward through time as normal. From the perspective of someone else on earth I may be standing still, but from space I’m spinning around the world at 10,000 kph and from outside the solar system I’m rotating around the sun at 100,000 kph.
Many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view. The truth from a bird’s eye view is different from but complementary to the truth from the perspective on the ground. Tension between God’s sovereignty and human responsibility arises when we confuse the theological aspects of human history from God’s perfective aspect and our imperfective aspect. Now we see in part, but it’s only from the perspective of the end that one can see the whole.
Thursday, September 15, 2011
God's Sovereignty and Our Will
One of the distinctions that has been used to understand and explain the tension between God’s sovereign will and our will is the distinction between what is necessary and what is voluntary. From the perspective of God’s sovereign will, human rebellion is necessary: “They stumble because they disobey the message – which is also what they were destined for.” (1 Peter 2:8), but from the perspective of our will, human rebellion is a free choice that we all make: “Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.” (John 3:19).
Don Carson explains this with an analogy: “A man may be locked in a room, but not want to get out. He therefore cannot get out, but equally he does not want to get out.” (Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibility, page 207). While this helpfully illustrates the necessity of the lock and the voluntariness of his will, it still pits the two against each other. The implied question remains, is he locked in or has he locked himself in? There is still a tension between God’s sovereign will and human will.
However, I propose that the tension is between human will and God’s moral will (the imperatives of the bible), not God’s sovereign will (everything that happens), that is, we rebel against God’s will for us to be selfless (loving God and our neighbour), not against his will for us to learn the consequences of selfishness the hard way. To push the analogy, God created us knowing which room we would chose, and he graciously leads some people out into his room, but there is no lock. God doesn’t force peoples to sin, but he does hand people over to their sin. Predestination doesn’t mean that God is stopping people who want to become Christians from becoming Christians, because no one actually wants to become a Christian, left to ourselves, we all chose ourselves over God.
While this may sound like I’m simply pushing the tension into God’s complex will, it’s not quite that simple. Because God is omniscient (all knowing) and omnipotent (all powerful) he can actually use evil to achieve good, that is, God can use peoples rejection of his moral will, to ultimately achieve his moral will inside his sovereign will. The classic example is that of Jacob, where his brothers rebel against God’s moral will and harm Jacob, but God uses that event to prevent the harm of many in his sovereign will (Genesis 50:20). The ultimate is example is that of the cross, where God uses the greatest act of evil by humans to achieve the greatest good for humanity (Acts 2:23). Whether we listen to his will in the bible or learn it the hard way, it always part of God’s master plan, our will may be for or against God’s will, but never instead of God’s will.
This may also sound like God is just an awesome chess player, constantly responding to situations that we create, but God uses our acts of evil for good by his “set purpose and foreknowledge” (Acts 2:23). God’s sovereign will transcends our will such that there is no dichotomy between them. The realities of God’s sovereign will and our will is not either/or, it’s both/and. God created humanity knowing that they would chose to sin and so he planned and purposed for Jesus to come to save us, but he did not force Adam’s hand. God allows us to be tempted (1 Corinthians 10:13), but he himself does not tempt anyone (James 1:13).
After the fall Adam’s first thought was to blame the circumstances (Genesis 3:12), but we are all responsible for the choices we make. “No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.” (1 Corinthians 10:13). God gives us every opportunity to see the rooms (or slaveries – Romans 6) of sin and righteousness for what they are, and gives us our life to chose which we will live in for eternity.
Don Carson explains this with an analogy: “A man may be locked in a room, but not want to get out. He therefore cannot get out, but equally he does not want to get out.” (Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibility, page 207). While this helpfully illustrates the necessity of the lock and the voluntariness of his will, it still pits the two against each other. The implied question remains, is he locked in or has he locked himself in? There is still a tension between God’s sovereign will and human will.
However, I propose that the tension is between human will and God’s moral will (the imperatives of the bible), not God’s sovereign will (everything that happens), that is, we rebel against God’s will for us to be selfless (loving God and our neighbour), not against his will for us to learn the consequences of selfishness the hard way. To push the analogy, God created us knowing which room we would chose, and he graciously leads some people out into his room, but there is no lock. God doesn’t force peoples to sin, but he does hand people over to their sin. Predestination doesn’t mean that God is stopping people who want to become Christians from becoming Christians, because no one actually wants to become a Christian, left to ourselves, we all chose ourselves over God.
While this may sound like I’m simply pushing the tension into God’s complex will, it’s not quite that simple. Because God is omniscient (all knowing) and omnipotent (all powerful) he can actually use evil to achieve good, that is, God can use peoples rejection of his moral will, to ultimately achieve his moral will inside his sovereign will. The classic example is that of Jacob, where his brothers rebel against God’s moral will and harm Jacob, but God uses that event to prevent the harm of many in his sovereign will (Genesis 50:20). The ultimate is example is that of the cross, where God uses the greatest act of evil by humans to achieve the greatest good for humanity (Acts 2:23). Whether we listen to his will in the bible or learn it the hard way, it always part of God’s master plan, our will may be for or against God’s will, but never instead of God’s will.
This may also sound like God is just an awesome chess player, constantly responding to situations that we create, but God uses our acts of evil for good by his “set purpose and foreknowledge” (Acts 2:23). God’s sovereign will transcends our will such that there is no dichotomy between them. The realities of God’s sovereign will and our will is not either/or, it’s both/and. God created humanity knowing that they would chose to sin and so he planned and purposed for Jesus to come to save us, but he did not force Adam’s hand. God allows us to be tempted (1 Corinthians 10:13), but he himself does not tempt anyone (James 1:13).
After the fall Adam’s first thought was to blame the circumstances (Genesis 3:12), but we are all responsible for the choices we make. “No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.” (1 Corinthians 10:13). God gives us every opportunity to see the rooms (or slaveries – Romans 6) of sin and righteousness for what they are, and gives us our life to chose which we will live in for eternity.
Thursday, August 18, 2011
God's Dual Will
The perceived tension between God’s sovereignty and human responsibility can be reconciled by understanding the dual will of God. Christians believe that God has a sovereign (or transcendent) will which is basically everything that happens (Acts 18:21, Rom 1:10, 9:19, 15:32, 1 Pet 3:17, 4:19) and a moral (or immanent) will which is to obey God (Mark 3:25, John 7:17, Rom 12:2, 1 Thess 4:3, 5:18). These dual wills are not in opposition to each other, if you think of God’s sovereign will and his moral will as overlapping circles then the overlap is when we obey and the area of God’s sovereign will not overlapping with God’s moral will is when we sin. The area of God’s moral will not overlapping with his sovereign will are a missed opportunities to obey and the area outside both circles are missed opportunities to sin.
If you can hold these two together, you can hold God’s sovereignty together with human responsibility. For God is sovereign in his sovereign will, there is nothing that happens outside of it. And people are responsible in God’s moral will, our decisions and actions have real consequences. In this paradigm, human will (or free will if there is such a thing) is in the same dimension as God’s moral will. Our will can be in line with God’s will as revealed in the Bible, or opposed to it in a tug of wills. God’s sovereign will is seen in a different dimension, transcendent to his moral will and human wills alike. For linguists, his sovereign will is like the perfective aspect (bird’s eye view) of his will and his moral will like the imperfective aspect (street view) of his will.
Another way of seeing it is that the various parts of God’s moral will make up the whole of his sovereign will. So that when something happens in line with his moral will (like doing good – 1 Pet 2:15), it’s part of his sovereign will (Eph 2:10), but even when something happens in opposition to his moral will (like injustice – 1 Pet 3:17), it’s part of his sovereign will, ultimately for good (Rom 8:28). This is where it gets a bit tricky, for we know God’s moral will for the future but not his sovereign will for the future. And so people are responsible for the evil they commit, even though it’s not outside God’s sovereign will i.e. God uses our evil actions to achieve his good purpose (Gen 50:20, Acts 2:23).
Unfortunately we can never see God’s sovereign will beyond the present unless he reveals it to us (we can’t see the bird’s eye view of the street because we’re on the street). I think this is the heart of the perceived tension between God’s sovereignty and human responsibility (as it was for Job). It’s only with hindsight that we can see how God used events that are contrary to his moral will to actually achieve his sovereign will which is good (in some cases, that hindsight might not come until we’re in heaven). Until then we’re called to trust that God is powerful (in control of everything) and good (in everything that happens).
The problem of evil then is only a problem for those who demand hindsight in the present. Predestination is only an issue if God’s will doesn’t have a sovereign dimension as well as a dimension that we interact with. Free will only undermines God’s will if his sovereign will is seen to be exactly the same as his moral will, i.e. only if God’s will is one dimensional. The duality of God’s will is something that Christians have believed for centuries, and it’s the key to understanding one of the most difficult theological concepts – God’s sovereign benevolence. In this way, God’s sovereignty and goodness are seen as two sides of the same coin, his plan as two dimensions of the same will. Your will is free to be for or against God’s (moral) will, but never instead of God’s (sovereign) will, for he uses our morality in his sovereignty, i.e. he uses our will to achieve his.
If you can hold these two together, you can hold God’s sovereignty together with human responsibility. For God is sovereign in his sovereign will, there is nothing that happens outside of it. And people are responsible in God’s moral will, our decisions and actions have real consequences. In this paradigm, human will (or free will if there is such a thing) is in the same dimension as God’s moral will. Our will can be in line with God’s will as revealed in the Bible, or opposed to it in a tug of wills. God’s sovereign will is seen in a different dimension, transcendent to his moral will and human wills alike. For linguists, his sovereign will is like the perfective aspect (bird’s eye view) of his will and his moral will like the imperfective aspect (street view) of his will.
Another way of seeing it is that the various parts of God’s moral will make up the whole of his sovereign will. So that when something happens in line with his moral will (like doing good – 1 Pet 2:15), it’s part of his sovereign will (Eph 2:10), but even when something happens in opposition to his moral will (like injustice – 1 Pet 3:17), it’s part of his sovereign will, ultimately for good (Rom 8:28). This is where it gets a bit tricky, for we know God’s moral will for the future but not his sovereign will for the future. And so people are responsible for the evil they commit, even though it’s not outside God’s sovereign will i.e. God uses our evil actions to achieve his good purpose (Gen 50:20, Acts 2:23).
Unfortunately we can never see God’s sovereign will beyond the present unless he reveals it to us (we can’t see the bird’s eye view of the street because we’re on the street). I think this is the heart of the perceived tension between God’s sovereignty and human responsibility (as it was for Job). It’s only with hindsight that we can see how God used events that are contrary to his moral will to actually achieve his sovereign will which is good (in some cases, that hindsight might not come until we’re in heaven). Until then we’re called to trust that God is powerful (in control of everything) and good (in everything that happens).
The problem of evil then is only a problem for those who demand hindsight in the present. Predestination is only an issue if God’s will doesn’t have a sovereign dimension as well as a dimension that we interact with. Free will only undermines God’s will if his sovereign will is seen to be exactly the same as his moral will, i.e. only if God’s will is one dimensional. The duality of God’s will is something that Christians have believed for centuries, and it’s the key to understanding one of the most difficult theological concepts – God’s sovereign benevolence. In this way, God’s sovereignty and goodness are seen as two sides of the same coin, his plan as two dimensions of the same will. Your will is free to be for or against God’s (moral) will, but never instead of God’s (sovereign) will, for he uses our morality in his sovereignty, i.e. he uses our will to achieve his.
Saturday, July 16, 2011
On Perseverance
Another perceived tension that often boils down to the one between divine sovereignty and human responsibility is that of assurance and perseverance. There are several passages in the bible that assure Christians that once they are saved, they cannot be unsaved (John 10:28; Romans 8:38-39; Philippians 1:6) but there are also very real warnings in the Bible not to fall away (John 15:6; Philippians 2:12; Hebrews 4:11). Which is it? Is a Christian’s salvation guaranteed by God or is it up to us to persevere as Christians?
Again the question draws a false dichotomy between the will of a Christian and the will of God. Whether or not your will is aligned with God’s will or not, it never acts instead of God’s will. It is God who keeps us, but the way he keeps us is by our own volition. If you think of God’s salvation as being placed on top of a building and falling away as jumping off, then God doesn’t need to build a giant fence around the roof to keep Christians from jumping off, he simply shows them how far down the drop would be.
Those without the Holy Spirit will always want to push the boundaries, this is why the Old Testament law was spelled out in such great detail. But once someone has received the Holy Spirit they are changed inwardly so that they will not want to jump off of God’s salvation or push the boundaries of God’s law. In fact, the boundaries don’t need to be spelt out in such great detail if the person is changed so that they stay in the centre of God’s moral will, that is, if they are changed to love God and love others, they will not go near the boundaries (which may look different in different cultures and situations).
One of the few errors the puritans made was to look to themselves instead of to Christ, to discern whether they were Christians. They knew that Christians are saved by faith alone but faith is never alone, so they went looking for the deeds that accompany faith in order to gain assurance of salvation. But this is effectively putting faith in faith, that is, they were trusting in whether or not they had faith rather than trusting in Christ alone. To be assured that God has you, you need to look at God who is faithful, rather than yourself who may not always be faithful, even though you’ve been given the faith which enables you to be. For every look at yourself, take ten looks at your saviour.
In the parable of the four soils (Matthew 13:1-23 // Mark 4:1-20 // Luke 81:15) Jesus warns us not to be the first soil who rejects God’s word or the second soil who falls away. Just as God is sovereign in whom he chooses, he is sovereign in his choice coming to fruition. In both cases we are not encouraged to be passive, but to actively grow as the seed sown in the good soil. God graciously uses us to bring about his kingdom in ourselves as well as in the world, but if Christians could fall away then salvation would rest on our commitment to God rather than his commitment to us. Christians are chosen by grace, and if by grace then it is no longer by works; if it were, grace would no longer be grace (Romans 11:5-6).
Again the question draws a false dichotomy between the will of a Christian and the will of God. Whether or not your will is aligned with God’s will or not, it never acts instead of God’s will. It is God who keeps us, but the way he keeps us is by our own volition. If you think of God’s salvation as being placed on top of a building and falling away as jumping off, then God doesn’t need to build a giant fence around the roof to keep Christians from jumping off, he simply shows them how far down the drop would be.
Those without the Holy Spirit will always want to push the boundaries, this is why the Old Testament law was spelled out in such great detail. But once someone has received the Holy Spirit they are changed inwardly so that they will not want to jump off of God’s salvation or push the boundaries of God’s law. In fact, the boundaries don’t need to be spelt out in such great detail if the person is changed so that they stay in the centre of God’s moral will, that is, if they are changed to love God and love others, they will not go near the boundaries (which may look different in different cultures and situations).
One of the few errors the puritans made was to look to themselves instead of to Christ, to discern whether they were Christians. They knew that Christians are saved by faith alone but faith is never alone, so they went looking for the deeds that accompany faith in order to gain assurance of salvation. But this is effectively putting faith in faith, that is, they were trusting in whether or not they had faith rather than trusting in Christ alone. To be assured that God has you, you need to look at God who is faithful, rather than yourself who may not always be faithful, even though you’ve been given the faith which enables you to be. For every look at yourself, take ten looks at your saviour.
In the parable of the four soils (Matthew 13:1-23 // Mark 4:1-20 // Luke 81:15) Jesus warns us not to be the first soil who rejects God’s word or the second soil who falls away. Just as God is sovereign in whom he chooses, he is sovereign in his choice coming to fruition. In both cases we are not encouraged to be passive, but to actively grow as the seed sown in the good soil. God graciously uses us to bring about his kingdom in ourselves as well as in the world, but if Christians could fall away then salvation would rest on our commitment to God rather than his commitment to us. Christians are chosen by grace, and if by grace then it is no longer by works; if it were, grace would no longer be grace (Romans 11:5-6).
Monday, June 27, 2011
On Predestination
The perceived tension between God’s sovereignty and human responsibility is particularly felt in the doctrine of predestination (that God has chosen his people for heaven). If God has elected his chosen people ahead of time, then what’s the point in praying for them and encouraging them to become Christians? Moreover, if predestination implies double predestination (that has destined some for heaven and some for hell), then there’s nothing that the non-elect can do, they were doomed before they were born, and so how can God be fair if he doesn’t give them a chance.
This objection misunderstands sin and the first objection misunderstands grace. Double predestination is biblical (Romans 9:18), but it often carries a false assumption that people would otherwise be neutral before God and he moves some up to heaven and some down to hell. The reality is that we moved ourselves down to hell, if anything is undeserved, it’s that God moves some up to heaven. Left to our own devices no one would choose God, we all had our chance in Adam. Just as I came to Australia in my ancestor, so I came to idolatry in Adam. If you’re going to resent Adam for his original sin then you have to ask yourself, where did you get your life from?
Using predestination as an excuse not to pray for people and encourage them to become Christians is often referred to as hyper Calvinism. The false assumption behind this is that either God brings people to Christ or people bring people to Christ. But God has graciously involved us in his redemptive work, God brings people to Christ by the prayers and evangelism of other people. This is evident in the epilogue of Job, God is angry with Job’s friends and he says ‘my servant Job will pray for you, and I will accept his prayer’ (Job 42:8). Did Job’s prayer make a difference or was God sovereign over his grace? The question draws a false dichotomy, God was sovereign over his grace in Job’s prayer making a difference.
The difference is one of primary and secondary means. God is the ultimate cause of everything because he created the universe and is sovereign over it, but how he brings things into being is another question, one which often involves the human will. Our will may be for God’s will or against God’s will, but never instead of God’s will. God uses our choices and actions, whether they be good or bad, to achieve his good and perfect will. The answer to why someone had become a Christian is always grace (and why someone hasn’t is always sin), but how that person became a Christian is a different question entirely. The ultimate answer of why any given thing has happened or will happen is either our sin or God’s grace, but from a human perspective we’re often more interested in the secondary means rather than the primary, that is, we’re more interested in the how than the why.
Predestination is often seen as a doctrine that doesn’t really matter. It’s philosophical and complicated and since we’re not saved by our understanding of predestination then why does it matter? After all, isn’t it possible to be wrong about predestination and still be saved? Like a number of difficult doctrines, it’s certainly possible to saved without understanding them fully, but if you do fully understand predestination and reject it, you are effectively rejecting God’s grace. If the ultimate cause of your salvation is anything other than God’s mercy, then you are relying on your works (often in a decision) rather than Christ’s work on the cross. Putting your hope and identity in anything except God is the very definition of sin, but someone who puts it in Jesus is the definition of a Christian.
This objection misunderstands sin and the first objection misunderstands grace. Double predestination is biblical (Romans 9:18), but it often carries a false assumption that people would otherwise be neutral before God and he moves some up to heaven and some down to hell. The reality is that we moved ourselves down to hell, if anything is undeserved, it’s that God moves some up to heaven. Left to our own devices no one would choose God, we all had our chance in Adam. Just as I came to Australia in my ancestor, so I came to idolatry in Adam. If you’re going to resent Adam for his original sin then you have to ask yourself, where did you get your life from?
Using predestination as an excuse not to pray for people and encourage them to become Christians is often referred to as hyper Calvinism. The false assumption behind this is that either God brings people to Christ or people bring people to Christ. But God has graciously involved us in his redemptive work, God brings people to Christ by the prayers and evangelism of other people. This is evident in the epilogue of Job, God is angry with Job’s friends and he says ‘my servant Job will pray for you, and I will accept his prayer’ (Job 42:8). Did Job’s prayer make a difference or was God sovereign over his grace? The question draws a false dichotomy, God was sovereign over his grace in Job’s prayer making a difference.
The difference is one of primary and secondary means. God is the ultimate cause of everything because he created the universe and is sovereign over it, but how he brings things into being is another question, one which often involves the human will. Our will may be for God’s will or against God’s will, but never instead of God’s will. God uses our choices and actions, whether they be good or bad, to achieve his good and perfect will. The answer to why someone had become a Christian is always grace (and why someone hasn’t is always sin), but how that person became a Christian is a different question entirely. The ultimate answer of why any given thing has happened or will happen is either our sin or God’s grace, but from a human perspective we’re often more interested in the secondary means rather than the primary, that is, we’re more interested in the how than the why.
Predestination is often seen as a doctrine that doesn’t really matter. It’s philosophical and complicated and since we’re not saved by our understanding of predestination then why does it matter? After all, isn’t it possible to be wrong about predestination and still be saved? Like a number of difficult doctrines, it’s certainly possible to saved without understanding them fully, but if you do fully understand predestination and reject it, you are effectively rejecting God’s grace. If the ultimate cause of your salvation is anything other than God’s mercy, then you are relying on your works (often in a decision) rather than Christ’s work on the cross. Putting your hope and identity in anything except God is the very definition of sin, but someone who puts it in Jesus is the definition of a Christian.
Thursday, May 5, 2011
The Problem of Evil and Suffering
The problem of the existence of evil and suffering has long been used as a reason to doubt and disbelieve in the existence of a good and powerful God. The argument goes like this, either God can’t stop evil and suffering and so he isn’t good, or he won’t stop evil and suffering and so he isn’t good. You can’t have your cake and eat it too. However, this objection carries assumptions about God’s power and his goodness that need to be examined.
Firstly it assumes that God’s power is like human power, that is, it’s displayed and measured by its ability to overcome rival powers. The more powerful things a person can stop, the more powerful the person is. But God’s power in incomparable to ours, in fact, all power that we have is only ours because God gave it to us (John 19:11). The bible teaches us that no one escapes God’s sovereign will (Rom 9:19), God is in control of everything (Rom 8:28, Eph 1:11). Power isn’t opposed by God because it’s derived from God, evil and suffering can occur with or without God, but never instead of God.
Secondly, and more importantly, it assumes that God’s goodness is to be judged by us, as opposed to our ‘goodness’ judged by God. Because we are limited in time, space and knowledge we can never see the full consequences of any action, we only see its immediate effects and make judgments on partial knowledge. The goodness that can come from evil and suffering is often difficult if not impossible to see when it happens, but that doesn’t mean that no good can come of it. In an evil event, the perpetrators intend it for harm but God intends it for good (Gen 50:20, Acts 2:23), even if we cannot see the good that God will bring out of it at the time.
Furthermore, the objection assumes that God is big enough to blame for evil and suffering but not big enough to have reasons for it. We want God to be omnipotent enough to be able to blame, but not omniscient enough to have reasons for it that we don’t know. If God is big enough to be in control of evil and suffering, then surely he is big enough to have reasons for it that we don’t necessarily know. You can’t have your cake and eat it too.
The problem of evil and suffering is actually more profound for those who don’t believe in God, for without God we have no basis to label or even believe in evil. The simple fact is, if there is no God then there is no objective good or evil, only opinions of them. The entire subject of ethics boils down to people saying yum or yuck. Moreover, if we’re so happy to affirm the strong eating the weak in evolution, then why are we so upset about the strong eating the weak in society? Why do we cry out against injustice? How can we have an inherent sense of good and evil unless God has written it on our hearts (Rom 2:15)?
While this might start to answer some of the intellectual difficulties we have with evil and suffering, is doesn’t even scratch the surface of difficulties that we have when we experience evil and suffering ourselves. This is quite a different objection that requires an even more different response. Just as Jesus responds differently to the same objection of Lazarus’ sisters (John 11:21-27 cf. 11:32-35), we must respond to intellectual question intellectually and pastoral questions pastorally.
When we experience evil and suffering, the bible points us to three points in history: the beginning, the centre, and the end. In the beginning of history we see that the reason that evil and suffering exists is because we chose it. Sin is more about law making than law breaking, evil and suffering enters the world because we call what God calls evil, good. In the centre of history we see Jesus dying on the cross, experiencing the height of evil and suffering being forsaken by God, so that we wouldn’t have to. God the son dies for us so that God the father can end evil and suffering without ending us.
Finally, when we suffer, the bible lifts our eyes to the end of history when God will wipe every tear from our eyes and there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain (Rev 21:4). The bitterness of life on earth will only make heaven all the more sweet. Like waking up from a bad dream, we will be able to appreciate God’s goodness so much more having experienced the evil of the world. Heaven is the best possible world, but unfortunately we have to go through earth to get there.
Firstly it assumes that God’s power is like human power, that is, it’s displayed and measured by its ability to overcome rival powers. The more powerful things a person can stop, the more powerful the person is. But God’s power in incomparable to ours, in fact, all power that we have is only ours because God gave it to us (John 19:11). The bible teaches us that no one escapes God’s sovereign will (Rom 9:19), God is in control of everything (Rom 8:28, Eph 1:11). Power isn’t opposed by God because it’s derived from God, evil and suffering can occur with or without God, but never instead of God.
Secondly, and more importantly, it assumes that God’s goodness is to be judged by us, as opposed to our ‘goodness’ judged by God. Because we are limited in time, space and knowledge we can never see the full consequences of any action, we only see its immediate effects and make judgments on partial knowledge. The goodness that can come from evil and suffering is often difficult if not impossible to see when it happens, but that doesn’t mean that no good can come of it. In an evil event, the perpetrators intend it for harm but God intends it for good (Gen 50:20, Acts 2:23), even if we cannot see the good that God will bring out of it at the time.
Furthermore, the objection assumes that God is big enough to blame for evil and suffering but not big enough to have reasons for it. We want God to be omnipotent enough to be able to blame, but not omniscient enough to have reasons for it that we don’t know. If God is big enough to be in control of evil and suffering, then surely he is big enough to have reasons for it that we don’t necessarily know. You can’t have your cake and eat it too.
The problem of evil and suffering is actually more profound for those who don’t believe in God, for without God we have no basis to label or even believe in evil. The simple fact is, if there is no God then there is no objective good or evil, only opinions of them. The entire subject of ethics boils down to people saying yum or yuck. Moreover, if we’re so happy to affirm the strong eating the weak in evolution, then why are we so upset about the strong eating the weak in society? Why do we cry out against injustice? How can we have an inherent sense of good and evil unless God has written it on our hearts (Rom 2:15)?
While this might start to answer some of the intellectual difficulties we have with evil and suffering, is doesn’t even scratch the surface of difficulties that we have when we experience evil and suffering ourselves. This is quite a different objection that requires an even more different response. Just as Jesus responds differently to the same objection of Lazarus’ sisters (John 11:21-27 cf. 11:32-35), we must respond to intellectual question intellectually and pastoral questions pastorally.
When we experience evil and suffering, the bible points us to three points in history: the beginning, the centre, and the end. In the beginning of history we see that the reason that evil and suffering exists is because we chose it. Sin is more about law making than law breaking, evil and suffering enters the world because we call what God calls evil, good. In the centre of history we see Jesus dying on the cross, experiencing the height of evil and suffering being forsaken by God, so that we wouldn’t have to. God the son dies for us so that God the father can end evil and suffering without ending us.
Finally, when we suffer, the bible lifts our eyes to the end of history when God will wipe every tear from our eyes and there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain (Rev 21:4). The bitterness of life on earth will only make heaven all the more sweet. Like waking up from a bad dream, we will be able to appreciate God’s goodness so much more having experienced the evil of the world. Heaven is the best possible world, but unfortunately we have to go through earth to get there.
Saturday, April 16, 2011
Sovereignty and Responsibility
For centuries theologians have wrestled with the “tension” that God is sovereign (in control) over everything and that people are responsible for the choices that they make. How can people be responsible for their actions if God is in control? Surely if God is in control then he is responsible and the individual isn’t, or by contrast, if an individual is responsible then God can’t be sovereign over that particular action (at least).
However this “antinomy” (perceived paradox) carries the assumption that only one will is responsible for any given event. In order to point the finger of blame we look for a single person to place the responsibility on. Unfortunately, cause and effect is not that simple. Every action, event and outcome has a sum of causes interacting with each other, and often effects a series of other actions, events and outcomes. Just as the surface of the sea is shaped by every breath of wind, wave, fish and rain drop; so too are the things that we do shaped by countless causes, influences, circumstances and situations.
Mutual (and even shared) responsibility is acknowledged in our legal system by recognising accomplices and accessories to crime. Several people (each with individual wills) often carry the weight of responsibility of an action, and very rarely do they carry it equally. The straw that breaks the camel’s back is rarely culprit we would assign blame to, and so should we blame the first weight, the heaviest weight, or a weight that allowed others to be added?
It gets a bit more complicated when mutually responsible people do things for different reasons. If an employee is told to fire a co-worker they don’t like, they may do it for spiteful reasons, but if it was ordained by the employer to release the co-worker from a contract they we’re hoping to get out of with financial compensation, it’s done for good reasons. Similarly if I told you to punch your enemy in the back you might do it with evil intent, but if that punch caused them to regurgitate a piece of food that was choking them then it would be the result of good intent.
And therein lies the rub. If actions are deemed to be good or evil based on their intent (as suggested above in defining right and wrong) and actions can be attributed to multiple wills with differing intentions, then there is no need for a tension between God’s sovereignty and human responsibility. Every event in history attributes responsibility to God, for without him no one would be created let alone do anything, and also to individuals, for we all have individual wills. Our wills may operate inside or outside God’s moral will (as revealed in the bible), but never outside his sovereign will (as revealed by history). We can do things with or without God, but never instead of God.
The bible says that God is sovereign over all things for good (Rom 8:28, Eph 1:11), but we know that people are capable of evil. In all such cases, the perpetrators intend it for harm while God intends it for good (Gen 50:20). And so the perpetrators are responsible to the extent that the event brings harm and God is responsible to the extent that the event brings good. This is not a tug of war of responsibility where the more responsible the perpetrator is the less responsible God is, rather the responsibility attributed to God transcends the responsibility attributed to the human agents. Both are responsible for all that they have done.
And so in a sense, we’re all accomplices in demonstrating God’s justice and God’s grace. When we do things that lead to God’s deserved punishment we’re accomplices in demonstrating God’s justice, and when we do things that lead to repentance and God’s undeserved grace we’re accomplices in demonstrating God’s grace. As an accomplice, we all have wills that make us 100% responsible for our actions, and as the principle (one who has an accomplice), God is 100% responsible for the events that he ordains (everything). Since all of these culminate in God’s perfect justice and God’s saving grace, God is shown to be just and good, while we may be culpably unjust and evil.
This is nowhere more evident than in Jesus’ death on the cross. Jesus was handed over to men by God’s set purpose and foreknowledge, who, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross (Acts 2:23). Those who killed him are wicked because they killed him out of envy, pride and hatred, but God’s set purpose was the forgiveness and salvation on all who would accept it. In this event, as it is with every event, God uses human (and often evil) wills to bring about his good will, for God is so sovereign that he uses our will to accomplish his.
However this “antinomy” (perceived paradox) carries the assumption that only one will is responsible for any given event. In order to point the finger of blame we look for a single person to place the responsibility on. Unfortunately, cause and effect is not that simple. Every action, event and outcome has a sum of causes interacting with each other, and often effects a series of other actions, events and outcomes. Just as the surface of the sea is shaped by every breath of wind, wave, fish and rain drop; so too are the things that we do shaped by countless causes, influences, circumstances and situations.
Mutual (and even shared) responsibility is acknowledged in our legal system by recognising accomplices and accessories to crime. Several people (each with individual wills) often carry the weight of responsibility of an action, and very rarely do they carry it equally. The straw that breaks the camel’s back is rarely culprit we would assign blame to, and so should we blame the first weight, the heaviest weight, or a weight that allowed others to be added?
It gets a bit more complicated when mutually responsible people do things for different reasons. If an employee is told to fire a co-worker they don’t like, they may do it for spiteful reasons, but if it was ordained by the employer to release the co-worker from a contract they we’re hoping to get out of with financial compensation, it’s done for good reasons. Similarly if I told you to punch your enemy in the back you might do it with evil intent, but if that punch caused them to regurgitate a piece of food that was choking them then it would be the result of good intent.
And therein lies the rub. If actions are deemed to be good or evil based on their intent (as suggested above in defining right and wrong) and actions can be attributed to multiple wills with differing intentions, then there is no need for a tension between God’s sovereignty and human responsibility. Every event in history attributes responsibility to God, for without him no one would be created let alone do anything, and also to individuals, for we all have individual wills. Our wills may operate inside or outside God’s moral will (as revealed in the bible), but never outside his sovereign will (as revealed by history). We can do things with or without God, but never instead of God.
The bible says that God is sovereign over all things for good (Rom 8:28, Eph 1:11), but we know that people are capable of evil. In all such cases, the perpetrators intend it for harm while God intends it for good (Gen 50:20). And so the perpetrators are responsible to the extent that the event brings harm and God is responsible to the extent that the event brings good. This is not a tug of war of responsibility where the more responsible the perpetrator is the less responsible God is, rather the responsibility attributed to God transcends the responsibility attributed to the human agents. Both are responsible for all that they have done.
And so in a sense, we’re all accomplices in demonstrating God’s justice and God’s grace. When we do things that lead to God’s deserved punishment we’re accomplices in demonstrating God’s justice, and when we do things that lead to repentance and God’s undeserved grace we’re accomplices in demonstrating God’s grace. As an accomplice, we all have wills that make us 100% responsible for our actions, and as the principle (one who has an accomplice), God is 100% responsible for the events that he ordains (everything). Since all of these culminate in God’s perfect justice and God’s saving grace, God is shown to be just and good, while we may be culpably unjust and evil.
This is nowhere more evident than in Jesus’ death on the cross. Jesus was handed over to men by God’s set purpose and foreknowledge, who, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross (Acts 2:23). Those who killed him are wicked because they killed him out of envy, pride and hatred, but God’s set purpose was the forgiveness and salvation on all who would accept it. In this event, as it is with every event, God uses human (and often evil) wills to bring about his good will, for God is so sovereign that he uses our will to accomplish his.
Thursday, March 17, 2011
The Complexities of Freedom
What’s the relationship between your freedom and your will? Most people talk about free will as if human will is free from influence, but our wills are captivated by all sorts of things on a daily basis. In order for something to influence us it has to affect our will i.e. it has to make us want to do it or at least be inclined to do it. Our will always has an object, when we talk about our will it’s always the will do to something (even if that something is to do nothing i.e. to rest). And so our wills are never free in every sense, for they must, by definition, orbit around one or more things.
Augustine said “What the heart desires, the will chooses and the mind justifies.” Implying that our wills are slaves to our heart's desires. Using these terms, those who advocate for free will may equate it with freedom of our hearts desire. Which sounds reasonable except for the fact that “the heart wants what the heart wants.” We’re never free from our hearts desire, if anything, we’re slaves to whatever captivates our hearts.
And so freedom isn’t the ability to control your will (it’s your will that controls you). Freedom is the ability to exercise your will, the ability to do whatever your will moves you to do. Freedom is not just having more options, because options that you will never choose are irrelevant. Freedom is the ability to go through the doors you want to go through, not just having access to more doors. This is fairly easily seen by reflecting at why people cry out for freedom. It’s always because they’re compelled to do something against their will, the door they want to go through is locked. An environmentalist is not going to feel oppressed when the government takes away peoples freedom to litter.
Freedom is further complicated by our changing situations. Usually, when you go through a door you come into a room with a different set of doors, previously open doors are now closed and new doors are open to you. If you want to be free to express yourself on a piano then you have to make yourself a slave to the study of piano lessons. Whichever you choose depends on your will, and turns what might otherwise be slavery into freedom. If you really want to be free to express yourself on a piano, you won’t see piano lessons as slavery. If you want to be free from piano lessons, you won’t see expressing yourself on a piano as freedom.
Which brings us to the question of truth. Postmodernism often sees truth claims as threats to peoples freedom. If I claim that guns a bad and people shouldn’t have guns, lots of people (especially in the U.S.) will see it as a threat to their freedom. If I say that marriage is between a man and a woman then the gay community and its supporters cry oppression. But the truth doesn’t limit our freedom, rather its lies that trap us and the truth that sets us free. If the captain of a ship knows where sandbanks and coral reefs are, then he’s free to steer the ship safely. If a competitor knows the rules of his competition than he’s free to compete in such a way as to win the prize.
And so truth claims about God are only restrictions to freedom if God doesn’t exist. If God’s character is a matter of opinion than proclaiming Christianity or Islam or even atheism is just as oppressive as demanding that everyone listen to your favourite type of music. But if God does exist then telling people the truth about him is like telling the captain of the ship the truth about the ocean, or telling an athlete the truth about their sport.
Jesus claims that anyone who sins is a slave to sin (John 8:34), and the rest of the bible claims that people are either slaves to sin or slaves to righteousness (Rom 6:16). We’re all free in that whichever we do is voluntary (sin is willful disobedience, righteousness is willful obedience) but we don’t have the power to do the contrary. If we’re saved by grace alone (Eph 2:8-9) then we don’t contribute, God alone frees us from sin and makes us slaves to righteousness. And if grace is effective then once we’re slaves to righteousness we can’t go back to our slavery to sin. It’s like we’re locked in one of two rooms, but we don’t want to leave the one we’re in, convinced that freedom is found in our room and slavery in the other (like freedom to express yourself on piano vs. freedom from piano lessons).
However, only the slaves to righteousness have seen both rooms. Becoming a Christian is kind of like the coming out of the matrix, you don’t what you’re coming out of until you’ve come out of it. While the devil has captured the will of mankind to sin, if the son sets you free, you will be free indeed (John 8:36).
Augustine said “What the heart desires, the will chooses and the mind justifies.” Implying that our wills are slaves to our heart's desires. Using these terms, those who advocate for free will may equate it with freedom of our hearts desire. Which sounds reasonable except for the fact that “the heart wants what the heart wants.” We’re never free from our hearts desire, if anything, we’re slaves to whatever captivates our hearts.
And so freedom isn’t the ability to control your will (it’s your will that controls you). Freedom is the ability to exercise your will, the ability to do whatever your will moves you to do. Freedom is not just having more options, because options that you will never choose are irrelevant. Freedom is the ability to go through the doors you want to go through, not just having access to more doors. This is fairly easily seen by reflecting at why people cry out for freedom. It’s always because they’re compelled to do something against their will, the door they want to go through is locked. An environmentalist is not going to feel oppressed when the government takes away peoples freedom to litter.
Freedom is further complicated by our changing situations. Usually, when you go through a door you come into a room with a different set of doors, previously open doors are now closed and new doors are open to you. If you want to be free to express yourself on a piano then you have to make yourself a slave to the study of piano lessons. Whichever you choose depends on your will, and turns what might otherwise be slavery into freedom. If you really want to be free to express yourself on a piano, you won’t see piano lessons as slavery. If you want to be free from piano lessons, you won’t see expressing yourself on a piano as freedom.
Which brings us to the question of truth. Postmodernism often sees truth claims as threats to peoples freedom. If I claim that guns a bad and people shouldn’t have guns, lots of people (especially in the U.S.) will see it as a threat to their freedom. If I say that marriage is between a man and a woman then the gay community and its supporters cry oppression. But the truth doesn’t limit our freedom, rather its lies that trap us and the truth that sets us free. If the captain of a ship knows where sandbanks and coral reefs are, then he’s free to steer the ship safely. If a competitor knows the rules of his competition than he’s free to compete in such a way as to win the prize.
And so truth claims about God are only restrictions to freedom if God doesn’t exist. If God’s character is a matter of opinion than proclaiming Christianity or Islam or even atheism is just as oppressive as demanding that everyone listen to your favourite type of music. But if God does exist then telling people the truth about him is like telling the captain of the ship the truth about the ocean, or telling an athlete the truth about their sport.
Jesus claims that anyone who sins is a slave to sin (John 8:34), and the rest of the bible claims that people are either slaves to sin or slaves to righteousness (Rom 6:16). We’re all free in that whichever we do is voluntary (sin is willful disobedience, righteousness is willful obedience) but we don’t have the power to do the contrary. If we’re saved by grace alone (Eph 2:8-9) then we don’t contribute, God alone frees us from sin and makes us slaves to righteousness. And if grace is effective then once we’re slaves to righteousness we can’t go back to our slavery to sin. It’s like we’re locked in one of two rooms, but we don’t want to leave the one we’re in, convinced that freedom is found in our room and slavery in the other (like freedom to express yourself on piano vs. freedom from piano lessons).
However, only the slaves to righteousness have seen both rooms. Becoming a Christian is kind of like the coming out of the matrix, you don’t what you’re coming out of until you’ve come out of it. While the devil has captured the will of mankind to sin, if the son sets you free, you will be free indeed (John 8:36).
Saturday, February 5, 2011
Defining Right and Wrong
What makes something right or wrong? Where do you draw the line between good and evil? Contrary to what some post-modernists say, in order to punish anything by law or to commend anything in any way, some things must be objectively right and some things must be objectively wrong. If whatever is right or wrong for you is only right or wrong for you, then not only do you have no grounds for enforcing any law, but you can never critique or improve anyone’s morality. If Hitler thought it was ok for him to kill the people that he saw as inferior then post-modernism is bound to let him do so because that’s what he believes is right and we need to respect that.
There are three major schools of thought in deciding what’s right and what’s wrong. Whether an action is good or bad depends on either the action itself (deontological ethics), the consequences (consequentialism), or the motive (teleological ethics). To define actions as universally good or bad (deontological ethics) is the most difficult ethic to defend and the most objected to ethic by post-modernism. This is because it forbids you to choose the lesser of two evils if the greater evil is more passive than the lesser. This was famously demonstrated when Immanuel Kant (who championed deontological ethics) was asked what he should do if a murderer asked him where his children were. Kant replied that since lying was universally wrong he was bound to tell him the truth. By contrast, when God-fearing midwives lied in order to save life they are commended by God for doing the right thing (Exodus 1:15-21). Deontological ethics also forbids going to war as the lesser of two evils because allowing a country to invade is more passive than defending yourself.
Defining an action as good or bad based on its consequences (consequentialism) is easier to defend but it is ultimately flawed by our limited understanding of consequences. While consequentialism invariably chooses whatever is for the greater good, who decides what the greater good is, and whose good are we talking about? Consequentialism leads to an ethic where the end justifies the means and so if you’re ‘end’ is important enough then it doesn’t matter how many people you hurt along the way. Consequentialism is gaining more and more popularity today and is often used to justify abortion and euthanasia. However, as finite human beings we can never see the full extent of the consequences of our actions. If your consequential scope is too small then you might be willing to negotiate with terrorists even if it means more terrorists will arise because they could get their way. If your consequential scope is too big then you might be willing to kill people for your end because it won’t make a difference in the big scheme of things after a few generations have passed. In the end it doesn’t really answer the question of right and wrong because the greater good is still subjective, even Hitler thought he was doing the right thing. All a man’s ways seem right to him, but the Lord weighs the heart (Proverbs 21:2). Consequentialism is a slippery slope to the mind justifying whatever the heart desires.
To define an action as good or evil based on motive (teleological ethics) is the easiest ethic to defend and the most liveable. It allows you to choose the lesser of two evils provided you do so for the right reasons, and it condemns pursuing your own ends at the expense of others. Motive plays a major part in how the law punishes crime, mistakes are never treated as severely as preconceived law breaking. Moreover, teleological ethics allows for innocence and guilt to fall on different people involved in the same action. If you tell someone the time without knowing that they would use that information to detonate an explosion at the time that would kill the maximum number of people, then to what extent are you an accessory? If you’re just looking at the raw consequences then your action has contributed to the death of many, but your motive (or lack thereof) testifies to your innocence. When Joseph is sold into slavery by his brothers as part of God’s plan to save lives, Joseph’s brothers are shown to be guilty because their evil intent while God is shown to be loving and merciful because of his good intent (Genesis 50:20). When Jesus was killed by men as part of God’s set purpose, the men are seen as wicked because their motive was jealousy and pride while God is seen to be good because his motive was the salvation of humanity (Acts 2:23). In the end, teleological ethics justifies everything done out of love and condemns everything done out of hate.
There are three major schools of thought in deciding what’s right and what’s wrong. Whether an action is good or bad depends on either the action itself (deontological ethics), the consequences (consequentialism), or the motive (teleological ethics). To define actions as universally good or bad (deontological ethics) is the most difficult ethic to defend and the most objected to ethic by post-modernism. This is because it forbids you to choose the lesser of two evils if the greater evil is more passive than the lesser. This was famously demonstrated when Immanuel Kant (who championed deontological ethics) was asked what he should do if a murderer asked him where his children were. Kant replied that since lying was universally wrong he was bound to tell him the truth. By contrast, when God-fearing midwives lied in order to save life they are commended by God for doing the right thing (Exodus 1:15-21). Deontological ethics also forbids going to war as the lesser of two evils because allowing a country to invade is more passive than defending yourself.
Defining an action as good or bad based on its consequences (consequentialism) is easier to defend but it is ultimately flawed by our limited understanding of consequences. While consequentialism invariably chooses whatever is for the greater good, who decides what the greater good is, and whose good are we talking about? Consequentialism leads to an ethic where the end justifies the means and so if you’re ‘end’ is important enough then it doesn’t matter how many people you hurt along the way. Consequentialism is gaining more and more popularity today and is often used to justify abortion and euthanasia. However, as finite human beings we can never see the full extent of the consequences of our actions. If your consequential scope is too small then you might be willing to negotiate with terrorists even if it means more terrorists will arise because they could get their way. If your consequential scope is too big then you might be willing to kill people for your end because it won’t make a difference in the big scheme of things after a few generations have passed. In the end it doesn’t really answer the question of right and wrong because the greater good is still subjective, even Hitler thought he was doing the right thing. All a man’s ways seem right to him, but the Lord weighs the heart (Proverbs 21:2). Consequentialism is a slippery slope to the mind justifying whatever the heart desires.
To define an action as good or evil based on motive (teleological ethics) is the easiest ethic to defend and the most liveable. It allows you to choose the lesser of two evils provided you do so for the right reasons, and it condemns pursuing your own ends at the expense of others. Motive plays a major part in how the law punishes crime, mistakes are never treated as severely as preconceived law breaking. Moreover, teleological ethics allows for innocence and guilt to fall on different people involved in the same action. If you tell someone the time without knowing that they would use that information to detonate an explosion at the time that would kill the maximum number of people, then to what extent are you an accessory? If you’re just looking at the raw consequences then your action has contributed to the death of many, but your motive (or lack thereof) testifies to your innocence. When Joseph is sold into slavery by his brothers as part of God’s plan to save lives, Joseph’s brothers are shown to be guilty because their evil intent while God is shown to be loving and merciful because of his good intent (Genesis 50:20). When Jesus was killed by men as part of God’s set purpose, the men are seen as wicked because their motive was jealousy and pride while God is seen to be good because his motive was the salvation of humanity (Acts 2:23). In the end, teleological ethics justifies everything done out of love and condemns everything done out of hate.
Saturday, January 1, 2011
The Impossibility of Paradoxes
There are four types of mathematical proofs, by definition, by contradiction, by contrapositive and by induction. The second – proof by contradiction – works on the principle that if you start with an assumption and use it to logically deduce a contradiction (a paradox with something that’s true) then you’re assumption is false. This assumption that’s proved to be false may be one of your logical steps, but it has to be something, falsehood cannot be created from truth alone.
And so philosophically, contradictions and paradoxes are challenges to assumptions. In the same way that two even numbers can never add together to produce an odd number, truth plus truth can never equal something that’s false. When we come across a paradox, it must be because there is something false in whatever it was that led us to the paradox. This doesn’t mean that nothing is paradoxical or counter intuitive, only that there is no such thing as a true paradox or contradiction. This can be demonstrated in philosophy, science and theology.
One of the most famous philosophical ‘paradoxes’ is of Achilles and the tortoise, this is sometimes phased in terms of an arrow and a target but the philosophy is the same. If Achilles can run ten times faster than the tortoise and he gives the tortoise a 100 meter head start, then how far will the tortoise get before Achilles catches him? In the time it takes Achilles to run the 100 meter starting difference, the tortoise will have gone ten meters. In the time it takes Achilles to run that ten meters the tortoise will have gone one meter. In the time it takes Achilles to run that one meter the tortoise will have gone a tenth of a meter and so on. This is an infinite series where Achilles asymptotically approaches the tortoise but never catches it, even though he’s running ten times faster – a philosophical paradox.
But this isn’t actually a paradox, it’s a proof by contradiction that space and time are quantised. The underlying assumption to the philosophy is that space and time (if you use seconds instead of meters) can infinitely divided i.e. you can always divide any given amount of space (or time) into ten. There has to be a length, probably the width of an electron, (and a time, probably the time it takes the speed of light to travel the width of an electron,) that cannot be further divided. Once Achilles is an electrons distance from the tortoise, he catches him in the next time step.
The classic scientific paradox is the wave-particle duality of light. In Young’s double-slit experiment, he fired a single photon (particle of light) at two slits and observed two slits of light on the other side. The single particle went through both slits at the same time – a scientific paradox. But this is actually a proof by contradiction that light has properties of waves as well as particles. The experiment disproves the assumption that photons behave in the same way as protons and electrons, which isn’t that surprising given that they have mass where as photons don’t.
In theology, one of the biggest ‘paradoxes’ is in God’s sovereignty and human responsibility. If God is sovereign over everything that happens, then how can people be held responsible for their actions? But again, this is no paradox, only an exposure of the false dichotomy between God’s sovereignty and our responsibility. Left to our own devices we all choose the path of selfishness, but God uses our bad choices for his good purpose. Like the dual authorship of the Bible, God’s sovereignty and our responsibility is the dual authorship of history. The two are not pulling in different directions but running parallel. Your choices and actions can be with or without God, but never instead of God.
Other theological concepts like the trinity and Jesus’ nature may appear to be paradoxical, but God’s word doesn’t contain contradictions. When a perceived contradiction arises, it is our assumptions that are challenged, not God. This gives rise to the principle hermeneutic; that the Bible must be read without drawing dichotomies with itself. This principle for understanding God’s special revelation – the Bible – is also used for our understanding of his general revelation in science. A scientific hypothesis is made in conjunction with other scientific laws, not in opposition to them. So too, theological conclusions must be made in coherency with all of God’s word. Furthermore, if the God who created the universe has revealed himself in the Bible, then dichotomies can’t be drawn between God’s special revelation and his general revelation. Our assumptions about how they are true may be challenged, but our challenge is to hold them both as true.
And so philosophically, contradictions and paradoxes are challenges to assumptions. In the same way that two even numbers can never add together to produce an odd number, truth plus truth can never equal something that’s false. When we come across a paradox, it must be because there is something false in whatever it was that led us to the paradox. This doesn’t mean that nothing is paradoxical or counter intuitive, only that there is no such thing as a true paradox or contradiction. This can be demonstrated in philosophy, science and theology.
One of the most famous philosophical ‘paradoxes’ is of Achilles and the tortoise, this is sometimes phased in terms of an arrow and a target but the philosophy is the same. If Achilles can run ten times faster than the tortoise and he gives the tortoise a 100 meter head start, then how far will the tortoise get before Achilles catches him? In the time it takes Achilles to run the 100 meter starting difference, the tortoise will have gone ten meters. In the time it takes Achilles to run that ten meters the tortoise will have gone one meter. In the time it takes Achilles to run that one meter the tortoise will have gone a tenth of a meter and so on. This is an infinite series where Achilles asymptotically approaches the tortoise but never catches it, even though he’s running ten times faster – a philosophical paradox.
But this isn’t actually a paradox, it’s a proof by contradiction that space and time are quantised. The underlying assumption to the philosophy is that space and time (if you use seconds instead of meters) can infinitely divided i.e. you can always divide any given amount of space (or time) into ten. There has to be a length, probably the width of an electron, (and a time, probably the time it takes the speed of light to travel the width of an electron,) that cannot be further divided. Once Achilles is an electrons distance from the tortoise, he catches him in the next time step.
The classic scientific paradox is the wave-particle duality of light. In Young’s double-slit experiment, he fired a single photon (particle of light) at two slits and observed two slits of light on the other side. The single particle went through both slits at the same time – a scientific paradox. But this is actually a proof by contradiction that light has properties of waves as well as particles. The experiment disproves the assumption that photons behave in the same way as protons and electrons, which isn’t that surprising given that they have mass where as photons don’t.
In theology, one of the biggest ‘paradoxes’ is in God’s sovereignty and human responsibility. If God is sovereign over everything that happens, then how can people be held responsible for their actions? But again, this is no paradox, only an exposure of the false dichotomy between God’s sovereignty and our responsibility. Left to our own devices we all choose the path of selfishness, but God uses our bad choices for his good purpose. Like the dual authorship of the Bible, God’s sovereignty and our responsibility is the dual authorship of history. The two are not pulling in different directions but running parallel. Your choices and actions can be with or without God, but never instead of God.
Other theological concepts like the trinity and Jesus’ nature may appear to be paradoxical, but God’s word doesn’t contain contradictions. When a perceived contradiction arises, it is our assumptions that are challenged, not God. This gives rise to the principle hermeneutic; that the Bible must be read without drawing dichotomies with itself. This principle for understanding God’s special revelation – the Bible – is also used for our understanding of his general revelation in science. A scientific hypothesis is made in conjunction with other scientific laws, not in opposition to them. So too, theological conclusions must be made in coherency with all of God’s word. Furthermore, if the God who created the universe has revealed himself in the Bible, then dichotomies can’t be drawn between God’s special revelation and his general revelation. Our assumptions about how they are true may be challenged, but our challenge is to hold them both as true.
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