Is Their God Truly Just? More Assessment of McLaren, Jones, Pagitt, and Bell

There are some key premises in their thought about God’s love and goodness: God essentially is both loving and good, and love is essential to good relationships. However, violence (e.g., with punishment of sin) is incompatible with these qualities of God and good relationships. So, how does God deal with injustice, and evil? It seems it is by His absorbing it into Himself, then forgiving and forgetting it.[1] God overcomes evil creatively by His goodness.

Now, McLaren and our other authors are deeply, and rightly, concerned about God’s goodness and justice being realized on earth as it is in heaven. They realize justice needs to be lived out now, and not just after we are with the Lord in heaven.

Yet, if God is truly good, just, and holy (i.e., utterly pure, righteous, and undefiled by sin), it seems He would hate evil and must exact punishment for it. This fits with God’s self-description in Exodus 34:6-7, where He discloses He is not only loving, compassionate, faithful, and more, but also that He will not leave the guilty unpunished. We can relate to this, for if a human judge did not punish evil actions, we would recognize that judge’s action to be unjust.

Nevertheless, this view is not an option for McLaren, or even Jones, for it treats His holiness as absolute, and it requires that God act retributively in justice. Evidently, then, on their views, God can choose not to punish sin. However, this implication leaves us with two disastrous results. First, God would be defective in terms of being truly holy, just, and even good because He would not necessarily be repulsed by evil.

Second, if God can choose not to punish sin, then He would punish it simply based upon His willing something to be wrong, and not due to His character of being just and holy. Yet, if so, then it seems God is arbitrary in His ethical requirements and even His character, the latter of which McLaren seems to presuppose is not arbitrary. This result makes McLaren’s view of God vulnerable to the Euthyphro objection, that whatever God wills is right, simply because He willed it. But that raises the prospects that on McLaren’s view, God could will all sorts of things we clearly know are immoral. Thus, if God can be arbitrary, He would not inspire “fear” in the sense of reverence, awe, and love, but instead deep terror. For on McLaren’s view of God, He could blow up in rage, the very kind of God McLaren and others reject as unacceptable. Even though McLaren wants to affirm God is good, and His character does not evolve (while our interpretations do), his view cannot sustain God’s goodness. For, to be truly good, a person must be not only truly loving, but also truly just. Yet, God’s justice is arbitrary on McLaren’s and others’ views, and therefore they cannot preserve God’s justice. Sadly, this leaves us with a God who is not truly good – and thus not worthy of worship.


[1] E.g., see McLaren, The Story We Find Ourselves In (San Francisco: Jossey Bass, 2003), 153.

Dallas Willard on the Loss of Moral Knowledge, & a Related Spiritual Aspect

Posthumously, Dallas Willard (one of my key mentors) published a book with Routledge called The Disappearance of Moral Knowledge. I learned a lot from him about the importance of tracing the history in the west of how morals became viewed as mere opinions, preferences, constructs, etc. That became the backbone of my own In Search of Moral Knowledge.

In May 2019, the Biola Center for Christian Thought convened a meeting sponsored by Dallas Willard Ministries to discuss this book. From that, I came away with an idea that there is a spiritual aspect to this issue, and not merely moral & philosophical ones. To read what I developed, see my “A Spiritual Issue with the ‘Disappearance of Moral Knowledge’” at the website for the Evangelical Philosophical Society.

COVID-19 and the Problem of Natural Evil

Introduction

One of the most deeply-felt questions many ask about the Christian God is this: how could a loving, good, all-knowing, and all-powerful God allow evil? This question poses what is commonly called the problem of evil (POE). The COVID-19 pandemic can force this question to the surface for many, with the suffering, deaths, and devastation. While many are safe so far by sheltering-in-place, others’ lives are being threatened and ruined.

COVID-19 is a case of natural evil. Other examples include disasters caused by earthquakes, tsunamis, or hurricanes and their aftermath. Natural evils bring massive pain, despair, widespread destruction, and death, and COVID-19 is no exception.

The Evidential Problem of Evil

While Alvin Plantinga has shown there is no logical contradiction with the existence of God and evil, there still remains the evidential version of the POE. Roughly, this version claims that due to the evidence of the amount and kind of evil in the world, it is more probable than not that God does not exist. Atheists such as William Rowe and Paul Draper have advocated it.

Yet, probability arguments depend upon expectations, which in turn depend upon one’s background beliefs. For believers, God exists, so they would evaluate the evidence from evil in that light. For atheists, they don’t believe God exists, so they would evaluate the evidence from evil accordingly. But, this tells us just that Christians’ and atheists’ background beliefs differ, and they each have good reasons for their beliefs. That result, however, is not helpful in resolving the POE.

What is Evil? What is Goodness?

While there is no question that there is real evil, I think a more helpful approach is to ask first: what kind of thing is evil? That question is harder to answer than it may seem at first. We all can recognize clear examples of evil, but that still doesn’t address what evil is.

Instead of evil actions, conditions, or people, it seems we suppose they should be good. That is, evil presupposes a standard of goodness. That is like Augustine realized, that evil is spoiled, or perverted, goodness.

What then could be the best explanation for the standard of goodness? Most atheists in the west are naturalists, who believe there is only the natural realm; there is no supernatural realm. While they have offered many suggestions for what is good, they face a common problem. Morals can be only descriptive, not normative, because what is natural (the physical world) can be exhausted descriptively. But that cannot account for morals, which are about what should be the case.

In my book, In Search of Moral Knowledge, I survey the gamut of options for that standard. Here, I simply think Christianity has the best explanation: God Himself is good. It also can explain why there is evil, which is due to sin. Yet, God has provided a solution in His Son, Jesus, and one day will eradicate all evil. In the meantime, we can trust His goodness and loving care, even in the midst of COVID-19 (Isaiah 26:3-4).

A Reply to “Ten Questions a Theist Cannot Answer”

I noticed a link to a short post in Medium by Barry Lyons, a freelance writer. It is called “Ten Questions that a Theist Can’t Answer.” You might look at it, & I wrote replies to 3 of them.

Ten Questions that a Theist Can’t Answer

Hi Barry, thanks for laying out your questions!

Two or three ideas:

#2: You mentioned there is no evidence for a super-natural source to have created the universe. I see you refer to evidence elsewhere too. Just so I follow, what counts as evidence to you? What doesn’t, & why?

Also on #2, have you considered the kalam cosmological argument for God’s existence?

# 6: “Many theists believe that our moral sensibilities are essences or qualities that were given to us by a supernatural source (“God”). There is no evidence to support this claim…” [emphasis mine]

I’ve written an academic book on this specific topic: In Search of Moral Knowledge: Overcoming the Fact-Value Dichotomy (InterVarsity Press, 2014). I’d like to see what you think, if you like. In it, I argue that God is the best explanation for, & thus is the ground of, goodness.

# 9: If my argument in that book is cogent, & no other alternative basis for morals can actually preserve core morals that we know are good & right (e.g., justice is good, love is good, rape & murder are wrong), then it seems that God is the ground for goodness. To be truly good, God must be love, & also just. But, there’s evil …

First, I think evil is [metaphysically] best explained as the privation/absence of goodness, & thus not a thing God created. Since God is truly good & just, God cannot permit evil to be in his presence. Second, I think that if God is just & love, God would do something about evil [& yet be consistent with his love & justice] — to provide a way for humans to be able to freely choose to come into a relationship with him.

Still, with that free will, there are people who will choose not to be with God, & letting people make that choice reflects God’s respect of them as inherently valuable. I think hell is reserved for such people. And, yes, I think God foreknew various people would make that choice. But, I don’t think that foreknowledge entails determination (cf. arguments for “middle knowledge”).

Hope these are helpful!

A Review of Paul M. Gould’s “Cultural Apologetics: Renewing the Christian Voice, Conscience, and Imagination in a Disenchanted World”

Paul Gould's book, Cultural Apologetics

Paul Gould is a friend and philosopher with the heart of an evangelist and apologist. In this excellent 2019 book by Zondervan, Gould draws upon his extensive experiences in teaching and ministry to weave together an important diagnosis of crucial barriers that keep Christians in the west from being the salt-and-light influences they should be in culture and with individuals, as well as the barriers that keep others from seeing the gospel as plausible. Yet, he also offers insightful, cogent, and practical solutions. The book should be widely read.

Chapter 1 is an overview of the book’s main points. For several reasons, western Christianity often is “relegated to the margins of culture as implausible, undesirable, or both” (19). Gould positions cultural apologetics, which is the “work of establishing the Christian voice, conscience, and imagination within a culture so that Christianity is seen as true and satisfying,” as key to help address this problem (21). He develops a model that includes not just rational apologetics, but also imaginative and moral ones that help people see Christianity as “satisfying, plausible and desirable” (23).

However, people in western culture perceive reality as disenchanted, in which everything real is thought to be material. There is no transcendent reality, and so they don’t tend to think of life and reality as beautiful gifts from God. We also are fixated on the physical, sense-perceptible, and material, and not what is immaterial and transcendent. We also live for pleasures, yet without a way to justify our strong, good desires for justice.

We can build bridges to the gospel, though, through appeals to three deep human longings: for truth via reason; for goodness via conscience and morality; and for beauty via imagination. Gould ties these strands together into a model for cultural apologetics (30) in terms of how all three “lines” find their fulfillment in the gospel and Jesus Himself.

Along the way, in connecting truth, goodness, and beauty to the gospel, he also will address internal and external barriers to Christianity (ch. 7). Internal barriers in the church include anti-intellectualism, fragmentation (such as the bifurcation between the “facts” of science, but the mere opinions of Christianity, including ethically), and our “unbaptized” imagination. External ones include major questions today: does science disprove God? Is God truly good? Isn’t it intolerant to claim Jesus is the only way to God? Moreover, is the biblical ethic outdated, unloving, and repressive?

Starting points Relate to 3 longings Appeal to 3 guides
Disenchanted truth   Reason  
Sensate goodness   Conscience  
Hedonistic beauty   Imagination  

The rest of the book develops these parts in more detail (disenchantment, reenchantment, imagination, reason, conscience, and our deep desires for being “home,” along with an appendix on how to adapt the model to non-western cultures).

There is much to highlight, but space limits me to just a few. Ch. 4 on imagination and beauty was thought provoking, reminding me of some special ways God made His presence known to me. In them, I experienced the beauty of His fatherly love and care. It also inspired me to take time to appreciate the beauty around me as a way to replenish my soul. There also are very helpful treatments of arguments from desire, reason, and beauty for God’s existence.

I have very little to say by way of weaknesses. One is how Gould phrases the start of the last full paragraph on 108. Agreeing with James K. A. Smith, Gould writes “the raw material of physical sensation … does not come to us unmediated …” I think Gould’s main point is that we’re shaped in how we understand reality by the formative story we embrace, which is true. Yet, it does not follow that we cannot access reality in an unmediated way, on which I have written many times. Otherwise, it seems we cannot get started in forming concepts and interpretations, which is problematic on J. Smith’s views.

This is a rich work deserving of wide reading and careful thought. It is a great tool to help thoughtful Christians understand and have tools to address these issues. I think it would be a crucial text for upper division and graduate students on cultural apologetics. In addition, it is written quite accessibly. Therefore, I would highly encourage pastors, church leaders, and other concerned Christians to read, discuss, and practice the rich insights Gould has provided.

Assessing McLaren et al on the Soul, Part 2

In my previous post, I argued that by rejecting the soul, McLaren, Pagitt, Bell, and Jones lack a basis for our being able to be the same person who can grow and develop over time. This has several implications.

First, our being able to tell a narrative about one’s life presupposes that that person remains literally the identical person through those changes. Yet, I also argued that without an essence (which is the soul), we are identical to just a set (or bundle) of qualities at a given time. If the set changes in membership from one time to the next, then those two sets are not identical. So, suppose I grow in my interpersonal relationships. Then the set of qualities that constitutes me at the time beforehand will not be identical to the set when those qualities have been developed. In that case, I will have ceased to exist, and a new person will have taken my place. Yet, if so, then I cannot grow in relationships, much less virtues or anything else.

Second, we will not be able to be morally responsible for our actions. Suppose an employer treats an employee unjustly (say, by using sexually harassing remarks). Upon the employee’s making a report, an investigation is launched. Yet, during this time, the employer has changed in some way; e.g., that person has been diagnosed with a disease. If we are nothing but the set of all our properties at a given time, then if there is a change in the members of the set, the new set is literally not the same as the former one. Thus, the person who harassed the other is no longer the same person. If so, it would seem to be immoral to hold that new person accountable for another’s actions.

Third, consider the prospects for our resurrection from the dead and eternal life. Clearly, our resurrection depends upon Jesus’ own resurrection. Now, as evangelicals hold, Jesus was fully God and fully human. Yet, on these emergents’ views, being fully human means ontologically we are just physical beings. If so, then did Jesus survive His own death as a human? (For surely as God, He cannot die.)

It seems not, for Jesus’ own resurrected body had different qualities than His body before death. (For one, after His resurrection, He could pass through solid walls.) But, this means that Jesus’ identity as a man did not remain the same through these important changes. If this is so, then it seems that Jesus did not survive His own death, but a different human replaced Him.   

That result would be disastrous for Christians. If Jesus did not survive His own death, then surely we will not either. Moreover, death wins after all.

But, let’s waive that concern for the sake of another argument. Suppose we are resurrected somehow on this view. According to McLaren and others, God will re-member us at the resurrection: “All the momentary members of our life story … will be re-membered, reunited, in God’s memory.”[1]Though our bodies will be different, God will remember our stories, and He will reunite our bodies with our stories.

Can this move alleviate the problem at hand? I don’t think so; for, what is a story? For it to be the basis for our being the same person through change, it needs to remain essentially the same through time and change. For one narrative to be identical to another, they have to have all their parts in common. Yet, biographical stories keep changing throughout a person’s life. So, an appeal to one’s story will not solve this problem of maintaining one’s personal identity and surviving death.

This result comes from their rejection of an essence to human beings, about whom a story can be told. But our identity does not depend upon one’s narrative; rather, one’s narrative trades upon the deeper reality of the identity of the person, which is due to his or her essence (i.e., the soul).   

[1] Brian McLaren, The Story We Find Ourselves In (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2003), 153.

Are Humans Really Depraved? More Assessment of McLaren & the Emergents

In a previous post about the nature of sin on the newer views of Brian McLaren, Tony Jones, Rob Bell, and Doug Pagitt, I observed that they have rejected the doctrine of original sin due in part to their embrace of physicalism. Yet, I also argued that sin is a soulish, not physical, kind of thing. For as Jesus explained, “the things that proceed out of the mouth come from the heart, and those defile the man. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, slanders” (Matt 15:18-19, NASB). There I also contended that things like attitudes and thoughts are not physical things, and so their view deeply misses the nature and depths of our sin.

This observation helps explain why even ordinary humans are capable of the most evil acts. My colleague at Biola’s Christian Apologetics MA program, Dr. Clay Jones, has researched genocide for many years, culminating in his book, Why Does God Allow Evil? There he gives numerous examples of the murderous hatred involved in genocides. What is very revealing, however, is that genocides do not require super villains or insane people. Rather, researchers consistently have found ordinary people committed them.

For instance, “If one keeps at the Holocaust long enough, then sooner or later the ultimate truth begins to reveal itself: one knows, finally, that one might either do it, or be done to. If it could happen on such a massive scale elsewhere, then it can happen anywhere; it is all within the range of human possibility…”[1] Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn reaches a similar conclusion:

Where did this wolf-tribe {i.e., officials who torture and murder} appear from among our people? Does it really stem from our own roots? Our own blood? It is our own. And just so we don’t go around flaunting too proudly the white mantle of the just, let everyone ask himself: “If my life had turned out differently, might I myself not have become just such an executioner?’” It is a dreadful question if one answers it honestly.[2]

And, Langdon Gilkey used to think that “nothing indicates so clearly the fixed belief in the innate goodness of humans as does this confidence that when the chips are down, and we are revealed for what we ‘really are,’ we will all be good to each other.”[3] Yet, after his time as a POW in a Japanese prison camp in China, he realized that “nothing could be so totally in error.”[4]

Yet, McLaren, Jones, Bell, and Pagitt reach a very different conclusion. For them, we do not need a Savior to atone for our sins by His penal, substitutionary death on the cross. Nor do we need a new heart, which is born of the Spirit. Rather, we mainly seem to need a conceptual and moral transformation, to see life in the light of the gospel story and live it out.

However, I am afraid this view seriously underestimates the depths of our sinfulness, which these quotes above help illustrate. Deep down, if we are honest with ourselves, I think we can see that our heart’s desire is to be autonomous from God. We thereby want to usurp God’s rightful place and define what is good and evil (cf. Gen 3:5 and the serpent’s claims to Eve). Moreover, as I noted above, if we are physical beings, then our sinfulness does not really make sense. Neither does evil, or even good for that matter. Physical stuff is something that can be described exhaustively. But, moral qualities are prescriptive. Therefore, by embracing a physical view of humans and creation, McLaren and others really have no basis for sin and evil, or even good. But that is an obviously and deeply mistaken conclusion.

[1] George Kren and Leon Rappoport, Holocaust and the Crisis of Human Behavior (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1980), 126.

[2] Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago: 1918–1956, Vol. 1 (Boulder: Westview, 1974), 160 (bracketed insert mine).

[3] Langdon Gilkey, Shantung Compound: The Story of Men and Women Under Pressure (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1966), 92.

[4] Ibid. (emphasis mine).

Assessing McLaren, et al., on Our Being Able to Have Interpersonal Relationships

In my last post, I explored how their views of humans as just physical beings undermines any hope of eternal life, including the resurrection from the dead. Nevertheless, there are more implications of their view, which will threaten our ability to have relationships with God or any other person.

What is needed to have interpersonal relationships? At the least, it seems we need to have things like experiences, thoughts, and beliefs of one another. For instance, when Debbie (my wife) and I were dating, we worked at communicating our wants and thoughts with one another. We tried to learn and respect each other’s wishes and desires. Over time, we could develop beliefs about what we each liked and what we didn’t.

These sorts of qualities (experiences used to observe, thoughts, interpretations, desires, intentions, and beliefs) traditionally have been called mental states, being qualities of minds, not brains, which instead are biological, chemical, and physical kinds of things. Notice something special about these states. They all seem to be of or about things. Typically, people have called this quality intentionality. Some even have suggested intentionality is the hallmark of the mental (versus physical).

However, if we were just physical beings, intentionality would have to be reducible to something physical. Can that work? There have been some suggestions. First is one by philosopher Michael Tye, who claims intentionality is just a matter of “causal covariation” under optimal conditions. For him, mental states are reducible to particular brain states, which we are describing in a certain way (e.g., using mentalistic terms). Such terms don’t change the underlying, physical reality, but they might help us to conceive of a brain state as being of or about something. So, for Tye, my thought of a ball is for that state to stand in a causal relation to that ball – the ball causes that state by light waves bouncing off the ball, impinging on my retina, traveling to my brain, and causing that state.

However, there are problems with this account. We can have thoughts about things that do not obtain; e.g., I can think of what would be the case if Hillary Clinton were president in 2019. However, there’s nothing in reality to cause that (brain) state. Moreover, between the ball and my thought is a potentially infinite series of causal states. It seems I cannot traverse this series and arrive at the originating source.

Second, Daniel Dennett suggests that mental states and intentionality aren’t real. There are just brains that process sensory inputs. Yet, he adopts a useful strategy, the intentional stance, to predict behavior of things that apparently have intentionality, including frogs, chess-playing computers, and humans. Suppose Star Trek’s Mr. Spock is playing 3-D chess with the computer. For Dennett, there are no real thoughts, beliefs, or desires about what moves each could make in order to checkmate the opponent, because natural selection is a completely blind process. Yet, we can attribute to the computer such “mental” states to predict its moves in light of Spock’s moves, and vice versa. We make interpretations based on behaviors.

These are the best options I know of for physicalists for intentionality. Yet, Tye’s won’t suffice, and Dennett presupposes we can make observations and interpretations to predict behavior. However, these very qualities seem to require the very intentionality he denies is real.

Therefore, it seems that on physicalism, there is no way to preserve intentionality. Yet, that has ripple effects – without it, there are no thoughts, beliefs, or experiences used to make observations, for these states must have intentionality (e.g., try having a thought that isn’t about anything). Yet, those states seem necessary for interpersonal communication. Without them, how can an interpersonal relationship occur?

In conclusion, I am very sympathetic with Doug Pagitt’s desire for a God who will be “down and in” with us, versus distant. Ironically, however, the physicalism he and other emergents have embraced will distance God and others from us, for we cannot be in interpersonal relationships.

Going further, if there’s no intentionality, there are no beliefs. However, having beliefs seem necessary for knowledge. Therefore, without beliefs, there will not be any knowledge …

Assessing McLaren et al on the Soul 1

In my last post, I began my assessment of some of their updated views. This time, I will begin to look at implications of their views of what is real.

McLaren and these “emergents” have rejected the view that we have souls; instead, we are physical beings. Not only have they rejected Descartes’ dualism of body and soul, they also have rejected all forms. I think Descartes’ view is untenable, for body and soul are so radically different, it is hard to see how they could interact. But Aristotle’s view was different. For him, the soul is the “form” of the body; all our capacities, including to form a human body, are rooted in the soul, which directs the body’s formation. His view is much more holistic in that there is a deep unity between body and soul.

Now, McLaren is concerned that souls are static, and so they would inhibit relationships. How could a story be told of someone who is static and cannot grow and develop? But, as I noted last time, Aristotle’s views provide for this ability; yet, we still remain the same person throughout. How?

Aristotle’s answer lies in two kinds of change: essential, and accidental (or, contingent). For him, the soul is our set of essential capacities and properties; without them, we would not be human. Moreover, if we lose something essential, we’d no longer exist.

But, Aristotle also distinguished contingent kinds of change, which depends upon various factors. While we all have capacities for (say) reasoning, not everyone will develop those qualities. For some, they may be blocked due to disease; for others, they may not want to apply themselves to keep developing in that way. Still others might develop quite advanced reasoning abilities, yet later they suffer a traumatic brain injury and lose that quality.

For me, I had a head full of brown hair at 19. But, now at 61, my hair is thinning out and is turning more and more gray. Additionally, at 26, I married my wife, and I graduated with my PhD when I was 42. At age 44, I became a father.

All these kinds of changes Aristotle would call accidental, or contingent – they are not essential changes, lest I cease to exist. For him, then, it is my essence, or what he calls my soul, that enables me to be literally the same, identical person through time and various [accidental] changes. Now, for two things to be identical, they have to have all their properties in common. If so, there are not really two separate things, but just one and the same thing. On Aristotle’s view, our personal identity through time and change is grounded in our essential set of properties, for they do not change, but our contingent ones can and do. That crucial distinction is what makes it possible for a story to be told about me as I grow and change.

But, what happens then if we do not have souls, as McLaren and these other emergents hold? Then it seems that we basically are identical to the set of properties that constitute “us” at any given time. But, if anything changes, the set of properties that is identical to me would no longer be the same. In that case, since there would not be any essential properties to me (since I do not have a soul on their view), I would cease to exist, and someone else would replace me.

So, consider again my example. Scott at age 18 “had” certain properties; but they were not the same as the set of properties that constituted “Scott” at age 26 (or 44, or 61). Instead of growing through time and change, I would exist at one time, but then I’d be replaced by someone else (still called “Scott”) at another time, who would be replaced once again when another property changes, etc. The implications of this finding are many, such as for the prospects of eternal life, which I’ll survey next time.