withallyourmind.net

The Da Vinci Code movie comes out next month and it is important for Christians to be able to respond to the claims it makes about the origins of Christianity, especially since in responding to these claims a strong case for the historical reliability of orthodox Christian teaching emerges. For those with iPods or who like to listen to audio lectures, here are some good ones to get you up to speed on the issues:
Craig Blomberg - Was There a Plan to Suppress ‘Secret Gospels’
                         - Was There a Conspiracy to Concoct a Divine Jesus?
Paul Maier - The Da Vinci Distortion
Darrell Bock - Breaking the Da Vinci Code
Apologetics.com - Da Vinci Code Discussion
Stand to Reason Radio - Discussion with Kerby Anderson on Da Vinci Code (may have to do free registration to download)

Enjoy!

Ahhhh…free at last. Yesterday at around 2:00 PM I finished my Philosophy of Mind exam and officially began my summer vacation. I apologize for being largely absent from the blog the last few weeks while finishing up the semester, but my father more than made up for it with his last few series. Anyway, I should be able to post more often now that I won’t be in class (although unfortunately I’ll still be working quite a bit).

I have a few goals for the summer, some of which are related to this blog, and, at any rate, I think that posting them here will keep me somewhat more accountable for them: I plan to get through at least one of either N.T. Wright’s Jesus and the Victory of God or Alvin Plantinga’s Warranted Christian Belief. I also want to get through Michael Loux’s Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction, and Del Ratzch’s Science and It’s Limits. I want to learn more about politics in order to think more intelligently about issues like immigration, the role of the central government, taxation, interpretation of the constitution, etc. (book suggestions are welcome). For all of the nonfiction books I read, I plan to do chapter outlines and notes to help my own comprehension, which I may post here for those interested. I also want to read through at least a few of the classic works of fiction that I haven’t yet read and I need to be studying quite a bit for the GRE’s, which I will be taking at some point this summer. Finally, I want to get better at playing the piano (especially jazz) and spend a lot of quality time with my wife. It should be a busy and exciting summer.

I’m also registered for some good classes next semester that I am looking forward to: Philosophy of Law, History and Philosophy of Science, a seminar on ‘Marx on Free Markets,’ and some directed independent study culminating in the writing of a 50 page honors thesis in the Spring (topic TBA).

Dallas Willard, in his excellent book, The Divine Conspiracy, opens chapter one with what he calls a parable of human existence. He tells the story of a fighter jet pilot who was practicing high-speed maneuvers. She turned the controls for what she thought was a steep ascent. Instead, she flew straight into the ground. She was unaware that she had been flying upside down. Willard contends that most people, and society as a whole, live their lives at high-speed with no clue as to whether they are flying upside down or right-side up. What is worse, to many in current society, there is no difference…or at least we cannot know if there is a difference. What is true is what is true for our community, claims postmodernism.

Ideas and beliefs matter. Despite the fact that all of us are forced to live our lives everyday in accord with this assertion, many modern intellectuals deny that it is true. It mattered to this jet pilot who believed she was flying right-side up but was not. Life is full of many other examples, where if our beliefs are contrary to reality we suffer serious consequences. Those who live their lives as if there is no objective reality, will also suffer the consequences of their ill-informed impressions.

Dean Geuras, a professor of philosophy at Southwest Texas State University makes the following comments on our postmodern culture:

I answer that it (postmodernism) is not benign…Postmodernism allows us our own truth, so we Christians can acknowledge it against the atheistic and agnostic concepts of truth so prevalent among scholars today. Does not postmodernism promise to preserve our intellectual freedom that was threatened by more antagonistic movements such as logical positivism, behaviorism, Marxism, and atheistic existentialism? But the answer to the question is negative. Postmodernism, in an evident inconsistency, rejects some beliefs. It absolutely denies the existence of a source of truth, morality, and intelligibility distinct from man. That is to say it denies a Christian, Judaic or Islamic God. There is also a more general reason for Christians to be wary of postmodernism. Historically, the Christian intellectual tradition has, despite some noteworthy exceptions, expressed confidence that the universe, under the guidance of a supreme being, is intelligible. However, since the Renaissance, that confidence in the world’s intelligibility has gradually eroded in Western intellectual history. Postmodernism, in its denial of an absolute truth or of any ultimate intelligible structure to reality, continues that erosion.

Unfortunately, the erosion of confidence in the world’s intelligibility leaves one open to a demise similar to that of the jet pilot.

This is the third and final in a series on how a Christian should view his body. First, we briefly introduced the Christian perspective. Next, we looked at how Plato has influenced some Christian beliefs about the body. Today, we look at another group which was heavily influenced by Platonic belief - the Gnostics. There has been a lot of talk about Gnosticism lately with the approaching release of the Da Vinci Code movie and the recently debated Gospel of Thomas. It would not be practical to speak of all the Gnostic beliefs, nor are all Gnostic beliefs universal among Gnostics. However, one may speak in a general sense about their view of the body.

The Gnostic theology finds much of its basis in Platonic thought. N. T. Wright quotes Helmut Koester, who introduced the Gospel of Thomas (a Gnostic gospel):

In order to return to one’s origin, the disciple is to become separate from the world by ‘stripping off’ the fleshly garment and ‘passing by’ the present corruptible existence.

A common theme found in many of the Gnostic writings is that the flesh and the material world are evil and corrupted. Our “resurrection” will be a purely spiritual one when we leave our bodies behind. As in Plato, there is a desire to escape suffering by being united with eternal essences. For the Gnostics, secret knowledge allows this escape to take place. Cary states that the Gnostics were the first Christians to believe “this world is not my home”. They believed they came from the heavenly world, belonged there and would return to it.
Now certainly, the world is not the home of the Christian in some sense (the world being corrupted by sin or the secular philosophy of the world), but in a real sense we were made for this world and a material existence.

It will be that “mortal” putting on “immortality” and that “corruptible” putting on “incorruptible” that will be our ultimate reality. Our hope is not some disembodied immaterial eternal existence, but a bodily existence, communing with our Lord and Savior who also lives forever in an embodied existence (his resurrection body) . I Cor 15:52-55 summarizes:

The trumpet shall sound; the dead shall be raised incorruptible; and we shall be changed. For this corruptible (body) must clothe itself with incorruptibility; and this mortal (body) must clothe itself with immortality. When this corruptible (body) has clothed itself with incorruptibility, and this mortal (body) has clothed itself with immortality, then shall come to pass the word that is written: Death is swallowed up into victory. Where is your victory, death? Where is your sting?

Wright argues that this repetition Paul uses in the foregoing verses is not unintentional. He is attempting to “stress against the doubters and the questioners, to make it clear to all the Christians in Corinth that the body is meant for the lord, and the lord for the body, and that the lord in whose own person death had been defeated would one day implement that defeat on behalf of all his people. They will not lose their bodies; nor will they be found ‘naked’. They will ‘put on a new suit of clothes’, will be given a new type of physicality…that…cannot wear out, cannot corrupt, cannot die (p 357-58).

In my previous post, I dealt with the Christian view of the body. I submitted that the view of the body as a prison from which our soul seeks to escape is not the teaching view. Of course, finding that Scripture did not teach that our bodies are prisons from which we seek to escape, one cannot help but wonder where such teaching is found. Surprisingly, one finds it in Plato. According to Cary, In Phaedo, Plato claims that our bodies are prisons for the soul whose real home is “above” in another world. In Phaedrus, he tells us that our souls began their existence without bodies, but somehow “fell” into physical bodies. Being in a body is a bad or “fallen” state. Eventually, the soul escapes back into that disembodied state for which it is intended. N.T. Wright states:

For Plato…, the soul, being immortal, existed before the body, and will continue to exist after the body is gone…Because the soul is this sort of thing, it not only survives the death of the body, but is delighted to do so. If it had known earlier where its real interests lay it would have been longing for this very moment. It will now flourish in a new way, released from the prison that had hitherto enslaved it. Its new environment will be just what it should have wanted…Death is frequently defined in terms of the separation of soul and body, seen as something to be desired.

Wright contrasts Plato’s views with that of the apostle Paul. According to Paul, being human or an embodied human is not bad.

What is bad is being a rebellious human, a decaying human, a human dishonored through bodily sin and death. What Paul desires…is not to let the soul fly free to a supposed astral home, but to stop the ‘soul’, the psyche, from being the animating principle for the body…He sees that the true solution to the human plight is to replace the ‘soul’ as the animating principle of the body with the ‘spirit’ – or rather, the Spirit.

According to Plato, we do not really belong here on earth or in physical bodies. We belong in a disembodied state in some other existence. I’ve heard this same sentiment many times from the mouths of Christians. But it does not seem to be a scriptural concept. Rev. 6:9-11, speaks of the disembodied souls of the saved who are not happy, but waiting for God to finish his work of judging the world, after which they will be reunited with their bodies. It is not “natural” for us to be without bodies. Plato feels that we will return to some un-embodied primal state. However, Paul does not teach this, but alternatively teaches that we will find redemption from sin and death which has corrupted the primal state. There is no scriptural teaching that we were once pre-existing immaterial souls without a body that were placed into bodies at some point in time. Our souls have always been associated with bodies. Those bodies which have suffered corruption through sin, in a future bodily resurrection will be created anew. As Wright asserts:

He (Christ) will enable other humans, not to escape from the physical world back to an original ‘image of God’, but to go on to bear, in the newly resurrected body, the ‘image of the man from heaven’.

Next…another place we find the Platonic view of the soul.

Are we imprisoned by our bodies? Is my body an evil thing, properly viewed as something to be loathed and cast off at the earliest opportunity? In reading The Resurrection of the Son of God, by N. T. Wright, I was compelled to think anew about the relationship of my material body to my immaterial soul. Recently, I listened to a series of lectures by Phillip Cary, of Eastern University. These lectures were titled, Philosophy and Religion in the West. Dr. Cary also made comments that made me rethink or at least better define my views on this subject.

Wright, on page 346, makes the following comments:

“Nor is the problem he (Paul) faces the same one as the one Plato and Cicero dealt with in their exposition of ‘astral immortality’. They were eager to escape the prison-house of the body; but for Paul the problem was not the body itself, but sin and death which had taken up residence in it, producing corruption, dishonour, and weakness. Being human is good; being an embodied human is good…”

I had never really considered this fleshy existence as a “good” thing. For whatever reason, through years of hearing sermons and Bible studies, I had come to think of my flesh as a prison which was to be escaped. There was a yearning to be set free from my body. I’m not quite sure if this concept was explicitly taught, or if it was a concept I somehow erroneously inferred from what I had heard. It was enlightening to find instruction to the contrary. To a Christian, our bodies are not to be considered bad or evil. After all, after God had created man on the sixth day, Gen 1:31 states:

God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

God called his creation of man, which included their physical bodies, very good! It was good that our souls inhabited flesh. Next, the origins of my error.

GOD, give us men! A time like this demands
Strong minds, great hearts, true faith and ready hands;
Men whom the lust of office does not kill;
Men whom the spoils of office can not buy;
Men who possess opinions and a will;
Men who have honor; men who will not lie;
Men who can stand before a demagogue
And damn his treacherous flatteries without winking!
Tall men, sun-crowned, who live above the fog
In public duty, and in private thinking;
For while the rabble, with their thumb-worn creeds,
Their large professions and their little deeds,
Mingle in selfish strife, lo! Freedom weeps,
Wrong rules the land and waiting Justice sleeps.

This is the final of a series of blogs exploring J. P. Moreland’s introduction to The Creation Hypothesis. A great deal of time has been spent exploring the Kalam Cosmological Argument and various aspects of the Design Argument. The Kalam argument provides reason to believe that an immaterial, transcendent agent more fundamental than the universe istself underlies the origin of the material universe. According to Moreland, the Design argument provides information about the nature and existence of this agent. These together lead to this important conclusion. Moreland states:

Before we even begin to investigate the scientific details of the universe in which we live, we already have reason to reject philosophical naturalism (the view that the space-time material universe is all there is). We also have reason to reject methodological naturalism…(the claim that within science we must adopt a naturalist standpoint in explaining things in science).

Moreland further asserts that unless there is some strong reason to accept this claim, we have not only a right, but a duty to bring to our study of the natural world an a priori belief in a transcendent, powerful Agent who designed and brought into being the universe. Several factors in science help to confirm the Kalam argument and the design argument for God’s existence. Among these are the origin and fine-tuning of the universe, the origin of life and systems of information, the origin of major taxonomic groups, and the origin of human language and linguistic abilities.

It is also Moreland’s claim that these factors and the inference to God justified by them can legitimately be seen as scientific matters. In asserting this, he also clarifies that the important issue is whether the inference to God is a rational one, not whether it is a scientific one. Theology does not need science’s endorsement to be rational.

Another criticism of the Design Argument anticipated by Moreland in his introduction to The Creation Hypothesis is the claim that living organisms and their parts, as well as the process responsible for their existence, are inefficient. For example, homologous structures are not as efficient as they could be, or should be, if an omniscient, omnipotent, optimally efficient Designer was responsible. They are however, what might be expected as a result of the random, mindless processes of Darwinian evolution.

Four responses are offered by Moreland:

1. First, there is reason to doubt whether such inefficiencies exist. After all, the features in question usually work quite nicely. We also must remember that we have limited knowledge of the complexity of living oranisms. The apparent inefficiency may be just that - “apparent” - and not actual.

2. The concept of “efficiency” may not accurately be applied to God and design. The engineering model, which values efficiency and is a late western value, may not be the best model by which to evaluate design. Other options, says Moreland, include God as playful artist. Beauty may be more important than efficiency of design.

3. Third, efficiency implies limited resources. While this concept applies quite nicely to finite designers, it loses all meaning when applied to a God of limitless resources.

4. Fourth, argument such as those offered above undercut the claim that theistic science is not science, but religion. These arguments have been frequently found in the arguments of evolutionary scientists against design. If, however, scientific data may be used negatively to undercut a certain theological model of God as designer, then scientific data may also be used positively.

Next, my last post in this series on Moreland’s introduction - Is Naturalism Necessary?

“I think the Church of Scotland is to be admired to be able to create this type of nuanced report, trying to make proposals about this type of thing rather than just condemning it like so many faith groups.” - Sheila McLean, professor of medical ethics at Glasgow University

According to the Scotsman, a committee of the Church of Scotland has just come out in favor of the use of embryos originally created for IVF for stem cell research. Only for the embryos less than 14 days old, however. It was this decision which was applauded by the medical ethicist above. I found her statement full of enlightenment. First, it seems that only those who agree with stem cell research on human embryos make proposals. If you disagree, you are making condemnations. I suppose it would be too much to ask if Ms. McLean was aware she just issued a (Oh, my!) condemnation! Apparently, one is not allowed to take a stand against something on principle and have her thoughts be considered a true proposal.

Second, I just learned a new euphemism for totally inconsistent, illogical, and irrational…”nuanced”. Merriam Webster Online defines nuance as: 1 : a subtle distinction or variation 2 : a subtle quality : NICETY 3 : sensibility to, awareness of, or ability to express delicate shadings (as of meaning, feeling, or value). I’m not quite sure the word applies. This report, which many medical experts have called “brave” was roundly criticized by the Roman Catholic Church which claimed that this was leading down a dangerous path where the end justifies the means. Here’s a brief excerpt from the article:

A key part of the report, and that likely to prove most contentious, is the assertion that embryos under 14 days old did not have the “moral status” of humans.

It says that although for some in the church “the embryo already has the same human dignity as a person who has been born”, the majority of the working group took the view that “the moral status of the human embryo is not established until some time into its biological development after conception”.

On what logic or rational basis was the decision made that at 14 days an embryo has inferior or no moral status. As one critic asked, why not 13 days, or 15 days, or 3 months, or 6 months? The committee offered no support for their arbritrary assignment of human value. In the words of Keith Plummer at The Christian Mind, where I first heard of this report:

The Church’s position, regardless of how vehemently it may deny it, reduces to an affirmation that human life is not inherently valuable. Rather, only those members of the species who have reached an arbitrarily decided upon level of development are worthy of society’s protection.