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In my last post, I provided 2 reasons why an honest seeker of religious truth should examine Christianity first. The first reason is that Christianity is rooted in history and makes testable claims which can be evaluated and embraced if found worthy, or reject if found lacking. the second reason is the unique concept of grace in Christianity. Salvation is free!

A third reason a wise seeker should examine Christianity first is that Christianity offers one the ability to live a non-compartmentalized life. What one believes in regard to spiritual things does not have to be shelved when it comes to non-religious things. The Buddhist must approach his religion with the understanding that all that surrounds him is an illusion. However, when he approaches the “real world” he must view the bus speeding down the road in his direction as a real entity. The Buddhist must deny the laws of logic in his religion, but in reality he must live as though the law of non-contradiction is true. Christianity does not require such mental gymnastics.

Related to the previous reason for trying Christianity first, is the fact that the Christian worldview best fits the world we actually find ourselves in. Regarding the problem of evil, the best a Buddhist can do is to deny evil as an illusion. Yet, this is unsatisfactory since we find ourselves confronted with evil daily. Christianity recognizes the evil that is there as being real, confronts it, and provides an ultimate solution for that evil.

The final reason why a wise seeker should try out Christianity first concerns the person of Jesus of Nazareth. There is no other person in any other religion like Jesus Christ. Almost all other major religions try to include Jesus in some way or the other (e.g., a prophet, a good moral teacher), but none recognize him in the way Christianity does. The person of Jesus is central to the very core of Christianity in a way very much unlike the role of Siddhartha Gautama in Buddhism or the role of Mohammed in Islam. Jesus of Nazareth is presented as the God-man who is the answer to the problems which we all face.

In conclusion, the claim of this post is not that Christianity is the true religion; just that a wise religious-seeker should investigate Christianity first. I think Hazen has given good reason for this, namely, in review:

1. Christianity is evidential, historical, and testable, unlike other world religions.
2. Christianity is unique among world religions in that it offers free salvation made available through grace.
3. Christianity does not require one to live a compartmentalized life, keeping religious beliefs separate from “real-world” beliefs.
4. The Christian worldview fits the way the world is.
5. Jesus Christ is the central focus of Christianity, while other religions only include him in a lesser role.

I’ve recently listened to a nice lecture by Craig Hazen, Professor of Comparative Religion and Christian Apologetics at Biola University. The lecture is presented as a practical appeal to the open-minded honest seeker to investigate Christianity. I think that much of what he says makes a great deal of sense and may be helpful in encouraging some people to think seriously about the Christian faith. I hope to summarize his main points in a couple of posts.

Hazen’s claim is that if one is a truly reasonable and open-minded religious seeker, then she should unquestionably investigate the claims of Christianity first, before investigating those of other religions. It is imperative that this claim is not misunderstood. He is not in any way, at this point, claiming that Christianity is true, but simply that a wise person would try out Christianity before trying out other religions. There are five reasons why this is the case.

First of all, Christianity is evidential and testable, both historically and experientially. Christianity makes claims to be objectively true. Other religions, such as Hinduism or Buddhism, cannot be tested as objectively true. If one were to try out Buddhism, for example, he would have to commit to doing so for the long haul. Only when one has actually reached enlightenment, perhaps after many cycles of reincarnation, can one know that he has chosen the right religion. Christianity, on the other hand, makes testable, historical claims, specifically concerning the person of Jesus of Nazareth and his resurrection from the dead. These claims lend themselves to investigation. If one looks at these claims, and decides they are found lacking, he can them move on to something else.

Another reason to check out Christianity first is the central concept of “grace” in Christianity. This is actually unique among all world religions. Salvation is a free gift in Christianity. Others require much effort and hard work in order to be saved. Contrasting Christianity once again with Buddhism, the road to enlightenment in Buddhism is long and difficult. In order to reach nirvana, one must extinguish the passions and desires which lead to suffering by following the eight-fold path of the right actions and views. It is very rigorous and burdensome to keep. Christianity, however, offers salvation freely.

After surveying some of the recent activity in the blogosphere, I came across three posts that I found so interesting that I feel compelled to point them out.

1. Ben Witherington has a positive (to say the least) review of the new Bourne movie with some worldview-oriented reflection. I look forward to seeing this one.

2. Justin Taylor points us to the newest episode of Stand to Reason which features a two hour interview with Francis Beckwith on his conversion to Catholicism.

3. John Mark Reynolds gives us seven reasons for cultural hope and argues that things are looking a lot better for the West and for Christianity than the media and our friends would have us believe. It almost seems overly optimistic to me, but very thought-provoking.

John Neuhaus at First Things, questions whether the N.Y. Times might be “pandering to prejudice” by choosing to have Richard Dawkins, militant atheist, to review Behe’s latest book The Edge of Evolution. It does seem that, of all the reviewers from which the Times could have chosen, there must have been someone more fitting than Dawkins. Neuhas observes:

All this raises interesting questions about the Book Review, which publicly claims to take care that a reviewer has no conflict of interest that would get in the way of a fair treatment of a book… Apparently it doesn’t matter if a prospective reviewer has publicly and repeatedly heaped contempt on an author and his arguments.

… Dawkins cannot engage Behe’s argument. It is not simply that he is not a biochemist. He is in principle disqualified because he is a militant atheist committed to a position of scientific materialism in which any reference to transcendent purpose or design is deemed to be delusional, meaning it is the product of a mental disorder.

It is hard to know what purpose is served by the Book Review in having Dawkins review Behe, except, possibly, to ostracize anyone who presumes to raise questions about prevailing Darwinist orthodoxies and, perhaps, to pander to the smug prejudices of the presumed readership of the Times.

Al Mohler (as he so often does) points us all in the right direction regarding our feelings in response to the recent I-35 bridge collapse in Minneapolis. I lived in the Twin Cities for three years and have driven over that bridge myself. Why did it collapse now and not then? Mohler reminds us that we live our lives in a sort of daily peril:

We drive across bridges, enter tall skyscrapers, board commercial aircraft, and perform any number of daily tasks as if there was no danger involved in the equation. We have come to trust architects and engineers to do their jobs and we place a great deal of confidence in inspectors, standards, and testing. Those driving across that bridge on Wednesday evening had every reason to give the bridge itself little thought . . . until it fell.

The point is not to scare us all to the point where we become recluses to keep ourselves from harm’s way. The point is to remind us how life may end quickly. He quotes from Jonathan Edwards’ famous sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God:

It is no security to a natural man, that he is now in health, and that he does not see which way he should now immediately go out of the world by any accident, and that there is no visible danger in any respect in his circumstances. The manifold and continual experience of the world in all ages, shows this is no evidence, that a man is not on the very brink of eternity, and that the next step will not be into another world. The unseen, unthought-of ways and means of persons going suddenly out of the world are innumerable and inconceivable.

I’ve just read an important and timely lecture by CS Lewis that I would like to commend to all of you called “The Inner Ring.” It was given at the University of London (King’s College) in 1944 and is about the inevitable development of exclusive circles and cliques within academia and every other field and area of life as well as the intense human desire to be inside of those circles.

Lewis admits that there are hundreds and hundreds of circles, often overlapping, and that their development is natural and unavoidable. They are not even bad in themselves. Nevertheless, the constant desire to be in the ‘inner ring’ is bad. By analogy, Lewis says that “the painless death of a pious relative at an advanced age is not an evil. But an earnest desire for her death on the part of her heirs [is]…”

What makes the desire for the inner ring so bad is that, when unwatched, it is the main cause of good people becoming scoundrels. So Lewis says to his young audience:

To nine out of ten of you the choice which could lead to scoundrelism will come, when it does come, in no very dramatic colours. Obviously bad men, obviously threatening or bribing, will almost certainly not appear. Over a drink, or a cup of coffee, disguised as triviality and sandwiched between two jokes, from the lips of a man, or woman, whom you have recently been getting to know rather better and whom you hope to know better still—just at the moment when you are most anxious not to appear crude, or naïf or a prig—the hint will come. It will be the hint of something which the public, the ignorant, romantic public, would never understand: something which even the outsiders in your own profession are apt to make a fuss about: but something, says your new friend, which “we”—and at the word “we” you try not to blush for mere pleasure—something “we always do.”

And you will be drawn in, if you are drawn in, not by desire for gain or ease, but simply because at that moment, when the cup was so near your lips, you cannot bear to be thrust back again into the cold outer world. It would be so terrible to see the other man’s face—that genial, confidential, delightfully sophisticated face—turn suddenly cold and contemptuous, to know that you had been tried for the Inner Ring and rejected. And then, if you are drawn in, next week it will be something a little further from the rules, and next year something further still, but all in the jolliest, friendliest spirit. It may end in a crash, a scandal, and penal servitude; it may end in millions, a peerage and giving the prizes at your old school. But you will be a scoundrel.

Additionally, submission to this vice, as with all others, does not truly satisfy. Instead, Lewis offers two main pieces of advice, one work-related, and the other leisure related:

he quest of the Inner Ring will break your hearts unless you break it. But if you break it, a surprising result will follow. If in your working hours you make the work your end, you will presently find yourself all unawares inside the only circle in your profession that really matters. You will be one of the sound craftsmen, and other sound craftsmen will know it. This group of craftsmen will by no means coincide with the Inner Ring or the Important People or the People in the Know. It will not shape that professional policy or work up that professional influence which fights for the profession as a whole against the public: nor will it lead to those periodic scandals and crises which the Inner Ring produces. But it will do those things which that profession exists to do and will in the long run be responsible for all the respect which that profession in fact enjoys and which the speeches and advertisements cannot maintain.

And if in your spare time you consort simply with the people you like, you will again find that you have come unawares to a real inside: that you are indeed snug and safe at the centre of something which, seen from without, would look exactly like an Inner Ring. But the difference is that the secrecy is accidental, and its exclusiveness a by-product, and no one was led thither by the lure of the esoteric: for it is only four or five people who like one another meeting to do things that they like. This is friendship. Aristotle placed it among the virtues. It causes perhaps half of all the happiness in the world, and no Inner Ring can ever have it.

It is a valuable, and not very long, read, and I suggest it in its entirety. The rest is here.

This is another post in a continuing discussion of the circumstances that led to one L.A. Times religion reporter’s loss of faith. In my last post, I discussed the role of the moral failings of those who call themselves Christians played in Lobdell’s downfall. I also mentioned philosopher of religion, John Hick’s conclusion that because Christian’s are not morally superior to other religious adherents, he embraces a pluralism which holds that there are many equally valid approaches to God and means to salvation. Is this conclusion warranted? I think not.

I will try to present the basic idea of Hick’s argument in a simple and straightforward manner:

Premise 1: If a religion’s truth claims are to be accepted (if that religion is true), that religion will produce morally superior people.
Premise 2: Christians are not morally superior to the adherents of other religious systems.
Conclusion: Therefore, Christianity is not the true religion.

The preceding argument appears valid (It’s conclusion follows from the premises), so what do we make of the premises. Well, many have expressed reason to doubt premise 2. Clark Pinnock , in Four Views on Salvation in a Pluralistic World, makes the following point:

I look and see blessings such as universal human rights, the demythologizing of the state, the care of the sick and the poor, the importance of preserving the earth, and the ideal of self-giving service, and I notice that it is mostly the fruit of the Christian gospel and possibly proof of its superior sanctifying power. Eastern religions seem to produce stagnant societies, and Islam, intolerant ones.

Although premise 2 is far from obvious, one can grant its veracity and still find strong reason to doubt premise 1. If a religion’s claims are true, does it necessarily follow that those who believe those claims will be morally superior to those who believe other religious claims? Alister McGrath questions Hick’s use of the highly loaded and emotive term “superiority” in reference to Christianity. Moral superiority is only one type of superiority. There are other ways, perhaps more important ways, that one belief system is “superior” to others. McGrath argues that the introduction of a moral dimension in considering the “superiority” of Christianity confuses the issue. He states that when he suggests that one theory or set of beliefs is “inferior” to the other, he…

… was simply declaring that it did not fit the empirical data as well as the others, and therfore it seemed a less religable framework for understanding our experience of the world… I would claim the right to speak of the “superiority” of Christianity in this explicative sense.”

McGrath goes on to point out how we evaluate truth claims in other areas of our lives:

The argument is not about morality. For example, the scientific debate back in the 1950’s about the macromolecular structure of DNA did not take place on the basis of which of the various alternatives (e.g., that of the late Linus Pauling) was morally superior, not which of the investigating teams were nicer people. The simple, relentless, and correct question was this: Which model approximates most closely to what is, and can be, known of the situation?

Douglas Geivett also demonstrates the failure of Hick’s argument in the following way.

1. First of all, Hick mistakes one goal of true religion for a criterion of truth in religion.
2. Inter-traditional comparisons of virtue are irrelevant, since Christian Scriptures teach that all human persons, relgardless of religious affiliation, are sinners in need of divine grace.
3. Finally, and most importantly…

… The unique moral superiority of Christianity is not founded on the moral character of fallible Christians but is attested by Jesus’ own sinless life as the incranate God-man whose righteousness is imputed to those who believe in him. Christians have no business trying to establish their own moral superiority…

In conclusion, while one must be saddened and concerned over the moral failings of those who say they are Christians, one would be gravely mistaken to “lose one’s faith” because of those moral failings. The morality of those who hold to certain beliefs are ultimately irrelevant to the veracity of the claims of that religion. To lose my faith in gravity because of the moral failings of Sir Isaac Newton would be ludicrous. I would be a fool to jump off a tall building because Newton was not morally superior to other scientists. Likewise one who loses faith in Christ, because of the sin of a human person is truly foolish.

In this post, I continue a discussion on William Lobdell’s journey which ultimately has led to the loss of his Christian faith. One of the factors which led to his present condition was the moral failures of Christians, especially those in leadership.

I understood that I was witnessing the failure of humans, not God. But in a way, that was the point. I didn’t see these institutions drenched in god’s spirit. Shouldn’t religious organizations, if they were God-inspired and -driven, reflect highere standards than government, corporations and other groups in society?

So, it appears that the sinfulness of those who were called by Christ’s name was a major reason Lobdell forsook Christianity. Was this a reasonable move to make? Would it be wise counsel for us to advise a seeker of truth to reject certain belief systems because of the moral failings on those who hold them?

Philosopher of Religion, John Hicks, thinks so. In Four Views on Salvation in a Pluralistic World, he rejects the exclusivistic truth claims of Christianity. Instead, he advocates for a pluralistic view in which there are numerous ways to attain salvation. Among the reasons he reaches this conclusion is the lack of moral superiority in Christianity:

I have not found that the people of the other world religions are, in general, on a different moral and spiritual level from Christians. They seeem on average to be neither better nor worse than are Christians… Virtues and vices seem to be spread more or less evenly among human beings, regardless of whether or not they are Christians…

But is this what we would expect if Christians have a more complete and direct access to God than anyone else and live in a closer relationship to him, being indwelt by the Holy Spirit? Should not the fruit of the Spirit, which according to Paul is “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Gal. 5:22-23), be more evident in Christian than in non-Christian lives… I propose… that it is not possib le to establish the moral superiority of the adherents of any one of the great traditions over the rest.

The moral failings of Christians has led William Lobdell to the brink of atheism. They have led John Hick to full-blown pluralism. The arguments put forth have, at first glance, a sense of respectability. What then can a Christian say to such an argument? Much, I think. I believe both Lobdell and Hick are terribly mistaken in their conclusions. Charles H. Pinnock, Alister McGrath, and Douglas Geivett have much to say in response to Hick in the book, Four Views on Salvation. I will turn my attention to those responses in my next post.