Christmas Day: "And the soul felt its worth"

"... he appeared, and the soul felt its worth ..."

This morning, as I prepared a pancake breakfast for my expanded Christmas morning family while listening to a Scott Simon interview of the The Puppini Sisters on NPR, I was struck by a lyric from their favorite Christmas carol. I’ve heard this lovely piece hundreds of times, sung it myself scores of times, but this morning the words fell upon my ears with fresh power: “'til he appeared and the soul felt its worth.”

The birth of Jesus, the song reminds us, forever raised mankind’s view of himself, lifting his lot from pining in sin and error to a thrilling hopefulness, to the dawning of a new and glorious morning. “ ... and the soul felt its worth.” By invading our material reality, and permeating earth with his transcendence, God forever ennobled life on this plane! By clothing himself in the flesh of humanity, God upped our stock, setting a new baseline value on what it means to be human! Nothing can impress upon the soul its eternal worth like the nativity scene, the humble babe housing infinity, the suffusion of man-flesh with unimaginable transcendent greatness.

The French wine merchant Adolphe Adam, and the English version translator John Sullivan Dwight merely assume this elevation of human dignity accompanying the divine visitation we commemorate on this day. David Bentley Hart builds the case methodically and potently in his brilliant work, Atheist Delusions. At the very core of what Hart calls the Christian Revolution is what he labels as nothing short of “the invention of the human.” As he traces the development of human worth through history, he argues cogently how effectively Jesus, the central figure in history, redefines what it means to be human. “ ... and the soul felt its worth.”

He also brings his readers face-to-face with the stark and terrifying prospect of a humankind delivered of its Christian influence. “If, as I have argued in these pages, the ‘human’ as we now understand it is the positive invention of Christianity, might it not be the case that a culture that has become truly post-Christian will also, ultimately, become posthuman?”

The chilling day when humanism has followed the path of a discarded Christmas, the day Hart sees looming on our horizon is not yet upon us. Nor is it inevitable. For now, the essential message of the Incarnation still rings clear. And Christians should boldly herald its powerful implications: Jesus appeared! “ ... and the soul felt its worth.” every soul! every color! every gender! every age! every ethnicity! every culture! the value of every person has been forever elevated by the event we know as Christmas. This revaluing of humanity is at the heart of the mega-joy implicit in Bethlehem’s child! This is the good news. It is this gospel that should be in our hearts, upon our lips, and lived out of our lives.

“ ... and the soul felt its worth.”

Book Review: Atheist Delusions, The Christian Revolution and its Fashionable Enemies

Following is my review of Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies, by David Bentley Hart (Yale University Press, April 2009). Hart (who also wrote The Doors of the Sea which I reviewed here) is an Eastern Orthodox theologian and philosopher who is currently a professor at Providence College. Those who read into the subtitle a dismissive tone (“its fashionable enemies”) do so correctly. Hart sets out to dismantle the underpinnings of today’s “New Atheist” authors, showing how their works rest less upon rigorous scholarship, and more upon the ethos of our age.

The Dismantling of New Atheism

In Atheist Delusions, Hart raises a powerful polemic against contemporary unbelief popularized by the so-called “New Atheists”. It is also, perhaps, the most formidable defense of Christian faith I have ever read.

I am a Christian skeptic. I tend not to believe things because someone told me it is so. I prefer to test everything, weigh everything in the balance of reason and evidence. I believe that God gave us minds to use! The result of all this is that I sometimes call much of what passes for Christianity into question. When I read what atheist skeptics are saying (as I often do), I find them to be correct in many of their assessments of belief.

Within this context, I found in Hart's book a powerful force drawing me into a much deeper appreciation for the place of Christianity in history, and the uniqueness of the Christian message. It also opened my mind (frighteningly!) to what a truly post-Christian era will look like. It is this flow of history, both in retrospect and in prospect, as seen through Hart's analysis, that greatly strengthens my assurance in the truth and viability of the essential message of Jesus.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. once remarked that “history has to be rewritten because history is the selection of those threads of causes or antecedents that we are interested in.” And so the rewriting of history will always reflect prevailing current thought. This phenomenon is nowhere more blatant than in the selective retelling of history presently in vogue among the New Atheists. Hart’s book offers a scholarly retort to the history of Christianity in the West being offered up by Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennet, and Harris. I suppose that the Holmes observation might apply equally to Hart’s work. I will leave that case for others to make. But having read from the New Atheists, and having read Hart, I found Hart’s retelling of Christianity’s story to be the far more compelling.

Much of this book draws a contrast between the paganism predominate in the pre-Christian era, and the Christian “revolution” which supplanted it. It is popular in some quarters today to cast a nostalgic eye upon the supposed virtues of paganism, and to lament its overthrow. Hart demonstrates conclusively how preposterous these notions are. He does not gloss over, nor deny the sad history of injustices and crimes which have been committed in the name of Christianity, a litany of offenses which seems to completely engross the enemies of belief. Notwithstanding these blemishes, and with great skill and scholarship, Hart takes us on an enlightening stroll though history; he reveals how Christianity has advanced the sciences, social morality, and in particular, humanitarianism, far beyond the highest prospects of paganism. It is the Christian understanding of humanity, the elevation of what it means to be human, that is, in Hart’s view, Christianity’s most significant contribution. Against this backdrop, Hart paints the horrific prospects of inhumanity which lay before us in a post-Christian era. Here he finds an ally in Nietzsche's more thoughtful atheism. Hart deeply respects the intellectually honest unbelief of Nietzsche who clearly saw the frightening nihilistic consequences of the “death of God.”

In contrast to his respect for Nietzsche, Hart laments the shallowness of today’s trendy unbelief. “ ... the tribe of the New Atheists is something of a disappointment. It probably says more than it is comfortable to know about the relative vapidity of our culture that we have lost the capacity to produce profound unbelief” (page 220). This “tribe of New Atheists” has published a spate of atheistic titles over the last decade. Hart has offered a persuasive rebuttal. The gauntlet has been dropped. I anxiously await a scholarly response from the halls of unbelief. I doubt that one will be written.

Briefly Noted: My Summer Reading List

Well, actually, I read some of these books before summer, and I am not likely to finish them all before winter (I wish I could read books like my friend Wayne who devours one almost a day!) I may offer full reviews of some of these books, but it occurred to me that some of my readers may be looking for a summer read recommendation, so ...

Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church, by N.T. Wright (HarperCollins Publishers, February 2008)

Many Christian universally accept the resurrection of Jesus as the pivotal event in human history. Most, however, fail to understand the full significance of resurrection. Wright (the Anglican Bishop of Durham, and one of Christianity’ s leading thinkers) offers a refreshing look at resurrection, its present and future implications. Evangelical Christians often emphasize “personal salvation” at the expense of the larger matters of God’s Kingdom purposes. Wright gently reminds us that it is not all about me! Those who think that they will “go to heaven” when they die should think again; Wright suggests otherwise. Those whose premillennial mindset gives them the perceived “right” to trample upon earth’s ecology should think again; those who think the earth is destined for the eternal ash heap should think again; Wright suggests otherwise. Those awaiting the “rapture” followed by seven years of tribulation should think again; Wright suggests otherwise. My emphasis here at OutsideTheBox has been upon how we got to this present moment; Wright’s sense of where we are and where we are headed fits in beautifully with where our cosmic and biological history tells us we have been.

The Deep Structure of Biology: Is Convergence Sufficiently Ubiquitous to Give a Directional Signal, Simon Conway Morris (Editor) (Templeton Press, May 2008)

Conway Morris, Professor of Evolutionary Palaeobiology at the University of Cambridge, happens to a Christian. Whether his faith biases him toward certain outcomes in his research, or whether it properly guides him down the correct path, will, of course, depend upon one’s presuppositions. But I find his work fascinating! This anthology about evolutionary convergence asks the larger question: Does biology offer evidence of ultimate purpose? Conway Morris and the writers joining him do not accept Special Creationism or Intelligent Design. They approach evolutionary science from a naturalistic standpoint. Nevertheless, they see hidden in the course of random evolution strong hints of teleology, a purpose behind it all. Convergence suggests that evolutionary outcomes are largely predictable without the interventions or superintendence of a Creator.

Life's Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe, Simon Conway Morris (Cambridge University Press, August 2004)

This earlier Conway Morris title arrived at my house from Amazon two days ago. I have only browsed the chapter titles so far. But the subtitle provides an overview. Conway Morris presents ample evidence that, given a planet like ours, and 3.8 billion years of random evolutionary wanderings, intelligent biped hominids (that’s us!) were bound to emerge. We are the inevitable result of the unguided, random processes of evolution. This is Conway Morris’s seminal presentation of convergence and its implications for intelligent, sentient life.

There Is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind, Antony Flew (HarperCollins Publishers,

November 2008)

The title says it all. Antony Flew is a British philosopher who long led an atheistic charge against belief, insisting that we should properly presuppose no God until we have proof of his existence. He argued that the problem of evil was not solved by theists, and therefore stood as a powerful argument against the monotheistic faiths. In 2004, he did a remarkable turnabout. His deistic beliefs are not Christian; in fact, they suggest a rational basis for belief in God outside of religious faith. I’ve wanted to read Flew’s account of his “conversion”, and look forward to doing so.

Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies, David Bentley Hart (Yale University Press, April 2009)

[NOTE: I have now written a full review of this book which can be found here.]

Hart (who also wrote The Doors of the Sea which I reviewed here) is an Eastern Orthodox theologian and philosopher who is currently a professor at Providence College. Those who read into the subtitle a slightly dismissive tone (“its fashionable enemies”) do so correctly. Hart sets out to dismantle the underpinnings of today’s “new atheist” authors, (Dennett, Dawkins, Hitchens, and Harris) showing how their works rest less upon rigorous scholarship, and more upon the ethos of our age. When you serve up just what a culture is hungering for, you can make blanket proclamations devoid of logic or evidence; ill-informed masses will nod in agreement. The mere force of such atheistic declarations, coupled with the presumed scholarship of their sources, establishes the argument. Such assertions become easy fodder for Hart’s powerful refutation. Hart is nothing short of masterful. This book also showed up on my doorstep last week, and I am currently devouring it. I will offer a full review later.

So, if you’re still looking for that title to fill out your summer reading opportunities, you might find it in one of these five books.

“The Problem of Evil” Debate: and the winner is ...

Sadly, the debate in the discussion of the preceding post has descended to personal attacks, perceived personal attacks, and recriminations. My goal is to maintain a higher level of mutual personal respect on this site, especially when the conversation is between believers and skeptics. Perhaps the fault is mine for offering the quadrilemma of Epicurus for discussion. The issue easily becomes an emotional one, it seems.

I appreciate many of the arguments offered by the theists who commented. Many of them have merit. But at the risk of alienating my believing friends (something I seem to be doing a lot lately!), I must declare myself on the side of the skeptics here. If I had to choose a winner, it would be Psiloiordinary, and the skeptics who joined him. Of course, I disagree with where their arguments lead them. I am solidly in the theist camp. But the tone of some of my fellow theists on this topic, their dismissiveness of the problem, their lack of humility distress me. The problem of evil is, in my view, a significant challenge to theism, one that has lacked a satisfactory answer. Christians often object to theodicy itself (that is, the felt need to defend God), as a pointless, even presumptuous endeavor. “Who do we think we are to sit in judgment of God and his actions?” they ask. I’ve never accepted such an approach. It presumes that, though the Creator made us rational and moral beings, he expects that we will not use these faculties in our response to him. No, for me the problem of evil is a very real problem, one that cannot be dealt with easily. We owe it to a world of skeptics to offer our best answers with a high level of humility.

Many who have thought long and hard on this problem have come to similar conclusions. Because the problem of evil is a real problem to me, and to my faith, I have read a number of books on the subject, including The Problem of Pain by C.S. Lewis, Unspeakable by Os Guinness, The Doors of the Sea by David Bentley Hart (which should be required reading by all who would engage in this debate!), and Is God to Blame by Gregory Boyd (which comes the closest to my own views). (I've also read the challenges of Richard Dawkins, and other atheists on the subject.) For the most part, the Christian authors above display a healthy tentativeness in their approach, and a humility in their tone befitting the issue at hand. There are no easy answers.


Having said that, I now propose to boldly lay out my own views on the problem of evil. I addressed these views briefly a year ago in a series of posts on this site. I will now resubmit them with more detail and elaboration. I will do this in a new series of posts. I will not defend or debate my thoughts as I present them. If readers have questions for clarification, I will be happy to respond. I will deal with reader objections only after I have finished the series. Fair enough?

I will begin shortly at an unlikely starting point: Jesus’ radical teachings in the Sermon on the Mount. Stay tuned ....

Book Review: The God Delusion

Note: This review of The God Delusion will be followed in a few days with a review of The Dawkins Delusion? by Alister McGrath and Joanna Collicutt McGrath. Alister McGrath, an atheist-turned-believer who is, with Richard Dawkins, an Oxford professor, is joined by his wife in authoring this succinct answer to Dawkins. Just as Dawkins should be required reading for serious believers, the McGraths’ pithy response should be required reading for serious atheists.

Let it be said: Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion, Bantam Press, 2006) is a very good writer, and the kind of person with whom one can readily imagine an enjoyable and simulating evening over a glass or two of red—enjoyable that is, so long as he refrained from his predictable outbursts of rambunctious polemic. And this highlights the two sides of Richard Dawkins: at once engaging, personable, rational, pleasant, entertaining; and alternatively unreasonable, angry, boisterous, given to ill-conceived diatribes. If he is preaching to his own choir, these diatribes will likely elicit hearty “amens!” If believers are his target audience, his arguments would go farther if he would restrain his clamorous tone.

Most of the theistic readers of this blog will find, as I do, that Dawkins’ arguments are often wide of the mark with respect to our brand of theism and Christian Faith. Some of his arguments are undisguised straw man. Many others are waged against a fundamentalism into which most readers of this blog do not fit. In fact many believers will find themselves nodding in agreement. For example, when Dawkins declares "As a scientist, I am hostile to fundamentalist religion because it actively debauches the scientific enterprise. It teaches us not to change our minds, and not to want to know exciting things that are available to be known. It subverts science and saps the intellect,” I heartily agree! However in Chapter 8 (Dawkins’ defense of his own hostility toward people of faith) he devotes the final section to answering why he deplores even the more moderate, rational wing of Christian faith. Here he develops his "moderates validate fundamentalists" argument. “The teachings of ‘moderate’ religion,” Dawkins contends, “though not extremist in themselves, are an open invitation to extremism.” What?? And how does this not apply equally to “moderate” atheism? While Dawkins dismisses the notion that Stalin and Hitler operated out of their atheistic world-view (his arguments are less than convincing), why are extreme acts of atheists not validated by more moderate atheists? I have often thought that Hemingway followed atheism to it’s logical extension: existential despair and suicide. While most atheists I’ve met do not take their atheism to that extreme, could it not be argued that moderate atheism paves the way to such actions. (I’m not forwarding this argument here. Theists also commit suicide. And Hitler’s atheism is arguable. I’m only suggesting that Dawkins' argument against moderate expressions of faith is unfair, and can be turned back upon his own brand of moderate atheism.) It is apparently Dawkins view that, without the more moderate voices of religion, the more extreme versions would fade away. He never explains the logic behind this supposed linkage.

Dawkins' “central” atheistic argument is found in chapter 4. After dismantling (to his satisfaction) many of the standard theistic arguments in chapter 3, Dawkins attempts to demonstrate “Why There Is Almost Certainly No God”. This argument from probability betrays his simplistic concept of the Christian view of God. For those unfamiliar with Dawkins’ core atheistic contention, Dawkins’ argument runs something like this: Believers, appealing to the extreme improbability of this universe developing as it has, the fact that it is hospitable to life at all, indeed the extreme improbability of life itself, contend that our universe demands the existence of an intelligent Cause. But, Dawkins counters that postulating a God only extends the problem of improbability, and pushes it back in time. That is, any God appealed to to account for the complexity of our universe must himself be yet more complex. And his existence thus becomes more difficult to explain than the material universe we observe. Thus, in Dawkins’ view, the notion of God is “very close to being ruled out by the laws of probability.” Dawkins is either unaware of, or fails to understand the Judeo-Christians concept of God as the eternal “self-existent” One. No believer I know has struggled with the question, “Whence God?” Nor will Dawkins’ expostulations raise such a question for believers. The God of believers is far beyond Dawkins’ notion of demanding explanation. It is indeed reasonable that we seek logical explanations for causation in our material world. To suggest the same logic must apply to God does not follow. Christians understand that God exists outside of our physical dimensions. As such, he cannot be restrained to our time bound concepts of causation. Dawkins’ shallow reasoning reminds me of a favorite passage from David Bentley Hart:

“... since strict materialism is among the most incoherent of superstitions ... it is incapable of imagining any conception of God more sophisticated than its own.” (The Doors of the Sea, page 14)

In fairness, Hart goes on to depict unbelief in more generous terms, but Dawkins leaves one wondering if his concept of God is as small as it seems.

There is an interesting confluence in Richard Dawkins, and one that should be telling for believers. He is considered by many to be both the world’s foremost evolutionary biologist, and the world’s foremost atheist. Is this indicative that evolution and atheism are intrinsically linked, as many of my believing and unbelieving friends insist? Or is it rather indicative of how believers have 1) failed to embrace evolutionary science (which has now moved beyond reasonable doubt), and 2) failed therefore to develop a reasonable theology around evolution. This website exists in part because I am convinced of the later, and hope to explore the promising theological implications of evolution. As Christian thinkers join in this process, I believe one effect will be to remove the stinger from Dawkins’ atheist arguments. For example, Dawkins devotes much of The God Delusion to evolutionary explanations for the development of religious impulses, morality, altruism, etc. Apparently, he views these explanations as the death knell of theism. As a theist who has thought long on the concept of “Evolutionary Creationism”, I found little in these explanations to disagree with. Furthermore, I did not see how his arguments inherently favored atheism over theism. Certainly they undo many worn-out theistic arguments. And they effectively rebut many traditional Christian assumptions. But those arguments and assumptions were incorrect, and should be scuttled. If the Creator has (as I believe) used evolution to bring humankind into a state of God-consciousness (which by Dawkins’ admission is ubiquitous in all cultures, and favored by the great majority of people), why should it surprise us that evolution would be his tool of choice?

Reading The God Delusion was, frankly, less challenging to my faith than I anticipated. His best arguments are leveled against religious fundamentalism; here I share many of his views. But when he turns his guns upon my faith, his extreme hostility tends to invalidate his arguments. When a person becomes consumed with antipathy, reasoned argument can give way to irrational tirades. Dawkins’ atheistic zeal seems to have negated any trace of respect he might have shown toward those with a different persuasion. And when we cease to respect our adversary, a consequence is that our arguments are inevitably weakened.

There was some discussion of my review over at Amazon.com, where it is also posted. Some of the comments were posted by David Marshall (author of The Truth Behind the New Atheism), who last year posted a review of his own. His comments prompted me to read his review. For those interested in further discussion of Dawkins' book, I recommend Marshall's review which can be read here.

Mini Book Review: The Doors of the Sea

On the first day of my vacation with my family, I just read The Doors of the Sea by David Bentley Hart (Eerdmans, 2005). I could not it put down. I recommend it to any reader who wants to delve deeper into our current topic of the problem of evil.

Hart wrote this wonderful little treatise, subtitled “Where was God in the Tsunami”, in the wake of the Indonesian Tsunami. Out of his deep faith and informed mind and with profound honesty and eloquence, Hart responds to the horrors of that 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean. Chris Tilling reviewed and recommend the book (you can read his review here) and his enthusiasm was so unrestrained that I immediately ordered my copy. I read it this morning; and, for reasons which shall in time be obvious, I am compelled to offer this review before moving on to my next post.

Against the backdrop of two manifestations of Natural Evil (the 2004 tsunami, and the Lisbon earthquake/tsunami/fire of 1755) and Dostoyevsky’s portrayal of Moral Evil in The Brothers Karamozov, Hart thoughtfully weaves his “elucidation” of God’s goodness, evil’s reality, suffering, and redemption. With his multiple scathing denunciations of Calvinistic determinism (which he calls absurd) and eloquent dismissals of all other standard Christian theodicies (many of which he unapologetically identifies as “blasphemous flippancies”), Hart shows his utter contempt for much of what passes as Christian explanations of the problem of evil.

The truth, Hart helps us to see, is to be found in the context of free-acting evil, the understanding of the cosmos as entropic and death driven, the coexisting of two Kingdoms (life/light and death/darkness — but Hart is no dualist!), the suffering that results from this state of affairs, and the glory that awaits a final consummation.

Hart’s thoughts closely parallel many of my own; he comes nearer to the concepts I will unfold in my next post than anything I have ever read or heard. There are still significant differences, and Hart would doubtless include mine in the category of “rational theodicies” which he uniformly rejects. Nevertheless, with considerable trepidation I shall boldly move forward with my proposed theodicy, encouraged and re-inspired by Hart’s superb book.