I devoted the six previous installments in this series (“Is Christianity True”) to clarifying the concepts needed to answer intelligently the question of Christianity’s truth. We examined the nature of the question about Christianity’s truth, the concepts of truth, reality, knowledge, and faith, and the issue of who bears the burden of proof. Now we begin to address the heart of the matter.

Debates about the truth of Christianity begin at different points depending on which objection is being pressed. It would seem that a discussion with an atheist would need to begin with the question of God’s existence. Deists would agree with Christians that God exists but would object to miracles, the incarnation, and the resurrection of Jesus. And adherents of other religions and philosophies would press other objections and demand other bodies of evidence. Since in these essays I am addressing a general audience, I don’t want to presume a beginning point anywhere short of the most basic issue. In the previous post, I spoke of certain natural decision points at which one must decide which road to take. One road takes us further on the way to Christian faith and the other takes us another step away from faith. What is the first and most fundamental decision point?

If asked, perhaps most people would say that the most obvious beginning point for the debate between nonbelievers and believers is issue of the existence of God. Indeed, this debate may be the most obvious beginning point, but we must also keep in mind that explicit atheism and theism presuppose many judgments and decisions about background beliefs. These unspoken background beliefs must be true if atheism or theism is true. So, I want to look for the most fundamental decision point among these unspoken commitments.

Atheist philosophies vary markedly and resist simple generalizations. But I have to risk some generalizations or our argument would never progress beyond disputes over definitions. At this stage, using Alvin Plantinga’s definition, I will define atheism as the belief that “there is no God or anything like God” (Warranted Christian Belief).  Theism is belief in one God conceived in a general sense that covers Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. Perhaps some atheists would disagree, but I am going to take for granted that the debate about God’s existence makes no sense unless atheists and theists alike believe that something is real, that something true can be said about it, and that we can attain some knowledge of it. It would be hard to argue with someone who denies the presuppositions and rules that make arguments possible! In my view, a second assumption, related to the first, is needed to get the debate going. How could a debate progress unless atheists and theists agree that behind or at the beginning of all the manifold phenomena in the world lies something that explains the phenomena but itself needs no explanation? Rationality possesses a drive to relate and unify things that seem at first to be unrelated and separate. The notion that ultimate reality is composed of an infinite number of unrelated, unconnected, utterly different and self-existent entities makes reason ineffective and knowledge impossible. Hence there is a tendency among atheists and theists to seek for the fewest and simplest explanatory principles possible.

We now have before us the first decision point. If atheists and theists agree that there is an ultimate reality that explains all phenomena and events, the debate turns on the nature of that ultimate reality. Is it spirit or matter, life or death, intelligible or unintelligible, mind or machine? Clearly, atheism, as the belief that there is no God or anything like God, chooses the second option in each of these four pairs. For atheism, the beginning and end of all things is matter, death, the unintelligible, and the mechanical. The theism chooses the first member of each pair. For theists, the beginning and end of all things is spirit, life, the intelligible, and mind. The choice one makes at this fork in the road determines one’s most basic understanding of everything else. All future choices are but specifications and variations of this one.

Is the choice between these two paths merely arbitrary or based on one’s personality? Or, is there room for making a rational judgment? And if so, what are our resources for making this rational judgment? I see only three: our experience of our minds, our experience of our bodies, and our experience through our minds and bodies of the external world. Or, we can think of it this way. Through our bodies and minds we experience reality in two ways, as intelligible and unintelligible or as mental and material or clear and obscure or internal or external. These two basic experiences give us three options: (1) the intelligible is primary and the material is derivative; or (2) the material is primary and the intelligible is derivative; or (3) the material and the intelligible are equally primordial.

In the coming posts I hope to lay out the evidence available for making a rational judgment about which one of these three options is superior. But already we can see the huge significance of this most basic decision. If death is God, God is dead. And if God is dead, death is God.

Where shall we begin to answer such a huge question? Medieval theologians used to say, “Method does not matter.” This saying makes sense when you consider that the English word “method” is derived ultimately from the Greek word “methodos”, which means “a following after” or “pursuit” or “access.” Christianity is a complex belief system, and one can begin thinking about it at any point within it. What matters is not where you begin but that you “pursue” the whole system of faith to the end.

Different people find themselves at different points in the journey from doubt to faith. For some, their faith in God is unshakable, but their belief in Jesus is tenuous. Others find Jesus’ moral teaching compelling but the church’s claims about him dubious. Still others find themselves at other places on the way from nonbelief to full faith. Ideally, this series would begin by addressing each person’s most pressing question and move from there to cover the entire system of belief. Demanding that everyone begin their quest for deeper faith at the same point would be as foolish as demanding that everyone who wants to go to New York City must begin at Los Angeles. You begin where you are. Hence there are as many beginning places and ways of “pursuing” the question, “Is Christianity true?” as there are individuals.

In this electronic medium, I cannot begin with each reader’s individual questions, which would be ideal. I must use another way, a more general method that will eventually cover all the questions in an orderly way. Two methods come to mind as possibilities. We could follow the “order of knowing” or the “order of being.” If we followed the order of knowing, we would ask ourselves, “What are the first, second, third things one needs to know in order to make the journey from nonbelief to full faith?” Do we begin with the question, “How do I know that I exist or that the external world exists?” Or, do we begin with some other question about what we need to know first? Once we settle on an order of knowing, the outline of our argument follows easily. Though this method has its famous champions, I will not take this approach.

Following the order of being, we would ask ourselves, “What is the order of reality, in order of priority, presupposed and asserted by the Christian faith?” In other words, “What must be true about the way things really are, in order of priority, if Christianity really is true?” Do I begin with the issue of the origin of the world or the first cause of everything or the existence and nature of God? Or, is some other question the best candidate for first place in the order of being? I will follow this method in this series. Along the way, I will explain why I prefer it.

I Respect Your Intelligence

Some of my most faithful readers reminded me recently that I write at a higher level than most bloggers. Yes, I do, and the reason is stated in my first post, August 8, 2013, “An Invitation to Thoughtfulness in Religion.” I really believe that most contemporary Christians do not hear deep and thoughtful teaching in their churches, and they don’t know where to begin their search for deeper understanding. This blog is dedicated to remedying this situation. My compulsion for challenging my readers to think hard is probably explained by my background. On the one hand, I am an academic theologian who teaches theology in a university. I have studied theology for 43 years and have taught it for 25 years. I also served in the ministry for 10 years before entering academia. My passion is bridging the gap between seminaries and churches, students of theology and church-going Christians. I try to avoid technical jargon. But I respect your intelligence and your desire to understand so much that I refuse to speak to you as if you were still in grammar school. I want you to experience some of the joy I have experienced in probing the depths of the Christian faith.

Next post coming soon: what do we mean by “Christianity”? And what would it mean to say “Christianity is true?”

As I have documented in previous posts in this series, the dominant culture in western societies acknowledges no public validity to natural law, human nature, divine law, or traditional wisdom. It recognizes no natural obligations individuals have to one another. The good and the right are defined subjectively, the good being understood as what pleases you and the right as “what is right for you.” Hence modern people feel reluctant to impose moral restrictions on others or to condemn their behavior; and they feel anger toward those who do so.

Nevertheless, there is one moral principle the dominant culture can feel good about imposing on others. It is called the “harm principle”, and was most famously stated by John Stuart Mill (Liberty). We’ve all heard people say, “Do whatever you want as long as it doesn’t hurt someone else.” It can be stated in various ways. But the principle is this: one must give an individual liberty of action up to the point where it begins to restrict the liberty of others. Hence the only condition under which our contemporaries feel justified in condemning a behavior is when one person coerces another person, that is, when one does something to another that the other does not want done to them. Whatever one does with and to oneself concerns only oneself and indeed falls completely outside the ethical sphere.

My goal today is to subject the “harm principle” to analysis, to show what it presupposes and where it leads. Clearly, the primary goal of the “harm principle” is to set limits on behavior that make sense within a fundamentally libertarian framework. (Without limits of some kind liberty becomes anarchy.) The harm principle defines the self in terms of will and the associated concepts of freedom, self-expression, authenticity, preferences, and a subjective view of the good (as the good-for-me according to my assessment). It is noteworthy that the self is not defined as God’s creature made in God’s image and responsible to God. The self is a will that does one thing: it acts to realize its desires. And it is limited only by the existence of other selves that also act to realize their desires, not in view of divine law, natural law or an objective understanding of the good passed down in tradition.

The fundamental instinct of the modern self is that it should be able to do whatever it wills. But most people stop short of advocating complete anarchy, realizing that this condition is war of each against all. Hence attempting to stay as close to the fundamental instinct as possible, they argue that liberty should be limited only by liberty itself and will by will. This move avoids appealing to human dignity, divine creation or other principles to limit liberty. In fact, the harm principle is not so much a principle as a pragmatic accommodation to the contradiction within the idea of liberty itself. There is no principle within the idea of my liberty that demands that I respect your liberty. Since modern culture refuses to acknowledge a law above human liberty, it resolves the inherent contradiction in the idea of individual liberty by turning to an even bigger will incarnated in the state. The state decides the scope and limits of individual liberty by deciding what individual or group activities cause harm to others. In a supreme irony liberty sells itself into slavery to escape its internal contradictions. Henceforth legality replaces morality.

Now let’s relate the well-worn phrase “consenting adults” to the harm principle. Our contemporaries have nothing to say about how human beings should act within, for and on themselves because they assume that when we do something with our own bodies we do so freely. The only moral question the dominant culture poses about the activities that two or more adults perform on each other concerns consent or lack thereof. There can be no rules for what two consenting adults do with each other derived from the harm principle; for harm is measured in terms of consent and coercion, not in terms of right and wrong or good and bad. To object to the activities of consenting adults one would need to appeal to other principles—human dignity, divine law, natural law—something modern culture adamantly refuses to do.

Here is the logical trajectory and emotional engine that drives the incessant change in sexual morality in contemporary culture. The dominant culture acknowledges no principle that can limit what individuals do with their solitude or what consenting adults to with and to each other. The harm principle cannot override the principle of mutual consent because “harm” is defined as coercion or lack of consent; and you cannot coerce a consenting party. As one after another formerly forbidden behavior is permitted, it is always accompanied with the judgment that no harm is being done; and if harm is defined as coercion, this judgment is self-evidently true. The human imagination is prolific in devising ways to excite pleasure or relieve pain. (Is it too much to say that it is unlimited?) And unless a third party is harmed (i.e. coerced) the modern person can make no moral objection to anything consenting adults wish to do. All claimed moral objections to behaviors that have been declared healthy by the culture will be interpreted as arising from a desire to dominate others or from sheer bigotry. And oppression and bigotry are deemed harmful to society. Since the state has been given the power to prevent harm, moral objections to approved behaviors will be subject to state coercion.

The Point of the Series

What am I trying to say in this series? (1) To those who reject divine law, natural law and traditional wisdom about what is good for human beings and celebrate maximum liberty as their sole value, I issue a warning: you are standing on the edge of the abyss of moral nihilism. Liberty is a purely negative concept. It means the absence of limits, and the absence of limits means the absence of distinctions between good and bad, right and wrong; and that is the essence of moral nihilism. If liberty to pursue your desires is your sole principle, there can be no principle by which to set limits to liberty. Such limits to liberty as the harm principle are in fact unprincipled and arbitrary impositions on liberty. It’s just a matter of time until some people transgress those limits into violence and murder in the name of liberty. If there is no God, there is no moral law; if there is no moral law, “all things are permitted.”

(2) To those who wish to remain serious Christians, I say: do not be fooled by the culture’s superficial appeals to tolerance, compassion and respect for other people’s autonomy and search for happiness. Underneath this beautiful veneer lies the rot of moral nihilism. Moral nihilism cannot affirm the good and right; it can only destroy. The dominant culture’s appeals to tolerance and compassion serve only one purpose: to undermine the idea that there is an objective good and right. Do not allow the false charge of intolerance to intimidate you into giving up or minimizing the importance of our faith that God is our Creator, that human beings are made in God’s image and are responsible to him for everything we do, and that there is a divine law and a natural law and that the Scriptures embody divine wisdom about what is good and right. Do not be deceived by the idea that desire and consent alone make an activity good or right.

End of series