In Defense of Narnia

In response to the scathing attacks by His Dark Materials author Philip Pullman, Michael Nelson, professor of political science at Rhodes College, has written a brilliant defense of C.S. Lewis and The Chronicles of Narnia by pointing out that neither Lewis nor his stories are racist, sexist, or warmongering. (originally linked at Arts and Letters Daily)

Sermons on Narnia

It turns out that even my pastor has caught Narnia fever. He’s going to do three sermons on C.S. Lewis in December. I suppose it’s easy to have a bandwagon mentality considering the vast coverage that the film is receiving in not only Christian magazines and journals but also in the mainstream media. Unfortunately, one can only do so much in a sermon on a Sunday morning. I would recommend reading the following Hollywood Jesus blog, especially for the analyses of all seven books. And with regard to the life and works of Lewis, one of the best sites is C.S. Lewis: 20th-Century Knight. One could spend a lot of time following all the links to papers and other Lewis sites. Of course, although Lewis is probably my favourite writer (if he isn’t he’s definitely in the top three), there are others who deserve attention. Dostoyevsky, for example. Once you read The Brothers Karamazov you may wonder why you wasted your time on all the pap and fluff that usually passes by one’s eyes. The great mysteries of life are often best explored in works of fiction. Lewis and Dostoyevsky provide some of the best of those works.

Women in the Church

This CT article reminded me of the nasty battles that occur in Christian circles regarding the role of women in the Church as well as in the home. There are two main views: complementarianism and egalitarianism. I pitch my tent in the egalitarian camp. In my view, women can hold any office in the church hierarchy including senior pastor and moderator of the General Assembly. And in the home I don’t think the biblical data supports the concept of male “headship” as it is commonly thought of. Two books I’d recommend (and there are many being published these days by evangelical presses) are Good News for Women: A Biblical Picture of Gender Equality by Rebecca Merrill Groothuis and Women in the Church: A Biblical Theology of Women in Ministry by Stanley Grenz and Denise Kjesbo.

For an excellent online examination, check out this series at the Christian-Thinktank. It’s a bit lengthy so I’d especially recommend reading section 4-Women in the NT and the Early Church, and especially the fourth article, Paul and Women which looks at the controversial passages such as 1 Cor. 11, 1 Cor. 14, 1 Tim. 2, Eph. 5.

Why Bother with Harry Potter

One response that we can expect from certain Christians whenever a new Harry Potter book or film is released is a good old fashioned book burning. Another response is the attempt to ban the book in public or school libraries. Obviously, parents have a right to impose reading restrictions on their own children as they see fit. Other Christians, however, see value in reading the books and viewing the films.

This article from CTMovies provides a brief look at why Christians of all people ought to read the Potter series.

Also worth reading is this First Things article by Alan Jacobs of Wheaton College.

And one of the best websites that looks at the Christian and redemptive themes in the books and films is HogwartsProfessor.com.

Who Made God? Pt.3

Third, one could appeal to the scientific evidence and ask the question, “The universe hasn’t always existed. Where did it come from?” Big bang cosmology tells us that our incredibly fine-tuned universe, all matter, energy and space, had a beginning to its existence. In other words, there was a creation event. Anything that begins to exist has a cause. Therefore, the universe had a cause (and God seems to be the best candidate). We also know that time itself, as Stephen Hawking, George Ellis, and Roger Penrose discovered around 35 years ago, had a finite beginning concurrent with the big bang. Since space and time are created entities, then whatever, or whomever, created them is not just another spatio-temporal being but would exist outside space and time.

Now, time is the dimension where cause and effect take place, and it is linear. The universe is confined to a single dimension of time moving in only one direction. Anything that begins to exist (such as the universe) has a starting point along this time dimension and is caused by something else. The law of causality tells us that effects follow their causes. But since God created time and is not limited to it, he can operate outside of our time dimension and not be subject to the law of causality. Consequently, if God is not subject to the law of cause and effect, He has no cause or beginning. This means that He has always existed. This is in concord with the traditional concepts of God. He must be eternal and necessary. He depends on nothing else for his existence. Non-theists who object should remember that they have always said that the universe was eternal and uncaused. Unfortunately, the scientific evidence has shown this position to be unacceptable. (Slight digression: And those who appeal to the existence of infinite universes to explain the fine-tuning of our universe are themselves stuck with the question of origins, to wit, where did all those universes come from?)

All three responses to the question of God’s origin, taken together, make for a cumulative case for God as the uncreated, Creator of the universe (Of course, I’ve presented only a short, lay-person written summary. I suggest reading the linked books for more detail). Even if not everybody is satisfied with what I’ve presented, that’s fine. I’m just trying to point out that when it comes to the existence of God and His nature, the realm of science and philosophy is still very much occupied.

Who Made God? Pt.2

Second, one could appeal to the fact that everything in the universe requires, right at this moment, a cause for its existence. Norman Geisler frames the argument like this: 1) Every part of the universe is dependent. 2) If every part of the universe is dependent, then the whole universe must also be dependent. 3) Therefore, the whole universe is dependent for existence right now on some independent being. (Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics, p. 277)

Philosopher William Davis puts it this way: "1) There are contingent things (at least some things might not have existed). 2) All contingent things are dependent (at least for their coming into existence) on something else. 3) Not everything can be dependent on something else. (Even if the chain of dependence looped back on itself, the entire chain would still be dependent, and thus something outside the chain would be needed.) 4) Thus, a nondependent (necessary) thing exists (which explains dependent things). (And for those already familiar with God on the basis of revelation, it is not hard to give a name to this necessary being.)" (Reason for the Hope Within, p.24).

Let’s say that your existence, right now, depends on some other dependent thing. But that dependent thing also is dependent on something else for its existence and so on. This chain of dependency cannot go on forever. An infinite regress is impossible. In Reason and Religious Belief, the authors write, “There cannot be an actually infinite set of anything in reality. Although in mathematics we can speak about actual infinities, mathematical infinities concern only the ideal world of mathematics. If they are applied to the real world, absurdities result. For example, if we had an infinite number of books, this would include all the books beginning with the letter A. Suppose that we also have an infinite number of books that begin with A. Then, though the first set contains the second set and more, both sets have the same number of books. But one would expect that if one set is the subset of the other, the subset would be less than the set. Now if the actual infinite cannot exist, then one cannot appeal to an actual infinite of present causal conditions to explain the existence of any given contingent being. Hence, the causal conditions must contain at least one noncontingent [ie. necessary] causal condition.” (p. 78)

A person could reply by objecting to the second premise of Geisler’s argument: If every part of the universe is dependent, then the whole universe must also be dependent. But, the objector might say, just because every part is dependent that doesn’t necessarily mean the entire universe is dependent. For example, if every player on a basketball team is a good player, that doesn’t necessarily mean the team will be good. So, if the whole is greater than its parts, then the universe need not be dependent even if every part of the universe is dependent; in other words, the universe itself could be a necessary being and, therefore, no creator is required.

In response, it could be pointed out that if every single particle making up the universe suddenly disappeared, it seems reasonable to conclude that the universe itself would also disappear. A counter example would be: if every tile of a floor is blue, then the entire floor will be blue. There are cases where it is legitimate to argue from parts to the whole. And the universe is one of those cases.

Third,...

Who Made God? Pt.1

In an otherwise standard letter about Intelligent Design printed in one of our national newspapers, a philosophy professor (in his support for the teaching of evolution in public schools) ended his letter with:

“Lastly, the appeal to some ‘unmoved mover’ or ‘first cause’ is inherently unsatisfactory since it raises the question of the origin of such an entity. Here we leave the realm of science and philosophy and enter the domain of faith.”

I’ve got no argument with evolutionary biology. I’ll let the scientific community deal with the reliability of the scientific evidence for neo-Darwinian evolution.

But the writer’s claim that the question of God’s origin “leaves the realm of science and philosophy to enter the domain of faith” is, I think, somewhat incorrect. Both science and philosophy can tell us something about God. I’m not trying to suggest that science and philosophy can prove with absolute certainty that God exists and is uncaused, only that they can make it more reasonable to believe this than believing its denial. And, it seems that he considers faith as “blind”, that is, believing in what your common sense tells you may be false, or believing in something based not on evidence but on some vague inner feeling. I don’t know how other religions view faith, but the Christian conception of faith is trusting in what one has good reason to believe is true. The reasons for believing can be evidential, though they don’t have to be. They can also be experiential. And the experience can be as clear and convincing as any logical argument or piece of empirical evidence.

In addition, the question “Who made God?” is often intended to be a conversation stopper, as if the questioner has asked the unanswerable. And since there is no answer, there’s no reason to believe in God. I think there are three responses that can be given to the question of who made God. (As usual, my lack of philosophical training makes me prone to making mistakes in logic, so take this for what it’s worth).

First, God, by definition, is a necessary being (ie. is not dependent on anything else for His existence), the uncreated Creator of everything that was created. To ask the question is to make a category mistake. It would be like asking what the note G# tasted like. Notes do not have taste. And an uncreated being cannot be created.

Although I think this first response true, I can see how someone might not be satisfied with it. There is the appearance of rhetorical hand-waving. One could define anything they want and then just refer to the definition. But, there are things in this world that are definitionally described. For example, a bachelor is, by definition, an unmarried man. And the biblical God, if He exists at all, is what theists have always defined as an uncaused necessary being.

Second,...

More C.S. Lewis

C.S. Lewis’ books are selling better now than they ever have. But when I talk to other Christians, very few of them have actually read his works. They may mention The Screwtape Letters or The Chronicles of Narnia (though not all seven volumes). A few have read Mere Christianity. No one I’ve talked to has read Christian Reflections or The Weight of Glory or Miracles or The Pilgrim’s Regress. And this is a shame because Lewis represents the best of what a bridge writer should be. He takes the thoughts of theologians and philosophers and translates them for a lay audience, allowing the passing of a normally unpassable river of arcana with dry feet. Now, I certainly haven’t read all of his works. This will be a lifelong endeavour. I’m making it my goal to read everything Lewis ever wrote (or, at the very least, as much as possible).

Stories about Lewis, such as this one from Newsweek, are all over the place now thanks to the upcoming Narnia film. It’s interesting that he is embraced by Christians from all across the theological spectrum, but especially by evangelicals. The fact that many of his papers and even some of his furniture are housed at the Marion E. Wade Center at evangelical Wheaton College is a testament to Lewis’ influence on evangelicalism. The irony is that this Irish-born, Anglican, pipe-smoking, beer drinking Oxbridge scholar would not, in his day, have been allowed to teach at Wheaton.