Comparing and contrasting Christian belief to others

For the last two meetings of the theology reading group we discussed I believe. Help my unbelief!: Christian beliefs for a religiously pluralistic and secular world by Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen

It is a 400+ page summary of the author's five-volume systematic theology series called Constructive Christian Theology for the Church in the Pluralistic World.

The book is an ambitious and admirable project. The author not only discusses all the main topics in systematic theology but also attempts to bring each topic into dialogue with science (representing the secular world) and the major religions: Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism.

I am in two minds as to how much the project has succeeded. I am glad Karkkainen tried. I learnt a lot about other religions. The compare and contrast approach was done in a respectful and honest way. I think there are two problematic extremes I have noticed in comparisons of religions. One is to force similarities that actually aren't there and to ignore or minimise real differences. The opposite extreme is to deny any similarities and demonise the religion of the "other". The author avoids both extremes.

I don't know enough about other religions to know if the author's descriptions were reasonable and accurate. I did learn a lot and found them helpful. It is interesting how in Judaism there is little emphasis on heaven and eternal life. How should that affect how Christians read the Old Testament? The discussion highlighted for me how certain Christian beliefs are distinctive, such as salvation by grace and the affirmation of the goodness of God's creation. I found it ironic that Buddhism and Hinduism are dominant in communal cultures but are highly individualistic in terms of their views of "salvation" and religious life.

I found Karkkainen's engagement with science somewhat disappointing. References on scientific topics were often popular websites such as space.com. Sometimes details were garbled, such as his description of quantum entanglement (page 90). He only mentioned a few authors on this topic, and some of the references were quite old. More recent authors such as Alister McGrath, Tom McLeish, Francis Collins, Denis Alexander, Peter Harrison, Alvin Plantinga, and Rodney Holder were not mentioned.

On theology, Karkkainen models "generous orthodoxy" in the sense of affirming central orthodox Christian beliefs while graciously acknowledging differences in how those beliefs are to be interpreted and lived out. He references authors from a range of traditions, convictions, and perspectives. Although he is Lutheran, he is comfortable criticising Martin Luther!

I looked through the index and counted page references to different theologians: Jurgen Moltmann (25), Augustine (23), Aquinas (15), Barth (14), Luther (14), and Pannenberg (7). I found this interesting, but I'm not sure what to conclude from it.

What does Jesus death on the cross achieve?

Tonight at the theology reading group we are discussing ``The Nature and Basis of Salvation,'' chapter 11 of Christian Theology: An Introduction, by Alister McGrath.
The chapter explores different perspectives through history on what the death of Jesus on the cross achieved and what is the meaning and nature of the salvation that is linked to his death and resurrection.

McGrath helpfully points out that it is hard to separate the question of ``What did Jesus achieve?" from the questions of ``Who is Jesus?" and ``What is the nature of humans and what do they need?''



Some view the cross of Christ as only exemplary and subjective, i.e. it provides an example and inspiration for humans to be willing to suffer, particularly for a greater good beyond themselves. In contrast, an objective ontological view is that the cross achieves something objective (makes salvation possible); it actually changes reality.

There are different models and metaphors for the cross and what it achieves including that it is a sacrifice for sin, a victory over sin and evil, a provider of forgiveness, and a demonstration of God's love. Most of the writers McGrath that engages with seem to exclusively favour just one of these over the others. I find this a little strange; why can't they all be true? There are many dimensions to what the cross achieves. They are not necessarily mutually exclusive. This seems to be similar to the view taken by John Stott in his classic book, The Cross of Christ. The challenge, as always in theology, is to find a balance in emphasis between the different dimensions. Furthermore, the cross represents a profound mystery and so any ``model'' will be limited by human language and concepts.

There is also a range of views about what is the nature of the salvation that Jesus offers: reconciliation with God, reconciliation with others, deification (being made divine, particularly favoured in Eastern Orthodox theology), imputed righteousness, personal holiness (Wesley), authentic human existence (Tillich), spiritual freedom, and political liberation (Boff, Gutierrez).
Finally, when it comes to the appropriation of salvation, what is the balance between an extremely Western individualistic conception of personal faith and a communal and institutional conception, as extremely embodied in the Roman Catholic church. Again, the challenge is to find a balance in emphasis between the different perspectives.

One thing in the chapter that was completely new and intriguing for me was the views of Rene Girard, an anthropologist, who claimed that desire, violence, and scapegoats were integral to humanity, to religion, and the sacred. Girard states "Mine is a search for the anthropology of the Cross, which turns out to rehabilitate orthodox theology". For the context and extensive bibliography see here.

It is arguable whether this chapter would be better after chapter 14, which concerns human nature and sin. Most of those who deny the saving power of the cross (particularly Enlightenment writers) do so because they don't think people need to be saved (i.e. they are basically good) and deny that human reason is not corrupted.

This leads to a broader issue that is discussed by McGrath: the influence of historical and cultural context on people's theology. Living in contexts as wide-ranging as Hellenistic philosophical debates, a military dictatorship in Latin America, upper middle-class North America today,  or Catholic Germany at the time of Luther, do have an influence, for better or for worse, on the theological emphases and formulations that they produce.

Most importantly, the chapter would be more helpful if there was a deeper engagement with key Bible passages, particularly those that are hard to reconcile with some of the narrow views advocated by some of the writers reviewed. This is where Stott's book is helpful.

Grunewald, Isenheim Altarpiece. Karl Barth wrote most of his Church Dogmatics, with a reproduction of this in view.

Who is Jesus Christ?

The Christian doctrine of the person of Christ sets out to explore why the church believes that the little piece of human history called "Jesus of Nazareth" holds the key to the nature of God and of human destiny. This area of theology, often referred to as ``Christology'', sets out to locate Jesus of Nazareth on a conceptual map. It attempts to place him along the coordinates of time and eternity, humanity and divinity, particularity and universality, and answer the question of how an event which took place at a specific time and place can be relevant for all people and all times.

This is the beginning of a chapter in Christian Theology: An Introduction, by Alister McGrath. It is the subject of the theology reading group will be looking at this month.

I found the chapter particularly interesting and stimulating. It highlights the many different dimensions and richness to Christology. Human language and concepts are inadequate to simply give a definitive description of such a great mystery, inevitably leading to debates, controversies, and divisions. History also shows how certain ideas and debates keep resurfacing. I think some of the issue with such a complex subject is that different people want to emphasize different perspectives. The question is how does one find balance.

A few of the things I found particularly interesting in the chapter are the following.

It is debatable to what extent one can separate ideas about Christ, about salvation, and about human nature (Christology, soteriology, and anthropology). Charles Gore said, ``Inadequate conceptions of Christ's person go hand in hand with inadequate conceptions of what human nature wants... The Nestorian Christ is the fitting saviour of the Pelagian man.''
[This is an allusion to Nestorius who emphasised the humanity of Christ and saw Christ as largely a human example. Pelagius  considered humans capable of doing good without any divine help.]



A second insight concerns how Adolf von Harnack raised questions about whether the desire of the patristic writers (early church fathers) to interpret the Gospel in terms of Greek thought was helpful or not. In particular, he considered that the concern with abstractions, particularly in fine debates about the meaning of the incarnation, distorted the "simple" practical message of salvation and living that Jesus presented. I would agree that Harnack ultimately took this in unhelpful and extreme directions but it is an important question to consider.

Another helpful insight is to consider the diversity of terms/names used in the New Testament to describe Jesus: Messiah, Lord, Christ, Son of Man, Son of God, God, Word, ....
I would add Suffering Servant, Redeemer, and Rabbi.
Each adds a different dimension and perspective, highlighting the problem of a narrow reductionist or one-dimensional perspective that too many seemed to have advocated over the centuries.

What is "double listening"?

This phrase was coined by John Stott in a book, The Contemporary Christian: An urgent plea for double listening, published in 1992.

Double listening concerns Christians listening to what the Bible says while also listening to what the world says. The world is interpreted, affirmed, and critiqued in terms of what the Bible says, while the Bible is interpreted in light of what learns from the world. Everyone does this, whether or not they acknowledge it. However, the challenge is to do it consciously, intentionally, humbly, diligently, creatively, consistently, and constructively.

The idea is helpfully reviewed by Alister McGrath in this lecture.



Here is some of the key text from the Contemporary Christian (p. 27-9).

How, then, can we be both conservative and radical simultaneously, conservative in guarding God’s revelation and radical in our thoroughgoing application of it? How can we develop a Christian mind, which is both shaped by the truths of historic, biblical Christianity, and acquainted with the realities of the contemporary world? How can we relate the Word to the world, understanding the world in the light of the Word, and even understanding the Word in the light of the world? We have to begin with a double refusal. We refuse to become either so absorbed in the Word, that we escape into it and fail to let it confront the world, or so absorbed in the world, that we conform to it and fail to subject it to the judgement of the Word. Escapism and conformity are opposite mistakes, but neither is a Christian option. 

In place of this double refusal we are called to double listening, listening both to the Word and to the world. It is a truism to say that we have to listen to the Word of God, except perhaps that we need to listen to him more expectantly and humbly, ready for him to confront us with a disturbing, uninvited word. It is less welcome to be told that we must also listen to the world. For the voices of our contemporaries may take the form of shrill and strident protest. They are now querulous, now appealing, now aggressive in tone. There are also the anguished cries of those who are suffering, and the pain, doubt, anger, alienation and even despair of those who are estranged from God. I am not suggesting that we should listen to God and to our fellow human beings in the same way or with the same degree of deference. We listen to the Word with humble reverence, anxious to understand it, and resolved to believe and obey what we come to understand. We listen to the world with critical alertness, anxious to understand it too, and resolved not necessarily to believe and obey it, but to sympathise with it and to seek grace to discover how the gospel relates to it. . . . 

‘Double listening’, however, contains no element of self-contradiction. It is the faculty of listening to two voices at the same time, the voice of God through Scripture and the voices of men and women around us. These voices will often contradict one another, but our purpose in listening to them both is to discover how they relate to each other. Double listening is indispensable to Christian discipleship and Christian mission. 

Two other books by John Stott that McGrath mentions are Issues Facing Christians Today and Christian Mission in the Modern World.

An excellent book on Christian apologetics

Apologetics concerns discussing intellectual questions or objections that people, both non-Christian and Christian, have about Christianity. The field has a long history, and there are a plethora of books, particularly from the USA on the subject. From my perspective, the books vary significantly in quality and some have quite narrow perspectives or offer simplistic answers and strategies.

The introductory book that I highly recommend is Mere Apologetics by Alister McGrath. He presents quite a balanced approach with regard to different apologetic methods. He also has an emphasis on the audience and tailoring approaches, methods, and arguments to them, particularly when the audience is postmodern. Following C.S. Lewis, McGrath highlights the value of appealing to the imagination and emotions, not just the intellect. Because of this audience sensitivity, the book is relevant and useful in non-Western contexts, unlike many Western books. This is the view of some of my non-Western friends who also say it is particularly accessible and clear as an introductory book.

I quite like this lecture McGrath gave where he discusses the importance of C.S. Lewis for apologetics.

The not so dark ages

I learnt a lot from the chapter in Historical Theology, Middle Ages and the Rennasiance (700-1500 AD).

Here is the video introduction from the corresponding chapter in Christian Theology: An introduction.


The first value of the chapter is it highlights how this period was not the "dark ages".
Nor was this period dominated by arcane arguments about questions such as “How many angels can dance on a pin head?” This was actually an intellectually rich time that set the stage for the Reformation.

Under Charlemagne, cathedrals and monasteries became centres of teaching and learning.
The first universities were founded by the church, with a focus on theology and philosophy.
Scholasticism, or “the cathedral of the mind” flourished during 1200-1500, with an emphasis on the “rational justification of religious belief and the systematic presentation of those beliefs”. McGrath says scholasticism  “does not refer to a specific system of beliefs, but to a particular way of doing and organising theology.”

Key figures were Erasmus, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, and William of Ockham.
The Renaissance occurred in the fourteenth and fifteenth century Italy.
Theological writers tended to ignore the scholastics and focus more on the text of scripture and patristics.
Humanism was concerned with ad fontes (“back to the sources”). This largely meant the New Testament in the original language, Greek.
This humanism is quite different from the secular humanism of today.
Byzantine writers tended to understand salvation in terms of deification, rather than western legal or relational categories, that were emphasized in the Reformation.
This period saw the beginning of apologetics. For example, Anselm’s “ontological argument” and
Aquinas’ five arguments for the existence of God, including the cosmological argument.

Learning from the church fathers

I am really enjoying the reading group that is working through Historical Theology by Alister McGrath. Here are some thoughts on chapter 1 which looks at the early church fathers (Patristic Period, c. 100-450). The video below gives a brief overview of the corresponding chapter in McGrath's Introduction to Christian Theology.



Theological debates occurred in the context of Greek philosophy. 
Ideas about the Trinity and the personhood of Christ were heavily influenced by Greek ideas about the perfection of God. (p. 12-13)
God is infinite and unchanging. How then can God suffer?
Theology has to be logically self-consistent.

But, what if we compare these Greek ideal of intellectual "perfection" to the teachings of Jesus? He did not present truth as a set of logical propositions. He told stories. Furthermore, he seemed to like paradoxes and “contradictions”. For example, “the first will be last and the last will be first.”

Same old same old.
Some of the issues of the past are the same today. For example, how is theology related to secular academic disciplines?
Tertullian asked “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem”?
i.e,, what do Greek intellectual ideas have to do with the church?
Augustine said Christians should “plunder the Egyptians”, i.e. freely make use of non-Christian ideas, such as Greek philosophy, in order to advance their cause.

Other questions theologians wrestled with include the following.
Can one find God in popular culture? How far does “common grace” extend?
What are the qualifications of church leaders?
Who can be a member of a church?
Is the ministry of a “fallen” church leader valid?
What is the role of analogical thinking

Learning from Historical Theology

A few years ago I took a short course on Early Church History.
I am now re-engaging with this topic because in the theology reading group we are reading through Historical Theology by Alister McGrath.

McGrath emphasises the distinction between church history and historical theology.
The latter is concerned solely with ideas and intellectual issues.
Theology is basically the study of God. How does one understand God and talk about
God?
In contrast, church history has a broader concern with events, personalities, and institutions. It considers how the ideas were influenced by these and visa versa.

Why do church history and historical theology matter?

Much of what Christians believe today has been shaped by this early period.
The canon of scripture was defined and the Apostle’s and Nicene creeds were formulated then. This shaped ideas about the divinity of Christ, sin, the Trinity, grace, methods of interpretation of scripture, church structure, sacraments …

McGrath quotes Karl Barth

"With regard to theology, we cannot be in the church without taking responsibility as much for the theology of the past as for the theology of the present day. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Luther, Schleiermacher and all the others are not dead but living. They still speak and demand a hearing as living voices, as surely as we know that they and we belong together in the church." 

We can learn much from the past. Some of the early theologians were brilliant minds and some lived exemplary lives. Augustine has had a significant influence on philosophy as well as theology.

Those who fail to learn from the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them.
This is a painful and tragic truth that happens in the church, politics, science, and personal life again and again.

Theology always occurs in a context: social, cultural, political, economic, intellectual, .. We cannot deny that the context has an influence on the issues discussed, controversies,
emphasis and neglect, language, method, …
However, that does not mean that the context is determinative or that the ideas or statements produced are or are not relevant in other contexts.
Somehow we have to discern what is and what is not relevant in our own contexts.
Christianity is global and historical. Consider these very different contexts:
1. the persecuted church in the third century of the Greco-Roman world
2. upper middle-class Australia today
3. slum dwellers in Latin America in the 1970s under military dictatorships
4. Dalit Christians in India today.

Finally, at least for some of us, the topic is fascinating and stimulating.

Last week we covered the Patristic period (approx. 100-451 AD). Here is the chapter and a short introduction to the corresponding chapter in another McGrath text.



Later I will review some of what struck me from the reading and from the Early Church history course.

Deconstructing the Trinity

I have found reading Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Toward a Fully Trinitarian Theology by Colin Gunton rather challenging. On Monday we will discuss it at the theology reading group.
It is not easy reading, but at times I struggle to see why it all matters.
Here are a few rambling reflections.

Gunton mentions that the struggle to put something as profound at the Trinity into words can be constructive. It stretches and clarifies our thinking. But it pushes the words and concepts to their limits.

Yet, it can also be dangerous. First, we can delude ourselves that we actually fully understand something. Second, it can become unnecessarily divisive. History has certainly shown this to be the case. The words can mean different things to different people. Different emphases and balances take different priorities to others. Pride and misunderstanding can lead to confusion, conflict, and hostility.

After struggling through the opening chapters of the book I found it helpful to re-read the chapter on the Trinity in Alister McGrath's textbook Christian Theology: An Introduction.
Here are a few details I found helpful, particularly in understanding some of the key terminology.

homoousios vs. homoiosious
same substance vs. similar substance
The Father and the Son are of the same [similar] substance.
The former was adopted in the Nicene Creed [325 A.D.] after much debate.

Aside: The two terms only differ by an "i" or "iota", the smallest object in the Greek alphabet. Amusingly, this may be the origin of the phrase, "it makes not one iota of difference."

Filioque [and from the Son]. There was controversy about whether the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father or from the Father and the Son.
This is one of the main differences between the Eastern vs. Western conceptions of the Trinity.

perichoresis. This describes the relation between each person of the Trinity.

The Economic Trinity. I tend to think "economic" means frugal or minimalist, but here it means "how the different parts relate to and interact with one another", just like economic/business relations between individuals, societies, and companies. It relates to the acts of the different persons of God in creation, redemption, salvation, and the personal experiences of believers.
It is the manner "in which we experience the diversity and unity of God's self disclosure in history".

The immanent trinity reflects the unity and diversity of God as it is in God.

The Cappodocians played a key role in the acceptance of the full divinity of the Holy Spirit, which was formally endorsed in AD 381 by the Council of Constantinople.

Karl Barth was influential in stimulating renewed interest in the twentieth century in the Doctrine of the Trinity. He placed it at the beginning of his Magnus Opus, Church Dogmatics. He argued that it "undergirds and guarantees the actuality of divine revelation to sinful humanity."

Karl Rahner also played a key role, with the axiom, "The economic trinity is the immanent trinity, and the immanent trinity is the economic trinity.
I still don't really understand this.

It is all about balance. [page 79].

As in all theology, we are on a knife edge, or, we might say, a narrow path with precipices on each side. On one side, we deny the unity of God, and make it appear that there are three gods; on the other, we cause the distinctions of the three to disappear into some underlying undifferentiated deity.

What is the relation between God and the world? On the one hand God is sovereign and ruler of everything. All creation is completely sustained by God and completely dependent. Yet, on the other hand, human agents seem to be autonomous and can act independently. And the material world [ostensibly the creation] can be described and understood scientifically without reference to God. Is there a tension and/or contradiction? Gunton responds to the interaction of Robert Jenson [his Ph.D supervisor] with Jonathan Edwards. [page 95]

in connection with Jenson's query to Edwards' theology of Creation. `T[o] say that "God himself, in the immediate exercise of his power" is the creature' sole support and coherence, were we to take the proposition without trinitarian differentiation would cursedly threaten the distinct reality of creation' [Systematic Theology 2, page 41] The reason is that an authentically Christian theology must make two affirmations which so easily slip into contradiction of one another: that, First, God is the sole creator, and indeed, sole lord of what happens within that creations' history subsequent to its creation; and that, second, as creator and redeemer he is at the same time the one who gives to that creation its ... relative independence, ....
It is one reason of the modern world's rejection of the gospel that it has come to the conclusion that this is indeed the case. To affirm the world, and especially to establish the freedom of the human agent with in that world, it is has been thought necessary to deny God. That is almost an axiom of modern atheism, and indeed of much that affects to be a Chrsitain response to it.

Thus, a Trinitarian theology allows one to at the same time affirm the complete sovereignty of God the Creator and the independence of the creation.

Why does it matter? Should we care? Is it just word games?

Gunton has helped me see there are practical implications that do matter.

First, who are we? What is the meaning of a human person?
"God is one who has his being in communion" [page 15], following John Zizioulas. Similarly, with many careful qualifications, we only have our true being as persons in relation to others, in community. We do have a distinct individual identity but that cannot be defined or meaningful out of the context of relationships.

Second, the Trinity is all about balance. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are of equal importance. Yet in the church today things tend to bifurcate to extremes. [page 79]
Conservative Reformed types barely mention the Holy Spirit, and focus solely on the Son, particularly on his redemptive death.
At the other extreme are Pentecostals, who are preoccupied with the Holy Spirit, often with little reference to the Son.

Videos on Genesis and Science

Today we watched and discussed several excellent videos that deal with the issue of how science is related to Genesis.

Science and Genesis, featuring John Polkinghorne, Alister McGrath, N.T. Wright, and others

Enuma Elish. This Babylonian creation myth contrasts with the Genesis text.

Test of Faith. The videos are not online. You have to buy them. But snippets are available on Youtube

We also discussed "The World as Creation," chapter 3 in Gods that Fail by Vinoth Ramachandra.

A rich diversity of apologetic approaches

In his excellent book, Mere Apologetics, Alister McGrath considers a diversity of approaches for engaging with those who are skeptical or curious about the Christian faith.

Chapter 7, Gateways for apologetics: Opening the door to faith, considers four different approaches.

1. Explanation
2. Argument
3. Stories
4. Images

Most traditional apologetics focusses on the first two approaches.

Stories is not just concerned with the Biblical narrative but engaging with influential secular literature such as Dan Brown's The Da Vinci code. 

Images is not just art but using and engaging with powerful mental images and concepts such as Plato's cave or the theological notion of adoption.

C.S. Lewis was all the more impressive as an apologist because he was a master at all four approaches, from Mere Christianity to Narnia.

Which approach to use should be determined by the background and interests of the audience.

An excellent book on apologetics

My son and I are reading through Mere Apologetics by Alister McGrath.
It is an excellent introduction to apologetics. The most impressive thing is the warm and positive tone. McGrath is excited about the gospel of Jesus. It is good news! But, there can be significant cultural and intellectual obstacles to people seeing this. Yet these people are made in the image of God and are to be respected and engaged with in a warm and gracious manner.

It is also refreshing that McGrath does not get bogged down in debates about the relative merits of different form of apologetics: evidentialist vs. presuppositionalist vs. experiential vs. dialogic.

To give you the flavour here is the outline of Chapter 6,  "Pointers to faith: approaches to apologetic engagement" nicely considers the following "clues"

1. Creation - the origins of the universe
Why did the universe and life have a beginning?

2. Fine-tuning - a universe designed for life

3. Order - the structure of the physical world
Why does science work?
Why is mathematics so unreasonably effective at describing the natural world?

4. Morality - a longing for justice
How can morality have a basis without God?

5. Desire - a homing instinct for God
Why do we long for something better?

6. Beauty - the splendour of the natural world

7. Relationality - God as a person
Why is it that we find the most meaning, fulfilment, (and pain) in human relationships?

8. Eternity - the intuition of hope

I don't find any one of these clues in isolation that compelling. However, put together they point to something significant. Furthermore, the Bible does provide coherent answers to these questions.

Talk on the Higgs boson

On friday I am giving a talk The Higgs boson: scientific reality vs. the media hype at the Centre for Science, Religion, and Culture at Emmanuel College.
Here is a draft of the associated slides.
The talk features 3 videos.

The One Minute Physics video, the Higgs boson: part I.

The superconducting hula hoop. This is the demonstration of the Meissner effect in superconductors, which can be interpreted as photons acquiring mass due to physics similar to the Higgs mechanism (spontaneous breaking of a gauge symmetry).

Simon Conway Morris, Professor of Paleaobiology at Cambridge University, briefly discussing why he is a Christian.

I welcome any comments.

Trusting something is really there

Late last year Alister McGrath wrote a short article Higgs boson: the particle of faith for The Telegraph newspaper. It is worth reading carefully and thinking about. Note the article was written before the recent experimental "discovery" of the Higgs boson.
Here is a key part:

The reason why the Higgs boson is taken so seriously in science is not because its existence has been proved, but because it makes so much sense of observations that its existence seems assured. In other words, its power to explain is seen as an indicator of its truth. 

There’s an obvious and important parallel with the way religious believers think about God. While some demand proof that God exists, most see this as unrealistic. Believers argue that the existence of God gives the best framework for making sense of the world.

Unfortunately, McGrath's point is subtle and was lost on many of the Telegraph readers who wrote comments on the article. Indeed, at first I did not like the article. However, on reflection I decided it is worthwhile because it raises some important questions.

The point is that the practice of science involves faith, i.e. acting on the belief that certain things are (or may be) true or certain entities exist. This is not identical to the faith I practice as a Christian, but it is still faith. Elementary particle physicists had significant reasons to believe that the Higgs boson existed. This faith motivated spending a lot of government money and their careers designing and conducting experiments to find more direct evidence that the Higgs boson existed. Yet, even before the recent experimental results most believed it existed, even though they had never "seen" it.
But, to the hard core "logical positivist" or "skeptic" surely this faith is "irrational".
In particular, why orient your daily life and professional career around something you have never seen. A valid counter is that these physicists were not assuming that the particle existed, but rather trying to see whether or not it did exist. Not finding it would have been just as worthwhile an outcome.

Reading Genesis historically and literally

I really liked this video.
What does it mean to read Genesis "literally" and in its historical context?
I think that N.T. Wright in the last few minutes is absolutely brilliant about how some "modern" readings miss the whole point and impoverish the text. But, it is a bit like what Barth says....

I
I thank Matt Cardier for bringing the video to my attention.
It is produced by the Biologos Foundation and appears to be a nice condensation of several longer videos they have produced.

Don't leave theology to the theologians

Today my son and I finished reading through Alister McGrath's Theology: The Basics. He bids the reader farewell with these thoughts from Karl Barth [originally from a 1934 Paris lecture]:

In conclusion, theology is not a private subject for theologians only. Nor is it a private subject for professors. Fortunately, there have always been pastors who have understood more about theology than most professors. Nor is theology a private subject of study for pastors. Fortunately, there have been repeatedly congregation members, and often whole congregations, who have pursued theology energetically while their pastors were theological infants or barbarians. Theology is a matter for the church. 

Karl Barth, God in Action,  1963, pp. 56-57

A Trinitarian resolution of the paradox of revelation

This post gives a brief summary of some discussion of Karl Barth's approach to the Trinity in Alister McGrath's Theology: The Basics.
The following two claims present a paradox.

1. Humanity is fundamentally incapable of hearing the Word of God, because of the sinful nature of humanity.

2. Nevertheless, humanity has heard the Word of God: humanity is sinful and cannot hear the Word of God.

Barth resolves the paradox in the following Trinitarian manner.

a. God the Father is a revealing God.
b. God the Son is the self-revelation of God.
c. God the Holy Spirit is the means by which Jesus is recognized as the self-revelation of God.

Below is the actual quote of Barth, that McGrath discusses.

The question of the self-revealing God which thus forces itself upon us as the first question cannot, if we follow the witness of Scripture, be separated in any way from the second question: How does it come about, how is it actual, that this God reveals Himself? Nor can it be separated from the third question: What is the result? What does this event do to the man to whom it happens? Conversely the second and third questions cannot possibly be separated from the first. So impossible is any separation here that the answer to any one of the questions, for all the autonomy and distinctiveness it has and must continue to have as the answer to a particular question, is essentially identical with the answer to the other two. God reveals Himself. He reveals Himself through Himself. He reveals Himself. If we really want to understand revelation in terms of its subject, i.e., God, then the first thing we have to realise is that this subject, God, the Revealer, is identical with His act in revelation and also identical with its effect. It is from this fact, which in the first instance we are merely indicating, that we learn we must begin the doctrine of revelation with the doctrine of the triune God.

Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics 1.1 The Doctrine of the Word of God , pages 296-7.

The limitations of analogy in science and theology

Analogues have great value in helping us better understand difficult concepts. However, they do have limitations, and understanding those limitations can be helpful too. No analogy is perfect and if pushed too far can become problematic. In his chapter on Salvation in Theology: The Basics Alister McGrath points out this limitation and illustrates it with the notion of Jesus paying a "ransom" through his death (see Mark 10:45). The analogy is powerful because it illustrates that we were hostages to our sin without hope of freedom. Jesus death and resurrection liberates us. But if we push the analogy too far we start to get bogged down in questions such as "To who was the ransom paid? Who was the hostage taker who received the ransom payment: God or the Devil?".

Analogues have their value and limitations in science too. A famous and historically important one was that of the aether. In 1865 James Clerk Maxwell proposed that light is an electromagnetic wave analogous to a sound wave travelling through a solid or gas (a medium). But this analogy requires that there must be some medium in which the light wave is travelling. This medium was called the aether and Maxwell proposed it was a "sea of molecular vortices", which he sketched below.

Physicists searched for this new medium in vain. Eventually Michelson and Morley performed experiments that showed such a medium could not exist. Light waves travel in a vacuum. The analogy was helpful but limited.

Creation: the basics

As I posted earlier my son and I are reading through Alister McGrath's small book Theology: The Basics. The chapter we discussed this morning on Jesus, I thought was particularly good. However, the purpose of this post was just to note that I found the previous chapter on Creation a little disappointing.

I felt this had too much emphasis on the issue of natural theology, and the associated controversy concerning its role in theology. Moreover, McGrath does not emphasize several key aspects of the doctrine of creation.

First, because God is the Creator we accountable to Him and He is worthy of our devotion and obedience (Revelation 4:11)

¹¹ "Worthy are you, our Lord and God,
   to receive glory and honor and power,
for you created all things,
   and by your will they existed and were created."

Second, creation is for a purpose: for us to live in a covenantal relationship with God.

Learning from history

Each week I go out for breakfast with my son and discuss a chapter of a book we are reading together. We just started Theology: The Basics, by Alister McGrath, which I had read earlier with my daughter.
The first chapter gives a nice discussion of some basic issues one must face in theological discourse.
How and to what extent one engages with historical perspectives?
[McGrath divides history into the eras: apostolic, patristic, medieval, reformation, and modern]
How does one interact with the Bible, with tradition, and with reason?
Dialogue with other disciplines and philosophies present both opportunities and risks for theology.

Creeds provide a valuable summary which is a good launching point for an overview of theology. McGrath centres the book around the Apostle's Creed. Each chapter also contains a short text by a prominent theologian from Anselm to Barth to Calvin to Luther to Wesley to Tillich.

One thing I think is particularly important and valuable about the book is that it is a good point to start appreciating the significance of history. Over the past two thousand years there have been many very thoughtful, eloquent, and godly people who have wrestled with theological questions. I believe most of the issues are not that different today. With humility we can learn a lot from them, for better or for poorer.