Karl Barth's evangelical theology

Almost a quarter of a century ago, I first encountered and engaged with the theology of Karl Barth. It blew my mind and invigorated my spirit. Perhaps there were two main reasons why Barth resonated so well with me.

First, Barth seemed to have a deep respect for and appreciation of the Bible (and secondarily the historical Christian faith), without degenerating into a faith or perspective that was uncritical, naive, tribal, or simplistic.

Second, there seemed to be parallels with my scientific/academic mindset. Barth created for me an avenue to constructively engage my mind in my Christian life like what I enjoyed so much in my scientific life.

This month at the theology reading group, we are discussing Evangelical Theology: An Introduction. The book is based on lectures that Barth gave in Chicago and Princeton in 1962, during the only visit that he ever made to the USA. You can even listen to a live recording here.

The book is a wonderful entry point to Barth's rich and complex theology.  One measure of the influence of the book on me is that 18 previous posts on this blog consider quotations from the book. There 128 posts that are tagged Barth, more than just a handful of other topics (e.g., books, justice, history, politics,...)!

What does Barth mean by evangelical theology?

Theology is a "science" [wissenschaft = an academic discipline of study] in the following sense.

Theology is one among those human undertakings traditionally described as "sciences." Not only the natural sciences are "sciences." Humanistic sciences also seek to apprehend a specific object and its environment in the manner directed by the phenomenon itself; they seek to understand it on its own terms and to speak of it along with all the implications of its existence. The word "theology" seems to signify a special science, a very special science, whose task is to apprehend, understand, and speak of "God."  (page 3)

The object to study is the triune self-revealing God. In other words, Barth's perspective is that ontology determines epistemology. The method we use to find the truth about an object (epistemology) is determined by the nature of that object (ontology).

The qualifying attribute "evangelical" recalls both the New Testament and at the same time the Reformation of the sixteenth century. Therefore, it may be taken as a dual affirmation: the theology to be considered here is the one which, nourished by the hidden sources of the documents of Israel's history, first achieved unambiguous expression in the writings of the New Testament evangelists, apostles, and prophets; it is also, moreover, the theology newly discovered and accepted by the Reformation of the sixteenth century. 

The expression "evangelical," however, cannot and should not be intended and understood in a confessional, that is, in a denominational and exclusive, sense. This is forbidden first of all by the elementary fact that "evangelical" refers primarily and decisively to the Bible, which is in some way respected by all confessions. Not all so-called "Protestant" theology is evangelical theology; moreover, there is also evangelical theology in the Roman Catholic and Eastern orthodox worlds, as well as in the many later variations, including deteriorations, of the Reformation departure. What the word "evangelical" will objectively designate is that theology which treats of the God of the Gospel. "Evangelical" signifies the "catholic," ecumenical (not to say "conciliar") continuity and unity of this theology. " (page 5).

Evangelical theology is modest, happy, free, and critical.

Photo is of my son reading the book back in 2017.

In passing, I mention a paper that I wrote with Ben Myers is Dialectical Critical Realism in Science and Theology: Quantum Physics and Karl Barth.

With ambivalence and confusion, I should mention that my original Barth enthusiasm is tempered by more recent revelations about his inappropriate relationship with his assistant, Charlotte von Kirschenbaum. This raises thorny questions about how to separate the evaluation of a person's written work from their life. Is such a separation possible, appropriate, or essential?

The first will be last; the last will be first

Next weekend I am looking forward to attending a Conference on Science and Christianity.
I have been asked to give three short talks/reflections during some worship times. For balance I have picked from the Bible three passages: a Psalm, a parable of Jesus, and a New Testament Epistle:
Psalm 19, Matthew 20:1-16, and Philippians 2:1-11.
Humility is a common theme.

The first talk will be similar to this one.
Below is a draft outline of a draft for the second talk.
I will post the third talk later.

What is the Kingdom of God like?
The first will be last and the last will be first.

The parable of the workers in the vineyard
Matthew 20:1-16

We all come to any subject in life with pre-conceptions about what is true, what is just, what is important, and what is the  actual nature of things.
We can come to science with such preconceptions.
We can come to theology (talk about God) with such preconceptions.
We all have preconceptions about how science and theology are related or not related.
But are my pre-conceptions justified? Are your pre-conceptions justified?
What will it take for you to change your views?

Jesus challenged the pre-conceptions of everyone, especially the religious people of his time. He challenged preconceptions about a wide range of topics: the character of God, how people should live, the role of the law, how people could be saved, who were God’s people,…
Today Jesus continues to challenge people’s preconceptions.

This parable is just one example of Jesus profoundly challenging peoples preconceptions. It should also challenge us.

Context
It is useful to look at any Bible passage in the context of what comes before and what comes after.

In Matthew 19 the disciples try to stop children coming to Jesus. Jesus responds, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.”

Then Jesus encounters a rich young man. He wants to get eternal life. He claims he has kept all of God’s commands. Jesus tells the young man to sell all of his possessions and give to the poor. He won’t do that. Jesus warns that it is hard for the rich to enter the kingdom of heaven.
He says to the disciples that “But many who are first will be last, and many who are last will be first.”

Jesus, then tells the parable to show what the kingdom of heaven is like.
Again, he concludes with “So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”

After telling the parable Jesus predicts his death and resurrection.
Then a mother requests that her two sons sit in power with Jesus in his kingdom.
Jesus then contrasts kingdom leadership to the that of worldly leaders who lord it over their subjects. Whoever wants to be great must be a servant, even a slave.
Jesus came to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.

Jesus is promoting an upside down kingdom. The least will be greatest. The greatest will be humbled. The first will be last and the last will be first.

This 17th century depiction of the parable is by Jacob Willemszoon de Wet.

What is the content of the parable?
The owner of a vineyard hires some workers. They all get paid the same amount. Yet, some of them worked fewer hours than others. This is not modern day economics or labour practice!
It isn’t fair! The hard workers complain, just like we would.
The landowner responds that he is not unfair. He has kept his promise. He challenges the grumblers, “Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?”

What is the meaning of the parable?
God is like the landowner. We are the workers.
God is generous. He is full of grace, i.e. he treats people better than they deserve. Some of us may live more virtuous lives than others. But this is irrelevant in God’s economy.
God offers us a free gift of forgiveness and eternal life, through Jesus death and resurrection. We don’t earn this gift.
God has the right to be generous as he pleases. It is not for us to question God. God is God. We don't have the right to tell God what is right and fair.

We may bridle at God’s generosity. We can be self-righteous like the rich young man and think we keep God’s commands and so deserve salvation.
But the last will be first. The first will be last. The tax collectors and prostitutes who repent will enter Jesus' kingdom before the rich and powerful, particularly the self-righteous religious leaders.
The kingdom belongs to those with the humility of little children.

This parable should rattle our pre-conceptions of how God operates, of what is fair, and what is true.
It should lead to humility and repentance and gratefulness for the mercy of God.
The kingdom of God is an upside down kingdom.
Paradox and dialectic are integral to theology.

How is this related to science?
Christians believe that God made the universe. He wrote the laws of nature.
What are some of the most striking things we have learnt in science in the past hundred years?

Sir Arthur Eddington was the most influential astronomer in the early twentieth century. J.B.S.Haldane was an influential geneticist and evolutionary biologist. Both are credited with saying that,

“the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose”.

Yet it is striking to me that this statement was made so long ago. The universe is indeed even stranger than what Haldane and Eddington knew 60 years ago. This was before we had to grapple with the most bizarre properties of quantum physics or the finding that 96% of the universe may be composed of dark matter and dark energy, completely unlike the matter and energy of which we are made and encounter in our daily lives.

Bill Bryson says the four most remarkable things he knows are
1. You exist.
2. Life does not happen anywhere else in the universe.
3. We live in a planet that we don't really know.
4. All life comes from a single moment of creation.

Science challenges our pre-conceptions of what is true, what makes sense, and how the world should be. Given the universe is made by the God of the upside-down kingdom, perhaps we
should not be surprised it goes against some of our prejudices and intuitions.

How does this apply to our discussions of the relationship between science and theology?
Perhaps we may need to be humbler and be open to new ways of thinking.
Do my pre-conceptions need to be challenged?

The legacy of Ian Barbour

Ian Barbour died this past Christmas Eve. He is arguably the person most responsible for the study and teaching of "science and religion" becoming significant in universities. His 1966 book Issues in Science and Religion laid the groundwork. It gave a comprehensive survey of the major issues and different perspectives on them. Barbour was better equipped to do this because he had both a Ph.D in physics and a B.Div. and then taught both physics and religion subjects at Carleton College, one of the leading 4-year undergraduate colleges in the USA.

Of particular note was Barbour's four-fold typology for relating science and religion:

• Conflict 
• Independence
• Dialogue
• Integration

Wikipedia mistakenly claims that Barbour "coined the term `critical realism'". The term and the associated philosophical perspective actually arose before Barbour was born! The 1920 book Essays in critical realism: a co-operative study of the theory of knowledge was co-authored by a group of prominent American philosophers. This history is nicely recounted in the wonderful book Barth and Rationality: Critical Realism in Theology by D. Paul La Montagne.

Over the years I have found many who are enamoured by Barbour and his contributions. I am not. He considered that the scientific issues [and particularly evolution] forced one to embrace process theology. It have never been able to understand his arguments. In his book Science and Religion: An Introduction, Alister McGrath gives a helpful summary of Barbour's views [pp. 208-9, first edition]

The key aspect of process theology which Barbour appropriates is the rejection of the classic doctrine of God's omnipotence: God is one agent among many, not the Sovereign Lord of all. ... process affirms "a God of persuasion rather than compulsion .. who influences the world without determining it". Process theology thus locates the origins of suffering and evil within the world to a radical limitation upon the power of God. God has set aside (or simply does not possess) the ability to coerce, really only the ability to persuade. Persuasion is seen as a means of exercising power in such a manner that the rights and freedom of others are respected.... process theology thus calls into question "the traditional expectation of an absolute victory over evil."....... 

Barbour argues that the evolutionary process is influenced by - but not directed by - God. This allows him to deal with the fact that the evolutionary process appears to have been long, complex and wasteful.....

To me this rejection of the sovereignty of God is just plain old heresy.

As McGrath points out Barbour himself acknowledges some inadequacy of process thought, particularly with the way it treats the inanimate world. Barbour claims "A vanishingly small novelty and self-determination in atoms is postulated only for the sake of metaphysical consistency and continuity." To me this just shows the silliness of aspects of process thought. I see no reason, either scientific or theological to entertain the idea that atoms have a "self" or "will".

Is my Jesus a fantasy or reality?

Who do I think Jesus is and was? How about you?
Here is the challenge of N.T. Wright:

“Remember the slogan of Melanchthon in the sixteenth century: it isn’t enough to know that Jesus is a Savior; I must know that he is the Savior for me. I agree with Melanchthon, but I think we have to say it the other way round as well. We must today stress that it isn’t enough to believe that Jesus is “my Savior” or even “my Lord”; you must know who Jesus himself was and is. Without that, merely saying that we have Jesus “within our heart” or that we “have a sense that Jesus loves me” or whatever can easily turn into mere fantasy, wish fulfillment. That has happened before, and it will happen again, unless it is earthed in actual historical reality. 

In order to know that you’re not just making it up, not fooling yourself… you must be able to say that this Jesus, who we know in prayer, this Jesus we meet when we are ministering to the poorest of the poor, this Jesus we recognize in the breaking of the bread, this Jesus is the same Jesus who lived and taught and loved and died and rose again in the first century.

This is from Wright's response to a collection of essays about his work.

I thank Samuel Vaiphei for bringing this to my attention. It provides motivation for the North Delhi Evangelical Graduate Fellowship to do a five week study of Wright's book The Challenge of Jesus. I wish I could be a part of the study group.

In what sense was Barth's theology "scientific"?

I was delighted to receive my copy of Barth and Rationality: Critical Realism in Theology by D. Paul La Montagne, just published by Wipf and Stock (Cascade Books). The concluding section of chapter 6 has a nice summary of some of the key ideas:

Karl Barth’s dialectical theology is properly to be characterized as a form of critical realism. Dialectical theology understands its own place as a form of human thought as well as its primary object, God’s self revealing address to humanity, in a critically realistic manner. Dialectical theology in Barth exhibits, .... analogies to the following features of scientific realism... 

(1) It presumes the reality of the object of its discourse. This is why theology and science are both post hoc investigations into what is the case, rather than what must be the case. 

(2) It is post-foundational. 

(3) It is both critical and self-critical. Moreover, it acknowledges that it is the reality of the object of knowledge that forces us to be critical. 

(4) It finds that positive and negative knowledge are bound together in the act of knowledge. 

(5) It considers that knowledge is co-determined by the structure of our minds, our cultural antecedents, and the external reality to which we refer in our discourse. 

(6) The referential power of our discourse is founded upon the power of the reality to which we refer to be a cause of our knowledge. 

(7) It uses a referential, correspondence idea of truth. 

(8) It recognizes that our knowledge is always indirect and mediated. 

(9) It accepts that all our knowledge is fallible and dares to propound fallibility as a criterion of truth. 

(10) It uses hypothetical method for an investigation into an unknown object.

The Spirit of a modest happy free critical science!

This coming saturday in the theology discussion group we are reading and discussing chapters 4 and 5 of Karl Barth's Evangelical Theology: An Introduction. The chapter titles are The Community and The Spirit. The latter includes: 

It was the Spirit whose existence and action make possible and real (and possible and real up to this very day) the existence of Christianity in the world. Up to this very day the Spirit calls into being the existence of every single Christian as a believing, loving, hoping witness to the Word of God. The Spirit does this certainly and irresistibly (for to wish to withstand him, when he steps in and acts, would be the one unforgivable sin), for he alone does this. "Any one who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him" ( Rom. 8:9).

It is clear that evangelical theology itself can only be pneumatic, spiritual theology. Only in the realm of the power of the Spirit can theology be realized as a humble, free, critical, and happy science of the God of the Gospel. Only in the courageous confidence that the Spirit is the truth does theology simultaneously pose and answer the question about truth.

page 55 

Theology is a modest happy free critical science!

In my theology discussion group this saturday we are reading the first three chapters of Karl Barth's Evangelical Theology: An Introduction [my choice!].

Theology is a "science" [wissenschaft = a discipline of study] because it seeks

"to apprehend a specific object and its environment in the manner directed by the phenomonen itself...to understand it on its own terms and to speak of it along with all the implications of its existence." 

page 3

Evangelical theology is modest theology, because it is determined to be so by its object, that is, by him who is its subject. 

page 7

theology is, for all its modesty, in an exemplary way a free science. This means it is a science which joyfully respects the mystery of the freedom of its object and which, in turn, is again and again freed by its object from any dependence on subordinate presuppositions. 

page 9

evangelical theology is an eminently critical science, for it is continually exposed to judgment and never relieved of the crisis in which it is placed by its object, or, rather to say, by its living subject.

page 10

 Evangelical theology is concerned with Immanuel, God with us! Having this God for its object, it can be nothing else but the most thankful and happy science!

page 12

Toiling amongst the weeds in the garden of science

Much has been written on the implications of the doctrine of creation for the philosophy and practice of science.
Genesis says (repeatedly) that God said the creation is good. Furthermore, there is a divine mandate to humanity to care for an develop the creation. Some would take this mandate to include the ordering of scientific knowledge.

A key idea is that science is possible because
* the creation is ordered
* the human creature has the ability to understand this order

But what are the implications of the fall of humanity for the philosophy and practice of science? After the fall, Adam is told (Genesis 3)

cursed is the ground because of you;
    in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life;
¹⁸thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you;
   and you shall eat the plants of the field.
¹⁹By the sweat of your face
   you shall eat bread,
till you return to the ground,

One might even wonder if science is possible. But, experience shows it is.

From experience, I believe that there are at least two important implications of the fall for the practice of science.

First, due to our sin nature we are prone to self delusion. Our own egos and self interest can lead to a tendency to believe what we want to believe [particularly that our own "pet" theories are correct and that experimental data conforms to them] rather than exercising the healthy skepticism needed.

[Aside: this should not be taken as an endorsement of the views of non-scientists and "skeptics" who seem to think that certain fields of mainstream science are flawed. I would rather characterise their views as "denialism".]

It is not widely enough appreciated that doing meaningful science is hard work.

This goes far beyond the fact that experimental apparatus breaks down, sometimes gives

erroneous results, software may contain bugs, mathematical equations are hard to solve,

and mathematical theories are hard to understand. Most such problems can usually be overcome with the appropriate skill, due diligence and adequate resources [just like cars can be repaired and infections stopped with medicines]. The bigger issue is that actually producing significant scientific knowledge is incredibly difficult (and rare).

It is relatively easy [for intelligent and well trained people] to through the motions of  scientific activities [e.g. doing experiments or solving equations on the computer and publishing the results]. But, actually getting results and developing concepts that are valid and important involves a totally different challenge. I refer to two posts on my work-related blog.

The importance of being stupid discusses how intinsically hard it is do important research.

i.e., lead to a real understanding of complex phenomena.

Alternatives to struggling to do significant research discusses how scientists can avoid the real challenges and resort to focussing on publishing papers which involve picking "low lying fruit" and/or activities of  self promotion.

Peter Harrison takes a complementary perspective in The Fall of Man and the Foundations of Science where he argues that theological debates about the corruption of man's reason by sin helped promote the development of empirical methods to counter this fallibility.

Is this unreal?

Does the world really exist? Previously I posted about how Karl Barth considered that the existence of the world was a contestable hypothesis. He went further stating

the supreme problem of theology is not the existence of God, as natural theology supposes, but the independent existence of creaturely reality.

Barth is not alone in his concern that the existence of the world is a contestable hypothesis. Immanuel Kant considered that

‘it always remains a scandal of philosophy and universal human reason that the existence of things outside us ... should have to be assumed merely on faith, and that if it occurs to anyone to doubt it, we should be unable to answer him with a satisfactory proof’. 

The response of Martin Heidegger was even more interesting:

The 'scandal of philosophy' is not that this proof has yet to be given, but that such proofs are expected and attempted again and again.

Science fiction in Christianity Today

There is a really strange article Christ of the Klingons in Christianity Today which sympathetically discusses some wild claims about the theological significance of string theory by a theoretical physicist Gerald Cleaver [who works in M-theory (a version of string theory)] and a philosopher Robin Collins. Here are a few statements I found rather strange:

"To me [M-Theory] offers a Christian God whose creative ability is much larger than we ever could imagine before," Cleaver says.

To Cleaver, M-Theory's multiverse, with its dizzying variety, unending moments of new creation, and perhaps infinite scope, makes perfect sense as the work of "a God of the infinities, who creates eternally."

I've always had problems perceiving the infinite God that we believe in [as] creating life in just one spot," Cleaver says. "Over the entire past and future of humankind, there'll probably be no more than a few hundred billion humans to interact with God on this earth. That is a finite number that does not make consistent theological sense to me."

"The beauty of it suggests that this is the true picture of reality," Cleaver says. "The beauty of a theory is extremely important."

[He quotes Paul Dirac, a famous theoretical physicist who said in 1963]

"It is more important to have beauty in one's equations than to have them fit [an] experiment… . If one is working from the point of view of getting beauty in one's equations, and if one has really a sound insight, one is on a sure line of progress."

I think theology is silent on the merits of specific scientific theories. I would say that Dirac's view borders on being unscientific. Arguably, this obsession with "beauty" is why he did not make any significant contributions for the last 30 years of his career.
It does not matter what we think about the beauty of a theory. What matters is whether it can explain experimental data and predict the outcomes of new experiments. String theory is yet to do that and some physicists are skeptical whether it will ever be falsifiable. So is it science? Theology is grounded in reality and so I see no need for it to engage with such speculations.

Expect the unexpected

We all have pre-conceived ideas about how God should and should not act. A case in point is Naaman, as recorded in 2 Kings 5. He had definite ideas about the way that the LORD, the God of Israel, should heal him from his leprosy: it should be very dramatic.

¹⁰And Elisha sent a messenger to him, saying, "Go and wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored, and you shall be clean." ¹¹But Naaman was angry and went away, saying, "Behold, I thought that he would surely come out to me and stand and call upon the name of the LORD his God, and wave his hand over the place and cure the leper.¹²Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them and be clean?" So he turned and went away in a rage. 

The Prophet Elisha and Naaman, Lambert Jacobsz (ca. 1598-1636). I found this image at Biblical Art on the WWW, which is particularly useful because you can search under specific Biblical passages.

Is God a geometer?

On Friday at work we had a very interesting Physics department colloquium by Marcelo Gleiser about his recent book.

One thing I learnt was that Johannes Kepler firmly believed that "God was a geometer". He found that he could relate the size of the orbits of the 6 known planets to the 5 "perfect" Platonic solids (see above). The Wikipedia entry about his first book,  Mysterium Cosmographicum (1596) states:

... Kepler thought he had revealed God’s geometrical plan for the universe. Much of Kepler’s enthusiasm for the Copernican system stemmed from his theological convictions about the connection between the physical and the spiritual; the universe itself was an image of God, with the Sun corresponding to the Father, the stellar sphere to the Son, and the intervening space between to the Holy Spirit. His first manuscript of Mysterium contained an extensive chapter reconciling heliocentrism with biblical passages that seemed to support geocentrism.

....Kepler received permission from the Tübingen university senate to publish his manuscript, pending removal of the Bible exegesis and the addition of a simpler, more understandable description of the Copernican system as well as Kepler’s new ideas.....

Later Kepler published Harmonices Mundi which applied to planetary motion the idea of the "music of the spheres" an idea of Pythagorus concerning musical harmonies and geometry.
Some of the laws of planetary motion that Kepler discovered were incredibly important for overturning the geocentric universe and for Newton. However, all these ideas which claimed a theological basis were overturned as more data became available.
To me this showings the danger of mixing theology (particularly preconceived ideas of how the world should be) and science.

Commonality of liberals and fundamentalists?

The decisive problem of fundamentalism is not so different after all from the problem of liberalism. Both appear to balk at the fact that God himself is the one ultimate Judge of the truth or falsity, the adequacy or inadequacy, of all human conceptions and statements about him.

Thomas F. Torrance, Preface to Reality and Evangelical Theology, page 18, 1999, IVP edition

True orthodoxy under test

The fact that, through the free grace of God, Jesus Christ is made our Righteousness means that we have no righteousness of our own. To be put freely in the right with God means that we and all our vaunted right are utterly called in question before God.... No one may boast of his own orthodoxy any more than he may boast of his own righteousness. Justification thus turns out to be the strongest statement of the objectivity of faith and knowledge..... the very beliefs which we profess and formulate as obediently and carefully as we can in fidelity to God's self-revelation in Jesus Christ are themselves called into question by that revelation, for they have their truth not in themselves but in him to whom they refer,...

This is the crux at which fundamentalism is put to its severest test...

Thomas F. Torrance, Preface to Reality and Evangelical Theology, pages 18-19, 1999, IVP edition

The existence of the world is a contestable hypothesis

Whether science does or even can establish the existence of an objective reality is a debate that has raged for centuries. It has been particularly contentious and strident in the twentieth century with both the success of science and the rise of postmodernism, leading to the conflict of "the Science wars."

Different philosophical positions on what science really does tell us range from a naive realism, to critical realism, to instrumentalism, to anti-realism.

There are some rather subtle philosophical issues here which are sometimes dismissed

too easily by practising scientists. I contend that science does involves faith, e

specially in an objective reality.

This issue is actually addressed by Karl Barth, but in an indirect manner, and not at all motivated by questions in the philosophy of science. Furthermore, as is often the case with Barth, his starting point is completely different.

Barth asserts that confession of faith in the Tri-une Creator involves

faith that there is an objective reality.

It cannot be shown that God must have created the world, .... Nor can it be shown in relation to the world that because God has created it, because it necessarily exists and has its being from Him, it is not an illusion, a dream, a mere figment of the imagination, but concept and reality.

The positive counter-assertion that God exists alone, that this divine being is the only one to the exclusion of all others, and the negative counter-assertion that the world and we ourselves do not exist at all, that we do not have a being distinct from that of God, but that everything else apart from God is only supposition, are, of course, as contestable and as little demonstrable as the assertion. But they cannot be refuted by the assertion.

On the contrary, they are refuted only if two conditions are fulfilled-and it is here that we see the real point of the [doctrine of Creation].

The first is that it should be established on the basis of the divine self-witness-....-that God has in fact created the world; that it is, therefore, a reality by God's free will and contingent act.

And the second is that we should have no less factual knowledge of this factual being of the world. Thus if we dare to take the not unimportant step of ascribing its own reality to that which is distinct from God, i.e., heaven and earth and ourselves; if we are Of the bold opinion that we ourselves, and with us the so-called world, are and are not not, we have to realise that this is always an undemonstrable and contestable hypothesis,

It need only be added that the assertion of creation is a statement of faith, i.e., a statement which can never be more than a hypothesis apart from its foundation in God's self-witness, not only on the side which maintains that God is the Creator of the world, and which therefore asserts the reality of God, but also on that which asserts that God is the Creator of the world, and which therefore asserts the distinctive reality of the world. It is only too easy to suggest that, while the reality of God as the Creator is uncertain, and therefore needs proof or revelation, the reality of the creature is all the more certain, so that the one is to be treated as a factor which is not given but has still to be sought, whereas the other may be presupposed ....

the whole history of theology [might be viewed] as a continuous fighting retreat in face of the irresistible advance of a rational and empirical science which on the very different grounds of a triumphant human self-conceit is quite sure of its subject. In preoccupation with only one side of the question, there has been a dangerous failure to realise that the question of creation is not less but even more concerned with the reality of the creature than that of the Creator. Presupposing the certain knowledge of God in His Word, it is actually the case that the existence and being of the world are rendered far more problematical by the existence and being of God than vice versa.

If the world is not created by God, it is not. If we do not recognise that it has been created by God, we do not recognise that it is. But we know that it has been created by God only on the ground of God's self-witness and therefore in faith. Therefore we know only in faith that the world is. The pressure exerted by science on theology could have been resisted if theology had been more energetically and effectively concerned with its own .... divine science; if it had realised that it is primarily the creature and not the Creator of whom we are not certain, and that in order to be certain of him we need proof or revelation.

The Doctrine of Creation, Church Dogmatics 3.1, page 5

Much of this argument is succinctly summarised in the Translator's preface as, "the supreme problem of theology is not the existence of God, as natural theology supposes, but the independent existence of creaturely reality."

So perhaps, Christians should not expect non-Christians to believe in objective reality.

Am I right?

"That is just your opinion" or "That is just one interpretation of the Bible".

Whether it is understanding a passage in the Bible or interpreting a particular scientific theory, this is the reponse one might get to a strongly held view.

But, as a scientist you soon learn that not all views are equally valid and not all interpretations worthy of consideration.

But how do we decide whether or not to take a view seriously.

One criteria which I think is important, but is perhaps not considered enough is the following. How unusual is the view? Are there people from different times, places, cultures, who hold this view? Or is it just me, and a few people with similar backgrounds to me to hold this view. If so, I should be very careful. It is somewhat arrogant to claim that I am right and all these other people are wrong. But, perhaps I am right.

I should stress that I am NOT saying that truth is determined by majority opinion. And there are occasionally individuals or small groups of people who hold a minority opinion that is subsequently vindicated. Examples include Einstein, Luther, Wilberforce, Barth, ...

But, most of us are not in this league!

I am just saying that having a minority opinion should cause me to hesitant about being quick to dismiss other views.

Deconstructing the "God is an elephant" argument

I heard a stimulating talk today at UniBible talks, "Aren't all religions the same?"

One issue that the speaker, Andrew Brown discussed, was the common argument by analogy about the Indian story about the six blind men who come across an elephant. All of the men use touch to develop their own "truth" about what the elephant is. These truths conflict with one another. Andrew (following Lesslie Newbigin and Tim Keller as described here) argued that it is arrogant to assert that all followers of religion are "blind" and that the person using the story has the "vision" to see the true "reality" of the "elephant", i.e, God. Further problems with the argument are discussed in this post at everystudent.com.

Key issues at the interface of theology and philosophy

Alister McGrath's widely used text, Christian Theology: An Introduction has a nice chapter on Philosophy and Theology. I read it partly because my daughter is about to start a philosophy subject at university. It is interesting how McGrath keeps coming back to parallel issues in the philosophy of science, particularly logical positivism, falsification, and critical realism.

Logical positivism was a view developed and held by the "Vienna Circle" in the early part of the twentieth century. They claimed that the only meaningful statements that can be made were those that could be empirically verified. [They rejected theology as "unscientific". Richard Dawkins thinking is implicitly that of logical positivism.] Karl Popper objected that scientific theories could not actually be "verified". Rather, all one could do was "falsify" them. The most widely reprinted philosophical publication of the last half century was Anthony Flew's Theology and Falsification, in which he argued that God meets the "death of a thousand qualifications." [Flew now holds a different view].

Tough love in the church, para-church and academy

What should be the standards of accountability for Christian organisations, their staff, and members?

One minimum standard for any organisation is that its constitution (governance structure), list of board members, financial policies, staff conduct of conduct, should be publicly available?

With regard to finances it is worth perusing the seven standards of the Evangelical Council on Financial Accountability.

Surely, Christian organisations should have even higher standards than secular ones. They should have a level of transparency so there is not even a hint of wrongdoing. Further, given our belief in the sinfulness of the human heart, we should have in place structures with oversight, accountability.

What does this have to do with tough love, parenting, and academia? Isn't this all a bit random. Tough love is about accountability. A key ingredient of academia is peer review and integrity in research. That is also about accountability. As the Nobel prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman said, "The easiest person to fool is yourself."

From philosophy to pastoral care

A couple of years ago Ben Myers and I published a paper in the journal, Science and Christian Belief with the heady title, Dialectic critical realism in science and theology: Quantum physics and Karl Barth.

Although the subject of the paper is subtle intellectual issues associated with the relationship between science and theology, I find it interesting to consider some related issues relevant to everyday life. I wonder whether the issue of idealism versus critical realism is actually relevant to personal relationships, church life, and mental health. I submit that the natural mode of operation of the sinful mind is one of idealism, i.e, we impose an order on the world to support our preconceived notions and prejudices. The data we perceive is interpreted in terms of our framework and values. We are not objective about our own limitations and shortcomings but are well aware of those of others. We look for specks in the eyes of others when there are logs in our own. The regenerate mind, that is being renewed by Christ, acknowledges its limitations and is willing to stand corrected and see other points of view.

How much church and family discord is caused by an unwillingness to see other points of views or an unwillingness or inability to not assign negative motives and interpretations to the words and actions of others?

How much counselling and pastoral care is based on helping people realign their individual expectations with reality?

Church is composed of a diverse group of personalities with a multitude of personal histories, expectations, relational styles, and perceptions.

Do the following statements usually reflect critical realism or idealism?

``No one at church cares about me.''

``Church is unfriendly.''

``The pastor is authoritarian.''

``There is nothing new in the sermon each week.''

``My spouse does not love me. If they did they would ...''

``I am never going to get married."

Jon Kabat-Zinn developed a highly successful stress reduction program in a secular hospital. A major emphasis is on learning to perceive and accept the world as it is, rather than as we wish it would be, and on focusing on present realities rather than on the past or future events on which the mind tends to dwell.