Barth on the Resurrection of Jesus

The knowledge which the Apostles acquired on the basis of Christ's Resurrection, the conclusion of which is the Ascension of Christ, is essentially this basic knowledge that the reconciliation which took place in Jesus Christ is not some casual story, but that in this work of God's grace we have to do with the word of God's omnipotence, that here an ultimate and supreme thing comes into action, behind which there is no other reality.

Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline, page 117.

Augustine on creation, angels, and numerology

At today's Volfians discussion group we will look at Book XI of Augustine's City of God. I was keen to do this because he discusses Genesis 1, creation, and time.
The broad trajectory is to develop the idea of the two-fold division, the City of men and the City of God, of evil and good.

Parts of this Book impressed me. Others did not.

I was impressed by the Section headings:

5. We are not to think about infinite time before the world, any more than about infinite space outside it. As there was no time before it, so there is no space outside it. 

6. The beginning of the world and the beginning of time are the same.

Over history many philosophers and scientists have had a different view. However, Augustine's view, inspired by Genesis, is actually consistent with a modern scientific view: both time and space began at the "big bang". Scientists only came to this consensus after a long struggle and finding the observational data was only consistent with one of many possible theories [Einstein's theory of general relativity with a "singularity" in the past].

Augustine considers the following puzzling issue raised by Genesis 1.

7. On the nature of the days where there was "morning and evening" before the creation of the sun. 

... these are questions beyond the scope of our sensible experience. We cannot understand what happened as it is presented to us; and yet we must believe it without hesitation...

Here he begins a debatable identification of "light and darkness" in Genesis with good and bad angels, respectively. He is often concerned with angels. It is interesting that issues about them are not at the forefront of discussions about Genesis and creation today.

God's rest on the seventh day of creation "means the rest of those who find their rest in him, just as "the joy of a house" means the joy of those who rejoice in that house."

Augustine rebuts ideas of Origen that the purpose of creation was to put souls into bodies. Rather, "there is only one cause for the creation of the world - the purpose of God's goodness in the creation of good."

....there are three questions to be asked in respect of any created being: ‘Who made it’, ‘How?’ and ‘Why?’. I put forward the answers: ‘God’, ‘Through his word’, ‘Because it is good’.

It is sometimes said, "Genesis tells us the the "who" and the "why", science tells us the "how" and the "when"". I don't think Augustine's view necessarily conflicts with this. Rather he might be answering "how does the scientific description and natural mechanism work?"

But, after this nice quote he begins an apparent tendency to want to invoke numerology and the Trinity, seeing a three-fold division of much of reality and philosophy. He wonders about whether the THREE questions above are related to the Trinity. Philosophy is divided into three parts: physics, logic, and ethics. "There are also three things that are looked for in any artist: natural ability, training, and the use to which he puts them." He moves on to the "perfection of the number six" and seven, too!

Scientist becomes insane following Christ?

The Economist has an interesting review of the new Oxford University Press book Nature's Oracle: The Life and Work of W.D. Hamilton by Ullica Segerstrale.
Hamilton is well known for his contributions to evolutionary theory, particularly its mathematical formulation. Some of his ideas were popularised by Richard Dawkins in his book, The Selfish Gene.

The review says the book recounts

... the suicide of [Hamilton's] early collaborator, George Price (a mentally unstable individual, who was driven mad by his conversion from atheism to Christianity)

It is interesting to compare this claim to the account of Price's life on Wikipedia which is quite different. It suggests Price's depression and resulting suicide was due to discouragement about the failure of his efforts to help the homeless.

Can helping someone hurt them?

Earlier I posted about the problem of Lending a helping hand. Some of these issues are discussed in much greater depth in the book, When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty Without Hurting the Poor and Yourself, by Brian Fikkert and Steve Corbett.
I hope to read it soon.

There is a helpful summary in a review by Tim Challies. It includes the following chilling statement from the book:

one of the biggest problems in many poverty-alleviation efforts is that their design and implementation exacerbates the poverty of being of the economically rich—their god-complexes—and the poverty of being of the economically poor—their feelings of inferiority and shame.

Workshop for postgraduate students

Today I am speaking at a workshop, "Surviving or thriving as a postgraduate student", organised by my church. The workshop was particularly oriented at international students who face the additional challenges of living, studying, and working in a different culture.

Here are the slides from my presentation which was interspersed with participants completing and discussing a worksheet.

False predictions of science killing God

Almost fifty years ago the anthropologist Anthony Wallace pronounced in an undergraduate textbook:

the evolutionary future of religion is extinction. Belief in supernatural beings and in supernatural forces that affect nature without obeying nature’s laws will erode and become only an interesting historical memory ... [As] a cultural trait, belief in supernatural powers is doomed to die out, all over the world, as a result of the increasing adequacy and diffusion of scientific knowledge ... the process is inevitable.

Wallace, F.C., Religion: An Anthropological View, Random House, New York (1966) pages 264-265.

Yet this has not been fulfilled. It did not deter the atheist and philosopher Daniel Dennett stating in 2007:

I’m so optimistic that I expect to live to see the evaporation of the powerful mystique of religion. I think that in about twenty-five years almost all religions will have evolved into very different phenomena, so much so that in most quarters religion will no longer command the awe it does today.

I first heard these quotations in the introduction that Peter Harrison gave to his excellent seminar last week on "Science and Secularization."

Refusing to hear the Word of the LORD

⁸ And the word of the Lord came to Zechariah, saying, ⁹ “Thus says the Lord of hosts, Render true judgments, show kindness and mercy to one another, ¹⁰ do not oppress the widow, the fatherless, the sojourner, or the poor, and let none of you devise evil against another in your heart.” ¹¹ But they refused to pay attention and turned a stubborn shoulder and stopped their ears that they might not hear. ¹² They made their hearts diamond-hard lest they should hear the law and the words that the Lord of hosts had sent by his Spirit through the former prophets.

Zechariah 7:8-12