Advice for Christian undergraduates

The new University year begins on monday. This evening I have be asked to speak briefly at our church, which has a lot of undergraduates, and offer advice for new Christian students.

A few years ago I spoke at a morning on Science and Christianity, organised by our church. Videos of the talks are all online here. At that event I did an interview with Bernard Mostert, about his experience being a Christian undergraduate. I thought he gave particularly articulate answers to questions such as:

What do you wish you knew when you started university?

What do you wish you had done different?

Several helpful points Bernard makes are

-there are cohesive rational arguments for the truth of Christianity

-Christian students have nothing to be afraid of at university

-don't expect atheists to be convinced by these arguments

-beware of pride. the goal is not to win arguments but to glorify Jesus

We are free and disobedient animals

This morning I read more of Karl Barth's exegesis of Genesis 1:20-23, particularly:

20 And God said, "Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens."........ 22 And God blessed them, saying, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth."

Barth makes some creative contrasts and similarities between humans and the birds and fish. God speaks His Word to both, blesses them, and commands them. But

If it is true that man, created with the beasts by the will and Word of God, may freely hear and obey this Word, it is also true that he will constantly have before him in the animal world immediately around him the spectacle of a submission to this Word, which, if it not free, is in its own way real and complete. The creature precedes man in a self-evident praise of its Creator, in the natural fulfilment of the destiny given to it at its creation, in the actual humble recognition and confirmation of its creatureliness. It also precedes him in the fact that it does not forget but maintains its animal nature, with its dignity and also its limitation, and thus asks man whether and to what extent the same can be said of him.

K. Barth, Church Dogmatics 3.1, p. 177.

Barth then also discusses how the fish and birds anticipate the central role played by the dove (Holy Spirit), disciples as "fishers of men", and the Greek diagramme ichthus of the name Jesus.

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].

Has Dawkins really softened?

I have been looking over some of the reviews of Richard Dawkins latest book, The Greatest Show on Earth.

It is interesting how different the reviews are. In The Independent, Marek Kohen says

The zero-tolerance stance he took towards religion in The God Delusion set atheists up as an exclusive sect, proudly isolated. Now he seems to have embraced the power of coalition and common cause, complaining that an opinion survey does not offer an option for people to agree that humans evolved over millions of years but that God had a hand in the process, and putting in a good word for the "churchmen and women who accept the evidence for evolution".

A side-effect of his new readiness to compromise is that he seems older, having shed some of the stringent impatience with the shortcomings of others that is more typically seen in much younger men. It suits him, though.

In contrast, in New Scientist, Randy Olsen writes:

Implying that your audience is stupid does not qualify as a great new angle. Yet this is precisely what Dawkins does. He opens the book by mentioning his two previous books about evolution, and then, with a nearly audible scoff, adds that back when he wrote those books (when people, apparently, were smarter?) he didn't have to argue that evolution actually happened. "That didn't seem to be necessary," he says.

By the first chapter he is comparing his predicament to a history professor forced to teach "a baying pack of ignoramuses" and dealing with a "rearguard defence". Today, he proclaims, "all but the woefully uninformed are forced to accept the fact of evolution".

It's really kind of comical. If "spot the condescensions" is a new drinking game, then bottoms up! There's one in just about every chapter. Though Dawkins says from the outset, "This is not an anti-religious book", he can't help but knock religion throughout, For instance, he writes: "God, to repeat this point, which ought to be obvious, but isn't, never made a tiny wing in his eternal life." Young Earth creationists are, he writes, "deluded to the point of perversity". You get the sense that Dawkins just can't control it. It's as if he suffers from an anti-religious form of Tourette's syndrome.

Covenant in the context of chaos

Karl Barth has an interesting, creative, and inspiring exegesis of Genesis 1:20-23:

²⁰And God said, "Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens."²¹So God created the great sea creatures and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarm, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. ²²And God blessed them, saying, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth." ²³And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day.

Barth puts this passage in the context of the chaos and fear associated with the air and the sea, areas man cannot inhabit.

It is in these spheres--surely the least expected--that the life of autonomous creatures begins by creative fiat.... In the depths below and the heights above He begins His work on and with such beings. So great is His mercy! So much is He the Lord and Master of all things, including these regions! So thoroughly did He see to it that even these regions cannot be more than threatening signs of His wrath; that chaos is controlled, and life is made possible in its immediate vicinity! Where man imagines he can see the open jaws of death, God causes things to swarm and to fly,.... The spectacle offered in these spheres is one to inspire confidence....

In God's blessing of the fish and birds we really transcend the concept of creation and enter the sphere of God's dealings with His creation. What we have here is the beginning of its history, or a least an introductory prologue which announces the theme of this history, i.e., the establishment of a covenant between God and His creation which moves independently like Himself and renews itself by procreation after its kind. .... there is to be a God-like creature ordained for fatherhood and sonship and continuing its existence in the relationship of fatherhood and sonship. It is not to strive against Him but to be at peace with Him; not to live in impotence but in power; not in its own arrogance and strength but in the strength of His blessing, authorisation and promise, living and active in fruitful begetting.

Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics 3.1, p. 168ff

Loving God will all your mind

Donald Hay is an economist who was the Head of the Division of Social Sciences at Oxford University, from 2000 to 2005. Since "retirement" he has helped develop an excellent program for Christian postgraduate students at Oxford, Developing a Christian Mind. It challenges and helps the students to integrate their Christian faith with their academic life. In this talk to the Graduate Christian Union at Oxford, Donald Hay presents the challenge.

The pleasure of physics research

My Oxford colleague, Professor Andrew Briggs is currently visiting me. Andrew was graduate student in physics at Cambridge when the Cavendish laboratory moved location. Over the entrance to the old laboratory James Clerk Maxwell, the first Cavendish Professor had engraved (in Latin) the words of Psalm 111:2. Professor Sir Brian Pippard, then the Cavendish Professor, recounted in a short history:

The great oak doors opening on the site of the original building had carved on them, by Maxwell's wish, the text from Psalm 111 Magna opera Domini esquisita in omnes voluntates ejus. Shortly after the move to the new buildings in 1973 a devout research student suggested to me that the same text should be displayed, in English, at the entrance. I undertook to put the proposal to the Policy Committee, confident that they would veto it; to my surprise, however, they heartily agreed both to the idea and to the choice of Coverdale’s translation:

Andrew Briggs was that "devout research student." The translation of Psalm 111:2 is:

The works of the Lord are great, sought out of all them that have pleasure therein