Evangelicals and God

The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life has published a major survey on religious life in America. The survey, U. S. Religious Landscape Survey, was an attempt at understanding the beliefs and practices of religious and non-religious people in the USA. The Pew Forum surveyed 35,000 Americans and compiled the results. A Summary of Key Findings is available free online in PDF format.

In a previous post I looked at a section of the survey and commented on how atheists, agnostics, and secular people responded to the questions about God. In the present post I will discuss evangelicals and their views about God. The survey also deals with the beliefs of mainline churches, black churches, Catholics, Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Orthodox churches. In this post I will only discuss the evangelical churches because of my interest in the evangelical movement in the USA.

The survey provides the following information about evangelicals:

1. Evangelicals view other religions

57% believe that many religions can lead to eternal life
53% believe that there is more than one true way to interpret the teachings of their religion

2. Evangelicals and God

99% believe in God. Of these:
79% believe in a personal God
13% believe in an impersonal God
7% don’t know

3. Certainty about believing in God

99% believe in God. Of these:
90% absolutely certain
9% less certain

4. Belief in Heaven and Hell

86% believe in heaven
82% believe in hell

5. Prayer and Meditation

92% pray at least weekly
46% meditate at least weekly

The results of the Pew survey deserve careful consideration. Any committed evangelical will look at these numbers and conclude that something is wrong with the conclusions of the survey. As I mentioned in my previous post, these numbers may indicate that the survey was poorly designed and that the results are distorted and do not really reflect the views of those surveyed. It is also possible that questions, methodology in polling, and the sample size of those surveyed also skewed the results. It is even possible that many people misunderstood the intent of the questions.

Take the case of universalism. The survey reports that 57% of evangelicals believe that many religions can lead to eternal life. But, as the Baptist Press reports, many American Protestants believe that the word “religion” can also mean “denominational affiliation.” Thus, Scott McConnell, in the new release published by Baptist Press, said: “But the way they worded their question may have had some impact; many people think of ‘denomination’ when they hear ‘religion,’ so it isn’t that surprising that a Lutheran could think a Methodist would also go to heaven or a Catholic could think that a Protestant would go to heaven.”

The numbers of evangelicals who don’t believe in heaven or hell or in a personal God or who have a tendency toward universalism may reflect a problem in the evangelical movement in the United States: the problem of identity.

Northern Seminary’s Mission Statement says: “Northern Baptist Theological Seminary affirms its evangelical heritage through its commitments to Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior and the authority of Scripture.” So, several years ago, Northern Baptist Seminary adopted a slogan to place the seminary within the evangelical community. Northern Seminary adopted the “Boldly Evangelical” slogan to position the seminary theologically. However, the slogan raised a number of questions. What does it mean to be “boldly evangelical”? Who is an evangelical?

The last question generated a lot of discussion. The late Bob Webber, my colleague here a Northern Seminary, conducted a study to discover what is meant by the word “evangelical.” In what follows, I quote a portion of Bob Webber’s observation on evangelicalism. Webber wrote:

Evangelicalism is characterized by unity and diversity. All evangelicals are unified in their commitment to the Lordship of Christ and to the authority of scripture. But within evangelicalism there is a great diversity. Dallas [Seminary] is dispensational, Calvin [Seminary] is Reformed, Asbury [Seminary] is Wesleyan, Fuller [Seminary] is Church Growth, Associates Biblical Seminary is Mennonite and so on. Then, beyond this denominational diversity, we can identify different streams of evangelicals – the intellectual stream, the mega-church stream, the emergent church stream, the Pentecostal stream and so on.

That is the problem the Pew survey probably never addressed. Who were these evangelicals Pew surveyed? Evangelicals can be Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Episcopalians, Pentecostals, Church of Christ, Reformed, and so on. I even know some Catholics who identify themselves as evangelicals.

Within this diversity of denominational affiliation many people can call themselves evangelicals without standing for basic evangelical principles.

The members of the Evangelical Theological Society is a group which calls themselves evangelicals. To join the society, members must subscribe annually to the Doctrinal Basis of the Society. Among the doctrinal statements members must accept, one deals with the Bible and another with the doctrine of God:

The Bible alone, and the Bible in its entirety, is the Word of God written and is therefore inerrant in the autographs.

God is a Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, each an uncreated person, one in essence, equal in power and glory.

Members also must accept the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy. I doubt that anyone who signs this doctrinal statement or accepts the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy would deny the existence of God or deny that God is a personal being.

The variety of denominational affiliations within the evangelical movement will certainly skew the results of the survey. Members of the Church of Christ and of the Baptist, Lutheran, and Pentecostal churches may classify themselves as evangelicals but they believe different things and these differences in beliefs probably influenced how the questions in the survey were answered.

One thing about the survey deserves close consideration. According to the survey, 99% of evangelicals believe in God. Although the report emphasizes that the numbers may not add up to 100% due to rounding, the survey says that 1% of evangelical do not believe in God. This means that 1% of evangelicals are atheists. This is alarming. Who are these wolves in sheep’s clothing who call themselves evangelicals and yet do not believe in God?

Can an evangelical be an atheist? According to U. S. Religious Landscape Survey, the answer is yes. Amazing!

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Evangelicals, God, Pew Survey

A God Who Suffers - Part 2

To read Part 1 of this post click here.

All these references (the ones mentioned at the end of Part 1) which indicate that God enters into the sufferings of his people are affirmed by the statement of a prophet who spoke out of the experience of exile: “In all their distress he too was distressed. . . . In his love and mercy he redeemed them” (Isaiah 63:9 NIV). An implication of the prophetic words is that Yahweh can and does participate in the suffering of the world, not only as one who causes it, but also as one who is affected by it.

The suffering of God in the Old Testament finds its finest expression in Hosea’s description of God’s heartbroken fatherly anguish over his prodigal child, Israel: “How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, Israel? How can I treat you like Admah? How can I make you like Zeboiim? My heart is changed within me; all my compassion is aroused” (Hosea 11:8 NIV).

The suffering of God is also expressed in the compassionate longing of a husband who desires reconciliation with his unfaithful wife.

Yahweh feels abandoned by Israel like a husband who is abandoned by his wife. The text reveals God as the one who was injured and offended by his unfaithful wife: “The Lord said to me, ‘Go, show your love to your wife again, though she is loved by another and is an adulteress. Love her as the Lord loves the Israelites’” (Hosea 3:1 NIV).

It is this picture of a suffering God who is intimately bound to his people which is the central focus of the Old Testament. This view of a God who suffers with, for, and because of his people is expressed throughout the Old Testament, especially in the messages of Isaiah, Hosea, and Jeremiah.

The idea of a suffering God is especially true in the life and ministry of Jeremiah. Jeremiah’s personal pain and his compassion for the people find their source in the love of God for Israel. Jeremiah experienced God's pain because of the rebellion of Israel and he tried to convey that reality to the people through his own grief and pain.

The God of the Old Testament is not absent from the world and is not detached from human affairs. God is intimately involved in the world and he chooses to enter into human history. God wills to be with humanity in bad as well as good times: “The Lord said, ‘I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey’” (Exodus 3:7-8 NIV).

As a result of his involvement with his creation, God participates in the misery of humanity. His pain for the world is never the sympathetic view of the uninvolved onlooker, but it is the genuine pain of one who is directly affected by the suffering of those who suffer and who takes upon himself the burden of the people. As Fretheim wrote (p. 39): “God is affected in many ways by what happens on earth.”

The opening speech in the book of Isaiah (Isaiah 1:2-9) deals not with the anger of God, but with the sorrow of God; it deals with the plight of a father who has been abandoned by his children. Isaiah 5:1-7 provides an additional example of the pain of God because of the rebellion of Israel. The “Song of the Vineyard,” reveals the wonderment of God whose care for the vineyard has been of no avail: “What more could have been done for my vineyard than I have done for it?” (Isaiah 5:4). Here, God himself says that he is at a loss trying to explain the rebellion of his people. God’s sorrow rather than the people's tragedy is the theme of this song. God's grief and disappointment are revealed in his being hurt at the thought of having to abandon his vineyard in which he had labored and placed so much hope for good things.

Thus, divine suffering is seen throughout the writings of the prophets and in many other passages of the Old Testament. God’s suffering is seen in his disappointment with Israel:

“What wrong did your fathers find in me that they went far from me, and went after worthlessness, and became worthless?” (Jeremiah 2:5 RSV).

“What shall I do with you, O Ephraim? What shall I do with you, O Judah?” (Hosea 6:4 RSV).

“My people, what have I done to you? How have I burdened you? Answer me” (Micah 6:3 NIV).

“Why do these people keep going along their self-destructive path, refusing to turn back, even though I have warned them?” (Jeremiah 8:5).

In trying to explain God’s questions, Fretheim wrote (p. 56): “These questions seem to imply a genuine loss on God’s part as to what might explain the faithlessness of the people.” God’s disappointment with his people gives occasion to these divine laments and expresses his pain at the rebellion of Israel.

God suffers because of his love for Israel. He experiences pain because of their unfaithfulness. God’s suffering teaches us an important lesson about God. Because God loves his people and desires their well-being, God identifies himself with their suffering. This identification of God with his people makes God vulnerable to being hurt, but it is this divine suffering that will motivate Israel to repent and turn to God.

To be continued.

Reference:

Fretheim, Terence. The Suffering of God: An Old Testament Perspective. Overtures to Biblical Theology. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: God, Suffering

A God Who Suffers - Part 1

In my previous post on the suffering of God, I wrote that the God of the Old Testament is a God who chooses to identify himself with his people in their suffering. The view that God chooses to identify with Israel and enter their history raises an important question: does God suffer with his people? According to the Old Testament perspective, God cannot do otherwise. Yahweh is related to Israel through the covenant established at Sinai. Therefore, he is directly involved with Israel in their misfortunes and their failures.

In his book, What Are They Saying About the Theology of Suffering (New York: Paulist Press, 1992), Lucien Richard summarizes what biblical scholars and theologians have written on the biblical view of suffering. In his summary of Walter Brueggemann’s view on the theology of the pain of God, Lucien wrote: “From within the covenantal relationship with God, Israel senses that its God is not only an enforcer and a legitimator of existing structures, but is also one who embraces Israel’s pain” (p. 16).

By embracing the pain of his people, God’s own self is transformed. God takes on the pain of Israel in his own person because of his compassion for them. E. S. Gerstenberger wrote: “In the Old Testament . . . suffering can be regarded as a means of expiation. A deity has been injured through human misconduct. He becomes angry, strikes back, and brings disaster upon the culprit and his community. But because the deity in principle stands in a friendly, and even familiar, relationship to the sufferer, the suffering will soften the wrath of God. God cannot bear to see his own people in misery; his justifiable indignation is transformed into compassion” (p. 107).

The God of the Old Testament saves and blesses Israel because of this covenantal relationship that is guaranteed by God’s hesed, his faithful love for Israel. Because of this special relationship established with the nation, God is united with his people and participates in their life and their misery. This special relationship is affirmed in the Old Testament in the emotional language of human suffering. As a partner in this relationship, God assumes the function of not only Israel’s God, but also her closest friend, a friend who takes upon himself part of the burden of his suffering friends (cf. John 15:13).

The Old Testament writers describe God’s response to Israel’s sins and rebellions in words that already express within themselves an element of divine suffering. One example is the rebellion of Israel at the occasion of the building of the golden calf in Exodus 32. At Sinai, Israel rebelled against God by being unfaithful to God and by violating the demands of the covenant which required exclusive allegiance to him.

God’s response to Israel’s apostasy was one of indignation. God told Moses: “Now let me alone, so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them; and of you I will make a great nation” (Exodus 32:10). Israel had entered into a relationship with Yahweh and now that relationship had been broken. God was affected by Israel’s disloyalty. God’s words to Moses, “Let me alone,” represents God’s desire to suffer grief in isolation.

This language of divine suffering is designed to describe a faith which views God in terms of historical involvement and relatedness with his people. To Israel, God was not an impersonal being nor was he a God that was above and beyond the world. To the contrary, he was a God who was with them (Isaiah 7:14), the Holy One who lived among the people (Hosea 11:9). “For what great nation has a god as near to them as the Lord our God is near to us whenever we call on him?” (Deuteronomy 4:7). This is the reason Israel ascribed personal characteristics to God, such as love, anger, anguish, patience, jealousy, and joy.

In addition, many other characteristics attributed to God reflect the fact that when God responds to human sin and rebellion, his response also contains the element of divine suffering. When God deals with humanity, God expresses a variety of reactions:

God is jealous: “Do not worship any other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God” (Exodus 34:14 NIV).

When God punishes, punishment is sometimes done out of a sense of injured honor: “Then my anger will cease and my wrath against them will subside, and I will be avenged. And when I have spent my wrath upon them, they will know that I the Lord have spoken in my zeal” (Ezekiel 5:13 NIV).

God becomes angry and enraged: “How long, O Lord? Will you be angry forever? How long will your jealousy burn like fire?” ( Psalm 79:5 NIV).

God is grieved by human sins: “The Lord was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain” (Genesis 6:6 NIV).

God changes his mind: “And the Lord changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people” (Exodus 32:14 NRSV).

God is affected by the suffering of his people: “Whenever the Lord raised up judges for them, the Lord was with the judge, and he saved them from the hand of their enemies all the days of the judge; for the Lord was moved to pity by their groaning because of those who afflicted and oppressed them” (Judges 2:18 RSV).

God cries out like a person in pain: “The Lord goes forth like a soldier, like a warrior he stirs up his fury; he cries out, he shouts aloud, he shows himself mighty against his foes. For a long time I have held my peace, I have kept still and restrained myself; now I will cry out like a woman in labor, I will gasp and pant” (Isaiah 42:13-14 NRSV).

Gerstenberger wrote: “All such affirmations in the Old Testament are deeply rooted in the emotional language of human suffering. ‘Pity’ (e.g., Hos. 2:23) is a new turning toward a beloved person that is rooted in keen anxiety; ‘regret’ (e.g., Gen. 6:6) is the painful concession to have failed in one’s plan. Thus for the Israelite God’s suffering is, strange as it may sound, precisely like human suffering, a bitter experience that injures body and spirit . . . God’s suffering results from the coinciding of human and divine action . . . His pain is the consequence of human misconduct” (p. 100).

To be continued in Part 2

References:

Gerstenberger, E. S. and W. Schrage, Suffering. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1977.

Richard, Lucien. What Are They Saying About the Theology of Suffering. New York: Paulist Press, 1992.


Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: God, Suffering

The Suffering of God

Few people today truly know the God of the Old Testament. Most Christians focus their study of Scriptures almost exclusively on the New Testament. For many, the God of the Old Testament is a violent God, a God of wrath, and an evil deity. Consequently, the view of a God who suffers with and because of his people is foreign to many Christians.

One book that has changed the way I perceive the God of the Old Testament is Terence Fretheim’s book, The Suffering of God: An Old Testament Perspective (Overtures to Biblical Theology; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984). Fretheim’s book shows how much Christians have been influenced by Greek philosophy, a philosophy that led the leaders of the early church to adopt the doctrine of the impassibility of God.

The doctrine of the impassibility of God teaches that the God of the Bible is a perfect being and as such he cannot suffer. Since God is a perfect being, he cannot be affected by outside events and thus cannot suffer, for suffering is a sign of imperfection. Today I begin a series of studies that will summarize some of the issues Fretheim raises in his book. Those who have read The Suffering of God will notice how much Fretheim’s views have affected my own views.

The God of the Old Testament is a God who chooses to identify himself with his people in their suffering. There are several passages in the Bible that reveal the pain of God for the sins and disobedience of his people.

The God who in the New Testament suffered in the person of Christ is the same God who in the Old Testament suffered because of the sins of his people. Several Old Testament texts give strong evidence that God experiences suffering. The suffering of God is portrayed in his words and actions. God’s suffering for his people is consistent with his nature as a God who chooses to enter into the history of Israel and establish a genuine relationship with his people.

The God of the Old Testament is known primarily by his role as creator and redeemer. In these two roles, God voluntarily limits himself to a gradual process of creation from the chaos of nothingness to the world in which we live. He is also the God who chooses to be patient with people who are arrogant, stubborn, and disobedient.

The stubbornness and rebellion of Israel are summarized in the words of the Levite prayer: “You warned them in order to turn them back to your law. Yet they acted presumptuously and did not obey your commandments, but sinned against your ordinances, by the observance of which a person shall live. They turned a stubborn shoulder and stiffened their neck and would not obey” (Nehemiah 9:29).

It is this voluntary limiting of God that sets the framework for the concept of God’s suffering. Since the God of the Bible reveals himself to his people in human form (Genesis 18:1-2) and communicates directly with human beings, the people of Israel assumed that God had thought and will, and that he was capable of emotions, anger, and love.

Throughout the Old Testament one can see that the moral evil of the world, the rebellion of human beings, and the disobedience of his people provoke God to anger (Deuteronomy 4:25; Judges 2:12) in the same way his love for them also moves him toward costly sacrifice (Joel 2:13; Hosea 11:1-9). The God of the Bible is a God who carries the burden of his people, who knows the failure of his purpose for them, who sorrows over them with a love that prevails over wrath, and who suffers because of their affliction.

The suffering of God in the Old Testament anticipates the pain and the agony of the Suffering Servant of the New Testament: “It is as if there were a cross unseen, standing on its undiscovered hill, far back in the ages, out of which were sounding always, just the same deep voice of suffering love and patience, that was heard by mortal ears from the sacred hill of Calvary” (H. Wheeler Robinson, Suffering: Human and Divine [New York: The Macmillan Company, 1939] 145).

These words express the nature of the God believers find in the Old Testament, the very same loving, caring, hurting God who reveals himself in the person of Jesus Christ.

Israel believed that God was present with the people in their suffering, that their God was a God who understood what the people were going through. Although Israel believed that God was the cause of their suffering, they also believed that God understood their suffering. Divine understanding for them presupposes suffering with them. The God who revealed himself to Israel could not be the personal God of his people without experiencing suffering. Those who do not experience suffering cannot sympathize with the pain and suffering of others (Hebrews 4:15; 5:8). God is a loving and compassionate God and it pains him to see humanity suffer.

According to Fretheim (p. 35), there are two poles for understanding God in the Old Testament. One is that God is a radically transcendent Lord who stands outside the world without acting in the world. This is what he calls the traditional view of God.

The second is the organismic view, a view in which a greater continuity, that is, a greater intimacy between God and the world is discerned. In the organismic view there is a relationship of reciprocity. In other words, the world is not only affected by God, God is also affected by the world, both positively and negatively. God has chosen to be involved in the history of the world and to be limited by it. Therefore, although God is unchangeable in his steadfast love and his salvific will for all creation, God does change in response to the interaction between himself and his creation.

For Israel to have understood God in any other light would have been incompatible with the revelation of God’s character in their history. The people of Israel could not have understood a God who had complete freedom to act in the realm of history but who refused to do so because of a lack of compassion or desire. After all, they had experienced just the opposite in the Exodus.

The belief in the genuine love of God for Israel necessitated, for them, a God who sympathized with his people, not merely superficially recognizing their condition, but actually participating with them in their sufferings. This is how Israel experienced God in Egypt: Exodus 2:24-25.

For God to have seen the affliction of his people, to have heard their cry, and to have known their suffering (Exodus 3:7) required God taking their sorrows into his very being and allowing those sorrows to arouse feelings of compassion and to affect his being in his interactions with them.

Thus, the suffering of God is basic for the proper understanding of the concept of relatedness or relationship which in the Old Testament derives from the concept of the covenant and the understanding of Israel as the chosen people of God. As Israel understood God, the idea of the suffering of God to some extent limited the concept of God’s power. For the relationship between God and Israel to have integrity required God giving up some of his own power and freedom for the sake of the relationship.

To be continued.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: God, Suffering

The Laws of Nature and the Existence of God

This is the fourth post evaluating Antony Flew’s journey toward God. I recommend that you read my first post, "From Atheism to Theism: A Journey Toward God," before you read this post. The second post was titled “The Origin of Life and the Existence of God.” The third post was titled “The Big Bang Theory and the Existence of God.” I will conclude my review of Antony Flew’s book There Is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind (New York: Harper Collins Publisher, 2007) with a postscript in which I will address the issues raised by an article published in the New York Times Magazine in which the author is critical of the way Flew's book was written.

In my last two posts I presented the reasons Antony Flew changed his mind and came to accept that there is a God.

The first reason Flew presented for changing his mind came out of a question that became the basis for his journey back to God. Flew asked: “How did life as a phenomenon originate from nonlife?” That question led him to evaluate recent works on the origin of life and to his amazement, he discovered that the evidence “pointed to the activity of a creative Intelligence” (p. 74).

The second reason that made Flew embark on his pilgrimage toward theism was the issue “that philosophers handed over to cosmologists: How did the universe, by which we mean all that is physical, come into existence?” This issue led Flew to a reformulation of the old cosmological argument for the existence of God.

The third reason that led Flew to re-evaluate his views on atheism was the constancy of the laws of nature. Flew asked: “How did the laws of nature come to be?” By laws of nature Flew means the regularity and symmetry that exist in the universe. He wrote: “The important point is not merely that there are regularities in nature, but that these regularities are mathematically precise, universal and ‘tied together.’” This, according to Flew (p. 96), is the question scientists from Newton to Einstein have been asking and their answer was one and the same: it was “the Mind of God.” Or, as Stephen Hawkins said in his book, A Brief History of Time, the day human beings discover the reason the universe exists that will be their greatest accomplishment, for then they will know “the mind of God.”

This question is in a sense, a reformulation of the classical argument from design for the existence of God. The argument from design states that the apparent order in nature requires the existence of a Designer. Although Hume, Kant, and Flew himself have done much to discredit the argument from design, Flew said (p. 95) that “when correctly formulated, this argument constitutes a persuasive case for the existence of God.”

Summing up his views about God and his creation, Flew summarized his views as follows (p. 88):

“I now believe that the universe was brought into existence by an infinite Intelligence. I believe that this universe’s intricate laws manifest what scientists have called the Mind of God. I believe that life and reproduction originated in a divine Source.”

Flew said that his acknowledgment of the existence of God was not a paradigm shift but of his acceptance of the Socratic principle that “we must follow the argument wherever it leads.”

Several developments in modern science have contributed to Flew’s reversal of attitude toward God. According to Flew (p. 88-89), science makes three important contributions to the declarations of the existence of God. The first declaration is “the fact that nature obeys laws.” The second is the origin of life and the existence of “intelligently organized and purpose driven beings.” Third, Flew wrote, is “the very existence of nature.”

Flew argues with Dawkins about whether Einstein believed in God. Flew quotes Einstein: “I want to know how God created this world . . . I want to know His thoughts, the rest are details.”

Flew states that scientists use the laws of nature without ever asking where these laws come from. In fact, they accept as an act of faith that the laws of nature will be consistent and that they are able to understand them.

These laws are not made by the scientists but are present in the universe. According to Flew (p. 108), these laws “are written in a cosmic code that scientists must crack in order to reveal the message.” This message is nature’s message or God’s message but it is not a message created by human beings.

Thus, according to Flew, the regularity of the laws of the universe demands the existence of God for it is God who created these laws and imposed symmetry and regularity in the universe.

Flew concludes (p. 112) that those scientist who point to God in order to explain the regularity of the laws of nature “propound a vision of reality that emerges from the conceptual heart of modern science and imposes itself on the rational mind. It is a vision that I personally find compelling and irrefutable.”

The book contains two appendices. The first appendix, “‘The New Atheism’: A Critical Appraisal of Dawkins, Dennett, Wolpert, Harris, and Stenger,” was written by Roy Abraham Varghese, the co-author of the book. This appendix is a critical assessment of the arguments presented in recent books in defense of atheism.

The second appendix is titled “The Self-Revelation of God in Human History: A Dialogue on Jesus with N. T. Wright.” In this appendix Flew and Wright have a dialogue about Jesus, his existence, his incarnation, and his resurrection. Wright’s presentation is a clear and forceful exposition of the basic tenets of the Christian faith.

I enjoyed reading the book. Those who read it will understand how a famous atheist changed his mind.

Reference:

Antony Flew, There Is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind. New York: Harper Collins Publisher, 2007.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary


Tags: Tags: Antony Flew, Atheism, God, Theism

The Big Bang Theory and the Existence of God

This is the third post evaluating Antony Flew's journey toward God. I recommend that you read my first post, "From Atheism to Theism: A Journey Toward God," before you read this post. The second post was titled “The Origin of Life and the Existence of God.”

Antony Flew was known as one of the most articulate atheists of the twentieth century. His books and articles influenced a generation of atheists who today still use the argument he developed in his book The Presumption of Atheism. That argument states that, in a discussion between a believer and an atheist, atheism should be the default position and that the burden of proof rests with those who believe in God.

In May 2004, Flew made a public announcement that he had changed his mind and had come to the conclusion that he was no longer an atheist. The reason Flew changed his mind was because recent scientific discoveries made in the latter part of the twentieth century tend to affirm the existence of God.

In my last post I presented the first reason Antony Flew changed his mind and came to accept that there is a God.

The first reason Flew presented for changing his mind came out of a question that became the basis for his journey back to God. Flew asked: “How did life as a phenomenon originate from nonlife?” That question led him to evaluate recent works on the origin of life and to his amazement, he discovered that the evidence “pointed to the activity of a creative Intelligence” (p. 74).

Another question that made him embark on his pilgrimage toward theism was the issue “that philosophers handed over to cosmologists: How did the universe, by which we mean all that is physical, come into existence?”

The answer that Flew provides is a reformulation of the old cosmological argument for the existence of God.

Those who deny the cosmological argument affirm that anything than can be known about the origin of life, the nature of the universe, and the laws of nature can be known without admitting the possibility of the existence of a transcendent reality beyond human understanding.

Flew himself was highly involved in attacking the cosmological argument. He even agreed and supported David Hume’s critique of the cosmological argument for the existence of God. However, Flew said (p. 135) that “most of my discussions were carried on independent of developments in modern cosmology. In fact, my two main antitheological books were written long before either the development of the big-bang cosmology or the introduction of the fine-tuning argument from physical constants.”


The cosmology that came out of the big bang theory made an impact on Flew’s understanding of the creation of the universe. With the development of the big bang cosmology in the early 1980s, Flew realized that cosmologists were providing “a scientific proof of what St. Thomas Aquinas contended could not be proved philosophically; namely, that the universe had a beginning” (p. 135).

The more Flew thought about the implications of the big bang the more he began to realize that the words of Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” were true (by the way, this is the only biblical text quoted in Flew’s book). As an atheist, Flew believed the universe did not have a beginning and as long as he believed that, there was no reason to ask what caused the universe to come into being.

However, the development of the big bang cosmology changed the situation. Flew wrote: “If the universe had a beginning [with the big bang], it became entirely sensible, almost inevitable, to ask what produced this beginning.”

Flew’s discovery of God has come through an understanding of the structure of the universe. This structure, according to Flew, is a map that leads to the discovery of the Divine. He wrote (p. 155): “I have followed the argument where it has led me. And it has led me to accept the existence of a self-existent, immutable, immaterial, omnipotent, and omniscient Being.”

Many Christians reject the big bang theory. For instance, Jason Lisle, writing in Answers Magazine said that the big bang theory is based on naturalism. He wrote:

Since the philosophy of naturalism does not allow for anything beyond nature, a naturalist would insist that the universe was created by the kinds of processes currently operating within it. The big bang is based on this critical assumption; that is, the big bang model attempts to describe the formation of the entire universe by processes currently operating within the universe. Stars, planets, and galaxies are all said to have formed "naturalistically"-by the laws of nature currently in operation today.

The big bang theory, however, had a different impact on Flew because the theory suggested that the universe had a beginning and if the universe had a beginning then the next question was what or who produced the big bang.

Flew predicted that in trying to explain the big bang, atheists would say that what produced the big bang was beyond human understanding. On the other hand, Flew said that believers would “welcome the big-bang cosmology as tending to confirm their prior belief that ‘in the beginning’ the universe was created by God” (p. 136).

The big bang theory shows that the universe had a beginning. A universe without a beginning is a universe without God. Those who affirm that the universe was eternal do not need a God to create it. But, since the universe began with the big bang 14 billion years ago, then what produced the big bang that caused the universe to come into existence? Since space, matter, and time are part of the created order, then the cause for the big bang must be immaterial, it must not be limited by space, and it must not be bound in time.

Because Flew was faithful to the Socratic principle of following the evidence wherever it may lead, it is clear that the cosmology that came out of the big bang theory and the existence of a fine tuned universe set him on a journey that eventually led him to accept the existence of God.

Reference:

Antony Flew, There Is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind. New York: Harper Collins Publisher, 2007.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Antony Flew, Atheism,

The Origin of Life and the Existence of God

This is the second post evaluating Antony Flew’s journey toward God. I recommend that you read my first post, “From Atheism to Theism: A Journey Toward God,” before you read this post. The first post has been updated in light of Charles Halton’s comment. In his comment, Charles included a link to an article published in the New York Times Magazine in which the author is critical of the way Flew’s book was written. Visit my post and read Charles’ comment. I will address the charges made by the author of that article in a postscript after I finish my review of Flew’s book.

When Antony Flew changed his mind and declared that he now accepted the existence of God, the atheist world reacted with anger and disdain. As one of the endorsers of his book wrote: “When Antony Flew, in the spirit of free-thinking, followed the evidence where he thought it led, namely, to theism, he was roundly denounced by supposed free-thinkers in the severest of terms. He had, it seemed, committed the unpardonable sin.”

Now, Flew has written a book, There Is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind (New York: Harper Collins Publisher, 2007), in which he recounts his journey from atheism to theism. However, the negative reaction to his book is expected to be fierce, primarily by those who deny the existence of God. As another endorser of the book wrote: “His colleagues in the church of fundamentalist atheism will be scandalized by his story, but believers will be greatly encouraged, and earnest seekers will find much in Flew’s journey to illuminate their own path toward the truth.”

Before he turned to theism, Flew wrote many books and articles that reflected his anti-theism belief, including God and Philosophy and The Presumption of Atheism. One of his most influential works was his lecture “Theology and Falsification” in which he said that any religious statement can be made significant by the many qualifications made concerning that statement.

In The Presumption of Atheism, Flew established a principle that is still used by atheists today. This principle states that in any discussion about the existence of God, the burden of proof rests on those who are defending the reality of God and that atheism should be the default position in the discussion.

Flew gives three reasons he abandoned atheism and accepted the reality of the existence of God. The most amazing thing is that Flew became aware of the existence of God not because he read the Bible or he went to church. According to Flew, he became convinced of the existence of God because of the implications of recent scientific discoveries.

His statement contradicts what atheists proclaim with vigor, that is, that science proves conclusively that God does not exist. Flew’s statement also goes contrary to the popular view among some Christians that science and faith are mutually exclusive.

The first reason Flew presented for changing his mind was that “recent work on the origin of life pointed to the activity of a creative Intelligence” (p. 74). One question that became the basis for his journey back to God was “How did life as a phenomenon originate from nonlife?” According to Flew (pp. 90-91), “the origin of life cannot be explained if you start with matter alone.” This declaration was made at a symposium in May 2004 in New York. In that symposium Flew declared that he believed in the existence of God because recent studies reveal that the complex DNA arrangements required to produce life demand that a creative Intelligence be involved.

When Flew was asked if studies on the origin of life pointed to a creative Intelligence, he answered (p. 75):

Yes, I now think it does . . . almost entirely because of the DNA investigations. What I think the DNA material has done is that it has shown, by the almost unbelievable complexity of the arrangements which are needed to produce (life), that intelligence must have been involved in getting these extraordinarily diverse elements to work together. It’s the enormous complexity of the number of elements and the enormous subtlety of the ways they work together. The meeting of these two parts at the right time by chance is simply minute. It is all a matter of the enormous complexity by which the results were achieved, which looked to me like the work of intelligence.

One idea that has been presented to defend the possibility that life can arise by change is what is called “the monkey theorem.” This view says if a large number of monkeys are put together in front a computer keyboard and type randomly, given enough time, the monkeys eventually will compose a Shakespearean sonnet. Or, as the Wikipedia puts it:

The infinite monkey theorem states that a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type a particular chosen text, such as the complete works of William Shakespeare.

Flew wrote in his book (pp. 75-78) that Gerald Schroeder, an Israeli scientist and the author of The Science of God, has presented a point-by-point refutation of the “monkey theorem.”



According to Schroeder, an experiment was conducted by the British National Council of Arts in which six monkeys were placed in front of a computer and allowed to type randomly. After one month the monkeys typed fifty pages but did not produce a single word.

Schroeder observed that in English there are two one-letter words: “I” and “a.” An “I” or an “a” is a word if there is a space before and after the word. After calculating the number of letters and characters in the keyboard, Schroeder concluded that the likelihood for a monkey to write a one-letter word is 1 chance out of 27,000.

Schroeder then applied the same principle to a Shakespearean sonnet. The sonnet “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” has 488 letters in the sonnet. Since there are 26 letters in the alphabet, then the likelihood of writing the 488 letters of the sonnet in its proper order is 26 multiplied by itself 488 times. The result would be the number 10 to the 690th power. The number is so immensely large that it could never be reached.

When this number is compared with the millions of arrangements that are needed to produce life, the possibility that life arose by chance is minimal. Flew then concluded (p. 78): “If the theorem won’t work for a single sonnet, then of course it’s simply absurd to suggest that the more elaborate feat of the origin of life could have been achieved by chance.”

Of course, Flew was highly criticized for his views. Richard Dawkins said that Flew was appealing to a “god of the gaps.” Flew, however, presents a good defense of his position (pp. 123-132). In defending his view, Flew quotes physiologist George Wald who said that “we choose to believe the impossible: that life arose spontaneously by chance” (p. 131). And then Flew concludes:

The only satisfactory explanation for the origin of such “end-directed, self-replicating” life as we see on earth is an infinitely intelligent Mind.

To that I say: Amen!

Reference:

Antony Flew, There Is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind. New York: Harper Collins Publisher, 2007.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Antony Flew, Atheism, God, Theism

From Atheism to Theism: A Journey Toward God

While I was away relaxing in my “traveler’s lodging place,” I had the opportunity to read Antony Flew’s latest book, There Is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind (New York: Harper Collins Publisher, 2007). The book is a personal account of how Flew, an atheist for more than fifty years, came to accept the fact that God exists.

On May 2004, at a symposium at New York University, Antony Flew, one of the better known atheists of the twentieth century, surprised the atheist world by announcing that, after much study and reflection, he has now come to accept the existence of God.

The news of Flew’s change of mind caught many people by surprise since he had spent most of his life defending atheism and writing books and articles debunking the religious arguments for the existence of God. As a philosopher, Flew had accepted the Socratic principle of following the evidence wherever it may lead. Faithful to this principle, Flew announced that recent developments in science has led him to the conclusion that the evidence affirms the existence of God.

Antony Flew was born into a Christian family. His father was a minister in the Wesleyan Methodist Church and taught New Testament at the Methodist theological college in Cambridge. Flew attended Kingswood School, a school founded by John Wesley dedicated to the education of the sons of Methodist pastors. Flew began his studies at Kingswood as a believer and by the time he graduated, he was an atheist.

Many factors contributed to Flew’s journey toward atheism. In his book, There Is a God, Flew wrote (p. 13):

“I have said in some of my later atheist writings that I reached the conclusion about the nonexistence of God much too quickly, much too easily, and for what later seemed to me wrong reasons.”

One of the reasons that led Flew to embrace atheism at the age of fifteen was the problem of evil. Flew gave two reasons why the problem of evil affirms the nonexistence of God:

1. The problem of evil was a decisive disproof of the existence of an all-good, all-powerful God.

2. The “free will defense” did not relieve the Creator of responsibility for the manifest ills of creation.

Later on in his academic life, Flew called these two reasons “juvenile insistencies.”

Many atheists point to the problem of evil in the world as one evidence to deny the existence of God. Flew is aware that evil and suffering are real. Flew deals with both. He wrote (p. 156):

“Certainly, the existence of evil and suffering must be faced. However, philosophically speaking, that is a separate issue from the question of God’s existence. From the existence of nature, we arrive at the ground of its existence. Nature may have its imperfections, but this says nothing as to whether it had an ultimate Source. Thus, the existence of God does not depend on the existence of warranted or unwarranted evil.”

Three scientific issues contributed to Flew’s pilgrimage back to theism. Flew formulates these three issues in the form of questions (p. 91):

1. How did the laws of nature come to be?
2. How did life as a phenomenon originate from nonlife?
3. How did the universe, by which we mean all that is physical, come into existence?

In the next few days, I will be examining how Flew deals with these three questions. His pilgrimage toward theism and his search of the evidence for God’s existence will become a challenge for those who still affirm that there is no God. I will be examining Flew’s quest with the following posts:

1. The Origin of Life and the Existence of God.

2. The Big Bang Theory and the Existence of God.

3. The Laws of Nature and the Existence of God.

The three posts will present a brief overview of how Flew tries to answer the three questions that lingered in his mind even when he was defending atheism. In the end, these posts will be an invitation to readers to read the book and join Flew in his journey toward God.

Reference:

Antony Flew, There Is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind. New York: Harper Collins Publisher, 2007.

UPDATE

After you finish reading this post, read Charles Halton’s comment and follow the link he provides to an article published in the New York Times Magazine in which the author is critical of the way Flew’s book was written. In light of Charles’ comment and the charges made by the author of the article, I have decided to write a postscript after I finish my review of Flew’s book and address the charges made in the article.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Next Post: The Origin of Life and the Existence of God

Tags: Antony Flew, Atheism, God, Theism

G. K. Chesterton on God

Here is a very good observation about God and culture:

G. K. Chesterton made this observation about our culture: "You are free in our time to say that God does not exist; you are free to say that He exists and is evil. ... You may talk of God as a metaphor or mystification ... and it is not merely that nobody punishes, but nobody protests. But if you speak of God as a fact, ... as a reason for changing one’s conduct, then the modern world will stop you somehow if it can."

HT: Greg Laurie at WorldNetDaily.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Culture, G. K. Chesterton, God

In the News

The following are some of the stories I read this week. These are some of the stories that almost because subjects of a post. However, lack of time did not allow me to blog on them.


Iran envoy defends amputation ‘of the hand that steals’

Iran’s ambassador to Spain has compared chopping off the hands of thieves to a “surgeon amputating a limb to prevent the spread of gangrene.”

Conservative Rabbis to Vote on Resolution Criticizing Pope’s Revision of Prayer

The revision of a contentious Good Friday prayer approved this week by Pope Benedict XVI could set back Jewish-Catholic relations, Conservative Judaism’s international assembly of rabbis says in a resolution to be voted on next week.

The prayer calls for God to enlighten the hearts of Jews “so that they may acknowledge Jesus Christ, the savior of all men.”

God and Politics

Frank Lambert’s “Religion in American Politics,” published last month, traces the interplay between pulpits and the public square through nearly two centuries of U.S. history. Some things, he writes, never change.

Efforts to proclaim the United States a “Christian nation” date at least to 1827, when Calvinist minister Ezra Stiles Ely tried to mobilize a “Christian party in politics” to fight the delivery of mail on Sundays.

The Book of Mormon and Archaeology

Because of many false statements disseminated by members of the LDS Church, such as the one cited above, the Smithsonian Institute was forced to publish a statement concerning these matters. The 1986 statement begins with a denial of the claims put forth by Mormon enthusiasts:

“The Smithsonian Institution has never used the Book of Mormon in any way as a scientific guide. Smithsonian archeologists see no direct connection between the archeology of the New World and the subject matter of the book.” (“Statement Regarding The Book of Mormon.” Smithsonian Institute, Spring 1986).

Enjoy reading.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Archaeology, God, Islam, Mormons, Politics, Pope

The Answer Atheists Can't Provide

In an article published in the Washington Post titled “What Atheists Can't Answer,” Michael Gerson asks this questions: “If the atheists are right, what would be the effect on human morality?” His article deals what the issue of what would happen to our world if “God were dethroned as the arbiter of moral truth.”

Gerson wrote:

“How do we choose between good and bad instincts? Theism, for several millennia, has given one answer: We should cultivate the better angels of our nature because the God we love and respect requires it. While many of us fall tragically short, the ideal remains.”

“Atheism provides no answer to this dilemma.”

According to Gerson,

“America's Founders embraced public neutrality on matters of religion, but they were not indifferent to the existence of religious faith. George Washington warned against the ‘supposition that morality can be maintained without religion.” The Founders generally believed that the virtues necessary for self-government -- self-sacrifice, honesty, public spirit -- were strengthened by religious beliefs and institutions.”

Gerson concludes:

“Atheists and theists seem to agree that human beings have an innate desire for morality and purpose. For the theist, this is perfectly understandable: We long for love, harmony and sympathy because we are intended by a Creator to find them. In a world without God, however, this desire for love and purpose is a cruel joke of nature -- imprinted by evolution, but destined for disappointment, just as we are destined for oblivion, on a planet that will be consumed by fire before the sun grows dim and cold.”

Read the article by clicking here.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: Atheism, God, Theism

God, Darwin, and Evolution

The New York Times has published a very interesting article written by Robin Marantz Henig on evolution and religion titled “Darwin’s God.” It is a long article but worth reading. The following is an excerpt of the article:

God has always been a puzzle for Scott Atran. When he was 10 years old, he scrawled a plaintive message on the wall of his bedroom in Baltimore. "God exists," he wrote in black and orange paint, "or if he doesn't, we're in trouble." Atran has been struggling with questions about religion ever since - why he himself no longer believes in God and why so many other people, everywhere in the world, apparently do.

Call it God; call it superstition; call it, as Atran does, "belief in hope beyond reason" - whatever you call it, there seems an inherent human drive to believe in something transcendent, unfathomable and otherworldly, something beyond the reach or understanding of science. "Why do we cross our fingers during turbulence, even the most atheistic among us?" asked Atran when we spoke at his Upper West Side pied-à-terre in January. Atran, who is 55, is an anthropologist at the National Center for Scientific Research in Paris, with joint appointments at the University of Michigan and the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. His research interests include cognitive science and evolutionary biology, and sometimes he presents students with a wooden box that he pretends is an African relic. "If you have negative sentiments toward religion," he tells them, "the box will destroy whatever you put inside it." Many of his students say they doubt the existence of God, but in this demonstration they act as if they believe in something. Put your pencil into the magic box, he tells them, and the nonbelievers do so blithely. Put in your driver's license, he says, and most do, but only after significant hesitation. And when he tells them to put in their hands, few will.

If they don't believe in God, what exactly are they afraid of?

Atran first conducted the magic-box demonstration in the 1980s, when he was at Cambridge University studying the nature of religious belief. He had received a doctorate in anthropology from Columbia University and, in the course of his fieldwork, saw evidence of religion everywhere he looked - at archaeological digs in Israel, among the Mayans in Guatemala, in artifact drawers at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Atran is Darwinian in his approach, which means he tries to explain behavior by how it might once have solved problems of survival and reproduction for our early ancestors. But it was not clear to him what evolutionary problems might have been solved by religious belief. Religion seemed to use up physical and mental resources without an obvious benefit for survival. Why, he wondered, was religion so pervasive, when it was something that seemed so costly from an evolutionary point of view?

The magic-box demonstration helped set Atran on a career studying why humans might have evolved to be religious, something few people were doing back in the '80s. Today, the effort has gained momentum, as scientists search for an evolutionary explanation for why belief in God exists - not whether God exists, which is a matter for philosophers and theologians, but why the belief does.

This is different from the scientific assault on religion that has been garnering attention recently, in the form of best-selling books from scientific atheists who see religion as a scourge. In "The God Delusion," published last year and still on best-seller lists, the Oxford evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins concludes that religion is nothing more than a useless, and sometimes dangerous, evolutionary accident. "Religious behavior may be a misfiring, an unfortunate byproduct of an underlying psychological propensity which in other circumstances is, or once was, useful," Dawkins wrote. He is joined by two other best-selling authors - Sam Harris, who wrote "The End of Faith," and Daniel Dennett, a philosopher at Tufts University who wrote "Breaking the Spell." The three men differ in their personal styles and whether they are engaged in a battle against religiosity, but their names are often mentioned together. They have been portrayed as an unholy trinity of neo-atheists, promoting their secular world view with a fervor that seems almost evangelical.

Read the article in its entirety by clicking here.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: God, Darwin, Evolution, Scott Atran

Belief in God: A Survey

A recent poll conducted by The Financial Times of London and the Harris Poll surveyed adults in the United States and in five European countries to ascertain their religious views on various topics.

The poll shows that 73% of Americans believe in God or a Supreme Being wile 62% of Italians expressed belief in God. Of the five European countries, the French have the lowest number, with only 27% of the people expressing faith in God.

Read the report by clicking here.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

Tags: God, Faith, Religion