hughbiquitous

Over a decade ago, Greg Koukl wrote the paper I wish J.P. Moreland had given last week.

Back in 1993, Greg wrote Is Biblical Counseling Biblical? Insight from Scripture and Classical Readings to the Current Anathematizing of Psychology. While its primary thrust is addressing some excesses of the Biblical Counseling movement (which may no longer be characteristic of what’s going on there; I confess ignorance), Greg makes a solid, biblical argument that defeats the narrow "Bible-only" view of sola scriptura that Dr. Moreland was addressing. He goes on to offer some absolutely brilliant things about the right use of natural theology in a solidly Reformed tradition.

While I encourage you to read the whole thing, I’ll highlight three key ingredients.

1. Reformers all the way back to Calvin recognized the value of man’s wisdom, depraved though it is. Quoting Calvin:

Therefore, in reading profane authors, the admirable light of truth displayed in them should remind us, that the human mind, however much fallen and perverted from its original integrity, is still adorned and invested with admirable gifts from its Creator… How then can we deny that truth must have beamed on those ancient lawgivers who arranged civil order and discipline with so much equity? Shall we say that the philosophers, in their exquisite researches and skillful description of nature, were blind?… Nay, we cannot read the ancients on these subjects without the highest admiration; an admiration which their excellence will not allow us to withhold… Therefore, since it is manifest that men whom the Scriptures term natural, are so acute and clear-sighted in the investigation of inferior things, their example should teach us how many gifts the Lord has left in possession of human nature, not withstanding of its having been despoiled of the true good.

2. Writing off all human virtue as sin is unbiblical. "Something is wrong with any assessment of human behavior that forces us to label all human virtue — love, kindness, mercy, patience, gentleness — as sin simply because none are expressed perfectly. This conclusion is not a biblical one," Koukl says.

3. The Formula of Concord, which dealt with certain errors among Lutherans following Luther’s death, addressed the nature of depravity with care and precision. Koukl puts it this way:

Concord makes a distinction that is lost on much of modern evangelicalism: man does not have a sinful nature, strictly speaking, but a nature that is corrupted by sin. This comports with Augustine’s view that evil is a privation of good and not a thing in itself. As such, the fall doesn’t create in man an ontologically new nature… but merely robs his human nature of its original righteousness.

These are weighty topics that need to be assessed carefully. Greg Koukl did a superlative job surveying the biblical data and the wisdom of the ages to make the very important point that sola scriptura does not entail an abandonment of truth found outside the Bible.

One of my college professors, Dick Baer, is of a rare breed: an evangelical professor at an Ivy League school. He has observed that Christian witness is usually regarded, at best, as nonsequitur. More commonly, it’s ignored with a certain disdain:

For over five years I attended a weekly Cornell graduate student/faculty seminar that focused on issues of science, technology, and public policy. Perhaps every third or fourth week, I would make a comment or two based on my knowledge of Bible, theology, or Christian ethics… But again and again, I would get the same kind of response. No one agreed with me, no one disagreed. To put it rather crudely, but very accurately, it was as if I had farted. And when someone farts in public, no one applauds, no one boos. They simply act as if it hadn’t happened. Someone violated a social taboo, and the best way to deal with the embarrassment is to go on to the next item of business as quickly and unobtrusively as possible.

I can relate.

I suppose the best you can say about this is that Christian ambassadors are supposed to recognize that, as Greg Koukl often says, “the Gospel is offensive—enough.” Meaning, of course, that if you offend somebody when you present them with the Gospel, don’t let it be because of the way you present it. Instead, it must be because of your faithfulness to the message of the Gospel — including the “I told you that you would die in your sins” and “deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow Me” bits. The sad fact is that even if you are as tactful and as erudite as can be, as my professor was, some people will still take offense. As Paul said,

For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. Who is sufficient for these things? For we are not, like so many, peddlers of God’s word, but as men of sincerity, as commissioned by God, in the sight of God we speak in Christ. (2 Corinthians 2:15-17)

Excuse me while I preach to myself: may we all speak up in the name of Christ, even if it sends our hearers scrambling for their gas masks. And a big “boo hoo” if they do: we’ve got it easy here. When Paul did it, his hearers went scrambling for stones, whips, wild beasts, and the executioner’s axe. May we who name Christ be more embarrassed of betraying our Savior and His martyrs’ blood than of committing a social faux pas against the delicate sensitivities of an effete culture.

As I’ve written elsewhere, I think Nietzsche was right about this much: “The most perfidious way of harming a cause consists of defending it deliberately with faulty arguments.” When all is said and done, I think the Salon.com interview with Paul Davies may go down as an example of this — even though it is more careless than deliberate. In that interview, Prof. Davies suggests that he’s found a way to reconcile cold, hard science with all the meaning and purpose that humanity craves. He does it with faulty arguments, but in so doing, he shows that arguments don’t always carry the day.

But this raises an important question: Why the need for reconciliation? The answer, I think, is that Davies is desperately trying to escape the fact that his preferred worldview — philosophical naturalism — necessarily renders our existence meaningless.

The Nature of Necessity

A thing is necessary if it could not have failed to exist. If a thing could have failed to exist, then it is not necessary, but contingent. Therefore, anything that starts to exist is necessarily contingent, because at some point, it did indeed fail to exist.

This is important for the questions Prof. Davies is raising, because he’s discussing the origin of the universe. If the universe has an origin, a starting point, it is contingent. But contingent on what? Here’s where the absurdity in Prof. Davies’ thinking comes in. He is saying that the universe is contingent on itself:

We can — if we try hard enough — come up with a complete explanation of existence from within the universe, without appealing to something mystical or magical lying beyond it. I think the scientists who are anti-God but appeal to unexplained sets of laws or an unexplained multiverse are just as much at fault as a naïve theist who says there’s a mysterious, unexplained God.

He affirms there must be an explanation for the universe, but he insists on finding that explanation within the universe.

The Line of Despair

The way I understand it, Francis Schaeffer used the term “Line of Despair” to describe what happens to a person when he “escapes” from reason and takes a “leap of faith” to make sense of the world. This isn’t faith in the biblical sense — biblical faith is about trust in objective realities. The leap of faith that accompanies despair is unconcerned with reality.

What is this despair? It arises from the abandonment of the hope of a unified answer for knowledge and life. Modern man continues to hang on to his rationalism and his autonomous revolt even though to do so he has had to abandon any rational hope of a unified answer. Previously, educated men would not give up rationality and the hope of a unified field of knowledge. Modern man has given up his hope of unity and lives in despair — the despair of no longer thinking that what has been the aspiration of men and women is at all possible. (Francis A. Schaeffer, Escape From Reason, found in The Francis A. Schaeffer Trilogy, p. 236)

It strikes me that Prof. Davies has plunged beneath the line of despair and embraced it, taking a leap of faith into the unreal, non-rational world of convenient fictions that enable his “autonomous revolt.” It is at first irritating to hear him talk about a universe that created itself and in the next breath deride theology as naïve, but it becomes pitiable when you realize what’s going on in the darkened corners of his soul. He is in intellectual rebellion against God and against reality.

Paul Davies’ Leap of Faith

The interview with Prof. Davies is filled with the language of teleology. “Meaning and purpose” seems to be the overriding goal of his research — which is odd, considering his philosophical naturalism. Whatever else you say about him, you’ve got to agree that Prof. Davies is intellectually honest about the implications of his worldview: “Davies acknowledges that if we are stuck with philosophic naturalism, we are robbed of unique value and dignity, and we become one of many living organisms that are qualitatively indistinguishable,” Greg Koukl wrote in the Stand to Reason article, Chance & Dignity.

But the way he overcomes the incompatibility between teleology and philosophical naturalism is to embrace ideas that are wildly implausible, if not patently absurd. What makes a highly intelligent person make such a leap of faith?

I think it’s because the meaninglessness and purposelessness of naturalism is unendurably empty. You can’t live there. He knows it, and he can’t embrace it. But given a choice between a theological answer and a leap of faith into the absurd, he chooses the absurd.

The Tragedy

This is profoundly sad, because he is so palpably close to the truth. “All my career, I’ve been fascinated by the fact that the universe looks not just beautiful but in some sense deeply ingenious. It looks like it’s been put together in a way that makes it work exceptionally well,” he said. Then, when asked if he wants to stay away from God, his answer is an elaborate “yes”:

I want to stay away from a pre-existing cosmic magician who is there within time, for all eternity, and then brings the universe into being as part of a preconceived plan. I think that’s just a naïve, silly idea that doesn’t fit the leanings of most theologians these days and doesn’t fit the scientific facts. I don’t want that. That’s a horrible idea.

Likewise, when asked if these wild theories became popular to “keep the whole idea of God at bay,” his answer was far less elaborate — “Yes.”

I can only turn to Paul for an assessment:

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools… (Romans 1:18-22a)

In my last post I was incredulous. Now I’m just sober. The beauty and genius revealed in the creation, together with the oppressive meaninglessness of living life as a cosmic accident, cannot overpower a sinner’s appetite for autonomy. Sin is a much bigger problem than anybody realizes.

Thank God for an invading Savior who has overridden my autonomy and revealed Himself as the ultimate reason and reality in the universe. May His fame spread far and wide.