C.S.Lewis on why we need theology

C. S. Lewis - Mere Christianity (Book IV, section 1)

... and by extension why we need the church and other believers.

I remember once when I had been giving a talk to the R.A.F., an old, hard-bitten officer got up and said, ‘I’ve no use for all that stuff. But, mind you, I’m a religious man too. I know there’s a God. I’ve felt Him: out alone in the desert at night: the tremendous mystery. And that’s just why I don’t believe all your neat little dogmas and formulas about Him. To anyone who’s met the real thing they all seem so petty and pedantic and unreal!’ 

Now in a sense I quite agreed with that man. I think he had probably had a real experience of God in the desert. And when he turned from that experience to the Christian creeds, I think he really was turning from something real to something less real. In the same way, if a man has once looked at the Atlantic from the beach, and then goes and looks at a map of the Atlantic, he also will be turning from something real to something less real: turning from real waves to a bit of coloured paper. But here comes the point. The map is admittedly only coloured paper, but there are two things you have to remember about it. In the first place, it is based on what hundreds and thousands of people have found out by sailing the real Atlantic. In that way it has behind it masses of experience just as real as the one you could have from the beach; only, while yours would be a single glimpse, the map fits all those different experiences together. In the second place, if you want to go anywhere, the map is absolutely necessary. As long as you are content with walks on the beach, your own glimpses are far more fun than looking at a map. But the map is going to be more use than walks on the beach if you want to get to America.

Now, Theology is like the map. Merely learning and thinking about the Christian doctrines, if you stop there, is less real and less exciting than the sort of thing my friend got in the desert. Doctrines are not God: they are only a kind of map. But that map is based on the experience of hundreds of people who really were in touch with God—experiences compared with which any thrills or pious feelings you and I are likely to get on our own are very elementary and very confused. And secondly, if you want to get any further, you must use the map. You see, what happened to that man in the desert may have been real, and was certainly exciting, but nothing comes of it. It leads nowhere. There is nothing to do about it. In fact, that is just why a vague religion—all about feeling God in nature, and so on—is so attractive. It is all thrills and no work: like watching the waves from the beach. But you will not get to Newfoundland by studying the Atlantic that way, and you will not get eternal life by simply feeling the presence of God in flowers or music. Neither will you get anywhere by looking at maps without going to sea. Nor will you be very safe if you go to sea without a map.

Book Review: Out of the East (Eothen) by Alexander Kinglake

Book Review - Eothen - by Alexander Kinglake

Eothen (Out of the East), by Alexander Kinglake, recounts his travels through the Near East in approximately 1834, when he was about 25. It would be a dramatic understatement to say that the culture of that era and location are unlike our own. In his encounters with various regions and peoples of the Ottoman Empire (Turkey, Palestine, Egypt, Syria), what stands out most starkly is the clash between British cultural chauvinism (in Kinglake’s commentary) and the local cultures and traditions of impoverished peoples living on the ruins of ancient civilizations. 

A passage near the end of the book serves to illustrate both the richness of language, and the author’s view of the contrast between the Near East and Western Europe. He recorded this when he saw the Mediterranean while transiting a pass in Lebanon on his transit from Syria to the sea, where he would take a ship on the journey home.

I had grown well used of late to the people and the scenes of forlorn Asia—well used to tombs and ruins, to silent cities and deserted lains, to tranquil men, and women sadly veiled; and now that I saw the even plain of the sea, I leapt with an easy leap to its yonder shores, and saw all the kingdoms of the West in that fair path that could lead me from out of this silent land straight on into shrill Marseilles, or round by the pillars of Hercules, to the crash and roar of London. My place upon this dividing barrier was as a man’s puzzling station in eternity, between the birthless Past, and the Future that has no end. Behind me I left an old and decrepit World—Religions dead and dying—calm tyrannies expiring in silence—women hushed, and swathed, and turned into waxen dolls —Love flown, and in its stead mere Royal, and ‘Paradise’, pleasures.—Before me there waited glad bustle and strife—Love itself, an emulous game—Religion a Cause and a Controversy, well smitten and well defended—men governed by reasons and suasion of speech—wheels going—steam buzzing—a mortal race, and a slashing pace, and the Devil taking the hindmost—taking me, by Jove (for that was my inner care), if I lingered too long, upon the difficult Pass that leads from Thought to Action. I descended, and went towards the West.

The clash of religions seems muted in Kinglake’s accounts of how his Western Christianity dealt with, and was treated by various Islamic (Musselman in this context) practitioners. In our day and in Western civilization, the comparative merits or truth of competing faiths is implicitly scored by cultural and individual freedom, prosperity, etc., i.e., the world’s standards, just as Kinglake does. We should not expect a 19th century aristocrat to judge with 21st century values or perspective, but Jesus did say “ What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?“ (Matthew 16:26) well before Alexander Kinglake toured the mideast.

A 21st century travelogue through the third world would likely encounter similar clashes, but hopefully with different context. Despite grinding poverty, or perhaps largely because of it, faith in the third world is strong, although those who live there seek material improvement. But the clash of religions is also much sharper than two centuries ago. Militant Islam seeks to overturn the verdict of history. The Holy Spirit is being poured out in unprecedented measure on Christians around the world. Let us pray that we do not look down on those whose history and current circumstances are so different from our own — in short, that we not judge by the world’s standards.

Book Review: The Lost World of Genesis One

Book Review - The Lost World of Genesis One

In The Lost World of Genesis One, John Walton presents a way to understand the Genesis 1 creation account based on Aristotelian epistemology without once citing Aristotle. Aristotle defined four types of causation: material, formal, efficient, and final. Walton proposes that while most believers view (and have been taught) that Genesis 1 is an account of material causes of existence, the ancient Hebrews, and other ancient civilizations, would have received it as describing efficient and final causation. Restated in different words, the author of Genesis described the creation of the functions and purpose of the universe and its contents. It describes the nature of completion; God rested on the seventh day by taking His place in the cosmic temple that He had set in order. 

The difficulties that arise from trying to interpret this passage as a scientific description of material origins are numerous. Equally difficult, in a different venue,  is trying to use scientific theories to prove metaphysical truth. These problems do not arise when we receive Genesis 1 as a description of spiritual realities. God’s purposes in His kingdom are described as bringing light, life, provision, and order out of chaos. Walton points to God’s words to Job (38:1-40:2) as a warning against  trying to link our scientific understanding to proof for or against His existence or His actions.

“The book [of Job] is full of Job’s demand for an explanation. When God finally appears, he does not offer an explanation, but offers a new insight to Job. By confronting Job with the vast complexity of the world, God shows that simplistic models are an inadequate basis for understanding what He is doing in the world.” (p 132)

In eighteen propositions, after explaining his epistemological approach to Genesis 1, Walton proposes an approach to deal with teaching science as it relates to matters of faith. The relation of evolution, intelligent design to empiricism and teleology must be addressed in order to properly teach science and the humanities.  He proposes that a clear divide does exist between the empiricism that defines science, and the humanities that address purpose and meaning. There may be evidence pointing to purpose in a scientific theory, but it cannot be proven because it is the wrong sort of stuff. They operate on different layers. 

The bottom line on the first chapter of Genesis is, for believers, that God is the immovable mover, the first cause, at all levels of existence, but this account does not provide scientific details. Rather, the chapter is written to describe that God, the YHWH of the Jews, assigned functions in order to accomplish His purposes, and then entered into the role He had prepared for Himself, as the God of the universe.

China's future and the West

In chapters six and seven of “Making Sense of  GOD” , Timothy Keller describes the implications of three possible sources of identity. Historically, people defined themselves by their society and its values and advancement. He gives the example of warriors who counted it an honor to die in battle for their people. Modern society tells people to find themselves in their own desires and values, regardless of social constraints, mores, and values. Biblically, believers in God defined themselves by their relationship to Him and in Him.

There is a curious shift in society to which I have no insight. In the past few decades, China has shifted from a very tradition-honoring society to one in which entrepreneurship is highly rewarded. While paying homage to the wisdom of ancient Chinese culture and tradition, it appears that China is moving culturally in the direction of valuing innovation and modernity, not foe their own sake, but because they promote efficiency, productivity, and prosperity. The outcome of this shift is outside my understanding, but it raises a question for believers.

In the west (Europe and North America) the new definition of self has been tried and found wanting. We have become societies of infinite variability with innumerable factions self-defined by their own values. And the conflict between factions seems to grow without limit. Christians, with centuries of history of sectarianism, seem to still, somehow unite based on the core values of who Jesus is, what He did, and what He commands, but are rapidly minoritizing in western society.

China has a much weaker basis in Christian values than the west although the gospel has been there for centuries and has a foothold. How will China fare as they progress into the social experiment of abandoning their tradition? Will their society dissolve into a sea of conflicting factions, will they retreat into the safety of tradition, or will Christianity have the opportunity to form a new basis for social values and function? How will the west react to the changes in China? Is this the precursor to that period in which the gospel will be preached effectually to every nation and every person? (Matthew 24:14) Will the west seize the weakness of Chinese society to prey on them? Or will China discover a new strength in a society based on Christian values and practice, and simply leave the west to dissolve in the post-Christian chaos of society that worships individuality above all?

A Challenge to the Hallmark Channel

A Challenge to the Hallmark Channel

The romance movies aired endlessly on the Hallmark channel, cookie cutter though they be, have a fanatically loyal following. They are women’s drug of choice, just as DUIT[1] is men’s endless obsession. And to be fair, it must be a profitable product, and far more uplifting than most of the unwatchable drivel on networks. Even though the plots are cut out with a cookie cutter, it is a clean cookie cutter. 

What is the challenge? Simply this: in life, only love that matures endures past the initial rush. C. S. Lewis put it this way [2]

I think the thrill of the Pagan stories and of romance may be due to the fact that they are mere beginnings—the first, faint whisper of the wind from beyond the world—while Christianity is the thing itself: and no thing, when you have really started on it, can have for you then and there just the same thrill as the first hint. For example, the experience of being married and bringing up a family cannot have the old bittersweet of first falling in love. But it is futile (and, I think, wicked) to go on trying to get the old thrill again: you must go forward and not backward. Any real advance will in its turn be ushered in by a new thrill, different from the old: doomed in its turn to disappear and to become in its turn a temptation to retrogression. Delight is a bell that rings as you set your foot on the first step of a new flight of stairs leading upwards. Once you have started climbing you will notice only the hard work: it is when you have reached the landing and catch sight of the new stair that you may expect the bell again. This is only an idea, and may be all rot: but it seems to fit in pretty well with the general law (thrills also must die to live) of autumn & spring, sleep and waking, death and resurrection, and “Whosoever loseth his life, shall save it.”

After the wedding comes a life of growth and change, or else failure. Positive dramatizations of marriage at midlife have typically focused on the children, in sitcoms such as Father Knows Best, Leave It to Beaver, My Three Sons, or The Brady Bunch. There are occasional shows that perhaps show the struggles of a married couple at midlife, and show the moral growth and maturing love that enables them to remain together. But they are few, and often hard to watch. Surely the creative genius of the producers and writers of the Hallmark channel can rise to the challenge of dramatizing struggle and growth in an appealing, compelling way.

Old age brings another type of challenge, as those who have matured in love deal with the gradual decay and failure of their bodies. Transcendent love emerges - the transformation of human devotion to focus on heavenly objectives and beings. The care and tenderness between those who have lived and loved for forty or fifty years is obvious to anyone who spends a few minutes in their presence. The outworking of all that God has done in their hearts over the years makes them almost a different kind of person. When the body fails, the soul is released. Sitting by the bed of affliction of such a saint, perhaps in hospice care, the Presence of God overwhelms the visitor, and the quality of His supernatural divine love is sensed. The Hallmark challenge is to convey this essence via movie and television. There is no cookie cutter for God’s activity in our lives.

[1] DUIT = driving under the influence of testosterone

[2] The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, Volume II: Family Letters 1905-1931. Copyright © 2004 by C. S. Lewis

Book Review: The Mideast Beast, by Joel Richardson

In The Mideast Beast, Joel Richardson argues that the antichrist of Revelation, the beast of Daniel, one and the same, will lead an Islamic nation or coalition, potentially a revived Caliphate. The various passages he considers and the logic he presents vary in depth, but certainly are worth considering. The fundamental premise he challenges is the widely held belief that the antichrist will head a revived Roman Empire, or at least have a European base. 

His strongest argument is the map. A comparison of the three empires unambiguously identified in Daniel 2:36-39 - Babylon, Medo-Persia, and Greece, compared to maps of the Roman Empire at its height and the Islamic Caliphate at its height, is compelling.  The fourth empire of Daniel 2:40-43 geographically is much more aligned with the Rashidun Caliphate or the Ottoman Empire than the empire of the Roman Caesars. The argument for the Roman paradigm is time. Rome conquered the remains of the Greek empire and ruled in its place. The Islamic Caliphate appeared almost a thousand years after the Greek domains of Alexander’s successors were conquered. Is time or geography more important?

There is also a discussion about the scope of the domain of the antichrist. If the antichrist leads a revived Islamic Caliphate covering the regions identified by map, he would not have the authority to force all people in the inhabited earth to take his mark in order to buy and sell. (Revelation 13:14-17) Some possible options: 

• Islam dominates the entire earth, not just the mid eastern region where it is currently predominant. The worldwide migration of Muslims might set the stage for this possibility.
• The passage in Revelation is speaking metaphorically or poetically about everyone who dwells in the kingdom of the beast, not literally the entire inhabited earth. Daniel 2:39 describes Alexander the Great’s empire as ruling over the whole earth, even though we would today call it a regional power.
• The beast of Revelation and the evil ruler of the fourth empire in Daniel are different, the events are in different eras, and the map of the Islamic empire is irrelevant to the prophecies of Revelation.

Another item of dispute is the identity of the people of ‘the prince who is to come’ (Daniel 9:26) with Rome. Although Titus was the commanding Roman general of the legions that destroyed Jerusalem in 70 AD (and later emperor of Rome, 79-81 A.D.), the troops were a conglomeration of subject peoples. Richardson presents evidence that these people were from the nations surrounding Israel, her perpetual enemies, and not ethnically Roman. 

Are the enemies of Israel are identified by ancestry or geography? There are many conflicting theories about where the descendants of the peoples named in Daniel and Ezekiel have migrated to. It is an inarguable fact of history that the people living in the lands that surround Israel have consistently hated the Jews. Projecting this to the future, the geographic origin of Israel’s future invaders will be will be unambiguous, whereas their ancestry could be arguable.

The book concludes with a heartfelt plea for reaching Muslims with the gospel. Muslims are devout people who seek God with ardor, but have been taken in by error. God loves them and wants to reach them with Truth. He hears the cry of Ishmael’s seed. Even if the hypothesis of this book is wrong, the Islamic world represents the largest unreached people group in the world. Can we receive the heart of Christ for the lost?

What is Truth? Pilate asked Jesus this question (John 18:38), because he was not at the Last Supper (John 14:6). Richardson does not address this question in depth, but it is critical. Islam teaches that Jesus was a prophet. Believing this does not meet the standards that Jesus set. The Bible identifies three types of things necessary to belong to Jesus.

• We must believe specific things, primarily that Jesus is Lord, and that God raised Him from the dead. (Romans 10:9)
• We must do the things Jesus commanded, not Pharisaical rule following but acting from the heart. (Luke 6:46)
• We must have a relationship with Him, so that we know His voice, and He knows us. (John 10:14)

This is not a multiple question exam. These gifts of God’s grace are more like three sides of a triangle. If the triangle represents salvation and peace with God, these are the stuff that the triangle is built of. They depend on and interact with each other. Being God’s child is vastly more important than knowing the future nationality of antichrist. A good bottom line on Richardson’s book.

Fractal Time and Biblical Prophecy

God’s Fractal Time

Envision time as a one-way street whose direction is fixed by entropy. The second law of thermodynamics fixes its irreversibility - no backing up! How do we reconcile this with Biblical prophecy and the doctrine of predestination? 

Using distance as a metaphor for time, we can imagine a second dimension (or more) perpendicular to our time-street. Imagine turning right 90 degrees. As we proceed in this direction, time on the original line is unchanged but seems to continue advancing for us. Imagine a grid of such streets. We advance on the cross street until encountering another street, and turns right again (imagining that entropy flows differently on Main Street than on our side street). Two more such maneuvers and we are back to the original time-line but upstream of our starting point. 

One might wish for such a trip, but such are not possible for mere mortals, as physics apparently confines us to our current timeline. We might think God inhabits some multidimensional continuum, and perhaps the angels, but there are still questions. If God desires all men to be saved (1 Timothy 2:4), how does He orchestrate time to give each individual, give each individual the best possible opportunity to be saved? When He allows prophets to see future events (e.g., Daniel, Revelation) is He allowing them a view from afar through this multidimensional time fabric, or recording future events on a heavenly DVD and playing it back for the prophet, or allowing them a short trip outside our timeline?

The story gets more complicated as we contemplate the hints that God may not be limited to integer time dimensions. Suppose our space-time continuum is constructed by God with fractional time dimensions. A one-dimensional one-way time street manifestation of fractal time might be self-similar constructs on different scales. For example, the concept of a Sabbath rest occurs on a weekly basis (Exodus 20:8-11), a seven-year span (Exodus 23:11) a 49-year span (Leviticus 25:8-11), and a 490 year span (2 Chronicles 36:21)). It is difficult to imagine how this would manifest in a multi-dimensional time construct.

What does this have to do with prophecy and predestination?  Our common sense concept of cause and effect is a tiny subset of the nature of God and the universe He constructed. Some consider causality to be a gift of God to humankind, given so that we live in a universe we can comprehend and act in with purpose. The angels behold God’s face, yet a third of them rebelled, knowing and experiencing the consequences (being eternally exiled and imprisoned in the lake of fire), and yet rebelling anyway. We have free will, but not seeing God eye to eye, the consequences of our choices are not visibly evident at the time of decision, so we accept or reject Him by faith. For most, the choice is offered more than once, so that when the curtain rings down, no one can say God didn’t give them a chance. 

Thus prophecy and predestination may be manifestations of God’s use of time, as a construct in which future events are foreshadowed by earlier incidents on a smaller scale. The one difference is freewill - humans can change their mind and repent, and turn to Him. This disturbs the symmetry of fractal constructs, but serves God’s ultimate purpose. If, on a later iteration of a sequence of events, we choose His path, and stick with it, the ultimate consummation is changed. The concept of fractals and the concepts of prophecy, foreshadowing, and repetition are not identical, but related in how we experience time. This dynamic is poetically described in The Four Calls, by Isaiah Baltzell (as L. Baltzall)