Wulf

I just received Michael Heller’s book Creative Tensions: Essays on Science and Religion, and I’m excited to give it a read. I’ve mentioned Heller before, and I’m confident he has some incredibly interesting things to say about how science and religion should coexist.

I’m also excited about two more Kierkegaard books: Fear and Trembling and Either / Or. With my newfound library, I’m hoping to churn through around 1 book a month. These books, combined with my already growing list, should keep me busy for a while.

I’m currently about 25% of the way through Søren Kierkegaard’s Attack upon “Christendom”, and he has some incredibly interesting things to say about Christianity, the church, the difference between the two, the role of offense and suffering in Christianity, and what all of these should mean to each of us personally.

To help summarize the setting for Kierkegaard’s book, let me pull a summary of the book from Wikipedia:

Søren Aabye Kierkegaard… was a prolific 19th century Danish philosopher and theologian. Kierkegaard strongly criticized both the Hegelianism of his time, and what he saw as the empty formalities of the Danish church. Much of his work deals with religious problems such as faith in God, the institution of the Christian Church, Christian ethics and theology, and the emotions and feelings of individuals when faced with life choices…

Kierkegaard’s final years were taken up with a sustained, outright attack on the Danish People’s Church by means of newspaper articles published in The Fatherland (Fædrelandet) and a series of self-published pamphlets called The Moment (Øjeblikket).^[18] Kierkegaard was initially called to action after Professor Hans Lassen Martensen gave a speech in church in which he called his recently deceased predecessor Bishop Jakob P. Mynster a “truth-witness, one of the authentic truth-witnesses.”^[19]

Kierkegaard had an affection towards Mynster, but had come to see that his conception of Christianity was in man’s interest, rather than God’s, and in no way was Mynster’s life comparable to that of a ‘truth-witness.’

A final bit of set up from the commentary at sorenkierkegaard.org:

Throughout his writings, and especially during this period, he maintained that conversion to Christ necessitated a qualitative leap of faith and hence involved the entire person. The Lutheran church, on the contrary, maintained that all Danes were born Lutheran and thus de facto Christians, which reduced to nothing the radical conversion to Christ. It must, however, be said at once, for this is often misunderstood: Kierkegaard’s attack was unusual, since he attacked the Church from within, as a believer.

The important piece of that summary is the last paragraph, and it’s on this that Keirkegaard focuses much of the book. The discussion throughout the book revolves primarily around what it means to truly be a Christian, and furthermore, what it means to be a “witness to the truth” for Christianity. As I’ve been taking notes as I’ve been reading, and here are a few quotes in particular that caught my attention:

Page 25:

Thou who readest this, say to thyself: Was I not in the right, and am I not, in saying that first and foremost everything must be done to make it perfectly definite what is required in the New Testament for being a Christian; that first and foremost everything must be done in order that at least we might become attentive?

Page 26:

We have what one might call a complete inventory of churches, bells, organs, benches, alms-boxes, foot warmers, tables, hearses, etc… A statistician for example, when he had assured himself of the existence of this Christian inventory, would think that he was thoroughly justified in putting into his statistics the statement that the Christian religion is the prevailing one in the land…

I have not the least doubt that every single individual in the nation will be honest enough with God and with himself to say in solitary conversation, “If I must be candid, I do not deny that I am not a Christian in the New Testament sense; if I must be honest, I do not deny that my life cannot be called an effort in the direction of what the New Testament calls Christianity, in the direction of denying myself, renouncing the world, dying from it, etc.; rather the earthly and the temporal become more and more important to me with every year I live.”

Next, a quote from another of Kierkegaard’s works, Practice in Christianity (from which I’ve read only briefly. This is my next to read on my book list.):

Page 106:

for to truly be a Christian… means to be [Christ’s] imitator, yet not a kind of prinked-up, nice-looking successor who makes use of the firm and leaves Christ’s having suffered many centuries in the past; no, to be an imitator means that your life has as much similarity to his as is possible for a human life to have.

I won’t pretend to offer commentary on Kierkegaard’s work here, but I wanted to offer these passages for us all to think about. While I’m still hardly one-fourth of the way through the book, I highly recommend it.

As I think through Kierkegaard’s thoughts on the difference between saying “I am a Christian” and actually living out a truly Christian life, I’m reminded of the following verses. Both of these below I think are of particular importance when reading Kierkegaard’s thoughts on Christianity and the role of suffering.

Romans 10:9:

That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

This verse in Romans offers a fantastically succinct snippet of the topic of that entire book, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t suggest the entire book of Romans as applicable for this discussion in particular.

Matthew 13:23:

The Narrow and Wide Gates

13“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. 14But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.

A Tree and Its Fruit

15“Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. 16By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? 17Likewise every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. 18A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. 19Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them. 21“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’ 23Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’

This last passage, verses 15 through 23 in particular, I think are extremely significant when examining one’s own faith.

While stumbling through The Google’s news site, I just found this article about Michael Heller winning the $1.6 Million Templeton Prize for his work in cosmology, religion, and his philosophy for unifying them both. I just heard about the guy today, but I’m absolutely buying  one of his over 20 books when I finally get 100% settled in Portland. I’m pretty excited about it.

The NYT article summarizes Heller’s work:

Much of Professor Heller’s career has been dedicated to reconciling the known scientific world with the unknowable dimensions of God.

In doing so, he has argued against a “God of the gaps” strategy for relating science and religion, a view that uses God to explain what science cannot.

Professor Heller said he believed, for example, that the religious objection to teaching evolution “is one of the greatest misunderstandings” because it “introduces a contradiction or opposition between God and chance.”

I completely agree with the man on this point. How many thousands of articles, conversations, and lectures have been given on the “God vs. Science” dichotomy? I’m eager to finally read a book from someone unifying the two.

I started out deciding to write an essay of sorts about the foundation of morality for theists and atheists and the implications of each of those foundations, but I’ve decided instead to simply point to some interesting reading, and wait to provide a full essay in the future.

My future thesis will essentially be: morality apart from God is arbitrary. There is no way to determine moral absolutes without God. Instead, all that is left is a sort of moral preference based on whim.

The readings below do not necessarily support my thesis at all, but are related and extremely interesting in their own right. As of yet I’ve provided exactly zero argument in my favor - that is for another post - but these readings should help set the stage for our discussion.

Subject readings:

1) the Euthyphro dilemma

2) and Emotivism

3) The Book of Romans

4) God and Morality by Dick Farnell

5) Euthyphro, Hume, and the Biblical Word by John M. Frame

Some interesting thoughts on Farnell’s essay; when he describes the Euthyphro dilemma, he offers:

Another problem with the DCT [Divine Command Theory] is that it means that we can never act morally as an end in itself, but only ever as a means to simply comply with God’s commands. We might say that we obey God’s commands in order to act morally. But within this theory the term ‘moral’ simply means ‘in accordance with God’s commands’. So we would simply be saying that we obey God’s commands in order to act in accordance with those commands, which is of course the same as saying that we obey God’s command as an end in itself. Therefore, within this theory, acting morally is ultimately about complying with the whims of an amoral dictator, which is a far cry from the noble view of moral action held by most people today.

Notice at the end of this paragraph, the problem with the DCT is reduced to us “complying with the whims of an amoral dictator”, that dictator being God.

I understand what Farnell is trying to say here, but I think he has confused the underlying problem. In trying to discuss the foundation of morality, he has suddenly switched to how this foundation of morality defines the character of God, when instead it should be the other way around. What morality is and what God is are two entirely different discussions. When they overlap, as they do here, we need to be careful to study both discussions as they relate to the other, and not let one entirely define the other, as has been done here.

Later in the essay, Farnell does properly weave these two discussions together and explain the very reason why we should not consider God an “amoral dictator,” even if we accept the Divine Command Theory.

The philosopher Emrys Westacott draws the following conclusion about the DCT: ‘God, it seems, just happens to have disapproved of adultery; had his whim been different then adultery would be permissible.’…

But the dictionary lists three definitions of ‘arbitrary’ that are relevant here:

1. Determined by chance, whim, or impulse, and not by necessity, reason, or principle: stopped at the first motel we passed, an arbitrary choice.
2. Not limited by law; despotic: the arbitrary rule of a dictator.
3. Based on or subject to individual judgment or preference: The diet imposes overall calorie limits, but daily menus are arbitrary. (see source 5)

It seems to have been assumed that, within this theory, God’s command must be arbitrary in the sense of both the first and second definitions. But if God is all-loving, and therefore omnibenevolent, his command must instead be arbitrary in, and only in, the second and third senses. That is, God must be a benevolent dictator who’s commands are based on a natural preference to act in the overall best interests of all of us - and so he commands the kind of behaviour that he judges to be in the overall best interests of all of us. God’s arbitrary commands therefore could, and must, define morality without that command being arbitrary in the sense of being based on whim.

This rabbit trail is a small point really, but is brings up an important rule: sloppy word choice muddies and confuses discussion. It’s is incredibly important to be as exacting as possible with these sorts of discussions, so that we don’t accidentally imply or infer what shouldn’t be. The relatively straightforward resolution to the DST that Farnell provides rests on specific definitions of amoral, arbitrary, and goodness.

With all of my future posts, I will aim to be as precise as possible, but these confusions are bound to arise. If and when they do, I hope you’ll keep me accountable and ask for clarification.

Since we’ve already stumbled into discussing the DST, a comment from Frame’s essay (#5 above) is also useful:

The problem is resolved, I think, by the principle advanced in the lecture outline: that God’s nature is righteous and therefore normative. God loves goodness because he is good, and therefore he commands goodness in his revelation to man. Therefore in one sense, God loves the good because it is good; the concept is not arbitrary. Yet he does not need to look outside himself for a standard of goodness. That standard is his own character.

This resolution is a bit different than Farnell’s above. Instead of relying on God’s benevolence as the resolution to God’s moral whim, we realize that God simply is the moral and good absolute. Morality is not separate from God to dictate what God can and cannot command, instead morality is God and God himself decides what he commands. He cannot command immorality any more than He cannot be Himself.

Frame goes on to discuss Hume’s is-ought problem, which will be particularly applicable in my later posts about the moral foundation of atheism, but I’ll let you read through and think on it on your own. This post has been derailed plenty for now.

Since we’ve travelled quite far enough away from the main point of interest - the foundation of morality and implications thereof - I’ll bring this post to an end. I hope to write again and more specifically about my own beliefs regarding morality, religion, atheism, and philosphy, but for now we can consider this a research post.

Cheers