Thinking Christian

Dallas Willard, professor of philosophy at the University of Southern California, asks this question in his excellent book Hearing God: Developing a Conversational Relationship With God:

How does a life in which one speaks the creative word of God differ from a life of voodoo, magic, and superstition?

Here is part of his answer (the section begins on page 137):

The word magic in this context refers to … the attempt to influence the actual course of events, as distinct from their appearance, by manipulation of symbolisms or special substances such as effigies and incantations….

Magic and witchcraft … are forms of superstition. They work from belief that some action, substance or circumstance not logically or naturally (or even supernaturally) related to a certain course of events does nonetheless influence the outcome of those events if “correctly” approached. Prayer and speaking with God must be carefully distinguished from superstition.

The word superstition is derived from words that mean “to stand over,” as one might stand in wonder or amazement over something incomprehensible…. Martin Buber rightly says that “magic desires to obtain its effects without entering into relation, and practices its tricks in the void,” the void of ignorance and selfish obsession.

Superstition, then, is belief in magic; and magic relies on alleged causal influences that are not actually mediated through the natures of the things involved. Suppose, for example, someone ways they can throw you into great pain or even kill you by mutilating a doll-like effigy of you…. It is superstition or magic, for there is no real connection between someone’s sticking a pin in a doll and your feeling pain….

In our faith we do not believe that the power concerned resides in the words used or in the rituals taken by themselves. If we did, we would indeed be engaged in superstitious practices. Instead we regard the words and actions simply as ways ordained in the nature of things as established by God for accomplishing the matter in question. They work as part of life in the kingdom of God. They enlist the personal agencies of that kingdom to achieve the ends at their disposal and are not mere tools by which we engineer our desired result. We are under authority, not in control….

It is the very nature of the material universe to be subject generally to the word of an all-present, all-powerful, all-knowing divine mind.

Three times in this excerpt Willard refers to the natures of things:

• Magic is not real because its “alleged causal influences are not actually mediated through the natures of the things involved.”
• Christian prayer (or speaking with spiritual authority, the real subject of this chapter) has its effect by working in concert with “ways ordained in the nature of things as established by God.”
• “It is the very nature of the material universe to be subject generally to the word of an all-present, all-powerful, all-knowing divine mind.

Although one specific recent controversy over the term “magic” has been resolved, this passage from Willard helpfully speaks to a larger question regarding the supernatural. Atheists generally consider belief in the supernatural to be not just wrong; to them it is mindlessness or idiocy. In one of the ellipses (omitted passages) of the above passage, Willard tells how Mark Twain’s Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court was able to get the superstitious Old Englanders to believe he had magical powers, when he was in fact working by natural methods known to 19th century science. Christians, according to the naturalists (this was not Willard’s point) are gullible in the same way, imagining there is more to the universe than the natural course of events, and misattributing natural effects to unnatural causes.

The consistent, supernaturalist theistic position is that supernatural causes and events actually are natural, though not in the sense of being susceptible to study by science or occurring within some closed system of matter, energy, natural law, and chance. They are natural in the sense that they involve the universe and its parts acting according to their natures; where the nature of everything is to be “subject to the word of an all-present, all-powerful, all-knowing divine mind.”

Whether using the term “magic” or the more acceptable “supernatural,” naturalistically-inclined atheists typically consider it risible that Christians believe in a “fairy-tale” view of reality. But it’s far from clear to me what’s ridiculous or even odd about this, if we view the supernatural and the natural as intertwined, all of it together subject to the word of God. It fits logically; it works; it’s not incoherent. Of course it is a strange, unfamiliar viewpoint for the mind trained to see nature (matter, energy, law, and chance) as a closed system. But what if it’s that training that’s confused? Is that not at least logically possible? If so, then it’s also logically possible that to mock supernaturalism might be to display one’s own confusion regarding the true nature of reality. And it might also be that this very confusion is what causes some to miss what’s really there.

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Not long ago I heard J.P. Moreland in a lecture discussing the importance of knowing that Christianity is true. Moreland is an apologist and the author of what I consider to be one of the most important books written by a Christian in recent years, Kingdom Triangle. I don’t have his exact words, but it went something like this:

“There seems to be among average churchgoers a nagging suspicion, a fear, that the scholars—those who are really in the know—have proved the faith is all wrong. In the universities, the laboratories, and even the  seminaries they’ve found out the Bible is mostly false and the message of Christ is a big hoax; but the rest of the world just hasn’t quite caught on yet.”

Moreland was actually drawing from Dallas Willard, in another on that short list of most important books, The Divine Conspiracy. Willard is professor of philosophy at the University of Southern California, and stands in a good position to comment on this topic. On page 92 he wrote,

The powerful though vague and unsubstantiated presumption is that something has been found out that renders a spiritual understanding of reality in the manner of Jesus simply foolish to those who are “in the know.”

This presumption, though “vague and unsubstantiated,” is nevertheless “powerful,” he says. What kind of effect might it have? Does it really make a difference? It must. A believer, after all, is someone who believes; and if that belief is colored by concerned that the really smart people, the ones who understand, have found out it’s all foolish, that belief may be little more than a confused mind game: “I guess it’s all wrong, or at least I think it is, but I’m going to believe it anyway.” This is irrational. It makes us double minded, even unstable, to use James’s words (James 1:6-8).

I wrote in a pending post that quite often, it really is good to do what others say is good for us; but too many churchgoers “believe” not because they think it’s true, but because they think it’s good for them to believe. That kind of belief isn’t good for you, though; it’s just confused.

This presumption that it’s foolish to believe is wrong, at any rate. Willard goes on:

But when it comes to say exactly what it is that has been found out, nothing of substance is forthcoming.

Thus Rudolf Bultmann, long regarded as one of the great leaders of twentieth-century thought, had this to say: “It is impossible to use electric light and to avail ourselves of modern medical and surgical discoveries, and at the same time believe in the New Testament world of spirits and miracles.”

To anyone who has worked through the relevant arguments, this statement is simply laughable. It only shows that great people are capable of great silliness. Yet this kind of “thinking” dominates much of our intellectual and professional life at present, and in particular has governed by far the greater part of the field of biblical studies for more than a century.

But the baseless presumption in question must be seen for the empty prejudice it is if we are to enroll with serious intent in Jesus’ school of life. Though this is not the place to discuss it, you can be very sure that nothing fundamental has changed in our knowledge of ultimate reality and the human self since the time of Jesus.

Here on this blog entry is not the place to discuss it either, for it would go far too long. I will leave you with questions and some advice instead, directed especially toward followers of Christ. Do you really believe what you “believe?” Does believe, for you, mean to consider the Gospel to be true and reliable information, or does it mean something less than that? Do you sense that nagging suspicion that it might be all wrong after all? Are you believing because you’re confident it’s true, or because you think it’s probably good for you?

If you identify any of those haunting doubts in you, here’s what not to do: Don’t try to squash or squelch it, don’t feel condemned about it, and don’t feel shame over it. It’s a signal, a good and helpful one for you to pay attention to. It may be a sign that what you “believe,” you don’t really believe, and that you’re trying to manage some kind of impossible schizophrenic doublethink. Bring that vague unsettledness out into the open. Turn it into genuine questions. Then you can look for genuine answers, in Scripture, at your church, and among good books and blogs (of which I hope this is one).

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Truth In the Fire
I have written appreciatively twice of Dallas Willard lately. Now I turn to his article, Truth in the Fire: C.S. Lewis and Pursuit of Truth Today: Publications: The Independent Institute. Originally delivered as a lecture ten years ago at the C.S. Lewis Centennial at Oxford University, this paper springboards from Lewis’s understanding of Truth, and attacks being made upon it in Lewis’s time, to a more contemporary discussion of the same issue. (Dallas Willard is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southern California.)

Everything we believe, everything we understand about the world, hinges on this issue. A colleague of mine has written a book (now out of print), God Is the Issue. I do not intend to say that Truth is above God, or more important than God. But God is consistently identified in his Word as the source of Truth, and as Truth himself (2 Samuel 22:32, Psalm 18:30, John 5:31-32, John 7:18, John 14:6, 1 John 5:20).

The Truth that is in God is multi-faceted: it involves his personal faithfulness, his consistency, his keeping his word, his integrity. It also involves what is technically, somewhat coldly perhaps, called propositional truth: that which allows us to affirm or to deny that something is in fact true in a meaningful sense (see Deuteronomy 18:22, 2 Samuel 7:28, John 19:35, Acts 26:25, 2 Corinthians 7:14).

Propositional truth itself is “In the Fire,” the phrase Willard uses in the title of his paper. Postmodern-leaning Christians often dismiss it: “How can you reduce the truth of God to mere propositions?” But that of course is a straw man. To insist on the reality of propositional truth is not to deny the other various aspects of God’s truth, any more than to insist that birds can fly is to deny they can sing. God can be (and is) personally faithful, at the same time that statements regarding him (or other subjects) may be true or false.

Rumors of Relativity
Of course the question is not raised only in regard to God. Propositional truth is denied on general terms, or is accepted only on the understanding that it is not objective. Truth is relative, they say. As Willard puts it:

In the face of present attitudes, however, even earnestness about truth—also about goodness and beauty—is definitely uncool. It might be tolerated in a Freshman. But he or she would be expected to wise up quickly, and might pay a stiff price for not doing so. The idea of devoting one’s life to truth, goodness or beauty is now quaint if not ridiculous, on the campus as in the corporation. They are not considered to be objective realities against which human life is or can be measured.

To encourage you to read the whole article, I’ll pick up a few points from it. First, on this belief that all truth is relative, Willard disagrees, to put it mildly. I stand with him.

All this puts us in position to see that, while belief is relative—a fact or statement is believed only if someone believes it—truth is not relative. One believes something, one does not truth it or fact it. Again, we can and should experiment with this. Try getting your car to run by believing gas is in your tank. Or by also enlisting others to believe it, or by generating a social movement in favor of it.

Pilate’s Question
But what do we mean by “truth?” Willard dares (such audacity!) to suggest an explanation, including,

When the object of our belief or statement is as we believe or state it to be, when it “matches up” to that object in the familiar way already indicated by cases, our belief or statement is true. Truth is just this characteristic of “matching up.” Otherwise our belief or statement is false. Truth and falsity are, then, objective properties of beliefs and statements….

For a belief, thought or statement to be true is simply for its subject matter to be as it is represented, or as it is held to be, in that belief, thought or statement. When we confirm that a hitherto unconfirmed belief or statement is true, we do not create the relation (correspondence) it actually has to what it is about, any more that we create the fit of a wrench to a bolt head by placing the wrench on the bolt head, or the fit of a door to a frame by putting the door in the frame….

Moreover, truth, as we have seen in the case of fact and reality, is totally unyielding in the face of belief, desire, tradition and will. There is no such thing as a belief or statement whose quality of truth or falsity is modified by mere belief or disbelief, desire or aversion, habit or tradition or social practice or professional opinion, or will and intent. We state it once again: belief is relative, as are our perceptions, but truth is not. Truth is a relation, a “correspondence,” but not one that depends upon belief or attitude….

A dignitary such as Pontius Pilate or a university professor can well say, rhetorically, “What is truth?” But that is never accepted as a response from a child being interrogated about vanished cookies, nor will a child accept it as an explanation of a broken promise. They know what truth is very well, even though, as they also know, it is not easy to determine in some cases. —Is it true there is a Santa Claus, for example, or a tooth fairy?

Is that so complicated, now? Well, of course there are issues attending this matter of truth, which Willard acknowledges in his paper. But the central foundation of it was never challenged for century upon century. It was only when men began to doubt everything except the evidence of their senses that they began to doubt such a thing as truth exists. Intuitively it is obvious even to a child; but intuitions don’t boil in a beaker, and they don’t generate a satisfyingly measurable electrical field, so the empiricists thought they must not be real. Never mind that (as Willard points out) they could not determine they were unreal without depending on their being real.

Why It Matters So
And why is this such a crucial matter? Simply this: without the ability to speak a true statement, to affirm a true proposition, then one cannot say things like,

• “God is love.”
• “Jesus Christ is the Word of God become flesh, full of grace and truth.”
• “Eternal life is found in Jesus Christ.”

These things cannot either be affirmed or denied. They are without content. They may be opinions, but they can be neither right nor wrong.

Further, without the ability to affirm something as true (even potentially), the following cannot be said, even to disagree with them:

• Opinions about God are without content.
• They may be opinions, but they can neither be right nor wrong.
• These things cannot be said, even to disagree with them.
• Nothing in fact can be affirmed as actually true, or denied as being actually false.

I hope you’ve noticed this is turning self-referential, as the philosophers put it. A self-referential statement is one like, “The sentence I am now writing is ten words long.” That happens to be true, if I counted right. Here’s another self-referential statement. “The statement I am now writing is false.” That one is not only false, it is incoherent, impossible; it cannot be true unless it is false; it cannot be false without being true. A better description for it is nonsense.

In a similar sense, if all truth is relative then the last several bulleted statements above are true, but if they are true propositions, then there are no true propositions. They are in the same condition as “This statement is false.” If they are true, then they are false.

Desperate Separation
One who denies truth denies all affirmations, all denials, all discourse. The result is not only to remain desperately separated from God, also to create a whole new kind of separation from each other. We can talk to each other, but your words and mine have no common referent, no meaning in common. You speak your language and I mine, but we can have no shared understanding: for there is no objective reality out there for us to share in.

It is a philosophy of absurdity. More grievous than that, though, it is a philosophy of utter alienation.

Hat tip (three weeks ago, saved until I had time to work on it): Victor Reppert

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From “The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life In God” (Dallas Willard) (p. 111); on the parable of The Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37):

The story does not teach that we can have eternal life just by loving our neighbor. We cannot get away with that nice legalism either. . . . But in God’s order nothing can substitute for loving people. And we define who our neighbor is by our live. We make a neighbor of someone by caring for him or her. . . .

Jesus deftly rejects the question, “Who is my neighbor?” and substitutes the only question really relevant here: “To whom will I be a neighbor?” And he knows that we can only answer this question case by case as we got through our days. In the morning we cannot yet know who our neighbor will be that day. The condition of our hearts will determine who along our path turns out to be our neighbor, and our faith in God will largely determine who we have strength enough to make our neighbor.

(Emphasis added)

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