Christianity Archives - Page 7 of 12

On Envy

Envy.

It is one of the Seven Deadly Sins. Not one we talk about much, though.

If you want to read a Treatise on the Sin of Envy, try Lex Luther: A Celebration of 75 Years.

OK, maybe a collection of Lex Luther comic books is not the final word on envy. But it is a starting place. After all, do you really want to start our study of envy with Aquinas? You do? OK.

Aquinas defines Envy by quoting Damascene: “Envy is sorrow for another’s good.” That seems like a crisp, clean definition.

Aquinas elaborates:

Since envy is about another’s good name in so far as it diminishes the good name a man desires to have, it follows that a man is envious of those only whom he wishes to rival or surpass in reputation.
But this does not apply to people who are far removed from one another: for no man, unless he be out of his mind, endeavors to rival or surpass in reputation those who are far above him. Thus a commoner does not envy the king, nor does the king envy a commoner whom he is far above. Wherefore a man envies not those who are far removed from him, whether in place, time, or station, but those who are near him, and whom he strives to rival or surpass. For it is against our will that these should be in better repute than we are, and that gives rise to sorrow.

We, like Aquinas, need to pause here for a moment to make sure we are talking about envy, and not things that look like envy. Aquinas notes, quoting Galatians 5:26, that envy in indeed a sin. But, the definition “sorrow for another’s good” encompasses things that are not a sin and thus not properly defined as envy. Aquinas notes four way such a sorrow might come about. (Remember, you are the one who wanted to start with Aquinas. I told you we could start with Lex Luther, but you scoffed at using a comic book to study envy. You did. I heard you.)

First, if the reason you are sorrowing at another’s good is that you believe the other’s good will cause harm to yourself or others, then it is not envy. You are, in other words, perfectly allowed to sorrow when evil triumphs.

Second, you may sorrow over another’s virtue (good) because you lack that virtue and wish you had it. This is zeal, not envy, and it is not a sin.

Third, one reason you may sorrow over another’s good is because the other is not worthy of the good. When an evil person gets lots of material goods, you might feel sorrow. Aristotle dubs this “indignation.” This sort of sorrow is misplaced and thus wrong; one should strive for virtuous, not temporal goods. But, while still wrong, this is not envy.

Fourth, “we grieve over a man’s good, in so far as his good surpasses ours; this is envy properly speaking, and is always sinful, as also the Philosopher states (Rhet. ii, 10), because to do so is to grieve over what should make us rejoice, viz. over our neighbor’s good.”

Now that envy has been defined, Aquinas goes on to explore first whether envy is a mortal sin and second whether envy is a capital vice. I know the suspense is killing you, so I’ll just quickly note the answer to both is “Yes.”

Here is the question: does this taxonomy of envy make you less likely to experience envy? Did it increase your zeal for good? No? Hmm. Maybe an example or two of the way that envy actually can destroy happiness would help. I know just the thing.

Lex Luthor: A Celebration of 75 Years is, like all the other volumes in this series, a really interesting way to see the development of a character. Luthor started out as a two-bit crook involving himself in international affairs. The most notable thing about him as that he had hair. Bright red hair. He also had some bald henchmen in his original story. In a subsequent appearance, an artist made the mistake of thinking the bald guy was Luthor and suddenly Luthor lost his hair. The look of an iconic villain was an artist’s mistake!

It took time for Luthor to acquire a personality, but when he finally did, there was no doubt what constituted the central passion of his life. Luthor is a genius. He is the sort of guy who would win all the awards in school and go on to be a hero of the whole planet. A 1983 story “Luthor Unleashed” shows the potential. Luthor ends up stranded on another planet and helps the people of the planet solve all their problems and he becomes the planet’s hero. (Alas, it does not last. Luthor cannot rid himself of his desire to beat Superman. In the ensuing battle, Luthor accidentally destroys the planet on which he was a hero. Do you feel sorrow for the demise of Luthor?)

Why is Luthor so obsessed with Superman? Luthor has it all. Brains and Brawn. Master inventor. He becomes President of the United States. He can do anything. Why spend his days fighting Superman? “The Gospel According to Lex Luthor” from 2006 has a fascinating conversation between Luthor and Clark Kent:

Luthor: This would never have happened if anyone else on this planet had the wit to see it. The smug self-regard that powers his beaming boyish grin. How does a man like you feel about Superman? Honestly?
Kent: I’m…ah…I’m fine with him. He’s always been friendly around the office.
Luther: And you don’t feel in any way diminished by his very presence on this planet? Strange….Imagine life on this world if some opportunistic alien vermin hadn’t decided to dump its trash here, Kent. That’s all I’ve ever asked anyone to do. Imagine how it was meant to be. We all fall short of that sickening, inhuman perfection, that impossible ideal….
Kent: Is it really all about Superman?

Yes, it is really all about Superman. Luthor is a textbook example of envy. Aquinas: “those who love to be honored are more envious.” Luthor wants to be honored for all that he can do. And yet, standing next to Superman, nobody will ever notice Luthor. That fuels everything Luthor ever does. As long as Superman is around, Luthor will always be at best the second greatest hero on Earth. He is close, oh so close, to being the Greatest. But, he will never get there.

Luthor teaches us that envy is destructive. It may seem like envy is a victimless crime, but it is not. The victim of envy is not necessarily the person who is envied. The victims are all the people who would benefit from the activities of the envier if only the envier could set aside envy and simply do good.

Do the lessons of Lex Luthor generalize? Of course they do. Tom Mayer, my advisor from back in college, once made this observation. Professors and researchers like to pretend they are truly interested in the advancement of knowledge. Imagine you have spent years working on a problem which really interests you and which you think is very important. Just when you are finishing up that project, someone else publishes a paper which addresses exactly the same problem and does a better job than you have done and gets better results that yours. Are you happy at this advance of knowledge?

The cure for envy? Virgil explains it to Dante:

Because your appetites are fixed on things
that, divided, lessen each one’s share,
envy’s bellows pushes breath into your sighs.

But if love for the highest sphere
could turn your longings toward heavenly things,
then fear of sharing would pass from your hearts.

For there above, when more souls speak of ours,
the more of goodness each one owns,
the more of love burning in that cloister.

So, is envy a sin? Does it cause damage to the envier and those whom the envier knows? When Aquinas, Dante, and Lex Luthor comic books all agree, surely we can count that as conclusive, right?

Green Lantern’s Light

Imagine you had a ring which would allow you to instantly create anything you could imagine.

What would you make?

Pretty obvious, right? You would instantly put on a goofy uniform and run around the universe fighting bad guys.

Green Lantern: A Celebration of 75 Years is a strange book. Like this whole series of celebrations from DC, it is a fabulous way to see the development of a superhero. That is not the same thing as seeing a “best of” series, though. In an overview like this, you see the character at both high and low points in development. And, wow, does Green Lantern have some low points. It’s not his fault though; he was a poorly conceived character from the start.

First, the bit of trivia known only to the aficionados: Green Lantern is not a person, it is a power charging unit for a ring that allows you to wear a Green Uniform. There have been five (yes, 5!) different people who took on the title of Green Lantern. Five on Earth, that is. There are a zillion Green Lanterns scattered across the universe. Well, not a zillion. Just something more than 7200.

You thought there was only one Green Lantern because the one who is best known is Hal Jordan, ace test pilot who is given the Green Lantern Ring. There was a movie about this Green Lantern…a movie that if you saw, you are trying desperately to forget. But, Hal wasn’t the first Green Lantern. That would be Alan Scott.

Scott was created in 1940. A meteor fell to earth “many years ago in old China” and someone turned the metal into a lamp (like the one a genie is trapped in), and then many years later for no apparent reason someone else turned it into an old-fashioned train lantern, and then later than that the lantern finds Alan Scott and gives him the power to create anything he wants with his mind. There are two limitations, though. First, the only color “anything he wants” comes in is green. And second, the power does not affect wood things…which makes zero sense, but whatever. Alan Scott was a total bore. The comic book is canceled. End of Green Lantern.

Then in 1959, seeking new comic book heroes, the Green Lantern is reborn, but in a slightly better way. Now there is a whole intergalactic Green Lantern Corps, who run around the Universe doing good things with Green Power Lamps and Rings. Hal Jordan is selected to be the Green Lantern of Earth because he is such a noble guy. He can create anything he wants and now he can even affect wood! Hooray! Ah, but he can’t affect anything that is yellow. Because…well, just go with it.

But, the Green Lantern stories run into an obvious problem. If you can create anything you want, what can you create? Suppose you meet Villain (who is obviously Bad). You want to stop Villain. How do you stop Villain? Pick your favorite way of crushing or immobilizing Villain. Problem solved. Next issue, repeat. You like crushing Villain under a massively heavy boulder? Well, just do that over and over. You like Encasing Villain in a solid block of impenetrable metal. Done. You like picking up villain with a giant hand and hurling him into outer space. Go ahead. No need to think about it, just pick one and use it every time.

Now, that would be very boring to read month after month. So, what do you do instead? Think of corny puns and create something that visualizes the corny pun. Sweep away the problem…with a Giant Broom and Dustpan! Get it?

After a few decades, you can tell the writers realized the character was stale, so suddenly a couple of other characters are born who can also be a Green Lantern whenever the writer needs something else to do.

Even that doesn’t work for too long. So then Hal Jordan, Mr. Green Lantern Himself, goes crazy and destroys the whole Green Lantern Universe! Don’t worry, the Green Lantern Corps is not completely destroyed. (Insert sigh of relief.) A new Green Lantern emerges. And most importantly, the new guy has a hot girlfriend who wears Oakland Raiders apparel! (I love her.) Then she dies. (How do you kill off the girlfriend who like the Raiders? How? Obviusly DC Comics has been infiltrated by Chiefs fans. I demand an investigation.)

And, so what do we learn from 75 years of Green Lantern comics? Quite a bit, actually. A character this strangely overpowered should never have lasted so long and become such a central part of the DC Universe. The thing that keeps him interesting is the fact that he is not an individual with superpowers. Alone among the Superheroes, he is important and powerful because he is a member of a Corps. It is only membership in the group that gives him power.

That idea that the group is what gives us the ability to do something obviously strikes a deep chord. We tend to think of superheroes as lone individuals fighting evil. Sometimes the lone individuals team up (see: The Justice League, the Avengers), but these are collections of individuals; the interactions of those individuals is what makes the team-ups so interesting.

The Green Lantern, on the other hand, does not exist without the Green Lantern Corps. He has a code he has to follow. He has a mantra he has to repeat every single day. The mantra is key:

In Brightest Day, In Blackest Night,
No Evil Shall Escape My Sight!
Let those who Worship Evil’s Might
Beware My Power—Green Lantern’s Light.

That is an interesting idea. Imagine a group of people fighting against the Dark Forces of Evil. Imagine that the people fighting against that evil have no power of their own. Imagine they can only derive their power by tapping into a power source of Light. And imagine the power of that Light cannot actually be used to do whatever you want; it can only be used to advance the Light against the Forces of Darkness and Evil.

Would that be a powerful narrative? Would lots of people be attracted to the idea that they too could tap into the Light and fight against Evil? The Green Lantern mythos wasn’t created in 1940 after all. It showed up about 2000 years earlier:

[The] light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.

Mapping the Bible

Imagine you are a person who has one of those study Bibles with maps in the back and you love those maps in the back and really wish there were even more maps because those maps are so great. (Maybe you don’t have to pretend this is you.)

Imagine having looked at that map of Paul’s missionary journeys so many times and you wished there was even more maps of journeys with brightly colored arrows showing all the places someone stopped.

In other words, you are a map junkie who really needs more maps.

Enter John Beck. He’ll fix you up. The Basic Bible Atlas has maps. Lots of maps. And according to the blurb on the back cover, you really need these maps. “To begin to fully understand the Bible, we must understand the geographical setting of Scripture and how each place participates in the biblical story.” Perhaps you want to begin to understand the Bible; I know I would like to begin to do that. So you and I must look at these maps!

The subtitle makes reading this book even more imperative: A Fascinating Guide to the Land of the Bible. Note, it is not a guide, it is a fascinating guide. Alas, I missed the clue in that subtitle. Imagine a book entitled A History of the Civil War. Maybe you are interested in reading it. If someone else told you the book was fascinating, you probably would want to read it even more. But imagine the title of the book was A Fascinating History of the Civil War. Does that slight change in title make you want to read it more or less?

Now that you are done reading the cover, you, the map junkie, dive into the book to discover all the fascinating things about the Bible which you can only learn by looking at these maps. And what do you find?

Well, there are maps. Sixty-two of them—roughly one every other page! That’s a lot of maps. Moreover, since there are maps relating to Bible stories, that is a lot of maps of Palestine. Page after page, more and more maps of Palestine. Zoom in for a map of a small section. Zoom out for a map of the region. Zoom in again. Zoom out again. You’ll really know where the Mediterranean Ocean and the Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee are by the end of this book.

If you are a map junkie and you want to look at lots of maps of Palestine, you’ll enjoy this book. But, what happens when you start reading the prose surrounding the maps? Sigh.

Chapter 2, “Introduction to the Biblical World” is about the area. We find out about the Fertile Crescent; that there was a major highway leading from Egypt to Damascus which ran through the region; that Palestine is not a very big area; that the area can be divided into a coastal region, a mountainous region, the Jordan Valley where the river connects the Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee, and the Transjordan region across the river; that there is not a lot of rain in the area; and that there are seasons and different crops planted at different times of year in different areas which have different soil types. If you didn’t know any of those things, you will like this chapter. Maps! And geographical features of the area!

But, then, we get to chapter 3. The rest of the book is simply Beck retelling the narrative portions of the Bible. Chapter by chapter, starting with Genesis and running through Revelation, Beck just retells the story. In telling the story, he mentions a lot of cities and you get a map! But, it is surprisingly rare when the story being told and the map on the page have any meaningful connection. You can look at the map and if you like maps, you’ll be happy. (Did I mention there are lots of maps?) You could instead read the text, and if you like hearing the narrative story of the Bible being retold, you’ll be happy. But if you want some meaningful connections between the maps and the story, you will be terribly disappointed. Over and over.

When reading the text, you will have to put up with a lot of odd speculation. For example, Beck repeats the description of Eden from the first two chapters of Eden. We then get this: “Given these qualities, we can creatively reassemble a day in the life of Adam and Eve.” If you are really interested in this creative reassembly, you’ll love this book! “They awakened in the morning to another beautiful day in paradise, a day brimming with joy and contentment…”

None of the above is to say that there are no interesting geographical notes in his book. They are just few and far between. In the story of Abraham, he first stops in Harran, before finally journeying on to the Promised Land. Beck notes that Harran is actually a really good place to settle; the Promised Land is not nearly so nice. That is another example of Abraham’s faith. However, oddly, Beck says absolutely nothing about the division of the land between Lot and Abram. In a book about the geography of the Bible, how did this division get omitted?

Similarly, the book does a nice job in showing that by beginning in Jericho, Israel’s assault on the Promised Land under Joshua began by splitting Canaan in half and capturing the connection point between the three main highways of the region. (In another interesting note—Jericho is not just the entry point to the Promised Land in Joshua, it is the exit point for the last king of Judah when the Babylonians roll into town.) By the end of Joshua’s campaign, the whole Promised Land had not been captured, but all the major transportation arteries had been. The importance of the cities of Shechem and Jerusalem gets discussed. (Oddly Bethlehem does not.)

The most curious absence from the book is maps of battle grounds. If you want one place where geography has a huge impact on history, it is certainly battlegrounds. What was the terrain like? Which battlegrounds favored chariots and which did not? How large are the battlegrounds relative to the size of the armies? Where is the high ground? Who is picking where the battles are fought? How are the cities situated and defended? Other than noting that Jerusalem was an odd location for a capital because it is actually not the high ground, there is virtually no discussion of these sorts of geographical details.

In the end, this is just an odd book. It promises lots of geographical insights, but fails to deliver. It does have those maps! And Beck’s prose easily rolls along. If you want a summary of the narrative part of the Bible, the book may not be a bad read at all. But, if you want an exploration of how the geography of the region affects the stories, look elsewhere.

Binging on Daily Devotionals

The Daily Devotional is a staple in the lives of many Christians. Set aside 15 minutes, read a short inspirational or thoughtful thing about God, think about it briefly, pray, and then go on with your day. Once you decide to do this, the first challenge is to find a good devotional booklet.

R. C. Sproul was a natural in this genre. He perfected it in a radio program and a zillion books. To take one example, three years before he died in 2017, he published Everyone’s a Theologian: An Introduction to Systematic Theology, which you would be excused for imagining is a work with long, intricate chapters exploring theology in a systematic fashion. Instead, the book has sixty chapters, each one about five pages long. Two months of daily devotionals in one book!

One of the interesting things about having an industry built around you is that your death does not end your publishing career. Growing in Holiness: Understanding God’s Role and Yours has the odd feature of looking like a book Sproul wrote, but the back cover notes that it is “drawn from lectures of beloved theologian R. C. Sproul,” which makes one wonder what “drawn from” means and who did the drawing, or more accurately editing, of this book.

The book is in the genre of “half-time pep talk.” It is an earnest: “You are doing great! Don’t lose hope now! Just keep working hard and you will succeed!”

The content is a bit repetitive, not surprising in a mysteriously edited book drawn from lectures. We have a chapter on how 1 Corinthians 13 (the love chapter) is parallel to the Galatians passage on the fruit of the spirit, immediately followed by a chapter on the Galatians passage on the fruit of the spirit. The chapter entitled “The Assurance of Salvation,” showing that assurance of salvation come from being confident in Christ, is immediately followed by the chapter “Confidence in Christ,” which explains how confidence in Christ gives us assurance of salvation.

The biggest problem with a book like this is reading it as if it is a book with a developing argument. It is better seen as a whole series of daily devotions strung together. If you are going to read it, don’t make the mistake of setting aside an evening and reading it straight through.

Insofar as there is an overarching theme in the book, it is, as the title suggests, growing in holiness, or, using a theological term Sproul really likes, “sanctification.” How do you become more holy? Slowly.

Remember there aren’t any shortcuts. You may find various resources at Christian bookstores on how to be a spiritual giant in in three easy lessons, but you are wasting time and money reading a book like that. Why? Because there are no such easy lessons with three quick steps. It’s work—pressing work, demanding work—and it requires a plan. Which is precisely why Jesus tells us there is a cost to discipleship.

To become more holy, you have to work at it, year after year after year. “Patiently pursue love” is Sproul’s pithy formulation. For a reader who is growing weary on the Christian walk, for a reader who is frustrated that perfection has not yet arrived, for a reader who is about to give up the struggle to be good because it seems so hopeless, Growing in Holiness says, “Don’t give up hope. Just take one more step. You can do this.”

What keeps the book from being a dull refrain is the endless set of asides or slightly different ways of framing the admonition to patiently pursue love. As befits a long series of short homilies, the quality of these framing devices varies hugely in quality. We could map them into the good, the bad, and the ugly. Let’s look at some examples.

The Good. In the section on the fruits of the Spirit, Sproul gets to “goodness.” What is goodness? When you say someone is a good person, what do you mean? It’s an odd word to define, but Sproul’s definition seems to come out of nowhere. “One of its dimensions in biblical terms is the ability to appreciate excellence. We have been born again with an ability to appreciate the good, the true, and the beautiful.” How does this manifest itself?

I love to walk into cathedrals. There is a sense of transcendence that I experience just by the very atmosphere the Gothic architecture communicates. I become pensive, contemplative. It centers on the exalted nature of God. I enjoy choral music by Handel, Mendelssohn, and Bach, where the finest artistry was done to the glory of God. Many people overlook that Bach was desperately opposed to the Enlightenment. He consciously intended his music as an apologetic for Christianity.

My first reaction on reading that was incredulousness. Is Sproul really saying that one of the fruits of the Spirit is that you like Bach? Don’t get me wrong, I love Bach. But, is that really what goodness means? Hard to believe it is.

Then I realized: I can say “Alyosha is a good person.” I can also say “Bach wrote good music.” Does “good” mean the same thing in those two sentences? What is the connection? Something worth pondering—which is exactly the point of an aside in a Daily Devotional. I doubt these thoughts will go where Sproul wants them to go—I have a very hard time believing that because of the work of the Holy Spirit Christians appreciate Bach more than non-Christians do—but, there is something there worth pondering.

The Bad. In the section on obstacles to overcome, Sproul tell us “This is so basic and central to Christianity that to deny it is basically to deny the essence of the faith itself.” What is this most central doctrine of the faith, this doctrine that to deny is the same thing as denying Christ Himself? The existence of a singular malevolent being, the devil named Satan. Most Christians accept the existence of Satan. But to elevate belief in Satan to the same level as belief in Christ, to say that thinking that there may not be a unique being called Satan is to “deny the essence of the faith itself,” is wildly too strong a claim.

What is Sproul’s evidence for the existence of Satan? Here is where it gets rather bad. The Lord’s Prayer. You know the line: “Deliver us from…” Is it “evil” or “the evil one”? Experts on Greek disagree which is right. But Sproul knows it is “the evil one” and he knows “the evil one” means Satan, so there is proof that doubting the existence of Satan is the same as denying the essence of the faith.

Not good. Not good at all.

The Ugly. At least the Satan passage could be excused as Sproul just fighting a linguistic war with other translators. Not so his ruminations on some aspects of growing in holiness. There is a bizarre Legalistic Calvinism lurking at the center of some of Sproul’s admonitions. This merits examination.

Sproul wants to give the readers assurance of their salvation. If you are saved and you know it, great. If you are not saved and you know it, also great (well not great that you are not saved, but great that you know you are not saved). But, there are two other categories. There are people who are saved and don’t know it and people who are not saved and don’t know it (they think they are saved). How do you find out if you are in one of those categories?

Well, Sproul argues, look at how you are behaving. If you aren’t following the rules, then you are like the Pharisees and not saved. Jesus chastises the Pharisees for tithing mint and dill but neglecting mercy and faithfulness. And, Sproul notes, lots of people in churches are not even doing as well as the Pharisees. “I’ve read studies that indicate only 4 percent of members of evangelical churches tithe today, which means that 96 percent of professing evangelical Christians systematically rob God of their tithes.”

Lest you think that is an isolated example

I think it’s theoretically possible for a regenerate Christian to fall into such slothfulness in his spiritual growth that he neglects the means of grace—the assembling together of the saints—and that he gets himself into a pattern where he doesn’t go to church except twice a year. That is conceivable, and it is possible if you are numbered among those people that you are still in fact a Christian.
But, dear friend, the odds against it are astronomical.

The odds are against it? Uh, are we playing the odds here? Is the test of faith simply going to church and giving 10% of your earnings (before or after tax?) to God? Sproul knows better than that. I know that isn’t what he really means. But it is what he is saying.

Reducing growing in holiness to the question of how much to give to your local church or how many times a month you attend church services cheapens the underlying message of the book. Patiently pursue love—that is excellent advice to growing in holiness. Make sure you tithe? That is awful advice to growing in holiness. The difference? The first is a change of heart, which will inevitably lead to better action. The second is a change in action, which may never result in a change in heart. Sproul would almost certainly agree with that, which is what makes parts of this book so incredibly disappointing.

What is Creation?

File this under: Books that should be much more widely read than they are.

Creation and New Creation: Understanding God’s Creation Project, by Sean McDonough

If you have any interest at all in Christian theology, you should order this book right now. You can even use the image of the book cover to the right to do so.

Theology is a tricky genre. Books tend to fall into three camps.

First there are the books written by and for academic theologians. Like all academic books in any discipline, most are dense, unreadable and not really worth reading. The exceptions become the Great Books. These are the books you read because you want to know what the author has argued. Think: books by people who will become the next Augustine or Aquinas or Calvin. Authors like that are worth reading. It is not a criticism that most people trying to write deep works of theology are not writing Great Books. That is the nature of the game. But, if you are outside the guild, most books in this genre are not worth reading.

The second type of books are the commentaries. The audience here is a combination of other academics and pastors. For the most part, commentaries are very tedious to read. They seem designed to allow a pastor faced with having to give a sermon on verses 10-19 of some chapter in the Bible to have a one-stop source of enough anecdotes and cross references to fill up a 30 minute sermon. There are some genuine insights in a Great Commentary, but even the best commentaries makes lousy reading on a Tuesday night.

The third type of book is aimed at a mass audience. Most of these are Theology Lite combined with some exhortation to Go Forth and Do Good. There is some genuinely good work done in this genre, and many people read and profit from these books. Finding the good books like this is like looking for gems in a desert; you know they are out there, but you really need a map to find them.

So, into which category does McDonough’s book fall? None of them. And that is the thing that makes this book stand apart.

As the subtitle notes, McDonough sets out to examine “God’s Creation Project.” Someone lent me a copy of the book, saying I would like it. I flipped through it to see what it was and instantly realized I needed to buy a copy because this was a book I was going to seriously mark up.

The book is structured around questions about the Creation Project. Chapter by chapter, McDonough raises a series of deep theological questions about Creation and then launches into an exploration of the assorted answers people have given to the questions. McDonough is a crisp writer, sketching out complicated theological puzzles with seeming ease.

But, then, McDonough does something extraordinary. He never gives into the temptation to pretend there are good answers to the difficult questions. He fairly examines the strong and weak parts of assorted answers and then if there is no obvious answer, just leaves the question on the table.

When I teach courses or give lectures on Western Civilization, I always start by noting that the History of Western Civilization is a history of questions, not a history of answers. That is what makes Western Civilization unique; it is constantly in search of answers. Theology is like that too. We still have not discovered all the depths of God or Scripture; there are always new things to learn. And the way to learn these things is to start by acknowledging we don’t have all the answers.

What makes McDonough’s book so extraordinary is that I finished reading it with more questions than I had when I started. I learned questions in his book I did not know existed. I discovered answers I had when I started evaporated under McDonough’s deft exploration of alternatives.

In other words: I know less about God’s Creation Project now than when I started this book. I am vastly more fascinated by the subject than I have ever been before. That is extremely high praise.

What does the book cover? Here are some of the questions.

Why did God create the world?

Was the purpose of Creation to enable Christ to redeem it?

Did God choose to create the world or was creating the world a necessary part of His being? In other words, is being a Creator an inherent characteristic of God or a choice God made?

Is this the best of all possible worlds?

How does an infinite, eternal God create a finite, temporal world?

When was the world created? That is not just how old is the world, but also what does it mean to discuss the time before the world was created?

Where is the world (or more properly, the Universe) located?

Is God in the Universe or outside the Universe? Or, is the Universe inside God?

Was the world created from nothing?

Was Eden inside or outside of time and space? Was the first human created inside or outside of Eden or the world?

How important is Plato in understanding Christian theology?

Would a theology without Platonic influence be a superior or inferior theology?

Is creation an event that has happened or is creation continually happening?

What exactly is beauty?

Let me be very clear. The above list of questions is not exhaustive. There are many more in this book. I have answers to some of those questions which I am reasonably confident are correct. I don’t even have a guess about how to answer others.

I am perfectly confident, however, that if you are at all interested in this topic, you read that list of questions and are intrigued by some of them. That is why you want to read this book. It may not give you an answer; it may make you even more confused and doubtful of the answers you thought you had. You may not find every question equally interesting. But, if you like thinking about Big Questions that don’t have obvious answers, then there is no way you will read this book and not be very glad you did so.

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Explaining Christianity to Christians

Some books have the wrong title.

This creates two problems. The more obvious problem: people who buy the book because of the title will be disappointed. The bigger problem: people who would really enjoy the book will never buy it because they have no idea it is a book written for them.

The case in point: James Emery White’s Christianity for People Who Aren’t Christians: Uncommon Answers to Common Questions.

The first sentence sets the tone: “I hope you begin this book with a healthy amount of doubt.” White then proceeds to explore a wide array of aspects of Christian theology. It is quite the collection of topics: Existence of God, Nature of God, Nature of Christ, and the basics of Christian Theology, the Bible, and the Church. Some quibbles aside (more about that anon), it is a solid book.

However, and it is a very important “However,” this is not a book I would hand to any non-Christian I have ever known and say, “Here is a book you should read.” On the other hand, I have known a lot of Christians to whom I would happily recommend this book. For reasons explained below, a more accurate title for the book is Christianity for Christians who Have a Lot of Questions about the Nature of What They Say They Believe.

Then consider the subtitle of the book: Uncommon Answers to Common Questions. With that subtitle, I naturally enough read the book waiting for the moments when White ventured out past the edge with an uncommon answer, either providing uncommon insight or wandering into the fringes of heresy. Instead, at no point in the entire book was there a single answer to a common question which was anything other than a quite common answer. I can’t even imagine where White believes any of his answers are uncommon. He keeps insisting through the whole book that his answers are simply run-of-the-mill Christian answers. I could suggest the subtitle should be Common Answers to Common Questions, but that is a pretty lame subtitle.

I would be fascinated to know if the title of this book was White’s own idea. The title reads like someone at the publisher spent too much time dreaming up titles which would have a big market, put them in a drawer waiting for a book to show up, saw this book, and slapped the title onto it.

So, what is the difference between a book explaining Christianity to non-Christians and one explaining it to Christians? The difference can be seen in thinking about an example from this book. The first substantive chapter sets out to prove the existence of God. The evidence White uses is the nature of the universe. It is, as he says, a universe which is “freakishly suited for human life.” It is a universe which, according to the most common view, is not eternal but originated in a Big Bang, yet there is no scientific explanation for the origin of the thing that went Bang. It is a universe in which things evolve which are so complex that the probability that they evolved due purely to random chance is smaller than infinitesimally small.

All those things about this universe are true. Do they prove there is a God? Of course not. Indeed, it would be a very dangerous argument to insist that these things are the proof of God. Scientific knowledge advances. Physicists are now exploring the idea that the Universe did not originate with Big Bang; instead it expands to its outer limit and then contracts back down and then expands again and then contracts again; it is a sort of bouncing universe. Biologists are exploring ways that evolutionary mechanisms might work which do not involve random genetic mutations. If anything like either of these theories ever becomes the best scientific explanation of the universe, there would still be no conflict with Christianity. So why would Christians want to tie their theology to the current state of scientific knowledge?

In other words, White’s argument here for the existence of God will persuade nobody who reads it with the doubt he encouraged in the first sentence of the book. But, imagine a Christian, who does believe in God. This chapter is an enormously useful overview of how a belief in God is easily reconciled with modern scientific understandings of the Universe.

In other words, what White has done is shown how Christianity is not in contradiction to scientific knowledge, not that scientific knowledge proves the existence of God.

To take another example, White recycles the C.S. Lewis bit about how we are faced with believing that Jesus is necessarily Liar, Lunatic, or Lord. In the gospel of John, for example, Jesus makes an explicit claim to be God. So, when people say they like the teachings of Jesus, but reject the divinity of Christ, the Lewis argument is a very nice thing for Christians to consider. If you accept the authority of the gospel of John, then indeed, you either have to believe that Jesus is God or that he was a liar or a lunatic.

But, what if you are not a Christian and you don’t accept the authority of the gospel of John? Then, it turns out there is a very easy solution to the problem. You can easily like the teachings of Jesus recorded elsewhere, but think John was not telling the truth at the part of the narrative in in which he wrote that Jesus claimed to be God.

There are very many examples along these lines. In case after case, it was easy to imagine Christians I have known who would learn a lot from this book, but difficult to imagine non-Christians I have known who would find this book persuasive at all.

However, and it is another very important “However,” the real title of the book is not even Christianity for Christians who Have a Lot of Questions About the Nature of What They Say They Believe. It should be Christianity for American Evangelical Christians who Have a Lot of Questions About the Nature of What They Say They Believe.

(Quick aside: the term “Evangelical Christian” has morphed in the last three years, and no longer means what it meant a decade ago. (More about this in a future blog post.) Unfortunately, there isn’t a new title for the Evangelicals of a decade ago. So, in the face of that problem, we have to stick with the word that no longer really means what it used to mean.)

There is no better example of this limitation of the book than this:

Did Jesus have brothers and sisters? As you read just a minute ago, yes, he had brothers. Christians believe his brothers were half-brothers through Mary…

Uh…Christians believe that? All Christians? It is an article of faith in the Roman Catholic Church that Mary was a perpetual virgin…so, is White saying Roman Catholics are not Christians? He certainly is saying that right here. Fortunately, later in the book, in explaining why there are so many denominations, he includes the Roman Catholics in the category of Christian.

This is just an example of the massive blind spot that runs throughout White’s book. When White talks about Christians, he means Christians like him. Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholics, and the mainline Protestant denominations don’t really enter into White’s conception of Christianity. This is terribly surprising given White’s clear reliance on and love of C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity. While I suspect White thought he was writing an update of Lewis’ book, he missed the memo on making sure the Christianity being described is the things Christians universally believe.

Similar blind spots are also undoubtedly related to the many quibbles I had in parts of the book. To take one example, White addresses the common complaint that there are contradictions in the Bible. He is entirely right in noting that none of the so-called contradictions really give us any reason to doubt the accuracy and internal coherence of the text. To show this, he picks the well-known problem of the cock crowing before Peter’s denial of Christ. Matthew’s gospel says Jesus said that Peter would deny Christ three time before the cock crowed. Mark’s gospel says that Jesus said that Peter would deny Christ three time before the cock crowed twice. These are obviously not the same statements. White explains: “Again, that’s not a contradiction. Peter would deny Jesus before the cock crowed, but Mark simply supplies an added detail—that the cock wouldn’t crow just once, but twice. Not exactly a scandal.”

What is a scandal is that White does not seem to have read the gospel of Mark before writing those sentences. White is clearly saying that the chain of events is Peter denies Christ three times and then the cock crows twice. If that is what happened, then Matthew and Mark are, as White says, in no way contradictory. But, if you actually read the gospel of Mark, the cock crows the first time after Peter’s first denial, but before his second and third denials. This is not even a hidden detail: it is quite explicit in text. In other words, White’s attempt to brush away the contradiction is not only wrong, but actually wrong in a way that unfortunately would cast suspicion on his whole method of argument if one started as the doubter White encouraged in the first sentence of the book. One might wonder: If White can’t be trusted to be accurate in describing the stories in the Bible, then is he accurate anywhere else?

Why did this happen? I have no idea. But, the simple truth is that there was no reason for White to make this sort of claim in the first place. The difference between the two accounts in easily explained if you think even briefly about the nature of biography in the first century. These sorts of details are not the point of the story; Matthew and Mark are writing moral biographies (akin to Plutarch), not “what happened at 3:36 pm on June 24^th” biographies.

The larger problem to which these sorts of problem point is White’s obvious desire to wrap up all the theological questions into nice little packages. He wants to answer, really answer, all the questions. He makes the extraordinary claim that “99 percent of the Bible does not take any heavy lifting in regard to interpretation.” That is simply absurd and, while White does not mean it this way, it utterly trivializes the Bible.

The Bible is a Great Book. It is worthy of attention from both Christians and non-Christians and will repay rereading and deep study. It requires thought, much thought, to divine all of its secrets. Yes, there are many lessons which can be learned in the first reading, many lessons which can be understood by anyone. But, to trivialize two thousand years of theological debate as arguing over a mere 1% of the text is beneath White. Some question are simply hard to answer.

All that being said, I’ll return to what I noted at the outset. Problems aside (all books have problems after all), this is a very good book for an American Evangelical Christian who is wondering about how to think about the faith. If you are someone like that or know someone like that, this is a rather good book. But, I would not even think about getting the book for your non-Christian friends.