Naturalistic vs. Christian Theistic Views of History

Here is a letter by my editorial-adversary, David McLoughlin. He normally attacks the faith in the Bedford Bulletin, and keeps his political morosophy restricted to the Lynchburg, VA News & Advance. Last week, however, he stepped out side the box a bit and submitted this in Lynchburg. So, of course, I couldn’t allow the opportunity to pass. As of today, my response letter is still forthcoming.

History’s ‘what-ifs’

Letter writers frequently refer to the U.S. as a “Christian nation” or declare our “exceptionalism” — neither of which is true. Our heritage is as much the result of accident as it is of our own determination. Consider just a couple of the “what ifs” of history and think how fragile the outcomes were and what might have been.

After Muhammad’s establishment of Islam, it spread rapidly across North Africa resulting in the Moors ruling Spain for 700 years. In 1492, the Moors were finally defeated at Granada and ultimately driven out. What if the Moors had won at Granada?

Soon thereafter Spain began its exploration of the New World which included both North and South America. If the Muslims rather than Christians had been in control, Islam, not Christianity, may have dominated the Americas. The Spanish influence from Mexico south is still recognizable today. Our largest minority will soon be Hispanic. While my pure speculation may be of interest only to those who recognize the fragility and accidental character of history, it does suggest that we ought not to be so smug and certain of the reasons that provide the foundation of our characteristics today. We are as much an accident of history as any other nation and, as such, should accept that our destiny might have been much different. The Middle East is the result of the English drawing lines in the sand after World War I, and we are still living with that disaster.

The U.S. is important today as much because of the rich resources we inherited and the two oceans and two friendly countries on our borders as for our own efforts. While it’s true we are predominately Christian by numbers, thankfully we are a secular nation by our Constitution. Could it have been different if the Muslims had won at Granada? Sure. Most U.S. Christians might have been Muslim just like they would have been Hindu if born in India. Imagine a Muslim Liberty University.

My point, of course, is that we are the product of our history as fragile as that is, and a more worldly view, as opposed to an ethnocentric myopia, would serve us well as we participate in a multicultural world.

If people dislike the U.S., it’s not because of our wealth, but because of our attitudes and actions toward people of other nations.

DAVID McLOUGHLIN

Historical Whatnots?

I am compelled to identify the latent comic relief in David McLoughlin’s, “History’s ‘what-ifs’ (Letters to the Editor, Wednesday, 03/10). Although his premises and conclusions had serious intentions, attempting to wed these produces some slapstick philosophy. While McLoughlin admited his “pure speculation” would likely impress only those who share his outlook, he imposed his criticisms and conclusions upon everyone.

The undercurrent of this letter is what’s known as metaphysical determinism. That is, a view of final reality that starts with a blind, undirected universe, consisting of only physical stuffs—like humans and nations. These stuffs move through history, controlled purely by fixed natural laws. Prior physical stuffs, working in accord with these fixed natural laws produce “fragile...accidental” features with no unifying, purposive beginning, meaning or end.

Mindful of this, consider McLoughlin’s central what-if: “What if the Moors had won Granada?”

If peoples and nations are simply material stuffs, aimlessly determined by impersonal natural law, then one could rightly ask, What do you mean, “What-if”? Does he mean, ‘What if’ natural law was temporarily suspended in order to bring about an alternate product to that which all the historical and physical antecedent causes had predetermined (I owe kudos to Steve for this line of criticism)? This is ironically similar to C. S. Lewis’ definition of miracles. Natural miracles, Mr. McLoughlin? Hilarious.

Historical “what-ifs” make sense only if there is an absolute-personality Who, knowing all possible choices, deliberates and governs according to His plan and purposes. Thankfully, there is. “For kingship belongs to the LORD, and he rules over the nations” (Psalm 22:28). McLoughlin’s “What-ifs” are intelligible only if the very Christianity he despises were true.

Secondly, he admitted that his observations were conjectural, but from these he goes on to insist, “we ought...we should.” These are moral terms. It is plain silliness to say that persons are the “accidental” outcome of blind historical and natural forces, and then speak of moral obligations. If McLoughlin’s correct, we may describe what “is” the case, but never prescribe what “ought” to be the case. Morality, Mr. McLoughlin? Uproarious.

Finally, McLoughlin presumes, on the one hand, that peoples’ choice of religion is sociologically determined. Nevertheless, even in making this claim, he, on the other hand, understands himself and his position free from such a morass, and thus culturally neutral. Sounds somewhat funny doesn’t it? Exactly.

McLoughlin, from his own culturally relative, predetermined social construct within a blind, impersonal historical flux, makes the moral demand that the rest of us, namely Christians, make the objective, personal, ethically meaningful choice to transcend our socially determined biases. Sidesplitting!

Only if Christianity is true, could McLoughlin’s request be performed.


KEVIN STEVENSON

Tertullian on Idolatry and Its Taunt-worthiness

What are the consequences of people's rejection to building their lives on a reverent respect and fear of the Lord? One of the consequences is foolishness, the hatred of all knowledge and wisdom and sound instruction (Prov 1:7, 29). This, because a person can’t despise the One in whom are hidden all the riches of wisdom and knowledge and still retain a solid foundation for life (Col 2:3). Every aspect of the unbeliever’s thoughts, words and deeds is resting squarely on a sand-like foundation (Matt 7:24ff).

Additionally, since as humans created to reflect what we reverence, in our unbelief we wind up taking on the dead, impersonal, and irrational characteristics of whatever object we have given God’s place of ultimacy over to (Ps 115:3—8). This idolatry leads us to futile reasoning and hearts of darkness. Finally, our exchanging the natural relationship we are to have with our God for that which is unnatural, worshipping something in creation (ultimately ourselves), leads us to pervert ALL that is natural. Making the natural unnatural and then proclaiming it “natural,” putting our selves as gods, we throw everything upside down and backwards (Rom 1:18ff). What’s saddest is that, we believe the upside down and backwards world is “just the way things are”—in a word, normal.

What the unbelieving world calls “normal,” Paul describes as a world of people who operate within every domain in the “futility of their minds,” and are “darkened in their understanding...hard-hearted” and “ignorant” (Eph 4:17—18). However, Paul also teaches us that God, in the omnipotent power and divine wisdom of the gospel, has made the world’s wisdom to be seen for the foolishness that it is; and the world’s perceived strength as it is in reality, weakness.

Now, as confessing Christians, we at least mentally assent to and affirm the truth of these biblical assessments of the unbelieving rationale (or should!). Far from Freud’s “psycho-scientific” conclusion that, our primary problems are the result of repressed anxieties of our sexual or patricidal tendencies; or Skinner’s excusing inferences from a person’s antecedent sociological depravations of one kind or another, the biblical diagnosis of our problem is simply idolatry. And idolatry makes one stupid—sin is irrationality in its highest manifestation. Despite the perceptions and delusions of the world, this is the reality and nature of the case.

Nevertheless, how often are we honest (or convicted) enough to tell the truth in this regard? Why aren’t Christians more willing to “answer the fool according to his folly” (Prov 1:5), not merely announcing the biblical diagnosis, but demonstrating it as well? As D. A. Carson often says, we’ll never agree on the solution (i.e., the gospel) until we can first agree on the problem (i.e., idolatry). The gospel is the only alternative to idolatry.

There has been one in our past who was not afraid to do these very things: reduce humanity’s dilemma down to the living true God or idols, and then make a mockery of the latter option. This one’s name was Tertullian.

In chapter I of De Idololatria, Tertullian gives a persuasive exhibition of how every sin, vice and avarice is in principle only a flagrant display of the deeper problem of idolatry. “The principle crime of the human race, the highest guilt charged upon the world, the whole procuring cause of judgment, is idolatry.” This is the opening line of this work, and the thesis that the rest compellingly proves.

Fraud, even, is rooted in idolatry. Tertullian explains, “The essence of fraud, I take it, is, that any should seize what is another’s, or refuse to another his due; and of course, fraud done toward man is a name of great crime. Well, but idolatry does fraud to God, by refusing to Him, and conferring on others, His honors.” Many similar correspondences are draw in this way. He concludes this chapter. “[S]ince all faults savor opposition to God...doubtless, whoever commits a fault is chargeable with idolatry.”

From a biblical perspective, idolatry is the root of all evil; for Tertullian, it was the same.

We insist that idolatry has not only moral but also intellectual fallout—idolatry = irrationality. Tertullian was quite comfortable to repeatedly point this out to his opponents. It must further be borne in mind that, in the late second and early third centuries, the N. African and Asia Minor Christian communities were experiencing a baptism of blood. Tertullian’s penchant for sardonic tones and heckling taunts were on the pains of death. Today, in the West, we fear challenging our Intelligentsians in the academy, for example, lest our grades suffer; we instead regurgitate their buffoonery back to them on tests and in papers, and in the end, place a measure of offering on the alter of rebellious human Reason. Not Tertullian. There was no compromise at any point; there will always be antithesis between the Church and the Academy, between Jerusalem and Athens.

Last night, Beaner and I read a striking example of his canny for making a mockery out of the judgments of idolaters who despised Christians for nothing more than their name. His point was to illustrate how the Emperor and the Senates’ hatred for Christ and his people had driven them to utter madness. This he does in both Apology II, III and Ad Nationes II. The latter makes the point lucid.

“In this case [of those charged only with being Christians] you actually conduct trials contrary to the usual form of judicial process against criminals; for when culprits are brought up for trial, should they deny the charge, you press them for a confession by tortures. When Christians, however, confess without compulsion, you apply torture to induce them to deny. What great perversity is this, when you stand out against confession, and change the use of torture, compelling the man who frankly acknowledges the charge to evade it, and him who is unwilling, to deny it? You, who preside for the purpose of extorting truth, demand falsehood from us alone, that we declare ourselves not to be what we are...To be sure, you put others on the rack and gibbet, to get them to deny what they have the reputation of being. Now, when they deny (the charge against them), you do not believe them; but on our denial [of Christ and the faith], you instantly believe us!”

“Let this perversity of yours lead you to suspect that there is some hidden power in the case under whose influence you act against the forms [of jurisprudence], against the nature of public justice, even against the laws themselves” (Apol. II).

“Upside down and backwards” are the terms we ascribed to the folly of idolatry earlier, and Tertullian has given us a brilliant illustration of it in the antichrist idolaters of his own day. “O miserable deliverance,--under the necessity of the case, a self-contradiction!...Goodness is of less value that hatred of Christians!” (Apol. II, III).

Although Tertullian had some heterodox slippage, not least with his Montanistic leanings, his taunts and censors against the idolatry and heresy of his day were reminiscent of Paul and in parts Jesus also.

That’s Tertullian. But, what about us today?