Unless a Seed Dies

Staring at the Sun

2012-01-30T14:21:00.002-05:00

Who is God, really? How should we think of God? We can begin by recognizing that we cannot know God. He is infinite, we are finite. He is the uncreated One, we are created. We can never fully cross this chasm by ourselves; it is like staring at the Sun, or climbing an infinite mountain. There are mysteries we will never grasp, depths we will never plumb, heights too high even for the Seraphim. Is this cause for discouragement? No indeed. This realization brings from C. S. Lewis the greatest outburst of praise, culminating what is perhaps the most beautiful chapter in all his writing. In Perelandra he speaks of “the Abyss of the Father, into which if a creature drop down his thoughts for ever he shall hear no echo return to him. Blessed, blessed, blessed be He!" No matter how much we take in in ages and worlds to come, there will always be abundantly more of God to discover. We will always be able to drop our thoughts down so deep that no echo ever returns. No echo!

Only after realizing this can we appreciate the truth that God has crossed this great chasm. The Incarnation is the fall of God, the descent of the Creator into creation. Before God became a man, the world was, though fallen, still reflecting His light: We may see God’s beauty in the stars, or in great music, or in human relationships, and exclaim with Lewis “what must be the quality of that Being whose far-off and momentary coruscations are like this!” But now in Jesus, God has given us a face, an “image” as Paul says. In this man’s deep love and humility, set side by side with his bold authority, and in his great courage at the end - in all this the greatest light breaks through. We see in small measure the personality of God, the character of a Person.

Mathematical Beauty: Roots of Polynomials

2011-12-16T17:01:00.000-05:00

On the subject of mathematical beauty, something I've mentioned before (eg. here and here), I couldn't resist pointing to this post about roots of polynomials from John Baez's blog...fascinating stuff. The basic idea: if you plot the complex roots of degree-24 polynomials, with coefficients 1 or -1, in the complex plane, you get the beautiful pattern below. Complexity emerges from simplicity, or if you prefer, within complexity, simplicity is hidden.

Dark Energy, Cosmic Acceleration, and the Anthropic Principle

2011-12-12T23:22:00.000-05:00

For those interested in the history and future of our universe, here is a link to a paper I wrote for my cosmology class. It's a summary of various attempts to identify what is causing the accelerated expansion of the universe (this year's Nobel prize in physics was awarded to the discoverers of this fact). Whatever it is, it's been given the name "dark energy."

Dark energy might turn out to be the cosmological constant, a parameter in Einstein's field equations, which relate matter to the curvature of spacetime. If so, we are faced with the question of why it is so small (there could be much much more dark energy). One potential explanation, advocated by Steven Weinberg, is that the cosmological constant varies over vast regions of space (or in different "universes" that comprise a "multiverse"), and life can only exist where the cosmological constant has a very small value. Thus, wherever life is in the universe, it will have to observe a small value of the cosmological constant. (For a more detailed explanation, see the paper.)

Some Christian apologists have viewed this explanation as a philosophically motivated attempt to escape the implication that God "finely tuned" the cosmological constant so that life could exist. The problem with this view is that it jumps the gun and fills the "gap" that science has not yet explained by appealing to God. But the value of the cosmological constant / dark energy is a scientific question, and theoretical physicists may very well yet be able to give a well-grounded explanation. Time and again, apparent appearances of "design" have found a scientific explanation, and scientific "God of the gaps" arguments have failed.

As a Christian, I myself believe that God is a necessary explanation for the world we experience. But we need to make sure we believe in God for the right reasons. Incorrect reasoning, even if it points towards the right conclusion, can still distort one's worldview. In particular, the wrong reasons may lead us to wrong ideas of God and the world he has made.

Let Us Sing

2011-11-06T11:17:00.001-05:00

A famous physicist said that truth can be recognized by its beauty, a principle which (when carefully qualified) applies not only in physics but to truth in general. The story of Christ's death and resurrection has this kind of of compelling, evidential beauty.

We find ourselves in a world full of good and evil, light and darkness, beauty and suffering.Reality is a beautiful portrait, yet scarred and torn. Why should it be this way?We live and love, suffer and die, and our bodies rot. Why? Death is not the final word, for humanity or for the universe. Hope points us towards something greater. We hear the great Music, we feel the truth that our story ends in joy. No evil can quench this spirit.

The suffering of humanity is so deep, and yet our hope so strong and sure, that God alone can answer to it.

Christianity tells us the story of our world: God himself suffered, bearing the greatest burden. He walked among us, and showed us love. He loved us till the end, giving himself unto death. No flower blooms unless a seed dies, and neither can creation be born unless it passes through the darkness first. But in Christ, it is God himself who leads us through this night. This emptying, suffering, even death of God in Christ is the greatest mystery, for through it all is healed and redeemed. Mystery and paradox surround the cross, where death overturns itself. A seed of resurrection is planted: the world is changed forever.

In the Great Battle, good overcomes evil. Joy is born from suffering. Death is swallowed up in victory. Love is the last word.

We see now as through a glass darkly, but we will see face to face.

Where God is, there is the center, and he is in all things: in the cosmos and the quantum, in the primes, in the stars and trees and wind, in music, in our pain, within us. Each beauty is his Name, each ray of light is from this bright Star, even all creation is the river from this source and fountain, the One in whom all things are brought together.

He is Risen.

Let us sing.

A Spiritual Universe

2011-11-02T15:18:00.000-04:00

There is a spiritual depth to physical reality, and by spiritual I do not mean “supernatural.” I mean something very real, “objective” if you will, something we perceive in a beautiful piece of music, for example, or in the physical laws of the world themselves: a beauty or depth that we cannot quite pin down. We cannot say for sure what it is or where it comes from, but I think we perceive something real.

The world is, so far as we know, quantum fields interacting with spacetime. When we hear music, these fields are singing to us. When we see the stars, the trees, the sea, we see the dance of these fields. The music arises naturally from them - in a sense it is hidden within them. The laws of nature are planted like a seed, and from them grows the tree of reality that we see.

The laws of nature, then, are also “spiritual” - as the seed, they contain within them the blueprint for the beautiful (and terrible) emergent world that we experience. The most basic laws, the unfolding of the early universe, the first elements, the first stars, our planet, life itself - all this is deeply spiritual. It means something.

If this sounds pantheistic, I don’t mean it that way. I simply mean that we should be in awe of reality, and that we are right to ask where it comes from, and what it means, because it does seem to mean something.

We should ask “what then is this universe? these fields from which everything unfolds?” or perhaps we may feel compelled to ask “who then is this, who speaks? who is this, of whom the laws of our world are but a seed falling from an outer branch?” There may be something deeper still, and greater, of which these fields, these laws of nature, and all that emerges from them, are but one part. Reality is likely much bigger than the universe we know.

What is Christianity?

2011-10-28T00:57:00.000-04:00

What is Christianity?
It is a story, a tapestry, a song, a dance: a way of looking at reality.
A puzzle, a chess match, a tale of two trees,
   of Eden and Gethsemane,
   of mystery and victory.
A great legend of the battle between good and evil,
   of evil turned against itself,
   of despair turned to sudden, unexpected joy.
A romance of the love that overcame death, the life that redeemed death

It perceives the fall of man, our sorrow and sin, our darkness within.
It finds heaven on earth, God among men.
It remembers forever the courage of one man to fight on, to go where no one else could go, to overcome.
It sings of a life poured out unto death, an empty cup that yet overflows.

It tells of an unquenchable light burning in the darkness,
of a seed that fell from heaven, planting eternity in our world,
of a shoot growing from barren ground,
of joy born from suffering, the fruit of the cross,
of death destroyed by the death of God.

It defies evil, and sees that the night cannot conquer forever.
It perceives that good will overcome,
   that all will be healed, redeemed,
   all suffering put to an end,
   all hopes and desires vindicated.
It tells of all things made new, of a new world born: the tree of which this is the seed.
It finds in death the secret passage, the beginning, the door to reality.

It points us towards that place sought by hope, from which all beauty comes, the stars, the trees, the wind, the sea.
Towards the time when we will see face to face.
Towards the center and fountain of reality, the One whose name is Love,
The Author of the story, He who suffered and rose victorious.

It is a paradox: it cannot be, and yet it is.
What is Christianity? It is the truth.

Reality is Being Born

2011-10-25T09:00:00.000-04:00

Our world is a womb, a seed.

Reality is being born, we are being born.

Reality is still very young, as are we. If it were not so, evil would not still exist. We are in the pains of birth.
Creation is unfolding, flowering, just now beginning to burst from the seed.

It is not born yet. As yet only the firstfruits have flowered, only Christ has gone through the door to new creation, and in his resurrection He lets a gleam of light through to us still in the seed. He leads us on, to Himself.

He is the firstborn from this womb, the firstfruits from this barren ground.

God is in the midst, kneading, shaping, guiding, participating in creation, in a sense growing within it Himself as the one who is always, at every step, leading us further up and further in.

God is not sitting outside watching the process unfold, He is here.

The Story of Reality and its Flowering is the story not of creation only but of all things, of God and creation together, of all reality.

A Story Reflected: The Great Rider

2011-10-19T18:14:00.001-04:00

I saw a great Rider on a white horse, robed in white and clothed in glory and light and magnificent splendor, a mighty warrior riding into battle like the wind.

His hair flowed behind him, but his face was constant, calm and benevolent, full of love, yet also of strength and power – his triumph was at hand. The Rider's face was ageless, both young and old, and his majesty was all the greater. All wisdom and knowledge was present in his face. He is good. I saw also in him the memory of suffering; in his body he bore the mark of his love, a wound that brought healing. In his eyes was light from an older age - from the very beginning.

The Rider directed his horse with ease. His armor shone like the sun, and in his hand was the greatest of swords. He wore no helmet, but a silver crown.

I too rode into battle, among the great host led by this Rider. The bright sun shone down on him from a clear blue sky - far above, at the edge of sight, flew a red and golden bird, the phoenix. The host of the Enemy was vast, but we had One, mightier than they: our captain and our banner, our White Rider, our Lord and King. His presence brought strength and hope to all who followed; we felt no fear, but wonder and joy. I remembered the older place and knew that our Lord would win the victory.

Gabriel and Michael rode beside him, one on either side, terrible to behold, but our Lord was greater far than they, and he rode before them like the wind. The drumbeat of the footfall of his horse shook the earth. As he rode I saw more clearly the wound he bore in his heel, the mark of his victory.

"The Cardinal Difficulty of Naturalism"?

2011-10-02T14:50:00.001-04:00

C. S. Lewis described, in his book Miracles, what he considered to be “The Cardinal Difficulty of Naturalism.” In a naturalistic, materialistic picture, rational human thought is merely the end product of a long chain of evolutionary causes and effects. But, writes Lewis, “an act of knowing must be determined, in a sense, solely by what is known...if it were totally explicable from other sources it would cease to be knowledge.” In other words, if you say “I think X because of my evolutionary history” this means you cannot say “I think X because it is true.” Why? “If causes fully account for a belief, then, since causes work inevitably, the belief would have had to arise whether it had grounds or not.” Consequently, naturalism leaves no room for affirming truths simply because they are true; all knowledge collapses for the naturalist, and his worldview self-destructs.

It’s an interesting argument, but does it work? I hesitate to give it too much weight. Lewis writes as if the evolutionary cause-and-effect process does nothing to differentiate between beliefs based on whether they are true or not (whether they have logical grounds or not). In his view, blind natural selection brings about thoughts with no regard to how true they are, so it “leaves no room” for believing things on rational grounds.

But it is by no means obvious that “believing X because it is true” and “believing X as a result of physical processes” are mutually exclusive, even if the physical processes are deterministic.

A moment’s reflection will convince us of this. We can all affirm, regardless of our worldviews, that the psychological act of making logical deductions can be described in terms of physical processes in the brain. The ideas running through the mind are exact representations of the (largely) deterministic neurological process (perhaps they are even the same thing, although that is another question). That is, abstract logical deductions are in a sense occurring as physical events. So we have in the human brain both an object that runs according to physical laws, and a truth-deducing mechanism, albeit imperfect and flawed.

Are we to throw up our hands in epistemological despair and cry “our thoughts have a physical cause-and-effect history in our bodies, therefore we cannot hold them rationally - science has destroyed itself as a rational endeavor, along with all other human knowledge!”? Surely not.

Doubtless Lewis would be in agreement here, but perhaps maintain that blind, atheistic natural selection eliminates any “left over” room for affirming truths because they are true. But couldn’t the evolutionary process works in such a way that it produces not merely brains that help us survive, but brains that can think rationally, as ours clearly do? Might we not expect natural selection to give us the ability to think rationally and logically precisely because that way of thinking reflects reality accurately?

Alvin Plantinga’s “evolutionary argument against naturalism” is a more recent version of Lewis’ argument. It is unlikely, suggests Plantinga, that true beliefs* would lead to behavior that would help us survive and reproduce. Consequently, the probability of blind natural selection generating true beliefs is low. If we are going to trust our cognitive faculties, we must appeal to some higher power influencing the course of natural selection so that we develop accurate cognitive faculties. Plantinga concludes, contra Dawkins, that "Darwin made it impossible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist."
*For the sake of argument, we may as well consider the kind of beliefs that don’t seem immediately useful for our survival; for example, atheism, theism, quantum field theory, or the theory of evolution.

But natural selection may still bring about a particular belief or idea or cognitive capability, even if it in turn has no survival value. It may be that natural selection constructed the ability to perceive the world accurately on a more basic sensory level (eg. counting objects, determining distances with simple geometry), which in turn generated, as a byproduct, the ability to think and reason on a higher level. The details of such a hypothetical scheme are beyond me, but it is a question science may yet answer. We cannot say that our ability to understand higher mathematics, or philosophize about the nature of reality, cannot have arisen from evolution, simply because these phenomena have no apparent evolutionary value.

If and how evolution brought these capabilities about is a complex scientific question, and the absence of a complete answer today is no reason to doubt that the gap will be filled eventually. Consequently, we can recognize that our beliefs have a biological history while at the same time affirming them because we think they are true.

If we are too uncritical in accepting evolutionary arguments against atheism, we may end up saying things like “we don’t know how natural selection could have given us brains fit for understanding the universe, so there must be a supernatural power at work.” Perhaps there is a higher power, and perhaps we can learn about this power in other ways. But in the present case, a less hasty response would be “we don’t know how natural selection gave us these remarkable brains, so let’s think about it, come up with a hypothesis, and test it out.” Maybe at the end of the day biologists will find that under no circumstances would natural selection give rise to the kind of accurate cognitive faculties we seem to possess; then we would indeed have an argument, and a very strong one at that. But Nature has surprised us time after time, so let’s not count on it. Let’s not make the “god of the gaps” mistake yet again. As Bonhoeffer said, “we are to find God in what we know, not in what we don't know.”

The kind of God reached by this argument is a grand architect who refines the physical process so our brains turn out to have the desired capabilities. Is he not rather like the “intelligent designer” God who intervenes in the evolutionary process when it can’t get the job done? And the kind of nature (or theologically, creation) assumed is an insufficient one - a nature that needs help from the outside. Isn’t this familiar?

Science has taught us to expect surprises from nature; evolution has proven itself up to the task again and again. And should we not also expect surprises from God? A creation that can give rise to rational beings of its own accord - in a sense, a world that can make itself - is a greater marvel. It is a creation truly other than God, a creation that has “grown up” in a sense, like a child learning to walk on its own feet. Would not God, being a good Father, let his world fly free?

Christian Apologetics

2011-07-15T00:36:00.001-04:00

What is the best approach to Christian apologetics? My thoughts:

The shocking fact of existence should not be taken for granted; this fact is best understood in light of a single, ultimate, and personal source and foundation of reality, that is to say, God.
Awakening an awareness of beauty, meaning, and purpose is important to me, since I have experienced God in this way. Beauty (in music, mathematics, the natural world, etc.) is an objective reality best understood within a theistic worldview.
The same can be said of morality.
Arguments for God based on science (eg. fine-tuning, cosmological argument) have little or no merit.
Christianity, properly understood, is its own defense. Explaining is prior to defending.
The story of fall and redemption gives the most illuminating account of human nature, which is paradoxically both good and sinful.
An understanding of the story of the cross can be aided by seeing it reflected in fictional stories, some of them very popular today. This is important to me because I came to understand Christ’s death and resurrection in this way.
The problem of evil is perhaps the apologist’s greatest concern. A Christian response must be centered on the cross, Christ’s resurrection, and the hope this gives for “eucatastrophe” even in the face of death (1 Corinthians 15).
Second in importance to seeing the beauty of Christianity is understanding its historical credibility. We must study the claims of the first Christians in their cultural context.
Skeptics need to see that Christianity is consistent with modern science, including biology. BioLogos has set a good example in addressing this issue.

J. R. R. Tolkien on "Eucatastrophe" and Christianity

2011-05-28T17:18:00.000-04:00

“The “consolation” of fairy-tales has another aspect than the imaginative satisfaction of ancient desires. Far more important is the consolation of the Happy Ending. Almost I would venture to assert that all complete fairy-stories must have it…I will call it Eucatastrophe [literally, “good catastrophe”]. The eucatastrophic tale is the true form of fairy-tale, and its highest function. The consolation of fairy-stories, the joy of the happy ending, or more correctly of the good catastrophe, of the sudden joyous “turn” does not deny the existence of dycatastrophe, of sorrow and failure; the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance. It denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will), universal final defeat and in so far is evangelium, giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief…In such stories when the sudden “turn” comes we get a piercing glimpse of joy, and heart’s desire, that for a moment passes outside the frame, rends indeed the very web of story, and lets a gleam come through.

It is not difficult to imagine the peculiar excitement and joy that one would feel, if any specially beautiful fairy-story were found to be “primarily” true, its narrative to be history...Probably every writer making a secondary world, a fantasy, every sub-creator, wishes in some measure to be a real maker, or hopes that he is drawing on reality: hopes that the peculiar quality of this secondary world (if not all the details) are derived from Reality…The peculiar quality of “joy” in successful Fantasy can thus be explained as a sudden glimpse of the underlying reality or truth.

The answer to this question [“is it true?”] that I gave at first was (quite rightly): “If you have built your little world well, yes: it is true in that world.” That is enough for the artist…But in the “eucatastrophe” we see in a brief vision that the answer may be greater – it may be a far-off gleam or echo of evangelium in the real world.”

The Gospels contain a fairy-story, or a story of a larger kind which embraces all the essence of fairy-stories. They contain many marvels - peculiarly artistic, beautiful, and moving: “mythical” in their perfect, self-contained significance; among the marvels is the greatest and most complete conceivable eucatastrophe. But this story has entered History and the primary world; the desire and aspiration of sub-creation has been raised to the fulfillment of Creation. The Birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of Man’s history. The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation. This story begins and ends in joy...There is no tale ever told that men would rather find was true, and none which so many skeptical men have accepted as true on its own merits. For the Art of it has the supremely convincing tone of Primary Art, that is, of Creation. The joy which the “turn” in the fairy-story gives…has the very taste of primary truth…It looks forward to the Great Eucatastrophe. The Christian joy, the Gloria, is of the same kind; but it is pre-eminently (infinitely, if our capacity were not finite) high and joyous. But this story is supreme, and it is true.”

-J. R. R. Tolkien, "On Fairy Stories"

The Beginning

2011-05-21T13:00:00.009-04:00

Irenaeus, one of the Fathers of the early church, shares this memory in a letter:

“For I distinctly recall the events of that time better than those of recent years (for what we learn in childhood keeps pace with the growing mind and becomes part of it), so that I can tell the very place where the blessed Polycarp used to sit as he discoursed, his goings out and his comings in, the character of his life, his bodily appearance, the discourses he would address to the multitude, how he would tell of his conversations with John and with the others who had seen the Lord, how we would relate their words from memory; and what the things were which he had heard from them concerning the Lord, his mighty works and his teaching, Polycarp, as having received them from the eyewitnesses.”

It is so clear and vivid a memory - there is nothing quite like it. Envision “that very place” where Polycarp shared his memories, smell the salty sea air of the Mediterranean nearby, now observe with Irenaeus “his goings out and his comings in.” What sort of conversations did Polycarp recount? What must it have been like to hear, spoken by a living voice, memories of the apostle John himself? To be that close...

Yet even this is two steps removed from the beginning. What must it have been like to live at that time, when the story of resurrection was first in the air? It was a discovery, groundbreaking, revolutionary, the greatest the world has ever seen. Death itself, “the last enemy,” overturned and destroyed - their Teacher and Lord had gone through, to the other side. “Philosophy’s greatest problem,” the meaning of death, answered in this singular event in history. We might compare it to, say, the discovery of a unified theory of the laws of nature, which is the holy grail of science.

How thrilling, how terribly and wonderfully exciting, to hear it first-hand and for the first time, as Paul did, when he went up to Jerusalem after his conversion and spent “fifteen days” in conversation with Peter (Galatians 1:18). What was it like for Paul after the first of those days? The world was a different place now. The tide of history had turned, and here he was with Peter, at the center of it all.

Repeatedly in the New Testament, we encounter the language of testimony, of bearing witness. For the early Christians, the response to so unique and powerful an experience was: remember. Never forget His words, never forget His acts, never forget His death and victory, but guard and remember the truth of what we have seen and heard. Retell these things to one another. Do not add or take away, but pass on faithfully so that others may find what we have found: bear witness, bear testimony. “We cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:20).

Thoughts on Dawkins' The God Delusion, Ch. 4: "Why There Almost Certainly Is No God"

2011-03-24T18:19:00.002-04:00

Dawkins' main argument against the existence of God is a philosophical extrapolation of the simple-to-complex pattern seen in evolution. Again and again, very complex organisms have been accounted for as things that have evolved from simple organisms by means of natural selection. This "simple-to-complex" pattern describes not only biological processes, but physical reality in general; chemistry and physics have allowed us to reduce the simplest living organisms to even simpler things: molecules, atoms, particles, fields, etc.

Now, Dawkins describes God as a "super-intelligence," an omniscient and omnipotent being who interacts with millions of people simultaneously by answering prayers. Such a being would have capabilities far beyond that of any human, and since the human brain is incredibly complex, such a God would have to be extremely complex. Why, when science has succeeded again and again in explaining complex phenomena in terms of simple laws, would we hypothesize a super-complex first cause? "We need a 'crane', not a 'skyhook', for only a crane can do the business of working up gradually and plausibly from simplicity to otherwise improbable complexity" (p. 188).

This is Dawkins' central argument that there is no God, and he makes a very strong point here, one that should be a serious concern for Christian readers. We certainly do need a "crane," that is, a simple first cause. Dawkins' God, an omniscient, omnipotent "super-intelligence," is no crane, but I find this to be a rather flat, two-dimensional theology; merely naming some characteristics doesn't really get to the heart of what God is like. Let me explain by proposing an alternate view of God.

It may be that God's complexity emerges or is "generated" from his simplicity. We know that the complex human brain is "generated" from simpler organisms; over billions of years, particles came together in increasingly complex ways, and in the end, the human brain emerged. The universe looks complex, but it's basic rules and building blocks are simple. Perhaps God is fundamentally simple in a similar way, and perhaps the simple "core" of his nature generates a beautiful complexity (facets of which include his omniscience, omnipotence, etc.), not as a process within time, but as a timeless, eternal event within Himself. And if the patterns of God's creation are based on those of his own nature (see "The Pattern of Reality"), one would expect this "emergence of complexity" in God to share similarities with the corresponding pattern in the universe (see NOTE below). I offer some speculative thoughts on this "emergence" in a post on how "Creation Reflects the Pattern of the Trinity."

If you look only at the "surface" of God, you may see a complex super-intelligence, as Dawkins does. If this is your idea of God, you may rightly agree with Dawkins that it is highly unlikely that this "God" just happened to exist eternally. But if you use your imagination and consider how deep and mysterious God's nature might really be, you might begin to find words like "super-intelligence" less helpful. God is not static and fixed, but dynamic, moving, perhaps even growing in a sense (yet also constant and unchanging, paradoxically, but all these words lose much of their meaning when we try to apply them to God). The ocean of his being is wider and deeper than we can know, and the foundational simplicity Dawkins seeks may still be there, hidden beneath the surface.

Update: I just found an article in which theoretical physicist Don Page (and collaborator with Stephen Hawking) makes the same point: "At first sight, the God of the Bible and of the Koran seems complex. But analogously, Earth’s biosphere seems complex. However, the full set of biospheres arising by evolution in a huge universe or multiverse with simple laws of physics might be simple. Similarly, the limited aspects we experience of God might be complex, but the entirety of God might be simple."

NOTE: You may be thinking, "this God sounds a lot like the universe; why not call the universe God and forget about anything beyond it? and in that case, why not drop the word God altogether?" Good question...and one that opens the door to the biggest question of all, "why is there something instead of nothing?" Something deep lies beneath the mystery of existence, and our experience is a signpost guiding us towards the answer, but not all the way. I for one find that the universe does not give much explanation or illumination of its own existence. To me, it makes more sense to think that there is a greater reality beyond the universe, from which it came and for which it, and we, were made. This "other" reality, this ultimate truth, this center of everything, is why there is something instead of nothing. This, and not the universe, we call God.

And if we are still going to use the word "God" as it is usually used (and not in the Einsteinian sense that Dawkins describes in chapter 1) we must maintain that everything about God - the simple foundation, the patterns within His being, the glorious whole of the Trinity - is self-existent and uncreated, and that everything else, such as the universe, from its basic building blocks to its complex parts, is created by God and dependent on God. That is, we must maintain an ontological gap between God and the rest of reality (see "The Idea of Creation").

What Does "Creation" Mean?

2010-11-28T00:06:00.002-05:00

Recently I've been writing about the Christian doctrine of "creation." What does "creation" mean? It's a word that has acquired a lot of baggage in recent decades; here I try to explain the original idea. And what does it imply about God as Creator, and about the nature of reality as creation? Some thoughts:

About This Blog

2010-11-26T18:00:00.007-05:00

Why hello, dear reader. My name is Elliot. I am a graduate student in physics at Penn State, and in my spare time, an amateur philosopher and theologian and an avid reader and writer. I enjoy climbing trees, playing the legendary game of pooh sticks, and looking (hitherto without success) for hidden doors to other worlds.

But your interest, I suspect, is primarily in the content of this blog. Whether you found this site while on some intriguing theological internet quest or stumbled upon it in sheer boredom, I’m glad you are here. This blog is the necessary overflow of the thoughts in my brain - thoughts that I feel compelled to share with others.

I've posted a list of topics on the left side of the blog; this functions as a sort of index for everything I've written. Each link there takes you to a page of links to individual posts. As I publish more writing to this blog (in no particular order), I will do my best to categorize it through these pages.

As the subtitle indicates, these writings are my "exploration of Christianity." Christianity, as I see it, is the true story of the world we are in, so what is it all about? Can it shed any light on this strange world in which we find ourselves? How does it address the problem of evil and suffering, or our perceptions of beauty and meaning in the world? Is there a deeper beauty in the many apparent paradoxes of Christianity? What is the significance of Christian themes in books and movies? Being a scientist, I also enjoy writing about the relationships between Christianity and science and between God and mathematics. Perhaps most importantly, who is God and how should we think of Him?

As I rational person, I am compelled to ask "why believe Christianity?" There are many reasons. But before we weigh the evidence, we must understand this worldview. We must ask "what is Christianity?" and only when we find the answer to this question will we see how Christianity explains things and why it is true. Responses to some of the most common objections to Christianity made by atheists or agnostics can be found here. More importantly, though, this site as a whole is my explanation of and apology for Christianity - my answer to both "what is it?" and "why believe it?"

You may be wondering what the title "unless a seed dies" means. The words come from Jesus: "unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit" (John 12:24). The meaning of this saying is central to my understanding of Christianity, and to much of what I have written on this site, including these posts on the beautiful theme of death and resurrection. God "empties himself" and is "made nothing," even to the point of human death on a cross, and from his own death God brings a new and greater life. Joy from suffering, beauty from ashes, life from death - this is the secret of Christianity and the beauty of God himself.

These thoughts are all about God - who He is and what He has done to reveal Himself to us. He is the foundation of existence and the fountain and purpose of all life - all reality revolves around God and finds its meaning in Him (Romans 11:36). And when I see His great design for humanity, I exclaim with Paul, "oh the depths of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!" (Romans 11:33).

I hope this blog will be a blessing to you in one way or another. If you have something to say, do not hesitate to leave a comment or email me at elliot137@gmail.com.

-Elliot

P.S. Some of my own favorite posts...
-He is Himself the Grain of Wheat: The Self-Emptying Nature of God
-The Paradox of God's Love: The Empty Cup Overflowing
-At the Cross, Death is Destroyed by Death
-A Story Reflected: Resurrection
-The 'Foolish' Wisdom of the Cross

The Wonder and Joy of Creation

2010-10-05T16:00:00.006-04:00

...Creation is not a mere copy of God's nature, nor is it so far below him as to be unworthy of his love and delight. It is the garment he wears, the theater of his glory, his grand design, the masterpiece of the Artist - his song and his dance and his story. As light from the sun, as streams from a fountain...

In creation the Maker "calls into existence the things that do not exist" (Romans 4:17); "by [his] will they existed and were created" (Revelation 4:11). Out of nothing at all, yet at the same time from him, the overflowing fountain, come all things, given being through the life and power of God, the self-existent One. The patterns of his own nature, the ideas eternally present in his infinite mind, are kindled with a creative fire and given a new and different expression in things other than God!

In Him there is no scarcity of ideas or designs for things that could be. Because God is not only the fountain but also the infinite well, he pours forth creation without limit. Plain bounty, as Lewis says - infinite abundance! When one thing is willed into being through the awesome power of the Maker, there is no depletion in the potential for things that yet may be. And for this - for his unending power and creativity - God is to be praised.

We are the streams from the fountain, the branches dependent on the tree. Yet we are even more dependent than this - without God we have no being at all, but without us He is the same, distinct from creation and without any need for it. He is Love, He is the Giver, and he creates so that his love and giving may overflow. We are blessed to receive this great treasure, given because God is a Giver, not because he needs to give. We are loved because God is a Lover, not because he needs to love us.

God is all-sufficient in himself, yet it is a joy for him to create - to see his own patterns and divine characteristics expressed and reflected in new ways, to see his ideas made to be as things distinct from him. And it is a joy for him to enter into his creation, even to live within it, as a creature - this too is his nature, and we see it in Christ.

Creativity, imagination, the making of new things, the bringing into being of worlds out of nothing...blessed be He!

An Analogy involving God, Creation, Mathematics, and Physics

2010-09-30T16:00:00.010-04:00

Let me ask another question to probe the relationship between God and creation: If creation is a reflection and expression of God's nature, is it something new, or merely a redundant copy of good things that are already there in God himself?

God, the "first thing," contains in his essence, his nature, all that is good and worthy in creation - its value is his value, its pattern an extension of the pattern of God's own nature. There is nothing created that does not derive its goodness or value or beauty from God. Every facet of creation is ultimately rooted and defined in God. Does not mean that creation is merely a copy of what was there first in God?

No. First of all, creation is something other than God, and that fact alone gives it a sort of newness. As an analogy, we might consider the laws of physics that describe our world. Many have argued that the mathematical truths expressed in physics have a reality of their own. That is, our world functions according to the language of mathematics, but the world does not need to exist for 1+1 to equal 2. All laws of physics are to some extent based on and dependent on mathematical truth(s) that are real apart from the physical world.

Perhaps it is similar with God and creation, in that there is no beauty or value in creation that is not rooted in the Maker and derived from him. Things that are eternally present as ideas in his mind, or even as part of his nature, are given actual reality in creation. They may have existed as God's ideas (like an artist's idea of his work), but they did not actually exist in their own right any more than the universe exists in the mathematics that describe it. Creation is still ex nihilo, a new thing made out of absolutely nothing.

It may even be that what I have used as an analogy here is an actual example of creation being rooted in God. The mathematical truths that form the foundation and structure for physics are, in my view, part of God's own nature. If God is three-in-one, then number is inherent to his very being - how then can any mathematical truth derived from basic numbers be separated from God? If this is so, then our physical world gives a new level of reality to that which is already true in God - a sort of creative fire is breathed into the divine equations, making them laws for a real world. In the same way, it may be that other facets of God's nature - moral truth, beauty, etc. - are given a new kind or degree of reality in creation.

No matter how extensively creation is rooted and grounded in the Creator, it is still something else, something new. Creation may be linked to God and dependent on God in every respect, but it remains a thing in its own right, with its own unique characteristics. God is able to give creation a distinct and unique identity, to help it stand alone on its own two feet, apart from him in a sense (for example, in the giving of free will to creatures). This is how he intended it to be.

At the same time, we must balance this affirmation of creation with a reaffirmation of God's all-encompassing supremacy. Creation comes into its own, yet it remains God's creation and cannot escape his design and purpose. As a branch must remain attached to the trunk of a tree, so must creation remain dependent on God. He is all in all, never lacking in himself any good which comes into being in his creation. He is ultimate reality, the overflowing fountain. Creation arises not to complete him, but because of who he is, because of the patterns and ways and perfections that are in him.

This is a difficult balance to keep because it is not clear exactly in what sense creation attains independence, or in what sense it remains dependent.* As long as we are careful to affirm both creation's integrity and God's supremacy, I think we are on solid ground.
*At the very least, creation is utterly dependent on God in order to continue in its existence.

If creation is small compared to God, is He a poor artist?

2010-09-27T16:00:00.010-04:00

I mentioned above that God is on an incomparably higher level of existence than anything he creates; God is to creation as a plane is to a line, perhaps. There is a vast chasm between creation and the uncreated Creator. In a sense, creation can never come close to God in his fullness. Compared to the infinite and transcendent God, creation is virtually nothing.

Is God a poor artist, then, to make something so little compared to himself? Ought God to do better than making something infinitely below himself?

No. First consider human artists. What painting or symphony could compare to the complexity and intricacy and beauty of the human mind that gave birth to it? The artists mind is in many ways a work of art far higher and greater than anything he produces. So also with God and his tapestry of creation. But this is an imperfect analogy, and I do not mean it to be taken as a strict, logical argument.

Second, the artist's work is not to be judged by whether it surpasses its author, but by what it is in its own right. In a sense, creation is little compared to God (and so it must be, or God is not God), but that is only a relative evaluation. When we speak of things as they are, creation is enormous, limitless in its growth and infinite in potential (see "Will God Stop Creating?").

Third, and most importantly, it is inconsistent with God's nature to make something greater than himself, or even to make something in the same category. This is on par with logical impossibilities: God's level cannot be reached by a created thing by definition! For what creature, what part of creation, could possibly compare with the Uncreated One? Creation is inherently dependent on God - how then could it approach the self-existent One in his transcendence? How could the One whose very essence is greatness make something greater than himself? God can no more make something comparable to or better than himself than he can make a stone so big that he cannot lift it or make 1+1=3. It would be inconsistent with who He is - his divine nature - and therefore no more possible than a logical contradiction.*

Is the sun less glorious because its rays cannot compare to it? Of course not. We must pause and think before directing the same absurd objection towards the Creator. Creation is the light God shines, the garment he wears. It is his expression and revelation, his song and his story. And seeing it as such enlarges our perception of both creation and God.

*One might object that it is a cop out simply to say "such and such is inconsistent with God's nature," for what do we really know of the depths of God? This would be a valid complaint if we had no reason to think of God in this way (that is, if "God's nature is such and such" really was an arbitrary statement), but in my view, we do have just enough light to speak confidently of God in this way, as did Anselm, for example, when he spoke of God as that something "than which which nothing greater can be conceived."

The Universe was Made for the Cross

2010-09-23T16:00:00.012-04:00

Creation, I have suggested, is an expression of God's nature much as a work of art bears the mark of the artist. God is like a fountain - it is in his nature to overflow, that is, to create, and to express himself through creation. According to Christianity, God reveals himself most fully to mankind in Jesus, and especially in his death and resurrection. In the cross and the empty tomb, God's wisdom, beauty, justice, love, self-giving and self-emptying nature, and power over evil are seen clearly in an unparalleled way (see "The Victory of God," "The Self-Empting Nature of God").

These qualities, which are part of the divine nature, that is, of God's character, are just as real in him without the story of the cross. God is immutable: his nature is not changed through his interaction with creation. The God who suffered and died on the cross is also the God who exists eternally before and beyond the universe.

But God is like a fountain, or like the sun: his light must shine, his nature must be expressed in new ways and shared and revealed to creatures made in his image. God's story must be told, the beauty of his ways expressed, the depths of his nature revealed. Something like the cross must therefore happen, and consequently a world must be made where this can occur.

If the cross was God's design for the deepest and highest revelation of his character to mankind, then it was primarily for this event that the world was made. The design of a universe in which creatures would have a free choice to sin (possibly accomplished through the indeterminism of quantum mechanics) and would be subject to death and evil (accomplished in part by the second law of thermodynamics; see "Integrating Scientific and Biblical Eschatologies") makes inevitable the need for salvation from sin and victory over death and thereby sets the stage for the cross. In other words, this world was created and allowed to fall into evil so that God could empty himself and enter an evil-filled world, and in so doing overcome evil and reveal himself most fully.

Can God Love without Creating?

2010-09-16T16:00:00.005-04:00

I recently shared some thoughts on the question "does God need creation?" What I said there is, I think, sufficient to demonstrate that (from a Christian perspective) the answer is a definite "no." But it may seem a little vague to say, as I suggested there, that the love between God and creatures (in particular, us humans) is incomparably lower than what God experiences in himself. Here I want to focus on this particular facet of the question: does God need creation in order to be in relationship with another, in order to love?

According to Christianity, love is central to God's character. But how, one might ask, could love be part of God's nature if he does not experience it in himself? And how could God know love without knowing another? Anyone other than God is a creature. Does God then need creation in order to love? Again, the answer is "no," and it is here that the Christian doctrine of the Trinity becomes essential.

If God was just one "person" as a human being is simply one person, he could not love another without creating someone to love. But God is Triune, both one being and three persons (see "Creation Reflects the Pattern of the Trinity" and "The Trinity: Mystery Beyond Comprehension"). Scripture speaks of Christ as the Son, who is "in the form of God," "one with the Father," "the image of the invisible God" and "the exact imprint of his nature." John begins his Gospel by saying simply that Christ, the Word, "was God." Implicit is the idea that the Son is uncreated and co-eternal with the Father. The bond of love and joy between the Son and the Father is so real and strong that many have understood the Holy Spirit to be a sort of personification of this love. In Jesus' own words, the love and glory shared by the Father and the Son as they delight in one another's perfection has been a reality since "before the foundation of the world" (John 17:24, see also 17:5).

Those who think that God must have been bored without creation have no imagination. They do not realize Who they are talking about. We humans must do things in order to entertain ourselves, but God needs no such diversion. He is the definition and climax of all goodness and beauty and glory and majesty, so it is only right for God to delight in himself. We humans delight in things or people because they are praiseworthy, but all worth and value is derived from God. All that is good in creation is only the faintest reflection of that eternal fullness. What could be more worthy of God's delight than himself?

Love between two persons then, is not only something God experiences in his own inner life, but part of his very being. "God is love" (1 John 4:8). And no love given and received between God and a creature could ever compare to this love. As the cube transcends the square, as consciousness seems to transcend matter, so also is the Love within God himself incomparably higher than any creaturely love.

This understanding of God as Trinity helps us to see a little more of the glorious truth that God has no need at all for anything he creates, and to see the beautiful nature of his love for us.

God's love for us is not a need-love but a gift-love. That is, he loves us not because he needs to love but because it is in his nature to give himself, to share himself with other things, to overflow. Because he is love and goodness by his very nature, it is in his nature to give good things. But there can be no giving unless there is something to give to.* God's love and goodness must therefore be expressed first by the giving of existence to something other than God - that is, by creation - and then by the sharing of his joy with creatures. In the end, we will join in the Dance of God and share in the love and glory of the Trinity (John 17:21-23). His own Love is extended to things other than himself.
*There is giving within the Trinity, but this does not mean God is not inclined to love and to give in new ways.

To be loved by a God who has no need for us but simply delights to give us the gifts of existence, intrinsic value, love, joy, etc. - this is infinitely better than to be loved by a God who needs to love us. Why? Because a God who needs nothing and is all-sufficient in himself is infinitely more worthy and glorious than a God who creates to satisfy unfulfilled needs. And if he is more worthy, then his love given to us is a greater treasure. That is why it is a glorious truth for us that God has no need for us.

All this giving and sharing of himself is part of God's self-expression - that is, his creative work as an artist. That we receive his love is part of what it means to be made in his image. So it is with all creation - the light of God's glorious nature is shared and given and received, and in this act God shines forth his light and glory as an artist revealing himself in his work. All things are "from him and through him and to him" (Romans 11:33). In Lewis' words, God is not merely "all" (the sum total of reality, as he was before creation), but "all in all" (Letters to Malcolm, Chiefly on Prayer, p. 70).

We should of course be glad that God loves us and created us so that we could share in the love that he has always known. But let us praise him not only because of who he is to us, but also because of who he is in himself - not only because of his gifts, but because he is the Giver. Praise him not only because he will satisfy our thirst, but because he is the fountain of living water, not only because he loves, but because he is Love. All the gifts he gives to creation are eternally present in him, and when he gives to creation, he is not any less himself, but more - always full, always overflowing.

"From Him and through Him and to Him are all things...All things are by Him and for Him. He utters Himself also for His own delight and sees that He is good. He is His own begotten and what proceeds from Him is Himself. Blessed be He!"

C. S. Lewis on the "Plain Bounty" of the Creator

2010-09-13T16:00:00.004-04:00

In the previous post I suggested that although God takes delight in creation, he has no need for it and is perfect and complete in himself. As a fountain is inclined to overflow, so is God inclined to create. C. S. Lewis uses similar imagery to describe God's relationship with creation. Consider these two passages from Perelandra:

"He has immeasurable use for each thing that is made, that His love and splendour may flow forth like a strong river which has need of a great watercourse and fills alike the deep pools and the little crannies, that are filled equally and remain unequal; and when it has filled them brim full it flows over and makes new channels. We also have need beyond measure of all that He has made. Love me, my brothers, for I am infinitely necessary to you and for your delight I was made. Blessed be He!"

"He has no need at all of anything that is made. An eldil is not more needful to Him than a grain of the Dust: a peopled world no more needful than a world that is empty: but all needless alike, and what all add to Him is nothing. We also have no need of anything that is made. Love me, my brothers, for I am infinitely superfluous, and your love shall be like His, born neither of your need nor of my deserving, but a plain bounty. Blessed be He!"

God has great use for creation - everything he makes is good and brought into being to accomplish good things. All things made by the Maker have value, and that God is complete in himself without them does not take away from this value. Creation is interrelated - no thing, no creature can be separated from the whole (see "The Pattern of Reality"), and in this sense we are infinitely necessary to one another. Yet only God is the source and root of our being. The "plain bounty" of God, as of an overflowing fountain, is the best light in which to understand creation.

N. T. Wright on the Resurrection of Jesus

2010-09-10T16:00:00.034-04:00

"I regard this conclusion [the early Christians' encounter with what appeared to be the risen Jesus] as coming in the same sort of category, of historical probability so high as to be virtually certain, as the death of Augustus in AD 14 or the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70." - N. T. Wright

This summer I read (most of) N. T. Wright's book The Resurrection of the Son of God. After exhaustively examinating the idea of resurrection in ancient Judaism, Judaism of Jesus' time, the writings of Paul, and the Gospels, Wright concludes that belief in Jesus' bodily resurrection was a startling new "mutation" from within Judaism. While it came about in the context of Judaism, there are numerous reasons why it cannot be explained away as an invented story. If you're interested, read the last few chapters of the book - the gist of Wright's argument is that if the story were invented, the early Christians would not have acted as they did or written the Gospels they did. The only conclusion that remains is that the earliest Christians really did experience what they believed to be the risen Jesus. Did they experience a delusion, or could it really have happened?

Stephen Hawking on God, Gravity, and the Question of Existence

2010-09-07T22:11:00.003-04:00

In his new book The Grand Design, which will be available Thursday (September 9), Stephen Hawking states,

"Because there is a law such as gravity, the Universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the Universe exists, why we exist...it is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the Universe going."

To be fair, I have not read Hawking's book, and perhaps my questions are answered there. What I have written here is only a response to the little I do know of Hawking's worldview.

As an aspiring graduate student in physics currently working towards my PhD at Penn State, and hoping to focus my research in the area of quantum gravity (see Penn State's gravity group here), I am fascinated by Hawking's suggestion that gravity could play such an important role in the origin of the universe.

But it seems to me (if I am wrong, someone please correct me), that something is wrong with Hawking's reasoning, at least in this excerpt. Hawking claims to have found "the reason there is something rather than nothing." But look at the premise behind this reason: "because there is a law..." Hawking assumes the existence of something (gravity, in this case) in order to explain the fact of existence.

Now, there is nothing wrong with reducing the question of why the universe exists to the question of why gravity exists (that is, of describing the universe, on a solely scientific level, in terms of gravity), but when Hawking claims that this is why anything at all exists, his reasoning (or at least his language) becomes a bit circular. Where did gravity come from? [1]

I have not read Hawking's book, and I am sure he addresses this question, but let me anticipate what may or may not be his argument. Gravity, presumably, either (A) does not count as something real, or (B) exists necessarily. Case A seems problematic to me - it may be what physicist and priest John Polkinghorne calls an "abuse of language." In response to the idea that the universe pulls itself into existence from a quantum vacuum, Polkinghorne writes "only by the greatest abuse of language could such an active and structured medium be called nihil [nothing]...in quantum theory, when there is 'nothing' there, it does not mean that nothing is happening" (The Faith of a Physicist 75). In other words, there isn't really nothing there. Maybe Hawking attempts a similar language trick in order to reduce the reality of gravity to nothing. He certainly seems to do in this sentence by saying that the universe comes from "nothing"...but by means of gravity.

Case B is more promising. Perhaps what seems to be great complexity in the universe can actually be reduced to a few or even just one simple and elegant law. Perhaps what appears to be a contingent universe that could have turned out differently is really part of a larger physical reality that is necessarily generated by one simple and necessary principle: gravity. This one basic principle is logically or mathematically necessary - it could not possibly have been other than it is.

But I ask, is gravity alone really so self-evident, so necessary that it should exist instead of nothing? By itself, is it so great a thing that it can exist actively and of its own accord, rather than being caused to exist? Is this basic mathematical/physical law really so self-sustaining, so powerful in a sense, that it can and must bridge the infinite gap between reality and nothing? Wouldn't nothing at all make more sense than one basic law? [2]

The self-existent foundation of all reality must be something truly great. It must explain itself to some degree, as an alternative to nothing. In my view, gravity alone doesn't have that kind of explanatory power. Do you ever have moments, as I do, when you glimpse for a brief second that, instead of nothing at all, there is a reality? If we are careful not to take existence for granted, but instead to recognize it for the shocking and troubling and mysterious and wonderful fact that it is, we may not be content to say, "ah, gravity - that explains why anything should exist."

Hawking, like other philosophically-minded scientists, sometimes uses the word "God" to describe the laws of physics. He is definitely on to something here. Believers may be afraid of deifying mathematics or the laws of physics, preferring to think of them as entities created by God. But there is nothing wrong with supposing that this basic principle (perhaps gravity) is part of God's own divine nature, that is, in saying that while God is more than the necessary laws of mathematics or physics, he might not be less. This is perfectly consistent with traditional ideas of God. The Christian idea of the Trinity, for example, implies that number is inherent to God's very being (see "A Theology of Mathematics"), and if mathematics, why not necessary mathematical laws?

You might ask, why make God more than this basic law? Doesn't that explain things well enough? In my view, it does not. The world may be built on physics, but it is more than that. Beauty, moral truth, purpose, love...these are objective realities that cannot be fully accounted for by scientific explanations* (see "Dawkins, the God of the Gaps, the Domain of Science, and the Question of Existence"). Only ultimate Love and Beauty at the foundation of reality can adequately account for these deep and moving realities. Only ultimate goodness and power can account for our confident and reasonable intuition that there is a good purpose for human existence.

*Although they may in part: see "Evolution as God's Instrument."

Hawking says there is no need for hypothesizing a personal God. If you're only looking at the world on a physical, scientific level, this is true. But if you open your eyes to the whole of reality, which is far greater than the sum of its parts, you might wonder whether gravity alone can explain it all. We need all of God, not just part of him (and the law behind gravity might be that). Hawking invokes gravity instead of God to "set the Universe going." I would rather invoke them both together: gravity to account for things on a scientific level, and God as the greater reality and context within which we can understand the existence of gravity - and everything else we experience - in better light.

[1] The obvious question for the believer is "where did God come from?" When I ask where gravity came from, I only mean to imply that it cannot explain its own existence. In my view, God does have this kind of explanatory power.

[2] Again, the related question the believer must face is "wouldn't nothing at all make more sense than God?" Our answer must be that God, if we were able to comprehend him as he is, would clearly be more self-evident and more obvious than nothingness. Gravity is not the whole picture - God alone is so great that he explains his own existence.

Does God Need Creation?

2010-09-06T16:00:00.006-04:00

...Let's investigate this remarkable doctrine of creation. What does it mean for God to be Creator, and for the reality we know to be created? If we are careful to think about God in the right way, we may find unexpected beauty in this simple idea of creation.

It is often stated by theologians that God does not need creation in any way. He is just as well off in a reality where there is nothing but himself - just as happy, content, complete in his divine glory, etc. This is true - it is simply what it means for God to be God. A "God" who depends on things other than himself in order to improve his state of being (whether through emotional satisfaction with creation or in some other way) is not the God that Christians have believed in for millennia. No, the God we worship, the God portrayed in the Bible, the God whose face we glimpse in Jesus Christ, is perfect and complete in himself, lacking nothing.*
*Cf. Acts 17:24-25, "The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything."

If we are not careful, it will seem as if we are forced to say that God cannot take pleasure in his creation. But this is at odds with nearly every page of the Bible, according to which God clearly loves, cares for, and delights in his creation.* But if God does take pleasure in creation, does he not receive something good from it that he would not have otherwise? Even if God was ultimately joyful in himself, without creation, would he not be even more joyful with the additional delight of loving his creation? And does he not therefore need creation in order to "better himself"? It would seem so.
*The Old Testament prophets like Hosea and Jeremiah describe a God who feels compassion for his people, delights in being close to them, and laments their suffering (Hosea 11, Isaiah 62:4). The New Testament describes a God who loved humanity enough to give himself for their redemption (John 3:16, Romans 5:8, Ephesians 2:4).

Let me pose another question before giving a possible answer. What do we mean when we say that God created us for his glory? The theme of God's glory saturates all of Scripture - the whole of human history is being drawn into the larger purpose of God's honor and glory and praise. But this praise can only come from creatures. If so much glory and honor comes to God only through his creation, would he not be diminished if we did not exist to praise him?

It seems, then, that God depends on creation in order to increase his joy and bring himself greater glory. How are we to make sense of this conundrum? (It is the same question stated in two different ways - God's glory and joy are inseparable and overlapping.) The answer to this conundrum lies, I think, in a proper understanding of who God is - in a theology that is rich and deep and strong, both imaginative and accurate.

First, it seems to me that these questions make a rather audacious assumption, namely that creation is basically on the same level as God, that whatever joy or glory God derives from creation is really the same kind of thing as the joy or glory he has in himself. But God is on a level of existence unutterably and unfathomably higher than that of creation. Are we to presume that anything we as his creatures can give him through our existence could even be compared to all that he is in his self-sufficient supremacy? A raindrop adds to the ocean because it has some finite volume of water - while vastly different in quantity, it is the same kind of thing. But the goodness of creation is not the same kind of thing as the goodness of God. We must remember Who we are talking about. A million lines cannot be stacked up to make a plane - a plane is a different kind of thing, in a higher dimension. In the same way, creation cannot add to what God has in himself. He exists in a dimension of being, as it were, that cannot be shared with creation. The difference between God and creation is immeasurably greater than the difference between the ocean and a raindrop.

That is one way to address the issue. At least as important in our understanding of God as Creator is the idea that it is in his nature to create. Let me explain what I mean and how it is relevant. Responding to the problem that we are considering here, Jonathan Edwards wrote in his book The End for Which God Created the World that God is like a fountain - of life and joy and all good things - and that "it is no argument of the emptiness or deficiency of a fountain that it is inclined to overflow." God creates, says Edwards, just as a fountain overflows - is his nature to create, to express himself by shining forth his light in new things other than himself and sharing his goodness with those new things.* Creating worlds out of nothing, making people in his image, revealing himself through word and image and story - this is what God does and what he delights to do. Like water from a fountain, new things overflow into existence from God. And this creative part of God does not need to be expressed in order to exist: before creation happened, God was the Creator. Creativity is fundamentally part of who God is.

In a sense, you could say that God "needs" his creation because he needs to create, but this is only because he needs to be himself. To use Edwards' excellent analogy again, God is bubbling over like a fountain - his beauty and glory and love must be expressed. That he is inclined to overflow in creation is no argument to his deficiency without creation. Think for a moment - how absurd, in a way, this objection is. It demands a God who makes and does nothing, a God who must keep his perfection to himself, a God who withholds existence from countless wonderful things that could be - a sterile God. What a lack of imagination one must have to think of God in this way - as a spring of water that can only attain perfection by being inactive!

We need not worry about the fountain of existence being indebted to that which it brings forth. God gives, creation receives. Because he is good, God shares his own love and joy and beauty with things other than himself. All the richness and beauty of creation is and always has been present in its Maker. Nothing comes into being which is not a reflection or expression of the Creator. Creation is his grand design, his majestic work of art, and it is no argument to the deficiency of an artist that he is inclined to make beautiful art and delight in his work.

This understanding of creation should enrich our vision of God. In recognizing his inherent inclination to create, we can grow in our ability to grasp the heights and depths of God's power, beauty, and brilliant imagination. That God should be so creative and make so much and shine so brightly in his creation is a beautiful truth.

*But we must not let this "fountain" analogy mislead us into thinking that God creates involuntarily, or that he is constrained by something other than himself. God creates because it is in his nature to create, and while we humans may be constrained by our nature because it is influenced by outside forces, God's nature is not influenced by anything outside of God. He is who He is, the I Am. Since God alone is the cause of his act of creation, we can still think of it as a voluntary choice. C. S. Lewis describes God as freely "uttering" creation into existence.

The Idea of Creation

2010-09-03T16:00:00.000-04:00

The incredible idea of creation is not often appreciated for what it is, even by those who believe it. By creation I mean the idea that God, who is transcendent, eternal, infinite, and self-existent, brought into being something other than himself.

If we take God for granted, this obvious but easily overlooked corollary to belief in God seems almost trivial. If God exists, then of course this world is something other than God - of course God was first (in an ontological if not temporal sense) and then this world was created. That is simply the way things are.

But do you see how unique that way of looking at the world is, how nontrivial it is that this is the nature of reality? Such a sharp divide is made between God and all that is not God. On the one hand, God is the foundation of existence itself: instead of nothing, the Trinity exists.* On the other hand, the universe (and all things that are part of it, including humans) does not sustain its own existence, but is ontologically dependent on God. Take God out of the picture, and everything else loses its very source of being. Take creation out of the picture, and God remains God. What this implies is that God and creation are in two radically different categories of being: God alone upholds His own existence, God alone exists in the active voice of the verb. All else is merely caused or made to exist.

To appreciate this worldview, we must see it in contrast with other philosophies in which reality is not sharply divided into these two different groups. Atheists, pantheists, and many others without a traditional Western view of God, deny that the universe is dependent on something beyond it. It is the universe, not God, that is self-existent and eternal.

The Christian doctrine of creation stands in stark contrast to this view, and just as we must appreciate the idea of God in contrast to atheism, so also we must not take for granted the idea that the universe is a created and thus dependent on something beyond itself. That everything we know is constantly and totally dependent on God in order to exist at all is quite a remarkable idea. Theism and the doctrine of creation are inseparably linked together, and we must take neither idea for granted.

*Where did God come from, you ask? This is a difficult question that I will write more about in the future. Suffice it to say, no light can be shed on the mystery of existence unless there is something at the foundation of reality that explains and upholds its own existence, simply by being what it is. In my view, God alone fits this category of first and greatest thing.

N. T. Wright on the Humanity of Jesus

2010-08-31T16:00:00.002-04:00

You can watch a brief video clip here of N. T. Wright responding to the question "what do you think is the biggest misunderstanding that Western, 20th century, evangelical Christians have about Jesus?" Wright makes a crucial point here - we must be careful to uphold the twin pillars of Jesus' divinity and his humanity, as did the early church. Neither is to be emphasized at the expense of the other. That Jesus was God incarnate does not mean that he could not have struggled emotionally or intellectually as a man (for example, his wondering in Gethsemene if there was a way other than the cross). Wright notes a certain "evangelical nervousness" when these questions arise, but we need to recognize that Jesus' fallibility in certain areas (in understanding the world scientifically, for example) as a man is not inconsistent with his divinity.

Did man invent God in his image? (summary)

2010-08-27T16:00:00.007-04:00

...To summarize the last three posts: First, we asked whether God made man in his image, or man invented the idea of God in his own image. We recognized that the existence of God is consistent with the natural development of the idea of God in the mind of man - believing in God does not mean that one must reject an evolutionary account of how theism developed. The question is whether biology alone can account for all the ideas of God that men have conjured up. Most importantly, we noticed how different the Christian idea of God (in particular, the idea of the Trinity, and of Jesus' unity with God) is from the gods of mythology, and we saw that this God cannot be easily brushed aside as an invention of man.

In conclusion, we cannot reach a definite answer to the question of whether God or man created the other in his image by looking only at man's idea of God and how it developed biologically and socially. The most common idea of God that man has developed (eternal, transcendent, all-powerful, self-existent creator...), shared by the monotheistic faiths, can certainly be described in biological or sociological terms (like all of our perceptions), and both a theistic and a purely naturalistic or atheistic picture can include the biological evidence in its description of man. But the account of man's idea of God can also be more fully fleshed out under the hypothesis that God does exist and made the world so that we would know him largely through natural means. Furthermore, whether a biological description alone can account for all the strange particularities of the Christian idea of God - such as the "tri-unity" of God, or the idea of Christ as a man who is one with God, the uncreated and self-existent Maker - is doubtful.

We cannot simply brush aside the possibility that God exists by pointing to psychological or evolutionary descriptions of man's idea of God. All we can say by looking at the social and biological history of man and his idea of God is that this idea may reflect some deep truth, or there may be nothing to it. The question of God cannot be decided by thinking only in these terms. In order to pursue the issue of whether God exists, we must ask other questions: what worldview best accounts for other facets of human nature, and ultimately for reality as we know it?

The God of Christianity: Invented by Man?

2010-08-23T16:00:00.004-04:00

...In Christianity we find a strong affirmation of God as the Author and Creator of all: the eternal Supreme Being of the philosophers and the one true God of the monotheistic Jews, identified as the same God. But the remarkable thing is that Christianity also describes this God as an actor within his own Story, and in that sense a character who shares some of the anthropomorphic qualities of the mythical gods. Specifically, this Supreme Being is described as being born as a man and living a human life, and the characteristics of this life do bear some striking resemblances to myths.*

Is the story of Jesus discredited because of its similarities to these man-made stories of human-like gods? I think not - while there are similarities, there are also crucial and striking differences. The gods are invented by men, and thus they are not men, but very much like men. Jesus Christ, on the other hand, is a man. The gods, being like men, are actors in the drama, not its Author; like us, they are creatures, not God (see previous post). But Jesus Christ is God - he is one with the Father, the Word who was with God in the beginning. He is both the eternal, self-existent Creator of the universe, and...a man. This is the shocking new idea of Christianity, and there is no precedent for it in myth. The gods were always like us - they were like a different race, one that could interbreed with humans, producing offspring that were half man and half god. But Jesus is unlike the gods in two incredible ways: he is a man, and he is God - not a god, but God, of Whom there is no plural (again, see above). It is easy to imagine men inventing the gods, but men inventing a man who was the one with the eternal Supreme Being? That is not exactly a natural anthropomorphism, and it begs a question (a historical question): where did this idea come from?

There is another scandal in Christianity: the Trinity. First we find the blasphemy that a man is one with the Father, and then the rigid monotheist's ultimate abomination, a God that is three persons! How, one might ask, did man conjure up the idea of a God that exists in three persons, yet remains One Being? I do not mean to imply that we must immediately conclude "only by revelation!," but merely to suggest that this idea in particular, which is central to the Christian idea of God, can hardly be explained away as an anthropomorphism. The question that must be asked, then, is indeed "where did this idea come from?"

In summary, then, Christianity's idea of God can hardly be explained away as a natural invention of the human mind. The story of Jesus is similar in ways to the clearly anthropomorphic pagan myths, but it is shockingly different in its theology. If we brush it aside into the same category, we are not thinking carefully.

Our good friend Richard Dawkins is fond of saying that the Christian God is no different from the gods of mythology. No one believes in Zeus or Thor, so why believe in any God at all? The Christian God is, in Dawkins' view, just another Apollo or Poseidon. What I have suggested in the previous post is that the Christian description of God (while sharing some important similarities with myths in the ideas of the incarnation, death, and resurrection) as self-existent, eternal, and existing in three persons is so radically different that a few moments of rational thought reveals the absurdity of putting this God in the same category as the gods. Anyone with a basic understanding of Christian theology will see Dawkins' pathetic ignorance.

*How we are to understand those similarities I discuss here.

Is the God of the philosophers like the gods of myth?

2010-08-20T16:00:00.001-04:00

...Now, the atheist might object that our idea of God is really quite anthropomorphic - God is so much like a human in the way we think of him that it seems obvious that we invented him. There is simply no need to hypothesize his actual existence in order to explain belief in God. A naturalistic picture offers a thorough account of belief in God; to suppose anything more would be arbitrary and unnecessary.

It may be helpful to compare different ideas of God or gods to one another at this point. In particular, if we recall the gods of Greek or Roman mythology, we find a picture that is strikingly anthropomorphic, indeed so much so that one could only lightly alter the stories in order to make them about men instead of gods. The gods go to war with one another, they procreate, they fall in love, etc. - all human activities. C. S. Lewis writes in Reflections on the Psalms,

"Even in the creation myths, gods have beginnings. Most of them have fathers and mothers; often we know their birth-places. There is no question of self-existence or the timeless. Being is imposed upon them, as upon us, by preceding causes. They are, like us, creatures or products; though they are luckier than we in being stronger, more beautiful, and exempt from death. They are, like us, actors in the cosmic drama, not its authors."

The idea of God - that is, of an Author of all reality, a Supreme Being that is self-existent, infinite, eternal, uncreated, and transcendent, and who brought everything else into existence - is radically different from the gods of mythology. Lewis writes, "the difference between believing in God and in many gods is not one of arithmetic. As someone has said "gods" is not really the plural of God; God has no plural."

This "One God" of the monotheistic faiths, a God who is the foundation of existence itself and the origin of all truth, may be like human beings in that "He" is a being and presumably thinks or feels in some way, but the differences between God and man are not merely of degree, or even category. God is transcendent, eternal, beyond comprehension, on a completely different level of existence than man.

Chesterton suggests in The Everlasting Man that philosophers such as Plato and Socrates, and perhaps many men in the ancient world, did not seriously think that the gods existed. The idea of a Supreme Being, on the other hand, was different. Men had always had a vague sense of a great power behind the world, and they invented myths as an imaginative way of pursuing this mysterious power, but it was the philosophers who actually tried to articulate rationally what it might be.

The atheist may object that this idea of God, of a higher power and purpose affecting all things, is a natural invention of the human mind. But again, this by no means disproves God; if he is real, he might well cause us to know him in exactly that way. And as pointed out here, the idea of God only bears a superficial resemblance to human beings, or to the gods of myth, who were clearly invented by men.

God and Man: Which One Invented the Other?

2010-08-17T16:00:00.005-04:00

It is a frequent objection of atheists that humans have invented God, making him in their own image. "God" is like man in every respect, except that he is bigger. We human beings think and learn and do things, so we invent a "supreme being" who is all-knowing and all-powerful. We are imaginative and creative and design things of our own (inventions, art, music, etc.), so we project this characteristic to a supposed Creator or Designer. We feel certain moral inclinations, which we project to this great being, supposing him to be the maker of this moral law. We love one another and desire to be loved, so we describe God as one who loves mankind and cares for us. Seeking to comfort ourselves with the idea that there is a purpose for our existence, we imagine that this being cares for us and works all things for good. It is in our nature to project our own human characteristics to this anthropomorphic "God," largely as a means of wish-fulfillment. God is not real, but merely an idea in our minds, constructed in our own image, as it were.

This is the scenario often set forth by the atheist, as I understand it (please correct me if this description is inadequate or incorrect). With their anthropomorphic account the atheists offer one possible explanation of the similarities between man and this idea of "God" which we seem to have conjured up.

The "God" we have imagined shares some similarities with human characteristics. Have we then invented God? Does he not actually exist? At first glance it may seem so, but correlation does not necessarily imply causation in either direction. That man has invented the idea of God simply does not follow from the fact that the God we imagine is in some ways like man.

There seems to be in some circles a dangerous tendency to "explain away" human perceptions, ideas, etc. as psychological phenomena. This way of explaining things can obviously be taken too far. It is one thing to say to a starving man in a desert that "your apparent perception of a table filled with food is a hallucination caused by your hunger," but quite another to say the same thing to a well-fed boy at a thanksgiving feast. The difference is that in the former case what seems to be an accurate perception or idea in the brain is a delusion caused by other factors, and in the latter it is an accurate perception of the external world (so it is of course misleading to say that this meal is only an event in the brain).

All perceptions result from events in the brain (it is through our brain that all our interaction with the world takes place) and can be described psychologically, but this does not mean that all perceptions can be "explained away" as nothing more than neurological events. Some perceptions, such as the hallucination of the starving man, may be no more than tricks of the brain, but in normal circumstances our perceptions are accurate reflections of the external world. The question at hand, then, is whether God is something real outside of our minds, or merely a "hallucination" as it were, conjured up for some reason other than his actual existence. It is true that ideas of God often have human-like characteristics, and this is a strength for the view that man has invented God - that is, that God is no more than a neurological phenomenon. But could this idea of God be just as well explained as an accurate perception of something real, external to our brains? That is the question we need to ask.

It is important to realize that the idea that God made man is not wholly mutually exclusive with the description of man making God in his image. Supposing that God exists and created us in his image, he would certainly make us capable of knowing him. And if he has made the physical world as we know it, one would expect him to build that capability into us as beings who grow and develop in that world. That is, if we are made in God's image, we have a natural ability to develop an idea of our Maker. The processes by which man develops his idea of God - evolution, development of human societies, etc. - which the atheist sees as completely naturalistic, can be viewed just as easily as a means by which God makes himself known to us (see "Evolution as God's Instrument"). This is a subtle but crucial point, and one that is often missed.

The atheist's account, then, need not be completely false. It is misleading, of course, to say that man made God in his image, but it is true that man's idea of God must develop such that it is shaped according to man's nature and experience (see "Dorothy Sayers on Describing God with Human Language"). And since God designed our experience to be what it is with the purpose of man knowing his Maker in mind, our idea of God will be meaningful, matching up in significant ways with what God is like in reality. Given our limitations this idea may well be inaccurate and will certainly be incomplete (hence the danger of incorrect anthropomorphic descriptions of God), but if God does indeed intend for us to know him, there will be some truth in it.

Dorothy Sayers on Describing God with Human Language

2010-08-14T16:00:00.006-04:00

Christianity describes God as a father and Jesus as his "son," and in relation to mankind, God is a father, a lover, a friend, a king, etc. He is described in terms of human roles, so it is sometimes objected that humans are merely projecting their own experience onto their idea of God. But let's pause and think for a minute. How else would humans describe God? All of human language is developed from man's experience - we can only describe God in terms of things that are not God. If an eternal and transcendent reality can be described with words at all, it must be by analogy and metaphor - we must compare God with things we know by saying how he is or is not like them. There is no other way to talk about God.

Dorothy Sayers addresses this question in her book The Mind of the Maker:

"The fact is that all language about everything is analogical; we think in a series of metaphors...When we speak about something of which we have no direct experience, we must think by analogy or refrain from thought. It may be perilous, as it must be inadequate, to interpret God by analogy with ourselves, but we are compelled to do so; we have no other means of interpreting anything...Sceptics frequently complain that man has made God in his own image; they should in reason go further (as many of them do) and acknowledge that man has made all existence in his own image. If the tendency to anthropomorphism is a good reason for refusing to think about God, it is an equally good reason for refusing to think about light, or oysters, or battleships. It may quite well be perilous, as it must be inadequate, to interpret the mind of our pet dog by analogy with ourselves; we can by no means enter directly into the nature of a dog; behind the appealing eyes and the wagging tail lies a mystery as inscrutable as the mystery of the Trinity. But that does not prevent us from ascribing to the dog feelings and ideas based on analogy with our own experience; and our behaviour to the dog, controlled by this kind of experimental guesswork, produces practical results which are reasonably satisfactory. Similarly the physicist, struggling to interpret the alien structure of the atom, finds himself obliged to consider it sometimes as a "wave and sometimes as a "particle". He knows very well that both these terms are analogical - they are metaphors, "picture-thinking", and, as pictures, they are incompatible and mutually contradictory. But he need not on that account refrain from using them for what they are worth. If he were to wait till he could have immediate experience of the atom, he would have to wait until he was set free from the framework of the universe. In the meantime, so long as he remembers that language and observation are human functions, partaking at every point of the limitations of humanity, he can get along quite well with them and carry out fruitful researches. To complain that man measures God by his own experience is a waste of time; man measures everything by his own experience; he has no other yardstick."

Human language is of course a limited means of communication, but it is all we have to go on. It is even more difficult when talking about God - we must describe the infinite and eternal in terms of what we know with our limited human senses, thoughts, and emotions. But even this kind of highly analogical language can carry truth, and we are aided by God in the task of knowing and describing him by means of human language. He has made himself known to us in terms of the tangible and the physical, in terms of human senses and relationships (see "A Religion that Can Be Touched: The "Myth and Metaphor" of Christianity"). He designed human roles such as father and son, lover and beloved, for this very purpose - that the finite should touch upon the infinite, that creatures should glimpse their Creator. Far from being a reason to doubt the truth of Christianity, these rich and varied descriptions of God in terms of things we know in our world of experience add a layer of depth and beauty to our understanding of the divine.

A Christian's Argument for Atheism

2010-08-11T16:00:00.004-04:00

[See "NOTE" below.]

We find that we exist, and we find ourselves existing within a particular world. We see that there are other people, other living organisms. Stepping back we find ourselves on a tiny blue sphere, teeming with life and activity. It's all quite remarkable, and of course it begs the question, "where did it come from?" Why the universe, why this universe? The theist proposes the idea of "God," a Supreme Being of infinite intelligence, knowledge, and power, a Superman if you will, as an explanation for the universe. Presumably this God exists eternally outside of time and created the world we know.

Existence is an incredible fact, so naturally we wish we could find an adequate explanation - we seek an extraordinary explanation for an extraordinary world. The believer imagines something of infinite magnitude, something that seems to him to possess true greatness, yet he can only imagine things that resemble his experience, so he naturally imagines something like himself: a great Being, which he calls God.

We must be patient with the theist - after all, his belief is quite understandable in psychological and biological terms. One would only expect that a human being, in trying to understand a big world, should hypothesize a big being - something big enough to seem like an explanation, but also an idea that he can at least vaguely understand and describe with words. And that is precisely what God is.

But does this idea really explain anything? A few moments of rational thought will reveal that it does not. Granted, the universe is a mystery - we really have no idea why it exists or why it is the way it is. But to say "God did it" - what a cop out! This idea of God is both less understandable and less self-explanatory than the universe we know. We can learn about the universe through observation and experimentation, gaining a real understanding of how it works (indeed, a full understanding is within sight), but how on earth could one test this hypothesis of God? How could we observe him? Being unknowable and incomprehensible, God explains nothing of the mystery of the universe and only succeeds in adding his own existence to the problem. The theist wonders why the universe exists, but we must press him: why does God exist? And if we hypothesize a second explanation - something that made God - then where did that thing came from? This kind of reasoning leads us down the path of infinite regress, which becomes more and more absurd the farther we follow it. It is better not to start out down that path in the first place. We must accept the mystery of our existence rather than grapple in the dark for invisible explanations. We ought not try to answer unanswerable questions.

Now the theist, stubbornly resistant, throws out several "arguments" for God. First, the cosmological argument. The universe had a beginning, the Big Bang, and since all events have causes, there must exist some cause of the Big Bang, something other than universe. But is the Big Bang really a beginning? The argument presupposes (a) that cause and effect follows the flow of time, but does time really "flow" or is the static Hawking-Hartle model a better description of the universe? and (b) that time begins with the Big Bang, but research in quantum cosmology suggests that the Bang was in fact a Bounce: there was a universe before the Big Bang. The Big Bang might well not be the beginning of a universe flowing in one direction in time.

Second, the believer sees the unmistakable marks of "design." The universe is fine-tuned to a remarkable degree of precision in order to allow for life to exist. But is our universe really the only one out there? Physicists are becoming increasingly interested in the idea of multiple universes - some string theorists suggest as many as 10^500 universes. With a number this high, it is inevitable that some of these universes will turn out to be sufficiently "fine-tuned," and that those universes will indeed produce life. The life on those particular universes is inevitable. The apparent design, then, need not be viewed as design at all.

Most powerful of all in refuting the idea of God is the problem of evil. Why would an all-powerful and benevolent God allow suffering to exist? For some greater good? But surely a God of infinite wisdom and power, such as the theist proposes, could find a way to bring about any conceivable good without resorting to such horrific means. Are we really to believe that this pain-filled world is the only way that God could possibly bring about his greater good. And even if it were, is it worth the unimaginable suffering of millions?

The idea of God fails to explain the problems for which it was invented, either because those problems were not problems after all, or because it only succeeds in introducing new problems. God is an arbitrary and unnecessary hypothesis. As Laplace famously said, "I have no need of that hypothesis."

The believer often finds security in the idea that God created him for a good purpose. It is clear that we cannot hide away in this cozy shell of delusion and remain rational people, but we need not despair of finding meaning or value in our existence. There is no reason for thinking that meaning can be found only in God - it can be found in abundance in the world around us. The universe is a beautiful and wonderful place - such a sublime physical and mathematical structure, such a vast and glorious cosmos, so incredible as a birthplace of life. And this beauty does not depend on the idea of God - one can see it in the world and wonder at it regardless of one's philosophy. There is grandeur in the story of the universe, and in our story within it.
_________________________________________________________________________________

NOTE: In order to approach the truth we must have meaningful dialogue, and for that to happen we must each strive to understand the viewpoints of those we disagree with, and why they hold these viewpoints. The above argument is my articulation of what I perceive to be some of the strongest and most common points made by atheists. I actually think there may be a good bit of truth in the responses to the cosmological and design arguments, but other than that the argument is, in my view, utterly false. Had I given what is to me the most convincing argument for atheism, it would have been somewhat different. As it is, it is not my argument for atheism, but my best short formulation of the atheists' arguments as I see them.

C. S. Lewis' "Pattern of Reality" in Perelandra: links

2010-08-07T19:41:00.002-04:00

Here is a list of links to the each post in this series of posts I've been doing on C. S. Lewis' idea of a "pattern of reality" that describes the "Great Dance" of God's unfolding plans and designs for creation:

C. S. Lewis on "The Very Pattern of Reality" in Perelandra
God Is Always Making a New Thing
"Behold, I Am Making All Things New"
The Whole Is Greater Than The Sum of Its Parts
The Pattern of Paradox
"Not as when stones lie side by side, but as when stones support and are supported in an arch, such is His order."
"Never Did He Utter One Word Twice"
A Religion that Can Be Touched: The "Myth and Metaphor" of Christianity
All Creation Bears the Image of the Creator
"Rule and obedience, begetting and bearing, heat glancing down, life growing up. Blessed be He!"
The Dance and Story of Creation
The Pattern of Mathematics
He is Himself the Grain of Wheat: The Self-Emptying Nature of God
Creation Reflects the Pattern of the Trinity
What if God was not a Trinity?
C. S. Lewis' Pattern of Reality: Summary
The Complexity and Simplicity of God
Alpha and Omega, Beginning and End
The Mind of Man and the Plans of God
God, Creation, and Mathematics: Are necessary truths trivial?
This world is only the first chapter of the Great Story
Will "Heaven" Last Forever? Will God stop Creating?
Is there a Center to the Great Dance?: Other Worlds and the Fruit of the Cross in Lewis' Perelandra

Is there a Center to the Great Dance?: Other Worlds and the Fruit of the Cross in Lewis' Perelandra

2010-08-05T16:00:00.001-04:00

...In the last post I suggested that the story we know - of God creating our world, entering into it in the person of Jesus Christ, and through His death and resurrection redeeming mankind and beginning a new creation - may only be the title page of a much greater Story - a Story of all that God has ever done, which will go on forever, always giving rise to new and more glorious designs.

Into this Great Dance, as Lewis calls it, may be gathered other worlds and universes and ages wholly unknown to us now - it is only reasonable to expect a vast and limitless creation of an infinite God. In my view, there probably are other worlds, other purposes, other stories out there in the far reaches of reality - places unimaginably distant and different from our world, yet places made by the same Maker. They may not tell the same story as our world does (fall, redemption, new creation), but they are part of the same Great Dance, and all creation bears the image of the Creator.

In Lewis' Ransom Trilogy, of which Perelandra is the second book, Malacandra (Mars) is an ancient world, far older than Earth, whose people were never tempted to sin (like the people of Earth and Perelandra) and never needed salvation (like Earth, and in a way also Perelandra). Maleldil (Christ) plants the seed of new creation with his Death and Resurrection in our world, but the firstfruits of this redemption appear on Perelandra - the fruit of the cross bursts out into the cosmos. Something new happened when Maleldil became a man - the universe was changed forever. And something new also happened when Perelandra's salvation and rebirth was complete - a new movement in the Dance had begun. Lewis writes,

"As is the circle to the sphere, so are the ancient worlds that needed no redemption to that world wherein He was born and died. As is a point to a line, so is that world to the far-off fruits of its redeeming. Blessed be He!"

The ancient worlds, the world where Maleldil became a man, the first redeemed world... At every step in the story of creation something wholly new emerges - even a new dimension, one might say, a higher plane of being.

But Lewis cautions again the temptation to rush ahead in the Dance - to see only the new things at the expense of seeing the beauty of what is already in motion:

"The Great Dance does not wait to be perfect until the peoples of the Low Worlds are gathered into it. We speak not of when it will begin. It has begun from before always. There was no time when we did not rejoice before His face as now. The dance which we dance is at the centre and for the dance all things were made. Blessed be He!"

The former things are not made less by what follows them; rather, they are made greater by the unique and essential role they play. The ancient people needed no redemption, and yet our redemption is for their joy as well. They take part in the same Dance, and Maleldil was with them in a unique way before the story of redemption began. The stories of the ancient peoples and of the angels are different from the story of man ("never did He utter one word twice"), but not any less a part of the Dance. Their movement in the Dance is beautiful in its uniqueness.

One might even think of the "movement in the Dance" of mathematics, or of the physical structure of the universe. Mathematics is beautiful in its role as the most basic and foundational structure of the universe. As the very framework of the Dance, it is totally unlike any other movement.

Because God is present in all things, writes Lewis, any movement or story that plays a part in the Great Dance may seem to be the center of all:

"Set your eyes on one movement and it will lead you through all patterns and it will seem to you the master movement. But the seeming will be true. Let no mouth open to gainsay it. There seems no plan because it is all plan: there seems no centre because it is all centre. Where Maleldil is, there is the centre. He is in every place. Blessed be He!"

Lewis is right, I think, to emphasize the presence of God in all things and the fact that this gives value to each movement in the Dance. At the same time, though, I am unsure whether or not it is true to say that all movements are equally the center.

In particular, it seems to me that the Incarnation, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ will always be the cornerstone of the arch and the crux of God's plan for creation. The event in which God himself suffered and died! Where the Trinity appeared for a moment to be tearing apart!* Surely this is the center of centers. For it seems that at the cross of Christ God plants a seed of infinite growth, a seed upon which the whole growing tree of creation is founded. Creation came to be when God said "let there be light," but new creation, real creation as God intended it to be, begins at the cross.
*But in reality, it is at the cross that God is being most fully Himself.

But I must confess I am in over my head. The thoughts and plans of God are incomparably higher than anything we can know (Isaiah 55:9), and God has his reasons for only showing us so much of this Dance. Let us again rejoice that no matter how much we see of the Great Dance, the fullness of God and his plans will remain forever beyond us. If our universe is just one movement in His great design, if our story is only the title page of all that is to come, then how great must He be! Let us join Lewis in worshipping this great Author and Maker: "Blessed Be He!"

Peter Kreeft on Christianity in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings

2010-08-03T21:38:00.004-04:00

Here is an excellent lecture by philosopher Peter Kreeft on Tolkien’s Christian faith and its presence in The Lord of the Rings. A few among many of the interesting points he makes...

Tolkien said that his faith was so deeply a part of him that anything he wrote would inevitably reflect it, whether or not he consciously intended it to be so.
Tolkien wrote of LotR that "the conflict is not basically about power or freedom, though these are naturally involved; it is about God, and his sole right to divine honor.” Wearing the Ring is about playing God, and the quest to destroy it is carried out in resistance to this temptation.
The Lord of the Rings is a "pagan, pre-Christian myth”: although it takes place in a time before Christ and the religious element is never explicit, Tolkien’s faith is deeply present in the form of the story and in the very shaping and structure of the world. An unbeliever wrote of LotR that “some sort of faith seems to be everywhere, like light from an invisible source.”

God, the Creator of Middle-earth, shows up once or twice in LotR, although more can be learned about him in The Silmarillion. His divine providence, says Kreeft, is “spectacularly present,” especially in the events surrounding Gollum and the Ring (Gandalf tells Frodo “you were meant to have it, and not by its maker [Sauron]”).

The beautiful setting of Middle-earth is what enchants us the most. The fact that we so easily accept Tolkien’s cosmology of a world where spirit mediates matter and all things live according to a high purpose suggests that we resonate with this worldview and, on a deeper level, know it to be true.

Frodo, Gandalf, and Aragorn each undergo a sort of sacrificial death and resurrection (respectively, in bearing the ring, battling the Balrog, and travelling the paths of the dead); the resemblances to Christ are striking in each case.

The sudden “eucatastrophic” victory at the end, in which our hopes are unexpectedly vindicated, reflects the true Eucatastrophe of Christ’s resurrection, wrote Tolkien. "Is everything sad going to come untrue?” asks Sam? It does in Middle-earth, and it is happening in reality as well.

Will "Heaven" Last Forever? Will God stop Creating?

2010-08-03T16:00:00.003-04:00

...One question worth thinking about is, "will the Story continue forever?"¹ I think it will - it seems to me that God is so overflowing with creative power that his creation must always be growing in new ways. There isn't a "ceiling" - never will creation reach some final, static, unchanging state of perfection. Rather, the Creator will always be creating; the eternal Fountain will always be pouring forth new things into being. In God there must surely be a bottomless well of potential designs and wonders to bring forth - surely He will always be creating and causing creation to grow without limit.

This is not to say that God can only look on his creation as an unfinished work. God is transcendent and eternal, beyond everything He creates, outside of time itself. When He looks on creation, He sees the whole Story as the Author, the Dance in its entirety, as the One who made it. Being the eternal and infinite God, his perspective is that of one who is beyond and outside it all.

But God has also entered creation through the Incarnation. Although He wrote it, He himself took part in the Dance and Story. Jesus Christ was God incarnate, so in Christ God lived as a creature and experienced the passage of time. God in his transcendent fullness is beyond time, and He sees in eternity the whole of (temporal) creation "from the outside," yet in Christ He has also entered time and experiences creation "from the inside," perhaps even looking forward to the unrealized future. How both these truths can stand remains a mystery; it is not a blatant contradiction, but a paradox beyond comprehension. We see in God's relation to time yet another aspect of the paradoxical Creator-creation relationship - both an uncrossable chasm and an unbreakable bond.

But how, one might ask, can even God see the whole Story at once if it will never end, if it is truly infinite? Here we can say little, because we do not see God as He is: infinite and eternal, wholly beyond everything He makes. Could creation ever grow beyond or out away from its Maker? We must remember the great chasm between Creator and creation. God always holds creation in the palm of his hand, even if it is in infinite, never-ending growth.² If we cannot comprehend infinity, how much less can we comprehend the Maker of that infinity! And if that infinity is unbounded and endless, how much more vast and bottomless must be the One who gave it being! If creation will always be growing, ever higher and deeper, "further up and further in" for all eternity, mounting endlessly to wonders that are far beyond anything that preceded them - if that is the case, then God waits at eternity to receive it all in its fullness. Never can anything grow out away from God, beyond his sight or grasp; all things tend towards Him, because all things come from Him and cannot escape Him. He, the fountain and foundation, gave it being in the first place, and He, the infinite Omega, gathers to Himself His infinitely growing creation. The light comes from Him and returns to Him, and He is all in all.

God alone, then, can see his boundlessly growing creation in a state of completeness - not static or sterile finality, but dynamic fullness. Although we, from the inside, as it were, may never reach an end, God holds the infinite and limitless whole in the palm of his hand. If creation is unbounded and limitless, growing forever, this does not imply that it is always incomplete and imperfect. It may seem so from a time-bound perspective, but God, while experiencing time in Christ, is beyond all in His divine fullness, and just as He rejoices in his own infinite glory and in Himself as the eternal origin from which all the designs of creation come, so also He sees the whole of his endless creative work and rejoices in its perfection.

But for us, human beings whose only frame of reference is from within creation, there will be no end to the journey, no final moment after which there will be nothing new. Our world of experience of who God is and what He has done will always be growing and expanding. Higher and greater revelations, "new dimensions of glory" will never end, and what we see of God will always be infinitely surpassed by what follows. Yet because we are finite and God is infinite, because we are created and God is the foundation of existence itself, we will never know or see Him fully - not all that He is. We will, as Paul says, see Him face to face, but we will never penetrate the infinite mystery of God, and for that He is to be praised.

¹ Again, this raises interesting questions about the nature of time. Maybe there is a way for the Story to continue, for there to be growth and change, in a non-temporal sense. What this might be like, we cannot even imagine. When I speak of change and growth, then, I am thinking in the only comprehensible context: time.
² Creation is always growing explosively, perhaps even gaining momentum indefinitely as God continually makes new things. Reality is huge, "heavy" in the fullness of its being, seemingly unstoppable in dynamic movement, but God holds at all as if it were nothing. It is all from Him and was eternally present in His mind, and He has unbounded and unfathomable power to hold it all together, like a grain of sand between His fingers.

This world is only the first chapter of the Great Story

2010-07-31T16:00:00.002-04:00

...Lewis' descriptions in Perelandra are truly breathtaking - I cannot recommend the book enough, especially the chapter "The Great Dance." The seed of redemption and new life planted on Earth, in Lewis' story, bursts into bloom on Perelandra, another planet. Through Ransom's Christ-like sacrifice, humanity on Perelandra is saved from evil. In remaining obedient under temptation, they learn of good and evil and become, in a sense, a new humanity, perfected and redeemed, unlike anything that has yet been seen.

Could it be possible for something like this to happen? If Christ's resurrection is the firstfruits of renewal and transformation of all creation, as Paul suggests in Romans 8 and Colossians 1, then who knows what far-reaching effects the cross of Christ could have - who knows what new and unforeseen events, even in other worlds, will be made possible through the cross? Who knows what new and unexpected story will grow out of the story we know in Scripture? How will God's Story continue once the part we know has played out?

Supposing the story about Satan's rebellion and fall from heaven to be true, one might imagine that the angels, having seen Satan defeated by God and cast out of his presence, might have thought that the story was complete. Evil had come into existence and opposed God, and God had won the victory; they themselves had learned of good and evil. Could the angels have foreseen the new design of humanity and the story of incarnation, death and resurrection to which Satan's existence was being directed? And if that design could not have been foreseen beforehand, what unforeseen new designs might follow from it?

We need to pause and widen our view of reality. What if the story we know - the story of God coming into this world in Christ and redeeming humanity through his death and resurrection - what if that story is just the prologue to the Great Story, the Great Dance of God towards which all things are moving? The cross is the center of the story that we are told, but what if it is just the title page of all that God is doing? “In the plan of the Great Dance," writes Lewis, "plans without number interlock, and each movement becomes in its season the breaking into flower of the whole design to which all else had been directed.” What design could the whole story of creation, fall, redemption, and new creation be directed towards? What even greater Story might this story be a part of?

But we need to be careful. On the one hand, we cannot assume that the story of redemption God has revealed to us is the sum total of all He is doing - it may be only a small part. On the other hand, we need to remember that even if it is just a small part, God decided to reveal to us exactly that part. In his wisdom He has concealed from us (for now) whatever else He may be up to. We would be wise to focus primarily on what God has shown us, rather than speculating excessively about what He has not revealed. And we must also be careful not to get caught up in the quantitative aspect of what God is doing, that is, with the sheer number of worlds He may be making. Expect majestic and limitless creation from God, but not at the expense of recognizing his greatness in the small things - the depth, the pattern, the beauty in what He has already shown us.

That said, there is, I think, a healthy kind of imaginative speculation about the "Great Dance" of all that God is doing and about the pattern or theme of that Story. "Heaven" as we often call it - the age to come - will not be an unchanging paradise where we enjoy the same pleasures for eternity. It will be as much a story as life is now - an adventure, but vast and endless, no longer blocked by death. All of human history, even our whole universe, will perhaps become part of something much larger - many worlds and many stories, all being woven into the Great Dance, the Great Story that never ends and is always breaking into some new design to which everything up to that point had been directed.

God, Creation, and Mathematics: Are necessary truths trivial?

2010-07-28T16:00:00.000-04:00

...Now, one response to this description of a possible "pattern of reality" would be to say that I am seeing what I want to see, that I am looking at the world in a particular way so that I will inevitably find the pattern I imagined from Lewis' writings, or perhaps that the world has to have the pattern I've described - that it is as essential as logic. One might say, "of course everything is interconnected and interrelated - what is special about that? Of course you can take any two things and find something new in the way they relate to one another. It's only common sense that eventually, given enough time, totally new and groundbreaking things will happen. And of course there must be some basic, simply beginning from which things grow, and it's the very nature of time for things to move in a definite direction." The objection is that the proposed "pattern" is not unique or special or remarkable because the world must be that way - because one can hardly imagine another logically coherent reality.

Maybe that is true. Maybe this "pattern" must characterize reality - maybe it is as basic as logic, so that the "pattern of reality" is simply a manifestation of logic or mathematics, or something to that effect. But even if this is the case, it does not make the pattern any less beautiful or wonderful. First of all, as we have seen, the pattern is grounded and rooted in God, and God is a rational God. The laws of logic are part of his nature, so if reality is patterned after who God is, one would expect the observed pattern to be logically coherent, and perhaps even logically necessary. Second, just because something has to be as it is doesn't mean it should be taken for granted, or that it is less of a miracle and wonder. The thing remains just as beautiful, and the breathtaking mystery of it is that a thing that beautiful should exist necessarily.

Consider mathematics as an example. When a mathematician discovers some elegant theorem, he may well think "this is beautiful and mysterious" and he may also think "this is necessarily true. It is not true only in my mind or my universe - it is a universal and necessary mathematical truth." And when he reflects on these two thoughts together, he sees no contradiction, but is rather struck with wonder and awe. What a mystery that this beautiful mathematical theorem must be true, and that reality can be no other way! What must reality truly be like, what must God be like, if wonders like this are necessary, woven into the fabric of existence itself?

It is exactly the same, I think, with all that God is and with all that he does. God must be as he is just as logic must be the way it is, but that does not make Him any less mysterious and beautiful. The necessity of his nature is itself part of who he is, which, one might argue, only adds to his greatness. In this sense, God is rather like the necessary and beautiful equation, and in many ways, so is His creation. If creation must be "patterned" as it is, the pattern remains just as beautiful, and just as much a signature of the Creator.

The Mind of Man and the Plans of God

2010-07-26T17:30:00.001-04:00

...In trying to identify a "pattern of reality," one might well object that there is a danger of over-speculation. How could we possibly know something so deep and mysterious? Certainly we cannot know the full truth, but it may be that God has revealed a small part, and this is what I attempt to understand. But we ought not imagine ourselves to be capable of pinning down the secret of the universe or unveiling the full the mystery of God's purposes. This is of course impossible.

Most of what I have written is based on Lewis' phrases and descriptions in Perelandra. To me these passages convey a unique beauty - there is some mysterious truth hidden in them. I have tried to understand what truth there may be in Lewis' words by looking beneath his analogies and examples for a more general principle. The danger in this is that one might acquire a sort of triumphalist attitude - "I have identified what is going on in these beautiful words and fit them into a broader context, so now I understand them completely." This would be a grave mistake, and I hope I have avoided it. I do not think that I or anyone else, including Lewis himself, has penetrated the full mystery of the truths he describes.

What we know of God's overarching plan is no more than what a first grader knows of mathematics. He can add, maybe even multiply, but he knows virtually nothing of limitless world of mathematical patterns and structures and theorems. He has a vague idea of a very small part of it. It is the same with humanity and God: what we know is a tiny fraction, and what we may be able to guess is a few tiny fractions. But what we do not know is vast and endless, and this is cause for wonder and joy.

Alpha and Omega, Beginning and End

2010-07-22T17:25:00.008-04:00

From Him, the seed and fountain, springs forth creation in all its glory. God is the oldest and first thing, the origin and source of all existence, and the whole pattern, even creation itself, is founded on Him as a tower built on firm ground. All truth is God's truth, all love is derived from Love Himself, all beauty a reflection of the Beautiful One. It is all to be found first and foremost in Him.

Through Him are all things accomplished. He is not only the origin of all, but the Life that continues to uphold the universe. In Him all things live and move and have their being. Like a fish in water, like a human in air, creation lives and breathes and grows through the Creator. "Deep Heaven is inside Him who is inside the seed": the likeness of divinity is in everything created by the Creator. And through His incarnation and image and pattern, all creation is made new and grows forever higher and deeper, forever closer to God.

To Him are all things. He is the final and ultimate new thing, the all-encompassing light and heat towards which the tree grows in all its fullness, the central character around Whom all the events in the story are woven. All creation bears the image of its Maker, all things reflect and magnify His light. And in the end all things are reconciled to Him, regathered to Him, resurrected to the Resurrection and the Life. Blessed Be He!

"All things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together." - Colossians 1:16-17

He is all in all, beginning and end, Alpha and Omega. He is the foundation and beginning of all things, the life and motion and growth of all things, the purpose and end of all things. The Light by Whom we see and understand the world, The Life that overcame death, the Love for Whom we were made, the Lord and God of all existence. Blessed be He forever and ever, unto ages of ages!

"For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen." - Romans 11:36

The Complexity and Simplicity of God

2010-07-20T17:22:00.014-04:00

...The pattern that Lewis describes is a beautiful pattern - after all, it is God's pattern, and God is the source of all beauty. God is the great One, the first One, the foundation of existence and fountain of creation. The pattern by which He brings new things into being makes Him not only Alpha, but Omega - not only the origin and beginning, but also the end and purpose of all things.

As the dance and pattern of creation unfolds, the tree grows upwards and outwards, and reality becomes more complex - from elementary particles and fields come molecules, from molecules cells, from cells living creatures. The physical complexity seems limitless, and this is just one movement in the Great Dance. Yet as God's plan continues to unfold, there is, I think, a simplicity on the far side of complexity, a unity the far side of diversity. Above the complexity of the stones is the simplicity of the whole arch, and beneath the complexity of, say, the body, is the simplicity and elegance of mathematics and physics. This undergirding simplicity and overarching unity is part of the pattern, and it too reflects the Creator. He is complex and diverse, yet also simple and One. Lewis, of course, says it best, and again in his words we find that image and analogy communicate something unique:

"Of many points one line; of many lines one shape; of many shapes one solid body; of many senses and thoughts one person; of three persons, Himself."

We have seen that God is the source and author of the pattern; here Lewis suggests that He is also the end for which all was made. The pattern is from Him, and it is also to Him.

C. S. Lewis' Pattern of Reality: Summary

2010-07-15T17:17:00.004-04:00

...For some time now, I've been working through C. S. Lewis' idea of God's plan and design for creation as a "Great Dance" (Perelandra, ch. 17), a "pattern of reality" if you will. Since it has been quite a long train of thought, a concise summary will, I hope, help to bring it all together:

God is always doing a new thing. From Himself, He "calls into existence the things that do not exist" (Rom 4:17) - things other than himself. The idea of each and every created thing was and is eternally present and complete in God's mind, yet created things did not have actual being in God's mind. They are something other than Him, and when He created, something completely new came to be. God is ultimate existence and ultimate reality, and when He brought forth a creation out of nothing, something groundbreaking and new happened: things existed that were other than God, the foundation of existence itself.

Within creation the pattern of new things continues. From a physical world comes conscious thought and emotion, that is, life. From living creatures comes a creature that can know and imitate God. And at each step the new thing comes in a new way; the "mode of change" itself is different, something never seen before, enriching the uniqueness and newness and beauty of the design as it unfolds. First the Son of God begotten of the Father, then the Son of Man born of Mary. First a new creation, then "out of the new creation, not a third but the mode of change itself is changed forever." In the Story of Christianity we find the same theme of new things: Scripture is saturated with the language of God making "all things new," and with Christ's death and resurrection all creation is renewed, like a seed growing into a flower.

New things are brought into being through the interrelatedness of things. A song from the relations between its notes, a story from the interdependent events that comprise it, living creatures from the intertwined structure of the physical world. This is the way God creates. "Not as when stones lie side by side, but as when stones support and are supported in an arch - such is his order." Creation is interconnected, like a great stone arch, and from this interrelatedness grows a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts - a new thing. Each stone affects each other stone just as everything God makes is related to all other things, yet each stone is utterly unique in the role it plays, just as each thing God has made is utterly unique: never does He utter one word twice.

Creation is richly layered: smaller things reflect or foreshadow greater things, and all creation reflects the light of its Creator. The whole of nature and history is telling the story of Christ's death and resurrection and reflecting the light of this great truth. Physical things are images for spiritual truths, human relationships reflect our relationship with God, and man is a symbol for God himself. In all this we see but one facet of the deep interconnectedness of all that God has made and planned.

Creation is not static, but dynamic, moving, growing in a definite direction: outwards from God, its Maker and Author, but also upwards towards God, the End for Whom all things were made. It is a Story, a Dance, a dynamic arch, a growing tree. The dynamic interaction between things is always giving rise to new designs and themes: new things that have never been before become the culmination of all before them and enter into the great arch of creation. Yet the tallest of trees comes from a tiny seed. Creation grows in the strangest and most paradoxical way: through weakness, through emptying, through the small things. It is through defeat that his victory is won; it is in his emptiness that his overflowing love and power is seen. God, in Jesus Christ, is himself the seed that died in order to unleash the tree of creation. It is here in the pattern of death and resurrection, at the very cross of Christ, that the most beautiful note in the pattern of reality sounds. Here above all other places is God's greatness is to be found.

Finally, we saw that all the facets of this pattern which marks creation are to be found in God himself. The Father is first, the Son is begotten of the Father, a new thing, an image or reflection of the first. The Spirit proceeds from this bond, and here the "mode of change" is itself new: proceeding is wholly different from begetting. Each person in the Trinity is unique in their identity and relation to the others, yet there is a deep interrelatedness between the three, and from the diversity of three comes a united whole: God is One, more than just three persons together, more than stones lying side by side. The order of God's creation, then, is also the order of His own divine nature. If there is a pattern of reality it is also the pattern of God, and if we see it in creation, this is because it is first in the Creator.

What if God was not a Trinity?

2010-07-12T16:00:00.000-04:00

...All this may seem abstract. What are these “persons” in the Trinity? What is this “order”? What in the world is “begetting” or “proceeding”? In order to understand better what the Trinity is all about, it may be helpful to consider a hypothetical different God.* Imagine a self-existent, eternal, transcendent, all-knowing and all-powerful Supreme Being without all the complications of multiple persons - that is, a "one-person" God, a seemingly simpler God, the sort of being we think of most intuitively when the word "God" is spoken. The remarkable qualities of the Trinity can perhaps be seen more clearly when compared to this simpler non-Trinitarian deity.

In such a God there would be no pattern of growth or new things, as there is in the begetting and procession in the Trinity. There would be no love within God’s very being, as there is between the persons of the Trinity. There would be unity, but it would not be the dynamic unity of the stones as they form an arch. It would be the unity of a uniformly painted canvas. In the Trinity, though, we find the unity of a beautiful painting - composed of various shades and tones and textures, yet forming a complete whole.

If, at the bottom of existence, there was one simple and uniform thing and nothing else, there is nothing else in relation to which that thing can be seen. There is no potential - reality cannot grow. But if there is a diverse and complex unity greater than uniformity, facets of reality can reflect each other. That is, if God is One and united, yet at the same time diverse and multifaceted and dynamically interconnected in relation with Himself, things can be seen in relation to one another even at the foundation of existence. The Son is seen in the Father's light, and the Spirit in light of these two. There is a sort of growth in God himself, foreshadowing the growing into being of things other than God: creation is anticipated, as it were, in the Creator himself. Lewis' beautiful description of the dynamic "growth" and creativity within the Trinity says it best and is worth quoting yet again:

…“All things are by Him and for Him. He utters Himself also for His own delight and sees that He is good. He is His own begotten and what proceeds from Him is Himself. Blessed be He!”

*Of course, we must remind ourselves that it is somewhat meaningless to talk about what reality would be if God were different, because God is the basis for all reality – the axiom, the foundation. It is like asking how mathematics would change if two and two did not make four. But even if God could not be other than He is, comparing to the impossible can still serve to deepen our understanding of the actual characteristics of God as He is.

Creation Reflects the Pattern of the Trinity

2010-07-08T16:44:00.007-04:00

"The pattern is there in Nature because it was first there in God." - C. S. Lewis, Miracles

…If there is indeed a pattern or theme that can be traced throughout all creation, as I have suggested, then where does it come from? Why is reality structured as it is, and not in some other way? The answer, of course, is that the whole pattern is found in God himself, in his very being, and its presence in creation is derived from its presence in the Creator.*

The doctrine of the Trinity is essential in understanding how this pattern is part of God's nature. God is One being, yet in a different sense, God is three persons, and there is a mysterious order among these persons. First is God the Father - all that God is is ultimately rooted in the Father. The Father is original, and in a deep and not fully understandable way, comes before the Son and the Spirit. All three persons exist eternally and are uncreated, yet the Father is first in this order.

The Son is the image of the Father, his "exact representation" (Hebrews 1:3, Colossians 1:15), "God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father." The Father's divine nature is shared fully by the Son, but the Son is the "mirror image" of the Father, second in this divine order. In other words, all that God is (his nature, character, attributes) is in the Son just as it is in the Father, yet one can only see it in the Son as the reflection of the Father. The Son bears the same "essence, substance, nature," but is emphatically not a copy of the Father. The Son is utterly unique because of his identity as the image, the second person. So even in the eternal being of God there is no repetition: "never the same thing twice."

The Spirit is the third person of the Trinity - third in this divine order. Many theologians have believed that the Spirit is a sort of outgrowth of the relationship, especially the bond of love (read John 17), between the Father and the Son, between the first One and his perfect image. If this is so, then the Spirit can be thought of as the "new thing" that emerges from the relationship between the first two. We must remember, though, that the Spirit, who is also eternal and self-existent, is not created or caused to exist any more than the Son.

In the very being of God, then, we see glimpses of the same pattern Lewis touches on in Perelandra. There is a beautiful interconnectedness within God, in the way the three persons of the Trinity are deeply related to one another. Each person, though having (in the words of the creed) the same divine "substance," is utterly unique in their relation to the other persons and to creation - Lewis' phrase "all is righteousness and there is no equality" is rooted in the Trinity. And each person is, in a sense, a groundbreaking "new thing." There is something in the second person, the Son, that is completely different and new; the Spirit too introduces a totally new plane of existence. From the rich interconnectedness of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit comes a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts: the being of God, three in One, the Trinity itself. Again, to use Lewis' imagery, "not as when stones lie side by side, but as when stones support and are supported in an arch, such is His order," and such is His nature. In the Trinity we find exactly the beautiful, rich, dynamic interconnectedness of the arch image.

Two stones in this arch are the roles of the Father and Son in relation to creation. The divine light of the Father is only seen by us - and by all creation - when it is reflected through the Son, the image. More generally, it is always through the Son that God interacts with creation, whether that is making or entering or redeeming it or revealing himself to it (John 1:3; Colossians 1:16, 19-20). So the Son, the Word, the image, is the "layer" that reflects the Father - not like a lesser thing reflecting a greater thing, as we saw so frequently in Scripture, but a layer nonetheless. One person as the image, almost a symbol, of the first; the pattern of images and symbols and layers in creation reflects this pattern of image and reflection in the Trinity. The being of God is richly and beautifully layered - both God in himself, and God as we see him.

There is also in God the same pattern of "growth" seen in creation. It would be wrong to call this growth "change" because God does not change as his creation does, and it would be wrong to suggest that it is growth in the sense of the Father causing the Son or Spirit to exist, or anything of that sort. God is eternal and transcendent, yet there is a sequence or order in the Trinity just as there is a definite direction in the Story of creation. There is a sort of starting point, an elemental beginning, in the Father, and there is a sort of outwards "growth" in the eternal begetting of the Son and procession of the Spirit. Furthermore, the love within the Trinity, many have suggested, is acted out in eternity through a sort of giving and receiving and indwelling between the persons of the Godhead - a dynamic activity, a dance if you will. This dance of God is the original light which the dance of creation reflects.

Lastly, the paradoxical pattern of creation growing from the weak and small things is rooted in God himself, who defines this pattern in His own death and resurrection. In emptying himself and becoming nothing, God expresses His love for creation. But the way God interacts with a changing creation reflects the inner life of the Trinity, God in Himself, eternal and unchanging. God’s love for creation grows from the eternal love between the persons of the Trinity (again, John 17), and God’s gift of Himself to creation reflects the eternal giving to one another of the three who live as One – always giving and emptying in love, yet always receiving and overflowing all the more.

In all this, we find in God himself the same pattern that can be seen in the created world and in the story told by Christianity (see previous posts). I suggest, then, that this pattern, which Lewis touches on so beautifully in Perelandra, is best understood and best explained when grounded in the doctrine of the Trinity and seen in that light. Given the pattern, one would expect something like the Trinity as its source and origin, and if indeed one considers the Trinity as a possibly explanation, great light is shed on the observed pattern. All creation bears the image of the Creator, and it is specifically the image of the Triune Creator that this world bears.

At the foundation of existence there is not just any first thing, but the Trinity, the three-in-one Creator, and the patterns and themes we see in creation are a reflection of the pattern of God's own nature. The pattern is defined in God - it is His pattern, and in Him it is exemplified. Lewis, of course, says it best:

“…All things are by Him and for Him. He utters Himself also for His own delight and sees that He is good. He is His own begotten and what proceeds from Him is Himself. Blessed be He!”

*One might ask in turn: why is God the way he is, and not some other way? But one might as well ask why two and two makes four. In the end, we must accept something as axiomatic, fundamental truth. In my view, God alone can be accepted in this way, and all fundamental truths are defined in Him.

He is Himself the Grain of Wheat: The Self-Emptying Nature of God

2010-07-03T16:00:00.004-04:00

“They who add years to years in lumpish aggregation, or miles to miles and galaxies to galaxies, shall not come near His greatness. The day of the fields of Arbol will fade and the days of Deep Heaven itself are numbered. Not thus is He great. He dwells (all of Him dwells) within the seed of the smallest flower and is not cramped: Deep Heaven is inside Him who is inside the seed and does not distend Him. Blessed be He!”

Lewis' next paragraph (above) touches on one of the most crucial characteristics of God and the way he does things. God's greatness is not to be found merely in his "bigness," that is, in his power to make enormous, sprawling universes that stretch for lightyears and megaparsecs. Certainly this is part of His greatness, but He is so much more than just that. Paradoxically, writes Lewis, His greatness is to be found most of all in the small things, in the weak things, the things that seem to be nothing at all (see 1 Corinthians 1). "Deep Heaven is inside Him who is inside the seed" - what a beautiful image!

This paradox gets to the heart of Christianity - that is, of the Story that God is telling - and it is at the center of that Story, at the cross of Christ, that we see the paradoxical pattern of God's character most clearly and most beautifully.¹ The explosive growth of creation and the unforeseen new things that spring into being are, according to the New Testament, mysteriously rooted in the event of the cross, where God himself became weak and small and apparently defeated, suffering and dying a human death. But from suffering infinite joy will grow, the greatest evil is transformed into the greatest good, and in death itself a seed of eternal life is planted (see "The Victory of God"). This paradoxical "pattern of Descent and Reascent," writes Lewis in Miracles, "is the very formula of reality." It is a pattern in God himself, in his very being: "Because He truly lives, He truly dies, for that is the very pattern of reality." In His death is new life, in His suffering is the birth of eternal joy - the pattern describes His nature because He is the one who defines it in His own death.

What is the grain of wheat of which Christ speaks when he says "unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone, but if it dies it bears much fruit"? He speaks of himself. God himself is the grain of wheat. God himself falls into the ground and dies, but because Deep Heaven is in Him, because He is the resurrection and the life, because He is the fountain of overflowing life, he cannot truly die. Empty yourselves out of love, our Lord tells his disciples. Die to yourselves, lose your lives, and you will find the greatest treasure. The treasure is Christ, because though he emptied himself and gave all he had, in that very act of love did His cup overflow again. God dies, yet he cannot die. He empties himself, yet he is never empty, but always overflowing in new life (see "The Empty Cup Overflowing"). Why? Because He is Himself Love, He is Himself Life - it is in his very nature to become empty and to overflow, to die and rise in new life.

The image of creation as a tree serves us well again. It grows outwards and upwards explosively, but from the smallest, weakest, most frail beginnings. What a marvel it is that the tree is, in a sense, within the seed! And what a miracle that God's greatness is hidden inside the smallest things, that he has even planted himself as the seed of new creation.

God is the fountain of life, of existence itself. He gives being, he creates, and that great power cannot be snuffed out. It is seen again in his Resurrection. But the beauty of the way he creates is that it is through weakness, through emptying. He is not only the fountain of existence from which creation flows, but also the dying seed from which the tree of creation grows.² Creation is vast and endless, always growing, but in the most paradoxical way. Always when things appear bleak and barren, decaying or dying or falling into nothingness, always at that very moment there is rebirth and light bursting from darkness and beautiful fruit from barrenness. It is almost as if God's way of bringing new things into being is by letting what is there fall to the very brink of nonexistence and then return in explosive eucatastrophic power.³ This too is the pattern of reality, and like everything else we have seen, it is found first in the Maker Himself, and for this beauty He is to be praised.

¹ Again, this Story is the brightest and most complete revelation of God's character that we have, so if we want to know anything about his way of doing things, we must look here especially.
² And in holding back his full power and allowing evil to come into being for a while, he brought into being something that could not otherwise have been (see "The Victory of God"). Creation is more beautiful and wonderful, more alive because it grows from this divine grain of wheat, the Crucified.
³ Redemption is a creative act. Creation is not a once-for-all event - as we have seen, new things are always coming, creation always growing and expanding. In our Story, this is seen most clearly in the "new creation" which was brought into being through Christ's death and resurrection, in which the pattern we have seen is exemplified.

The Pattern of Mathematics

2010-07-01T16:00:00.006-04:00

...Mathematics is the framework and structure upon which this world is built and the language of God himself (see "A Theology of Mathematics"), and in it we see many of the characteristics of this "pattern of reality." There is explosive outwards growth and the emergence of new things, all from basic, fundamental truths: The whole field is based on simple, elementary things like the natural numbers "1,2,3..." From this seemingly simple foundation one can build up to a vast and intricate web of mathematical concepts, theorems, etc. 1 and 2 is 3, a prime, but 1 and 3 is 4, which is twice 2, a composite number: here we find not just a new number but a new kind of number! But this is only the very beginning. Fractals, exceptional Lie groups, the Riemann zeta function, each with a sublime and mysterious beauty of its own. Beautiful theorems that penetrate into the depths of existence, truths that have made men weep from joy and wonder. Who knows the heights and depths of mathematical truth that may lie forever beyond the discovery and comprehension of man. And all this from the most basic, self-evident ideas. All this limitless glory is to be found in seemingly ordinary beginnings like the relationships between counting numbers "1,2,3..." In mathematics, then, we see the same patterns of interrelatedness and boundless growth from a foundation that can be found in the whole of creation, the Great Dance and Story of God. And in both cases God is himself the foundation and origin from which the pattern grows.

The Dance and Story of Creation

2010-06-28T16:00:00.007-04:00

...So where are we? To summarize the last few posts, all of creation is interconnected like a vast web or like an archway of many stones. New and greater things are always growing from what came before, and these things are reflected and magnified in the lesser things. Images and symbols of greater things abound, and creation itself bears the image of its Maker. This pattern of layers and symbols adds a depth and richness to everything God does. The light of the Creator in the things he creates is reflected and refracted in a million different textures and colors. In all this there is no repetition - the greater and lesser things, the new things and the first things, the ways in which one thing bears the image of another, images of images and layers upon layers - every facet of reality, every ray of divine light is utterly unique. And God, as the origin and source of all these wonders, is worthy of praise.

In all this, and especially in "new things," there is a characteristic of the pattern that is easily taken for granted. Creation is dynamic, moving, growing. The pattern we have seen is not one of static, unchanging balance, but of explosive growth. This is perhaps the least speculative part of my musings on Lewis' "pattern of reality." Why? Because it is the basic framework that Christianity assumes.

One of the beautiful things about Christianity is that it is a story (see these posts), and that means not only change but growth: progress in a linear direction.* Other religions teach that certain virtues are valuable or describe the purpose of man and his place in reality, but they do not always describe a beginning or origin to reality, or an ultimate purpose towards which all things tend. Christianity, however, describes reality in story language: there is a beginning, a linear series of events, and a final purpose, and in this story one finds the answers to all the great questions (the meaning of life, the problem of suffering, the fact of existence, etc.). The point, then, is that according to Christianity, all things come from some origin (God) and are moving and growing towards some end purpose (given by God). In my view, this is a beautiful truth about the way God structured reality, and by no means to be taken for granted.

Reality is moving in a direction: explosively outwards from God, the origin and seed and fountain, yet always "further up and further in," forwards towards God, the end for which all things are made. The direction of growth in the Story is defined by the Creator.

One might also describe creation as a "Great Dance," as Lewis does in Perelandra: “In the plan of the Great Dance plans without number interlock, and each movement becomes in its season the breaking into flower of the whole design to which all else had been directed.” The layers and interrelatedness of creation, its growth and unfolding as a story - all this is like the intricate movements of a dance.

Or one could speak of creation as a seed growing into a tree: from seemingly small and simple beginnings it grows explosively, always outwards and upwards. Each of these images communicates something about the pattern and theme that is present in all God's works. It is an unfolding story, a beautiful dance, a growing tree, a musical masterpiece, and in all things the Author, the Designer, the Great Orderer is guiding the motion and growth of his great work.

*The idea of change and linear growth raises interesting questions about the nature of time. It seems to me that time may be an essential characteristic of creation. Consequently, if time is a physical phenomenon, like space and matter, this would necessarily imply a physical framework for all of created reality, including "spiritual" realms beyond our world. God, however, must in one sense remain eternal and "outside of time," while in another sense He has of course entered time in the person of Christ.

"Rule and obedience, begetting and bearing, heat glancing down, life growing up. Blessed be He!"

2010-06-23T17:45:00.003-04:00

...Let's keep working through Lewis' beautiful passage in Perelandra. He writes,

"Rule and obedience, begetting and bearing, heat glancing down, life growing up."

Rule and obedience is the relationship between the the Creator and creation, between God and man. We find our place when we submit to his sovereign rule, and in this asymmetric relationship there is beauty, uniqueness on both ends, just as there is in the relationship between man and woman. We are not to God what he is to us - everything is utterly unique, "never the same thing twice."

Begetting and bearing describes ways in which new things come into being. The new things are unique not only in what they are, but in the way in which they come to be. "Each movement becomes in its season the breaking into flower of the whole design to which all else had been directed." With each movement, the way in which things are renewed and transformed is itself a new theme in the dance. Lewis' story in Perelandra, especially the "great dance" chapter, exemplifies this. The "mode of change" through which creation grows is rich and diverse and is itself always new and growing. The Word is first begotten (not created) as the Son of God the Father, and then born as the son of Mary. Begetting and bearing.

Heat glancing down, life growing up. The fullness of God's intense love and joy and power shines down upon creation. All things receive this heat from their Creator and grow upwards towards Him, their Maker for whom they were made, the source of the light they reflect, the Living God who gives life to all things. The light comes from Him, is reflected through Him in all things, which were made by Him and for Him, and the light returns back to Him as all things grow forever higher and deeper, always moving towards their Maker. For more on the relationship between Creator and creation, see "All Creation Bears the Image of the Creator."

All Creation Bears the Image of the Creator

2010-06-20T16:00:00.000-04:00

...Perhaps the greatest symbol of all is us. Human beings are made in God's image, and many human qualities and actions (thinking, feeling, knowing, loving, etc.) are to be found first and foremost in our Maker. Scripture speaks of God's thoughts and knowledge, of his love and joy, much as it speaks of human thought and emotion.*

If we look back over these many images, it becomes clear that all of creation bears the image of the Creator. The natural world is marked with his "invisible qualities" (Romans 1:20), human relationships bear a fragrance of the divine, the whole of history as God's Story reflects and reveals the Author. Not just elements of creation, but creation itself - the whole of it, all reality - is a "layer" that reflects the greater reality of God himself.

This dynamic Creator-creation relationship is, I think, a beautiful design of God's. On the one hand, there is a deep connection between God and his creation. Everything in creation is striving towards God and bearing his mark and shining his light, and if Christianity is right, the connection goes much deeper than this. God, the Creator himself, has entered creation and become part of it in Jesus Christ. In the miracle and mystery of Incarnation, the bond between the Creator and the created is forever sealed, and the new things God has brought into being are gathered back to him. Created beings, whether humans or angels or of some other form, can know and love their Maker, who made them to share in his glory and beauty.

Yet on the other hand, there is and always will be an infinite chasm between God and created things. Creation changes and grows, yet God is eternal, transcendent, unchanging, and in a very real sense forever beyond his created designs, unknowable in his fullness. Lewis writes of "the Abyss of the Father, into which if a creature drop down his thoughts for ever he shall hear no echo return to him." Because of his very nature as the Uncreated One, nothing he makes could ever be on the same level. In summary, then, the relationship between Creator and creation can be described in terms of both an unbreakable bond and, in a different sense, an uncrossable chasm. Once again we find the beauty of paradox.

*See, for example, Psalm 139:17, Romans 11:33, Isaiah 55:9, John 17:24.

A Religion that Can Be Touched: The "Myth and Metaphor" of Christianity

2010-06-14T16:00:00.033-04:00

...This interconnectedness can be seen in the way that God creates "new things." Each new thing is utterly unique and unlike anything that has come before, groundbreaking on a whole new level, and yet the new thing is always deeply connected to and intertwined with everything that has come before. When the new thing comes, the former things are seen for what they are; as Lewis says, "each movement becomes in its season the breaking into flower of the whole design to which all else had been directed." And because they prepared the way for it and are gathered into it, the former things reflect and magnify the light and beauty of the new thing when it comes. The greater thing (the new thing is always greater) is seen more fully because of the layers of lesser things that symbolize it and point towards it. Again, this may seem abstract and general, and we have to look at examples to understand the pattern.

We have already seen how the theme of God doing "new things" grows throughout the Bible until it reaches a glorious climax in the very last pages. The idea of reality being layered - so that the greater thing is always reflected through a million smaller things in a million different ways - also has a strong presence in the Bible. Consider first the "layers" or "images" in the Old Testament that foreshadow different aspects of Christ and his coming (which is the ultimate "new thing" in Scripture):

Christ's death and resurrection is reflected and in a way foretold in pagan myths of dying and rising gods (see "The Great Story"). More broadly, the fictional stories we tell have a striking tendency to reflect the pattern of "eucatastrophe" in this Great Story of death and resurrection, like "refracted light" (see "Made in the Author's Image" and "Tolkien on Stories and Sub-creation").
Salvation: God's deliverance of his people from bondage in Egypt and restoration of his people to the promised land from Exile in Babylon foreshadow the ultimate deliverance from sin and death and return from exile in a fallen world that is accomplished through Christ.
Jesus Christ, the true King, comes on the path made ready for him by the pattern of Kingship in Israel. He is "David's son and David's Lord," the King of Kings, of whom the kings before are but a shadow.
Jesus is the great high priest, ultimate mediator between God and man, and once-for-all sacrifice for sins. Ancient Israel's sacrificial system pointed towards this coming achievement symbolically with its priests as mediators and its sacrificial rituals.
Jesus, the final and greatest prophet, is preceded by countless lesser prophets who spoke of his coming and prepared the way for Him.
The giving of God's law through Moses is shown to be the first step towards the fulfillment of that law in Christ, the "new Moses."
Adam and Christ are connected in the opposing roles they play; through Adam, sin comes into the world, and through Christ, sin is eliminated (Romans 5). All humanity is connected to Adam's fall and Christ's faithfulness.

All of these human roles in ancient Israel were designed (by God) to point towards Christ and to magnify his light all the more when he came. More generally, almost everything in the Old Testament is a shadow of something greater that is to come. People, events, practices, stories, etc. are shadows and whispers, precursers and "types" of the real thing that is to come. With Christ the veil is lifted and the real thing is seen in full light, but those who know the Story remember the shadows and whispers, the images and types, and see the light of the greater thing shining all the more brightly. They see how it is connected to all that came before, they glimpse the larger pattern of which Christ is the center and cornerstone.

Of course, it is not only things before Christ that are "layers." The same pattern continues in the New Testament. Christ's death and resurrection unleashes, as it were, a wave of redemption and salvation and renewal upon all of creation. In all things, though, Christ remains the root and center of the pattern, the seed from which the tree grows, and everything that happens in the wake of his resurrection is again a reflection and magnification of that center:¹

Plant life symbolizes death and resurrection. Jesus and Paul both used this analogy (John 12:24, 1 Corinthians 15:36; see also 1 Clement 24). The seed falls into the earth as a frail and tiny little thing, but from it rises up a far greater and stronger new life.
The setting and rising of the sun reflects Christ's death and resurrection (again, see 1 Clement 24). Christ, the Son of God and light of the world (John 1), whose face was seen "shining like the sun in all its brilliance" (Revelation 1:16), dies on a cross as darkness veils the sky and rises again in the early morning.
Baptism and communion symbolize death and resurrection and the gift of the cross in a tangible way. When we eat the bread and drink the wine, when we are carried down into the water and then raised up, we taste, we feel, we experience with our senses this great pattern of death and resurrection.
As we grow in our spiritual lives, we become more like Christ. In losing our lives to find them, in dying to ourselves in order to live in Christ, in finding joy in suffering, we participate in his death and resurrection. We are "Christ figures" of a sort, and by growing in this way we shine the light of Christ to the world around us.
Human birth is another image for spiritual rebirth - we must be "born again."

Through these symbols, Christianity is made tangible - one can taste sacrifice and redemption in the bread and the cup, one can see resurrection in the rising sun and in the annual rebirth of all plant life. The music, the pictures and icons and visuals, the words and grammar of the Bible, the color and texture of 1st-century Palestine - all these things function as a tangible layer through which we can approach the deeper truths claimed by Christianity.

If we broaden our horizon, we find that not only Christ and his death and resurrection, but many other spiritual things are reflected by images and symbols within this world:

Our relationship with God - multiple images in Scripture are used to describe this. We are God's children and he is our Father. The Church, God's people, is the bride of Christ (Ephesians 5). Christ is the "Son" of God the "Father." Human relationships - between children and parents, between siblings, between lovers - are "layers" reflecting our relationship with God, and the relationships between persons of the Trinity. We cannot stare at the sun, but in human relationships we see in part who God is (both in himself and to us) in the form of reflected light.
Dorothy Sayers argues in The Mind of the Maker that the human activity of imagining, writing, and telling fictional stories is an image of the Triune God creating this world and telling His Story within it. "The mind of the maker and the Mind of the Maker are formed on the same pattern, and all their works are made in their own image."
Physical things are often used in Scripture as metaphors for spiritual realities (eg. "the body of Christ," "the bread of life")
Language itself is metaphorical and symbolic. Words can never capture the very identity of the things they refer to - they merely represent, just as a picture can represent a place or person or moment. Language is another layer through which we comprehend and communicate an understanding of the world.
For many more potential images and layers, see "To Him Are All Things."

In short, all of creation is filled with images and symbols of greater things. "Is not the sky itself a myth?" asks Lewis. These shadows and metaphors and layers are the lens through which we begin to grasp the things of God. Abstract truths are made tangible, the ways of the eternal and invisible God made understandable to sensory and temporal creatures.² In a sense, the infinite becomes finite, but the light of the higher and deeper things of God is not diminished by being reflected through "lesser" things. It is enriched by this added layer and is magnified so that it shines all the brighter. Through "myth and metaphor," through words and images and stories, we make our way towards the heights, "further up and further in" towards the things of God that transcend comprehension. High and deep are these truths, and yet even with our senses we begin to know them.

¹ For more on the pattern of death and resurrection, see these posts.
² It is of course the physical world that mediates all these tangible images. How astonishing it is that fields and particles and space and time should be God's chosen language, as it were, for revealing transcendent divine truths to his children! How incredible it is that beauty from beyond the walls of the world can be carried in the frequencies of sound waves (music) or photons (colors). Space and time and matter is the stage upon which God’s story is told, the language through which it is spoken, the medium through which the divine light shines. But it's more than a stage - it is beautiful in its own right and shines its own God-given light. Above all, God affirms the goodness and value of the physical world by making a human body his own body, by making the physical a part of his own identity in Christ.

"Never Did He Utter One Word Twice"

2010-06-12T11:49:00.000-04:00

...What does Lewis mean, though, when he writes "All is righteousness and there is no equality," or when he says "Never did He make two things the same; never did He utter one word twice"? The idea here, I think, is that everything is utterly unique. God is not redundant; his infinite creativity in making new things can never be exhausted, so you will never find that he has made the same thing twice, or that an event occurred twice in exactly the same way. Everything - every person, every moment in life, every place in the world, every event in God's story, every stone in the arch - is utterly unique in its place within the whole of creation.

This is completely true. Nowhere in all the universe will you find that God has repeated a thing in exactly the same way. Identical twins are shaped to be completely different people by their environments and choices. Even elementary particles like electrons, which cannot be distinguished from one another, are unique in the sense that each one has a unique history of places where it has been and ways in which it has interacted with other matter. Everything, every single tiny thing in all the incomprehensible vastness of reality, is utterly unique.

In the mind and being of the Maker there is infinite potential for new things to be made, and he unleashes them into existence with explosive creativity. How, in this ever-growing and boundless newness, could anything be done twice? As if the eternal God could run out of new ideas and designs and wonders to bring forth, as if the bottomless well and fountain of creation could run dry. All is righteousness, all is in perfect paradoxical balance, saturated with justice and holiness and all the goodness that is given from God "as a tree bows down with fruit," yet there is no equality, no repetition. A greater unity grows from this strong diversity, and for this too the Creator is to be praised.

"Not as when stones lie side by side, but as when stones support and are supported in an arch, such is His order."

2010-06-07T11:42:00.006-04:00

...In paradoxes, then, we see a brilliant example of how the dynamic relationship between two things can give rise to a new thing, how two (or more) parts can give rise to a greater whole when they are seen in light of one another, in much the same way as the examples given here. Now is a good point to dig into Lewis' next paragraph:

“It is loaded with justice as a tree bows down with fruit. All is righteousness and there is no equality. Not as when stones lie side by side, but as when stones support and are supported in an arch, such is His order; rule and obedience, begetting and bearing, heat glancing down, life growing up. Blessed be He!”

God designs and orders creation so that it is not like stones lying side by side, but like stones supporting one another in an arch. It is a truly beautiful image. Every stone in the arch exerts a force on every other stone, and every force is mediated by and connected to the other stones. It is "the very idiom of reality," writes Lewis in Miracles: "everything is indebted to everything else, sacrificed to everything else, dependent on everything else" (ch. 14).

Creation is not just a set of things, not just stones lying side by side. That is, it’s not just space and time and minds and matter and other things all assembled together in a universe. It’s a reality where those things interact in unique ways, where new things emerge or proceed from this interrelatedness (see above for some examples). Everything is connected to everything in God's creation (see "The Theme of Love in The Brothers Karamazov: Alyosha's Moment"). Like a complex web of many woven strands, creation is interconnected and interrelated, and the connections give rise to a beautiful pattern, a coherent whole greater than the sum of its parts. Each part, each strand, each piece in the puzzle, shines brighter because of what it is in light of all else and in light of each other thing. Each stone finds its place in the arch and becomes truly itself only when it takes its unique place in relation to the whole arch and to every other stone. The uniqueness of each element is not compromised but magnified by the interconnectedness and interdependence. The whole is one and united, yet at the same time richly diverse, and its unity is strengthened by the perfectly balanced diversity of its parts, just as the arch is stronger because of the perfectly unique role played by each stone.

Consider the phenomenon of cause and effect as an example. Every event occurs only because countless causes work together in exactly the right way to bring it about, and every event begins an explosive chain of events which can affect the whole world. How limitless in his brilliance must God be to foresee and set in motion all future events in the moment of the creation of the universe! Each event must have been foreseen in light of each and all of the countless events that contributed to it, and in light of the particular initial conditions with which God made the world. Those conditions themselves could be said to be effected by all future events, because God designed them, in a self-consistent way, for the purpose of bringing about those events. The web of cause and effect is then made even more complex and interconnected when seen in light of God's foreknowledge and sovereign power. There is no particular starting point for this great design, unless it is the whole of the web itself, the glory of creation in all its perfect fullness, for which its individual strands of cause and effect were finely set.

An example from God's Word and Story: the Church is described by the apostle Paul as being like a body which functions (ideally) with a sort of symbiotic interdependence (1 Corinthians 12, Romans 12:5). Just as each part of the human body is necessary for the proper functioning of the whole, each person in the church plays a unique and essential part, different than that of any other member, and each person finds their own identity in light of their place in the whole body. The whole depends on its parts, and since the whole is made up of its parts, each part depends on all the other parts. The image is strikingly similar to Lewis' "stones support and are supported in an arch," and elsewhere in Scripture, Christ, who is the "head" of the Church, is described as the "cornerstone" of an arch.

Perhaps the best example of this interdependence or "vicariousness" as Lewis calls it is our total dependence on Christ. Through the cross our sins are atoned for and we are declared righteous. Our freedom from guilt is not our own, but Christ's - his sinlessness and righteousness become ours because of the beautiful exchange that happened on the cross (see "The Paradoxical Riches of the Gospel"). Even our growth in love and humility as we become more like Christ is not the result of our own moral efforts, but another outgrowth of Christ's work. In short, none of the good things about us are our own - they are all gifts from God. Christ's death and resurrection becomes ours, and our lives are to be lived "in Christ."

One more example: in gender we glimpse a very deep mystery. Why should there be exactly two kinds of people, male and female, and more broadly, two different sexes for most living things? The whole biological planet lives and breathes this great theme of male-female duality, and it is the means by which all things grow. Whatever God's reason for making life in this way may be, it illustrates the pattern of uniqueness and interconnectedness in all things. Male and female are very different, so the relationship is asymmetric and "there is no equality." Yet they were made for one another and need one another; they fit together and balance one another perfectly in relationship, and from the union of these two comes new living things. The pattern is very similar to what we saw in paradoxes.

As we have seen, all this beautiful interaction and interrelatedness is the means by which new things are brought into being. It is in the dynamic connections between the parts that the greater whole emerges. The Order of Creation is not as when stones lie side by side, but like an arch of many stones and a growing tower of many arches. Always a new creation grows from the beautiful dynamic interaction, and for this great pattern the Designer is to be praised.

The Pattern of Paradox

2010-06-06T21:38:00.002-04:00

...Some time ago I wrote a series of posts on “The Paradoxes of Christianity.” Christianity is a faith that is saturated with paradoxes – paradoxes in the sense given here. When two starkly contrasting ideas, events, or objects that seem to be in tension are brought together, a dynamic connection or “paradox” between them emerges. The paradox, being the relationship or connection, is something other than and greater than the two original things. For example, “one must die in order to live” (a sequential and causal connection is established between death and life, two opposing realities). Or “Jesus Christ is both God and a man” (in this case, a connection of identity is made between God and man, two seemingly mutually exclusive categories). Paradoxical relationships like this abound in Christian doctrine, in the Gospel, and in Jesus’ teaching. And in each case, the beauty of the paradox is something more than its parts. The wonder of the Incarnation is more than the humility of Jesus the man, and more than the divinity of the Son of God. It is the astonishing fact that both are true simultaneously, in the same person: "the worth and beauty of the Son come not just from his majesty, nor just from his meekness, but from the way these mingle in perfect proportion" (John Piper, The Pleasures of God 29). A paradox, then, is a sort of "new thing" greater than the sum of its parts, similar to the examples we have already seen. Here is not the place to investigate this remarkable pattern of paradox in Christianity. Suffice it to say that in these paradoxes we see a particularly outstanding instance of this pattern of "new things" - the dynamic bond between the two things is especially strong, the paradoxical relationship especially compelling and beautiful...

The Whole Is Greater Than The Sum of Its Parts

2010-06-02T18:59:00.001-04:00

...So far we've looked at two examples of this pattern of "new things":

Mathematics, physical reality, consciousness, knowledge of God: each level is built on the one before, but at each step something completely new comes into being
The story of Christianity, which is the story God is telling about himself through humanity. Each turn of events surpasses all that came before; each time the change is unprecedented and explosive.

These examples are "big" ones - we are talking about the whole world, and about all of history - in short, about everything we know. Our view here is telescopic, but if we focus in on the smaller elements of creation and consider very particular things, in a sort of microscopic way, we will find a similar pattern:

A digital image is made from pixels, but the whole of the image is more than the sum of the individual pixels that make it up. It is only because of the way in which the pixels interact with one another that the whole emerges as a new thing, greater than the sum of its parts. The same could be said for a movie as a sequence of screenshots and sound bytes.
A melody is made from individual notes, but the beauty of the whole is found only in the sequence of the notes, that is, in their relations to one another. The simplest example is two consecutive notes. In this sequence there may be a sublime beauty that is wholly absent from each note individually. The same could be said of chords, that is, of different notes played simultaneously.
All the billions of neurons in the brain interact with one another and with the surrounding world to bring about sensations of a three-dimensional environment, the hearing of sounds, perceptions of other senses, etc. Although the brain is the means of their creation, these images and sounds are new things that cannot be found among the neurons themselves.

These examples lead us to another characteristic of the way God does things. In each case, the new thing arises from the relationship or interaction between things. It emerges from the interconnectedness of the things, from the fact that their whole is greater than the sum of their parts. Perhaps the most important example of this arising of new things from the dynamic connections between things is the pattern of paradox in Christianity...

"Behold, I Am Making All Things New"

2010-05-29T20:00:00.003-04:00

...Lewis' second example of this pattern of "new things" is the story told by Christianity, a story of fall, redemption, and new creation.* The new creation, writes Lewis, is not simply a recovery of what was lost, nor merely an improvement on that. The state of being towards which the world is moving is, according to Christianity, not only better than the original creation, but something on a whole new level.

In Jesus' resurrection we witness the very first instance of this groundbreaking pattern. Paul explains at length in 1 Corinthians 15 how the resurrection body is not simply the former body raised, but a transformed body, a new kind of thing breaking into the world. As the seed is to the tree, so is the mortal body to the resurrection body. Starting with Christ, the whole of creation is being raised from the dead - the decay of the universe is being suddenly and paradoxically overturned into explosive new life, an overflowing and ever-growing life unlike anything that was part of creation before.

In the end, the hearts and minds of God's people will be filled with a love and joy in one another, in all creation, and in God that is not only deeper and stronger than anything felt before, but different and new, not known or experienced at all until that point. God will bring to fruition in us a knowledge of Him and understanding of His ways and purposes in all of creation that will be not only unfathomably higher than what is now known, but groundbreaking - a new kind of knowledge. As the seed is to the tree, so is all we see and feel and know of God now to what is to come (see "A Higher Joy," "A More Glorious Reality").

Christianity is a story in which new things are bursting onto the scene at every turn of events; it is a theme that can hardly be missed in the Bible, especially in the New Testament. In the book of Isaiah (and in the Psalms) we hear the first whispers of the great new thing that God is beginning to do: "behold, I am doing a new thing...new things I now declare; before they spring forth I tell you of them" (Isaiah 43:19, 42:9). Ezekiel foretells that God will give his people "a new heart and a new spirit" (Ezekiel 36:26). With Christ's coming the door is blown wide open: all things are finally being made new. Jesus gives a "new commandment" of love and speaks of "new wine" as an image of what his Incarnation means for the world. A "new covenant" between God and man is begun through Christ's sacrificial death, which opens "the new and living way" (Hebrews 10:20).

In his letters Paul develops the theme of individual people becoming new. One must leave behind the sins of the old life, die to one's old self, and be made anew in Christ: "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come" (2 Corinthians 5:17). Not only God's people, but all creation - the entire cosmos - is now being made anew. Finally, in the book of Revelation, with John's visions of what is to come, the theme comes to its climax. God's people will sing a new song, each will be given a new name, and they will dwell in a new city, in the midst of a new heaven and a new earth:

"The one who conquers...I will write on him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down from my God out of heaven, and my own new name...I will give him a white stone, with a new name written on the stone that no one knows except the one who receives it." (Revelation 3:12, 2:17)

"I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away...he who was seated on the throne said, 'Behold, I am making all things new.'" (Revelation 21:1,5)

The message is clear and bright as day. All that Christ did while on earth, all that he set in motion in redemptive history, all that he accomplished for his people, can be accurately and vividly described as something new. New things, new people, a new creation - this is the brilliant message of the New Testament, and for it the Author is to be praised.

NOTES:
-References for "new" things: John 13:34-35, 1 John 2:8 (new commandment), Mark 2:21-22 (new wine); Jeremiah 31:31, 1 Corinthians 11:25, Hebrews 8-10 (new covenant); Colossians 3:10, Ephesians 4:24 (new humanity); Revelation 5:9, 14:3 (new song); Galatians 6:15 (new creation); Revelation 2:17, 3:12 (new name); the Spirit is associated with new things (eg. Romans 7:6)
-Christ's resurrection is the real turning point, the first new thing. Perhaps this was intentionally foreshadowed in the fact that he was laid in a new tomb (John 19:41).
-In Revelation, John draws on Isaiah (42:10; 62:2; 65:8, 17) when he uses the language of a new song, new names, and new heavens and earth.

*Because this story is the brightest revelation of God that we humans have, it is the most likely source for clues about the "pattern of reality," and is therefore worth looking at closely and thoroughly.

The History of Christianity

2010-05-28T17:22:00.006-04:00

I hope to write more on this in the future. In the mean time, I'll recommend N. T. Wright's The Resurrection of the Son of God and Richard Bauckham's Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, and list the only thing I've written so far:

The Beginning: early Christianity as a discovery of the meaning of death.

God Is Always Doing a New Thing

2010-05-25T16:00:00.002-04:00

...With these things in mind, let's start digging into Lewis' treasure-filled mine of words, images, and ideas. He begins with this:

“Never did He make two things the same; never did He utter one word twice. After earths, not better earths but beasts; after beasts, not better beasts, but spirits. After a falling, not a recovery but a new creation. Out of the new creation, not a third but the mode of change itself is changed forever. Blessed is He!”

The idea I see here is that God is always doing new things. He is always taking things that are already there and bringing out of them something completely new - something groundbreaking and unprecedented. And each new turn in God's story, each new event in his creation, is brought about by a change that is itself unlike anything that has come before. This imaginative newness saturates creation, and it all comes from the Creator, who is an infinite and ever-overflowing fountain of creativity.

Lewis has already given some examples of this pattern. After earths come beasts, and after beasts, spirits. Each time something wholly new happens. Creation begins with earths - that is, with the physical world, the universe in which we find ourselves, a world of space and time, fields and particles, which is a stage for greater things to come.* Out of this physical substance, conscious minds emerge. The consciousness of God's "beasts," the animals that fill his world, is a completely new thing. No matter how hard you look in the particles and fields that make up the world, no matter how closely you examine the fundamental constituents of the physical world, you won't find consciousness. It is an emergent phenomenon, astonishingly unprecedented.

Beasts, says Lewis, are followed by "spirits," and in particular, humans, whom Lewis describes elsewhere as "hybrid" creatures, beasts that are also spirits. The new thing here is, I think, the creature's ability to perceive its Maker. Humans can taste and see the majesty of the heavens, the depth of moral truth, the sublime beauty of music, the love and joy of knowing another in relationship. These things do not simply follow from consciousness. The conscious squirrel does not see God in the stars above or in the moral law within. Once more we find a totally new thing. First life from matter, then a new kind of life, something different and higher growing from the first life - the image of God, a living creature taken into the life of God.

It is important here to realize that even if one can describe the growth in our understanding of beauty and morality in terms of evolution and biology, the beauty we see in the world and the moral truth we perceive is no less a mystery in itself. That is, giving a partial account of our perception does not account for the object of our perception, which is a new and unexplained miracle. Another example: even if one knows all the math and physics that describes the motion of water and light, the beauty of the sea and the stars is an entirely new thing and a new wonder. The full beauty and depth of this world cannot be found in its mathematical description or physical laws. The whole cannot be found in its parts, and for this the Maker is to be praised.

*One could argue that the physical world is itself a "new thing" that has been built on the foundation of something more basic: mathematics. The language of the physical universe is mathematics - everything we encounter follows some mathematical pattern. The whole world seems to rely on the foundation of mathematics just as a body is built on a skeleton, or a building on a foundation. But the world is something more than mathematics - the equations of physics that describe the universe are made real and tangible because the space and time and particles they describe are real things - real things that are built on the mathematical foundation, but are different and new - unforeseeable in the mathematics itself.

C. S. Lewis on "The Very Pattern of Reality" in Perelandra

2010-05-21T16:52:00.001-04:00

C. S. Lewis’ Perelandra is an incredible book. The matchless Dr. Elwin Ransom travels to the planet Perelandra (Venus) in order to prevent evil from spreading in an innocent paradise. Ransom succeeds in defeating his foe and eliminating the possibility of a fall on Perelandra. The remarkable twist in the story, though, is that although Perelandra has not fallen, although it is an Eden-like paradise, untainted by sin and evil, the events of the story take place after Christ’s incarnation, death, and resurrection on Earth. That event reversed the effects of the Fall in Eden, and it is ultimately through Christ's work that Perelandra is saved as well. This is because Ransom himself is redeemed through the cross, and in his Christ-like sacrifice on Venus, he participates in Christ’s death and resurrection and extends its redemptive effects to humanity on Perelandra. Like Christ, he undergoes a sort of suffering, “death,” and rebirth, and through Ransom, the redemption that had its origin on the cross bursts forth on Perelandra like a cosmic flower. It is as if the seed that died on earth and grew into a tree of new redeemed life has dropped a seedling on Perelandra, which in turn bursts into flower.

At the end of the story, we are given a glimpse of a humanity that is both unfallen and knowledgeable of good and evil – a humanity raised to a higher level of creation. The characters rejoice in the great design of Maleldil (Christ) to extend salvation and new creation from Earth, where it began with the Incarnation, to another world – their world. All this is but one movement in "the Great Dance" of all that God is doing. In a beautiful moment of worship, the characters stand in awe of the ways of Maleldil and give praise to their Maker and Redeemer.

Another said, “Never did He make two things the same; never did He utter one word twice. After earths, not better earths but beasts; after beasts, not better beasts, but spirits. After a falling, not a recovery but a new creation. Out of the new creation, not a third but the mode of change itself is changed forever. Blessed is He!”
And another said, “It is loaded with justice as a tree bows down with fruit. All is righteousness and there is no equality. Not as when stones lie side by side, but as when stones support and are supported in an arch, such is His order; rule and obedience, begetting and bearing, heat glancing down, life growing up. Blessed be He!”
One said, “They who add years to years in lumpish aggregation, or miles to miles and galaxies to galaxies, shall not come near His greatness. The day of the fields of Arbol will fade and the days of Deep Heaven itself are numbered. Not thus is He great. He dwells (all of Him dwells) within the seed of the smallest flower and is not cramped: Deep Heaven is inside Him who is inside the seed and does not distend Him. Blessed be He!”
…“In the plan of the Great Dance plans without number interlock, and each movement becomes in its season the breaking into flower of the whole design to which all else had been directed.”
…“All things are by Him and for Him. He utters Himself also for His own delight and sees that He is good. He is His own begotten and what proceeds from Him is Himself. Blessed be He!”

This passage is not only a beautiful string of images and metaphors, but also a rich collection of ideas, and it has profoundly influenced my own worldview. The words are saturated with meaning, and the images point towards deep truths about the world and about God. To me they are like scattered pieces of a puzzle, or fragments of an ancient manuscript. The picture or story that is formed by piecing together these ideas is simply the way God does things - a pattern that characterizes the way he creates and the way he interacts with creation*, and ultimately a pattern that reflects his own divine nature. Just as a great composer or artist is revealed through his work, the "Great Dance" of creation bears the mark of the Maker.

Lewis writes elsewhere (see "The Grand Miracle," the absolutely incredible 14th chapter of Lewis' Miracles) of what he calls "the very pattern of reality" or "the very formula of reality." And indeed, one might well imagine that God, from his own divine perspective, looks on creation and sees in all things a pattern, a thread that ties it all together. One might imagine that God, looking upon the whole story of creation, fall, redemption, and new creation that stretches throughout the history of man and even of the universe, seeing the whole breadth of existence in which this story takes its place, even seeing other worlds beyond our own, all reality in its unfathomable limitless fullness - one might guess that God, seeing all things that are and seeing himself as Maker, would think "yes, there is a theme, a pattern in everything I have done, in each thing and in all things. I intended to mark creation with that unifying theme, and there it is in all its glory."

But could we possibly know and understand such a pattern, if it existed? If there was a general pattern in the way God structured reality, and in the way he makes creation change and develop, could we possibly say anything about it? Only if God wanted us to see it and revealed it to us. We are small and frail, so if God has given us some clues about "the pattern of reality," it is not we who deserve recognition for being capable of such knowledge, but God in his greatness who merits our wonder for finding a way to reveal things so high and deep to creatures so limited as us.

The fullness of God will be unknown to us forever. It must be so, because we are finite humans, and God is the infinite and transcendent source of all existence. Could a creature really ever comprehend its Creator? And yet, in spite of this great gulf, the creature can know his Creator in part, and that only because the Creator in his brilliance designed a way to reveal himself to the creature - to cross that gulf, in a sense.

I think that God has given us, at the very least, a clue or two - in ourselves, in the world around us, and most of all in his Story, which we know through his Word. This next series of posts is a description of what I think may be facets or parts of this "pattern of reality." Of course this is only my idea of a pattern in the way God does things, so it is speculative, and if accurate it would only be a small fraction of the reality. If God is the sun, humanity has only taken in a miniscule portion of his light, and each person only sees one unique part of that fraction. These posts, then, are but speculation about a single drop of water in the ocean.

*Whenever I say "creation" I mean simply this: everything that God has made (the universe, human beings, other worlds perhaps, etc.); the sum total of reality itself, excluding God, who is the uncreated Creator.

Tim Keller on "The Reason for God"

2010-05-17T11:00:00.002-04:00

Tim Keller at Google headquarters giving a talk on his book The Reason for God:

Dawkins, the “God of the Gaps,” the Domain of Science, and the Question of Existence

2010-05-11T16:00:00.019-04:00

...Popular atheists, such as Richard Dawkins, are fond of saying that science disproves God. But the statement “God exists” posits the existence of a nonphysical object – something beyond our reach of physical observation, beyond physical reality itself. If God exists, we would be arrogant indeed to presume that his existence must be scientifically testable. So no matter how thorough our understanding of the physical world is, it does not and cannot follow that God is excluded from existence.

Granted, Dawkins and his cohorts would probably agree with this and yet maintain that science still “disproves” God in the sense that it has the potential to offer such a complete description of the world that there would no longer be any phenomenon that would suggest a transcendent reality beyond the world. All the gaps in our knowledge of reality would be filled. The universe would be exhaustively explained in terms of simple laws, and God would be not only an unnecessary hypothesis, but a completely arbitrary hypothesis for which there is no evidence. In short, science would provide a sufficient explanation for everything.

It is true that science has explained things that were previously thought to need something beyond the physical world as an explanation – the “God of the gaps” was in certain instances shown to be unnecessary. But even if all these “gaps” were filled, such that through the scientific method humans arrived at a complete description of the physical world, God is not disproved. Science can and does fill gaps in our knowledge of the physical world, and the filling of one such gap does suggest that other gaps will be filled, but philosophical “gaps” of the type considered above (see previous post) cannot, as we have seen, be addressed by science.

Science cannot, then, as Dawkins maintains, explain everything. It cannot answer questions about realities that are not perceived solely with our senses (eg. causation, consciousness, good and evil, etc.), and it cannot by itself support its own presuppositions (eg. the accuracy of our reasoning and perception). That is why we need philosophy of science, and, more broadly, philosophy. Perhaps most importantly, science cannot answer the question “why does something exist instead of nothing?”

No question, including this one, can be answered except in terms of things that exist. That is, the only way this question could ever be answered would be if we could point to something that does exist, the existence of which is so self-evident, or self-explanatory, or obviously necessary, that it explains in itself why anything exists. But can physical experimentation by means of our five senses discern whether or not a thing must exist – whether it explains its own existence?! The closest science comes to this is the discovery of mathematical laws that appear so beautiful that it would seem they simply must be. But the perception of mathematical beauty is of a different kind than that of the lab, achieved through our senses. To say “this theory is beautiful” or “this pattern is simple and elegant” is to make (yet again) a statement of another kind. It is no longer the physicist who draws this conclusion and so approaches the question of existence, but the philosopher, the mystic, the theologian. He has powers of perception that the scientist knows not.¹

In short, science only observes the physical realm as it is, so it cannot answer why that realm exists in the first place. Science can offer an accurate description of the physical world, but it is beyond the bounds of science to judge whether that description gives a complete account of reality, or whether hypothesizing something (like God) beyond the physical realm would or would not provide an overall more compelling explanation for reality as a whole. To consider whether any particular description of the world offers a good explanation is to ask whether it is reasonable, elegant, beautiful. Philosophical thought, that is, the use of our minds² to draw reasonable conclusions above and beyond what science can reveal, is a necessary part of this.

¹Scientists at work (especially theoretical physicists) are not only scientists, but also part-time philosophers.
²And, I would argue, our hearts – see “The Reason of the Heart.” It is with more than cold logic that the physicist says “this equation is beautiful, deep, mysterious.”

Causation, Perception, Morality, and the Domain of Science

2010-05-06T11:12:00.003-04:00

The definition of science (as in physics, chemistry, biology, etc.) could be stated as something like “systematic knowledge of the physical or material world gained through observation and experimentation” (one of dictionary.com’s several definitions of the word “science”). This means that whatever cannot be observed in the physical world and tested experimentally lies outside the realm of what science can answer. Science can answer questions such as “what is the charge-to-mass ratio of an electron?” or “how does this wavefunction change in time?” or “why do the seasons go through an annual cycle?” All of these questions are asking for no more than physical information about the physical world: “How” is to be read as “in what [physical] way?” and “why” is to be read as “what is the physical cause?” This is what science deals with – the physical world. But when it comes to anything other than observation of physical reality, science must remain silent. Let’s look at a couple examples.

First, science assumes that when we study the physical world, what we perceive to be a physical reality outside of our own minds is indeed real, but this is a philosophical claim. No observation of the world could confirm that what we perceive is anything more than an illusory perception, but we assume that it is. Equivalently, the claim that our perceptions are illusions cannot be falsified through science, because science necessarily depends on perception. (You would have to rely on your perceptions to disprove them - it be like trying to pick yourself up off the ground by pulling on your hair.) An even more basic assumption made by science is that the logic and reasoning of our minds is an accurate guide to truth – without making this philosophical assumption, science can say nothing. There is no objective, unbiased frame of reference from which we could observe our own reasoning – we could not say the reasoning of our minds is reliable except by using our minds, and that is begging the question. In short, science cannot prove, but must simply assume, that our perceptions and rational thoughts are (in general) reliable.

As another example, consider the philosophical idea of causation. Science can observe that an apple falls in consistently the same way under a certain set of circumstances. Nevertheless it cannot prove that gravity (via the mass of the earth) actually causes the apple to fall. If causation is real, it is a physically unobservable phenomenon since it refers to connections between events and not to the physical events themselves. Causation cannot be perceived with our five senses, so it cannot be proved or disproved with science, and thus saying that causation is real is a philosophical statement.

In both of these cases, we make certain reasonable philosophical assumptions – assumptions that seem highly likely but that cannot be confirmed by experiment. Other assumptions of this kind could include moral statements, eg. “genocide is wrong.” Because moral right and wrong is not, like an electron or molecule, physically observable, it cannot be tested scientifically, yet we know that genocide is wrong.

In general, anything that cannot be fully perceived and understood physically is beyond the domain of science. Love, beauty, moral values, good and evil, suffering, death, existence, meaning and purpose – these are facts about the world that cannot be described in terms of particles and fields and dimensions. They lie outside the domain of science. There are many questions that could never be answered merely by pointing to something in the physical world. What is the meaning of death? Why is human nature both good and bad? Why is there suffering and evil in the world? These questions can be given partial answers by pointing to physical things such as the decaying of the human body, processes in the brain that result in a person being desensitized to violence, or events in the nervous system that cause sensations of pain or pleasure, moral repugnance or admiration of beauty.* But the larger question of why these remarkable realities are part of the world at all, and what purpose they serve, cannot be addressed by the scientist alone.

*See my posts on evolution, of which this is the first.

Ravi Zacharias on the Perception of Beauty

2010-05-02T16:00:00.004-04:00

Ravi Zacharias addresses the question of whether or not there is a line between real beauty and what only seems to be beauty due to the distortion of one's perception:

The Theme of Love in The Brothers Karamazov: Alyosha's Moment

2010-04-28T16:00:00.002-04:00

There is a beautiful scene where Alyosha returns to the monastery the night after his elder dies. Father Paissy is standing over the body of Father Zossima, reading the story of Cana of Galilee. Jesus' first miracle, recalls Alyosha, brought joy to men, for love desires the gladness of the beloved. Alyosha imagines himself at Cana, where he finds Father Zossima rejoicing and beckoning to him to join him in drinking the new wine, Christ's gift of gladness. As Alyosha walks outside under the night sky,

"The silence of earth seemed to melt into the silence of the heavens. The mystery of earth was one with the mystery of the stars...Alyosha stood, gazed, and suddenly threw himself down on the earth. He did not know why he embraced it. He could not have told why he longed so irresistibly to kiss it, to kiss it all. But he kissed it weeping, sobbing, and watering it with his tears, and vowed passionately to love it, to love it for ever and ever. "Water the earth with the tears of your joy and love those tears," echoed in his soul...There seemed to be threads from all those innumerable worlds of God, linking his soul to them, and it was trembling all over "in contact with other worlds." He longed to forgive everyone and for everything, and to beg forgiveness. Oh, not for himself, but for all men, for all and for everything. "And others are praying for me too," echoed again in his soul...He had fallen on the earth a weak boy, but he rose up a resolute champion, and he knew and felt it suddenly at the very moment of his ecstasy. And never, never, his life long, could Alyosha forget that minute." (book 7, ch. 4)

Through loving the world - through giving his love and forgiveness to the whole of humanity and to each person, and receiving from them - Alyosha finds that he can almost touch other worlds. This too is the nature of love - it is all-encompassing and brings all things together. Through love, everything is connected to everything, and diversity is enriched with a greater unity. "Each one personally" is responsible "for all mankind and every individual man." "All is like an ocean," writes Dostoevsky, "all is flowing and blending; a touch in one place sets up movement at the other end of the earth."

Alyosha's falling to and rising from the earth also calls to mind a verse quoted by Father Zossima multiple times: "unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone, but if it dies it bears much fruit" (John 12:24). Father Zossima himself falls to the earth like a seed in the moment of his death:

"Though suffering, he still looked at them with a smile, sank slowly from his chair on to his knees, then bowed his face to the ground, stretched out his arms and as though in joyful ecstasy, praying and kissing the ground, quietly and joyfully gave up his soul to God." (book 6, ch. 2)

In his death, Father Zossima embodies his own teaching. He gives himself unto death, loving the world in his final moment, and although he dies, his death is blessed. Because he fell to the earth like a grain of wheat, he will rise again in the last day, and indeed, he has already born much fruit.

The Theme of Love in The Brothers Karamazov: The Redeeming Power of Love

2010-04-24T16:00:00.017-04:00

"Who can describe the blessed bond of the love of God? What man is able to tell the excellence of its beauty, as it ought to be told? The height to which love exalts is unspeakable. Love unites us to God. Love covers a multitude of sins. Love beareth all things, is long-suffering in all things." - Clement of Rome, in his letter to the Corinthian church

"Fear nothing and never be afraid. And don't worry. If only your penitence fail not, God will forgive all. There is no sin, and there can be no sin on all the earth, which the Lord will not forgive to the truly repentant! Man cannot commit a sin so great as to exhaust the infinite love of God. Can there be a sin which could exceed the love of God? Think only of repentance, continual repentance, but dismiss fear altogether. Believe that God loves you as you cannot conceive; that he loves you with your sin, in your sin...If you are penitent you love. And if you love you are of God. All things are atoned for, all things are saved by love...Love is such a priceless treasure that you can redeem the whole world by it, and cleanse not only your sins but the sins of others." (The Brothers Karamazov, book 2, ch. 3)

"Loving humility is marvelously strong, the strongest of all things. There is nothing else like it." (book 6, ch. 2)

Dostoevsky and Clement of Rome describe love as a treasure of unspeakable height and depth, with power to wash away sins, even redeem the world. Our sins are innumerable, but no sin cannot be overcome by the infinite love of God. "How wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ," writes Paul.

In "The Victory of God" I wrote about God's mysterious and paradoxical triumph over evil in the cross. It was not only through his love that God accomplished this great victory (his wisdom, justice, power, etc. were all brought together in the cross), but if there is one attribute of God that is closest to the heart of it, even to the heart of who God is, it is love. There was power in that love, a power "as strong as death" (Song of Solomon 8:6; see my posts on "Harry Potter," a beautiful story in which love conquers death, just as it does in the cross), even "more wonderful and more terrible than death," which the enemy could neither understand nor overcome (see also "The Love of God").

In Christ's sufferings and death, God sheds his tears upon a broken earth and washes away its sin and evil. The body and blood of Christ, broken and shed for us, is God's gift of love to a world that rejected him, and through that gift, the anguish and tears of God himself, our sins are forgiven and we are redeemed from death's curse.

It is this Love that we are called to share in. In Dostoevsky's words, we can love to the point of bearing others' sufferings and sins with them, and through forgiveness our love too can "cover a multitude of sins" (1 Peter 4:8). We can bring forth fruit by extending God's love to the world - not a fruit that grows from us, but a fruit that grows from the cross, and only through us. We "fill up" (Colossians 1:24) what Christ accomplished on the cross by reflecting his light to others and giving ourselves as he gave himself. Love may cost us everything - it did for God - but in losing our lives we will find an eternal treasure.

The Theme of Love in The Brothers Karamazov: Bearing the Sufferings and Sins of Others

2010-04-19T16:00:00.018-04:00

I recently read Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov. An interesting theme can be seen in the teaching of the beloved Father Zossima. Take a look at the following quotes:

"For know, dear ones, that every one of us is undoubtedly responsible for all men and everything on earth, not merely through the general sinfulness of creation, but each one personally for all mankind and every individual man. This knowledge is the crown of life for the monk and for every man...Only through that knowledge, our heart grows soft with infinite, universal, inexhaustible love. Then every one of you will have the power to win over the whole world by love and to wash away the sins of the world with your tears." (book 2, ch. 3)

"There is only one means of salvation. Make yourself responsible for all men's sins. As soon as you sincerely make yourself responsible for everything and for all men, you will see at once that you have found salvation." (book 6, ch. 2)

"If you can take upon yourself the crime of the criminal your heart is judging, take it at once...seek suffering for yourself, as though you were guilty of that wrong." (book 6, ch. 2)

What does Father Zossima mean when he tells his listeners to be responsible to all for all, and to take the burden and punishment for men's sins upon oneself? Of course he does not mean that we are literally to consider ourselves guilty of others' wrongs. And yet we are to take those crimes upon our own heart, to bear them, perhaps to seek a love for others that brings one to a point of suffering when another sins. Father Zossima also says,

"Love a man even in his sin, for that is the semblance of Divine Love and is the highest love on earth. Love all God's creation, the whole and every grain of sand of it. Love every leaf, every ray of God's light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love." (book 6, ch. 2)

"When you are left alone, fall on the earth and kiss it. Water it with your tears and it will bring forth fruit...Love to throw yourself on the earth and kiss it. Kiss the earth and love it with an unceasing, consuming love. Love all men, love everything." (book 6, ch. 2)

To "be responsible to all and for all," to "suffer for all men," is nothing more or less than to love - in the fullest and truest way possible. "Kiss the earth, water the ground with your tears," says Father Zossima. We are to give ourselves, to empty ourselves out of love for a broken world.* We are to love others in their sins, to forgive, even to the point of bearing their pain.

Why do Dostoevsky's words ring so true? Why do they pierce the heart? It is because Father Zossima's wisdom was first taught by Jesus - and not only taught by him, but embodied in his life and being till the very end (see "The Paradox of Jesus"). He "made himself nothing" (Philippians 2:7), he washed his disciples' feet, he wept at the death of Lazarus, he gave himself unto death for our redemption. "This is my commandment," teaches Jesus, "that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends" (John 15:12-13).

In Christ, God falls to the earth and waters its dead ground with the tears of his love. In Christ, God loves and embraces all creation by becoming part of it. In Christ, God loves all humanity and each individual person, each sinner. In Christ, God really does bear responsibility for all and suffer for all, and for each individual person. In Christ, God sheds his blood on the earth, the gift of his love. In his blood shed and his body broken, we see tangibly the love of God, his tears and suffering for us.

Father Zossima's teaching, then, is simply that we be like Christ, imitating his character, joining him in his sufferings, and participating in his death and resurrection, just as the apostle Paul taught (Philippians 3:10-11, Colossians 1:24). This does not mean that we ought to seek out "suffering for all men" as a goal in itself, or that we can save others by taking their sins upon ourselves. Only Christ can and truly has taken the burden of others' sins upon himself and suffered in their place. This he did out of love, and while we cannot do what he did, we can love others with a love like his: to the point where their pain is very nearly ours, where if they do wrong we feel the moral weight of that sin. Even if a sin is not punished, it is a moral burden and a weight, and loving a man in his sin means feeling that reality, even wishing that we could suffer the punishment in his place. If the sin committed is again us, it may mean forgiveness.

"Love bears all things" wrote Paul. Christ bore all on the cross, suffering for all men and bearing responsibility for their sins. If we love as Christ taught us to love, we reflect him and bear his image to the world. The challenge is incredibly high, just like Jesus' teaching to love our enemies and to "be perfect" (Matthew 5:48), but all things are possible if we live "in Christ."

Each one can give to others, emptying himself for them just as Christ made himself nothing, and each one can receive from others in the same way. Yet it is in this very act of emptying ourselves that we can be filled. This is the nature of love - always giving, always becoming nothing, yet always receiving from others and being filled again in the act of giving (see "The Paradox of the Empty Cup Overflowing").

*This love, writes Dostoevsky, also means knowing ourselves in relation to all, and recognizing and bearing responsibility for the dark blot on creation that our own sin is.

Does God Need Creation? (summary)

2010-04-15T16:00:00.010-04:00

If God created us for his own glory and joy (as well as ours), you might think that he needs his own creation - would he have been less happy without us, or would his glory be diminished if we did not exist to praise him? In response to this question, Jonathan Edwards wrote that God is like a fountain - of life and joy and all good things - and that "it is no argument of the emptiness or deficiency of a fountain that it is inclined to overflow."

Creating worlds out of nothing, making people in his image, revealing himself through word and image and story - this is what God does and what he delights to do. Like water from a fountain, new things overflow into existence from God.

In a sense, you could say that God "needs" to create, but only because he needs to be himself - he doesn't need the things he makes. He gives, creation receives. And all the richness and beauty of creation is and always has been present in its Maker.

One of the incredible things about the Trinity is that love is part of the very being of God. If God was just one "person" he could not love another without creating someone to love. But God is Triune, both one being and three persons, and the love between the Father and the Son has been a reality, in Jesus' own words, since "before the foundation of the world" (John 17:24).

We should of course be glad that God loves us as well and created us so that we could share in the love that he has always known. But maybe we should praise him even more for simply being all-sufficient in himself. Praise him not only because he will satisfy our thirst, but because he is the fountain of living water. All the gifts he gives to creation are eternally present in Him, and when he gives to creation, he is not any less himself, but more - always full, always overflowing.

"From Him and through Him and to Him are all things...All things are by Him and for Him. He utters Himself also for His own delight and sees that He is good. He is His own begotten and what proceeds from Him is Himself. Blessed be He!"

Avatar, Christianity, and Pantheism

2010-04-11T16:00:00.006-04:00

Spoiler alert.

Some Christians seem to have dismissed Avatar because of its Pocahontas-like pantheism. Isn't it blasphemous to worship nature as if it were God?

While the Na'vi deity Ehwa is certainly intimately connected with nature, it is not clear whether Ehwa is a powerful being, or some spiritual force, or just an emergent biological phenomenon of the Pandoran ecosystem. Ehwa does answer Jake's prayer, though, and when Jake first comes to the Na'vi, the seeds of Ehwa land on him, as if to give a sign that he is chosen to become one of the people. When Grace Augustine breathes her last, she whispers, "I'm with her, Jake, she's real." This suggests that Ehwa is something more than highly developed plant life.

The religion of the Na'vi shares some important similarities with Christianity. For the Na'vi, all of nature is intricately and beautifully interconnected, and Ehwa is the force or power that ties everything together. Similarly, the Bible says of God, "in him we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28) and "in him all things hold together" (Colossians 1:17). For the Na'vi there is a deep purpose for everything and beauty to be found in all living things. Christians ought to affirm the same about God's creation; indeed, the wonder and respect that the Na'vi give to their world is something we can learn from if we are to honor God with a right attitude towards the world he has made. Also, each Na'vi is born a second time when he becomes fully one of the people; being "born again" for Christians means becoming part of the body of Christ, the community of God's people.

None of this should be taken in any allegorical sense - God forbid. I am only saying that some qualities of the Na'vi and their beliefs about Ehwa are similar to Christian beliefs. C. S. Lewis described pagan myths and religions as blurry shadows and partial reflections of the truth; in Christ the myth becomes fact, and the reflected light finds its source. This, I think, is the best way to think about the Na'vi religion. One might even imagine that just as God revealed himself to Israelites on this planet as "Yahweh," so he might reveal himself to the fictional Na'vi on Pandora as "Ehwa." The beliefs and way of life of the Na'vi are, I think, consistent with this. And just as the Israelites only saw God in a fuzzy and incomplete way (until Christ came), one would imagine that what the Na'vi see in their deity is only a shadow of the full reality.*

One more point needs to be made: Avatar is the story of Jake Sully, a man who becomes one of the Na'vi by taking their bodily form (the word avatar means "incarnation") and living among them, and essentially saves them from destruction by their enemies. At the end Jake's old body dies and he lives fully in his avatar body. Whether or not James Cameron saw the parallels, the story is similar to Christianity, in which God's Son becomes a man, lives with humans in their world, and saves them from ruin. (Of course the analogy does not go very far - Jake is just a man, not the Son of God.)

Avatar is just a fictional story, and in all these things, it only gives a partial reflection of the truth. Like most stories, there are some things about it that garble or confuse the truth rather than reflecting it. On the whole, though, the positive far outweighs the negative. And in addition to the great story, the jaw-dropping visual presentation of Pandora and the beautiful and majestic music make it an absolute must-see.

*In the chapter "Christianity and Religion" of his book Miracles, C. S. Lewis points out the flaws of pantheism. It is "not utterly wrong, but needing correction." The Na'vi beliefs about Ehwa share some similarities to the pantheism Lewis addresses, but not, I think, most of its shortcomings. In any case, Lewis helps to highlight the incompleteness of any kind of pantheism in comparison with a more concrete understanding of what God is like.

Is it arrogant to claim knowledge that Christianity is true?

2010-04-08T16:00:00.005-04:00

...In the last post I pointed out what is obvious but all too often missed: Christianity is not just a cultural tradition or way of life, but a worldview that claims to describe reality as it is. In particular, it makes historical truth claims that we can test under the scrutiny of historical evidence. But it claims much more than that. How could we possibly test claims like "Jesus is one with God the Father" or "the universe was created by God"? Wouldn't it be incredibly arrogant to claim to know such things?

No, not necessarily. While the knowledge claimed here is indeed extraordinary, our acquiring of that knowledge is not explained by any outstanding qualities in us, but rather by God's wisdom and power in making himself known to us within the limiting context of our physical world. According to Christianity, God created us and the universe with the purpose of revealing himself to us, and he did that successfully. We did not climb our way to a transcending knowledge of the infinite God; rather, he limited himself so that we could know him (Philippians 2:6-11), and the way in which he accomplished this descent is truly amazing. This is the unique teaching of Christianity. Our confidence in knowing truth rests on God's ability to create and reveal, not our ability to discover.

In fact, it is very often the weak and lowly to whom God chooses to make himself known in Scripture. Consider Jesus' words, "I thank you Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children" (Luke 10:21), and Paul's teaching, "God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God" (1 Corinthians 1:28-29). This theme is everywhere in the New Testament, and in the life of Jesus. Christianity, then, gives us ample reason not to boast in our knowledge. Anyone who asserts their belief in Christianity in a way that proudly suggests they have arrived at that knowledge by their own skill and intelligence has missed a large part of the message.

Some might object that Christianity makes arrogant claims because its adherents think that humans are particularly "special" - God loves us and made us to be the culmination of his physical creation (at least in this universe). This may be true, but it's only one side of the coin. Christianity also teaches the less than flattering truths that man sinned against God, fell into a shameful state of inclination towards sin and inability to live righteously, incurred his just wrath, and deserves eternal punishment. The language used throughout the Bible to describe the sinfulness and evil of the human heart is incredibly humbling. Human nature, then, is paradoxical (see "The Paradox of Human Nature") - we are both very good (Genesis 1:31) and, in Jesus' own words (Matthew 7:11), evil. In C. S. Lewis' words, "you come of the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve, and that is both honour enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor on earth" (Prince Caspian).

Most humbling of all is that we are so broken and fallen in our sins that our salvation could only be achieved by God himself suffering and dying. The cross of Christ is the center of Christianity - it is the clearest and highest revelation of God's love for us, and yet at the same time an incredibly humbling description of humanity. We could not save ourselves, yet while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8).

I think these reasons justify the conclusion that it is by no means arrogant to claim to know that Christianity is true (and by implication, other wordviews false). We ought to be humbled by the truths we embrace and amazed by God's wisdom in designing a way to make himself known to creatures as frail and small as us.

Christianity as Fact

2010-04-03T16:00:00.002-04:00

Christianity is true, and every other worldview, description of reality, or philosophy of life is either incomplete or false.

I believe that. If you are a Christian you probably believe that too. If you are not a Christian, and maybe even if you are, it may strike you as a presumptuous, arrogant, or shocking statement. I want to suggest here that it should not be received that way - it is really quite an ordinary statement.

It is a truth claim, and neither more nor less of a truth claim than the statements "I exist," "I heartily enjoy yogurt," and "I am not a blue-footed booby" (there really is a bird with this name - look it up). Each of these statements says something about reality - each attempts to describe the world as it is, accurately and truthfully.

"Christianity is true" is exactly the same kind of statement, and when I say "I am a Christian" I mean precisely that: I think Christianity is true. I don't mean that I was raised as a Christian, or that it is my cultural tradition or family practice, but rather that it gives an accurate description of reality - it is true.

Maybe people have become accustomed to thinking of religion merely as tradition or cultural practice, and for many it may be no more than that. But by Christianity I mean the faith that has a history, the faith rooted in the creeds, the writings of the apostle Paul, the historian Luke, and others, the faith that sprung out of nowhere about 1980 years ago and began to make factual claims about a Jewish man named Jesus. Whether or not these claims are true, they are factual claims, and the word "Christianity" should be understood to refer to the historically rooted faith that makes these claims.

In particular, "Christianity" should not be identified with the beliefs of your average 20th-century "born-again Christian" or "evangelical." These words have good historical origins but unfortunately have taken on politically-loaded and often un-Christian connotations, in part because many Christians are unfamiliar with their own faith. In this post I suggest that our opinion of Christianity should be decided not by the beliefs or behaviors of Christians, but by the historical claims of the faith, and in particular, the person of Christ.

In short, Christianity claims that the man Jesus was and is “one with God” and that by his incarnation, passion, death on a cross, and bodily resurrection, forgiveness for the sins of humanity is accomplished, the door to eternal life opened, death and evil defeated, and this fallen world redeemed. These statements are truth claims about God, humanity, and the world we live in.

It may be helpful to consider science as an analogy. Scientific theories attempt to describe the physical world accurately. It is a basic assumption of science that we are capable of saying something about the way the world works. Although any given theory may be partially incorrect, it is never proposed and received except as a potentially accurate description. Later theories replace older ones and are recognized as more accurate, and although they may not be perfect, they are never proposed and received except as descriptions that are, in all probability, more accurate than the previous theories. In short, scientists assume that the world functions in one particular way (that is, there is one unique truth), we can study it and describe it accurately (we can know that truth, to an extent), and that as our theories grow and develop, they get better (closer to that truth). Christianity is the same in that it claims to be an accurate description of the world - not of its physical functioning, but of its purpose, meaning, origin, etc. in relation to God and man. It is also similar in that it asserts that man's knowledge of God has grown more accurate and more complete throughout history.

Christianity is not less than tradition or custom or social practice, but it is certainly more than these things. To reiterate, then, an obvious and repeated point (but it is extremely important and, for some strange reason, elusive to many), Christianity is a description of reality that is claiming to be true. It asserts itself as fact. There is nothing unusual about that - if your worldview or philosophy of life isn't making any claims about reality, if it's not trying to describe the world as it is, then it's not much of a worldview. If your philosophy of life need only be "true for you" but not for me, then it is not saying anything about the real world that we both experience. It may be a way of thinking that makes life easier, it may be a pleasant idea to have floating around in your mind, or it may accomplish some practical purpose (ie. "hakuna matata"), but it has no real substance. It's not saying anything.

Christianity may or may not be dead wrong, but it's saying something about reality. It's claiming to be the one true description of what our existence is all about. And either it's true or it's false. Either Jesus Christ rose from the dead or he did not. It's as simple as that. He didn't rise in my mind and not yours. If he rose at all, it was outside Jerusalem, two millennia ago, in the world we are all in.

If Christianity is true (that is, if Jesus' resurrection was a historical event), then any other worldview is either false or incomplete. If its claims contradict those of Christianity, then it is false. If it is consistent with Christianity, it may be true, but it is not the whole story. This is simply common sense. It may seem intolerant or exclusive, but that is only the nature of truth: "truth by definition is exclusive" (Ravi Zacharias). Any truth claim must exclude contradictory claims. And of course, we should all be aware of the weight of this question. In C. S. Lewis' words, "Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important."

I've suggested here that the original claim "Christianity is true" (although it is very significant) is not a particularly unusual statement. Whether it is overly ambitious to think that we can know with certainty such weighty truths as the existence of God and the purpose of humanity is the question I will consider next...

Comparing Christianity to Buddhism's "Four Noble Truths"

2010-03-29T15:59:00.002-04:00

...Actually to just three of them, in this case. I am by no means familiar with Buddhism, but the little I do know makes for an interesting comparison to Christianity. The following are among the "four noble truths" of Buddhism:

Suffering is part of life. Christianity affirms this wholeheartedly. Read the book of Job, read the Psalms, read Jeremiah - suffering is a fact that the Bible doesn't shy away from, especially in the New Testament. The apostle Paul even writes that "we are… heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him" (Romans 8:17, see also Philippians 3:7-11, 2 Timothy 3:12, Acts 14:22, Colossians 1:24, Philippians 1:29). Through suffering we can participate in Christ's suffering, death, and resurrection, bearing the image of our Savior and the Author of our faith, and reflecting that light to the world. Of course, suffering is far from the whole story, as we will see.
Suffering is caused by desire, either in the form of an unsatisfied desire for some pleasure, or an unsatisfied desire for the ending of some pain. I am not sure if I have understood this point entirely correctly, but, as I have stated it here, it is obviously true.
Suffering ends when desire is given up and fades away. One can then attain liberation and enlightenment. This is the main point that I want to discuss in this post.

Hypothetically, I suppose that if one's desires (whether positive or negative) where to go away, so would suffering. Christianity, however, gives a radically different answer to suffering, an answer that doesn't sacrifice something so good. Desire is to be embraced and pursued - this is at the heart of Christianity. We were made to know God, and that knowledge and love will in the end give more joy than this world could ever offer. It is this joy of knowing, seeing, and loving God for all that he is, and of bearing his image and drawing near to him as sons and daughters, that the Christian is to pursue with all his might.

John Piper really explains this well in books like Desiring God, The Pleasures of God, and When I Don't Desire God: How to Fight for Joy. Notice the pattern? Desire and God go together. God is a fountain of infinite joy, and he gave us being so that we could partake in that joy. In Piper's words, Christianity is hedonistic in the sense that it's about pursuing joy - not simple happiness per se, but the ultimate joy that is defined by God and inseparable from God. Consider Jonathan Edwards' resolution at age 19: "Resolved, to endeavor to obtain for myself as much happiness, in the other world, as I possibly can, with all the power; might, vigor, and vehemence, yea violence, I am capable of, or can bring myself to exert, in any way that can be thought of."*

How does suffering fit into this? I've suggested in these posts that a suffering and pain-filled world, and specifically the suffering of God on the cross, makes possible a far greater eternal joy than what would otherwise have been, an eternal reward in comparison to which all the genocides and tortures of history are nothing (this by no means trivializes suffering - it is a relative comparison). This world is broken and marked by pain, but God is in the business of healing and renewing it. Suffering has to be a part of that rebirth and renewal, and of our rebirth, for we are being made new just like creation, and suffering serves, in part, as a refining fire that transforms us into the people God made us to be. There is suffering that is redemptive and gives birth to joy, even making the sufferer more capable of joy. (Here perhaps Buddhism is not so far from the truth when it speaks of a cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. In reality, though, it's not an endlessly repeating cycle that must be escaped, but more of a linear, non-repeating path that we are called to follow. There is a rebirth that is not followed again by death, but rather limitless growth.)

Of course, this joy that the New Testament speaks of is only partially given in this world, and "if in Christ we have hope for this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied" (1 Corinthians 15:19). Although there is, I think, a surpassing God-centered joy that can be attained in this life, and can be enriched by suffering, it is largely "treasures in heaven" that we store up. This seems to be what Edwards means by "in the other world." Pursuit of this eternal joy means making earthly sacrifices, but again, suffering can even now give birth to joy:

"Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds.” (James 1:2)
"I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us." (Romans 8:18)

Christianity, then, is radically different from Buddhism in its understanding of both suffering and desire. Suffering is (like death) not to be evaded or escaped, but accepted, even at times embraced, for it serves a redemptive purpose for a greater good (for more thoughts, see "Death and Resurrection, Part V"). And desire, which, though it may manifest itself in different ways, at its root can be traced back to a longing for our Maker, is to be pursued, even sought like a treasure. Since it is part of our very being, desire can never fully fade away, and therefore suffering can only end when our desires are satisfied. That fulfillment of our longing is what we were made for - knowing and being with God (see "Whispers of Eternity").

Far from sacrificing desire to flee pain, we are to pursue it with our utmost efforts, even if that means passing through suffering. To give up that great pursuit in order to achieve the "liberation" of transcending suffering can, I think, be a very sad thing. Suffering, while bad in itself, has a way of paradoxically turning into joy. Consider Paul's words "as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing, as poor, yet making many rich, as having nothing, yet possessing everything" (2 Corinthians 6:10), or Jesus' "unless a grain of wheat falls to the earth it remains alone, but if it dies, it bears much fruit" (John 12:24). God works in mysterious ways.

*Of course, this does not mean indulging oneself in sensual pleasures without limit. That would be sacrificing a greater long-term joy for fleeting and momentary pleasures. C. S. Lewis wrote, "We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased" (The Weight of Glory).

A Story Reflected: Resurrection

2010-03-24T16:00:00.001-04:00

I was conscious, I was aware, thinking. My thoughts were stronger, faster, more precise, more complete, more real. I breathed in and felt my limbs - I had a body. Immediately I knew that not only was I a new man, not only was I more real and more myself than I had been, but this place, this world in which I found myself was more real. This was the real world, the beginning.

I remembered my past. I had come through, then, to the other side. All was new - it had all been preparation for this. All was open before me. Some power or purpose drew me on, beckoning me forwards and outwards, to begin the journey, to find the end and the center of it all.

All was dark and cold, but a light shone ahead, and with it came warmth. I went towards it and came to an open doorway leading into the light. As I went through it, light shone all around, bright like the sun, but I was not blinded. I was able to take in the light, to see more. I felt the strength returning to my arms and legs, growing in a new way. Breathing deeply, I found that my lungs could take in more air.

The door opened to what seemed to be a garden. The flowers were rich in color, the patterns and structures more complex, more detailed, yet simpler and more elegant than anything I had seen. The trees were strong and broad, their buds just breaking into bloom. Whether their colors were deeper and their lines and curves more finely detailed, or I was now able to perceive things that had been hidden before, I did not know. Throughout the garden stood stone arches and other structures that seemed to be the remnants of ancient buildings. A bird with deep, crimson red plumage and a bright golden tail flew overhead, sweeping back and forth through the garden and between the arches. Looking back I saw a high stone cliff, and opening into the rock, the doorway through which I had come. Beside it was a great stone, rolled aside.

The road, for I realized then that the doorway had opened onto a road, continued straight. I walked on. Coming through a great stone arch, the road opened onto a wide plain. At the horizon rose the sun, red and gold, its light revealing the bright crimson of the bird, which stood atop the arch under the cloudless blue sky. Seeing the ground stretch before me, I knew the reason I had been brought to that place. I closed my eyes and, feeling the warmth of the sun on my face, began to walk. As I moved I felt the cool air mixing with the heat of the sun. I ran, for I could do nothing but run. I knew I had been created for that moment, to run towards the sun. Faster and faster I ran, pushing every muscle, feeling the movement and the beat of my body. I could go no faster, and yet every moment I ran faster still. I inhaled, taking in more and more air, filling my body until I could take no more, and yet even then I breathed in. Quickly then I exhaled - I breathed out and continued to breath out, surely far more than I had taken in. I spread my arms out and shouted, for I was not weary, though every moment I ran faster still. "I am not weary!" I shouted. I raised my fists to the sky, let them fall, and then laughed. Faster still I went, laughing and shouting as I ran.

I saw ahead the ground fall away at the brink of a cliff, but I had no fear. All fear had been left behind. The ground gave way before me, and I saw that the cliff was higher far than I could have imagined. Miles below, perhaps, I could see forests and rivers. I saw the lines on each leaf, the sunlight reflected in a droplet of water, the texture of a root as it broke into the earth, and I saw distinctly each leaf, each stone, each ripple in its uniqueness. I saw each of these in all its glory, each leaf enriched by every other leaf, each more fully in relation to the whole of the world beneath me, and that world more glorious in light of the whole of my experience. The whole was greater than the sum of its parts, and each part was more than itself by virtue of being part of the whole. All this I saw and pondered in a moment, realizing even in that same moment the limitless ability of my eyes and mind. In the distance spread wide and far the sea for which my heart longed, last of all things on the path to the sun. All this I took in that last moment on the brink, in the twinkling of an eye.

With my last step I landed my foot on the very edge. I jumped with far more than all my might. All was still and silent for a moment. I saw only the endless sky above, a boundless and infinite world in itself. My legs moved slowly beneath me, in step with time itself. Suddenly I surged upwards with a power from my own body that I had not felt before. My wings spread wide, ten feet on either side. This bodily power was new, but I was ready. I pressed the air behind me and soared higher, feeling the muscles at work in my wings as in my limbs. I stopped short and, turning down, went into a freefall dive. The wind rushed in my face as I plummeted. I spread my wings out and flew high again, higher and higher until the place from which I jumped was far beneath me. It began to rain, but the sun still shone on me from the horizon. Its rays were reflected and magnified by the falling water in a thousand ways, and I felt its warmth on my face along with the rain as it washed over me.

I closed my eyes and breathed deeply, climbing into the sky above the sea, further up and further in. I had come to Deep Heaven. I was with the Seraphim, among the stars, falling and soaring into the beauty and glory of God. I had come to the sun, the bright Morning Star. His light shone all around me, ten thousand times brighter, but I took it all in, I saw it all with my eyes wide, receiving it into my being like water into my mouth. His light passed through me and lived within me and shone from me. The crimson and gold bird, the phoenix, had returned with me to the sun, its brilliant feathers burning in everlasting fire. And I saw that I too burned in the flames of the sun. I felt the heat in all its intensity, but knew no pain, nor did the flames consume me. "Blessed be he!" I cried, as the Seraphim joined me, "worthy are you, risen King of Ages, son of righteousness, fountain of eternal life; hallowed be your name unto ages of ages."

A Story Reflected: Christus Victor

2010-03-19T17:00:00.001-04:00

It was night. I was standing on barren and desolate ground. Dark clouds covered the sky - there was no starlight. I looked around and saw a tree some distance away, on the top of a hill. As I climbed the hill I saw that the tree was old and strong; its roots dug deep, and its branches grew high. But as I came closer I saw that no leaves hung upon its branches; the tree seemed to be dead.

Before the tree was a stone altar. It was square, seven feet by seven feet, and three feet high. I looked closely and saw writing graven on the stone, but I could not read the language. The dead tree loomed over the altar, under the dark sky. It was a bleak and hopeless place. The air was still, the tree motionless, as if waiting silently.

As I stood there I knew at once, with absolute certainty, that the place was very old - older than the earth itself, older than the stars that lay hidden behind the black clouds. I knew also that that place would endure forever.

Suddenly I cried out, for I saw something moving on the ground. A great serpent came towards me. It curled itself around the tree, as if to signal its possession. It came to me, and at once I obeyed, for I knew the serpent's command that I stand aside and watch what was about to happen.

A lamb was climbing the hill. It was completely silent, making no sound at all, and it came slowly, as if it was very weak. As it approached the tree and the altar, the serpent moved quickly towards it. It circled around the lamb, hissing at it and speaking to it in some ancient tongue. I was afraid. But the lamb seemed not to see the serpent. It looked only at the tree that stood before it now, and when it came to the altar it stopped.

Once again I knew the serpent's command. I took the lamb into my arms and lifted it onto the altar. As I saw its face I wept, for I knew why the lamb had come. The sky grew darker. Again I knew the command of the serpent as it circled the altar. I took the rope that I had brought with me and bound the lamb to the altar.

For a moment the clouds parted and the starlight shone through upon the lamb, a pure and perfect light in that darkness. Then all was night again. The serpent came, and in terror I watched as it descended upon the altar and struck the lamb. It sunk its teeth deep into the body, releasing its poison into the veins of the lamb. As I saw the blood begin to flow I knew, once again with certainty, that the lamb was dead. It was defeated by the serpent, and I had bound it to the altar. I bowed my head and turned away in despair. Night had come.

But a strange thing happened then. I did not know why, but I had lifted my head, and what I saw terrified me. The serpent thrashed its body as if in great anguish, but it could not release its fangs from the lamb. It too was bound to the altar. I stood, and walked towards the altar. The blood of the lamb covered the stone surface and had begun to fall off the edge onto the barren ground. I trembled in awe and fear at what I saw, for the serpent's poison was no match for the blood of the lamb. A greater power was at work, for as the blood flowed it destroyed the poison until the serpent's fangs were empty and dry, without their sting. Finally the serpent fell to the ground, as if it had itself been released from the jaws of this strange power.

At once fire came down from heaven and consumed the body of the lamb. The great tree too was covered in flames. My eyes grew wide as I watched this new light in the darkness. The body of the lamb I saw no more, for the flames covered the altar. From the fire upon the altar leapt a great Lion, bright and golden. Immediately the Lion fell upon the cowering serpent and tore its ruined fangs from its mouth. And the serpent, knowing the command of the Lion, departed from that place, broken and defeated by the Lion and the Lamb.

Rain began to fall, watering the dead ground and washing away its brokenness. On the ground by the altar lay also the blood of the lamb, healing the earth of its wounds. The sky grew lighter, and I knew that heaven was opened and the veil of darkness torn. Then the Lion turned towards me, his face like the sun shining in all its brilliance, and I fell to the ground before him and wept. I knew his love for me, for I had seen it in the face of the Lamb. My tears fell to the ground, becoming one with the rain from heaven. The Lion led me to the tree, and though it had been dead it was now in full bloom, bearing much fruit. Through fire and water it had come to new life. "Come, take and eat," said the Lion, and a dove flew down to me, carrying a bright red fruit from the tree. I took it and ate.

Then I heard a voice from heaven saying “whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Who will tell of the Lamb that was slain and the Lion who broke the power of the serpent? Who will tell of the blood of the Lamb and of the fruit of the tree of life?” And I said “here am I, send me.”

Christian Themes in Harry Potter – Links

2010-03-15T14:26:00.005-04:00

I’ve just finished writing about Christianity in Harry Potter. Here is a list of links to these posts (key posts in bold). Disclaimer: While most of what I have written is an exposition of themes that were clearly intended by the author, some of the ideas proposed below (eg. Jesus as a horcrux) are my own, drawn out of the text, and in all likelihood not intended by J. K. Rowling. More may be found in a written work than what the author meant to put there.

The “Resurrection Bird”: Phoenix Imagery in Harry Potter

2010-03-10T19:00:00.003-05:00

Many of the magical creatures in Harry Potter may be symbols of Christ, or at least share literary and historical roots with creatures that took on significance as Christ symbols. For more on this, John Granger’s Finding God in Harry Potter has a chapter worth reading. Most beautiful, though, is what we see in Dumbledore’s phoenix, Fawkes. The phoenix, or “resurrection bird” goes through cycles of death and rebirth. These majestic crimson birds, with golden tails, beaks, and talons,¹ “burst into flame when it is time for them to die, and are reborn from the ashes…They can carry immensely heavy loads, their tears have healing powers, and they make highly faithful pets” (CS264).²

There is a beautiful piece of imagery in Dumbledore’s duel with Voldemort in The Order of the Phoenix. Voldemort casts the killing curse, Avada Kedavra, towards Dumbledore, who sends Fawkes the phoenix into the curse in his place. The phoenix bursts into flame and dies, but, because of its nature as the “resurrection bird,” is born again from death. What a beautiful image of Christ’s sacrificial death and resurrection – in exactly the same way he saved us by bearing the death curse of sin directed towards us, and returned from death!³

Another instance of phoenix imagery gives us a hint of the resurrection theme. As Harry looks at Dumbledore’s white, marble tomb, he notices “bright, white flames…Harry thought, for one heart-stopping moment, that he saw a phoenix fly joyfully into the blue” (645). The resurrection bird flying from a tomb…perhaps Rowling is suggesting life after death, as she did more explicitly through Luna’s observation of the voices beyond the veil.

At the end of The Goblet of Fire, we encounter the strongest phoenix imagery – crimson and gold, beautiful song and brilliant light, hope welling up from within. As Harry’s wand clashes with Voldemort’s and priori incantatem takes place, the green and red spells connect to form a “bright, deep gold…cage of light.” Phoenix song surrounds Harry: “It was the sound of hope to Harry…the most beautiful and welcome thing he had ever heard in his life…He felt as though the song were inside him instead of just around him…It was the sound he connected with Dumbledore” (GoF 664).

The phoenix imagery is virtually always connected with Dumbledore (who is the founder and secret keeper of the Order of the Phoenix, and whose Patronus is a phoenix), and, as we have seen numerous times, it is always from Dumbledore that Harry learns of death and resurrection and the power and value of sacrificial love. It is Dumbledore who prepares Harry and teaches him what he needs to know in order to accept death as the necessary path. And it is Dumbledore who has Bible verses written on the graves of his mother and sister, and of Harry’s parents. While Harry is the symbol that encompasses the beautiful Christian themes, Dumbledore is the Teacher of all these things – to Harry, and to the reader.

¹ Cf. CS ch. 17, “a long, sharp golden beak and a beady black eye.”
² The healing power of phoenix tears is perhaps related to its ability to be reborn from death. Just as life is born from death, joy and healing is the fruit of sorrow, pain, and brokenness.
³ Cf. Galatians 3:13, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.”

“Expecto Patronum”: Light/Darkness Imagery in Harry Potter

2010-03-07T19:00:00.001-05:00

One of the most beautiful pieces of imagery in Harry Potter, that of the Patronus charm overcoming the dementors, is found in The Prisoner of Azkaban. Harry discovers that the dementors are attracted to him in particular:

“The dementors affect you worse than others because there are horrors in your past that others don’t have…Dementors are among the foulest creatures that walk this earth. They infest the darkest, filthiest places, they glory in decay and despair, they drain peace, hope, and happiness out of the air around them.” (PoA 187)

Dementors “suck the happiness out of a place”; those who encounter dementors feel like as if they would “never be happy again.” Professor Lupin teaches Harry the Patronus charm, which “is a kind of positive force, a projection of the very things that the dementor feeds upon – hope, happiness, the desire to survive – but it cannot feel despair, as real humans can, so the dementors can’t hurt it” (PoA 237). One conjurs a Patronus by thinking of a very happy memory and focusing on it, allowing the memory to fill one’s thoughts.¹

The imagery here is truly beautiful (especially in the film version of The Prisoner of Azkaban), and, I think, can be accurately applied to the very real battle between good and evil. Dementors – dark and evil creatures that spread sorrow and despair – are overcome by the blinding light of the Patronus. Warmth invades the icy cold,² light enters into the darkness and defeats it, joy triumphs over sorrow. The presentation of evil is of an evil that is absolute, real, and truly horrible. Good is victorious over evil.³

¹ Philippians 4:8 comes to mind: “Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”
² Similar imagery is found in The Half-Blood Prince, when Dumbledore and Harry are in danger of the Inferi. Dumbledore describes how these creatures, which dwell in cold and darkness, fear light and warmth (HBP 566) and can be fought back with fire.
³ We ought not to take for granted that good is portrayed as very good and very real, and evil as very evil and very real. This too reflects the objective reality of good and evil in our world.

Voldemort’s Rebirthing Party: A Black Mass

2010-03-05T19:00:00.004-05:00

In his book Finding God in Harry Potter (a good read for understanding the Christian symbolism in Harry Potter, although I wonder if he stretches it a little too far at times), John Granger describes the Christian, or rather, anti-Christian nature of what may well be the darkest scene in all seven books. At the end of The Goblet of Fire, Voldemort uses “an old piece of Dark Magic” (GoF 656) to regain bodily form. “Bone of the father, unknowingly given, you will renew your son…flesh of the servant, willingly given, you will revive your master…blood of the enemy, forcibly taken, you will resurrect your foe” (641-42), narrates Wormtail as he puts into a cauldron Voldemort’s father’s bone, his own sliced-off hand, and Harry Potter’s blood in order to brew the potion that would resurrect the Dark Lord.

Granger describes this “rebirthing party” as Voldemort calls it as a Black Mass: “A Black Mass is the demonic mockery of traditional Christian liturgy and sacramental worship. A Black Mass inverts everything that is sacred; death and darkness trump life and light” (Granger 152). Let’s take a look at the main elements of this perversion or twisting of all that is true and sacred:

Christ’s death and resurrection are mocked in Voldemort’s dark resurrection. Whereas Christ gave his life to save others and conquer death, Voldemort forces others to suffer so that he may regain a body, in order to conquer death.
“The Eucharist, or life-giving body and blood of [Christ], are mocked in the potion’s requirements of the blood of an enemy, flesh of the servant, and bone of the father” (Granger 152). Instead of body and blood given out of love to save others (see 1 Corinthians 11:24-26), they are taken by Voldemort for his own gain.
“The baptismal font and immersion in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are turned qualitatively inside out in the Voldemort baby’s immersion in the cauldron with three magical, physical ingredients (and the “old man” rather than the “new man” or “babe in Christ” rising from the font)” (Granger 152).
As the Death Eaters gather to follow their Lord’s commands, Voldemort functions as a sort of priest or minister. He delivers a sermon of sorts to his followers, “rewards” Wormtail with a new hand, promises good things to those who follow him like his “faithful servant,” and promises punishment to those who disobey.
Worship is mocked: “Then one of the Death Eaters fell to his knees, crawled toward Voldemort, and kissed the hem of his black robes” (GoF 647).
“The mystery of Christian burial is turned on its head by the graveyard of the church becoming a birthplace of devils rather than a resting place for those hopeful for an authentic resurrection from the dead” (Granger 153).

Everything here is a perversion of truth, a twisting of something deeper and older, more original and foundational. The structure of events in the graveyard parallels symbols and metaphors in Christianity just as darkness and shadow is defined by light. Stay tuned for my next two posts if you are looking for more uplifting Christian imagery in Harry Potter.

“The fact that you can feel pain like this is your greatest strength”: Humanity in Harry Potter

2010-03-03T19:00:00.003-05:00

Although most of the ideas described here have been explained elsewhere, the theme of humanity is worth mentioning briefly. Both love and death, which are such enormous ideas in Harry Potter, are portrayed as essential to humanity. When a hot-headed Harry, having been recently possessed by Voldemort, insists that he just doesn’t care anymore, Dumbledore tells him, “the fact that you can feel pain like this is your greatest strength...suffering like this proves you are still a man! This pain is part of being human!...You do care. You care so much you feel as though you will bleed to death with the pain of it” (OotP 823). “To hurt is as human as to breath,” says Dumbledore elsewhere (The Tales of Beedle the Bard, p. 56). To be vulnerable, to ache, to desire – this is essential to being human. The pain here is that of love – Harry suffers because he loves and is willing to make sacrifices for others, and it is this that makes him fully human, unlike Voldemort, who “does not love.”

Similarly, death is an essential part of being human. This is a key idea, which I have explained in depth elsewhere. It is, of course, something that Voldemort, in his quest for immortality, never learns. In tearing his soul apart to make horcruxes he destroys his humanity. In his folly, he looks down on being human is if it were a weakness. “I am not a man,” says Tom Riddle, “I am much, much more than a man” (GoF 15). Ironically, though, “in seeking to become superhuman,” writes Dumbledore, Voldemort “renders himself inhuman” (The Tales of Beedle the Bard 59).

Community and Friendship in Harry Potter

2010-02-28T19:00:00.000-05:00

“In the light of Lord Voldemort’s return, we are only as strong as we are united, as weak as we are divided. Lord Voldemort’s gift for spreading discord and enmity is very great. We can fight it only by showing an equally strong bond of friendship and trust.” (GoF 723)

Community, or friendship, is another important theme in Harry Potter. Throughout his long struggle against Lord Voldemort, Harry relies heavily on his friends. “People who had cared about him had stood in front of him one by one, his mother, his father, his godfather, and finally Dumbledore, all determined to protect him” (HBP 645). As he enters the Dark Forest on that final walk to his death, he uses the resurrection stone to see his parents James and Lily, his godfather Sirius, and Remus Lupin. “Their presence was his courage,” writes Rowling. Harry ultimately sacrifices himself to protect his friends, but he, in turn, is constantly strengthened by their love for him and sacrifices for him, and by the memories he treasures of the ones he loves. Harry depends on them, and their hope is ultimately in him. This “vicariousness” or “interdependence,” is the nature of true community, and of love. Love brings people together through relationship.

Voldemort, on the other hand, isolates himself, resisting all relationship with others. Remember Dumbledore’s words: “you will hear many of his Death Eaters claiming that they are in his confidence, that they alone are close to him, even understand him. They are deluded. Lord Voldemort has never had a friend, nor do I believe that he has ever wanted one” (HBP 277). Instead, Voldemort scorns his own followers, humiliating Bellatrix and her family in front of the other Death Eaters (DH ch. 1) and ruthlessly ruining the Malfoys’ reputation. Their value to him lies only in the benefits he derives from their service, and most of the Death Eaters obey him out of fear rather than loyalty, which Voldemort does not understand.* There is no love in the corrupted “community” of Voldemort and his Death Eaters. Nor is Voldemort at all comfortable with being dependent on anyone or anything other than himself (even including the Philosopher’s Stone, notes Dumbledore). He scorns Harry for his “weak” dependence on others and taunts him because of the sacrifices they have made for him (DH ch. 36), and when his attempt to kill Harry in the Dark Forest mysteriously knocks him over backwards, he announces coldly “I do not require assistance.”

*On the other hand, there is a genuine loyalty among Harry and his friends, and in particular loyalty to Dumbledore.

Harry’s Selfless Love and Mercy

2010-02-26T19:00:00.001-05:00

In the previous posts I described how Harry Potter is a Christ figure and explained in depth what I perceive to be beautiful Christian themes in Harry Potter. In the next few posts I will make a few final observations of other elements in the books, including: phoenix imagery, light and darkness imagery in The Prisoner of Azkaban, and themes of humanity and community. But first, some observations about Harry’s character:

Harry is “a remarkably selfless person” (DH ch. 35). This becomes clear when Dumbledore describes the uniqueness of what Harry sees in the mirror of Erised: “[The mirror showed] only the way to thwart Lord Voldemort, and not immortality or riches. Harry, have you any idea how few wizards could have seen what you saw in that mirror? Voldemort should have known then what he was dealing with, but he did not!” (HBP ch. 23) Harry desired only the defeat of his enemy, not his own gain – this reveals his remarkable humility.
Harry is “unusual” in his capacity for love; he “loves fiercely” and will protect his friends at great cost to himself.
Harry is merciful, saving the life of the man who betrayed his parents to their deaths (PoA 375). (Lord Voldemort, on the other hand, tells his followers “I do not forgive, I do not forget…I want thirteen years’ repayment before I forgive you.” (GoF 649).)
Harry accepts his own death, realizing that he “must die.”

These qualities make Harry shine even brighter as a Christ figure and are, in my view, among the highest virtues a person can have. They are all well worth pursuing.

Conclusion: Harry Potter is a Christ Figure

2010-02-20T19:00:00.004-05:00

“Dumbledore’s favorite solution, love, which he claimed conquered death.” – Voldemort (DH 592)

At the beginning of this series of posts, I stated that the idea of love overcoming death was the central theme in Harry Potter, and I have done my best to explain in depth exactly how love overcomes death in Harry’s story: see especially “The true master of death accepts that he must die,” “The Protective Power of Sacrificial Love,” and “Jesus Christ Was a Horcrux.” The two main themes of love and death come together at the end of the final book, in which Harry gives his life for his friends, and by his death triumphs over death and saves his friends through his sacrificial love. Death may be an enemy beyond the reach of magic (“no magic can raise the dead”), but the “deeper magic” of love can and does conquer death in Harry’s final battle. As an overall theme, this is a peculiarly Christian idea. Throughout these posts I have identified a number of Christian themes in Harry Potter. Here I summarize these key similarities between Harry’s story and Christianity:

Harry “accepts that he must die,” and by his death he becomes “the true master of death,” uniting the Deathly Hallows, and defeats Voldemort. Similarly, Jesus went intentionally to his own death, and by his suffering and death he defeated death (1 Corinthians 15:26, 54) and evil (Colossians 2:15).

Harry loves his friends and gives his life for them, and because of the power of his sacrificial love, they are shielded from harm (just as Harry was by his mother’s love). Similarly, Jesus loved us and laid down his life for us (John 15:13, Romans 5:8), and because of his atoning sacrifice, we are saved from our sins.

Voldemort cannot kill Harry because he had taken his blood and “tethered him to life.” Similarly, death could not keep its hold on Christ (Acts 2:24) because by dying Christ destroyed sin, the sting of death (1 Corinthians 15:56).

Harry bears in his body an evil that must be destroyed if his enemy is to be defeated, and in his "death" this is accomplished. Similarly, Christ bore on the cross the sin of mankind, which had to be destroyed if evil was to be defeated and humanity redeemed, and in his death this was accomplished.

In Harry’s story, love is revealed to be a power “more wonderful and more terrible than death” – love conquers death. In the same way, the cross of Christ made it beautifully and powerfully clear that nothing, not even death, can separate us from the love of God (Romans 8:38-39).

Of course, the parallels are imperfect and incomplete, and there are significant differences between Harry and Jesus, some of which I have already noted. Perhaps most significantly, when Harry returns from death, he returns to mortal life – to the “same side” of death as before. Presumably he will die again. Christ, on the other hand, conquered death once for all, and his resurrection was that of eternal, imperishable life. Even more obviously, Harry is not God, and Jesus Christ is God.

Nevertheless, the similarities that are present are very striking. Harry is of course not meant to be identified with Jesus in the same way that, say, Aslan in The Chronicles of Narnia is a supposal of what Christ might actually be like if he became incarnate in another world. But he is most definitely a “Christ figure” in the sense that he reflects qualities of Jesus Christ. His character and choices, in some ways, resemble those of Christ, and his story bears distinct similarities to the story of Christianity. To “the lowly, the enslaved, the dregs of the magical world,” says Dobby, “Harry Potter shone like a beacon of hope for those…who thought the Dark days would never end” (CS ch. 10). He was “their savior and their guide” (DH ch. 36). In much the same way, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is to Christians a beacon of hope in a broken world. He is our savior and our guide, our captain and our banner, our victor over death, our Lord.

Rowling’s septology is filled with beautifully interwoven images and symbols of the many facets of Christ’s death and resurrection and of the story told by Christianity. It is a reflection or partial retelling of the Great Story in a different world. Reading it and other such truth-reflecting stories can be very enriching. Through these stories, we can approach the cross from a new angle and thus gain new insight – about what happened on the cross, the nature of good and evil, love, death, morality, etc. To use a crude analogy, when we stare directly at the sun for too long, we are blinded, but if we study other sources of light, such as fire, we can learn new things about the sun. In the same way, there are countless stories that tell the Story of Christianity in another world and in a different language, and studying these stories can take us closer to the truth, and to God.

Granted, it may not be that J. K. Rowling wrote Harry Potter with every single one of the parallels I have suggested consciously in mind,* but it is plain as day that the core themes have a strong Christian element to them. It’s no wonder that Rowling remarked “there was a Christian commentator who said that Harry Potter had been the Christian church’s biggest missed opportunity. And I thought, there’s someone who actually has their eyes open.” Columnist Jerry Bowyer notes “So much of the religious right failed to see the Christianity in the Potter novels because it knows so little Christianity itself…the gospel stories themselves, the various metaphors and figures of the Law and the Prophets, and their echoes down through the past two millennia of Christian literature and art are largely unknown to vast swaths of American Christendom.”

*Even if she didn’t intend some of these, it is acceptable to draw those ideas out as long as we recognize that they are our own and not the author’s. Regardless of whether it originated with the author or not, each idea has the possibility of proving to be a beautiful image or reflection of something true.

“Deeper Magic” in Harry Potter and Narnia

2010-02-17T19:00:00.000-05:00

At this point, I have finished tracing what I find to be the most significant Christian themes throughout Harry Potter – themes conveyed in descriptions of evil, love, and death that bear a striking resemblance to ideas in Christianity. Before moving on to summarize these themes, especially as they come together in Harry Potter and his battle with Voldemort, and then to make several other observations of various other images/ideas/events in the books, I pause to note an especially curious description which Rowling uses on several occasions:

Sacrificial love in particular, but also mercy, justice, loyalty, and innocence are referred to with such phrases as “old magic,” “ancient magic,” and “the deepest laws of magic.” Most of these instances have been noted in previous posts. Voldemort himself is aware of the power of Lily’s sacrifice, recalling that “this is old magic, I should have remembered it, I was foolish to overlook it” (GoF 653). Similarly, Dumbledore explains to Harry that “love, loyalty and innocence…have a power…beyond the reach of any magic” (DH ch. 35). Perhaps most interesting is the “deep magic” that occurs when one wizard saves the life of another. Dumbledore explains this to Harry:

“You did a very noble thing, in saving Pettigrew’s life…Pettigrew owes his life to you. You have sent Voldemort a deputy who is in your debt…When one wizard saves another wizard’s life, it creates a certain bond between them…and I’m much mistaken if Voldemort wants his servant in the debt of Harry Potter…This is magic at its deepest, Harry…the time may come when you will be very glad you saved Pettigrew’s life.” (PoA 426)

All of these ideas – love, mercy, justice, sacrifice – are similar in that they are things of objective value, and more precisely, things with a moral quality to them. That these things are repeatedly described as having such a deep, powerful magic sheds light on why Rowling has often described her books as “very moral.” Furthermore, when she uses these phrases, Rowling is almost certainly drawing on C. S. Lewis’ Narnia, where the power of a just sacrifice to overturn death is described similarly:

“Though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor's stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backward.” (The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe)

Not only is the language of “deep magic” here, but also ideas such as evil characters being limited in their knowledge, the power of sacrifice, and victory over death, which are so enormously significant in Harry Potter. We encounter here even more explicitly the idea of substitution – the victim gives himself in the traitor’s stead just as Harry and Lily substitute themselves in the places of others.

Voldemort “killed by his own rebounding curse”

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In the Christian story, the battle was won decisively with Christ’s death – the resurrection was a declaration of that victory to all creation. In Harry Potter, the story is different in this regard. Harry’s “death” is crucial to Voldemort’s doom, but it is not the final, decisive cause. When Harry is “resurrected,” he must complete the task, which he does brilliantly, exposing Voldemort’s folly and defeating him in battle as the sun rises red and gold. The final stroke was Harry’s deflection of (once again) Voldemort’s death curse. This, as Harry explains to Voldemort with great lucidity, was only possible because Harry was the true master of the Elder Wand, which Voldemort had seized and with which he attempted to kill Harry. I have already described how Voldemort’s mistaken belief that he had mastered the Elder Wand bore similarities to his fatal ignorance of love. Just as that ignorance resulted in the Avada Kedavra curse reflecting back upon Voldemort from a love-protected baby Harry, so once again the Dark Lord’s ignorance of what it means to master the Elder Wand (and thus master death) results in him being “killed by his own rebounding curse.”

Everything Voldemort seems to think of as a brilliant move on his own part backfires against him, reveals his folly, and allows the true nature of love and death to be seen. He marked Harry (who loved) as the one with power to vanquish him and (accidentally) made him into a horcrux, thus making necessary Harry’s death for Voldemort’s defeat. Later he accomplished his own defeat by “killing” Harry himself.

When Voldemort tried to eliminate the prophesied threat to his immortality, he created his own worst enemy and handed him a powerful weapon. When Voldemort took Harry’s blood, he “tethered Harry to life” and set up his own demise. When he attempted to kill Harry in the Dark Forest, he destroyed what was left of his own soul, made himself mortal, and foolishly allowed his enemies to be shielded from harm. And when he seized the Elder Wand and used it against Harry, its true master, his death curse was (once again) reflected back upon him, this time killing him, since he had accidentally mortalized himself. In all of these actions, he “tampered so ill-advisedly with the deepest laws of magic” ( DH 570). This pattern of the seemingly cunning designs of evil playing paradoxically into the deeper and greater designs of the good is, as we have seen, most definitely present in Christianity. It is a pattern that profoundly reflects reality.

Voldemort, in his folly, mistook his enemies’ greatest strengths for weaknesses. A similarity in the paradoxical nature of love and death is worth noting. Just as the “weakness” of love (Voldemort views his enemies as “fools who love”) was shown to be crucial in Voldemort’s defeat, so also was the “shameful human weakness” of death turned on its head, resulting in resurrection from death and victory over death (see also C. S. Lewis’ description of God as a chessmaster, turning the enemy’s great weapon of death into his own even greater weapon for victory). For more thoughts on these “weaknesses” being, in fact, powerful and strong and true, see “The ‘Foolish’ Wisdom of the Cross,” “The Paradox of the Cross,” and “The Paradox of ‘Foolish Wisdom’.”

Jesus Christ was a Horcrux

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We have seen how Voldemort’s decisions to take Harry’s blood and, in a way, hold his friends for ransom, unleashed the power of sacrificial love, to Voldemort’s demise, and we have noted the Christian nature of the theme of love. Perhaps the most distinctly Christian image in Harry Potter (and maybe the most beautiful) is that of Harry as a horcrux. In taking a closer look at this central part of the plot, we will see in greater detail how Harry’s “death” brought about victory over death.

On the night of the final battle, Harry discovers that when Voldemort’s killing curse rebounded on him because of Lily’s sacrifice, a ruined fragment of Voldemort’s lost and mutilated soul became attached to Harry’s body. In order for Voldemort to be defeated, this horcrux must be destroyed, which can only happen if Harry himself dies.

The parallel between this and events in the Christian story is remarkable. Just as Christ bore in himself everything of mankind that was evil and worthy of just destruction, everything that had to be destroyed if death was to be defeated, and victory gained over evil, so Harry bears in his body something terrible that must be annihilated if evil is to be overcome! Indeed, just as Harry Potter was a horcrux, Christ was said to have, in a sense, become the sin of mankind¹ – Christ also was a horcrux. And just as the sin Christ bore was destroyed in his passion and death, thereby achieving victory over sin and death,² so the evil that Harry bore was destroyed through his “death,” thereby putting Voldemort (who essentially destroyed what was left of his own soul) on the brink of defeat.

This parallel is very striking. Death could not keep its hold on Christ (Acts 2:24) because by his death he destroyed sin, which was the sting of death (see “Death Destroyed by Death”). That is, death could not take Christ without losing its sting and thus destroying itself, and in destroying itself it lost its hold on Christ.³ Satan’s “death curse” could not destroy Christ. Death is an evil that feeds off of something good; it depends on sin in order to have power, and sin implies a moral standard, or justice, which comes from God. On the cross, God wielded both love and justice as his own original weapons (see “A Deeper Wisdom”) in order to atone for sin and thus take away that which death, the great weapon of evil, depended on!

Similarly, Voldemort could not touch Harry without taking his blood and thus depending on him for life, and having done this he could not have killed Harry except by destroying the blood that gave him life, the blood which he had taken into his own body when in his folly he (in Dumbledore’s words) “tethered Harry to life while he lived”! Just as death could not take Christ without destroying itself, so Voldemort could not have killed Harry without destroying himself.

In both cases evil is parasitic, dependent.⁴ Voldemort took Harry’s blood to gain power, and Satan brought about the Fall in order to gain power in the world. Voldemort tried to exploit love, a very good thing, but it ruined him, and Satan tried to exploit God’s justice, a very good thing, and it ruined him. Neither could escape the deeper and older power of the things on which they depended, and which were turned against them.

I do not mean for this comparison to be taken as allegory. There are a number of strong parallels, but there are also dissimilarities. Harry did not die – he could not die because his blood ran in the Dark Lord’s veins. He returned from death because he did not, technically speaking, die. Christ did die, and he rose again for a different reason. Christ rose because the destruction of his “horcrux” (that is, sin) resulted directly in death’s defeat, and thus in resurrection and victory. So Harry’s death and resurrection does not line up with that of Jesus Christ in every way. Furthermore, the cross was an act of love just as Harry’s sacrifice was, but the reason we are “shielded” or “protected” from death and evil by the cross is not because of love per se. The cross would not have happened if God didn’t love us, but we are saved not only because of God’s love, but also his wisdom, power, etc. – all of God (all his attributes) went into the cross (see “A Greater Revelation of God’s Perfections”). If there is one thing, though, it is the justice of God, through which he atoned for our sins. In Harry Potter, on the other hand, the protective/shielding power resides mysteriously in love itself. Love is a “refuge,” whereas in Christianity it is God himself (and especially his justice) in whom we seek refuge and salvation.

While there are dissimilarities, Harry Potter does weave together facets of what happened on the cross in a similar way. Even the differences share similarities. For example, although Harry and Christ returned from death for different reasons, in both cases evil could not keep the hero in the grave without sealing its own doom. And in both cases, as we have seen, evil is turned on its head because of its own ignorance and folly, and thus death, a great evil, is turned into victory. Furthermore, although the shielding, refuge-giving power of sacrifice is not quite the same, it is similar in that in both cases that power is demonstrated or put into action through sacrificial love.

In summary, just as Christ’s death (because, as a demonstration of sacrificial love, it atoned for / destroyed sin, which is the sting of death) sealed Satan’s doom, so Harry’s death (both because it destroyed the last horcrux and because it was, like the cross, a demonstration of sacrificial love (note the difference in phrasing)) sealed Voldemort’s doom. The symbolism and imagery here is truly beautiful. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that insight into what happened on the cross, and thus a deeper understanding of Christianity, can be gained by reading Harry Potter.

¹ See 2 Corinthians 5:21, “for our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God,” 1 Peter 2:22, “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree,” and Romans 6:6, “…in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing.”
² See Colossians 2:15, “having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.”
³ At the cross God made the brilliant winning stroke, checkmating evil by using its own great weapon against it – see “C. S. Lewis on Death Defeating Death.”
⁴ Voldemort depends not only on Harry’s blood in his own body, but on Harry’s body as a vessel for his horcrux. This is doubly ironic, given Voldemort’s resistance to depending on anything other than himself – see “Voldemort and the Nature of Evil.” Evil cannot escape the fact that it is no more than a perversion of good, and therefore depends on good in order to exist at all – see “An Unbalanced Duality.”

Harry Potter’s “One Great Flaw”

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We have seen how when Voldemort took Harry’s blood, he unknowingly “tethered him to life.” Voldemort’s other fatal mistake is his decision to exploit Harry’s love for his friends. His description of this “weakness” is worth noting again: “I know his weakness, you see, his one great flaw. He will hate watching the others struck down around him, knowing that it is for him that it happens. He will want to stop it at any cost. He will come” (DH ch. 32). Voldemort thought he was taking advantage of Harry’s weakness when in fact he was allowing Harry to exercise his greatest strength. We have already seen how, when Voldemort killed Lily, he first commanded her to “stand aside,” thus making it possible for Lily to sacrifice herself for Harry, which strengthened in Harry the great “weapon” of love and gave him a powerful, lasting protection. Here, at the very end, he makes the same mistake, announcing that unless Harry gives himself up he will “punish every last man, woman, and child who has tried to conceal you from me” (DH ch. 33), and thus effectively holding Harry’s friends for ransom (cf. Mark 10:45). When Harry sacrifices himself for his friends, they are shielded from harm by his sacrifice – his blood becomes their refuge just as Lily’s blood became Harry’s “refuge.”* Paradoxically, exploiting Harry’s “one great flaw” of love is Voldemort’s great error. Harry’s love was more beautiful and more powerful because of Voldemort. This is, in my view, the purpose of evil – to be exposed for the foolishness that it is and, more importantly, to make it possible for all that is good to shine even brighter (before being ultimately defeated, of course). For more, see “The Victory of God.”

*See “The Protective Power of Sacrificial Love in Harry Potter”: “I’ve done what my mother did, and that’s what did it. They’re protected from you. Haven’t you noticed how none of the spells you put on them are binding? You can’t torture them. You can’t touch them. You don’t learn from your mistakes, Riddle, do you?” (DH 591).

Your blood in his veins, Harry. He tethered you to life while he lives.” – Albus Dumbledore

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In their ongoing battle, these two became magically connected,¹ in a sense, with what Rowling calls a “bond of blood.” Some of Voldemort’s powers (such as parseltongue, and the ability to see into Voldemort’s mind), even a fragment of his soul, were transferred to Harry at their first encounter, and when Voldemort acquired a body again, he took Harry’s blood into his own veins.

This act plays a crucial role in Voldemort’s ultimate demise, and, like his other foolish decisions (which allowed his enemies to be protected (from him) by love), it is due to his ignorance of the power of love. Voldemort needed the blood of an enemy in order to acquire a physical body once again, and he believed Harry’s blood would strengthen him:

“I knew the one I must use, if I was to rise again, more powerful than I had been when I had fallen…I wanted the blood of the one who had stripped me of power thirteen years ago…for the lingering protection his mother once gave him would then reside in my veins also.” (GoF 656)

When Harry first tells Dumbledore that Voldemort took his blood, Dumbledore knows how significant this is, and there is a “gleam of triumph” in his eyes (GoF 696). At the end of Deathly Hallows, once Voldemort’s folly has been brought to light, Dumbledore explains to Harry:

“Remember what he did, in his ignorance, in his greed and cruelty…he took your blood and rebuilt his living body with it! Your blood in his veins, Harry. Lily’s protection inside both of you. He tethered you to life while he lives…He took your blood believing it would strengthen him. He took into his body a tiny part of the enchantment your mother laid upon you when she died for you. His body keeps her sacrifice alive, and while that enchantment survives, so do you, and so does Voldemort’s one last chance for himself…Voldemort doubled the bond of blood between you when he returned to a human form. A part of his soul was still attached to yours, and, thinking to strengthen himself, he took a part of your mother’s sacrifice into himself. If he could only have understood the precise and terrible power of that sacrifice, he would not, perhaps, have dared to touch your blood…but then, if he had been able to understand, he would not have been Lord Voldemort.” (DH ch. 35)

This passage is filled with revelations. Voldemort thought that the he could exploit love in order to accomplish his dark resurrection by, as it were, feeding parasitically off of the “lingering protection” of the love Harry was given by his mother. This is a gross misunderstanding of the nature of love. The protective power it gives is not something that can be acquired by force (much as ownership of the Elder Wand cannot be acquired by sheer force). Love is powerful for the one to whom it is given – it is not a thing that can be bought or sold, or seized by anyone who craves power. The power in Harry’s blood was that of love shown to Harry – it was Lily’s sacrifice for Harry that Voldemort kept alive in his body. So it was Harry that gained strength and protection, not Voldemort: he was “tethered to life” by his own blood in the Dark Lord’s veins. While taking Harry’s blood did allow him to touch Harry without doing harm to himself (GoF 696), it made it impossible for him to kill Harry. Voldemort could only touch Harry by allowing Harry’s love to invade his own body. More generally, evil can gain nothing without good gaining more² – because evil has no hope apart from what it has in good, no hope in itself. It is parasitic (see “An Unbalanced Duality”). Good invades and overpowers evil as Harry’s blood enters the Dark Lord.

So once again, Voldemort’s action backfires. As Dumbledore says, Voldemort’s inability to understand the “terrible power of that sacrifice” (see “The Protective Power of Sacrificial Love in Harry Potter”) was his undoing (for more on Voldemort’s ignorance and folly, see this).

Before moving on to see the significance of this action in Voldemort’s demise, it is important to note the symbolism of blood in Harry Potter.³ We already saw how the power of sacrificial love is described as being in the blood: “Your mother’s sacrifice made the bond of blood the strongest shield I could give you…[Voldemort] shed her blood, but it lives on in you and her sister. Her blood became your refuge” (OotP 836). Blood is symbolically powerful in Christianity much as it is in Harry Potter. Just as Harry’s blood was taken by Voldemort, Christ’s blood was shed on the cross. There was spiritual power in Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, and Christ’s blood is a frequent symbol for that power (see Matthew 26:28, Luke 22:20, Romans 5:9, Ephesians 1:7, Hebrews 9:14, and more broadly, Hebrews 9-10). Furthermore, blood is symbolic of the protective, shielding power of sacrificial love in Harry Potter (“her blood became your refuge”) in almost exactly the same way as it is in Christianity. We have “refuge” in Christ’s blood, that is, forgiveness from sins through his sacrificial gift of love: “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” (Matthew 26:28).

¹ There are other striking similarities between Harry and Voldemort. Both were half-bloods, orphans, and raised by Muggles. But, as Dumbledore says to Harry, it’s not how they are alike, but how they are different. For example, Voldemort says to Harry, “Your mother died to defend you as a child…and I killed my father, and see how useful he has proved himself, in death” (GoF 646). Whereas Harry is marked by love and sacrifice, and a willingness to give to and receive from others, Voldemort simply uses others for his own gain.
² We will soon see more fully what this means for Harry’s struggle with defeating death. Death, like evil, can make no lasting gains without self-destructing.
³ On a related note to Voldemort’s taking of Harry’s blood, in The Half-Blood Prince Voldemort requires “blood payment” of anyone who tries to gain access to one of his horcruxes. Again we encounter the idea of blood holding some power, and the giving or taking of blood accomplishing something. It is also interesting that in this scene, Dumbledore says that Harry’s blood is more valuable than his own. This gives even more weight to the idea that Harry is a Christ figure, for in Christianity the blood of Christ is described as being very valuable (cf. 1 Peter 1:19, “the precious blood of Christ, and Hebrews 9-10).

“The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord.”

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I’ve made a number of observations about the themes of death, evil, and love in Harry Potter. At the end of the final book, these themes come together in a remarkable way. A closer examination of the extraordinary revelations at the end of Deathly Hallows reveals the key to Voldemort’s downfall and what are perhaps the most striking Christian parallels. But in order to better understand these events, we need to look back at how the battle between Harry and Voldemort originated. In attacking Harry and his parents, Voldemort’s original purpose was indeed to kill Harry, whom he believed to be a threat to him. This was because of a prophecy made concerning Voldemort and Harry, a prophecy that describes Harry almost as a Messiah* in whom the deliverance from evil will be found:

“The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches…Born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies…and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not…and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives.” (OotP 841)

Voldemort, writes Rowling, was not merely following the tides of destiny when he attacked Harry in order to eliminate the threat foretold in this prophecy. He made a choice to single out a person whose unusual love was power beyond that of the Dark Lord, and in putting Lily in a position to give herself for Harry, Voldemort allowed Harry to acquire an additional weapon, the protective power of his mother’s love (HBP 510). Overlooking the power of sacrificial love proved to be fatal for Voldemort, and although he realized this, he makes the same mistake years later. Dumbledore tells Harry,

“Voldemort made a grave error, and acted on Professor Trelawney’s words!...Voldemort himself created his worst enemy, just as tyrants everywhere do! Have you any idea how much tyrants fear the people they oppress? All of them realize that, one day, amongst their many victims, there, is sure to be one who rises against them and strikes back! Voldemort is no different! Always he was on the lookout for the one who would challenge him. He heard the prophecy and he leapt into action, with he result that he not only handpicked the man most likely to finish him, he handed him uniquely deadly weapons.” (HBP 510)

It is in the nature of evil, says Dumbledore, to create its own enemy, to bring about its own doom by doing things that will backfire in the end. (This is not surprising, given Voldemort’s woeful ignorance of all that is good.) In trying to eliminate Harry, Voldemort “marked him as his equal” and strengthened the power of love in Harry. That Voldemort’s attempt to destroy Harry as a baby both backfired against him at the time and resulted in Harry becoming a formidable future enemy to Voldemort is important as a backdrop for later events that took place between Harry and Voldemort.

*Harry’s birth was prophesied, and his enemy tried to kill him as a baby because the prophecy described Harry as a threat to him. In a strikingly similar way, Jesus’ birth was prophesied, and Herod tried to kill him as a child because the prophecies described the Messiah as King, which Herod considered a threat to his kingship. And just as strange events coincided with Jesus’ birth and childhood (the star of Bethlehem, angels appearing to shepherds, etc.), so also “strange and mysterious things” (PS ch. 1), such as shooting stars and an abundance of flying owls, coincide with Harry’s survival defeat of Voldemort as a baby.

The Protective Power of Sacrificial Love in Harry Potter

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In Deathly Hallows, the series culminates with an event remarkably similar to that with which it begins – the sacrifice of Harry’s parents, which is, again, a foundational backdrop to Harry’s journey. Voldemort confronts Harry with the choice between giving his own life and letting his friends die (for more, see “I must die. It must end”), and Harry gives his life. Because of his sacrifice, his friends are shielded from harm in the final battle:

“I’ve done what my mother did, and that’s what did it. They’re protected from you. Haven’t you noticed how none of the spells you put on them are binding? You can’t torture them. You can’t touch them. You don’t learn from your mistakes, Riddle, do you?” (DH 591)

In both cases, there is power in self-giving, sacrificial love – a power that protects, even saves. The love shown is self-emptying love, love unto death. Lily’s love, shown in her sacrificial death, shields Harry, and Harry’s love, demonstrated in his willingness to die, shields his friends.

One final passage is well worth noting. At the end of Order of the Phoenix, Dumbledore explains more fully how Harry’s mother’s love has remained with him, a powerful protective shield. Love, says Dumbledore, is

“…an ancient magic of which [Voldemort] knows, which he despises, and which he has always, therefore, underestimated…a protection that runs in your veins to this day. I put my trust, therefore, in your mother’s blood…Your mother’s sacrifice made the bond of blood the strongest shield I could give you…While you can still call home the place where your mother’s blood dwells, there you cannot be touched or harmed by Voldemort. He shed her blood, but it lives on in you and her sister. Her blood became your refuge.” (OotP 836)

Consider the language Rowling uses in this and other passages to describe love and sacrifice: powerful, protection, mark, shield, “her blood became your refuge.” The idea of this power residing in blood is important, as we will see later. In both the language used, and in the events narrated, there is a definite Christian theme. We find a reflection or image of Christ’s love for us, which, Like Harry’s, was effective and powerful because it saved us by shielding us from just condemnation. Christ gave himself unto death (Philippians 2:7-8) out of love for us (Romans 5:8), and through his death we are shielded from condemnation for sin (this message is repeated throughout the New Testament – it is the essence of Christianity). In Christ’s sacrificial death, which is the fullest and highest revelation of God’s love for us, there is power to save man from spiritual death, that is, protection from harm to our souls:

“Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” – John 15:13 (see also John 10:11, 1 John 3:16, Galatians 2:20)

“God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” – Romans 5:8

“Even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” – Mark 10:45

“Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” – Ephesians 5:2 (see also 1 John 4:10)

Lily took Harry’s place, Harry took his friends’ place, laid his life down, exchanged or substituted it (“kill me instead” cries Lily), and in this there is a power that protects, even saves. Very Christian. Of course, words such as salvation, redemption, and substitution are never used explicitly in Harry Potter, but the attentive reader will find that the ideas are definitely present.

Love: “A force more wonderful and more terrible than death.” – Albus Dumbledore

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“Not Harry, please no, take me, kill me instead…” – Lily (DH ch. 17)

Harry Potter’s mother gave her life to save her son. This event is foundational throughout the books, both for Harry’s growth as a person and to his understanding of love and death (and what he must do to defeat Voldemort). It is the prime example of the theme of sacrifice and love, or, more concisely, sacrificial love, that runs throughout the series. Harry, who “loves fiercely” and is “a remarkably selfless person” (DH ch. 35), repeatedly puts himself in danger or makes sacrifices in order to save others. And Dumbledore, like Lily, was willing to sacrifice his life to save his mother and sister from Grindelwald: “Don’t hurt them,” he cries, “please…hurt me instead...kill me!” (HBP 572-73).

It is not simply a theme of sacrifice, though. Sacrifice, in Harry Potter, is effective and powerful. It works. There is a protective power in sacrificial love, or, more simply, love is powerful. Let me explain. In his first year at Hogwarts, Harry discovers that his mother’s sacrificial love was so powerful that it shielded him from Voldemort’s death curse, saving Harry’s life and causing the curse to rebound upon Voldemort. Lily gave herself in Harry’s place, and that sacrifice was powerful, an “ancient magic,” one of the “deepest laws of magic.” There is a sort of “layer of protection” over him due to his mother’s sacrifice and love for him. Dumbledore explains why professor Quirrell could not kill him:

“Your mother died to save you. If there is one thing Voldemort cannot understand, it is love. He didn’t realise that love as powerful as your mother’s for you leaves its own mark. Not a scar, no visible sign…to have been loved so deeply, even though the person who loved us is gone, will give us some protection forever. It is in your very skin. Quirrell, full of hatred, greed and ambition, sharing his soul with Voldemort, could not touch you for this reason. It was agony to touch a person marked by something so good.” (PS ch. 17)

In Order of the Phoenix, Voldemort attempts to possess Harry but the pain is unendurable because of Harry’s extraordinary love. Voldemort can neither understand love (to him it is another “human weakness,” like death), nor overcome it, nor be in contact with anyone who loves or is covered by the love of another. Dumbledore explains once more:

“There is a room in the Department of Mysteries that is kept locked at all times. It contains a force that is at once more wonderful and more terrible than death, than human intelligence, than forces of nature. It is also, perhaps, the most mysterious of the many objects for study that reside there. It is the power held within that room that you possess in such quantities and which Voldemort has not at all. That power took you to save Sirius tonight. That power also saved you from possession by Voldemort, because he could not bear to reside in a body so full of the force he detests…It was your heart that saved you.” (OotP 843-44)

“You are protected, in short, by your ability to love!...The only protection that can possibly work against the lure of power like Voldemort’s.” (HBP 511)

“Of house-elves and children’s tales, of love, loyalty and innocence, Voldemort knows and understands nothing.” – Albus Dumbledore

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In summary, Voldemort, consumed by evil, cannot comprehend what is good. Shrouded in darkness, he is not only repulsed and disgusted, but also outwitted, outmatched, overwhelmed, and overcome by everything that is good and right and true. He simply does not understand the true nature of things. As we have seen, the power of love, and what it means to love another, is lost to Voldemort because he does not love. The true nature of death eludes him because it is part of what it means to be human, and Voldemort has forsaken his humanity. More generally, the meaning of death is not far from the meaning of reality itself (see “The Problem of Death”) – but Voldemort, in exalting himself, has lost sight of all meaning other than what he finds in his own existence. Dumbledore describes all this perfectly when he explains things to Harry at Kings Cross:

“His knowledge remained woefully incomplete, Harry! That which Voldemort does not value, he takes no trouble to comprehend. Of house-elves and children’s tales, of love, loyalty and innocence, Voldemort knows and understands nothing. Nothing. That they all have a power beyond his own, a power beyond the reach of any magic, is a truth he has never grasped.” – Albus Dumbledore (DH ch. 35)

There is, writes Rowling, a power, a beauty, an “ancient magic” in such things as love, sacrifice, loyalty, etc. – in all that is good. And it is a truth that this power is deeper and greater by far than that of any magic. Voldemort cannot see this – he cannot see goodness for what it is. Having forsaken the truth, he can no longer understand it, “and if he had been able to understand, he would not have been Lord Voldemort” (DH ch. 35).

It is not, I think, very different in the real world – there is a depth and power in all that is good – a power that reaches to the foundation of reality itself. Turning to evil, therefore, puts one out of touch with reality (see also “The Ruin of Satan,” “An Unbalanced Duality,” and “A Deeper Wisdom”).

Voldemort’s Ignorance of Love and Death

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As a result of the events in his life, and of his choices, Tom Riddle became evil, and because he became evil, he lost touch with reality. This is a key theme in Harry’s struggle with Voldemort. Over and over, Voldemort shows himself to be ignorant of his enemies, unable to understand all that is good, and for that reason unable to overcome it. Let’s take a closer look at how Voldemort’s descent into darkness blinded him to the true nature of reality.

As a result of his pride and obsession with himself and with everything that made him unique (everything that separated him from others), Voldemort lost touch of things of value beyond himself. His view of reality became narrow, restricted, and he clung to the only thing he valued – his own life (hence his quest to conquer death).¹ Consequently, he lost all understanding of the true meaning of death – understanding death requires that one value something beyond one’s own mortal life. Remember Dumbledore’s words, “your failure to understand that there are things much worse than death has always been your greatest weakness.” One might generalize this to something like, “failure to recognize value beyond your own existence.” Voldemort’s ambition to conquer death is, essentially, his attempt to set himself up as God.² But Tom Riddle is, in fact, not God, and his attempt to set himself on high is bound to fail because he can neither understand nor escape the truth of what it means to be a mortal human.

Similarly, Voldemort’s refusal to care for anyone but himself caused him to lose all understanding of love. Love is the very essence of reality – it is part of God himself. Voldemort, however, “does not love” (DH ch. 35). It was never something he valued. Although his evil must, to an extent, be attributed to his own choices (choice is another important theme in Harry Potter), Tom Riddle was clearly shaped by his experiences in his rejection of love: “Nothing I have seen in the world has supported your famous pronouncements that love is more powerful than my kind of magic, Dumbledore” (HBP 443-44). Hence his decision to “[revenge] himself upon the father who never wanted him” (HBP 367) – the father who abandoned him and left his mother to die at the hands of the cruel world. It is easy to see why Tom Riddle neither loved nor valued love, but rather, saw it as another shameful human weakness.

Because of this, Voldemort is never able to grasp the depth and power of the sacrificial love shown by Harry and his mother. (He realizes that this is what protected Harry years ago, and yet his later mistakes in dealing with Harry are, as we will see, quite similar, showing that he never learned his lesson, but remained ignorant of love.) Speaking of Harry, Voldemort declares, “I know his weakness, you see, his one great flaw. He will hate watching the others struck down around him, knowing that it is for him that it happens. He will want to stop it at any cost. He will come” (DH ch. 32). Harry did come, and paradoxically, his “weakness” brought to light and triumphed over Voldemort’s weakness: his inability to comprehend the true power of sacrificial love. In a similar way, Voldemort fails to see that his own loyal Death Eater, Severus Snape, is working against him. Not surprisingly, it is Snape’s love for Lily (DH ch. 36), which Voldemort could not have understood, that betrays him. Lastly, when facing difficulties against Harry’s wand, Voldemort assumes it is the wand that is troubling him, not Harry, who wields it (DH ch. 35); he underestimates Harry’s unusual power – his ability to love. Love is “an ancient magic which he despises, and which he has always, therefore, underestimated” (OotP 836).

Could it be that Satan (and evil more broadly) is unable to grasp the idea of love? C. S. Lewis portrays evil in this way in The Screwtape Letters; for more thoughts on this, see “A Mind in Darkness” and “The Love of God, Part II.”

As a result of Voldemort’s turning away from love, he not only lost understanding of love, but became unable to endure its presence, just as a nocturnal animal cannot stand the light. In Order of the Phoenix, when Voldemort attempts to possess Harry, “it was pain such as he has never experienced…Lord Voldemort’s soul, maimed as it is, cannot bear close contact with a soul like Harry’s. Like a tongue on frozen steel, like flesh in flames” (DH ch. 33). A very similar event occurs in Philosopher’s Stone, when Voldemort (through Quirrell) “could not touch [Harry]… It was agony to touch a person marked by something so good” (PS ch. 17). And in Deathly Hallows, when Harry finally learns to close his mind to Voldemort’s invasions, it is love (taking the form of grief for Dobby) that drives Voldemort out (DH 387). When love is at work, evil is thrown into confusion, put out of its reckoning. Evil cannot stand good – it is like a creature from the dark forced into the light.

Consumed with hunger for gaining power and control for himself, Voldemort becomes so narrow-minded that he simply loses sight of anything that he cannot fit into his self-centered, power-driven view of the world. In Half-Blood Prince he underestimates the remarkable abilities of tiny house-elves (whom he deems weak, worthless, and beneath his notice) while hiding a horcrux, a mistake that proves fatal. And at the end of Deathly Hallows, Voldemort fails to see that the master of the Elder Wand is not simply whoever manages to wrest it from another by sheer force. One must defeat the previous master in a more subtle way: “the wand chooses the wizard,” not vice versa. After defeating Voldemort, Harry chooses to give up the Elder Wand in order to ensure that the trail of bloodshed it left through wizard history would end – a humble release of power that Voldemort in his blind pride would have thought “weak.”

¹ Voldemort’s failure to value anything but himself – his narrow vision of reality – also caused him to fear things that need not be feared – most significantly, death, as we have already seen, but also darkness, and even a human body. This fear, says Dumbledore, reveals his lack of wisdom (HBP 556).
² Strikingly similar attempts at being God are made by characters in C. S. Lewis’ That Hideous Strength, which tells a modern-day “tower of Babel” story.