The first time the rationality of my Christian belief was challenged was in high school; I was ill-equipped to handle the objections. Flustered by being unable to answer the hard questions posed by my exceedingly clever friends, my dad took me to the local Christian bookstore to buy an apologetics book. “Apologetics” was a new word in my limited vocabulary, and all I really knew about it was an ostensive definition–CS Lewis did something like that. I don’t remember why, but I didn’t buy Mere Christianity, a book that had a profound effect on my father and my grandfather before him. Instead, I bought Answers for Atheists, Agnostics, and Other Thoughtful Skeptics by E. Calvin Beisner. The big red-lettered words ANSWERS grabbed my attention: “Hey! That’s just what I’m looking for,” I thought!

I was not a savvy book buyer then (why didn’t I read the first chapter before buying it, I don’t know), but when I got it home, I was sorely disappointed (you can read the Amazon reviews to get a sense of why). The book was written as an imaginary dialogue between two friends, one a believer, the other a “skeptic”–if you could call him that–which was supposed to model how certain knock-down, drag-out arguments for the Christian faith were supposed to go. It was awful. First, the sorts of answers I was looking for weren’t there; second, I felt as though I had to learn how to manipulate a conversation to go the way the author did and then remember how to deploy a form of reasoning I did not fully understand; third, I realized that if I was ever going to learn how to talk confidently with smart friends, I would have to learn some philosophy, something I thought would be impossible.

Nearly twenty years later, with a freshly earned Master’s degree in philosophy in hand, I am faced with reviewing a book that is of the same genre: Randal Rauser’s The Swedish Atheist, the Scuba Diver and Other Apologetic Rabbit Trails. Reading it brought back all the memories rehearsed above, and I kept wondering if it would have helped me if I had picked it up then. I think it probably would have faced the same challenges from my clumsy, immature self–but this book is much, much better.

Thanks to InterVaristy Press for the complimentary copy for review.

As the subtitle explains, God or Godless? is the product of one atheist, John W. Loftus, and one Christian, Randal Rauser, taking on “twenty controversial questions.” Both Loftus and Rauser are popular bloggers who inspire vigorous disagreement among their respective readers, and it appears their book is the result of a friendship that was formed through occasionally sparring with one another. While both have published book-length arguments in the past, this volume exhibits a pattern only bloggers can appreciate. Each author submits ten theses, which they either affirm or deny with 800 words of prose. They are then allowed 150 words of rebuttal, which is then followed by another 50 words of closing statements. Every exchange reads like a blog post with two follow-up comments. The skill of each author is on display as they both jam a lot of content into a short space, and for that I can appreciate how much I have to learn about the art of dialoguing with few words to spare (sadly, this introduction is already over 200 words).

Instead of giving a blow by blow account of each argument, I want to make a few observations about the general strategy of the contenders along with some commendations and criticisms of what I took be the heart of their main arguments.

I got the impression that Loftus had Christianity, and not so much God, in his sights. This is understandable, because he is a former Christian debating another Christian in a book put out by a Christian publisher; hence, all ten of his theses begin as criticisms of “the Biblical God…” No doubt, Christians as myself have a lot to account for when reading Loftus’ criticisms of Yahweh, Jesus, and the New Testament writers, but at most, his arguments drive a wedge between the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and the Being than which none greater can be conceived. While this is a compelling strategy to take against Christians, it doesn’t really get him to godlessness. As I understand him, Loftus’ argument goes like this:

[1] If the God of the Bible is not worthy of worship, then God probably doesn’t exist.

[2] The God of the Bible is not worthy of worship.

[3] Therefore, God probably doesn’t exist.

Assuming he is right about premise 2, is the argument sound? Well, following Loftus’ favorite sort of response, premise 1 is possible but not probable, and a more probable inference would be that not everything in Scripture is God’s revelation. That is to say, a weaker conclusion is more probable: regardless of whether or not God exists, the Bible is not inerrant. This is not to say that Loftus doesn’t make any arguments against theism in general. To be sure, he hints at the problem of evil throughout the book when engaging Rauser’s positive theses, but he doesn’t formally spell it out anywhere in any great detail (the most articulate reference to it is found on page 145—a bit late to bring out atheism’s biggest gun in my opinion). Thus, the bulk of Loftus’ arguments will threaten only those who maintain a strong tie between the existence of God and biblical inerrancy; perhaps this explains why his most vociferous critics hail from the Reformed tradition and follow the apologetic method of Cornelius Van Til or Gordon Clark. Of course, Rauser is not among their number as he seems willing to concede that there are genuine conflicts between what the Old Testament says about the killing of children and our widely shared moral intuitions. Rauser maintains biblical authority by suggesting that Old Testament violence should be read as ironically condemning such behavior, but in any event, it seems clear enough that he (rightly) doesn’t accept the premise that God probably exists only if inerrancy is true.

So how does Randall make his case for God? By appealing to the so-called ‘transcendentals’ of  truth, goodness and beauty, none of which we would know about without the existence of God. Broadly, Rauser makes a cosmological argument to explain why there is something rather than nothing, and then makes a design argument from the fact that creatures like us exist with the cognitive capacities to know truth, perceive beauty, and be subject to moral properties. While many of these arguments can come across as tired and well-worn, Rauser deftly weaves their major claims into little stories or examples a middle school student could understand. That’s no knock, and this reviewer, who has spent too many hours reading William Lane Craig, Alvin Plantinga, and William Dembski, benefited greatly in seeing how their arguments could be boiled down to their essentials and elegantly deployed for apologetic purposes. Through his argumentation, Rauser is able to show that Loftus is left with an impoverished worldview where truth, beauty, and goodness are relative to the whims and wiles of an unguided and random process that can only induce cosmic despair. Intuitively assuming atheism’s outcome has no existential fit, Rauser’s arguments roughly go like this:

[1] If God does not exist, then there is no truth, goodness, or beauty that could be objectively known.

[2] There is truth, goodness, and beauty that can be objectively known.

[3] Therefore, God exists.

But what about the Bible? Rauser’s defenses of Scripture are sure to leave some Christians dissatisfied. While it is true that he makes an effort to disabuse Loftus of his severely critical interpretations, his concessions with respect to the problem of Old Testament violence and biological evolution give the impression that there is something strange about holding to the authority of Scripture in this day of age. Why not just jettison it and search for a more adequate revelation of God? Rauser maintains that despite Scripture’s oddities, God is a supremely competent author, but if Loftus has achieved anything in this book, it is that he creates some prima facie reasonable doubt for this claim.

All in all this is a breezy read that feels like being hit with a scatter gun of truncated arguments. As a reviewer, I am used to reading longer, more sustained arguments, so I wasn’t disposed to like this sort of format and I can’t say I did (To their credit, the authors realize the shortcomings of their format and offer a nice “for further reading” section with excellent recommendations.). But if you are wanting to expose middle and high school aged kids to some of the challenges Christians and atheists face in making their respective cases, this book may be of some value. The atheists will appreciate Loftus’ simple, if not blustery writing style, and the Christians will enjoy Rauser’s snarky sense of humor and vivid storytelling.

G&G&A begin their book with a story about a pair of wealthy socialites from New York who met, fell in love, and got married. They were a man and a woman who each felt they had met their soul mate. But in order to tie the knot, they had to divorce their spouses! This, says G&G&A is the outcome of the revisionist view of marriage, and it is a blight on an institution that historically has been understood as a conjugal relation. Even in ancient Greek culture when same-sex relationships were acceptable, the union of one man and one woman for life was thought to be the norm. But why? According to G&G&A, it is because the act of coitus was the only sex act that was truly marital; in it male and female become one reproductive unit oriented towards the creation of children. Again, since same-sex couples cannot engage in coitus, they cannot exemplify the type of bodily union necessary for marriage.

There are other features of the book that go into the details of religious liberty, the libertarian view of marriage, and the benefits enjoyed by children of two-parent families constituted by their biological parents. All of these are worth reading and deserve a wide hearing for anyone interested in the marriage debate, but I forgo reviewing these aspects to take issue with the central premise of the argument: there is a true marital union only if two adults consummate their union in coitus. To this I now turn.

Throughout the book, the authors did not address a counterexample I had in mind until one of the very last footnotes: an unconsummated marriage (think of a man and a woman, neither of which have genitals due to genetics who marry). In addressing the counterexample, they remark that a conditional attitude towards coitus is sufficient for the bond: if things were normal for the couple, they would consummate their marriage (apparently, Aquinas made this sort of move so as to explain Joseph’s marriage to the virgin Mary). In their words, “forming marital consent requires (and thus expecting) to consummate. In that case, marital consent involves at least a conditional promise to consummate–say, upon a reasonable request.” Thus the marriage of, say a paraplegic couple, is valid. Hence, a counterfactual promise about what a couple would do if things were different is sufficient to seal their union. But if this sort of intentional attitude is all that matters, then the act of coitus isn’t essential for marriage! Not only that, but it seems a same-sex couple could affirm the same sort of conditional and get married–after all, one of them may desire a sex change, but doesn’t have the means to do it. While this, no doubt, would be exceptional, it seems to satisfy the conjugal view of marriage.

Nor is it clear to me is how coitus “completes” a marriage on their view. Does it bring a marriage fully into existence (along with other necessary conditions)? Or does it fulfill the function of a marriage that already exists? On one hand, it seems G&G&A are intending the former view, because they argue that since same-sex couples can’t unite in coitus, they can’t be married, and so the traditional view of marriage has to be revised if same-sex couples are to marry. On the other hand, they draw on the latter view to explain the situation of the paraplegic couple.

Don’t get me wrong; this is a well-written and interesting book; perhaps the best of its kind for the case of traditional marriage out there. But these natural law arguments seem to fall a bit flat when you start to get specific about cases.

Due to hormone imbalances, genetic anomalies, and a number of unknown factors, between 50 percent and 75 percent of embryos fail to implant in the uterus and are passed with the monthly menstrual flow. If we agree with pro-life advocates that every embryo is as morally valuable as an adult human, this means that more than half of humans immediately die. This fact provides pro-life advocates with an opportunity to follow through on their convictions. Surely, a moral response to a pandemic of this magnitude would be to rally the scientific community to devote the vast majority of its efforts to better understanding why this happens and trying to stop it. Yet the same pro-life leaders who declare that every embryo is morally equivalent to a fully developed child have done nothing to advocate such research. … Even if medicine could save only 10 percent of these embryos — and we don’t know because no one has cared enough to ask — it would be saving more lives than curing HIV, diabetes, and malaria combined. One could say that this massive loss of human life is natural, and therefore, humans are under no obligation to end it. But it is not clear why the same argument could not be used to justify complacency in the face of AIDS, cancer, heart disease, and other natural causes of human death.

The above paragraph is from Jonathan Dudley’s Broken Words: The Abuse of Science and Faith in American Politics. I think this is an interesting argument; it can be stated more formally like this:

[1] If the pro-life movement were morally consistent, it would advocate for research to mitigate the loss of human life naturally lost in the womb [premise].

[2] The pro-life movement fails to do this [premise].

[3] Therefore, pro-life movement is morally inconsistent [MT 1, 2].

Suppose this is right. Then the pro-life movement should make an effort to advocate for research to be morally consistent. But so what? That just says something about what the pro-life movement fails to do; it doesn’t say anything about the truth of what the pro-life movement believes about the human embryo, which is what ultimately matters.

Naturally enough, some question this. People who make up the pro life movement are not the sort who are complacent in the face of human death. Thus, it seems that members of the pro-life movement do not truly believe human embryos have a right not to be killed. The argument can be stated like this:

[3] If the human embryo has moral status, then we are under an obligation to mitigate the loss of human life naturally lost in the womb [premise].

[4] We are not under an obligation to mitigate the loss of human life naturally lost in the womb [premise].

[5] Therefore, the human embryo does not have moral status (MT 3, 4].

Taken together these two arguments generate a dilemma. As Fred Clark puts it:

Either these pro-life advocates are complacent monsters every bit as callously unconcerned with saving unborn babies as those they oppose. Or else, just like those they oppose, these folks do not really believe that “every embryo is morally equivalent to a fully developed child.”

What can be said in response? One strategy would be to embrace one of the horns of the dilemma and change one’s practices accordingly. Libby Anne embraced the second horn of the dilemma and came to believe that human life inside the womb has no moral status until the event of birth. But this comes at too high a price, because it reduces one’s moral status to a matter of location. If being inside another’s body eliminates one’s moral status, then surgeons, dentists, and men have no moral status when they perform appendectomies, drill fillings, or have sexual intercourse. Furthermore, embryos created in a lab would not have their moral status eliminated rendering embryonic stem cell research immoral. But at least one or both of these outcomes are absurd for the moral-status-at-birth proponent (the birther?). Perhaps there is some earlier event than birth and later than conception to which the critic can point to save her position, but I think we are justified in looking for a better strategy.

What if we were to to embrace the second horn? While this state of affairs would be embarrassing to the pro life movement, it is not something that cannot be changed. The response to the rhetorical question “Why no 5K to save the zygotes?” would be “Why not?” Research in this area might help alleviate underlying conditions of infertility, which would benefit both human embryos and their parents. This is where I personally land, but it seems doubtful that the pro-life movement will adopt this strategy. I hope I am wrong, but let us explore one last strategy that is available to the pro-life movement so as to avoid the dilemma.

The pro-lifer might deny the second premise of the second argument:

[3] If the human embryo has moral status, then we are under an obligation to mitigate the loss of human life naturally lost in the womb [premise].

What reason might be given for the denial of [3]? One might think that [3] is committed to [6]:

[6] We are always under the obligation to save the lives of beings with moral status.

But why assume that? In certain end-of-life contexts we are not obligated to save the lives of patients who have elected to die naturally. While this assumes that there is a morally relevant distinction between killing and letting die, the point is that having moral status is not a sufficient condition for generating the relevant moral obligation stated in [4]. It is up to the critic to supply the additional condition(s) that will make it sufficient, and the pro-lifer is justified in denying (or suspending judgment on) [3] until one is furnished. If conditions like “the embryo has a future like ours” are given, then the pro-lifer has to respond or be impaled on the second horn of the dilemma. But that would not be as bad as it would be for the pro-choicer who goes this route: for if it is true that the human embryo has a future like ours then it seems abortion is seriously immoral.

For van Inwagen, the ontological argument is true only if it is ontic. That is, it must be the sort of argument that proceeds from a premise that claims that a set of properties is such that there exists something that exemplifies that set of properties. Thus we can formalize van Inwagen’s argument like this:

1. Either N and C are compatible or they are not.
2. If they are not, then we can deduce a contradiction from an argument with the premise ‘Something has both N and C’ and show that the conjunction of the other premises in the argument are necessarily true.
3. But we can’t do that.
4. If they are, then we can form an argument with the premise ‘Something has both N and C’ and show that its conjunction with the other premises in the argument is possibly true.
5. But we can’t do that either.
6. Therefore, we cannot show N and C are compatible or incompatible (1, 2, 3, 4, 5).
7. If we cannot show N and C are compatible or incompatible, then we are not in a position to know whether premise 1 is true.
8. Therefore, we are not in a position to know whether premise 1 is true (6, 7).
9. If we are not in an epistemic position to know premise 1 is true, then we cannot determine that the ontological argument is ontic and it fails as a piece of natural theology.
10. Therefore, we cannot determine that the ontological argument is ontic and it fails as a piece of natural theology (8, 9).

UPDATE: For what it’s worth, I think this is a powerful criticism. It largely depends on whether you think conceivability is a reliable guide to possibility; I am predisposed by other works by van Inwagen to think it is not.

Both of these definitions avoid, among other things, the parody-style counterexamples offered by Gaunilo (against Anselm) and Martin (against Plantinga). Objects like the “greatest conceivable island” or a “special fairy” do not exemplify the necessary and sufficient conditions of unsurpassable greatness; no island can bring about any logically possible state of affairs and no tiny woodland creature with magical powers can exist without a material world (either it is essentially material itself or essentially connected to a material world).

With these concepts of greatness in mind, premise two of each of the parodied arguments below is false, and therefore, unsound.

Thus, both forms of the ontological argument emerge unscathed. What is needed to prove them false is an argument that shows premise 2 to be false, and such an argument has not been given. Tomorrow we will look at Peter van Inwagen’s challenge of premise 2.

Why the long face?
At Lenten service
I am supposed to feel grief
Rather talk to friends

How hard could it be?
Watching SNL
Gave up late TV for Lent
Been only three days

Graduate School
Awake. Read. Eat. Write.
Study wearies the soul. Sleep.
And dream of lost love

A Mind Full of Ashes
The knowledge of God
Sensus Divinitatis
Lost in Eden’s wind

Taste and See
Call me religious
I am not spiritual
Give me bread and wine

So what is all the fuss about? Nagel is sorely unconvinced a Darwinian mechanism could produce the following in a physicalist universe:

1. The emergence of life from a lifeless universe in such a short time.
2. The preponderance of diversity and complexity among life forms in such a short time.
3. The production of consciousness from unconscious matter.
4. The existence of objective standards of value and rationality and creatures endowed with the cognitive equipment to grasp them.

For Nagel, these sorts of things are produced by something purposeful, though he cannot bring himself to invoke a intentional supernatural agent for their cause; rather, he appeals to the shadowy concept of “natural teleology.” That is to say, there was a purpose built-in to the initial conditions of the universe such that creatures like us were “in mind”–a panpsychist view of nature if there ever was one.

I refrain from reviewing the main argument of the book, because there are more competent and complete reviews you should read (see above, and this one). But I recommend it to anyone who wants to take the time to slog through it for three reasons: (1) the thesis is fascinating, (2) Nagel’s skill of being able briefly summarize vast swaths of literature is worthy of imitation, and (3) it is a good example of how to “do” philosophy with respect to sorting out contentious subjects without losing sight of the ‘big’ questions.

I should have liked Christian Smith’s latest commentary on evangelical Christians and Scripture, but I didn’t; The Bible Made Impossible never really hit an interesting target even though Smith shoots a scatter gun at what he calls “biblicism.” What is biblicism? Smith lists ten things that function as biblicist beliefs:

1. The words of the Bible are identical with God’s words written inerrantly in human language.
2. The Bible represents the totality of God’s will for humanity.
3. The divine will for all issues relevant to Christian life are contained in the Bible.
4. Any reasonable person can correctly understand the plain meaning of the text.
5. The way to understand the Bible is to look at the obvious, literal sense.
6. The Bible can be understood without reliance on creeds, confessions, or historic church traditions.
7. The Bible possesses internal harmony and consistency.
8. The Bible is universally applicable for all Christians.
9. All matters of Christian belief and practice can be learned through inductive Bible study.
10. The Bible is a kind of handbook or textbook for Christian faith and practice.

These are not meant to be taken as necessary and sufficient conditions for biblicism; rather, they constitute a cluster of popular beliefs that are held by the Southern Baptist Convention, the Evangelical Free Church, and the Presbyterian Church of America. They can also be found in the doctrinal statements of Wheaton, Moody, Gordon-Conwell, Covenant, Westminster, Dallas, Talbot, Concordia, and Asbury. The Chicago Statement of Biblical Inerrancy is a paradigm example biblicist commitment.

What disposed me to like Smith’s book is that he rightly lampoons instances of biblicist excess in books with titles like Queen Esther’s Secrete of Womanhood: A Biblical Rite of Passage for your Daughter; The Biblical Guide to Alternative Medicine; The Bible Cure for Cancer; Gardening with Biblical Plants; or Biblical Strategies to Financial Freedom. Other examples could be multiplied, but the point is clear: the Bible was not written to satisfy anyone’s curiosity about these topics. These are clear examples of the “handbook” model of Scripture, a view that defectively presumes that the Bible has a definitive answer to whatever question we bring to the text. What Smith has to say about this faulty view of Scripture is timely and appropriate, “Go find any one of the user’s manuals or handbooks in your garage or closet and think for a moment about whether even a divinely inspired manual for living would really amount to gospel-like news. It wouldn’t.”

So why didn’t I like it? There are three reasons. First, his call for a return to a Christocentric hermeneutic (reading the Bible with Jesus in view) is something that is already widely practiced within the institutions that Smith criticizes. Second, the problem of pervasive interpretive pluralism, as he presents it, is not as problematic as Smith makes it out to be, and the problem that it does present, is left unexplained. Third, Smith’s call for evangelical Bible scholars to abandon classical foundationalism for critical realism isn’t all that applicable. I’ll explain these in more detail in that order.

First, if there is anything that disparate segments of evangelicalism agree on, it is placing the Jesus and the gospel at the center of their interpretive frameworks. The third article of the 1982 Chicago Statement on Biblical Hermeneutics says,

WE AFFIRM that the Person and work of Jesus Christ are the central focus of the entire Bible.

WE DENY that any method of interpretation which rejects or obscures the Christ-centeredness of Scripture is correct.

Yet this strong statement of Christocentrocism is not something we should expect to see in any of the Chicago statements if Smith is correct, because in his view, the Chicago documents are the apogee of biblicist reasoning. Furthermore, if one looks at the trends of evangelicals fairly, one will find that everyone from left-leaning “emergents” to conservative Calvinists gravitate towards reading Scripture with things like the gospel or the kingdom of God in view. Of course, what they disagree on, is the content of these things.

This brings us to the second, and most interesting argument Smith makes: the argument from what he calls “pervasive interpretive pluralism.” What he means by this is that, “The very same Bible–which biblicists insist is perspicuous and harmonious–gives rise to divergent understandings among intelligent, sincere, committed readers about what it says about most topics of interest.” Think of all the different “counterpoints” or “four-views” books out there; if the Bible really was a clear and inerrant authority, wouldn’t we be able to determine what it says? If not, then it seems to be no better than a map that would lead competent map-readers to different locations after they tried to follow it. The topics discussed in the “multiple views” books are enough to show that highly trained scholars who have a high view of Scripture do not agree on what seems to be central doctrines. Topics like the atonement, justification, and baptism are just a few. Ethical concerns are just as variegated: divorce, women’s roles, and the morality of warfare are subject to wide interpretations with far-reaching consequences.

What are we to make of this? It’s hard to know, because Smith blames this problem on biblicism,, and if we just stopped being biblicists, it would go away. Yet the problem is not biblicism per se; it is the authority of Scripture itself! Hence, his call to abandon biblicism does nothing to save the authority of Scripture, something to which he is very interested in maintaining.

Nonetheless, I think there is something in Smith’s analysis that is too quick. The underlying assumption seems to be that pervasive interpretive pluralism is equivalent with peer disagreement. With this in mind, the argument can be read like this: (1) if there is peer disagreement among biblicists, then biblicism undermines the authority of the Bible; (2) there is peer disagreement among biblicists; (3) therefore, biblicism undermines the authority of the Bible (perhaps Smith might quibble with the way these are stated, and would prefer that we say that “biblicism makes the Bible impossible” though I am not sure why this would matter). In any event, there is no good reason to think that premise (2) is true, and biblicicts are not the sort of people who accept what usually passes for ‘peer disagreement’ so easily.

What do I mean by ‘peer disagreement?’ A rough way to summarize it would be to say, that in light of it, one would be justified in saying, “I have my belief, you have yours, and we are both justified and our epistemic situations are comparable.” Hence, one might think that peer disagreement implies that, “It is possible for a person to be justified in believing p while also being justified in believing that other people are justified in believing ~p” (Feldman, 2003:184). But one would be wrong. This is because it is possible for a modern scholar to be justified in believing heliocentrism while also being justified in believing that a pre-modern scholar is justified in believing geocentrism. Given the best available information at the time, the pre-modern scholar was justified in holding his false belief, and this is something that the modern scholar is justified in believing about the pre-modern scholar! The reason why this is not peer disagreement is because there is an obvious asymmetrical relationship between the modern and pre-modern scholar: the modern knows more than the pre-modern about the nature of the solar system.

Thus, peer-disagreement occurs only if a symmetrical relationship obtains between the parties of disagreement. In this view, “It is possible for a person to be justified in believing p, and justified in believing that other people are justified in believing ~p, and not have any reason to believe that this or her own reasons (or methods) are superior to those of the other people” (Feldman, 2003:185. Emphasis added). It is important to remember that this is not the only way to define disagreement among peers. But it is this sort of definition that is sufficient to undermine the authority of Scripture if it is what biblicists truly believe about their disagreements.

But this is not what biblicists believe. In fact, biblicists are hesitant to believe that the following three propositions are compatible: (1) I have good reasons for my beliefs; (2) you have good reasons for your competing belief; and (3) I am right and you are wrong. This is often true of the scholars Smith thinks are biblicists: Wayne Grudem, G.K. Beale, and Vern Poythress. In cases when these scholars come to hold these three propositions together, they are quick to hold that their epistemic relationship with their interlocutors is an asymmetrical one: they believe they have access to better knowledge than their opponents. But in this way, they are not unlike the scholars Smith holds up as exemplary non-biblicists: Peter Enns, Kenton Sparks, and John Goldingay. Therefore, as formulated above, the argument from peer-disagreement fails.

Nonetheless, it is possible that biblicism is true and the interpretive methods of biblicists themselves are hopelessly compromised. Try as they might, they cannot exclude their personal or political concerns from the process of exegesis; in essence, they read their agendas on to the text despite their best efforts to the contrary. While the Bible remains our authority, our confidence in getting at the truth it reveals is functionally undermined. Affirming the existence of objective, inerrant truth revealed only in Scripture is of no use for those who have no access to it. This, then, is the real problem of which pervasive interpretive pluralism is the evidence.

How could it be solved? Smith’s call for the abandonment of classical foundationalism and the embrace of critical realism is meant to right the ship. The story has been told many times. Starting with Old Princeton, modern evangelicals drunk deeply from Enlightenment rationalism in search of absolute certainty, which they tried to derive from the promise of Scottish commonsense realism. Like Descarte, they were committed to an epistemological program that would base Christian belief on a solid foundation of indubitable beliefs. The doctrine of revelation provided this in an inspired Bible, and the doctrine of inerrancy was formulated so as to ensure the proper outcomes of evangelical theology. Of course, this has been an abject failure, and we ought to return to the more modest proposal of critical realism. Smith describes it well,

Critical realism brings to the table a number of crucial metatheoretical understandings about reality and knowledge that tend to foster openness and humility in inquiry, criteria for sorting through more and less compelling interpretations of evidence, and truly personal (not merely abstract cognitive) involvement in the process of pursuing truth without falling into individualistic subjectivism.

If only evangelicals would embrace this view, the problem of pervasive interpretive pluralism would no longer be a problem.

My response: this is a good story, but it’s not true. While it is true that Old Princeton scholars like Charles Hodge made use of the metaphor that the Bible was a ‘storehouse of facts’ of which the theologian, like a scientist, tried to explain, it hardly follows that they were doing the same sort of thing Descartes was doing. Nor do I know of any classical foundationalist among the number of Christian philosophers or Bible scholars; rather, the best representatives of foundationalism insist on a modest version that postulates basic beliefs that are fully defeasible (see Moreland and DeWeese, 2004 for an example). In this sort of approach, the inerrancy of Scripture is not presumed, but understood conditionally: if the Bible is inerrant, then it is a source of testimony that can be believed in a properly basic way.

Lastly, the disagreement found in the multiple perspective books need not be taken as problematic. Anyone who takes the time to seriously work through the arguments of the counterpoints books has two options: either judge one (or none) of the views right and the others wrong or suspend (or soften) one’s judgment and wait for better arguments to made in the future. Learning how to do this is to evangelicalism’s benefit, so perhaps interpretive pluralism is a sign of health, not a disease. To be sure, our beliefs about the perspicuity of Scripture need some revision if they are the kind that assume that Scripture is perfectly clear on every topic it touches on. But I’m not sure how pervasive this belief is to begin with.

All in all, Smith’s book is a provocative and interesting read as he names names, points out embarrassing curiosities, and writes punchy footnotes. As usual, he exposes some frustrating features of the evangelical landscape, but in the end his positive argument doesn’t amount to much.

While the metaphor of evolution she uses to describe her process is not always apt (her “mutations” were not random), Evans gives a detailed account of how she changed from being  passionately certain of her “Christian worldview” to learning how to live with her perplexing questions while continuing to trust Jesus. The beauty of her story is not found so much in the sorts of answers she suggests, but in how she is impacted by the questions and learns to cope with the misery of doubt. Her doubt was good for her faith in that it functioned as a kind of “agent of selection,” weeding out bad beliefs and allowing the good one’s to flourish.

Receiving her education at Bryan College in Dayton, TN (named after William Jennings Brayn), she learned everything she needed to know in order to contend for the “Christian worldview.” Diligent teachers taught her the basics of systematic theology and apologetics; for every question about God and the world, there was a corresponding answer that could be found in an encyclopedic tome. But she came to experience a concrete manifestation of the problem of evil when she watched the videotaped execution of a Muslim woman named Zarmina. In one instant, her belief in a benevolent, all-powerful God was shaken, and she could not believe that Zarmina went straight to hell after dying such a cruel death. The problems of evil and religious pluralism became insuperable, and Evans came to see her blessed lot in life as merely the result of a great “cosmic lottery,” not the providence of a good and wise God.

Attending to this story are the sideshows of religious bigotry that unfortunately manifest in “June the Ten Commandments Lady” (who praises God for the assassination of MLK), and a Dayton city ordinance outlawing homosexuality. Nothing induces doubt quite like angry Christians who become known for nothing but their hate.

Yet through her travels, Evans meets an illiterate widow from India who is thankful to Christ for saving her from the slums and and the deadly effects of the HIV virus. Yet, isn’t she a victim of the cosmic lottery? “If anyone has a right to complain, they do,” she writes. “And yet the widows and orphans in India were actually less angry with God than I was. In fact, they loved him in a way I couldn’t quite understand.” This incident functions as a turning point for Evans who begins to ‘doubt her doubts,’ so to speak. Along the way, she learns that many of her assumptions about God were unwarranted, and after an in depth study of the gospels, she encountered the person of Jesus as one who came to liberate:

Following Jesus would mean liberation from my bitterness, my worry, my self-righteousness, my prejudices, my selfishness, my materialism, and my misplaced loyalties. Following Jesus would mean salvation from my sin.

While this seems like it should be Christianity 101, Evans shows the reader a deeper sense of it in the life of Christ, not just his death.

Perhaps it because I relate so much with going through this sort of process in a similar context, but I will say that if I ever have to teach a Christian worldview-style class, this book will be assigned reading. Learning how to take one’s faith seriously in the midst of doubt and challenges is more important than passing tests about the differences between theism and naturalism or what have you. In fact, I would go so far to say that aspects of her college education set her up for failure. Such worldview-based programs assume students have the virtues of faith to flourish; if only they were equipped with a few more tools of discernment, they would be “roaring lambs.” What’s conspicuously absent from most curricula is an exposition of how Jesus viewed the world and how his closest followers have labored to make his view their own in an world full of trouble and unbelief. In a very personal and indirect way, Evans does just that.