The Slavery of Death (Part 4: Christus Victor)

The fourth and final installment of this series:

Christus Victor

That brings us to the final – and perhaps the oldest – atonement theory. Christus Victor was the primary way the early church viewed the work of Christ. Story plays a large role here, and all of us are characters in a grand meta-narrative. Instead of God primarily saving us from himself, like the satisfaction theories, or from our own clouded understandings, God saves us from everything that holds us captive; from sin and death and all of the evil things we do to ourselves, other people, and the whole of creation. The scope of Christus Victor is wide open. While penal substitution and moral influence focused on individuals and Anselmian satisfaction focused on humanity as a species, Christus Victor is truly universal. Through Christ’s victory, God’s intent is realized: The reconciliation of all things to himself. However, with such a deep history, the Christus Victory theory finds many expressions. For the sake of brevity, I will briefly discuss the ∙historical ransom theory, and then go on to formulate a ∙modern synthesis of Christus Victor. 

Ransom Theory

The historical ransom theory imagines a world in which Satan has taken humankind captive. We are slaves to evil against both our will and God’s. For us to be released, Satan, rather than God, must be appeased by the payment of some debt. So God put on flesh and became incarnate as Jesus, with the intent of offering himself as the payment for the ransom of humanity. Satan gladly accepted this exchange. Think of it – exchanging petty mortals for the eternal God! But Satan could not foresee the resurrection, which was part of God’s plan all along. Jesus rose from the dead, leading forth from hell those who had died under Satan’s bondage. Through his resurrection, Jesus conquered Satan and the power of death, freeing us from slavery and making it possible for us to be in relationship with God. 1 John 3:8 explicitly says as much: “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work.” Hell is our bondage to Satan and his work. It is the separation from God that resulted from Satan’s conquest of humanity.

I see a few problems with the historical ransom theory, though. For one, God seems to be impotent to a degree. Why does God have to “trick” Satan? Why couldn’t he just overwhelm him with his awesome power? After all, Christianity is decidedly not Manichean – God and Satan do no occupy equal and opposite positions in the cosmic power scheme. Secondly, not only the power of Satan, but the very existence of Satan as a person is up for debate today. The problem, if this is the case, is we are left without an enemy to be saved from.

The Modern Synthesis

This is where the modern synthesis comes in. With the destabilization of Satan as a personal enemy, the question is, again, what exactly are we saved from then? And why couldn’t God just “zap” it away?

Even though we may reject a personal Satan, we cannot ignore the very real role of “the accuser”[1] in our lives. It is evident that we all sin, and we live lives dominated by the fear of pain and death. This motif still remains – Christ is victorious over Hostile Powers. While they may be de-personalized, they are still very, very real. Paul tells us in Ephesians 6:12 that "Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms" (emphasis mine). In Hebrews 2:14-15 we are told that “Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death… and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death” (emphasis mine). So even in the “superstitious” age the Bible was written in, there were other ways of viewing evil than a personal Satan. And it seems that these powers hold humanity captive by the fear of death.

As biological organisms, we have evolved with an intense fear of death. This is adaptive in the sense that it increases the likelihood that the species will reproduce, but it is extremely destructive relationally. Traditionally, physical death was seen as stemming from sin. However, this view is incompatible with our understanding of biology today. But the inverse view is not only compatible with our understanding of biology; its descriptive power is impressive. Maybe we should think of sin as stemming from our fear of physical death. It does not take too much thought to realize the slavery that results from this.

Sin is displayed through the power structures of this world. The fear of death drives us to dominate others, to try to gain some semblance of control in the light of our inevitable demise. In Romans 8:1, Paul clearly saw the danger of this fear, saying, "Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death" (emphasis mine). There is no condemnation once we have been set free from the system that says death is final

We have all had encounters with the Hostile Powers. The need for self-preservation extends to every aspect of our lives – from business to social groups and even to church. And the fear of death is within each of us individually. That fear keeps us from truly being able to enter into loving, self-sacrificial relationships with others and with God.

So why did Jesus have to die? Because he was Love, self-sacrificing Love. Abelard’s theory may be useful here, but the story does not end with moral influence. The powers that be, full of hatred and oppression, set out to do what they always do to that which goes against them: they sought to destroy the opposition through violence in the name of self-preservation. The powers detected a threat, and they dealt with it the only way they could. Jesus came to undermine the power structures and to set us free from the slavery of our mortality – but he did not play by the rules. The destruction he wrought was non-violent in nature, and radically rooted in free, grace-filled expressions of love. And from the ashes of the toppled system, he established his Kingdom in Love. So that final power that no human could conquer – death – was defeated by Christ. Through death’s death, we are freed from the bondage, from the hell, of the fear of death. The cross and Jesus’ resurrection are the first glimpses of the reversal and upheaval of the system of the world.

In this paradigm, we are weak creatures, held in bondage to our own desires, manipulated by forces outside our control on a personal and corporate level – rather than evil, intentionally rebellious sinners who spit in God’s face. We are not only perpetrators of evil, we are victims as well. Sometimes we are victims because of something we have done; other times there is really no meaning for this victimhood. But most of all, we are loved and desired by God.

God is seen as the gracious father who wishes to set his children free. Not only the cross, but the incarnation itself is motivated by love. God is not the greatest existential threat to humanity, as he appears to be in satisfaction theories. Rather, here is a God who is willing to touch the untouchables, to come and set the oppressed free. And in setting the captives free, through his free grace, God himself is free. The mean theologies hold God captive to the laws and systems that Christ came to destroy. God is a God of both justice and mercy – because justice and mercy are one.

A Better Atonement: A Better Hell?

Few things seem more hellish to me than serving a tyrannical God. As we move away from atonement theories that paint a picture of a wrathful, petty, legalistic God towards a view of the atonement that affirms God’s loving and free nature, hell – that which we are saved from – also changes its form. Hell goes from being something God justly inflicts upon us to something that he desires to save us from: hell is not about God getting what he deserves. Death produces sin, fear, and anxiety, but Christ’s death and victory over frail mortality frees us from this bondage, allowing us to experience the life of the Kingdom: A life characterized by self-sacrificial love and reconciliation. 

“They regard the father of their spirits as their governor! They yield the idea of the Ancient of Days, ‘the glad creator,’ and put in its stead a miserable, puritanical martinet of a God, caring not for righteousness, but for his rights; not for the eternal purities, but the goody proprieties. The prophets of such a God take all the glow, all the hope, all the colour, all the worth, out of life on earth, and offer you instead what they call eternal bliss—a pale, tearless hell.”[2]

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[1] Satan is the anthropomorphization of this abstract concept. Satans can also be understood as anyone who brings an accusation forward. 

[2] From George MacDonald’s Unspoken Sermons

The Slavery of Death (Part 3)

I apologize for not getting this post up sooner, but here it is. This post deals with the implications of the satisfaction theories I discussed last time and in addition, deals with the moral influence theory. 

Satisfaction Theories, God’s Nature, and Hell

Hell has a much more prominent role in the satisfaction theories of the atonement. God’s wrath is often seen as being justly exercised through the conscious eternal torment of guilty sinners. Their punishment is rightly deserved, and God rightly upholds the system of justice, whether it operates on shame or guilt. Hell plays an important role in the scope of the cosmic story. It exists, in penal substitution, for the punishment of sins, and is easily recognized as a necessary part of the legal system of punishment. Satisfaction theories make the distinction between good and evil very evident. It wouldn’t do for God to punish those who just barely deserved it. So God is the supremely good being, who cannot bear sin and is bound to uphold the moral law, while we are evil, and we are saved from the fate we rightfully deserve because God loves us enough to offer a way out through his good grace. Our redemption does not really have much to do with any relationship God wants to cultivate with us. Rather, it is a divine scheme to save face in light of an imperfect creation.  

Of course, many people look at this picture of the world and are utterly horrified with its God, its system of justification, its hell, and its view of humanity. Although love is claimed to play a role in the story, love does not really seem to have a meaningful place. George MacDonald does not mince words over this sort of story. He sees it as a world dominated by “a miserable, puritanical martinet of a God, caring not for righteousness, but for his rights; not for the eternal purities, but the goody proprieties.”[1]

Not only is God’s love brought under serious scrutiny, the idea of justice employed by the satisfaction theories does not seem to fit with the notion of justice presented across the entire canon. Perhaps most strikingly, in Zechariah 7:9 we are told, "This is what the LORD Almighty says: `Administer true justice: show mercy and compassion to one another.’” In Isaiah 30:18, we hear that "the LORD longs to be gracious to you; he rises to show you compassion. For the LORD is a God of justice." Note how justice has more to do with what is good than what is right. Anselm claims that God cannot freely give out mercy because it would oppose his justice, yet there are passages that explicitly define justice as showing mercy!

Furthermore, the notion that God cannot bear to be in the presence of sin is simply untenable in light of scripture. God is constantly working in and through sinful people. God works through the nation of Israel, not because they are a great people, but because they are weak and worthless by standards of the world. And he works through sinful individuals. A quick purview of the Bible yields a cast of liars, thieves, murders, adulterers, and self-righteous pricks – all in the presence of God.

A huge problem with satisfaction theories is the emphasis on dealing with sin in the form of a social contract or legal transaction. Although we are urged to consider the gravity of sin by those who seek to advance these theories – after all, a very real hell awaits for those who are bound by sin! – it seems as though they themselves have missed the gravity of sin by thinking that it can be dealt with through some sort of system. Ultimately, I agree with MacDonald – we need to look elsewhere to properly understand the atonement. Love and relationship need more emphasis for the atonement to make sense.

Moral Influence Theory

Peter Abelard developed the atonement theory referred to as moral influence a generation after Anselm developed his satisfaction theory. Abelard thinks it is wrong to constrain God with the feudalistic system of honor, and he believes God is willing and able to extend mercy at any time. The problem does not lie with God, the problem lies within people. God does not need to find a loophole in the system; people must change in order to receive grace.

The human predicament is brought on by a corrupted mind and a misdirected will. The problem isn’t just that we do wrong, sin occurs when we direct our will to do something wrong, knowing full well what we are doing. Improper intent is the key ingredient in sin, perhaps more so than wrong action. People must learn how to see clearly and how to direct their wills towards the good.

Some see Abelard’s solution thusly: God desires to be in right relationship with humankind, but humankind is too petty, corrupt, and blind to see. So God becomes incarnate in the person of Jesus to demonstrate the proper was to live. He shows us a new way to be human. By following Jesus, people can affect change ∙within their lives, ∙by their own actions. A problem with this view is that Jesus really doesn’t seem to do much. A possible solution to this is by adding that Christ is not merely an example. While the change is affected ∙within a person, the change is initiated ∙by God.

However, Abelard’s theory has not gained as large of a following as satisfaction theories due to some shortcomings with it. First, it does not present our predicament in a way that mirrors reality. Anselm would be justified if he argued that Abelard’s theory does not account for the gravity of sin. Evil is a more than actions carried out with malicious intent, it extends to all negative occurrences. Lower degrees of responsibility do not remove evil from the picture. Additionally, the critical role of intent seems incapable of dealing with sins that span entire societies and people groups. And even if Jesus’ work brings people into right relationship with God, his theory lacks the sort of objectivity of satisfaction theories of the atonement. Therefore, it has trouble really answering the question of what Christ did.

Second, Christ needs to play a continuing role in the salvation story. Abelard does not leave much for Jesus to do after his exemplary life and death. So although Abelard makes important steps towards a picture of God that is loving and relational, he does not seem to take sin seriously enough. Perhaps the hell we are saved from under his theory is not as hellish as reality demands.

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[1] From George MacDonald’s Unspoken Sermons.

The Slavery of Death (Part 2: Satisfaction Theories)

The first theories I will consider can be classified as “satisfaction theories.” Very broadly, these theories paint a picture of some sort of divine transaction between humankind and God, with Christ’s death playing an important role. First I will examine ∙the Anselmian formula, followed by ∙the Penal Substitution formula. Although they share the satisfaction element, wherein God is the party that is owed something and humankind is the party that owes something, it is important to keep each theory distinct–a practice that is not always carried out in the current discussion.

Anselmian Satisfaction

Perhaps the first great theologian to develop a satisfaction theory was St. Anselm of Canterbury. His theory is presented in the work Cur Deus Homo, completed in 1098 C.E. Anselm found the then-dominant ransom theory of atonement to be insufficient given his view of God.[2]

The basic formula of Anselm’s satisfaction theory is as follows: Every being in the universe owes a debt of honor to God, the perfect and Supreme Being. Failing to give God his due honor results in a sin of infinite magnitude, due to the infiniteness of the being sinned against. Of course, the human race failed to give God his due honor; Adam and Eve brought shame to the entire race through the fall. Any good we do does not lift us out of our shamefulness, as that goodness was already owed to God in the first place. We must somehow go above and beyond to repay this debt of honor. God cannot simply forgive us; as the Supreme Being he must be perfectly just, and to leave the cosmic scales of justice unbalanced would be inconceivable. That’s where Jesus comes in. As both God and man, Jesus was able to go above and beyond the dutiful requirement to give God honor, and through his obedience–even to death on a cross–he lifted the entire human species out of its shameful condition. Thus, Jesus satisfied God’s need for honor, and through his death and resurrection, the entire human family receives the benefits of his action.

Anselm’s formulation is not surprising, given his historical context. His cosmic view of God and humanity are informed by the feudalistic society he lived in: God as the lord and humanity as the serfs, bound in a social contract whose currency was honor and shame. The role of Christ and his death is the restoration and renewing of the social obligations that were apparent in Anselm’s day. However, this dependence on a specific spatiotemporal social structure makes Anselm’s theory suspect, or at least unwieldy, as this way of thinking is not intuitive to us today–making misunderstanding all too likely. Additionally, the theory may be so wrapped up in the social structures of the day that it is rendered vulnerable to missing some important element of the atonement.

Penal Substitution

The dominant theory of atonement in America today is the penal substitution theory. It is the “gospel message” most often used in lay evangelism, it is championed by the Reformed tradition, and it has become a doctrine of huge importance in the Neo-Calvinist movement.[3] Hints of penal substitution first emerge in Augustine and Anselm, but the theory only reached fruition in the reformation period. John Calvin and Martin Luther were prominent in the development of the theory as it is understood today, introducing a personal element to atonement that had not really enjoyed such prominence in the past.

The paradigm of penal substitution is as follows: God is the just judge presiding over all of creation who cannot bear to be in the presence of sin. When the laws of creation are violated, the guilty party must be apprehended and punished in order to balance the cosmic scales of justice. No human being is able to keep the law, though, and thus we are all under condemnation. Though God is wrathful towards sin and can leave no sin unpunished, he is also loving. So he sent his only son to bear punishment and death in our stead, as an innocent substitute for us. Through faith in Christ, Christ’s death and resurrection allows us to stand before God, blameless and innocent. God’s wrath was poured out on Christ, so it would not have to be poured out on us. Thus, Jesus satisfies God’s need for just punishment, rather than his need for honor.

Calvin assembles his Biblical case from passages throughout the canon, but perhaps the key passage is Isaiah 53. Calvin said, “This is our acquittal: the guilt that held us liable for punishment has been transferred to the head of the Son of God.”[4]

While Anselmian satisfaction was based on the medieval notion of honor and shame, penal substitution is based on the notion of a lawful system. The new paradigm operates under the interplay between innocence, guilt, and punishment. This paradigm is more easily understood in a Western democracy like America, where a legal system based on law, guilt, and punishment are normative. However, this theory also has some glaring flaws, which will be addressed in the next post.

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[2] Any familiarity with his Monologion or Proslogion should make this anything but surprising. Remember, Anselm was the man who formulated the original ontological argument for the existence of God.

[3] A rapidly growing movement among young Protestants characterized by folks like John Piper, Mark Driscoll, etc.

[4] From Book II of John Calvin’s Institutes.

The Slavery of Death: How Atonement Theories Affect Our Perception of Hell (Part 1)

This past semester I spent a lot of time thinking about heaven and hell, as I took a philosophy class that delved into these often talked about, but rarely understood ides. I've been left contemplating how much our perception of God's nature affects both how we think salvation "works" and what we think we are saved from. In the next few days, I'll be posting adaptations from my final paper on the blog. Please join the conversation in the comments section!

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"A society that tolerates misery, a religion that tolerates Hell, a humanity that tolerates war, is to me an inferior one. With all of the strength of my being I want to destroy this human depravation. I damn the slavery, I chase away the misery, I heal the sickness, I brighten the darkness, I hate the hatred."[1]

An Introduction

The doctrines of hell and atonement have been a source of much debate over the past 2,000 years of church history. Differences of opinion have always existed, but at different points in time, certain theories have been normative within the broader tradition. Today in evangelical America, the predominant atonement theory is the penal substitution formulation of the satisfaction theory, while the predominant doctrine of hell involves some notion of a real, literal place, in which conscious eternal torment takes place. This has not always been the case, though.

I would argue that there is a relationship between our perception of hell and the theory of atonement that we accept. Behind these two doctrines lies our conception of God’s nature. Different views of God’s nature lead us to varying ways of looking at the atonement, and they in turn shape our perception of what, exactly, we are saved from. Hell has many connotations in the evangelical landscape today, but I will define hell in a more abstract fashion. In the metaconversation of this series of posts, hell broadly refers to that which we are saved from by God.

Ultimately, the fate of hell rests in the atonement. And so the grand question is: What did Jesus accomplish? And what did his death save us from?

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[1] From Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables

Puddleglum's Wager

Anyone who has been around philosophical circles – or better yet, the apologetics movement – has heard of Pascal’s Wager. Pascal tells us that the consequences of rejecting Christ in this life are eternally dreadful, while the consequences of following Christ in this life are eternally favorable. God may or may not exist, but any wise person is going to bet on God.

There have been a number of criticisms of Pascal’s Wager over the years. Which God should we bet on? If we believe Pascal, then what do we do about Zeus, Apollo, and Mars? What about Allah? The wager cannot specify the Christian God. Perhaps most troubling, the wager makes the emphasis of the gospel lie in the some future existence. It strips Christianity of its implications for here and now.

That’s where Puddleglum comes in. In the Silver Chair, he and the children are in Underland. In a moment of inspiration, he says, "Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all of those things—trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones."

Puddleglum does not relegate faith in Aslan to a bet on the future life. He says belief in Aslan and the world above are not only a future hope, they make life worth living here and now. Belief has an enormous role in molding our behaviors right now, and can provide profound meaning and purpose to our lives.

Maybe the church has been spending too much time trying to get people to hedge their bets. Many have been far too good at presenting the gospel with all of the life sucked out of it, reducing it to a formula for entering a really cool afterlife. They have bought Pascal’s Wager.

Perhaps a more meaningful – and productive – move would be to focus not just on the “benefits” of following Christ (specifically as that relates to the afterlife), but on the power and life-changing effects Christ can have here and now. Jesus came proclaiming the Kingdom of God. Jesus was never concerned about just getting people into heaven. He was always trying to help them enter the Kingdom of God. Maybe we should be more like Puddleglum – and Jesus.

Convergent Evolution and God’s Intent

A common objection to the theory of evolution, especially when it is combined with a materialistic view of human persons, is that it is directly antithetical to God and her purposes. It is thought to be a “gateway” to atheism and absolutely opposed to Christian belief, undermining the foundation of religious significance by (1) Moving God too far out of the frame of human creation, as the account of “special creation” by miraculous means is rejected and (2) Destroying human worth and dignity by rejecting the necessity of an immaterial substance, rendering us “mere machines.” For the sake of expediency, I will refer to these collectively as the “traditionalist view of human nature,” or more simply, the traditionalist view. In this post, I will explore why (1) and (2) are not significant threats to Christian belief, and may perhaps strengthen the reasonableness of faith. Last, I will examine the role convergent evolution may play in this.

To begin, a brief look into personhood is in order. A person is not merely a human being, although most human beings are, in fact, persons. Rather, persons are beings that possess specific person-making properties. The exact combination of properties required to make persons might be unsettled, but in the very least a person is a being that possesses the mental properties of both rationality and consciousness in such a way that self-consciousness is possible. The traditionalist view would state that some necessary component of these person-making properties must be ·miraculously created by God[1] and ·reside in some non-physical substance, whether it be an immaterial mind or the soul.[2] I would stand by those who say that a materialist account of human nature is adequate for explaining such properties.

First, I propose that the rejection of special creation in no way removes God from the human story in a manner that has a significantly negative impact on any possible relationship with him. In fact, the space between God’s direct actions in the creation of the universe and the biological evolution of Homo sapiens nearly 14 billion years later can be thought of as a necessary component in the creation of genuine persons. Again, the alleged problem is that the rejection of an act of “special creation” with miraculous intent results in a world that does not allow humans to have a relationship with God, as we are the mere products of deterministic natural causes. This is perceived to be one of the greatest threats to human dignity and value. The proposed solution is that human beings are the product of some indeterministic and miraculous cause. However, I think the above problem actual stems from a misguided sense of self-importance, along with a vague and distorted notion of what God’s intent is.

Let me posit a question now. If human parents had the ability to create a “designer baby” where they could choose each trait the child would have, should they exercise that ability? Would it be a loving choice to do so? I think the answer is clearly no. If the parents were to design their baby, the child would merely be an extension of their beliefs and desires. This is a problem if they desire a loving relationship – you need a separate person, not just an extension of yourself, if you truly desire a loving relationship that can be reciprocated.

Of course, this scenario can be applied to God’s creation of humankind. It seems that in trying to avoid the undesirable view that we are the result of deterministic natural laws, those who maintain the view that God must have created humans via miraculous causes have stumbled onto a much bigger problem. If God directly caused each and every aspect of human nature, we are not genuinely separate persons from God; we are merely extensions of his person. And the power God must possess would allow him to do this to a far greater extent than any human parent ever could. The implications of this are apparent, and I think they are anything but descriptive of the world as we understand it and experience it.

Can a satisfactory solution be reached? An indeterministic, miraculous cause seems to only raise more problems, and its counterpart – deterministic natural causes – is often juxtaposed against it as the only other (wholly unappealing) option in this dilemma. However, I think the answer lies within a third possibility that we have yet to explore. Let’s return to the human parent example to illustrate it.

How do human parents create new persons? The easy answer is sex – but the enticing details there had better wait for another time. The (less exciting) version of the story is that the fertilization of the female’s egg by the sperm of the male is an event that is filled with uncertainty, chance, and even randomness. First, each individual’s gametes undergo meiosis, which includes the crossing over of chromosomes, scrambling the DNA. If unfertilized eggs could mature, there would already be a great deal of variance from the mother. But fertilization adds a whole new level of uncertainty and chance. The scrambled DNA from both the mother and father combine to form one unique organism. In short, this whole process, directed by indeterministic and natural causes, results in a distinct individual with the right mental properties to be considered a person.

By accepting an evolutionary framework and a materialistic view of human nature, we create space for beings to come into existence; beings that can be thought of as distinct persons. Much of the work done so far can now come to bear on problem (2); that is, if the special creation by God of our mental properties is not only unnecessary but also detrimental to the outlook on human value and worth,[3] then how much more detrimental is appealing to some immaterial substance that absolutely must be created by God and is immutable in substance?[4] In short, the special creation of human beings does not guard against the degradation of the value of human nature--it creates the problem!

Of theological concern here is God’s intent. The traditionalist view wishes to hold onto the idea that God specifically intended for human beings to exist as they are now. However, as I demonstrated earlier, this leads to a situation where God cannot reasonably create distinct persons from himself. A solution might be to remove God from the causes that directly influence the makeup of each person, while maintaining that God is in control of the process as the initiator of those processes. The use of indeterministic, natural laws with a deterministic range of possibilities would be an intuitive way of envisioning this. In this way, intent is not removed from God, but rather intent is generalized. Instead of God intending to make each person exactly as they are, planning every detail of their physical and psychological make-up, God broadly intended that a person-producing universe should come to exist.

Here an analogy to sex can be drawn again. Loving human parents realize their love with the intent of creating new life to share in their love, initiating processes that lead to new life, and they do so in an indeterministic manner that preserves the distinctiveness of their child. The loving parents do not know exactly what kind of child they will have, but they choose to love the child regardless. God has intent and realizes her love as well – and thus initiates indeterministic processes that yield persons. God may not know exactly what specific kinds of creatures the universe will produce, but in the deterministic range of possibilities, sentient life is probably nearly inevitable.

Luckily, we have an example in the natural world of an indeterministic process that leads to a surprisingly deterministic outcome: convergent evolution. The phenomenon of convergent evolution occurs when two or more unrelated organisms gain traits that are similar in function, but are achieved through very different evolutionary pathways. Desert plants are a classic example of convergent evolution at work. Many desert plants in many different parts of the world have independently evolved structures like reduced leaves or photosynthetic stems. Another example would be the independent evolution of fish fins and the flippers of marine mammals. Additionally, flight evolved independently in insects, reptiles, birds, and mammals. There seems to be little variability on the best structure for each environment, but evolution explores many different ways of getting to that structure.

It is no small coincidence that we ourselves are products of evolution, and thus the possibility that we are acted upon by these same forces is wide open. Furthermore, after bidding the immaterial ghost in the machine farewell, the human mind is free to be acted upon by physical forces. Perhaps the "cultural niche" was bound to be exploited. My grand question is this: What if sentient life and personhood are extremely favorable ends according to the laws of the universe? I think convergent evolution lends support to a view of the universe in which God ensures that some sentient life would form through indeterminate processes, while allowing enough space in the creative process for these beings to be novel persons that God could enter into a genuine and loving relationship with. We may not be as special as we once thought, and that is the best news we may ever hear.

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[1] Note the relationship to problem (1)

[2] Note the relationship to problem (2)

[3] As human beings would actually be extensions of God rather than distinct persons

[4] As it cannot be affected by biological processes or the laws of nature.

Immanuel Kant, John Piper, and Rob Bell

While discussing Kant in Modern Philosophy, we touched on a few of his thoughts on both a perfect being theology, as well as a glory-based perception of God. The first half is interesting in its own right, and relates to what I studied last spring in Medieval Philosophy, but the second half concerning a glory-oriented being seems to be crafted specifically for a thread that has been running through our conversation in class: What is the nature of God? Our good friend John Piper is a well-known and outspoken proponent of the sort of glory-based theology that Kant addresses here.

I would do a bit more work myself, but Kant just says it well, so I’ll go ahead and quote him at length:

“Nevertheless, this [perfect being theology] is better than (2b) the theological concept, which derives morality from a most perfect divine will. There are two reasons for the inferiority of the theological concept; or, more accurately, they are two halves of a single reason which constitutes a dilemma confronting the theological approach to morality. The perfection of the divine will is not something that is given to us in intuition analogous to how items are given to us through the senses; so we have to derive it from our own concepts. Foremost among these is our concept of morality; if we let this generate our concept of God’s perfection, and then use the latter as a basis for morality, we are guilty of a flagrantly circular explanation. And if we don’t get at God’s perfection in that way, our only remaining concept of it is made up of the attributes of desire for glory and dominion, combined with the awe-inspiring conceptions of power and vengefulness; and any system of ethics based on these would be directly opposed to morality.” (Groundworks, pp. 38-39)

The first problem Kant raises is the apparently cyclic nature of the relationship between a divine being and morality. Kant is, of course, the father of deontology, and claims that morality is actually a metaphysically significant thing. As such, he notes that we often constrain our picture of God’s nature to that which is morally good, thus using morality to construct out picture of God’s nature. But then we turn around and say God is the author of the moral law. Kant realizes that something is suspect with this line of reasoning.

The second, and much more interesting and pertinent problem with the theological concept of morality arises when we reject the first move from before – starting with the moral law. And if we cannot begin by assigning morality to a most powerful being, we are bound to ascribe glory and dominion – Piper-esque sovereignty – to this being. But that ultimately results in a being that is an absolute moral monster who will achieve his end of self-glorification by any means possible. Hence the dilemma.

Maybe John Piper was doing Rob Bell a favor when he wished him “farewell.” I certainly would not want to be associated with a God like that!

And ultimately, Rob seems to offer up a picture of God that rejects parts of both Kant and Piper's views. God isn't obsessed with his glory, but he is no pure logician, either. Rather, God is seen as loving. I think Bell tries to give us a more holistic picture of both God and human nature.

Is Bell a virtue ethicist? That's a good question, but I'll save it for another time.