apologia spring 2011

The featuring

4C

Mythof Pure

Objectivity

Christian Eschatology and the End of the World

The Rationality of Fairy Stories

also inside

Gnosticism and the Meaning of Heresy

Spring 2011, Volume 5, Issue 2

Front cover image: Justitia, by Raphael

Spring 2011, Volume 5, Issue 2

Editorial BoardPeter Blair ‘12, Editor-in-Chief

Sarah White ‘11, Managing EditorCharles Clark ‘11

Emily DeBaun ‘12Lee Farnsworth ‘12

Business ManagerBrady Kelly ‘12

Distribution ManagerBlake Neff ‘13

ProductionJen Freise ‘12

Edward Talmage ‘12Elli Kim ‘13

Stefanie Ostrowski ‘14Minae Seog ‘14

PhotographyElizabeth Jacob ‘11

Kelsey Carter ‘12

ContributorsSusan Conroy ‘87 Suiwen Liang ‘13Chris Hauser ‘14Robert Smith ‘14

John Joseph Porter, Harvard ‘12

Faculty Advisory BoardGregg Fairbrothers, TuckRichard Denton, Physics

Eric Hansen, ThayerEric Johnson, Tuck

James Murphy, GovernmentLeo Zacharski, DMS

Special thanks toCouncil on Student Organizations

The Eleazar Wheelock Society

Ever since the work of the philosopher René Descartes, modern philosophy has tended to view knowledge and belief as purely intellectual enterprises. Descartes’s fa-

mous phrase, “I think, therefore I am,” had the perhaps unintended effect of reducing the human person to his or her intellect. The result is that the intellect, decontextualized from the rest of the human person, became the primary aspect of man, and knowledge and belief were thought to be solely those propositions or facts grasped and held by the mind.

However, the traditional Christian understanding of knowledge is much different. Father Pinckaers explains this alternative understanding in his book Sources of Christian Ethics: “On the text of John 10:14, ‘I am the good shepherd; I know my own and my own know me,’ the Jerusalem Bible notes: ‘In Biblical language, ‘knowledge’ is not merely the conclusion of an intellectual process, but the fruit of an ‘experience,’ a personal contact; when it matures, it is love.’ Knowledge, and the vision it brings, must be understood as happening at the heart of a personal relationship. It engages the entire person: the mind, where wisdom dwells; the will, which desires and loves; the imagination, the sensibilities, even the body.”

In the Biblical view, knowledge has physical, experiential, and relational components, in ad-dition to its intellectual aspects. It is not something we discover solely by the mind, but some-thing that engages our whole person. Therefore, Christianity is not merely a set of propositions which some affirm and others deny. Christianity is rather grounded in the encounter and experience with reality, both the reality of the natural world, through which God is indirectly revealed, and the Reality of the Word Incarnate, though which God is directly and luminously revealed to us. This encounter does not give rise only to intellectual belief. As Chris Hauser ’14 notes in his article “The Rationality of Fairy Stories” it also engenders a certain attitude towards the world, one of gratitude, wonder, and joy. And as Susan Conroy, a Dartmouth alumna who worked closely with Mother Teresa, explains in her interview in this issue, this gratitude in turn inspires us to give to others. Christianity, then, is about experience, love, emotion, and action as much as it is about intellectually held beliefs.

Therefore, we at the Apologia are not trying to promote clever sophistry nor to browbeat the skeptic with aggressive argument. The Apologia does not exist to argue people into faith; rather we exist to use all the disciplines of thought—from history to science to philosophy—to better investigate the rational structure of our faith and to comprehend the world by it. We are a community of people who have been formed by a decisive encounter with Reality, and who seek to understand and examine the world through the light of that experience. In his now famous quote, C.S. Lewis said of Christianity, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” In the light of Christianity, we see the world. This journal is the fruit of effort to articulate that vision.

A Letter from the Editor

Apologia OnlineSubscription information is avail-able on our website at dartmouthap-ologia.org. The Dartmouth Apologia also publishes a weekly blog called Tolle Lege on issues related to faith and reason. Blitz “Apologia” to subscribe, or access the blog at blog.dartmouthapologia.org.

The opinions expressed in The Dartmouth Apologia are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the journal, its editors, or Dartmouth College. Copyright © 2011 The Dartmouth Apologia.

SubmissionsWe welcome the submission of any article, essay, or artwork for publication in The Dartmouth Apologia. Submissions should seek to promote respectful, thoughtful discussion in the community. We will consider submissions from any member of the community but reserve the right to publish only those that are in line with our mission statement and quality rubric. Blitz “Apologia.”

Letters to the EditorWe value your opinions and encourage thoughtful submissions expressing support, dissent, or other views. We will gladly consider any letter that is consistent with our mission statement’s focus on promoting intellectual discourse in the Dartmouth community.

Peter BlairEditor-in-Chief

Apo

logia

�e

A Journalof Christian

Dartmouth

�ought

Apo

logia

�e


Dartmouth

�oughtThe Dartmouth Apologia exists to articulate Christian perspectives

in the academic community.

Apo

logia

�e


Dartmouth

�ought

2IntervIewSusan Conroy ‘87

GnostIcIsm and the meanInG of heresy

Suiwen Liang ‘13

the ratIonalIty of faIry storIes

Chris Hauser ‘14

the end of the world: Authentic Christian

EschatologyRobert Smith ‘14

the myth of pure objectIvItyLee Farnsworth ‘12

certum est quIa possIbIle:An Apologetic for God’s Existence

John Joseph Porter, Harvard ‘12

epIstemIc pluralIsm and the chrIstIan tradItIon

Peter Blair ‘12

book revIews:Orthodoxy

Emily DeBaun ‘12The Moral Landscape

Blake Neff ‘13

5

11

16

20

24

30

36

38

2 • The Dartmouth Apologia • Spring 2011 ]

A big theme at Dartmouth is social justice and helping to solve the world’s problems. How do you understand social justice? What is it and how do we bring it about?

To me, justice isn’t the worldly sense of justice of giving everyone their due… We don’t deserve God’s love, none of us do. None of us deserve the blessings and the love. I always see social justice and love as go-ing hand-in-hand. Mother Teresa used to say, “Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier.” That is social justice. “Be especially kind to all you meet; each of us carries a burden that others cannot see.” This is social justice. And our model is Jesus. The most difficult commandment of all and characteristic of Jesus Christ and his teaching is, “Love your enemy, pray for those who persecute you, bless those who curse you.” That is the most difficult thing in the whole world. It’s not natural, it’s supernatural. It’s not human, it’s superhuman. And we’re called to that. We’re called to do good to all, not just to our friends. I think of the greatest commandment, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength, and then you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” We love God whom we cannot see by loving one another who we can see. That is precisely how we fulfill the first and greatest commandment, by loving one another and especially those who are most in need of mercy—the

afflicted—comforting the afflicted, uplifting the lowly and the poor and those in need of kindness and love.

A lot of people think you can do good for the world, for people, without having a religious or a Christian background. So what do you see as the distinction between “social work” and the Chris-tian understanding of these things?

Christian charity is motivated above all by love of God—love of Jesus Christ. Whatever we do or give for others in this life, we do it with Jesus and for Jesus, and that truly makes a difference. We are no longer doing things for something—we are doing things for Someone. It is no longer purely human; it is touched by the divine. Taking Christ at his word, Mother Teresa truly believed that whatsoever she did to the least of our brothers and sisters on Earth, she was doing to Christ himself, because he said so. He said, “Whatsoever you do unto the least of my brethren, you do to me. When I was hungry, you gave me to eat, when I was thirsty,

SuSan Conroy ‘87Susan Conroy, Dartmouth ’87, is a renowned author, translator, and television host. As a 21-year-old college student, Susan traveled to Calcutta, India to work with Mother Teresa and the Missionaries of Charity. She formed a friendship with Mother Teresa and continued her association with Mother Teresa and her work until Mother Teresa’s death. Today she is a best-selling author, having written several books, including a book about and directly authorized by Mother Teresa. Currently she hosts an EWTN series entitled “Speaking of Saints,” gives lectures across the country, and is working on her next book.

Conducted by Peter Blair

An interview with

Spring 2011 • The Dartmouth Apologia • 3[

you gave me to drink, when I was naked, you clothed me, sick or in prison you visited me.” She bet her life on those words of Jesus Christ.

It seems, too, that Christians like Mother Teresa have more resources to help them in their work. Mother Teresa said that she couldn’t do her work unless she went to Mass every day. In having the strength to do this work, to constantly give of yourself, and to do that joyfully as well, it seems like that would be really hard to do unless you had some of these spiritual resources behind you.

Mother Teresa was the first one to admit that with-out Christ she couldn’t do it, what she was doing in the world, in 120 countries throughout the world, in all of her shelters for the poor, the sick, the dying, and the abandoned throughout the world. But with Christ all things are possible. She was always reminding us that, “Without Christ I could not do this, but with him all things are possible.” When someone asked Mother Teresa how she could do this work of serving the poor, sick, and dying for so many years of her life without becoming depressed by all the misery, and without be-coming burnt out by the seemingly daunting task of trying to alleviate so much human need (which you see happen with secular people all the time: they come to do good, but they get burnt out), Mother Teresa replied, “My secret is quite simple: I pray.” Through prayer, she had constant access to God, who is our endless source of all love, compassion, energy, grace, and goodness. He empowers us to keep loving, serving, giving, sacrificing, pouring ourselves out—endlessly and even cheerfully. And joy is one of the most beauti-ful characteristics of the Christian. Joy and pure love.

You’ve said that Mother Teresa’s faith told her every human person has dignity, and if you purely reduce a person to his or her material nature, the dignity becomes lessened. How did her faith allow her to treat human beings as special and unique in a very deep way?

Mother Teresa asked me to draw a picture of [a] little child in the palm of God’s hand with the words that God said to the prophet Isaiah, “See I will not forget you, I have carved you in the palm of my hands. I have called you by your name. You are mine, you are precious to me, I love you.” And Mother Teresa would tell every individual that, “This is you, this child carved in the palm of God’s hand is you.” God looks at every creature as precious. He loves them. We’re supposed to be considering every human life as pre-cious and treating everyone with respect and dignity. That’s one of the things I have a profound respect of

Mother Teresa for, when I realized and learned how she looked at every human being. That man dying in the gutter of Calcutta was not a dog dying, but a man, or a woman, or a little boy, a human being deserving of dignity and respect. She could look past the distressing disguise of the poor and see Jesus Christ in agony, Jesus Christ spat upon and neglected and forgotten, looking through the eyes of love as God looks at every single one of us. It was huge for me, because it’s a struggle for us to look at every human being with such tenderness and such love. She so felt like she was serving Jesus Christ, serving with as much reverence and respect and love and humility as if she was touching and serving Jesus.

And that helps to overcome the natural disgust. Yes, [once] a reporter was following Mother Teresa.

She came across a destitute man covered with scabs and sores and maggots, which is not uncommon in Calcutta, and Mother Teresa knelt down on the ground to minister to this person with her own hands. The reporter stood back in disgust at this filthy, dirt-covered man and said, “I wouldn’t do that for a million bucks,” and she looked back at the reporter and said, “Neither would I.” You couldn’t pay Mother Teresa enough to do this work; she wouldn’t do it for money, but she would do this for Jesus Christ. She would do it for the love of God and the love of our neighbor. And this changes everything, knowing the words that Jesus said changes everything. We didn’t dread going to the home of the dying to serve the sick, the destitute, the dying, those with diseases that I can’t even pronounce, the lepers; we didn’t dread going to all that misery and suffering. We longed to go see Jesus in the distressing disguise of the poor and to serve him and to be near to him, and we felt privileged. It was a privilege to be serving the Lord in this very tangible, visible, practi-cal way. Again, looking through the eyes of faith and knowing who it is who we were serving and feeding and touching and helping and alleviating. It was pow-erful. We felt privileged to do this.

How do we help others without losing our humil-ity in the process? How to we help others without thinking of ourselves as in some way better or more advanced than they are?

How do we retain humility? “Humility is nothing but truth,” as the great Saint Teresa of Avila said. If we see the truth about ourselves and others and God, we will be humble. We will be living in reality. Those whom we are helping and serving are truly our broth-ers and sisters. When we help one another, we don’t have to stoop very far. We are all at the same level. God


is the only one who truly has to stoop far in reaching us. And as Mother Teresa used to say, we are all poor in one way or another. We are all handicapped in one way or another. We were all weak and helpless once—and we will be weak and helpless again. When I was serving the dying destitutes in Calcutta, India, volunteering in Mother Teresa’s Home for the Dying, I truly felt honored to be in the presence of those poor and dying men. I wanted to be more like them—not so much in their illness and suffering, but in their gentleness and humility and virtue and quiet endurance of suffering. I wanted my spirit to be more like their spirit. Truly I wanted to learn from them. They were my inspira-tion. I was their servant, their sister. We were all family, the family of mankind. In the Home for the Dying, the strong were helping the weak, yes, but those dying and destitute men were far stronger than I was in ways that matter far more than physical strength and health. When I was in the presence of Mother Teresa, I was struck by her profound humility. It was stunning. She was as humble as the poor and dying men whom we

lifted out of the gutters. As I witnessed her love and humility, I sensed very strongly that humility is a sign of true greatness. Everything is a gift. “Everything is grace.” Therefore, we have every reason to remain pro-foundly humble and grateful to God as we continue to serve and love one another and seek to make this world a better place.

It seems that religion is often criticized as a force for evil the world, but people like Mother Teresa do so much good. How do we understand this?

Religion is not a force for evil in the world—hu-man beings are. And human beings don’t always get things right. Mahatma Gandhi once said that if Christians truly lived their Christian faith, there would be no more Hindus in India. They would all become Christian. If we were truly religious, and truly follow-ing Christ instead of ourselves, this world would be more like Heaven.

Mother Teresa, 1988


In 1996, The National Geographic released a documentary about “The Gospel of Judas,” an ancient text that had recently come to light

and was alleged to be the testimony of Judas Iscariot. Both the document itself and the documentary made the startling claim that the traditional conception of Christianity was flawed, proposing Gnosticism as an alternative interpretation of the life and teachings of Jesus.1 This new “gospel” claimed that Jesus’ message to the world had been purposefully cryptic, while Judas, the supposed author of the text, had received “secret knowl-edge” of the truth from Christ. This viewpoint quickly gained a following in popular culture, as demonstrated by the success of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, indicating society’s fascination with the notion of Gnostic knowledge and the purported mysteries that the church had concealed over the centuries.2 In the academic sphere, many books and scholars sought to characterize Gnosticism as an equally valid Christian perspective that was labeled as heresy and subse-quently repressed after orthodox Christianity gained

dominance over other views in the early centuries of Christianity. Elaine Pagels of Princeton University, for example, wrote of orthodoxy that, “It is the winners who write history—their way.”3 Likewise, The National Geographic’s documentary proposed the theory that, “the alternatives,” or heresy, “were simply outmaneu-vered in the battle for the Christian mind.”4 For many

people, the idea of Gnosticism raises the question of what au-thentic Christianity is and how it can be differentiated from other interpretations of the gospels and the life of Jesus. Comparative study of the doctrines of ortho-dox Christianity and Gnosticism reveals not mere differences be-tween the two viewpoints, but sharp oppositions. In addition,

comparing the origins of the ca-nonical gospels with those of the Gnostic texts suggests that the former are more historically valid. Far from re-pressing the secret teachings of Gnosticism, orthodox Christianity rejects Gnosticism as false teaching that is incompatible with the teachings of Jesus recorded in the historically reliable canonical gospels.

GnostIcIsm

by Suiwen Liang

AND ThE

meanInG of heresy

Gemstone charm used by ancient Gnostic sects, carved with the image of Abraxis


First and foremost, orthodox Christianity and Gnosticism adopt sharply contrasting visions of the purpose of Christ’s incarnation and the nature of sal-vation. In essence, orthodox Christianity teaches that Jesus is the Son of God who bore humanity’s sins through his death on the cross in order to reconcile sinful man with God. Jesus rose from the dead after three days and ascended into Heaven after commis-sioning his apostles, whom he had taught during his time on earth, to spread the gospel, or “good news,” of his death and resurrection. In the early Corinthian creed, the Apostle Paul writes that Christianity teach-es, “That Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.”5

Though Gnosticism also claims to have been hand-ed down by the same apostles, it contains many con-cepts that are wholly foreign to orthodox doctrine. It is difficult to provide an exhaustive definition for Gnosticism, as the term is used to encompass a di-verse body of beliefs, but Gnostic doctrines do hold several beliefs in common. The chief of these concerns

the gnosis, or secret knowledge, that Christ possessed for attaining salvation. The notion of gnosis is men-tioned repeatedly in the Gnostic gospels, such as the Gospel of Thomas, which claims that Thomas was a privileged disciple of Jesus who possessed the “secret sayings which the living Jesus spoke.”6 He acquires this

knowledge through a sort of test when Jesus asks his disciples to tell him what they think he is like. Peter says he is like an angel, Matthew compares him to

a philosopher, but Thomas tells Jesus that his “mouth is wholly incapable”7 of comparing him to anyone. Jesus then takes Thomas away from the others to speak with him privately. Upon Thomas’s return, his companions ask him what Jesus has confided. Thomas answers, “If I tell you one of the things which he told me, you will pick up stones and throw them at me; a fire will come out of the stones and burn you up.”8 The Gospel of Judas tells a similar story, though in this case Judas is chosen to be above his fellow disciples. Jesus tells him, “Move away from the others, and I shall explain to you the mysteries of the kingdom. You can attain it.”9 This notion of a secret teaching that was imparted to one

or other of the disciples is the first instance in which Gnosticism differs sharply from the teachings of orthodox Christianity. In the book of Acts, Jesus tells his apostles, “You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”10 While the Gnostic gospels make claims that Jesus’ deepest teachings were reserved for a select elite, orthodox teachings are insistent that Jesus’ teachings were meant for everyone who was willing to listen.

Another point of doctrine on which Gnosticism and orthodoxy differ is the re-lationship between matter and spirit. The Gnostics embraced a dualism in which mat-ter was condemned as evil and spirit was es-teemed as good. Gnostic teaching claimed that humans were essentially divine spirits imprisoned within the body and that sal-vation was an escape from the degraded material body into the spiritual realm. The Gnostic creation account reflects this divi-sion between matter and spirit; according to Gnostic teachings, there was a Divine Being who created a spiritual realm oc-cupied by spiritual beings called aeons.11 One of the aeons, Sophia, fell and begot a god.12 It was this god, who was inferior to

Gnostic teaching claimed… salvation was an escape from the degraded material body into the spiritual realm.

The Judas Kiss, by Gustav Doré


the Divine Being and called the Demiurge, who cre-ated the material world and humanity. Although hu-manity was created by the Demiurge, it retained the divine spark that resembled the Divine Being, and so the Divine Being sent his messenger to awaken hu-mans to a consciousness of their own divinity and let them escape the material realm of the Demiurge.13 The Gnostic gospels taught that Jesus was this messenger. The opening of the Gospel of Judas overtly references the distinction between the Demiurge and the Divine Being. It recounts the story that Jesus came upon his disciples while they were praying over a meal and laughed. When his disciples asked why he laughed at their prayer,

He answered and said to them, “I’m not laughing at you. You aren’t doing this out of your own will, but because in this way your god [will be] praised.”

They said, “Master, you are… the son of our god.”

Jesus said to them, “How is that you know me?”14

In this account, Jesus laughs at his disciples’ ignorance and denies being the son of “their god”15 because they are actually worshipping the Demiurge, the creator of the material world.

The Demiurge is mentioned nowhere in the teach-ings or writings of orthodox Christianity. On the con-trary, according to orthodoxy, the God of creation is the same God the Father who sent Jesus to the earth. Orthodoxy teaches that in the beginning God’s cre-ation was perfect, but that man’s sin introduced cor-ruption into humanity and the physical world; thus,

orthodoxy holds that it is man’s spirit that corrupts his material body, and not that the body is innately evil. The two doctrines differ again in that the Gnostic teachings regarded the Demiurge as being responsible for the introduction of evil into the world, while or-thodoxy taught that man’s error brought about sin and evil, not God’s.

A further implication of Gnostic dualism was that the inherent evil of the material realm precluded Jesus from having a human body and, by extension, from having a physical resurrection. Thus, the Gnostic Jesus was not really crucified but only appeared to be. The Gnostic text The Second Treatise of the Great Seth shows a disdain for matter and the material world by claim-ing that Jesus could not have died because he was purely spirit without a material body. The Treatise goes on to claim that the man the Romans crucified was not Christ himself but actually a man named Simon of Cyrene, who in the orthodox gospels is known for carrying Jesus’ cross to Gethsemane. Jesus is por-trayed as claiming that Simon “was an earthly man, but I, I am from above the heavens.”16 The Gnostic Jesus declares that he “did not die in reality but in ap-pearance,”17 but rather he “was laughing at their igno-rance”18 while Simon was crucified in his place. This callous disregard for Simon’s sufferings demonstrates the Gnostic tenet that flesh was of no importance be-cause only spirit mattered. David Bentley Hart says of the tale that, “The sufferings of Simon, a mere creature of the Demiurge apparently, are no more than an oc-casion for divine mirth at the expense of the cretin-ous archons.”19 This account of Jesus’ behavior at the

Jesus Helped by Simon of Cyrene, Artist Unknown


crucifixion is utterly incompatible with the accounts of the orthodox gospels. Orthodoxy teaches that Jesus was fully human with a physical body and that he was actually crucified and died, as well as that his presence on earth was motivated by love and compassion for sinful humanity. Furthermore, as is discussed above, though orthodoxy also teaches that both material and spiritual dimensions exist, it rejects the notion that matter is essentially evil. Thus, the Gnostic and the or-thodox views prove once again to be utterly incompat-ible with each other.

Both these and many of the other doctrines of Gnosticism conflict with and contradict the teach-ings of orthodox Christianity. The incompatibility of their tenets shows that these teachings cannot both be accepted as true, leaving once again the question of which tradition constitutes authentic Christianity. Historically speaking, Christianity was passed down by Jesus’ apostles and others who heard his teachings and witnessed his death and resurrection. The ortho-

dox churches could thus trace their roots back to the apostles, a claim the Gnostics could not make.20 Some of the Church Fathers, who led the second generation of the church, were personally students of the apostles: for example, Ignatius was a student of the Apostle John, and Irenaeus was the student of Polycarp, who was also taught by John. Consequently, Church Fathers who

came in contact with the teachings of Gnosticism were able to lay claim to an apostolic succession of teachings handed down from those who knew Jesus personally.21 This witness was also presented through the four gos-pels that were later made part of the New Testament. Church Father Irenaeus wrote in Against Heresies that the four canonical gospels had already been received from the apostles and made known to the churches during his time:

Matthew also issued a written Gospel among the Hebrews in their own dialect… Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, did also hand down to us in writing what had been preached by Peter. Luke also, the companion of Paul, recorded in a book the Gospel preached by him. Afterwards, John… did himself pub-lish a Gospel during his residence at Ephesus.22

Ireneaus’ account affirms that these gospels were writ-ten relatively soon after Jesus’ ministry and could be authenticated by the early church. The Gnostic gos-pels, on the other hand, appeared much later than the canonical gospels. New Testament scholar N.T. Wright observes, “There is no point dressing it up: the canoni-cal gospels are early, and the Gnostic ones are late… By ‘early’ I mean within a generation or so of the death of Jesus; by ‘late’ I mean no earlier than around the mid-dle of the second century.”23 Furthermore, Craig Evans notes that the Gnostic documents “reflect settings that are entirely foreign to pre-A.D. 70 Jewish Palestine and at the same time reflect traditions and tendencies found in documents known to have emerged in later times and in places outside of Palestine.”24 All of the evidence points to the impossibility of the Gnostic

The orthodox churches could thus trace their roots back to the

apostles, a claim the Gnostics could not make.

The Riders of the Sidhe, by John Duncan


gospels having been written by the historical figures whose names they claim. The Gnostic gospels that are named for Judas and Thomas were written at least a century after those disciples’ deaths. Professor Philip Jenkins aptly concludes, “The more access we have to ancient ‘alternative gospel,’ the more we must respect the choices made by the early church in forming its canon.”25

Moreover, it is clear that the apostles directly reject-ed many Gnostic notions in their letters to the early church. The Apostle John, for instance, wrote, “Many deceivers, who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh have gone out into the world. Any such person is the deceiver.”26 This is clearly an effort to contradict the Gnostic teaching that Jesus came to earth only as a spirit, rather than as a fully mate-rial person. The Apostle Paul also confronted believers who were beginning to embrace Gnostic dualism. The belief in the goodness of the spirit and the evil of mat-ter led some Gnostic believers to conclude that any-thing material could corrupt the spirit and others to believe that the body could not taint the spirit; conse-quently, Gnostics emerged as both unyielding ascetics and committed hedonists; both are lifestyles that the Apostle Paul argues against.27 In his letter to Timothy, Paul condemned the ascetics who “forbid people to marry and order them to abstain from certain foods,”28

while in his letter to the Corinthian church he rejected hedonism, as well, writing to the believers that, “The body is… for the Lord,”29 and, “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit?”30 Paul also argued strenuously for the physical resurrection of Christ, saying, “For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins.”31 Both the late emergence of the Gnostic gospels and the direct con-tradictions of Gnostic doctrine made in the more reliable canonical gospels indicate that orthodoxy is more true to the original teach-ings of Jesus and his apostles.

Christian orthodoxy and Gnosticism present radically different portrayals of Jesus and of God’s revelation. Gnosticism asserts that Jesus was merely a messenger sent to impart secret knowledge to a select few who were selected to be saved, while orthodoxy recognizes that the ultimate revelation and salvation is not esoteric knowledge but rath-er Jesus Christ himself.32 As Church Father Ignatius wrote,

Jesus Christ, of David’s lineage, of Mary… was really born, ate, and drank; was really

persecuted under Pontius Pilate; was really cru-cified and died, in the sight of heaven and earth and the underworld. He was really raised from the dead, for his Father raised him, just as his Father will raise us, who believe on him, through Christ Jesus, apart from whom we have no genuine life.33

Orthodoxy and Gnosticism cannot accurately be pre-sented as two different but equally valid “perspectives” of Christianity. As G.K. Chesterton pointed out in his book Orthodoxy, there can only be one true conception of God:

It is not enough to find the gods… we must find God… It does not trouble me to be told that the Hebrew god was one among many. I know he was... Jehovah and Baal looked equally important, just as the sun and the moon looked the same size. It is only slowly that we learn that the sun is immeasurably our mas-ter, and the small moon only our satellite.34

The Church Fathers tried to prevent the dissemination of Gnostic teachings not in order to prevent the rev-elation of some sort of secret knowledge, but rather because they knew that there was no secret that needed to be kept. Gnosticism not only subverts the doctrine passed down by the authentic Jesus, but it also ob-scures the revelation of God, that is, Jesus himself, by exchanging a personal God for a mere teacher of the

The Sermon on the Mount, by Carl Bloch


Suiwen Liang ‘13 lives in Memphis, Tennessee. He is a Chemistry major.

esoteric. Orthodox Christianity, on the other hand, is founded on the authentic person of Christ.

1 Stanley E. Porter and Gordon L. Heath, The Lost Gospel of Judas (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2007) 2-3.2 Alister McGrath, Heresy: A History of Defending the Truth (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2009) 81-82; Porter and Heath 98-99. Also known as “The Lucky Winners Thesis.”3 Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels (New York: Random House, 1979) 142.4 Andrew Cockburn, “The Judas Gospel: Feature Story,” April 2006, National Geographic Interactive Edition, 5 Mar. 2011 <http://ngm. nationalgeographic.com/ngm/gospel/text3.html>.5 1 Corinthians 15:3.6 Howard Clark Kee, The New Testament in Context (Eaglewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1984) 171.7 Ibid.8 Ibid. 172.9 Marvin Meyer, The Nag Hammadi Scriptures

(New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2007) 761.10 Acts 1:8.11 Justo L. Gonzalez, The Story of Christianity: The Early Church to the Present Day (Peabody, MS: Prince Press, 1984) 58-61.12 Kee 165-169.13 Gonzalez 59.14 Meyer 760-761.15 Ibid. 755-756.16 William C. Placher, Readings in the History of Christian Theology, Volume 1 (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1988) 14.17 Ibid.18 Ibid. 15.19 David Bentley Hart, Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009) 141.20 Gonzalez 66.21 Placher 24-27.22 Ibid. 26.23 N.T. Wright, Judas and the Gospel of Jesus: Have We Missed the Truth about Christianity? (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2006) 76.24 Craig Evans, Fabricating Jesus: How Modern Scholars Distort the Gospels (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press Books, 2006) 98.25 Phillip Jenkins, Hidden Gospels: How the Search for Jesus Lost Its Way (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001) 105-106.26 2 John 7.27 Gonzalez 60.28 1 Timothy 4:3.29 1 Corinthians 4:13.30 1 Corinthian 6:19.31 1 Corinthians 15:16-17.32 McGrath 223-224.33 Placher 16.34 G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1927) 285-286.

A page from the Codex Tchacos, a book of Gnostic writings


C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien are two authors whose literary masterpieces are known throughout the modern world.

However, both men shared much in common beyond literary genius. Both taught at Oxford, both lived through the unprecedented drama of World War II, and both articulated their Christian faith in their writ-ings with unmatched brilliance. Lewis devoted much of his literary career to explicitly sharing and explain-ing Christianity to the world, and he remains famous to this day as one of the best writers to ever put pen to paper on behalf of the Christian faith. Though less explicitly, Tolkien also incorporated religious truth in his work, often burying profound Christian insights underneath the surface of his stories.

Interestingly, both men were deeply influenced by a single predecessor, an-other British Christian au-thor who lived just before them: G. K. Chesterton.1 Chesterton similarly brought his faith into his vocation, writing both explicitly and implicitly about Christian themes. Perhaps the most remark-able connection between

these three masterly writers was their shared appre-ciation for and vocal approval of fairy tales and the world of literary fantasy. In an essay titled “On Fairy Stories,” Tolkien suggests that fairy stories give us a lens by which we can recognize the truly valuable and transcendent aspects of our world and re-imagine the “eucatastrophe” of Christ’s birth and resurrection.2 G. K. Chesterton similarly devoted an entire chapter of his seminal work Orthodoxy (reviewed in this issue of the Apologia) to discussing the importance of fairy tales, asserting that fairy tales help us recall an exis-tential wonder for the world, a wonder that drives us towards humility, gratitude, and ultimately praise for the being responsible for everything.

Chesterton’s thoughts on fairy stories begin with the seemingly radical claim that fairy tales are more rational than materialist philosophy. According to Chesterton, fairy tales reflect a true rational-ity that understands the nature of necessity and contingency, whereas the modern materialist is ir-rational and nonsensi-cal because he confuses the necessary with the

by Chris Hauser

Fairy StoriesThe Rationality of


contingent. Chesterton claims that the modern athe-ist, a person who believes all truth about the world can be discerned empirically and scientifically, in fact makes false causal associations by confusing two cat-egories of phenomena. He argues that on the one hand there are causal sequences that are “mathematical and logical.”3 These things are truly necessary and truly ra-tional, and fairy tales recognize and incorporate these sequences. On the other hand, he notes that not everything falls into this category of ne-cessity. He writes, “I observed that learned men in spectacles were talking of actual things that happened, dawn and death and so on—as if they were rational and inevitable. They talked as if the fact that trees bear fruit were just as necessary as the fact that two and one trees make three.”4 Trees do not necessarily need to bear fruit—they could just as easily bear “gold-en candlesticks or tigers” as Chesterton fondly notes.5 One plus two, however, must equal three.

Fairy tales, Chesterton believes, help us under-stand this distinction. He explains that there is a “test of fairyland,” a test of imagination: we can imagine trees bearing “golden candlesticks or tigers,” but we can’t imagine one plus two not equaling three. Thus,

the latter is necessary and inevitable, but the former is miraculous and magical.6 Chesterton explains the dis-tinction between the two, saying, “We have always in our fairy tales kept this sharp distinction between the science of mental relations, in which there really are laws, and the science of physical facts, in which there

are no laws, but only weird repetitions. We believe in bodily miracles, but not in mental impossibilities.”7 Chesterton then concludes with an example: “We be-lieve that a Beanstalk climbed up to Heaven; but that does not at all confuse our convictions on the philo-sophical questions of how many beans make five.”8

The “weird repetitions” that Chesterton refers to are

in fact the foundation of half the Scientific Method, the half that deals with empirical experimentation and conclusions drawn from inductive reasoning. Inductive reasoning refers to the way in which we draw conclusions about a phenomenon after repeat-ing experiments whose results demonstrate the same sequence of events. However, many philosophers (David Hume being the classic example) have offered compelling arguments about the potentially fallacious nature of inductive reasoning. Hume offers the follow-ing description of the flaws of induction: “When we look about us towards external objects, and consider the operation of causes, we are never able, in a single instance, to discover any power or necessary connec-tion; any quality, which binds the effect to the cause, and renders the one an infallible consequence of the other.”9 The conclusion of his argument is that, “We only find, that the one does actually, in fact, follow the other.”10

Chesterton’s example of the phenomenon of apples falling from trees further illustrates this point:

But the scientific men do muddle their heads, until they imagine a necessary mental connection between an apple leaving the tree and an apple reaching the ground. They do really talk as if they had found not only a set of marvelous facts, but a truth connecting those facts. They do talk as if the connection of two strange things physically con-nected them philosophically. They feel that because one incomprehensible thing constantly follows another incomprehensible thing the two together somehow make up a comprehensible thing.11

The reality is that the question of why something hap-pens is infinitely differentiable. No matter how many times you answer it, there will always be another ques-tion: why that specific answer? There is an eternity, an infinity, a divinity, to our world because of the infi-nite nature of this question. We must keep going back and back, further and further, until we reach some-thing that is not contingent.12 Thus Chesterton con-cludes that the following ought to be our response to

The problem with materialism is not that it attempts to understand the universe but that it ignores the magical arbitrariness of our world.

G.K. Chesterton


the world: “When we are asked why eggs turn to birds or fruits fall in autumn… we must answer that it is magic. It is not a ‘law,’ for we do not understand its general formula. It is not a ne-cessity, for though we can count on it hap-pening practically, we have no right to say that it must always happen.”13

With this in mind, Chesterton asserts that fairy tale terminology, words like “charm,” “spell,” “enchant-ment,” or “magic,” is really more appropri-ate for describing our world than scientific words like “law,” “ne-cessity,” “order,” or “tendency.” The words of fairy stories capture “the arbitrariness of the fact and its mystery.”14 The problem with materialism is not that it attempts to understand the universe but that it ignores the magical arbitrariness of our world. In trying to capture the scientific nature of our world, materialism forgets contingency, that things need not be the way they are, that trees could just as easily bear “golden candlesticks or tigers” as fruit.

Therefore, the appropriate response to this magical arbitrariness, to the beauty of things that need not be the way they are, is wonder. This response of awe is deeply ingrained in our existence, and fairy tales evoke this sense of won-der in readers and listeners, whether children or adults. They fill us with an inexplicable joy, a pure, uncontrollable urge to smile and laugh. The source of this wonder, which Chesterton calls “elementary wonder,”15 ultimately is not found within the enchanted world of fairy tales; rather, this wonder is derived from our experience of the real

world. As Chesterton puts it, fairy stories “touch the nerve of the ancient instinct of astonishment.”16

Chesterton argues that, “When we are very young children we do not need fairy tales: we only need tales. Mere life is in-teresting enough.”17 In other words, as young children who were new to the world and its magical arbitrari-ness, we were filled with an overwhelm-ing vitality because we were so struck with wonder for existence. Thus, in order to re-spond to the world with the pure wonder that Chesterton sug-gests, we must return to our childhood per-spective of the world.

This echoes the numer-ous passages in Scripture where Jesus urges us to be like children. The book of Matthew reports one instance when, “calling to him a child, [Jesus] put him in the midst of them and said, ‘Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.’”18 Thus, Chesterton characterizes us as people suffering from a sort of amnesia in which we have forgotten our wonder for the world around us. To put it into definite-

ly Christian terms, we have lost the eyes to see God in the world (to, as St. Ignatius put it, “find God in all things”) and appreciate the beauty of his cre-ation. Additionally, Chesterton suggests that we “forget that

we have forgotten” and that “all that we call spirit and art and ecstasy only means that for one awful moment we remember that we forget.”19

“These tales say that apples were golden only to refresh

the forgotten moment when we found that they were green. They make rivers run with wine only to make us remember, for one wild

moment, that they run with water.”

St. George, by Raphael


This is where the power of fairy tales truly lies: they help us to remember what we have forgotten. All the wonder and joy evoked by fairy tales, Chesterton sug-gests, is a reflection of the existential wonder that we have lost. He writes, “This proves that even nursery tales only echo an almost prenatal leap of interest and amazement. These tales say that apples were golden only to refresh the forgotten moment when we found that they were green. They make rivers run with wine

only to make us remember, for one wild moment, that they run with water.”20 This wonder eventually leads to humility and gratitude, for when we grasp the possibil-ity of the world being radically different than it is, we realize how special our world really is. Humility and gratitude in turn lead to praise for someone to whom we are grateful, that is, God. According to Chesterton, this wonder, the natural wonder rediscovered through fairy tales, “has a positive element of praise” to it.21 The world, existence, cannot be described as anything other than a profound and awe-inspiring surprise, for it need not necessarily be the way it is.

Furthermore, the world is not just arbitrary. It truly is, as Genesis tells us, good. Fairy tales remind us how wondrous our world is and how lucky we are to have

A refusal to trust in something beyond ourselves is not the sign of rationality but of irrationality.

it. Trying to describe the feelings associated with his joyful wonder, Chesterton says the following:

Thus I have said that stories of magic alone can express my sense that life is not only a pleasure but a kind of eccentric privilege… And the strongest emotion was that life was as precious as it was puzzling. It was an ecstasy because it was an adventure; it was an adventure be-cause it was an opportunity. The goodness of

the fairy tale was not affected by the fact that there might be more drag-ons than princesses; it was good to be in a fairy tale. The test of all happi-ness is gratitude; and I felt grateful, though I hardly knew to whom.22

Fairy tales give us more than just a momentary reflec-tion of our innate wonder for existence. They give us the strength to persevere in the face of the suffering in the world and the humility to appreciate the love of God. Gratitude is intimately connected with wonder, and gratitude is not possible without someone to be grateful towards.

In addition to suggesting that fairy tales rekindle our wonder for the world, Chesterton claims that they also have much to offer us with regard to answering the question of why we should submit to the will of a God whom we cannot really understand and whose com-mands may not always make sense to us. He points out that in fairy tales, “all the wild and whirling things that are let loose depend upon one thing that is for-bidden.”23 The prosperity of the world rests on some seemingly random law, a command that seems to be entirely unrelated to the world’s happiness. If anyone in the fairy world violates this law, terrible tragedies and disruptions fall upon them and their entire world. For example, “an apple is eaten, and the hope of God is gone.”24

And so Chesterton explains that, “The true citizen of fairyland is obeying something that he does not understand at all. In the fairy tale an incomprehen-sible happiness rests upon an incomprehensible condi-tion.”25 Yet, this trust, this uncertainty, is tolerable in fairy tales, just as it should be tolerable in our world. It does not have to make sense to us. We ought not to not put trust in something just because it is mysterious and inexplicable. A refusal to trust in something beyond ourselves is not the sign of rationality but of irratio-nality. The wondrous, magical arbitrariness of

the world demands that we have faith in some-thing beyond us. As Chesterton puts it,

“Estates are sometimes held by foolish terms, Illustration from “The Greek Princess,” by John D. Batten


Chris Hauser ‘14 is from Barrington, Illinois. He is undecided on a major.

the breaking of a stick or the payment of a pepper-corn: I was willing to hold the huge estate of earth and heaven by any such feudal fantasy. It could not well be wilder than the fact that I was allowed to hold it at all.”26

Thus Chesterton suggests that fairy tales invite us to rediscover a deep sense of humility and to experience a profound wonder for the world, a wonder which must necessarily lead us to a profound sense of gratitude and praise. Ultimately then, as in Chesterton’s own case, fairy tales recall to us our existential humility, wonder, and gratitude, and can thereby lead us to God.

1 Richard L. Purtill, Lord of the Elves and Eldils: Fantasy and Philosophy in C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien (Ignatius Press: San Fransisco, 2006) 205. 2 See “J. R. R. Tolkien and the Significance of the Fairy Story” by Andrew Schuman in the Spring 2008 issue of the Apologia for more information.3 G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (Moody Publishers: Chicago, 2009) 77.4 Ibid. 78.5 Ibid.6 Ibid.7 Ibid. 78-79.

8 Ibid. 9 David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (Charleston, SC: Forgotten Books, 2008) 46.10 Ibid. 11 Chesterton 79.12 The Unmoved Mover or First Cause, according to Thomas Aquinas. See “A Proof for the Existence of God” by Peter Blair in the Winter 2011 issue of the Apologia.13 Chesterton 80-81.14 Ibid. 81.15 Ibid. 82.16 Ibid.17 Ibid.18 Matthew 18: 2-6. See also Mark 10: 13-16 and Luke 18: 15-17.19 Chesterton 83.20 Ibid. 21 Ibid.22 Ibid. 84.23 Ibid.24 Ibid. 86.25 Ibid. 85.26 Ibid. 88.

The Flying Carpet, by Viktor Vasnetsov


At times throughout history, a lack of theological or philosophical understand-ing has made otherwise faithful Christians

an easy target for sensationalist teachings. Caught up in the emotional fervor of fideism, these individuals have sometimes associated themselves with apocalyptic movements heralding the imminent return of Christ. Such movements, collectively labeled millenarianism, are based on the belief that one is living in the End Times. In addition to announcing the second coming of Christ, Christian millenarianism is often specifi-cally related to theological ideas like the rapture and premillennialism, or the thousand-year reign of Christ on earth. Though complex and var-ied, these crusades have enough in common to be grouped in the same category, one that unfortunately is becoming associated with mainstream Christianity. Today, the stock character of the “street corner evangelist” predicting the end of the world populates innumerable television shows and movies. Such depictions may be entertaining, but they are not at all representative of Christian orthodoxy. Unbridled apocalypticism not only violates scripture and tradition, but also promotes a false conception of how Christians should interact with the world.

One poignant example of millenarianism is the so-called Great Disappointment of 1844. In that year, a group of Christians led by the preacher William Miller

eagerly awaited the second coming of the Messiah. The expected date of Christ’s return, calculated by a numerological interpretation of the Bible, was set for October 22nd of that year.1 When the day came and went, however, followers of Miller were not sure what to believe. Hiram Edson, a Millerite and even-tual founding member of the Seventh Day Adventists,2 described the morning of October 23: “Our fondest hopes and expectations were blasted, and such a spirit of weeping came over us as I never experienced before. It seemed that the loss of all earthly friends could have been no comparison… Has the Bible proved a failure?

Is there no God, no heaven, no golden city, no para-dise?”3 Some rejected the movement altogether, but the vast majority of Miller’s loyal community insisted that there had to have been some minor mistake.

Unfortunately, Miller was not the exception; escha-tological and apocalyptic conjecture has long existed in the margins of Christian thought. Quoting histo-rian Norman Cohn, scholar Daniel Wojcik notes that, “The importance of the apocalyptic tradition should not be underestimated; even though official doctrine no longer had any place for it, it existed in the obscure

Scripture warns against false prophets who claim to predict the exact day and

time of Christ’s return.

by Robert Smith

Authentic Christian Eschatology

Theof

the

worldend


underworld of popular religion.”4 In the past, these ideas were often limited to the fringes, but today, their influence is growing in some mainstream American denominations. Wojcik writes, “Premillennial dispen-sationalism, a form of evangelicalism that emphasizes apocalyptic prophecy, is espoused by the majority of televangelists, including Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Jack Van Impe, and Oral Roberts.”5

Though not premillennialists, “Brother” Harold Camping and his associates at Family Radio are a clear example of the weakness of modern day apocalypti-cism. Like many others before him, Camping sub-scribes to a vague numerological method of Biblical interpretation.6 It was this method that he used in his book 1994?, which predicted the end of the world on the sixth of September of that year. Camping’s book contained the startling assertion that, “When September 6, 1994, arrives, no one else can become saved. The end has come.”7 Faced with the undeniable error of his prediction when the time came, however, Camping followed Miller and Edson’s example and simply changed the date. He currently claims that, “We indeed can be certain that the rapture will occur on May 21, 2011, and the final day of the history of the world is October 21, 2011.”8

Camping’s views remain popular on the fringes of Christian thought. EBible Fellowship, a nonprofit organization with no official connection to Family

Radio, has recently attempted to spread Camping’s message through an international billboard campaign stretching from across the world. In a written response to questions posed for this article, a representative of the organization stated,

There is no doubt, whatsoever, that the rap-ture on May 21, 2011 will happen, because the Bible assures us that it will. Neither EBible Fellowship nor Family Radio would ever en-tertain doubt in this area, because it would be going against Scripture, and what God has shown us to be true. There are no back up or contingency plans, because we do not need any.9

The motives behind these kinds of pronouncements are varied. For those like Camping, who have no set salary and therefore no obvious financial motives,10 one might conclude that they sincerely believe what they preach. Ironically, Christians are warned about such pronouncements by the same book that millenar-ians turn to for proof of their claims, that is, the Bible. In the Gospel of Luke, Christ says, “See that you not be deceived, for many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am he,’ and, ‘The time has come.’ Do not follow them! When you hear of wars and insurrections, do not be terrified; for such things must happen first, but it will not immediately be the end.”11 And again, in the Gospel of Matthew, “But of that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone… So too, you also must be prepared, for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come.”12 Again and again, Scripture warns against false prophets who claim to predict the exact day and time of Christ’s return. Christ clearly states that no one knows the time of the apocalypse and even seems to condemn those who claim they do as deceivers. There could not be a more direct Scriptural condemnation of the kind of thinking that characterizes these apocalyp-tic movements.

In addition to going against such passages in Scripture, these kinds of predictions undermine two central Christian principles, principles that have been consistently and universally upheld by the Christian church in every age. First, millenarianism ignores the idea that life in this world does indeed matter. Christian doctrine has always been very clear; by serv-ing God, we in effect serve humanity. In Matthew 25, Jesus states, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”13 Jesus himself commands us to work for the good of this world, for by serving those around us, we are serving him. This is perhaps why social justice is an integral element of Christian faith,14 as the philan-thropy of Christians is the direct byproduct of Christ’s commandments. As apologist C.S. Lewis wrote in his

The Fifth and Sixth Trumpets, Ottheinrich Bible


essay “First and Second Things,” “You can’t get second things by putting them first; you can get second things only by putting first things first.”15 By primarily aim-ing to love God and others, Christians achieve a sec-ond goal, that of bettering the world. But rather than inspiring believers to do good for others, fear-inducing millenarian rhetoric can actually hinder people from going about their daily routines. Individuals may plan their lives around a single event, some selling their homes and everything they own with the assumption that they will not need their belongings after a cer-tain date. The Bible indicates that we are called to live morally, as if Christ were coming today. That does not mean, however, that Christians should obsess over his imminent return at the expense of serving God by hav-ing a positive impact during life on earth.

Second, millenarianism often ignores the principle of Scriptural hermeneutics that proposes that Scripture needs to be taken allegorically as well as literally.16 The common millenarian method of assigning quantita-tive meaning to chronologies or symbolic numbers in Revelation seems to go against this guideline for Scriptural interpretation. As Saint Augustine wrote in his treatise On Christian Doctrine,

We must beware of taking a figurative ex-pression literally. For the saying of the apostle applies in this case too: ‘The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.’ For when what is said figuratively is taken as if it were said literally, it is understood in a carnal man-ner. And nothing is more fittingly called the death of the soul than when that in it which raises it above the brutes, the intel-ligence namely, is put in subjection to the flesh by a blind adherence to the letter.17

Augustine here warns that trying to under-stand Biblical text in a solely literal fashion is actually a form of “spiritual death.” The Biblical interpretations of the leaders of apoc-alyptic movements violate this principle be-cause they take certain numerical descriptions in the Bible to be strictly literal. For example, central to Camping’s calculations about the 2011 apocalypse is the Biblical text: “But, be-loved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.”18 Using the traditional principle of Scriptural interpre-tation that Augustine expresses, one would conclude that this statement is probably figu-rative; “one thousand” is a relatively arbitrary number picked to indicate the eternity and timelessness of God. Camping, however, uses

this quote to prove that the seven “days” mentioned in the Genesis creation account were therefore each one thousand years long, and he makes the seven thousand years of creation central to his calculations.19 This ex-ample illustrates the tendency of these movements to rely upon literal interpretations of passages of the Bible that Christian scholars throughout the centuries have seen as being non-literal.

In addition, millenarianism sometimes goes against the notion, held by many orthodox Christians, in-cluding those of the Catholic tradition, that Scripture should be read in light of tradition and the orthodox beliefs of the Church, the universal body that Saint Paul called “the pillar and foundation of truth.”20 Camping denies this fact, arguing that the church age has ended, and that personal study of the Bible can take the place of communal worship.21 Such think-ing opens up the door for interpretations that are not disciplined by the traditional understandings of the wider Christian community. It neglects the organiza-tional aspect of Christianity that promotes orthodoxy in teaching and seeks to uphold Christ’s wish “that they may be one.”22 As the Catechism of the Catholic Church puts it, “The task of giving an authentic inter-pretation of the Word of God, whether in its written

Ascension, Cathedral of the Assumption of the Mother of God, St. Cyril-Belozersk Monastery


form or in the form of Tradition, has been entrust-ed to the living teaching office of the Church alone. Its authority in this matter is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ.”23 Of course, different Christian de-nominations have different ways of understanding the teaching office and the authority of tradition, but most agree that Scripture is most properly read in the con-text of the wisdom of other Christians, both contem-porary and ancient, rather than merely in the light of a single reader’s understanding.

Overall, millenarianism damages rather than sup-ports the Christian faith. Those without the neces-sary theological background to effectively evaluate the claims of millenarian leaders can be lured into think-ing that men like Camping purport scripturally and theologically sound ideas. The failed predictions of demagogues thus spread scandal, leading many to be-come disillusioned with what they took to be certain predictions of the Christian faith. Furthermore, mil-lenarian movements lead Christians to neglect their duties and responsibilities in this world to build up the Kingdom of God, giving confirmation to a false un-derstanding of Christian otherworldliness. It would be rash to thoroughly discount all apocalyptic discussion, for orthodox Christianity does hold that the world will

eventually end at some definite time. However, it is also appropriate for Christians to rec-ognize Scripture’s warning against absolute pro-nouncements, to be humble enough to know that we do not have per-fect knowledge of everything, and to try to live our lives on Earth ac-cording to Christ’s teachings.

1 Frederic J. Baumgartner, Longing for the End: A History of Millennialism in Western Civilization (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999) 167.2 Ibid. 175.3 Ibid. 169.

Robert Smith ‘14 is from North Wales, Pennsylvania. His major is currently undecided.

The Four Horsemen of The Apocalypse, by Albrecht Dürer

4 Daniel Wojcik, The End of The World As We Know It: Faith, Fatalism, and Apocalypse in America (New York: New York University Press, 1997) 15.5 Ibid. 7.6 Harold Camping denies this, but one only needs to examine his work to verify it. See Camping’s 1994? (New York: Vantage, 1992). 7 Ibid. 533. 8 Harold Camping, We Are Almost There! (Oakland, CA: Family Stations, 2008) 63. <http://www.familyradio.com /PDFS/waat.pdf>.9 The EBible Fellowship Response Team, e-mail message to author, January 20, 2011.10 Family Stations, Inc., “Who or What is Family Radio,” Family Radio Worldwide, <http://www.familyradio.com/ graphical/literature/fr_who.html>.11 Luke 21:8-9.12 Matthew 24:36, 44.13 Matthew 25: 40. See Matthew 25: 34-40 for the full context of the passage.14 In 2010, six of the top ten largest American charities were explicitly Christian. William P. Barrett, “America’s Biggest Charities,” 17 November 2010, Forbes.com, 22 March 2011 <http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2010/ 1206/investment-guide-charity-americares-united-way-ymca-biggest-charities.html>.15 C.S. Lewis, “First and Second Things,” God in the Dock (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1970) 280.16 Mary Elizabeth Sperry, “Bible is for Catholics,” United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 22 March 2011, <http://www.usccb.org/mr/mediatalk/bible_catholics.shtml>.17 Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, vol. 2, trans. James Shaw (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1887) 559. 18 2 Peter 3:8.19 Camping, We Are Almost There!, 56.20 1 Timothy 3:15.21 Harold Camping, The End of the Church Age ... and After (Oakland, CA: Family Stations, 2003), <http://www.philvaz.com/apologetics/CampingEndOfTheChurchAge.pdf>.22 John 17:21.23 Catechism of the Catholic Church (New York: Catholic Book Publishing Company, 1994) 27.


Richard Rorty is famous for his notion of religion or religious reasons as “conversa-tion stoppers.”1 Suppose that an individual,

during a discussion about some policy issue such as provision of universal healthcare or the permissibil-ity of abortion or assisted suicide, argues that certain policies ought to be enacted because they are required by God’s will. What are the other participants in the discussion to say if they do not share similar religious convictions? Rorty’s answer seems to be that the other participants can say nothing, and it is for precisely this reason that religion ought to be confined to the private sphere. We can only make progress in discourse, Rorty argues, by examining shared premises that would allow us to continue the argument.2

Rorty’s characterization of religious belief is not new. Religious believers have long been told that since their belief is personal, since they believe what they believe about God not for objective reasons but due to a subjective choice, that religious convictions can play no role in making public decisions. The only rea-sons that count in the public arena are those that do not reflect any specific ideology or religious affiliation. Reasons, in this sense, must be “neutral.” The secular response to the invocation of God is often, “I under-stand that your personal beliefs about God imply that [position x] is wrong. But those are just your beliefs. And since I do not accept your beliefs about God and

there is no way to prove them, we must rely on objec-tive facts, on reasons that do not come merely from faith.” My objective in this article is not to address the mischaracterization of religious faith or to give exam-ples of religious thought that has, far from stopping the conversation, enriched it. Instead, for the sake of argument, I would like to grant the premise that the only reasons that can count as such in public discourse are those that do not reflect any specific faith com-mitments. The question then becomes, are there any reasons that meet this standard of neutrality?

A logical starting point for trying to find such reasons would be to monitor cur-rent political discourse. And indeed, people offer reasons for various positions all the time. A policy might pro-

mote equality, preserve freedom, ensure tolerance, etc. But, as Steven Smith points out in The Disenchantment of Secular Discourse, these abstract notions are just that, abstract.3 Equality, freedom, tolerance, all must be filled in with substantive criteria if they are to do any evaluative work. For example, notions of equality do not imply that we must treat all things equally, but rather that we must treat those things which are rel-evantly similar equally. It is these substantive criteria, the identification of what things are relevantly similar in a given case, that make arguments which invoke equality persuasive or not.4 To borrow an example from Smith, students taking multiple choice tests may

There is no clear way to determine just how

valuable freedom is relative to other political goods.

Mythof Pure Objectivity

by Lee Farnsworth

The


well argue that considerations of equality prevent their teacher from penalizing an incorrect answer because we should treat all answers the same.5 In this case, we feel that the appeal to equality falls flat because the answers are not relevantly similar, one is correct and the other is incorrect. The point is, though, that we do not know whether considerations of equality ap-ply until after we have filled in the notion with some substantive criteria.

Ideals of tolerance and freedom are similarly empty. As Smith writes,

Moreover, an expansion of one person’s freedom of-ten means a contraction of other people’s freedom: if we recognize and protect the freedom of the pornographer to market pornographic materials, we simultaneously reduce the freedom of people to live and raise their children in a pornography-free community. Hence, appeals to “freedom” can easily be—and often are—question-begging.6

Thus we see that arguments which invoke freedom are, like those which invoke equality, only persuasive to

the degree that one favors the substantive criteria un-derlying the concept. Freedom can be invoked on be-half of virtually any cause: freedom to discipline one’s children as one sees fit, freedom to abuse addictive drugs, freedom to steal cars, etc. The appeal will only be persuasive, however, to the degree that one favors

the cause being defended. Most often, these appeals to freedom are shot down, with opponents invoking another ubiquitous but empty principle, harm.

“Of course you do not have the freedom to disci-pline your child in any way you want,” these oppo-nents argue. “Certain discipline causes harm to the child and thus limits your freedom.” Appeals to harm as a limit on freedom are prevalent and intuitively ap-pealing. But filling in harm with a substantive defi-nition is tricky. The most straightforward way would be a sort of subjectivist approach to harm: you are harmed if it is the case that you sincerely believe you were harmed, if one or more of your preferences or desires are frustrated. However, we run into problems with this rationale almost immediately. Suppose I have a desire to restore and drive old automobiles, but I live in a town that is extremely environmentally conscious and so has forbidden cars that fail to meet certain gas mileage standards. How does the harm that results from the frustration of my desire to drive a certain car compare to the harm that would result from the frus-

tration of my community members’ de-sire to prevent harm to the environment? From a purely subjectivist perspective, both groups suffer harm. If we still want to appeal to harm to adjudicate these mat-ters, then we must have some system of deeming certain harms more legitimate or more important than others. But what authority could we claim to establish such a standard without fundamentally beg-ging the question?

Even if we grant that freedom is a val-ue, there is no clear way to determine just how valuable freedom is relative to other political goods. No way, at least, that does not smuggle in a presupposed and unsub-stantiated hierarchy of values. We might feel that freedom is valuable in itself but can be restricted to promote some other, more valuable, state of affairs. The free-dom to act as one pleases is valuable, but not as valuable as living in a society with-out murder or theft, and so we restrict individuals’ freedom to promote these higher goods. But here, too, it is unclear what standard we use to rank political goods and where such a standard could

come from (other than God) and not be, in a certain sense, arbitrary.

At this point, I think, we have reached the central problem of secular ethics. If notions such as harm, or freedom, or equality are to do any evaluative work, they must be filled in with substantive criteria. In other

Photograph by Jen Freise ‘12


words, evaluative judgment assumes an evaluator, a person or group of people or document that can pro-vide the substantive criteria that give “secular” values meaning. In light of this problem, there are those who favor a subjectivist approach. Such a person might say, “We do not need God or anyone else to tell us what is good or right. We can determine those notions for ourselves.” But in essence, this approach just replaces one God with many (about six billion, actually). Each individual is his or her own God, with the ability to determine for himself or herself what the relevant sub-stantive criteria are in fleshing out normative concepts.

Two things are im-portant to note about this approach. The first is that it fails the secu-lar test of what kinds of reasons can be included in public discourse. Secularists want to argue that only those reasons that did not reflect any specific faith commitments could be included in our discussions. At this point, the re-ligious believer can reply that no such reasons exist. All substantive normative claims rest on assumed first principles about what is good and what constitutes “the good life.” Whether these first principles are re-ceived from God or determined by individuals, they are certainly not objective empirical facts. There is no scientific experiment from which we can derive values. As Stanley Fish puts it,

While secular discourse, in the form of statisti-cal analyses, controlled experiments and rational decision-trees, can yield banks of data that can then be subdivided and refined in more ways

than we can count, it cannot tell us what that data means or what to do with it. No mat-ter how much information you pile up and how sophisticated are the analytical operations you perform, you will never get one millime-ter closer to the moment when you can move from the piled-up information to some lesson or imperative it points to; for it doesn’t point anywhere; it just sits there, inert and empty.7

Appeals to reasons derived from any kind of values would no longer be allowed, as these reasons come from faith. While the values asserted may not reflect

Christian faith com-mitments (or the faith commitments of any other organized reli-gion), person X’s values do reflect X-ian a priori faith, a reliance on X’s

assumed first principles.The second important consequence of a subjectivist

theory of the good is that it is wholly unworkable in a world in which people interact and inevitably disagree. Suppose we return to the example of environmental standards. If my asserted values permit more harm to the environment than yours allow, what are we to do? Why should I listen to you? After all, I determine what is good for me and you determine what is good for you, and if our visions of “the good life” are neces-sarily contradictory, then what recourse do we have? We might appeal to some other authority, but again, it is not clear why I (or you) should listen to him or her. Various solutions to this problem have been pro-moted, from relying on the wisdom of the majority

The only way the majority has power is if we cede power to it, and… there is no reason for me

to do so.



to invoking acceptance of a social contract. But there is no natural connection between a majority of the citizenry affirming a proposition and that proposition’s validity. The only way the majority has power is if we cede power to it, and again, there is no reason for me to do so. After all, I am the master of my own values, and the only way for me to lose the power to deter-mine those values is to abdicate it.

But this decision to abdicate and the resulting vali-dation of any non-supernatural substantive criteria is necessarily arbitrary. There is no standard, other than one we receive or baldly assert, by which we can judge competing visions of “the good life.” Purely secular discourse has no choice but to be question-begging. A discussion relying on secular reasons cannot even get off the ground unless the parties involve happen to

Lee Farnsworth ‘12 is from Fort Wayne, Indiana. He is a Government and Philosophy double major.

agree on the same, ultimately arbitrary, notion of “the good life.” Conversation stopper indeed.

1 Richard Rorty, “Religion as Conversation-Stopper,” Common Knowledge 3 (1994): 1.2 Ibid.3 Steven D. Smith, The Disenchantment of Secular Discourse (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010) 25.4 Ibid. 29-31.5 Ibid. 29-30.6 Ibid. 27-28.7 Stanley Fish, “Are There Secular Reasons,” The New York Times Opinionator, 5 Mar. 2011, 22 Feb. 2010 <http:// opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/22/are-there-secular-reasons/>.

Justice, by Luca Giorda


I. TO BE OR NOT TO BE“Why,” asks Leibniz, “is there something rather

than nothing?”1 This question is not unique to Leibniz; Baron Rees of Ludlow, an English astrophysicist and current president of the Royal Society, echoes Leibniz’ words: “The preeminent mystery is why anything exists at all.”2 According to Rees (who is not a theist), “Such questions lie beyond science… they are the province of philosophers and theologians.”3 With the blistering pace of scientific progress over the past two centuries, however, many have posited (often aggressively) that Leibniz’ question has no answer. Victor Stenger, a physicist and prominent atheist at the University of Hawaii, expresses this view bluntly: “The universe is an accident.”4 It has no explanation. It is impossible to ignore the implications of such an assertion: Either so-called “Why?” questions are (as Stenger proposes) un-answerable, or their answers will be of the non-scientif-ic variety. This essay primarily concerns itself with the non-scientific answers to these questions, specifically with Gottfried Leibniz’ argument from contingency.

II. THE PRINCIPLE OF SUFFICIENT REASONWhat is contingency? Richard Gale and Alexander

Pruss distinguish between contingent entities and nec-essary entities in the following manner: “A contingent proposition (or being) is one that possibly, in the broad-ly conceptual or logical sense, is true (or existent) and possibly is false (or nonexistent). A being is a neces-sary being (or has necessary existence) if and only if it is necessary that it exists.”5 For example, “A bachelor cannot be married” is a necessary truth because it is, by definition, impossible for a bachelor to be mar-ried, but “George Washington was the first president of the United States of America” is a contingent truth because someone else hypothetically could have been the first president.6

According to Leibniz, contingent truths (and, by extension, contingent things) must have explanations:

“[W]e can find no true or existent fact, no true asser-tion, without there being a sufficient reason why it is thus and not otherwise…”7 This idea is known as the principle of sufficient reason, or causal doctrine, and it forms the linchpin of Leibniz’ argument from contin-gency. In Leibniz’ mind, reality is a “series of contin-gent things”8—things which do exist but could have not existed—and this “series” of contingencies must be rooted in a necessary (non-contingent) cause, the source of all things, an ens causa sui:

Now, all of this detail implies previous or more particular contingents, each of which again stands in need of similar analysis to be accounted for, so that nothing is gained by such analysis. The sufficient or ultimate reason must therefore exist outside the succession of series of contin-gent particulars, infinite though this series be. Consequently, the ultimate reason of all things must subsist in a necessary substance, in which all particular changes may exist only virtually as in its source: this substance is what we call God.9

Without some necessary being that “[bears] the rea-son for its existence within itself,”10 there cannot be a complete explanation for the existence of contingent beings; and if a set of contingent beings cannot be ex-haustively explained, they cannot exist. But we know that contingent beings exist, and consequently a neces-sary being must exist.

Because Leibniz distinguishes between “reasons” (explanations for truths) and “causes” (events which

Certum Est Quia Possibileby John Joseph Porter

an apologetic for God’s existence

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, by Johann Friedrich Wentzel


precede and lead to other events), his argument from contingency does not hinge upon a non-eternal uni-verse. Instead, Leibniz’ argument depends only on the aforementioned principle of sufficient reason and the contingency of the universe.

That the universe is contingent seems relatively un-controversial; the fact that modal logicians speak of possible worlds at all implies that the actual world is not the only possible world, which itself implies that the actual world is not necessary.11 Furthermore, few things are as arbitrary—as contingent—as the initial conditions and physical “laws” of our bizarre universe. Consider fundamental physical constants. John Baez estimates that there currently exist twenty-six arbi-trary fundamental constants in the Standard Model of physics.12 For example, the fine-structure constant α, which characterizes the strength of the electromag-netic interaction, is approximately 7.297 x 10-3. Is there justification for the belief that this constant must be what it is, rather than, say, 8.297 x 10-3? If not, then the fine-structure constant is contingent. It is not 7.297 x 10-3 of necessity; it could be any real number. If this is the case, then the fine-structure constant, and thus the entire Standard Model of physics, is contingent and not necessary.

But what if our current understanding of physics is incomplete?13 Perhaps there exists some Theory of Everything which would explain even the allegedly “fundamental constants.” Even if there were such a theory, it would still be as contingent as the fine-struc-ture constant, because other Theories of Everything would be just as plausible as the actual one.

Furthermore, none of this would even begin to ex-plain why the initial conditions of the universe are ex-actly what they are. Why did the universe begin with x amount of initial matter and energy instead of y? A Theory of Everything could hypothetically tell us how exactly a universe of x matter and energy would behave; it still would not be able to explain why the universe began with that exact amount of matter and energy.14 Put another way, the exact structure and composition of the singularity which began our universe preceded the exis-tence of time itself; as something which was true, so to speak, “before” time, it cannot be contingent upon physical laws which govern how reality operates within time.

III. QUO ERRAT DEMONSTRATOR?15 Leibniz’ invocation of a contingent universe is not,

however, the main point of dispute with his critics; according to Alexander Pruss, “in the Cosmological Argument [Leibniz’ argument from contingency] it is the invocation of the PSR [principle of sufficient

reason] that gives the most difficulty to the contem-porary philosophical atheist.”16 Interestingly, the principle of sufficient reason was not widely (if ever) contested until recent centuries (as recently as 1847, Schopenhauer listed it as one his laws of thought).17 However, contemporary analytic philosophy has in-creasingly called it into question. Pruss believes that the theistic defender of the principle of sufficient rea-son has two alternatives: “[T]he theist would do well either to try to justify the PSR or to make-do with a weakened version of the PSR.” He either must argue for the principle of sufficient reason or modify it in some fashion.

IV. A NEW ARGUMENTIn this essay, I will not attempt to defend the prin-

ciple of sufficient reason as articulated by Leibniz (though I believe it is ultimately defensible);18 instead, I will delve into two arguments based on modified versions of the principle of sufficient reason. One, the “new cosmological argument,”19 is predicated on a weak principle of sufficient reason (W-PSR); the other is predicated on a restricted principle of sufficient rea-son (RPSR).

Pruss and Gale’s “new cosmological argument,” based on the weak principle of sufficient reason, posits a being who, “although not proved to be the absolutely perfect God of the great Medieval theists… [is] just powerful and intelligent enough to be the supernatural designer-creator of the exceedingly complex and won-drous cosmos that in fact confronts us.”20 Their argu-ment is “intended to appeal to an atheist who is willing to accept that even if there were a brute fact, i.e., a true but unexplained contingent proposition, the brute fact would be something that could have an explanation.”21

They begin by defining possible worlds. According to Gale and Pruss, “A possible world is a maximal, com-possible conjunction of abstract propositions. It is maximal in that, for every proposition p, either p is a conjunct in this conjunction or its negation, not-p, is, and it is compossible in that it is conceptually or

logically possible that all of the conjuncts be true to-gether.”22 In other words, a possible world is a coherent collection of propositions in which any proposition p is either affirmed or denied. Each possible world has a Big Conjunctive Fact. “The Big Conjunctive Fact for a given world comprises all the propositions that would be true if this world were to be actualized.”23 It is the set of all propositions that would be true in a certain world.

Necessary propositions… are true in all possible worlds, and thus every world’s Big Conjunctive Fact will include them.


Necessary propositions (such as “2 + 2 = 4”), by definition, are true in all possible worlds, and thus ev-ery world’s Big Conjunctive Fact will include them.24 Because all possible Big Conjunctive Facts share the same necessary propositions, necessary proposi-tions “will not serve to individuate or distinguish be-tween worlds.”25 The set of necessary propositions in each possible world is identical. Therefore, each Big Conjunctive Fact is uniquely individuated by all the contingent (i.e., non-necessary) propositions con-tained within it, or by its Big Conjunctive Contingent Fact. In the same manner, “a possible world is unique-ly individuated by its Big Conjunctive Contingent Fact.”26 Simply put, two possible worlds cannot share identical Big Conjunctive Contingent Facts (and, by extension, Big Conjunctive Facts).

For example, “2 + 2 = 4” (a necessary proposition) will be true in every possible world. But “George Washington was the first president of the United States” (a contingent proposition) will not be true in every world; in some possible worlds, Thomas Jefferson (or Clint Eastwood or Paris Hilton) will be the first president of the United States. Thus, every possible world is unique because every possible world has a unique set of propositions.

After this exposition, Pruss and Gale present the weak principle of sufficient reason: “[F]or any proposi-tion, p, if p is true, then it is possible that there exist a proposition, q, such that q explains p.”27 (Compare this to the strong principle of sufficient reason, which states that, for any true proposition p, there necessarily – not possibly – exists a proposition q that explains p.) Everything possibly has a reason.

In “terms of a possible worlds semantics,” the weak principle of sufficient reason can be restated: “For any proposition, p, and any world, w, if p is in w’s Big Conjunctive Fact, then there is some possible world, w1, and proposition, q, such that w1’s Big Conjunctive Fact contains p and q and the proposition that q ex-plains p.”28 To simplify, for any proposition p, there must exist at least one possible world which contains p, another proposition q, and the affirmed proposition that q explains p.

Let A be the set of all true contingent propositions, or the actual world’s Big Conjunctive Contingent Fact. So “George Washington was the first president of the United States” is in A, but “Thomas Jefferson was the first president of the United States” is not. Let B be the Big Conjunctive Contingent Fact of the possible world w1 that contains A and its explanation.

By the weak principle of sufficient reason, we know that A possibly has an explanation; however, we do not know (yet) that A does, in fact, have an explanation. To demonstrate that A has an actual explanation, we

must prove that the possible world w1 (which contains A and its explanation) is identical to the actual world in which we live.

Remember that every possible world has a unique Big Conjunctive Contingent Fact; each will have a unique set of responses to propositions such as “George Washington was the first president.” Given this prin-ciple, we will have established that w1, the world which

contains A’s explanation, is identical to our world if we can show that B, w1’s Big Conjunctive Contingent Fact, is identical to A, our world’s Big Conjunctive Contingent Fact. We can prove this in the following way:

Recall that every possible world is maximal. Then A, the actual world’s Big Conjunctive Contingent Fact, contains either q or not-q, but not both. B, w1’s Big Conjunctive Contingent Fact, must by definition con-tain within it A. In addition, we have chosen w1 such that B contains q. Now assuming that A contains not-q results in a contradiction. If A contains not-q, then B must also contain not-q because B contains A. But we have supposed that B contains q, so B does not con-tain not-q. So A must contain q. Therefore, there exists a proposition q that explains A, the Big Conjunctive Contingent Fact of the actual world. There exists an explanation for every true contingent proposition.

“What kind of proposition is q?… q is either a per-sonal explanation or q is a scientific explanation,”29 because a scientific explanation would simply be an impersonal explanation. Gale and Pruss claim that “it cannot be the case that q gives a scientific explanation of p.”30 Therefore, “q is a personal explanation.”31

“Since q is a personal explanation, q will explain p in terms of the intentional action of either a contin-gent or a necessary being.”32 It is intuitive (and demon-strable) that q must report the intentional action of a necessary being, not a contingent being:

[I]f it did [report the intentional action of a contingent being], there would be in the Big Conjunctive Contingent Fact a propo-sition reporting the existence of the contin-gent being in question. But q itself is not able to explain why the contingent being it refers to exists, since a contingent being’s inten-tional action evidently must presuppose, and hence cannot explain, that being’s existence.33

“[F]or any proposition, p, if p is true, then it is

possible that there exists a proposition, q, such

that q explains p.”


A contingent creator would require further explana-tion, making q insufficient.

Therefore, “q reports the intentional action of a necessary being.”34 In other words, there exists a be-ing who has intentionally actualized our universe. This being, though not necessarily synonymous with the theistic God, is free, intelligent, and powerful enough to have created it.

There exist a few objections to this argument, which Gale and Pruss address, but the main objection is that the weak principle of sufficient reason begs the ques-tion. Gale and Pruss are highly critical of this objection:

Our atheistic opponent might have been will-ing initially to grant us this premise, but after it is seen what results from this acceptance it no longer will be granted. The opponent might charge W-PSR [the weak principle of sufficient reason] with begging the question. When con-fronted with a valid deductive argument for the existence of God, the atheist can always charge one of its premises with being question-begging. The problem with this facile move is that it lays the foundation for charging ev-ery valid deductive argument with begging the question in one or more of its premises.35

The weak principle of sufficient reason posits only that explanations are possible. Thus, to reject the weak principle of sufficient reason is to assert dogmatically that it is necessary that certain contingent propositions do not have explanations. As G.K. Chesterton said, “Atheism is indeed the most daring of dogmas… for it is the assertion of a universal negative.”36

V. THE RESTRICTED PRINCIPLE OF SUFFICIENT REASON

Of course, there are other objections both to the weak and to the strong principle of sufficient reason. Pruss considers the

interlocutor who finds the PSR [principle of suf-ficient reason] very plausible, but who is unable

to consent to the PSR because she thinks there are serious counterexamples to it. For instance, she might think that random quantum mechanical phenomena cannot be explained. Or she might be a libertarian who thinks that although one might explain why Smith died by saying that Jones freely chose to kill Smith, one cannot in turn give an explanation for why Jones freely chose to kill Smith: the availability of an ex-planation would undermine the freedom… Such an interlocutor would accept the PSR ei-ther if the apparent counterexamples could be taken care of or if there were some way of re-stricting the PSR in a way… that would move the apparent counterexamples beyond its scope.

The position I am imagining is a quite rea-sonable one if there are counterexamples to the PSR. The PSR does very much appeal to us. The ordinary person has a very strong intu-ition that it is true. In the case of a principle like this, when faced with counterexamples that one cannot refute one would like to re-strict the principle in some plausible way to get around the counterexamples. It would be irrational to dismiss the principle entirely.37

He then proceeds to restrict the principle of sufficient reason, using the libertarian objection (essentially, that free will is incompatible with the principle of sufficient reason) as an example:

If we accept this line of reasoning, then we have a very natural way to restrict the PSR:… If p is a true proposition and possibly p has an ex-planation, then p actually has an explanation… [T]he RPSR [restricted PSR] immediately takes care of all the counterexamples that present propositions that cannot have an explanation.38

From this principle, a simple argument can be formu-lated for the existence of a necessary causal being:

Projections, by Tray Drumhann


Let p be the claim that there exists at least one contingent being. Then, possibly p has an expla-nation. Hence, by the RPSR, p in fact has an explanation. Since the agency of a contingent be-ing cannot, without vicious circularity, explain why there exists at least one contingent, it fol-lows that the explanation of p invokes the agen-cy of a necessary being which is a first cause.39

This line of reasoning is similar to Pruss’ previous arguments.

But it is not the only argument that can be made with the restricted principle of sufficient reason. Pruss asks us to imagine our world’s Big Contingent Existential Proposition (BCEP), which he refers to as p. This BCEP, or p, is the collection of all true proposi-

tions of the form “r exists”: “Bill Clinton exists and Napoleon exists and Bucephalus exists…” for each ac-tual contingent being.40

Imagine a world, Ghost-World, containing all the contingent beings that exist in our world (e.g., Bill Clinton, Napoleon, etc.). Imagine that Ghost-World also contains “an infinite number of contingent and powerful ghosts,” such that one unique ghost created each contingent being that exists in our world: “Ghost g1 created Bill Clinton and ghost g2 created Napoleon and ghost g3 created Bucephalus…” for each being.41 If Ghost-World possibly exists, then p (our world’s BCEP) is possibly explained. Because p is possibly ex-plained and is true, it is actually explained.

That the ghosts from Ghost-World possibly explain p does not mean that they actually explain it: “[I]f there is a possible explanation, there is an actual explanation, but nothing is said about whether the two are the same or not, as indeed nothing should be said, since a given

proposition might have one explanation in one world and another in another.”42 The ghosts prove that p has an explanation, but that does not mean that they are p’s explanation.

From here, Pruss continues much like he did before:

Now, the explanation of the existence of a con-crete contingent being involves the causal efficacy of another concrete being. Thus, the explana-tion of p must involve the causal efficacy of at least one concrete being. Moreover, the beings whose causal efficacy is invoked in the expla-nation of p cannot all be contingent. For then these beings by explaining p end up explain-ing their own existence. However, neither the individual existence of a contingent being is

self-explanatory nor is the existence of a bunch of contingent beings self-explanatory. Thus, the explanation of p must involve the causal efficacy of at least one necessary being, a first cause.43

We have seen this before: Because contingent beings cannot explain themselves, there must be a necessary being whose existence explains p.

1 G.W. Leibniz, “Principes de la nature et de la grâce fondés en raison” (1714).2 The Sunday Times, December 24, 2006.3 Ibid.4 V.J. Stenger, Not by Design: The Origin of the Universe (1988).5 R.M. Gale and A.R. Pruss, “A New Cosmological Argument” (1999).6 Put in the terms of modal logic, this means that, in the set of all possible worlds, there exist worlds other than our own in which George Washington was not



the first president of the United States of America. Of course, what it means to invoke “all possible worlds” (assuming that more than one world could possibly exist) is not always clearly defined.7 La monadologie (1714). Interestingly, Leibniz adds that “most of the time these reasons cannot be known to us.”8 “Principes de la nature et de la grâce fondés en raison” (1714).9 La monadologie (1714).10 “Principes de la nature et de la grâce fondés en raison” (1714).11 I should note that some philosophers believe that all other “possible worlds” exist as much as our “actual world” does. This view is known as modal realism.12 J.C. Baez, “How Many Fundamental Constants Are There?” (2002)13 Given the fact that scientific thought is consistently subject to revision (or complete replacement), this claim is not too far-fetched.14 This is, admittedly, a sort of argument from ignorance, in the sense that I cannot prove that an unknown Theory of Everything would be constrained in this way. But at the very least, a Theory of Everything that necessitates a certain amount of matter and energy would be completely unlike any other scientific theory ever proposed by anyone.15 “Where does the one who proves err?”16 A.R. Pruss, “A Restricted Principle of Sufficient Reason and the Cosmological Argument” (2003).17 A. Schopenhauer, On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason (1847).18 For a more thorough (but by no means) exhaustive discussion of arguments for and against the principle of sufficient reason, I recommend Pruss’ “Ex Nihilo Nihil Fit: Arguments New and Old for the Principle of Sufficient Reason” (2002), which I have quoted from here. Pruss himself recommends Thomas D. Sullivan’s “On the Alleged Causeless Beginning of the Universe: a Reply to Quentin Smith,” from his Dialogue (1994). Suffice it to say that I can hardly conceive of a logical system that does not include the principle of sufficient reason.19 R.M. Gale and A.R. Pruss, “A New Cosmological Argument” (1999).20 Ibid.21 A.R. Pruss, “A Restricted Principle of Sufficient Reason and the Cosmological Argument” (2003).22 Ibid.23 R.M. Gale and A.R. Pruss, “A New Cosmological Argument” (1999).24 Ibid.25 Ibid.26 Ibid.

27 Ibid.28 Ibid.29 Ibid. According to Gale and Pruss, “The only sort of explanations that we can conceive of are personal and scientific explanations, in which a personal explanation explains why some proposition is true in terms of the intentional action of an agent and a scientific one in terms of some conjunction of law-like propositions, be they deterministic or only statistical, and one that reports a state of affairs at some time. There might be types of explanation that we cannot conceive of; but, in philosophy we ultimately must go with what we can make intelligible to ourselves after we have made our best effort.”30 Ibid. Gale and Pruss provide the following rationale: “The reason is that q must contain some law-like proposition, as well as a proposition reporting a state of affairs at some time, but such propositions seem to be contingent, especially the latter. And, since they are contingent they are members of the Big Conjunctive Contingent Fact. But then they would have to explain themselves, since q must explain each and every contingent proposition in this Fact, as well as the Conjunction as a whole. But law-like propositions cannot explain themselves.”31 Ibid.32 Ibid.33 Ibid.34 Ibid.35 Ibid.36 G.K. Chesterton, Twelve Types (1902).37 A.R. Pruss, “A Restricted Principle of Sufficient Reason and the Cosmological Argument” (2003).38 Ibid.39 Ibid.40 Ibid.41 Ibid.42 Ibid.43 Ibid.

This is part of a longer article published by The Harvard Ichthus, Volume 4, Issue 2, Winter 2008. You can access the complete article on their website at www.harvardichthus.org.

John Joseph Porter ‘12 is a Philosophy major at Harvard University and is an editor of Harvard’s Christian journal The Ichthus


In today’s public imagination, Christianity is often associated with the term “fundamental-ism.” Fundamentalism is thought to be some-

how intrinsic to Christianity and representative of it. The famous atheist journalist Christopher Hitchens so closely identifies Christianity with fundamentalism that he has even said, “Fundamentalist simply means those who think that the Bible is a serious book and should be taken seriously,”1 unfairly equating funda-mentalist Bible literalists with orthodox Christians who take the Bible seriously but apply multiple her-meneutical frameworks when interpreting it. When this phenomenon is more closely examined, it be-comes clear that the basic attitudes, assumptions, and principles of fundamentalism are not representative of historical Christianity, but in fact are products of modernity. Though modern secular intellectuals—es-pecially those with a deep interest in evolution—often seen themselves at war with fundamentalism, they are in fact the intellectual siblings of fundamentalists.

In order to see the relationship between modern secularism and fundamentalism, it is first necessary to determine what is meant by calling Christianity fun-damentalist. The term “fundamentalism” has a long and complex history that makes it difficult to define, but today it is almost exclusively given a derogatory connotation. Generally speaking, the term is used to label Christianity as aggressively irrational, even

by Peter Blair

and the

Christian Tradition

EpistemicPluralism

Origen studying the Bible


anti-rational, an attitude which is said to be mani-fested in a contempt for science and philosophy, in a strictly literal reading of the Bible, and in suspicion towards anything that contradicts strict dogmatism. This word has come to have a privileged place in the self-narrative of secular intellectuals working in the Enlightenment tradition. As theologian David Bentley Hart puts it, this story is “the modern ages’ grand narrative of itself: its story of the triumph of critical reason over irratio-nal faith, of progress of social morality toward greater justice and freedom, of the ‘tolerance’ of the secular state, and of the unquestioned ethical primacy of either individualism or collectivism (as the case may be).”2 In this historical narrative, fundamentalism is seen as the cultural leftover of religious superstition, a vestigial artifact that is gradually but surely being eliminated by the advance of modern knowledge.

In the context of today’s heated debate over evo-lution, the term has taken on an even more precise meaning. This definition is espoused, for example, by atheist and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, who distinguishes fundamentalists by their inability to change their minds based on evidence:

Fundamentalists know they are right because they have read the truth in a holy book and they know, in advance, that nothing will budge them from their belief… The book is true, and if the evidence seems to contradict it, it is the evidence that must be thrown out, not the book. By con-trast, what I, as a scientist, believe (for example, evolution) I believe not because of reading a holy book but because I have studied the evidence… Books about evolution are believed not because they are holy. They are believed because they pres-ent overwhelming quantities of mutually but-tressed evidence. In principle, any reader can go and check that evidence. When a science book is wrong, somebody eventually discovers the mis-take and it is corrected in subsequent books. That conspicuously doesn’t happen with holy books.3

This characterization of fundamentalism is more ac-curate than Hitchens’s, because it makes the obvi-ous and essential distinction that fundamentalism is a unique movement within Christianity, and not Christianity itself; the two terms are over-lapping, but not co-terminus.

Dawkins identifies many characteristics of funda-mentalism above, but one of these is central to a prop-er definition of the movement: adherence to a strictly literal interpretation of the Bible over and against the

findings of reason and science. This definition is basi-cally in agreement with Hitchens’s, as well, for they both locate fundamentalism as an approach to the Bible. This approach, however, is not native to the Christian tradition. Though popular today, Biblical literalism—the belief that the literal meaning of the Bible ought to be the primary or only meaning attend-

ed to by Christians—was en-tirely absent from the Christian tradition until relatively re-cently. Though Christians have always been aware of and inter-ested in the literal sense of the Bible, they were far more inter-ested in other modes of Biblical interpretation.

Starting in the second and third centuries after Christ when the Biblical canon was beginning to be assembled and solidified, Christians believed that one could understand the Bible figuratively or allegori-cally as well as literally. Drawing on older Jewish and Hellenistic traditions, the famous Christian theolo-gian Origen taught that the literal, visible words of the Bible, especially those surrounding historical events, conveyed a non-literal, invisible, spiritual truth that transcended the historical details of any particular Biblical story.4 Origen and his fellow Biblical scholars even held that certain stories in the Bible had only an allegorical meaning and were not to be interpreted lit-erally or historically at all. For instance, every Biblical scholar until the modern period, starting with Origen himself, held that the Old Testament book entitled The Song of Songs had no important literal meaning and was to be understood solely in an allegorical sense.5 For Origen, there were certain passages or sayings in the Bible which necessarily could not be understood literally, because to understand them literally was to attribute absurdity or evil to God.6

In the Middle Ages, this dual sense of Scripture—literal and allegorical—was hardened into a four-fold exegetical system. Scripture was understood by all Biblical scholars to have four senses: literal, moral, alle-gorical, and mystical.7 This four-fold hermeneutic does not deny the truth of the Bible, but rather it assumes that the kind of truth being conveyed varies through-out the Bible according to the genre or mode of expres-sion being used in different passages. The literal sense was the plain meaning of the words, accepting them as explicitly expressing some truth, usually historical truth. The moral sense was when some ethical lesson was drawn from a Biblical story, similar to how one might draw a true ethical lesson about honesty from the story about George Washington and the cherry tree, even if that story was not historically accurate.

Christians believed that one could understand the Bible figuratively or allegorically as well as

literally.


The allegorical sense usually worked by taking people or events in Biblical stories as symbols of other people or events (called “types”). This kind of interpretation was especially popular with the Old Testament, where people or events were often seen to foreshadow the truths of the New Testament. Finally, there was the mystical sense, in which the reader of the Bible learns some hidden, ineffable, mystical truth contained in the Bible.

The importance of these four senses was hierarchical according to the order above, with the literal or historical meaning being understood to be the least important, while the mystical sense was thought to be the most impor-tant.8 Examples of these kinds of interpretation per-vade historical Christian documents. For example, it is traditional in Christian Biblical commentary to read the water that flowed out of Christ’s side after he was pierced by the Roman soldier as symbolic of baptism.9

When Christian scholars read about some historical detail in the Bible, such as water flowing from Christ’s side, they did not usually attend to the actual event but tried to discover some spiritual truth which that event represented. Of course, commentators disagreed about the nature of allegorical truths, and certain interpreta-

tions became replaced by others over time. Dawkins is therefore incorrect to state that the understanding of holy books is never corrected.

So essential is allegorical interpretation to the Christian tradition that the famous Victorian theo-logian Blessed John Henry Newman identifies non-

literal Biblical exegesis as a vital mark of true Christianity. In his work An Essay on Development of Christian Doctrine, Newman sets out to dis-cover those beliefs and practices that have always characterized the Christian church in order to find which particular denomination of his day best represented historical Christianity. He concludes that the interpretation of Scripture in its al-legorical sense (which he calls mysti-cal) in preference to its literal one was such a common practice in the histo-ry of the church that no purely literal school of interpretation could claim to truly represent Christianity.10 After noting that many of the great-est historical heretics, such as the founders of the Nestorian heresy, also adopted a strict literalism, Newman writes, “It may be almost laid down as an historical fact, that the mysti-cal interpretation and orthodoxy will stand or fall together.”11 Literalism, from a historical perspective, is not only alien to true Christianity, but is actually the most common approach to the Bible among those condemned by the Christian church as intellectu-ally unchristian.

The writings of St. Augustine of Hippo, one of most important theologians in Christian history, make clear the implications of the

Literalism… is not only alien to true Christianity, but is actually the most common approach to the Bible among those condemned by the Christian church as intellectually unchristian.

First page of Genesis from the Wenceslas Illuminated Bible


allegorical interpreta-tion. Augustine himself was repulsed by the lan-guage and stories found in the Bible, especially in the Old Testament. The Bible, read literally, was a major obstacle to his conversion.12 He only found himself able to embrace the Bible when he encountered the mas-terful allegorical interpre-tations of St. Ambrose, bishop of Milan.13 He himself puts this method to use in his Confessions, applying allegory to what has become perhaps the most contested Biblical passage of our own time: the creation account in Genesis. Like Christians today, Augustine was confronted by scientific findings that made certain passages in Genesis seem to be implau-sible when taken on a strictly literal level, though for very different reasons than are often confronted today. Since he lived before the advent of modernity, how-ever, Augustine had no difficulty in using non-literal interpretation to harmonize these passages with sci-ence. On the question of whether God made the world in seven literal days, a hotly debated question today, Augustine “teaches… that the length of the six days is not determined by the length of our week-days.”14

Augustine was able to harmonize science and Scripture because he worked within what might be called the “two-book” tradition. In this tradi-tion, dominant throughout much of the history of Christianity, God was thought to have “written” two books: the Book of Scripture and the Book of Nature (also referred to as the Book of Reason or Science). Since God wrote both, the truths of each could never conflict with the other, and thus any apparent conflict resulted either from a misunderstanding of reason or a misunderstanding of the Bible. As Thomas Aquinas wrote, “All truth, whoever speaks it, is from the Holy Spirit.”15 Therefore, confident in the truths of reason as well as of faith, Augustine had no qualms about using allegory to adjust his interpretation of Scripture when reason demanded it.

Biblical literalism, then, was totally absent from historical, orthodox Christianity, and Christians were willing to read the Bible in light of scientific discov-eries. This fact demonstrates that fundamentalism is not a phenomenon of the past, but a creation of the

present. Though writers like Dawkins and Hitchens view themselves as the opponents of fundamentalism, they possess an ideology that is essentially similar to fundamentalism. Their ideology could variously be called rationalism, empiricism, or scientism. The basic principles of it are evident in Dawkins’s description of fundamentalism. He asserts that material evidence and the science that is based on it are the only sure way of gaining knowledge, and that all non-evidential claims to knowledge, especially those found in holy books, must be discounted. This belief that we can only access reality through the evidential methodologies of science is the fundamental tenet of scientism. In Dawkins’s view, scientism is locked in an intellectual battle with religious fundamentalism, and all those who love rea-son should hope for scientism’s victory. In fact, how-ever, Dawkins and others who share his view entirely misunderstand the phenomenon of fundamentalism. Fundamentalism is not, pace Dawkins, an enemy of modern scientism, but rather its brother, as both ide-ologies are the product of modernity. In fact, since rationalism preceded fundamentalism, and fundamen-talism was in large part a reaction to rationalism, one could even argue that rationalism in a sense engen-dered religious fundamentalism.

This close relationship between religious funda-mentalism and modern rationalism is evident in the life and thought of the Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza. Though he lived before the Enlightenment proper, Spinoza’s approach to the Bible and to theol-ogy had an enormous influence on Enlightenment thinkers. Spinoza was an opponent of orthodoxy; he was a deist of sorts and rejected most traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs. He was also a proponent of

St. Augustine, by Phillipe de Champaigne


rationalism and believed in reforming religion to make it more “rational” according to his own understand-ing of what it means to be rational. Spinoza’s ideas are praised by many atheists today, including Christopher Hitchens and Rebecca Goldstein, and he is thus ex-actly the sort of person whom one would expect to oppose fundamentalism. In fact, however, ignoring the tradition of allegorical Biblical interpretation that pre-dated him, Spinoza insisted,

But we should depart as little as possible from the literal sense… If we do not find it signifying any-thing else in normal linguistic usage, that is how we must interpret the expression, however much it may conflict with reason… For, as we have already shown, we are not permitted to adjust meaning of Scripture to the dictates of our reason or our preconceived opinions; all explanations of the Bible must be sought from the Bible alone.16

It is Spinoza and the Enlightenment thinkers who fol-lowed him, rather than orthodox religious thinkers, who broke from the Christian tradition in arguing that the Bible must be read literally and that one cannot interpret the Bible in light of reason or science.

These thinkers and philosophers saw a demo-tion of the importance of the Bible as necessary to the rational religious reform they were trying to effect, and they believed an attack on the Bible by “reason” was the best and easiest way to ac-complish this project. Therefore they argued that the Bible must be understood strictly literally, a tactic that made the Bible much easier to attack. This process was still continuing centuries later. The twentieth-century Christian writer Hilaire Belloc notes about H.G. Wells, a rational-ist whose ideas were formed by Enlightenment philosophy and who was a staunch opponent of Christianity,

Mr. H.G. Wells has been at great pains to discuss the Fall of Man, in which considerable catas-trophe he puts no faith. But when he discusses the Fall of Man he always has in mind the eat-ing of an apple at a particular place at a particu-lar time. When he hears that there is no Catholic doctrine defining the exact place or the exact time—nor even the name of the apple, he shrewd-ly suspects that we are shirking the main issue. He thinks in terms of the [fundamentalist]—with whom he disagrees… not understanding that there has been any other kind of believer.17

Spinoza, Wells, and their intellectual allies either as-sume or argue for literalism in their attacks on tradi-tional Christianity. They, in a sense, pushed funda-mentalism onto Christianity. One sees this effort con-tinuing even with Christopher Hitchens. He argues

that all Christians—for all Christians take the Bible seriously—are fundamentalists; that is to say, he wants to make all Christians into fundamentalists.

As Belloc points out, rationalists and fundamen-talists think the same way. This structural similarity is undergirded by a shared principle. Spinoza argues here that when the Bible contradicts reason, we must not change our understanding of the Bible to fit the truths of reason. This position is the fundamental prin-ciple shared by both rationalists and fundamentalists. The only distinction between these two ideologies is how the reader responds to the dilemma raised by this principle. If we cannot read the Bible in light of rea-son, then we must either abandon reason or abandon the Bible; rationalists do the latter, fundamentalists the former. It is because they both share this “either/or” principle, but approach it differently, that ratio-nalism and fundamentalism are at the same time both enemies and intellectual siblings. In assenting to this principle, both rationalism and fundamentalism mark themselves as the related offspring of modernity and set themselves up in direct opposition to the histori-cal Christian tradition of reading the Bible holistically

that is outlined above. Their shared stance on literalism is, in any case, something that arose with modernity, rather than something which modernity is gradually eliminating.

Moreover, there is a further similarity between these two ideologies. Both assert the exclusive su-premacy of their own way of knowing, or epistemol-ogy. Fundamentalists uphold a literalistic Biblical epis-temology, rationalists a scientistic one. Both of these ideologies, therefore, stand opposed to the epistemo-logical pluralism of the historical Christian tradition. This tradition was hostile to fundamentalism, but not to the Bible, to scientism and rationalism, but not to

Creation, by Michelangelo


science and reason. Science, reason, and the Bible were all thought to be valid ways of accessing truth. In con-clusion, fundamentalism and rationalism are related because, in opposition this epistemological pluralism, they have both agreed to adopt the principle that there must only be one central way of knowing, and they each insist that they have sole access to that way.

1 Christopher Hitchens and Marilyn Sewell, “The Hitchens Transcript,” January 2010, Portland Monthly Magazine, 3 April 2011 <http://www.portlandmonthlymag.com/arts-and-entertainment/category/books-and-talks/articles/christopher-hitchens/1/>.2 David Bentley Hart, Atheist Delusions (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009) 4.3 Richard Dawkins, “Why I am Hostile Toward Religion,” Belief.net, 4 April 2011 <http://www.beliefnet.com/ Faiths/Secular-Philosophies/Why-I-Am-Hostile-Toward-Religion.aspx>.4 Origen, De Principiis, trans. Frederick Crombie (London: Hamilton and Co, 1869) 294. See also Luke Timothy Johnson’s article “Taking the Bible Seriously” in the Winter 2011 edition of the Apologia. 5 Ann Matter, The Voice of my Beloved: The Song of Songs in Western Medieval Christianity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990) 4.6 Origen 293.7 Henri de Lubac, Medieval Exegesis: The Four Senses of Scripture, vol. 1 (Michigan: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1998) 1.8 Ibid. 4.

9 John Henry Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (London: W. Blanchard and Sons, 1845) 323.10 Ibid 320.11 Ibid 324.12 Augustine, Confessions (New York: Penguin, 1961) 105.13 Ibid. 108.14 William G.T. Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, vol. 1 (Edinburgh: T.& T. Clark, 1889) 476.15 Jacques Maritain, An Introduction to Philosophy (New York: Sheed and Ward, 2005) 97.16 Baruch Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise, trans. Michael Silverthorne and Jonathan Israel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007) 10.17 Hilaire Belloc, Survivals and New Arrivals (Charlotte, NC: Tan Books and Publishers, 1993) 68-9.

Peter Blair ‘12 is from Newton Square, Pennsylvania. He is a Government and Classics double major.

Hilaire Belloc H.G. Wells


G.K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy has long been considered a classic work of Christian apologetics, and this is a fitting categori-

zation, though not for the usual reasons. Readers of Chesterton’s book will not find tight philosophical arguments for the existence of God, or a detailed pre-sentation of historical evidence for the Christian faith. They will face neither an assertive tone aimed solely at persuasion nor the serious voice of a scholarly tome. Instead, they will find, in Chesterton’s delightful and whimsical prose, a fleshed-out account of Chesterton’s own “elephantine adventures in pursuit of the obvi-ous,”1 the process by which he claims to have “tried to found a heresy… [and] discovered that it was or-thodoxy.”2 Orthodoxy takes a unique approach to pre-senting reasons for faith. In this largely personal piece, Chesterton examines the dominant thought paradigms of his time, exposes their clash with his intuitions, and explains how Christianity satisfies human instinct in a more robust way than secular philosophies.

To give a sample of the kind of argument the book makes against secular ideologies, I’ll briefly outline Orthodoxy’s criticism of materialism. He begins with a discussion of what characterizes a “madman,” suggesting that insanity lies not in bound-less imagination, but in an extreme sense of reason that runs amok in the confines of a person’s limited, ego-centric conception of the world. As Chesterton puts it, “the strongest and most unmistakable mark of madness is this combination between a logical completeness and a spiritual contraction.”3 Chesterton sees a paranoid

madman not as someone with too grand an imagina-tion, but rather as someone who seeks to rationally reconcile strange occurrences in his or her life, even when doing so results in an improbable theory of mali-cious conspiracy. Chesterton compares the materialist with the overly logical madman, writing, “His cosmos may be complete in every rivet and cogwheel, but still his cosmos is smaller than our world.”4 To Chesterton, materialists and madmen exhibit the same ability to provide an airtight explanation of everything that sur-rounds them while failing to recognize the limitations of their own powers of observation. Materialism has the appearance of logical soundness, but it fails to pro-vide a comprehensive explanation of the world, since, according to Chesterton, intuition tells us that more

exists than what is physical. This type of argument exemplifies how Chesterton combats the dominant worldviews of his time; he draws a comparison between each ideology and some other aspect of life, re-lying upon a person’s intuition to make the connection and affirm his argument.

This same technique is applied in defense of or-thodox Christianity. One example of this occurs in the chapter titled “The Paradoxes of Christianity.” Chesterton begins with a hunch: “The real trouble with this world of ours is not that it is an unreason-able world, nor that it is a reasonable one. The com-monest kind of trouble is that it is nearly reasonable, but not quite.”5 As an example of this, Chesterton points to the symmetry of the human body, com-menting that it would be “reasonable” for an alien to

“The real trouble with this world of ours is not that it

is an unreasonable world, nor that it is a

reasonable one.”

by Emily DeBaun

Orthodoxy

Book Reviews


guess that humans have two hearts, given that we are superficially symmetrical and have two sides to many internal organs, including the brain. Chesterton com-pares this eerie “near-reasonableness” to the doctrines of Christianity, saying, “Not merely that it deduces logical truths, but that when it becomes illogical, it has found, so to speak, an illogical truth.”6 He claims that the “complication of our modern world” demands a “complex creed,”7 and that the complexity of such a creed is a testament to its truth. It seems to “fit” the world it describes, in the same way that, “a key and a lock are both complex. And if a key fits a lock, you

know it is the right key.”8 As a result of this, Chesterton explains that a person’s belief in Christianity, and really in anything, is not due to a few simple, clear argu-ments, but rather due to a multitude of small evidences from everyday life—such a multitude that Chesterton claims, “everything proves it.”9

If a reader does not profess to have the same “gut instincts” about the world as Chesterton, she may have trouble accepting his ideas. Even if a reader does sympathize with Chesterton’s intuitions, she may still find his method suspect, refusing to accept his train of thought as a solid argument, since it does not appear

to rely on such “concrete” evidence as established fact or pure reason. Chesterton himself acknowledges such potential rejections of his work at the very beginning of the book. He writes, “Mere light sophistry is the thing that I happen to despise the most of all things, and it is perhaps a wholesome fact that this is the thing of which I am generally accused. I know nothing so contemptible as… a mere ingenious [defense] of the indefensible.”10 Chesterton admits that his reasons for belief may not satisfy the standards of the purely ra-tionally minded, and that his belief system (and any other, really) cannot be fully and completely defended to others. His purpose in writing is not persuasive, but rather communicative. He wishes to provide readers with his reasons for belief; his unconventional appeal to intuition is merely a reflection of his own journey to faith. At the same time, his approach is subtly con-sistent with Orthodoxy’s repeated entreaty that readers reconsider pure logic’s ability to explain the world and become comfortable in an attitude of wonder and as-tonishment towards life.

For readers whose instincts about life match Chesterton’s, Orthodoxy can provide a deep case for and affirmation of orthodox Christian beliefs. For readers interested in a semi-autobiographical book, it clearly chronicles Chesterton’s journey to faith. For readers seeking airtight, logical arguments for Christianity, Orthodoxy may disappoint. However, it is, as described, a very unusual kind of apologetics piece, and there is no telling when a reader may find himself deeply iden-tifying with Chesterton’s musings.

1 G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (New York: Doubleday, 2001) 4.2 Ibid. 5.3 Ibid. 14.4 Ibid.17.5 Ibid. 81.6 Ibid. 82.7 Ibid. 83.8 Ibid. 83.9 Ibid. 84.10 Ibid. 3.

Emily DeBaun ‘12 is from Sandown, New Hampshire. She is a Physics major and an English minor.


Nobody can ever accuse Sam Harris of giving religion a break. Well known as one of the “Four Horsemen of Atheism”

alongside Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens, Harris has been relentless over the years in his criticisms of religious faith as irrational and socially harmful. In his previous works, The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation, Harris has likened religious belief to a mental illness and implied that humanity will take a major step forward once it stops affording tolerance to such intolerable beliefs.

In his newest book, though, Harris tries to shift his focus, at least slightly. The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values is exactly what its title implies, an attempt by Harris to explain how the scientific method can serve as the supreme arbiter of moral questions.

According to Harris, the impression most people have of a divide between scientific questions and moral ones is simply a longstanding historical error, one per-petuated by figures like David Hume, who argued that what “is” cannot easily be used to say what “ought” to be, and Stephen Jay Gould, who believed that sci-ence and religion have “non-overlapping magisteria.” Harris claims that this divide is simply not sensible and holds that with sufficient information all moral questions may be answered in a manner not unlike a physics problem.

To Harris, moral worldviews should be framed in neuroscientific terms. Our moral attitudes are, at their roots, attempts to produce certain mental states that we like while avoiding those we dislike. Therefore, Harris’s thesis is that morality itself should be treated as a branch of scientific inquiry no different from fields like astronomy. By this, Harris means to say that we can apply the scientific method towards moral ques-tions in order to provide objective answers. Just as we might study natural phenomena to find the density of zinc, we may use the same standards to decide whether something like the death penalty is morally justified.

To back this concept up, Harris argues as a first principle that “the only thing we can reasonably value” is “maximizing the well-being of conscious creatures.” Indeed, he says this is already the universal value shared by all existing systems of morality both religious and secular, even if we do not realize it. Furthermore, Harris states that advances in neuroscience have given

us the ability to “measure” well-being within humans and thereby to decide which other things we ought to

The failure of The Moral Landscape…falls squarely on Harris’s inability or unwillingness to make the arguments that he simply has to make.

by Blake Neff

The Moral Landscape


value in order to achieve maximum well-being. In finding these values we can in turn determine what the correct answers are to moral questions.

Harris’s fundamental problem, though, is that he actually is not using science to determine human values at all. Instead, Harris actually describes how science can conceivably measure human values. If one were a hedonist, for instance, and held that pleasure is the world’s only intrinsic good, then it is conceivably possible that one could monitor ev-eryone’s brains and measure the precise amount of “pleasure” (say, in the form of dopamine) that vari-ous actions produce and use these measurements to make moral judgments.

Measuring values, though, is not the same thing as determining them. Unfortunately, Harris leaves his key concept of “well-being” woefully under-developed. Just what goes into well-being? Does truth matter, or is it acceptable for well-being to be based on illusions? Can well-being be “forced” on those who do not agree with the findings of Harris’s neuromoralists? Harris leaves questions like these unanswered, effectively reducing his principle of “maximum well-being” to a meaningless husk.

An even more fundamental problem is that Harris simply assumes that a utilitarian approach to well-being is the best one. Quite simply, there is no valid reason for him to assume this. While there is some merit to the argument that all people ultimately pursue their own conscious well-being, it is certainly not the case that all people exalt the utilitar-ian goal of the greatest good for the greatest number. Utilitarianism is one particular moral theory among many others, including other forms of consequential-ism, deontology, virtue ethics, and divine command theory. Harris provides no argument for how science could possibility mediate between these various moral philosophies. He simply asserts his own understanding of how to best seek out “well-being” without justifying it at all. Such a shortcut is simply inexcusable for a work that claims to lay out a bold moral vision.

Making matters worse, Harris acknowledges but does not even rebut the many objections to utilitarian-ism that have been raised over the centuries. For ex-ample, how should the level of well-being in two dis-tinct creatures be compared? Should cumulative well-being be prioritized, or should the average well-being of each creature? How can we actually know what the consequences of our actions will be? These are impor-tant questions that have to be addressed before creat-ing any coherent value system based on utilitarianism, but Harris mentions them only to brush them aside as unimportant.

If this book’s shortcomings were merely limitations imposed by its status as a popular work which cannot delve too much into the details, they would be more understandable. However, large swaths of the book (which is only 192 pages to begin with) are dedicated to the standard religion-bashing that has proven so lu-crative for Harris in the past. As such, the failure of The Moral Landscape to live up to its ambitious premise falls squarely on Harris’s inability or unwillingness to make the arguments that he simply has to make. The result is a barren landscape indeed.

Blake Neff ‘13 is from Sioux Falls, South Dakota. He is a History major.

The Nicene Creed

This prayer by professor of religion Lucius Waterman appears on a plaque hanging outside Parkhurst Hall.

O Lord God Almighty, well-spring of wisdom, master of power, guide of all growth, giver of all gain. We make our prayer to thee, this day, for Dartmouth College. Earnestly entreating thy favour for its people. For its work, and for all its life. Let thy hand be upon its officers of administration to make them strong and wise, and let thy word make known to them the hiding-place of power. Give to its teachers the gift of teaching, and make them to be men right-minded and high-hearted. Give to its students the spirit of vision, and fill them with a just ambition to be strong and well-furnished, and to have understanding of the times in which they live. Save the men of Dartmouth from the allurements of self-indulgence, from the assaults of evil foes, from pride of success, from false ambitions, from hardness, from shallowness, from laziness, from heedlessness, from carelessness of opportunity, and from ingratitude for sacrifices out of which their opportunity has grown. Make, we beseech thee, this society of scholars to be a fountain of true knowledge, a temple of sacred service, a fortress for the defense of things just and right, and fill the Dartmouth spirit with thy spirit, to make it a name and a praise that shall not fail, but stand before thee forever. We ask in the name in which alone is salvation, even through Jesus Christ our Lord, amen.

The Reverend Lucius Waterman, D.D.

We, the members of The Dartmouth Apologia, affirm that the Bible is inspired by God, that faith in Jesus

Christ is necessary for salvation, and that God has called us to live by the moral principles of the New

Testament. We also affirm the Nicene Creed, with the understanding that views may differ on baptism and

the meaning of the word “catholic.”

We [I] believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen.

We [I] believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father. Through him all things were made. For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven: by the power of the Holy Spirit he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and was made man. For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried. On the third day he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures; he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.

We [I] believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father [and the Son]. With the Father and the Son he is worshiped and glorified. He has spoken through the Prophets. We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church. We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.

A Prayer for Dartmouth


Photograph byKelsey Carter ‘12

apologia spring 2011

Documents