Human Rights and Justice in an Age of Terror

By Keith Pavlischek
Christianity Today

War is a dreadful thing, and I can respect an honest pacifist, although I think he is entirely mistaken. What I cannot understand is this sort of semi-pacifism you get nowadays which gives people the idea that though you have to fight, you ought to do it with a long face and as if you were ashamed of it. (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity)

When a religious scheme is shattered it is not merely the vices that are let loose. The vices are, indeed, let loose, and they wander and do damage. But the virtues are let loose also, and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage. The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they are isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful … .(G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy)
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In March 2007 a small group of evangelical academic theologians and activists released An Evangelical Declaration Against Torture: Protecting Human Rights in an Age of Terror, a document that was subsequently published in The Review of Faith and International Affairs, along with a commentary by David Gushee, the lead drafter. What follows is my own effort—as an evangelical, a political philosopher, and a recently retired intelligence officer in the United States Marine Corps with a long history of both scholarly and personal interest in these matters—to engage the issues they have raised. I hope that this response will give rise to further discussion and clarification of these vitally important matters, and help provide guidance for evangelicals who wish to speak coherently and responsibly on these and similar issues of public concern.
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This is no minor point between those of us who would defend the classic just war tradition against the pacifist and quasi-pacifist signatories to the Declaration. To illustrate my point that there is something profound at stake here, let me call attention to an illuminating passage from The Wine-Dark Sea, the sixteenth volume of Patrick O'Brian's masterful twenty-volume series of historical novels set in the Napoleonic period in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Captain Jack Aubrey, captain of the British ship Surprise, has taken captive the American privateer, Franklin. The sailing-master of the Franklin had been killed in the battle, but the owner of the ship, the Frenchman Jean Dutourd, survived. O'Brian's description is priceless:

Dutourd, a man of passionate enthusiasms, had like many others at the time fallen in love with the idea of a terrestrial Paradise to be founded in a perfect climate, where there should be perfect equality as well as justice, and plenty without excessive labour, trade, or the use of money, a true democracy, a more cheerful Sparta; and unlike most others he was rich enough to carry his theories into something like practice, acquiring this American-built privateer, manning her with prospective settlers and a certain number of seamen, most of the people being French Canadians or men from Louisiana, and sailing her to Moahu, an island well south of Hawaii, where with the help of a northern chief and his own powers of persuasion, he hoped to found his colony. (28)

Stephen Maturin, surgeon, natural philosopher, intelligence officer, and Captain Aubrey's closest friend, had met Dutourd before. Maturin, who holds decidedly more republican sympathies than his Tory captain, thought Dutourd, despite seeming to be benevolent enough, "to have been misled first by that mumping villain Rousseau and also by his passionate belief in his own system, based as it was on a hatred of poverty, war and injustice, but also on the assumption that men were naturally and equally good, needing only a firm, friendly hand to set them on the right path, the path to the realization of their full potentialities." (p. 32)

Upon the capture of his vessel, the prisoner Dutourd was brought to Captain Aubrey's quarters to formally consummate the surrender:

Doutourd's most recent sailing-master had been an exact, an orderly person as well as a tout skipper and an excellent seaman, and Doutourd handed over a complete set [of official papers] wrapped in sailcloth.
Jack looked through them with satisfaction; then frowned and looked though the parcels again. 'But where is your commission, or letter of marque?'
'I have no commission or letter of marque, sir,' replied Dutourd, shaking his head and smiling a bit. 'I am only a private citizen, not a naval officer. My soul purpose was to found a colony for the benefit of mankind.'
'No commission, either American of French?'
'No, no. It never occurred to me to solicit one. Is it looked upon as a necessary formality?'
'Very much so."
'I remember having received a letter from the Minister of Marine wishing me every happiness on my voyage; perhaps that would answer?'
'I am afraid not, sir. Your happiness has included the taking of several prizes, I collect?'
'Why, yes, sir. You will not think me impertinent if I observe that our countries, alas, are in a state of war.'
'So I understand. But wars are conducted according to certain forms. They are not wild riots in which anyone may join and seize whatever he can overpower; and I fear that if you can produce nothing better than the recollection of a letter wishing you every happiness you must be hanged as a pirate.'
'I am concerned to hear it … .'

Absent a commission or a letter of marque from a recognized member of the community of nations, the Franklin and the private citizen Dutourd were no more authorized to take "prizes" (attacking ships on the high seas) than were mere criminals (pirates) who did it for private gain. Indeed, they were in a moral sense worse than pirates seeking private gain, for they undermined the authority (in terms of the jus ad bellum the criteria of right authority) by which war could be waged. By doing so, the otherwise benevolent Dutourd was assaulting the laws and customs of war and undermining the just war tradition's insistence that "wars are conducted according to certain forms" and are not "wild riots" which anyone can join.

Captain Aubrey captures the proper Christian sensibilities in the matter in contrast to the rights-bearing, egalitarian, war-hating, poverty-hating Dutourd. Nobody familiar with O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin canon will mistake Jack Aubrey as a model of Christian piety. But he was formed in a Christian culture (in his case an Anglican one) that understood quite well that civilization, even in times of war, rests on certain forms and behaviors. That letter of marque distinguished what was owed to honorable combatants and what was not owed to proto-terrorists like Dutourd.

In thinking about how they should respond to moral challenges such as torture in an age of terror, or in an age of Islamic-style Dutourds gone mad, if you will, American evangelical academic theologians and activists must come to grips with the proper moral and political distinctions that Christians have struggled with throughout the ages. Just so, the framers of the Declaration might have reflected on the distinction that came to Captain Aubrey quite naturally, that whatever non-state terrorists are owed, they don't deserve the same "rights" as honorable warriors captured on the field of battle, and from there seek to explain just what is and is not owed to them. But those distinctions seem to have eluded them. (more)

Retaking Mars Hill

By Russell D. Moore
Touchstone Magazine

Offering one answer to this confusion, many contemporary Christians often speak of the need to “engage” popular culture. What they most often mean by this is that they seek to speak in a language people shaped by popular culture can understand or that they want to “redeem” popular culture for the glory of Christ.

In my world, the world of American Evangelicalism, at least two groups have clear ways to do this. One group wants to imitate pop culture but Christianize it. Another group wants to find ways in which that culture itself presents the gospel. Both want to use pop culture to reach the wider culture, and both find their justification in Paul’s talk on that first-century Athenian hilltop described in Acts 17.

And they are right to try: If Christians are going to speak to people, Christians as well as others, who have been deeply formed by popular culture (as we must) without losing our souls, we’re going to have to decipher how to relate Mars Hill to Rolling Stone.
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Adapting current cultural forms for use as Christians is not, in itself, a bad idea. In fact, in many ways it is unavoidable. If our pulpits are successful in persuading Christians that Jesus is to be the central focus of the believer’s life, we should not be surprised but joyful when young Christians gifted to be hip-hop artists rap about Jesus rather than about pimps and firearms.

Still, there is a danger in a kind of co-option of popular culture for Christian use that does not discern the limits of the evangelistic and apologetic potential of such a strategy. This is especially true when the impetus behind so much of it is not ecclesial or missionary but commercial.
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In this model, one seeks to know pop culture, not in order to imitate it, but first to enjoy it as an aspect of common grace, and second to share a common cultural dialect with unbelievers. You don’t fight a “culture war” with Hollywood, you seek to redeem Hollywood instead, by finding the aspects of contemporary music and film that are consonant with biblical truth. Christians are to highlight these commonalities, and downplay thedivergences.

Again, there is much that is commendable here. These Christians recognize that insights about God, man, and redemption cannot be found simply in the piety of believers. Even at the end of the Scripture story, at the New Jerusalem, the Apostle John tells us that “the glory and the honor of the nations” will be brought into the City, a glory that surely includes expressions of human culture—perhaps even popular culture. Moreover, these Evangelicals wish to avoid a “Christian ghetto” in which Christians are unable to speak the same basic cultural discourse as the people to whom they are called to bring Christ.

The pitfalls with this approach also include a commercial Christian industry that by its very nature, perhaps unintentionally, militates against wisdom, discernment, and balance. As with the “Off Brand” market, money is involved here, too. It’s just subtler. The younger, cooler wave of Evangelicals would never fall for a Christian version of the Backstreet Boys, much less the crass evangelistic showmanship of the last generation’s Petra or Carman musical acts. Instead they consume anti-consumerist Evangelical acts, such as Derek Webb.
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Christians seeking to “engage popular culture” point to the Apostle Paul’s speech before the Areopagus, in which he cited the lyrics of pagan poets and the architecture of pagan temples. Christians, they argue, should follow Paul and use popular culture to “build a bridge” with its consumers, finding in popular works a “common ground” through which we can attract their interest and later communicate the gospel.
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But is this what Paul is doing on Mars Hill? The answer is no . The Apostle might say, “God forbid.” Often those pointing to Acts 17 wish to begin with Paul’s address itself, which starts in verse 22. But we must look first at how Paul found himself on the Hill in the first place. He was summoned there because of a controversy he evoked among the populace “because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection” (Acts 17:18).

Paul did not start speaking in Athens with a “common ground” idea of a generic god, and then reason along to Jesus. He started with the gospel of Jesus of Nazareth, proclaiming among the Gentile philosophers exactly what he had proclaimed among the Jewish rabbis: that God had raised him from the dead. Where Paul starts is also where he ends: with the guarantee that God will bring about judgment found in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead (17:31).
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He points to the altar of the unknown god to demonstrate that the Athenians themselves acknowledge ignorance. How can you pontificate about the nature of the divine, he is asking, when even you tell me that there’s something important out there you admit you don’t know?

Paul does not find in the poets some form of “redemptive analogy” he can use among a people who don’t acknowledge the authority of Scripture. He uses them to demonstrate that Athenian philosophy and culture are self-contradictory.

How can you claim that these temples house the gods, he asks, when even your own culture-mavens say the divine can’t be housed in edifices made with hands? The poets lead him not to finding “common ground” with his hearers but to calling them to repentance on the basis of a scripturally revealed storyline of humanity (17:26–27,30–31).
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Paul’s discourse on the Areopagus is strikingly different from many Christians’ attempts to be relevant to popular culture. He points to the Athenians’ culture not so much to bring out what they know as what they deny.

Paul systematically unhinges key facets of Hellenic thought: the multiplicity of gods, their representation by images, their dwelling in temples, Greek racial superiority, the distance of the gods from humanity. He boldly challenges the Greeks’ tribal pride in being “sprung from the soil of their native Attica” (in the words of the New Testament scholar F. F. Bruce) by pointing to the common ancestry of humanity from “one man,” with God determining the “bounds of their habitation” and “removing all imagined justification for the belief that Greeks were innately superior to barbarians.”

Moreover, the very nature of Paul’s message was an affront to the ideological underpinnings of Athenian culture. He constantly returns to the resurrection of the body. Nothing was more alien to Epicurean and Stoic thought, both of which sought to combat the fear of death by separating the prison of the body that dies from the spirit that survives. How different is Paul’s view of death and resurrection from that of, for instance, the Stoic philosopher-king Marcus Aurelius, who in his Meditations compared death with birth from the womb, “when your soul will emerge from its compartment,” the body.
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Contemporary attempts at engaging popular culture are partly right. We cannot ignore it. It affects life in twenty-first-century America far more than high culture, far more, even, than the middle-brow culture of Broadway and PBS.
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The Bible speaks of culture being “redeemed” eschatologically; cultural artifacts seem to be in view as the “glory of the nations” brought into the New Jerusalem in the new creation (Rev. 21:24–26). We shouldn’t demand personal regeneration for artists before we can enjoy their work—whether that artist is Mozart or George Jones.

Christians should ask why culture resonates with the Superman mythology of a hero from beyond the stars who rescues humanity from itself. We should ask why country-music singer Toby Keith sings about the unity-in-diversity he longs for in his song “I Love This Bar.”

We should ask why, as the City Journal’s Harry Stein points out, trashy talk shows such as The Jerry Springer Show always end with a “moral lesson for the day,” despite the fact that the rest of the broadcast has dismissed the very idea of moral absolutes. Why do gangster-rap hip-hop artists sing so much about their rage against an absent father?

We can see in pop culture what we can see also in the ideologies of Marx, Freud, Darwin, and others, even “New Atheists” like Dawkins and Hitchens: the longing for a story that makes sense of the world. In literature, films, and ballads, we can see a flash of what we know to be true—that man does not live by bread alone, or by orgasm alone, or by self-image alone. We are created to find ourselves in a storyline that begins and ends in Christ—even while, as sinners, we kick against the reality of that story.

The Christian analysis of popular culture always proceeds with a knowledge that there is enmity between the idolatries of man and the kingdom of Christ, that we are most tempted to evade Christ by looking to the works of our own hands (Is. 2:8), even, or maybe especially, when these works are culturally effective.

This means we must contrast gospels: the gospel of Jesus is always combated by other gospels—today by one that is often embedded in music, film, and visual art. And these messages are heard by our people in our pews. The people in our congregations are shaped by pop culture, a culture fueled by the advertising industry and a politically active artist guild.
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To contrast the “abundant life” of Christ with the “abundant life” offered by the spirit of the age, we must understand something of what Mammon is hawking.
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We must bring attentive consciences to bear even on (or especially upon) the most subtle pop-culture influences. How do Everybody Loves Raymond reruns, with a scolding, yelling wife and a cringing husband seeking permission to play golf, affect the way people in our churches view marriage? How does MTV’s Pimp My Ride affect the way our teenagers and young adults read the Sermon on the Mount? How do animated Disney films such as The Little Mermaid shape the way children—and adults—hear the command to honor father and mother?

Do we really believe that suspending disbelief long enough to see Morgan Freeman as God in the film Evan Almighty—heavily marketed to Evangelical

Christians—will not affect the way we read the prophet’s vision of the Holy One in Isaiah 6?

This is not being a scold; it is being a shepherd. The shepherd must look at the world in which his sheep live and warn them of its dangers, especially the most subtle ones. But he has an even greater duty. Let us go back to Paul in Athens.

What pop-culture-engaging Christians need to understand most from Acts 17 is the Athenians’ response. Luke tells us that what arrests the attention of the Athenians is not the so-called bridges Paul builds by citing Athenian cultural products. What pricks their attention at the end is what pricked their attention at the start: Jesus and the resurrection: “Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked. But others said, ‘We will hear you again about this’” (Acts 17:32).
Knowing Andy Griffith episodes or Coldplay lyrics might be important avenues for talking about kingdom matters, but let’s not kid ourselves. We connect with sinners in the same way Christians always have: by telling an awfully freakish-sounding story about a man who was dead, and isn’t anymore, but whom we’ll all meet face-to-face in judgment.
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Knowing Andy Griffith episodes or Coldplay lyrics might be important avenues for talking about kingdom matters, but let’s not kid ourselves. We connect with sinners in the same way Christians always have: by telling an awfully freakish-sounding story about a man who was dead, and isn’t anymore, but whom we’ll all meet face-to-face in judgment.
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Too many attempts at reconciling Christianity and pop culture, it seems to me, have to do with being seen as “relevant” by the culture on its own terms. We will never be able to do that. Pop culture is a rolling stone, and it waits for no band of Christians seeking to imitate it or exegete it.

Yes, we must learn to listen to what our culture is saying. We must remember to listen beneath the cool to the fear of a people who know that Judgment Day is coming; it’s written in their hearts (Rom. 2:15–16). We must remember to listen beneath the cynicism to men and women who experience longings that can only be fulfilled in the reign of a Galilean Carpenter-King.
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Christians must make sense of pop culture by judging it in terms of the story we embrace. When that happens, we’ll find ourselves back on Mars Hill. But let’s make sure we’re there because we are, as Paul was, preaching Jesus and the resurrection, not because we’ve started a new business making “unknown god” action figures. We probably won’t be considered “cool” to the culture—whether or not we’re able to sell music downloads to Christians. (more)

God Doesn't Give Autographs

By Gregory Koukl
Stand To Reason

why didn't God allow us to have the autographs, the originals? I guess I need to back up here a moment and talk about inspiration because this whole question that I want to approach here is grounded in the idea of inspiration. It's really important that you understand precisely what we mean when we say that God inspired the Scripture. Let's just take the claim at face value right now. I won't defend the notion; that's a different issue. What it means is that God worked in a supernatural way such that those who were actually doing the writing wrote down precisely what God wanted them to write. He was moving through a human individual.
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The point is, when we say it's inspired we mean that whatever the words were that were written down, these were the precise words that God wanted to have written down. God worked powerfully through those people such that their words were God's words and God's words were their words. That's why we call the Scripture the Word of God, even though they may be the words of Peter or Paul or John or the Prophets. They are still the word of God because God was working in a concursive way. He was writing together with them, in a sense. We call this operation inspiration.

What we mean by this, for example in the case of the New Testament, is that these are the particular words in the Greek language that most precisely reflect the meanings that God wanted to convey. Notice I used two terms there: words and meanings. In others words, the very words are the out-breathing of God. Technically they are not inspired; they are expired. I don't mean they are dead. They are theopneustus , "the breathing of God." "God-breathed" is what that means, literally. So now we have the words flowing from the pens of Peter and Paul and Moses and the Prophets that are the particular words that God chose to express His thoughts to us, but we don't have in our possession the inspired original words. No problem. That's actually a good thing.
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God has chosen a particular set of tokens in words recorded in the Scriptures that can be communicated equally to everyone. Therefore everybody has the same shot at the truth.

How does all this relate to the issue of Scripture and the original documents? There's a couple of conclusions we can draw. First is that the only way we can really communicate meaning is by using some kind of token of it--in this case, words. It can be a spoken word or a written word or sign language or some kind of token which communicates meaning. This is why it is so critical that it is not the meanings only that are inspired in Scripture but the tokens themselves, the writings, the words. If you lose the tokens, if you can't count on the tokens, then we don't have access to the meanings either. Another way of putting it is, how can you get inspired meanings without inspired words? Yet there are some people who hold that it is not the words that are inspired. The words can be fallible, but it's the meanings that are the things that really count. But how do you get one without the other? You've got to have some fixed point from which to depart. You've got to have the words--the tokens--which are a point of public access to the meanings. All of us can see the same word there. In this case, the fixed point is the words in the original manuscripts in the Greek, and God has given those things as a fixed point, particular tokens so that we can work with those tokens to get at the meaning. That's what we do when we do biblical interpretation.

Another advantage is that meanings themselves aren't reproducible. Only tokens are reproducible. So it makes sense that we have a Bible that is given to us in tokens. That is, written words which allow us to reproduce the tokens so that the meaning carried with the tokens can be transferred as well. Some people ask, Why doesn't God just speak to me? Why doesn't He just show himself to me? In a way He has. He has spoken. But to avoid showing Himself to every single person in some kind of special and unique fashion that may be confusing or misleading, God has chosen a particular set of tokens in words recorded in the Scriptures that can be communicated equally to everyone. Therefore everybody has the same shot at the truth. They have this shot through a fixed medium of the particular words that God has chosen. You can see how helpful this makes things, can't you? It deals decisively with the problem of each person having to interpret his own individual subjective revelation that is not tied to something objective like a text--words.
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how do you guard against it being changed or tampered with or corrupted by someone? It's one thing not to have any record at all and then everyone's in the dark. It's another thing altogether to have a spurious record, a faulty record giving commands from God that are not from God at all. That's worse.

Well, the way God handled that is to solve both problems by allowing the original to be destroyed. How does that solve the problem? He made sure there were thousands and then millions of copies. So many copies that they could not all be destroyed.

That's why I don't get it when some claim that the early church took out all the references from the Bible about reincarnation. Some claim that the Council of Nicea took out all the references to reincarnation, that it was originally in the Bible. First of all, how would anybody know that if it was taken a millennium and a half ago? How would you even know that it used to be there and now it's not there any more? Would you find eraser marks or something?

Then there's another problem. How is the church going to gather up the thousands of manuscripts that are being circulated all over the Mediterranean--actually there were tens of thousands; only thousands have survived--and expunge every reference in the Bible to reincarnation? Well, they can't do it when there are thousands of copies, but if there was only one they could. They could take it out and they could rewrite it. They could pretend that what they changed was really the original. That is, I think, one of the reasons God has allowed such a thing. If you had only the original, that could be done. But when you have thousands of copies it can't be done.

The Scriptures become dispersed abroad to all peoples in an objective form so that everyone gets the same thing in a way that protects the document from ever being forged or falsified. That can be done because even the original represents meaning through words as tokens and the tokens can be copied. They can be reproduced such that the copy of the token is the same as the original token. Just like the three words table on the board. They are the same as each other. So if we have a copy using the exact same tokens as the autograph, we essentially have the autograph. The same tokens convey the same meanings that are behind them.

In one sense, the original tokens are gone, the autograph is gone. But if we demonstrate that our present copies are accurate copies then it's fair to say that in regards to the tokens we have millions of originals all over the world. By golly, that's a pretty good system. (more)

The Left Celebrate Powwows

By Enoch Arya

In response to this article that appears in Politico.com, I'd like to pose this question: Should anyone be surprised by the fact that liberals like meetings? If that which is considered to be the highest level of morality is consensus, then meetings would be the tactical means to achieve it. This is the reason why Pres. Clinton cared so much about opinion polls and seemed to have based his decisions on their results. This is the same reason why Sen. John Kerry flip-flopped during his presidential campaign. It is an evidence of the group-think mentality of the Left. People who are intent on accomplishing things and being productive have a tendency to dislike meetings. Conversely, liberals embrace group-think mentality. Is it a surprise to anyone that this is how Sen. Pelosi prefers to run the Democratic Caucus?

Bigger & Heavier

By Enoch Arya

After reading this article at the Edmunds.com blog, I can't help but think that a large (pun intended) part of the reason automobiles get bigger and heavier is because their occupants are getting bigger and heavier, especially in developed countries, such as the US. Consequently, this mandates that additional safety be built into vehicles to safeguard against collision with ever bigger and heavier vehicles and against roll-over tendencies of bigger and heavier vehicles with bigger and heavier occupants/drivers whose driving skills and reaction times are inversely proportional to their belly size. These safety equipment include things, such as bigger and heavier steel braces around the doors, bigger and heavier crumple zones in the front and rear of the vehicles, multiple airbags for each occupant, driving nannies, such as dynamic stability control and traction control, all of which increase the size and weight of vehicles. Of course, with all of these additional size and weight, which impacts driving dynamics negatively, the vehicles will need more robust brakes, wheels, tires, and suspension components that are bigger and heavier, which once again contribute to the vehicles being, you guessed it, bigger and heavier.

Considering that the family sizes in most developed countries are getting ever smaller, which would lead an observer to conclude logically that the need for larger vehicles would decrease, perhaps in an inverse proportionality to the belly size of the family members, it's becoming apparent how ridiculously decadent people/automobile consumers are in the developed countries. This is not to mention that as an implication of vehicles being bigger and heavier is that collisions are getting more serious and damages/losses heavier, which in turn send insurance and healthcare bills skyrocketing, not to mention the vehicle prices themselves. Additionally, vehicle designers and safety experts, not to mention government regulators, will spend an increasing amount of time and effort pondering the solutions to and accomodating the effects of the vehicle occupants' increasing belly size as opposed to coming up with progressive inventions that make life and vehicles truly better.

Thank you decadent BIG and HEAVY folks for making this a reality.

Writers Cramped

By Donald T. Williams
Touchstone Magazine

My fellow Evangelicals publish reams upon reams of prose. What we have not tended to write is anything recognized as having literary value by the literary world. What makes this failure remarkable is that our Protestant forebears include a number of people who did: Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser, George Herbert, John Milton, and John Bunyan, to mention a few.

Equally remarkable is the host of near contemporary conservative Christians—sometimes quite evangelical and even evangelistic, though not “Evangelicals”—who were also important writers. G. K. Chesterton, C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, T. S. Eliot, Graham Greene, Aleksander Solzhenitsyn, Walker Percy, and Flannery O’Connor are all recognized as important literary figures even by people who do not share their Christian commitment.

Where is the contemporary American Evangelical who can make such a claim?
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A True Worldview

First, O’Connor found a true worldview, encapsulated in dogma, which constituted a lens that brings human nature and human significance into piercing clarity. “Dogma,” she said, “is an instrument for penetratingreality. . . . It is one of the functions of the Church to transmit the prophetic vision that is good for all time, and when the novelist has this as a part of his own vision, he has a powerful extension of sight.”

O’Connor understood that good writers do not simply parrot these insights; they must take this doctrinal understanding and apply it to the concrete realities of human life. “Your beliefs will be the light by which you see, but they will not be what you see and they will not be a substitute for seeing.”

When we do not understand this distinction, Christian fiction becomes mere religious propaganda. “The sorry religious novel comes about when the writer supposes that because of his belief, he is somehow dispensed from the obligation to penetrate concrete reality.” Doctrine is a light to see human experience by, not a formula to be dressed up in a fictional disguise.

Though O’Connor did not put it this way, the biblical worldview gives us several truths relevant to the writer of fiction or poetry. It teaches us that everything in creation is significant, pregnant with meaning, because it all came from and relates back to the eternal Logos. It teaches us to see life as a drama of redemption in which human choices matter, and to see all of life, not just religious conversion, in those terms.

And it teaches us the value not only of God’s creation but also of our own creativity, for we were made in the image of the Creator. As J. R. R. Tolkien put it in his seminal essay “On Faerie Stories,” “We make still by the law in which we’re made."
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Purposeful Art

The second form of nurture O’Connor felt she had received from the Catholic Church was a definition of art that affirmed a spiritual purpose, indeed, a vocation, for the artist distinct from that of the propagandist. She quotes Thomas Aquinas as saying that art “is wholly concerned with the good of that which is made.” And she adds,

We are not content to stay within our limitations and make something that is simply a good in and by itself. Now we want to make something that will have some utilitarian value. Yet what is good in itself glorifies God because it reflects God.

This is a telling comment. That which reflects God may have an evangelistic effect. But if evangelism must be the primary purpose of everything we write, then a lot of God’s character will remain unreflected—which will,ironically, not help the cause of evangelism. Also, the emphasis on “the good of that which is made” puts theology on record as affirming the value—indeed, the necessity—of the hard work and craftsmanship required for good writing.
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So it is not surprising that, with no such emphasis coming from its leaders, the popular Evangelical subculture seems even more addicted to pragmatism in itsapproach, as a brief trip through the “Christian bookstore” will show. Fiction can only be justified if it has an overt evangelistic purpose; works of visual art must have a Scripture verse tacked under them.

Perhaps when our theologians become concerned with the good of the thing made, some of our people will, too.

Fictional Mystery

The third form of nourishment O’Connor acknowledged as a gift from the Catholic Church was a sense of mystery. Good fiction ultimately probes the mysteries of life: Why are we here? Why do we suffer? What is the Good?

“It is the business of fiction to embody mystery through manners,” she wrote. Therefore, “the type of mind that can understand good fiction is . . . the kind of mind that is willing to have its sense of mystery deepened by contact with reality, and its sense of reality deepened by contact with mystery."
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This cannot be unrelated to the fact that we as a community can seem too much like the generation O’Connor described, “that has been made to feel that the aim of learning is to eliminate mystery.” Our services, like our fiction, are justified by their efficiency in achieving pragmatic goals. Our sermons are full of practical, easy steps to spiritual victory, a better marriage, or financial success; our music is designed to express comfortable emotions; everything is aimed at maximizing the body count at the altar call.
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Our failure to encourage our people to apply doctrine to the realities of life; our failure to include in our theology the whole counsel of the God who called Bezalel and Oholiab and gifted them as artists; and our pragmatism, an uncritical reflection of American culture rather than a biblical mandate, with our mystery-impoverished worship tradition are all simple failures to be what we claim to be, faithful to Scripture. They could be changed without threatening any of the doctrinal emphases that we think we have been right about. (more)

Why Do the Heathen Rage?

By Anthony Sacramone
First Things

Was there no better answer McGrath could have offered Dawkins, other than that the world is what it is, like it or not, but we mustn’t blame a God who, having assumed human flesh, suffered too? (God is made to seem like a cardiologist who, rather than operate on a patient with serious heart disease, induces in himself a heart attack so he can at least empathize if not cure.)
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What McGrath seemed hesitant to assert was God’s sovereignty. Between the theological statement “God is Good” and the sentimental statement “God is good” most definitely lies a world of pain. Shifting tectonic plates come as no surprise to God, who may very well choose to allow thousands to perish, just as he may choose to steady one child teetering on the precipice of disaster. And it has nothing to do with the kid’s being “lucky” (which explains nothing anyway) or particularly deserving (as opposed to all those spoiled brats and ungrateful adults who got theirs?).

But doesn’t that then make God little more than a despot, a sovereign being who simply wills arbitrarily and without cause or justification because, well, he’s God and we’re not, and therefore not conditioned by outside forces or answerable to anyone or anything?

“I saw Satan fall like lightning from Heaven,” Jesus tells his disciples (Luke 10:18). The end of Evil and its attendant evils is a foregone conclusion, a closed case. Natural disasters and the machinations of wicked men have been finally arrested—at the cross. But Jesus’ declaration of victory is an eschatological statement—made even before the cross had been planted in Calvary’s soil. We finite creatures are caught in the molasses of time and must endure the death throes of all that is contrary to God’s final purposes as if in slow motion. And so it is important to remember that Jesus is speaking to the seventy-two sent to preach and teach in his name. The victory of Jesus must still be published to all the world because it is a victory that is not immediately discernible except through the eyes of faith.

Which is to say that there’s the “already” of salvation history—He is risen—and the “not yet.” And the “not yet” entails suffering in this passing age—suffering that is often unjust and seemingly pointless, but in the hands of a sovereign and Good God a tool to conform his children to the image of his Only Begotten, the true purpose of their predestination. (So as not to be misunderstood, because suffering falls within the permissive will of God, and can even be used by him for ultimately good ends, is no excuse for complacency; the alleviation of pain, done in the name of Jesus, is, like preaching and teaching, a heralding of the kingdom and a diffusion of hope.)

Now, a sovereign God does not displace secondary causes in Christians’ thinking about how the world works. Shifting tectonic plates do give rise to earthquakes and tsunamis. But Christians also believe God continues to intervene in the affairs of his creatures and does so to remind them that the world and its horrors are not beyond his purview, and that the saved child and the answered prayer is a foretaste of the age to come, in which every tear shall be wiped away and the body will no longer be an occasion of sin or pain.

But a foretaste only. Which is why sometimes only one child is saved. And why only Lazarus is raised from the dead. They are signs of the “already,” while the rest endure the “not yet.” Hints, whispers, and still small voices until the full number of the Elect have come into the Kingdom and the very last fundamentalist Darwinian has raged.
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But a world in which children are deliberately kept from being taught the faith of their parents is one programmed for another kind of indoctrination—a materialist one. Those “protected” children will still thirst for meaning—a deeper meaning than even great achievements in this world can provide. And that thirst may find itself slaked in forms of religion that remain unable and unwilling to enter such rational champions as Alister McGrath into the lists of academic debate.

Dawkins may deplore such an eventuality, but he cannot stop it without finally embracing a totalitarian society that controls “thought” in the very way he deplores. (more)