The formative period of Christianity was a turbulent time, to say the least. For several decades, Jews and gentiles, some Christianized, some not, belonged to the same diaspora synagogues. Many contentious issues show up in the New Testament, especially regarding the rules for the inclusion of gentiles. But there is a glaring omission. A pivotal battle which should have been occured didn't take place. To ignore it is literally like not noticing an 800 pound gorilla standing in the corner of a room. The discussion of the battle that wasn't has huge implications for Christian claims.
The writings of the apostle Paul are the earliest stream of Christian thinking available to us today. He wrote from circa 50 CE to perhaps the early 60's. Only the epistle to the Hebrews competes with Paul for primacy in time. Paul never wrote a fully developed theology, nor did he offer much description of the history of his exploits, but in his letters addressing issues troubling particular congregations, we can look over his shoulder and get a feel for the situations he was addressing. His insistence that gentiles be admitted to full membership in the synagogues set off a host of issues since many of them brought some of their customs with them.
Among the problems which distressed Paul were sexual immorality, eating food offered to idols, losing hope, improper observance of the supper, observance of holy days, inter-congregational relations, charity, and the understanding of the means of salvation. But no issue dominated his conversation more than that of the inclusion of gentile believers into the congregation without becoming fully observant Jews. Paul fancied himself as the man tasked with converting the gentiles and bringing them into the true Israel of God. His letter to the churches of Galatia, generally considered to be his first, is targeted directly to this issue.
In the Epistle to the congregations of Galatia Paul takes issue with Judaizers, emmissaries from Jerusalem, who are insisting that his converts become fully observant Jews. The initiation rite of circumcision was used as the term standing for adherance to the whole Torah including following kosher rules for eating, ceremonial washing, wearing proper clothing, observing holy days, etc. While some of the gentile converts to Paul's preaching were willing to follow some of the laws of the Torah, some were not. And the biggest issue was that of circumcision itself. This rite of entrance into the covenant with the God of Abraham was obviously not something an adult male would wish to undergo, sans anesthesia. Yet the Judaizers contending with Paul were convincing some of his converts to undergo the procedure and to become subject to all the rules of the Torah. Those who were resistant were under pressure to submit. Paul was apoplectic.
Historical context must be appreciated at this point. It must be remembered that the crisis with the Greek king Antiochus IV was fresh in the mind of every Jew. In the 160's BCE, in his conquest of Judea, Antiochus disallowed circumcision under pain of death. He intended to force his subjects to receive the blessings of his superior Greek culture, and destroying the temple-state culture of the Jews was paramount in his mind. Parents who circumcised their sons on the 8th day were routinely killed. Many followed the prohibition out of fear. Others continued to circumcize and rose in rebellion eventually throwing off the rule of Antiochus and brutally re-establishing proper Torah observance and the necessity to circumcize (commemorated in the festival of Channukah). Many of those who refused circumcision were circumcized forcibly. Others were exiled, many to the region of Galilee. To the Jews, these events were like yesterday. The issues were fresh. The necessity to be fully observant was no longer a question. The requirements were clear and final. The religious police were actively enforcing the rules.
To Paul, this was a crisis of ultimate importance. To his rivals, the argument was foundational. One must be a full Jewish convert in order to find inclusion within the covenant community. Paul argued strenuously against that necessity, stating that faith alone was sufficient; that the promise to Abraham to be a blessing to all nations (gentiles) through his seed was to be enjoyed without submission to the Torah.
Paul indicates that he had gone to Jerusalem to meet with the pillars, specifically Cephas and James, and received their blessing on the inclusion of gentiles based only on their faith and willingness to abstain from various immoralities. Circumcision and adherance to the entire Torah would not be required. From Paul's point of view, his arguments carried the day.
But as important as the issue of Torah observance was, it pales beside the issue which defined Judaism. That issue is the nature and identity of God. This issue is fundamental to Judaism and preceeds observance to the laws in that the laws proceed from God, and he is recognized and defined in the most important prayer of Judaism. This prayer, and the identity of the 800 pound gorilla standing unnoticed in the corner, is known as the SHEMA.
The Shema is the prayer which begins and ends the day of every observant Jew. It is recited at the time of death. It is the recognition that there is one God, transcendent, above all, and requiring of recognition and obedience as he calls his people into covenant with himself. Here is thereading of the Shema:
שמע ישראל יהוה אלהינו יהוה אחד
Sh'ma Yis'ra'eil Adonai Eloheinu Adonai echad.
Hear, Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One. Deut 6:4
Note that the name of God YHWH is rendered "Adonai" (the Lord) so as to avoid accidentally pronouncing the holy name. To observant Jews, the person of God is frequently called "Ha Shem" which in Hebrew means "The Name." The name of God is not to be pronounced, so holy is it. The Shema defines Jews as monotheists. This cannot in any way be minimized. They believe in the one God, the Most High, the Almighty, The Lord, and there is none like him. No image can represent him. Nothing on earth can be worshipped. There is nothing of correspondence between YHWH and his creation.
Now, referring back to the crisis of Greek rule under Antiochus IV, the event which triggered the bloody rebellion of the Maccabean Jews was when Antiochus put his own image in the most holy place in the temple. Antiochus promoted the cult of the living ruler. He proclaimed himself to be the incarnation of Zeus on earth, the supreme God in human flesh. He demanded that the Jews offer worship and sacrifice to his image. The Jews would have none of it. That a man would be proclaimed to be God was the ultimate abomination. The Jews under Judas Maccabee rose up and killed both the Jewish collaborators and the foreign soldiers, reinstituting the worship of the one true God and ejecting the image of the man who claimed to be the incarnation of God.
Why is this an issue, an 800 pound gorilla which no one wants to notice? Because Paul and presumably others were proclaiming that Jesus was God. Next to this claim, the issue of whether or not to circumcize would pale into insignificance. If there was one issue which should have been the ultimate point of contention in the early Christian proclamation, this was it. Where were the Jews ready to take up stones against Paul for blasphemy claiming that a man was God? Where was Paul's argumentation defending the proposition that God had come to earth and lived as a man? Where is the discussion with the Pillars in Jerusalem over this issue? Was the issue of eating food sacrificed to idols really more fundamental than the claim that God had been recently incarnated? A war had recently been fought over that very claim. To claim that anyone or anything in the material realm could have ontological correspondence with the Most High was anathema.
No issue could be expected to come to the fore more than the issue of identifying Jesus as God. Yet, it didn't happen. What are we to make of this conundrum? There are several possibilities:
POSSIBILITY 1. Paul never claimed divinity for Jesus, therefore no battle over monotheism would be expected:
This is not a credible suggestion based upon clear statements from Paul's authentic epistles. Some examples:
"Who (the Son) is the image of the invisible God, the first born of every creature: for by him were all things created, that are in heaven, that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him and for him: he is before all things and by him all things consist." Col 1:15-18. This sounds rather God-like. The Son is being presented as the Creator of Genesis.
"Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who being in the form of God thought it not robbery to be equal with God." Phil 2:5,6. Literally "not something to be held onto." This is in the hymn showing the Son descending and ascending. Again, the claim of divinity for Jesus is clear.
It is apparent that Paul did proclaim the divinity of Jesus. Possibility number 1 is thus null and void.
POSSIBILITY 2. There was a battle over the claim that Jesus was God, however, the record has been lost:
That something so fundamental could have gone unmentioned in the book of Galatians is difficult to believe. Could there have been a battle not mentioned elsewhere in Paul? There are at least two epistles of Paul which are lost to history. His epistle to the Colossians mentions an epistle to the church of Laodicea. We have no information as to its contents. The second epistle to the Corinthians mentions "a letter of tears" which does not seem to be a match with first Corinthians.
Since these have been lost, and since others not mentioned could have been lost, it is possible that a great discussion over the issue of Jesus as God could have ensued, but it cannot be known. If God had been providencially protecting his word, not allowing these letters to be lost might have been a good place to start (this has implications for the doctrine of innerancy). This possibility, however, is difficult to maintain, for it can be safely assumed that such a discussion would have touched all the epistles which were preserved. It is simply too fundamental an issue to have gone unmentioned in the foundational period of Christianity. To claim that a man was God incarnated would have been the ultimate hot button issue and an offense to Judaism. Silence on the question indicates that the battle did not take place.
Therefore we must conclude that possibility 2, while not absolutely falsifiable, is overwhelmingly unlikely.
POSSIBILITY 3. Paul did not assume that Christ Jesus had lived on earth as a Jew just a few years prior to his own conversion. If he did not consider Jesus to have been a man, no battle over monotheism would be expected:
This is not as far-fetched as it may seem at first gasp. Mark's Gospel, the first documented mention of Jesus living in the recent past, would not be written for many years after Paul's epistles. It is nothing more than an inferrance to assume that Paul was envisioning the Jesus of the gospels. He himself is silent on the details of the "Jesus of history."
The questions must be asked, Is it legitimate to read into Paul the beliefs of others from a later time? Since later writers referred to Jesus "of Nazareth" is it a necessary implication that Paul had that personage in mind? Orthodoxy would answer yes to both questions. Those accepting a priori that all writings which were collected into the New Testament were inspired, non-contradictory, and are different aspects of a single truth will feel free to harmonize Paul with the gospels, but if we examine Paul in isolation, his Jesus inhabits a very different universe than did Jesus of Nazareth. Just because Christians of later years would choose to compile a collection of disparate documents together, does not necessarily indicate that they belong together nor that their authors shared a common outlook.
Paul had much to say about Jesus. His Jesus, though, does not share much commonality with the Jesus of the gospels. Imagine for a moment that Mark's gospel had never been written, or like some of Paul's letters, lost. What would we know of Jesus from reading Paul and the other epistle writers? The obvious answer is nothing aside from the activities of a descending and ascending heavenly savior who has created a new Israel through faith.
Where, for instance, does one find in Paul:
A. Any mention of the birth of Jesus
B. The virgin Mary
C. Joseph
D. The family of Jesus
E. The birthplace of Jesus
F. His hometown of Nazareth (a town which may not have existed at the time)
G. His baptism by John in the Jordan river
H. His temptation in the wilderness
I. His healing miracles
J. His exorcisms
K. His preaching ministry in Galilee
L. His cleanshing of the temple
M. His disputes with the Pharisees in the synagogues
N. His disciples
O. His betrayal by Judas
P. His struggle in Gethsemane
Q. His arrest
R. His trial
S. His questioning by Herod
T. His crucifixion in Jerusalem
U. The two thieves
V. His burial in Joseph's tomb
W. The empty tomb
X. The resurrection appearances to the women
Y. The great commission
Z. The ascension before a crowd of witnesses
Many more details of the life of the Jesus of the Gospels are missing from Paul of course, but we've run out of alphabet. That which we are touching on here is The Pauline Problem. The problem is that Paul never locates the activities of Jesus in a particular historical period nor in a particular geographical location. He seems to be completely unaware of the gospel details of Jesus of Nazareth. He specifically says that he received his information about Jesus through direct revelation or interpretation of the Jewish scriptures, not by oral tradition or knowledge via human agency. His Jesus operates in the cosmos.
Is it possible that the reason the issue of Jewish monotheism didn't come to the fore is because Paul wasn't making pronouncements which would be in conflict with it? If that is the case, what would the explanation be?
Judaism in that period was very eclectic, and freely made use of hellenistic philosophy. For instance, God was seen as being so transcendent that some intermediary form was needed to communicate with man. It was not seen as a contradiction of belief in the one God to envision "emanations" or "aspects" of God acting in lower regions of the heavens, even treating them as somewhat separate persons.
Some Jewish writers and poets of the period freely spoke of Wisdom, or Sophia, as an aspect of God, even as the feminized consort of God, or the Spirit of God. She was pictured as being sent forth by God to communicate to man but was rejected and returned to the highest heaven. In some instances she was pictured as being a virgin mother to an anointed (Christ) Son of God who was a savior to those who believe. Philo, a contemporary of Paul and platonic philosopher/theologian and historian, spoke of the logos (word) of God who was God's agent in the creation of the world and cosmos. God Himself was seen as being too transcendent to deal directly with the lower material world; he used an intermediary to create, but still an aspect of Himself. Philo's concepts were the source for the preamble to John's gospel, "in the beginning was the 'logos' (the word) and the logos was with God and the logos was God. Through him were all things made that were made."
The Jewish religious literature of the period is rich with speculation and contemplation of the aspects of God descending through the heavens for the benefit of man. Diaspora Judaism was living in a Greek universe, and was immersed in Platonic thought. The concepts from that literature were the basis for many of the foundational ideas which we find in the NT and other early Christian literature. Many of the Jewish texts eloquently describing the saving aspects of the personified emanations of God sound utterly Christian until one notices that they are not referring to a man named Jesus. Some of the literature makes much of the coming of God's holy spirit and savior and uses the term "the anointed" which in Greek is simply "Christos." Paul's heavenly savior has an apropros name in "Jesus" which literally means Yahweh Saves. To refer to him in Paul's manner as "Christ Jesus" would not be foreign to the Jewish literature of the period, meaning the Anointed One through whom Yahweh Saves. There is no reason in Paul's context that "Christ Jesus" cannot be a title as much as a name. Paul's "Son of God" character did not even receive the name "Jesus" (savior) until he had ascended back to God's side. Phil 2:5-11 (nothing remotely resembling the naming of a baby in Bethlehem)
It is difficult for us moderns to get into the ancient mindset with a seven layered heaven with God in the 7th and highest layer and intermediary levels descending until the first heaven just above us. But Paul believed in it. He even claimed to have known someone who had been to the third level of heaven 2 Cor 12:2, perhaps he was speaking of himself in the third person. The concept of descending and ascending aspects of God was a commonplace to the first century Jewish mind. Aspects of God such as the logos, the spirit, Wisdom, or the son, could easily move through the different levels. The lower the descent, the more they would take on material characteristics and become less spiritual so as to be more understandable to man.
If Paul were referring to Christ Jesus as a descending and ascending Son-of-God savior figure rather than to a man, the problem ceases to exist. We wouldn't expect to find contention over monotheism if Paul were not envisioning a recently living man as God incarnate. Shema, the 800 pound gorilla, would no longer be in the room. Paul would simply be extrapolating the implications of Jewish thought already in vogue in his milieu. He would also be in harmony with the Greek-Egyptian hero/dying and rising sons of God common in the mystery religions of the era; Dionysus, Attis, Osiris, Adonis, Bacchus, et al.
To summarize, the absence of a battle over monotheism vis a vis claims to the divinity of Jesus must be explained. It is too fundamental to first century Jewish though to just gloss over. The need to answer the "WHY?" is overwhelming. The explanation must fall into one of three categories: Early Christians didn't think of Jesus as being divine; The story of the intense battle has been lost; Paul wasn't identifying Jesus as a man who had been his contemporary in Palestine. Only the third theory offers a coherant resolution to the question.
Bart Willruth
March 2, 208
Sunday, March 2, 2008
Monday, February 25, 2008
From faith to reason, my journey
From faith to reason, my journey
The conversion of Bart Willruth
In the summer of 1979, I was a theology student at the top of my game. I was standing next to several of my professors, some recognized as the worldwide authorities in their fields. I had already completed a B.A. degree with a double major, history and theology, with a minor in Koine Greek. Now I was the fair-haired golden boy of the theological seminary at Andrews University. It was graduation. I was speaking with these professors I had looked up to for so many years, who were now starting to treat me as a bit of a colleague. I was basking in the glow of graduation from the Master of Divinity program at the theological seminary and had graduated first in a class of 300, Summa cum Laude. I had just been invited to enter the Doctor of Theology program at the University. What made that unusual was that no student had ever before been allowed to enter that program prior to serving several years as a pastor and receiving ordination. I was being fast-tracked to become a seminary professor myself. I had just been interviewed by the executive editor of the Southern Publishing Association and asked to write a commentaty on the Apocalypse for educated laymen and college students. Two of my professors had already given me multiple opportunities to guest lecture in their M.Div. classes on the subject of apocalyptic literature and New Testament eschatology. I was a committed Christian who was realizing a dream years in the making.
While I had been brought up in the Armenian Protestant tradition, I had steadily been embracing Calvinist theology, albeit without the hard predestinarianism associated with it. The death and resurrection of Jesus as my saviour, forensic justification, the Protestant credo; Grace alone, Faith alone, and scripture as sole authority, were my life blood. I stood firmly in the gospel and let the gospel stand in judgment of all things; creeds, church institutions, and worldview. I was as committed as one could be and certain of my salvation by the grace of God through his son Jesus Christ. I was a believer, an Evangelical Christian.
As I entered into my doctoral program, specializing in apocalyptic literature, I took on the position of associate editor of "Evangelica" magazine, published numerous articles, and begain accepting invitations to give seminars at churches in several states. I excelled in my studies, maintaining a straight 4.0 G.P.A. throughout.
But there was a serpent in the garden. I had studied deeply in Christian apologetics (defending the faith) using clear logic and argumentation to bolster the reasons for articles of faith. I was convinced that reason and faith could work hand in hand, that reason strengthened faith, and faith could take us where reason could not. One day I picked up a book on economics by Ayn Rand, "Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal." I found the arguments for free markets and capitalism to be enlightening and compelling from the practical standpoint. But the more challenging part of the book was the moral defence for capitalism. I had always believed, in keeping with the teachings of Jesus, that there was no positive morality involved in the pursuit of commercial interests, wealth, or any of the material benefits of the secular world other than to renounce them and give to the poor. Suddenly I was confronted with a tightly argued presentation of the morality and the necessity of using one's mind for survival and well being, for being properly concerned with life, this life on earth, and the irrationality of self sacrifice and altruism. Her interplay of the practical and the moral were a blatant challenge to my Christian worldview wherein this life was to be used to serve the purposes of God in sacrifice to Him and others, with the reward coming in the next life. Jesus, as he is presented in the gospels, deliberately drives a wedge between the moral and the practical. A three page section of Rand's book called "the Meaning of Money" presented a conversation of two protagonists debating the question of the truth of Jesus' position that money is the root of all evil. As the conversation grew sharper, the debate corrected to Jesus' position that the Love of money is the root of all evil. The capitalist protagonist began to show that there is no higher value to man than life. Without it, no other values exist. That that which supports this life is the moral and that which is destructive of life is the immoral. That this life is the only one we have (any other is just a hope). That we survive through the use of our mind and reason. That we use our minds to judge the best course of action, to reep the rewards of our thought and action, and to live as we see fit without coercion. That reason is our only guide and means of knowledge. That self sacrifice by any organism, from the lowliest worm to the most intelligent human, is the road to self destruction and death. That money is the visible means of identifying the value we offer to others in exchange for the value they offer to us. It is the tangible symbol of the best within us and is the support for life, our highest value. That the value we put on money is the value we put on our own life itself. That to disdain money is to disdain life. That to love life is to love money which supports it. I was stunned, not that I agreed with the position at that time, but that morality could be so logically argued and tightly reasoned from an ontological perspective (arising out of that which is, existence) rather than being a kind of knowledge only available from revelation. Reason from existence vs. acceptance by authority. She summed up Judeo-Christian morality in this way, To the degree that we are fitted properly for this life, we are unfit for the next. The result of the Christian morality is that to the degree we are fitted properly for the life to come, we are unfit for survival in this life. The vision before my mind was the ultimate symbol of Christian righteousness, Christ on the cross, death in this life in sacrifice for others, self immolation, with new life in glory. Death and humiliation as the paradigm for our proper behavior vs. a morality of making the best out of the life we have, to live for our own purposes, to love this life. The differences are obviously stark, and the sources for the two moralities just as opposite, reason vs. authority. The explosion of Christian morality through reason was shocking. I had never questioned it before. I had thought that Christian morality was the obvious, the given. That those who rejected it did so for sinful reasons, not for moral reasons. Could it be that the morality of Jesus' was irrational?
And then came the computer virus that began working its way through my mind, corrupting every connection, thought, and memory. Rand pointed out that all systems of thought begin with premises. But then she issued the challenge, "CHECK YOUR PREMISES." Nothing, no other concept, no other challenge, has so profoundly influenced my life. I had observed Rand systematically debunking the sermon on the mount, the moral teachings of Jesus, and the Christian life of piety, through reason and logic, the same methods I had used in Christian apologetics to support my faith and that of millions of others throughout the last 2,000 years. How could this be? How can two systems both use the same logical methods to arrive at such opposite conclusions? The answer was in their respective starting points. These questions didn't percolate quickly through my mind, but they did work as a background program over the next two years.
Finally, with a troubled mind and a fear of doubting, which is placed into every Christian early on, I took the challenge. I decided to check my premises. It is such a simple thing to do, and it is a continuing source of embarassment to me that I had managed to achieve the doctoral level in my theological studies without ever asking the basic questions and demanding satisfactory answers. I asked myself, "What are the premises upon which Christianity is based?" I started from the philosophy of religion perspective and found Karl Barth to be the most lucid expositor of the theistic premises. He posited two presuppositions (premises) on which the whole of theological speculation is based:
1. There is a God
2. He has revealed Himself.
Yes, I agreed that those are the starting points upon which all logical arguments for God and His will are based. Number one deals with metaphysics, the issue of existence. To acknowledge this premise is to accept as a fact that God exists. Number two deals with epistemology, the means of knowledge and verification. Together, these presuppositions state that God exists and He has made Himself known to man. The problem as I pondered was that these premises were presuppositions, not objective facts. That is, they were propositions that we suppose to be true in advance as a starting point. But are these propositions really facts? Are they proper starting points? Or are they themselves conclusions? On what basis? Theologians and philosophers have long pondered these issues, and other than the more ignorant fundamentalist country preachers, most have acknowledged that there is nothing within the natural world enabling us to indicate the existence of the supernatural. Or to put it another way, God's existence must be taken as a given, not the result of a line of reasoning or argumentation. We must first believe that He is. The act that existence exists, that there is a universe rather than nothing, does not require the existence of God. Without evidence, and indeed no evidence is possible, the brutal fact is that the first premise that God exists, is an arbitrary proposition; arbitrary meaning that it has no cause or evidence. That "God exists" must be accepted solely on the basis of sheer faith, unseen, and unknowable. When it is acknowledged that the first premise is arbitrary, it necessarily follows that the second premise, that God has revealed Himself, is also arbitrary since it is derivative upon acceptance if the first premise that God exists. Even so, the question becomes "Revealed how?" The Christian will always answer this with a two-fold response. God first revealed himself through "inspired" men throughout the ages and finally through his son who was the pre-existent God becoming a man, living about two thousand years ago ina poor backwater of the Roman Empire. This revelation to "inspired men" is problematic. Why was such vital information released piecemeal in a geographically limited area to one group and not available to every person equally? And how can we know that anything was actually revealed to any of these individuals? We cannot check out their stories and claims. In fact, in many cases the original writers are unknown. How do we know if they conveyed their revelations accurately? And how do we know that the copying of texts through millenia has been scrupulously accurate? If errors could have crept in, how do we know what they are, what was original, and what was altered? How do we know which claimants to revelation were truthful and which were fakers? Numerous individuals have claimed to have received communication from a god. We know more about Muhammad, Joseph Smith, Ellen White, and the Rev. Moon than we know about many of the authors of the writings which make up the Bible. Which prophet do we accept and which do we reject? By what criteria? If we choose Paul and use his thoughts as a standard, then we reject Muhammad. But if we choose Muhammad and use his thoughts as a standard, then we reject Paul. Why would the great Revealer make us arbitrarily choose which guy to trust in order to come to salvific knowledge? When we choose, and choose we must if we accept the premise that God has revealed Himself, we are ultimately directing faith not to a god, but to the man or woman claiming to be the recipient of the revelation. Why must we exercise faith in fallible men to understand God and his will? Do we know if any inspired man was actually mentally ill or delusional? Do we know if he had a good memory and faithfully wrote down every detail which was revealed to him accurately? We do know that problems occurred in the transmission of the texts, that corruptions entered the texts through omissions by copyists, additions to add authority to someone's pet beliefs, through changes intended to clarify based upon current understanding, through outright fraud and forgery, through simple copying errors, and by the church of the fourth century as it tried to clarify and define orthodoxy. The fundamentalist will answer that from start to finish, God's revelation was controlled and preserved at every level by his will, that is by a long series of miracles safeguarding his word. But this is an argument of faith, not fact; it is unknowable, circular reasoning.
"All of this is a problem" I thought to myself, "and a huge and fundamental problem at that." If all theological thought begins with two premises which must be accepted by faith alone, then is there no objectivity involved? This gets to the crucial questions,\
1. What do I know? and
2. How do I know it?
We are right back to the issues of metaphysics and epistemology.; I had long believed that reason and faith were fellow travelers. Reason could be used to get us part of the way and to bolster faith with evidence, and that faith could fill in the gaps of information unavailable to reason. But if the starting point must be accepted by faith, it is then like a child's game of "let's pretend." Let's pretend that there is a God and that he has revealed Himself, and then logically and with reason extrapolate those premises. We end up with systems called Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, but the pyramid of belief which was so carefully built up with so much painstaking care and reasoning all stands on a completely arbitrary and very uncertain foundation. At this point, the marriage of reason and faith is on the rocks. If faith is the starting point and posits "facts" not in evidence, no reasonong beyond that point, no matter how erudite, can claim anything more than that it is a house of cards, smoke, and mirrors. No knowledge can be furthered by extrapolating arbitrary "facts."
As I grappled with these issues, I was devastated. Could my whole worldview, all my study, all my hopes be false? I couldn't accept it. I began to loook for another way to objectify my beliefs. I turned to the second claim of God's revelation, that of the incarnation of Jesus. The Judeo-Christian tradition (and its stepchild, Islam) is unique in world religions in that it claims that God has entered history. In the case of Christianity, He entered history in the person of Jesus of Nazareth who was born a Jew in the first century, was the promised Messiah of the Jews, taught with the authority of God, worked numerous miracles which certified his claims, was crucified, dead, and buried. That on the third day through a mighty miracle, God raised him from the dead. The risen Jesus was then seen by hundreds of witnesses over a period of weeks, and was then raised up to heaven before a group of witnesses. This claim is not a faith issue (using "faith" as an epistemological method). Rather, it is a historical claim, subject to the same methods of examination to which other events of history are subject. That he was dead and then alive again is the historical claim. That the event has implications for believers is a faith issue and is not subject to historical investigation. It is the claim of the actual events on the Judean dirt that must be examined as history.
I seized on this issue as the solution to my questions. It would objectify the basic claims of Christian belief even if the philosophical side was wanting. I threw myself into the question with high energy. While this is not the venue for explaining the details, I put together a research project to marshall all the evidence possible to bolster the arguments for the objective historical claims. I read every apologetic book I could find on the resurrection. I read some historical-critical scholarly texts. And I did intense research on my own. I came out at the far end of that study with the realization that the claim of the death and resurrection of Jesus as a historical event was indefensible. The only way to hold on to that belief would be to blindly accept the internally contradictory and irrational claims of the mostly anonymous writers of the New Testament.
I was faced with two options; retreat into faith, blind faith, to believe in the absence of evidence or in spite of evidence to the contrary. Or I could use the mind I have to apprehend the universe and existence as it is, not as I wish it were. FAITH or REASON. There is no middle ground. Either-or. I chose reason, but not without pain. It was an exceedingly difficult thing to shed the beliefs of a lifetime which had permeated every part of my being and my outlook. At every point I had to stop and ask myself if I were reacting automatically to my old perspectives or was I thinking and acting in accordance with reason.
I deliberately and proudly expunged faith from my being and took up the banner of reason. When asked what I believe in now, I invariably respond "I don't believe in anything." What I mean is that I know. I apply reason to every part of my life. That perspective is helpful in protection against all con men, religious or commercial. For the last 25 years I have been an Objectivist with reason and logic as my only means of knowing and acting. I have rejected Christianity and other forms of theism. I consider faith to be a short circuit of the mind and hugely detrimental to achieving the full potential of human possibility. Faith is the lazy man's attempt at gaining knowledge, free from the rigors and risks of thinking.
In the interim years, I have remained a careful student of philosophy, theology, and history. I have worked diligently to deconstruct the claims of Christianity, for my own benefit and that of others crippled by this scourge. I study the formative period of Christian origins to ascertain what actually took place and how Christianity evolved into that which we recognize today. I believe theism is the most destructive force in the world today. It cripples the human mind and its potential. It causes the sacrifice of the interests of this life for the delusion of a hoped for afterlife. It allows separation and vilification. Its fundamentalist side can has frequently led to coercion and voilence. It is intolerant. Its liberal side has led to the collectivist/altruist governance of communism, progressivism, and the social welfare state. In a post-enlightenment world, it has no place. Christianity belongs to the primitive, superstitious, and credulous past.
Bart Willruth
The conversion of Bart Willruth
In the summer of 1979, I was a theology student at the top of my game. I was standing next to several of my professors, some recognized as the worldwide authorities in their fields. I had already completed a B.A. degree with a double major, history and theology, with a minor in Koine Greek. Now I was the fair-haired golden boy of the theological seminary at Andrews University. It was graduation. I was speaking with these professors I had looked up to for so many years, who were now starting to treat me as a bit of a colleague. I was basking in the glow of graduation from the Master of Divinity program at the theological seminary and had graduated first in a class of 300, Summa cum Laude. I had just been invited to enter the Doctor of Theology program at the University. What made that unusual was that no student had ever before been allowed to enter that program prior to serving several years as a pastor and receiving ordination. I was being fast-tracked to become a seminary professor myself. I had just been interviewed by the executive editor of the Southern Publishing Association and asked to write a commentaty on the Apocalypse for educated laymen and college students. Two of my professors had already given me multiple opportunities to guest lecture in their M.Div. classes on the subject of apocalyptic literature and New Testament eschatology. I was a committed Christian who was realizing a dream years in the making.
While I had been brought up in the Armenian Protestant tradition, I had steadily been embracing Calvinist theology, albeit without the hard predestinarianism associated with it. The death and resurrection of Jesus as my saviour, forensic justification, the Protestant credo; Grace alone, Faith alone, and scripture as sole authority, were my life blood. I stood firmly in the gospel and let the gospel stand in judgment of all things; creeds, church institutions, and worldview. I was as committed as one could be and certain of my salvation by the grace of God through his son Jesus Christ. I was a believer, an Evangelical Christian.
As I entered into my doctoral program, specializing in apocalyptic literature, I took on the position of associate editor of "Evangelica" magazine, published numerous articles, and begain accepting invitations to give seminars at churches in several states. I excelled in my studies, maintaining a straight 4.0 G.P.A. throughout.
But there was a serpent in the garden. I had studied deeply in Christian apologetics (defending the faith) using clear logic and argumentation to bolster the reasons for articles of faith. I was convinced that reason and faith could work hand in hand, that reason strengthened faith, and faith could take us where reason could not. One day I picked up a book on economics by Ayn Rand, "Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal." I found the arguments for free markets and capitalism to be enlightening and compelling from the practical standpoint. But the more challenging part of the book was the moral defence for capitalism. I had always believed, in keeping with the teachings of Jesus, that there was no positive morality involved in the pursuit of commercial interests, wealth, or any of the material benefits of the secular world other than to renounce them and give to the poor. Suddenly I was confronted with a tightly argued presentation of the morality and the necessity of using one's mind for survival and well being, for being properly concerned with life, this life on earth, and the irrationality of self sacrifice and altruism. Her interplay of the practical and the moral were a blatant challenge to my Christian worldview wherein this life was to be used to serve the purposes of God in sacrifice to Him and others, with the reward coming in the next life. Jesus, as he is presented in the gospels, deliberately drives a wedge between the moral and the practical. A three page section of Rand's book called "the Meaning of Money" presented a conversation of two protagonists debating the question of the truth of Jesus' position that money is the root of all evil. As the conversation grew sharper, the debate corrected to Jesus' position that the Love of money is the root of all evil. The capitalist protagonist began to show that there is no higher value to man than life. Without it, no other values exist. That that which supports this life is the moral and that which is destructive of life is the immoral. That this life is the only one we have (any other is just a hope). That we survive through the use of our mind and reason. That we use our minds to judge the best course of action, to reep the rewards of our thought and action, and to live as we see fit without coercion. That reason is our only guide and means of knowledge. That self sacrifice by any organism, from the lowliest worm to the most intelligent human, is the road to self destruction and death. That money is the visible means of identifying the value we offer to others in exchange for the value they offer to us. It is the tangible symbol of the best within us and is the support for life, our highest value. That the value we put on money is the value we put on our own life itself. That to disdain money is to disdain life. That to love life is to love money which supports it. I was stunned, not that I agreed with the position at that time, but that morality could be so logically argued and tightly reasoned from an ontological perspective (arising out of that which is, existence) rather than being a kind of knowledge only available from revelation. Reason from existence vs. acceptance by authority. She summed up Judeo-Christian morality in this way, To the degree that we are fitted properly for this life, we are unfit for the next. The result of the Christian morality is that to the degree we are fitted properly for the life to come, we are unfit for survival in this life. The vision before my mind was the ultimate symbol of Christian righteousness, Christ on the cross, death in this life in sacrifice for others, self immolation, with new life in glory. Death and humiliation as the paradigm for our proper behavior vs. a morality of making the best out of the life we have, to live for our own purposes, to love this life. The differences are obviously stark, and the sources for the two moralities just as opposite, reason vs. authority. The explosion of Christian morality through reason was shocking. I had never questioned it before. I had thought that Christian morality was the obvious, the given. That those who rejected it did so for sinful reasons, not for moral reasons. Could it be that the morality of Jesus' was irrational?
And then came the computer virus that began working its way through my mind, corrupting every connection, thought, and memory. Rand pointed out that all systems of thought begin with premises. But then she issued the challenge, "CHECK YOUR PREMISES." Nothing, no other concept, no other challenge, has so profoundly influenced my life. I had observed Rand systematically debunking the sermon on the mount, the moral teachings of Jesus, and the Christian life of piety, through reason and logic, the same methods I had used in Christian apologetics to support my faith and that of millions of others throughout the last 2,000 years. How could this be? How can two systems both use the same logical methods to arrive at such opposite conclusions? The answer was in their respective starting points. These questions didn't percolate quickly through my mind, but they did work as a background program over the next two years.
Finally, with a troubled mind and a fear of doubting, which is placed into every Christian early on, I took the challenge. I decided to check my premises. It is such a simple thing to do, and it is a continuing source of embarassment to me that I had managed to achieve the doctoral level in my theological studies without ever asking the basic questions and demanding satisfactory answers. I asked myself, "What are the premises upon which Christianity is based?" I started from the philosophy of religion perspective and found Karl Barth to be the most lucid expositor of the theistic premises. He posited two presuppositions (premises) on which the whole of theological speculation is based:
1. There is a God
2. He has revealed Himself.
Yes, I agreed that those are the starting points upon which all logical arguments for God and His will are based. Number one deals with metaphysics, the issue of existence. To acknowledge this premise is to accept as a fact that God exists. Number two deals with epistemology, the means of knowledge and verification. Together, these presuppositions state that God exists and He has made Himself known to man. The problem as I pondered was that these premises were presuppositions, not objective facts. That is, they were propositions that we suppose to be true in advance as a starting point. But are these propositions really facts? Are they proper starting points? Or are they themselves conclusions? On what basis? Theologians and philosophers have long pondered these issues, and other than the more ignorant fundamentalist country preachers, most have acknowledged that there is nothing within the natural world enabling us to indicate the existence of the supernatural. Or to put it another way, God's existence must be taken as a given, not the result of a line of reasoning or argumentation. We must first believe that He is. The act that existence exists, that there is a universe rather than nothing, does not require the existence of God. Without evidence, and indeed no evidence is possible, the brutal fact is that the first premise that God exists, is an arbitrary proposition; arbitrary meaning that it has no cause or evidence. That "God exists" must be accepted solely on the basis of sheer faith, unseen, and unknowable. When it is acknowledged that the first premise is arbitrary, it necessarily follows that the second premise, that God has revealed Himself, is also arbitrary since it is derivative upon acceptance if the first premise that God exists. Even so, the question becomes "Revealed how?" The Christian will always answer this with a two-fold response. God first revealed himself through "inspired" men throughout the ages and finally through his son who was the pre-existent God becoming a man, living about two thousand years ago ina poor backwater of the Roman Empire. This revelation to "inspired men" is problematic. Why was such vital information released piecemeal in a geographically limited area to one group and not available to every person equally? And how can we know that anything was actually revealed to any of these individuals? We cannot check out their stories and claims. In fact, in many cases the original writers are unknown. How do we know if they conveyed their revelations accurately? And how do we know that the copying of texts through millenia has been scrupulously accurate? If errors could have crept in, how do we know what they are, what was original, and what was altered? How do we know which claimants to revelation were truthful and which were fakers? Numerous individuals have claimed to have received communication from a god. We know more about Muhammad, Joseph Smith, Ellen White, and the Rev. Moon than we know about many of the authors of the writings which make up the Bible. Which prophet do we accept and which do we reject? By what criteria? If we choose Paul and use his thoughts as a standard, then we reject Muhammad. But if we choose Muhammad and use his thoughts as a standard, then we reject Paul. Why would the great Revealer make us arbitrarily choose which guy to trust in order to come to salvific knowledge? When we choose, and choose we must if we accept the premise that God has revealed Himself, we are ultimately directing faith not to a god, but to the man or woman claiming to be the recipient of the revelation. Why must we exercise faith in fallible men to understand God and his will? Do we know if any inspired man was actually mentally ill or delusional? Do we know if he had a good memory and faithfully wrote down every detail which was revealed to him accurately? We do know that problems occurred in the transmission of the texts, that corruptions entered the texts through omissions by copyists, additions to add authority to someone's pet beliefs, through changes intended to clarify based upon current understanding, through outright fraud and forgery, through simple copying errors, and by the church of the fourth century as it tried to clarify and define orthodoxy. The fundamentalist will answer that from start to finish, God's revelation was controlled and preserved at every level by his will, that is by a long series of miracles safeguarding his word. But this is an argument of faith, not fact; it is unknowable, circular reasoning.
"All of this is a problem" I thought to myself, "and a huge and fundamental problem at that." If all theological thought begins with two premises which must be accepted by faith alone, then is there no objectivity involved? This gets to the crucial questions,\
1. What do I know? and
2. How do I know it?
We are right back to the issues of metaphysics and epistemology.; I had long believed that reason and faith were fellow travelers. Reason could be used to get us part of the way and to bolster faith with evidence, and that faith could fill in the gaps of information unavailable to reason. But if the starting point must be accepted by faith, it is then like a child's game of "let's pretend." Let's pretend that there is a God and that he has revealed Himself, and then logically and with reason extrapolate those premises. We end up with systems called Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, but the pyramid of belief which was so carefully built up with so much painstaking care and reasoning all stands on a completely arbitrary and very uncertain foundation. At this point, the marriage of reason and faith is on the rocks. If faith is the starting point and posits "facts" not in evidence, no reasonong beyond that point, no matter how erudite, can claim anything more than that it is a house of cards, smoke, and mirrors. No knowledge can be furthered by extrapolating arbitrary "facts."
As I grappled with these issues, I was devastated. Could my whole worldview, all my study, all my hopes be false? I couldn't accept it. I began to loook for another way to objectify my beliefs. I turned to the second claim of God's revelation, that of the incarnation of Jesus. The Judeo-Christian tradition (and its stepchild, Islam) is unique in world religions in that it claims that God has entered history. In the case of Christianity, He entered history in the person of Jesus of Nazareth who was born a Jew in the first century, was the promised Messiah of the Jews, taught with the authority of God, worked numerous miracles which certified his claims, was crucified, dead, and buried. That on the third day through a mighty miracle, God raised him from the dead. The risen Jesus was then seen by hundreds of witnesses over a period of weeks, and was then raised up to heaven before a group of witnesses. This claim is not a faith issue (using "faith" as an epistemological method). Rather, it is a historical claim, subject to the same methods of examination to which other events of history are subject. That he was dead and then alive again is the historical claim. That the event has implications for believers is a faith issue and is not subject to historical investigation. It is the claim of the actual events on the Judean dirt that must be examined as history.
I seized on this issue as the solution to my questions. It would objectify the basic claims of Christian belief even if the philosophical side was wanting. I threw myself into the question with high energy. While this is not the venue for explaining the details, I put together a research project to marshall all the evidence possible to bolster the arguments for the objective historical claims. I read every apologetic book I could find on the resurrection. I read some historical-critical scholarly texts. And I did intense research on my own. I came out at the far end of that study with the realization that the claim of the death and resurrection of Jesus as a historical event was indefensible. The only way to hold on to that belief would be to blindly accept the internally contradictory and irrational claims of the mostly anonymous writers of the New Testament.
I was faced with two options; retreat into faith, blind faith, to believe in the absence of evidence or in spite of evidence to the contrary. Or I could use the mind I have to apprehend the universe and existence as it is, not as I wish it were. FAITH or REASON. There is no middle ground. Either-or. I chose reason, but not without pain. It was an exceedingly difficult thing to shed the beliefs of a lifetime which had permeated every part of my being and my outlook. At every point I had to stop and ask myself if I were reacting automatically to my old perspectives or was I thinking and acting in accordance with reason.
I deliberately and proudly expunged faith from my being and took up the banner of reason. When asked what I believe in now, I invariably respond "I don't believe in anything." What I mean is that I know. I apply reason to every part of my life. That perspective is helpful in protection against all con men, religious or commercial. For the last 25 years I have been an Objectivist with reason and logic as my only means of knowing and acting. I have rejected Christianity and other forms of theism. I consider faith to be a short circuit of the mind and hugely detrimental to achieving the full potential of human possibility. Faith is the lazy man's attempt at gaining knowledge, free from the rigors and risks of thinking.
In the interim years, I have remained a careful student of philosophy, theology, and history. I have worked diligently to deconstruct the claims of Christianity, for my own benefit and that of others crippled by this scourge. I study the formative period of Christian origins to ascertain what actually took place and how Christianity evolved into that which we recognize today. I believe theism is the most destructive force in the world today. It cripples the human mind and its potential. It causes the sacrifice of the interests of this life for the delusion of a hoped for afterlife. It allows separation and vilification. Its fundamentalist side can has frequently led to coercion and voilence. It is intolerant. Its liberal side has led to the collectivist/altruist governance of communism, progressivism, and the social welfare state. In a post-enlightenment world, it has no place. Christianity belongs to the primitive, superstitious, and credulous past.
Bart Willruth
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