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If God is in the processes, if God is the context, if God is not a specific interventionist . then how can this Jesus of Nazareth be related to God any differently than anyone else? How can we justify looking to the Christ for meaning any more than looking to Nietzsche or the Buddha or your next-door neighbor? Or your own selfish desires?

In previous chapters we have shown why we cannot identify Jesus either as God incarnate or as a person specially sent or chosen by God. God just doesn’t work that way. Instead, we identify Jesus as "the Christ", meaning by this that it is he whose life and teachings function as the focus for our understanding of reality. It is he through whom we find meaning in our lives, and in whom we find the key to our understanding of God.

The interpretations of Jesus which we can no longer use -- as God incarnate or as specially chosen -- did have the advantage of making a clear claim about his authority to speak of God and moral truths. But how do we justify now our claim of Jesus’ role as key to our understanding of God, as focus to the whole complex of meaning in our lives?

In traditional language this is the question of authority: the question of the authority of Jesus Christ. But why do we speak of "authority" here? What does it mean in the realm of value and meaning and common sense theology to speak of authority?

The Question of Authority

Usually when we speak of authority we are referring either to the state, that is, the authority of the government vested in certain positions and so in the people who hold those positions, or to the legal authority that derives from ownership or contract. Obviously, this is not the kind of authority that we mean here.

We also commonly speak of someone being an authority on a certain subject, meaning that he or she is recognized as an accepted source of expert opinion in that area.

Or we might recognize the moral authority of an individual, either because of their relationship to us (e.g. parent) or because of something about their life or wisdom.

These three types of authority -- legal, expert, and moral -- were combined in first century Palestine in a way that is foreign to us today. Scripture was the highest authority, of course (within the limits set by Roman law). Legal decisions, whether by local lawyers or the high council in Jerusalem, were in fact interpretations of God’s will as found in the Scriptures. And interpretations were generally made by citing recognized (authoritative) rabbis.

Jesus of Nazareth, however, was neither a member of the high council nor a local official nor a recognized rabbi. Naturally, then, the people who heard him "were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one who had authority, and not as the scribes." (Mark 1:22) Two questions must be answered: first, what was the source of this authority? That is, how was he able to speak this way and be recognized this way in first century Palestine? And second, does this translate into authority for us today? If so, how? And with what meaning of authority?

Jesus’ Authority in First Century Palestine

He spoke as one who had authority. He did not just repeat the traditions of the elders or justify what he said by the teachings of Rabbi somebody-or-other. "You have heard that it was said of old;" he said, "but I say to you . . ."

How was he able to do this? Because he was sure of himself. He knew he could sense the pull of the God that spoke through the law and the prophets, and knew that he had to point the way to others. So he did.

He saw that some were perverting justice and that others were trapped in their own greed. He saw that some tried to be faithful but couldn’t get past their lists of rules and that others stood in the need of the freeing word of God’s love. So he acted accordingly, and he did so with self-assurance.

This sort of moral certainty is much out of favor today, being identified in our minds with fascists and Ayatollahs and other out-of-touch-with-reality fanatics. Too often we have heard the narrow-minded offer simplistic solutions to complex problems. We have, rightly, rejected these so-called "solutions". We have recognized that there are no easy answers. But it seems that we have often gone one step further: we justify our own confusion by being suspicious of any certainty, and we interpret the lack of easy answers to mean that any answer is as good as another, that we cannot be sure about right and wrong.

This last step is a tragic and inexcusable surrender of human moral responsibility. Even if we cannot know the answer to all of society’s ills, even if we cannot pretend to know how to solve the problems of crime and drugs and inflation and poverty, we can still proclaim that it is obviously and unquestionably a moral wrong to maintain a penal system based on vengeance instead of rehabilitation; to allow human rights violations to go unchallenged (on either side of the iron curtain); to waste vast quantities of food and resources while others are malnourished and sick and poor; or to allow so many children in our own midst to go through childhood unwanted and unloved and even abused. The lack of easy solutions cannot be used as an excuse to cease recognizing and proclaiming right and wrong.

Jesus of Nazareth did not surrender this responsibility. He proclaimed right and wrong. He spoke with the authority of someone who saw clearly, someone who was not distracted or blinded by self-interest, someone who was not a prisoner to societal conventions. But most simply, he spoke with authority because he spoke from his own deep convictions.

So he preached his call to God, his call to love and repentance and reconciliation, with courage and conviction and charisma. And he preached it in such a way that his listeners were presented with a choice. They felt compelled to either accept or reject his message. Indeed, this is not an unusual reaction to someone who is secure in who they are and sure of their vision.

Those who responded positively to his message recognized him as having authority as their leader and teacher. Those who responded negatively also recognized the claim of authority in the way he taught and acted, but they rejected this claim.

So we can explain a claim to authority in first century Palestine in terms of convictions and charisma and a demand for decision. But how do we address the question of the authority of Jesus of Nazareth today?

The Question of Jesus’ Authority Today

The question of Jesus’ authority today cannot be answered by an appeal to his compelling presence or to ancient Near Eastern understandings. Rather we must look at our own response to his life and teachings. And we need to address three different questions here: (1) What is involved in recognizing in Jesus, or attributing to Jesus, authority?

(2) How do we justify this in terms of our common sense theology?

(3) Why recognize authority in this person rather than in someone else or in no one at all?

1. What Does It Mean to Recognize Jesus’ Authority?

There are three steps involved in an individual recognizing the authority of Jesus of Nazareth. The first step is a real awareness of who he is. This does not mean the vague and comfortable awareness that we get from our culture -- and all too often from our churches and church schools -- that Jesus was a good guy who talked about love. Neither does this mean an awareness of creeds, or an ability to say that Jesus Christ is Lord or Savior or Son of God or whatever. To begin with we need to seriously confront the life and teachings of Jesus himself. If this is done earnestly and sincerely we will be forced to ask ourselves whether indeed he may have been right, whether he knew what he was about, whether he did in fact correctly perceive God and truth, value and meaning.

The second step in an individual’s recognition of Jesus’ authority is an affirmative answer to this, a recognition on our part that, yes indeed, this guy was right in his central message. He had the key: service of others and of God is our greatest purpose; love in return for hate is the greatest triumph; there is something in life more important than our own selfish fears and desires. Step two is thus the recognition that Jesus of Nazareth points to the truth, that here we have an accurate compass.

This in itself would be to recognize a certain authority in this person. But this remains only an abstract authority, an authority that we recognize for others but not ourselves, unless we move on to step three. This third step is the decision that since Jesus was right, we will try to live by his teachings. Since he illustrated the way to live in accordance with truth and meaning, we will follow his lead in orienting our own lives. Or, to put it another way, after deciding that here we have an accurate compass (step two), we now decide to follow where it points (step three). In the terminology we used earlier, this is what makes us Christians; this is what it means to confess Jesus as the Christ.

This is what is involved today in an individual recognizing the authority of Jesus of Nazareth. Now we move on to question (2): How does this fit without common sense?

2. How Do We Justify This Authority?

How can we justify this authority for Jesus of Nazareth in a way consistent with our common sense theology? It fits with our understanding of the Christ, with our conception of God, and with our modern common sense to claim that Jesus of Nazareth was particularly sensitive to the presence of God as the context for our lives and to the possibilities and demands that this creates for us. If we use the image of God as magnetic field, then we can similarly picture Jesus as a compass. A compass is not made of the same substance as a magnetic field, nor is it sent or chosen by the north pole, but it is accurately sensitive to the pull and direction of the magnetic field within which we live.

It is well known that some other animals can sense color and smell and sound beyond our range. Bees home in on brilliant ultraviolet patterns that we see as plain white daisies; pigeons can literally align themselves to magnetic north because of magnetite in their brains. Similarly, we recognize that some people are more sensitive than others to the spiritual dimensions of human existence and that some are particularly sensitive. And this is the claim that we make of Jesus of Nazareth. We claim that he was particularly aware of and in tune with God, that he was aware of and in tune with the ultimate truths and values and meaning.

We do not have to claim that he is the only person who was ever this sensitive to God, that he was in tune with God in an absolutely unique way. Rather, our claim is that Jesus was particularly sensitive to God. We claim that he was right, that he is an accurate compass. This is sufficient for our faith -- that we have a trustworthy guide -- and this fits with our common sense in a way that other kinds of claims about Jesus do not.

3. Why Jesus of Nazareth?

If we do not claim an absolutely unique relationship between Jesus and God, then how do we justify recognizing Jesus’ authority? Even if it fits with our common sense, how can we justify choosing this person as our compass when there may be others just as accurate?

This is a legitimate and important question. But we need to remember that we do not need to claim that Jesus is the only trustworthy guide to God. I hope we are not so insecure that we need to claim that everyone else in all other religious traditions is hopelessly misguided. As we pointed out in Chapter 8, we can consider each other to be wrong without necessarily impugning the validity of the other’s religious beliefs, if their beliefs lead to right relation with God and people. And indeed, should we not rejoice if others find themselves directed to truth and to God, even if it is by other paths than our own?

Well, if we don’t claim (and so don’t need to try to prove) uniqueness for Jesus of Nazareth, how then do we justify giving him the role and authority of compass? There are four parts to our answer: (A) we are not aware of any equally good alternatives; (B) Jesus has been confirmed in this role by many faithful lives; (C) our interpretation of Jesus’ role is subject to the correction of tradition and ongoing public discussion; and (D) in the end, it depends on the response of our hearts. You will note that these are mostly reasons of historical accident, dependent on our own historical situation. We are historical creatures, influenced greatly by our circumstances. Our claim is that -- partly because of these circumstances -- Jesus can function as the Christ for us, and does function this way for those who choose him.

(A) Why choose Jesus of Nazareth when there may be others who were as sensitive to God? The plain fact is that we don’t know of any others who would fill the bill for us. The other people of whom I am aware who show in their lives this same sensitivity and devotion to the cause of God and rightness are themselves acknowledged followers of Jesus. If we were to choose one of them as a guide we would find ourselves directed right back to Jesus as compass. The one exception to this with which we in the West are familiar is Mahatma Gandhi. However, it is unlikely that we could bridge the cultural gap and choose as compass someone who was an ascetic and a vegetarian and who promoted celibacy even in marriage for the sake of spiritual growth.

Now I freely admit that my not being aware of good alternatives to Jesus of Nazareth may be due to simple ignorance on my part and is no doubt culturally conditioned. Nevertheless, it makes no sense to withhold our allegiance from Jesus merely because it is possible that there may be other options, if in fact there are no actual viable alternatives in sight. (And I must say, even with the honey-wagon load of self-proclaimed saviors now in evidence, there has never been a greater and more obvious dearth of good candidates.)

(B) If we were to become aware of another individual, or even several people, who seem to point to God and to the deepest truths as consistently and accurately as Jesus of Nazareth, we would still have another question. What kind of confirmation is there for the ability of these individuals to serve as accurate guides in aligning our lives with God?

The fact is that the teachings and example of Jesus have been tested out in many lives over many years. It is painfully true that his principles have been tested out by only a small fraction of those who have called themselves Christians through the centuries. But we do have numerous examples of people who, orienting their lives by the Christ, have lived in right relation with their neighbors and God, displaying unselfish caring for the hurts and needs of others.

This is very mundane historical fact. But the fact of the matter is that Jesus’ ability to function as a compass has been tested and confirmed over many generations. It is unlikely that we will find an alternative with this kind of confirmation, in whom we can have the same level of confidence.

(C) We need also to consider the fact that the content and implications of Jesus’ message are the subject of ongoing public discussion and debate. The importance of this must not be underestimated. When someone chooses to follow this particular compass they have as a resource an existing institution -- the Church -- to provide support and encouragement as well as the challenge and reminder of what it means to live in this direction. Who among us does not need this encouragement from time to time?

Furthermore, the existence of an established group with an established tradition tends to restrain personal extremes and idiosyncracies. Within this context our beliefs and actions are subject to the correction of public scrutiny. The mass suicide of Jonesville, for instance, was only possible in the isolation of the Guyanese jungle. And while it is also true that tradition can petrify into inflexibility, and can even at times inhibit the correct understanding of the original message, it contains within it the kernel of its own renewal. Given a free exchange of ideas, untraditional points of view are free to test themselves against accepted beliefs and a new and stronger synthesis may emerge.

(D) Points A, B, and C address the intellect. However, we cannot answer the question "Why Jesus of Nazareth?" by appealing to reason alone. It is a question of value and meaning, and as such is a question that addresses the heart. The first three points show that the choice of Jesus of Nazareth as compass makes sense and has certain arguments on its side. But the choice itself must be made with our hearts. In the final analysis, the question "Why Jesus of Nazareth?" must be answered by each of us individually, and the only adequate answer is a strong conviction in our deepest being that Jesus’ message is indeed the wonderful and powerful Truth. Why Jesus? Because the message that he preached and lived grabs us, permeates our values and gives our lives meaning. People other than Jesus, for reasons both circumstantial and substantial, do not grab us as profoundly.

What is this? Does it all boil down to a subjective response? Has Jesus of Nazareth no more of an objective claim on our loyalty than Sun Myung Moon or the Dalai Lama or the latest self-proclaimed messiah?

In one sense, he has not. Jesus has no claim of authority apart from our own subjective choice of him as compass. Democratic symbolism is appropriate here: he has authority only as we "elect" him or choose him. His message is authoritative for us only as we recognize its truth.

In another sense, as we pointed out in A, B, and C, there are some objective reasons which support this subjective choice. It can further be pointed out that there are some very real and important differences between Jesus and the others who have been put forth as authoritative guides, both in their messages and in the fruit that is born in the lives of their disciples.

Those who fully appropriate the central message of Jesus into their lives, whatever portion of "Christians" this may be, evidence a combination of freedom, moral concern, inner peace and good works of love that often bear fruit in the lives of others. In contrast, the brainwashed disciples of a guru may have inner peace, but they have attained this through the loss of their freedom and their ability to think, and their goal seems to be not to help others but to entrap more disciples. The pleasure-seekers in our society may seem free in comparison, but they lack inner meaning and bear no good fruit. Seeking to be free from responsibility, they all too often lack a responsible self to be free, and end up in bondage to the frenetic activity in which they hide from their own emptiness. Our solid burghers seem responsible: good parents and good citizens, active in civic endeavors, enjoying the peace and the satisfaction of respect and status and social conformity. Too often, though, these solid citizens cannot break through the walls of prejudice and habit, economic security and "what will the neighbors think", to reach the possibilities of love and freedom and justice to which God calls us.

I have claimed, and I claim again, that the life lived in love and right relation, and the character of one who lives in such a way, are in the most important sense better. If someone were to produce as gripping an example of this and as sure a guide to this as Jesus of Nazareth, then there might not be grounds for choosing one over the other. (And certainly this poor world of ours can make use of more good compasses!) However, for whatever reasons, I do not see this other someone.

So why Jesus of Nazareth? Because we find in him a key that yields meaning, a guide to value and truth that is confirmed as we live out our lives. Because his example and his teachings first grab us and then prove themselves over time. Because we find that the attitude, the faith, embodied in him leads to right relationship. And because we know, in our deepest heart of hearts, that his call to love and service is the call to that which is right and true in a way that transcends all other rights and all other truths. This is why we confess Jesus as the Christ.

It is finally time to talk about God. This chapter will certainly not be an exhaustive statement of all that can be said about God, however. For one thing, that can’t be done in one chapter or even in one book. It can’t be done by any one individual. Probably as a whole species we will never fully understand God, much less as individuals.

For another thing, it is not the purpose of this chapter to give a complete statement about God. The purpose of this chapter is to set out a general framework of what we can say. We will first look at those aspects of reality which can serve to point to God (Where do we see God?). We will then ask how God acts (What does God do?), and briefly address some questions about the nature of God (What is God like?). Finally, in the last section we will shift from concepts to images as I briefly suggest some metaphors that may help us to understand God.¹

One further note of introduction: while it is appropriate to be cautious in making statements about God, we showed in the last chapter that it is not appropriate to limit ourselves to that which can be empirically or logically proven. So while we will not appeal to revelation, there are insights about God that have been developed through the ages, passed on by the great religions, and confirmed or maybe even originated in our own lives. (As Christians, of course, we are guided first and foremost by the witness of the Christ.) We can put forth these insights as statements about God so long as we can show that they fit with reality and with our common sense.

I. Where Do We See God?

Q: If we are going to look for God -- what does God look like?

A: God doesn’t "look like". God doesn’t look like anything, in the sense that God could be said to have shape and size and color like most things around us. We cannot see God just as we cannot see the wind and cannot see love. Yet we can usually tell by looking outside whether there is any wind. If we cannot see what the wind "looks like" we can still tell, by looking or feeling, its strength and direction. And if we know what to look for we can see the presence of love.

Q: How, then, do you see God? Where can you point to God even in the same way that you see the wind?

A: Someone of the "specific interventionist" line of thought might point to a particular incident and say, "There! That was God’s doing!" Perhaps this is the kind of evidence you want. We can, after all, point to a blown-down tree and say, "There, that was the wind’s doing?’ However -- besides being a bit suspicious about which events get credited to God -- I simply cannot believe in a specific interventionist God. Our common sense does not allow it, nor does our faith (see Chapter 3). So it is inappropriate to ask us for specific interventionist type of evidence. This means we cannot point to God by means of an incident here or there which somehow violates what we know of natural law.

Q: At what, then, do we look?

A: At the pattern. You could examine every single separate happening and phenomenon, human and natural, and in each separate case not see God. But this would be like someone who examined an exquisite fishermans knit sweater and decided to find out what it is about the yarn that holds the sweater together and makes it so beautiful. They could then examine the yarn millimeter by millimeter, perhaps pulling the sweater apart in the process. They might learn much about the qualities of the yarn and wool. They might even conclude that they had learned all there was to learn about the sweater. But if all they looked at was the strand of wool in itself, they would never discover what holds the sweater together and what makes it beautiful. Unless you look at the pattern, at the way the yarn loops and ties and fastens, at the way the rows are related and at the intricate interconnections, you will never fathom the structure or the nature or the beauty of a sweater.

Q: That’s fine for sweaters. But what pattern do we look at in the world?

A: There are four aspects of pattern.

The Pattern Part 1: The Fact of Pattern Itself

To begin with, look at the fact that there is pattern. Not just that there is something rather than nothing -- although this is impressive in its own right -- but that there is a whole range of particular somethings rather than just a great lot of nothing in particular. There is order rather than chaos, there are things -- all sorts of things -- rather than a big primordial blob.

"Nonsense" you may say. "That’s just simple natural law in action, the unavoidable result of the laws of physics."

Perhaps it is. But was it unavoidable that the laws of physics should work just this way? Others have pointed out how an absurdly small change in any of a number of physical forces would yield a radically different universe. For instance, if the force that holds protons in an atomic nucleus were even slightly weaker or stronger, stars -- and so also life as we know it -- would be impossible.²

And is it so simple? The manner in which infinitesimal something-or-others -- they are, after all, neither energy nor matter, or perhaps both energy and matter, whose behavior can be predicted only in probabilities -- the manner in which they manage to join together in the proper sorts of atoms and molecules is, to me, a cause for wonder. A greater wonder yet is how these still infinitesimally small molecules make the great leap from aggregations of infinitesimals -- however numerous -- to solid, visible things. How do any number of atoms, which are mostly empty space, turn into tables and chairs and mountains and little green lizards? How do subatomic whatever-they-are acquire color and solidity and identity as a chair?

I am not suggesting that God turns subatomic particles into atoms and then into molecules and then into chairs, giving them color and hardness in the process. I believe I have at least a vague idea of how this works. But the point is this: there is an exceptionally useful and necessary set of patterns here which allows for infinitesimals to become "things" of a very different nature, bridging such an improbable gap that if we did not take it for granted we would not find it credible.

All I wish to say is this: I wonder if we ought to take this so cavalierly for granted.

The Pattern Part 2: Life and Consciousness

Look at this thing called life. Is this not a wonder? Is not the fact of life itself (not to mention its diversity, its beauty, its interrelatedness) a thing to marvel at?

There are some who would not agree. I do not mean those who would say that life’s diversity, for instance, is a natural result of the process of evolution. I tend to agree, but it does not lessen the marvel for me. I refer here to the small group of scientists who argue that in fact there is no qualitative difference between living organisms and other chemical processes. They argue this on the basis that one can posit a series of intermediary steps leading from basic chemical reactions to what we call living organisms, which could be viewed as a simple chemical progression leading to the strategy of the cell.

But this is not a persuasive argument. To say that living organisms cannot be classified as different from other locales of chemical reactions because there are intermediate steps is like saying that animals ought not to be distinguished from plants because there are organisms that possess the features of both. However, while I cannot tell you whether protista are animal or vegetable or something else altogether, I can still distinguish a mammal from a conifer without pondering over it for too very long. And so can you.

Linguistic philosophy has long recognized that the existence of "borderline cases" does not argue against the existence of two genuinely separate classes. I do hope that no one believes that the presence of protista means that there aren’t perfectly valid criteria for distinguishing plants from animals, petunias from porcupines. Similarly -- and our common sense, modern philosophy, and the vast bulk of scientists are in agreement on this -- while life and non-life both involve chemical reactions, life is qualitatively different in some very important ways.

And whether life represents the inevitable result of several billion years of chemical interactions on a planet such as ours, or whether it represents a one-in-a-trillion fluke, it is a source of wonder.

And among the living things of our world there are conscious beings. Descartes’ famous utterance of "cogito ergo sum" – "l think, therefore I am" -- is not nearly as important as the comment we can then make: "Because he thinks this, here is a conscious being."

Indeed, Descartes was a conscious being. I am a conscious being. I suspect that you are a conscious being as well. I not only feel, physically and emotionally, but I also think. And I am aware that I feel and think, and think about my feeling and thinking.

Life is a marvel in itself -- and here is consciousness as well! We are, wonder of wonders, conscious beings.

I am not arguing that God gave us this consciousness by a special act or that this is what separates human beings from all other animals. In fact it is apparent that some other animals share a certain degree of self-consciousness, most notably the great apes. (Might we notice this more in dolphins and whales if they were not so different from us that real communication is more difficult?)

Nor are we concerned here with the question of humanity’s uniqueness in the universe. Whether or not there are other sentient creatures is an interesting question which -- as of this writing -- is unresolved. I expect it to remain that way for some time.³ But this is irrelevant to our point here.

Our point here is that consciousness and the mind -- something that is non-physical, that transcends the physical, that is wondrous in itself -- somehow develops from physical processes. Please note: I am not saying that we don’t know how the brain works. Though there is much yet to learn, we understand more and more each passing year. And I have no doubt that if you and I applied ourselves to the subject we could acquire at least a basic understanding of neurons and synapses and the like. And obviously the mind, and consciousness, depend upon the brain. But they are not reducible to the brain. Again, we see the bridging of an incomprehensible gap: electro-chemical impulses give rise to a mind and to consciousness. Physical occurrences somehow translate into a thinking, feeling, willing, acting being.

And again, we take this pattern for granted.

The Pattern Part 3: Ethics and Aesthetics

To talk about the leap from subatomic particles and probabilities to objects as we know them, and to talk about the leap from chemistry to consciousness, is in a very real sense to engage in metaphysics. Of a somewhat different nature are considerations of our ethical and aesthetic senses, of the fact that we can recognize right and wrong and perceive beauty.

Let us turn first to the ethical. There are voluminous studies on how we acquire moral reasoning. But about the only conclusions they can draw are that we acquire this by stages as we grow up and that development of our moral reasoning can be encouraged by the right sort of instruction and example.

What these studies have not answered -- what cannot be answered by studies and perhaps cannot be answered at all -- is why we have this capacity in the first place. Remember, now, we are talking about our moral sense, not just about our ability to understand and comply with the rules of our society. Certainly our capacity to absorb the standards of our culture can be explained by psychology and sociology.

But we are not referring here to our ability to mimic our elders or to toe the line. Rather, we are referring here to our moral or ethical sense: our ability to recognize right and wrong, justice and injustice, even when inequity is socially acceptable and injustice is inherent in the existing structures.

Please note that we recognize what is right. This implies that there is more than our own subjective sense of right and wrong. Actions and situations are right or wrong in an objective sense, whether or not we have the ability to discern this. There is a right and a wrong. I’m not saying that it is always easy to figure out, although sometimes it is appallingly obvious. I am saying that it is always there, whether we can see it or not.

The conviction and drive of the great prophets did not come from their having devised a scheme of morality. It came from a sense of having discovered a truth so great and so powerful that it had to be shared. Some people, of course, feel this same way about "truths" that the rest of us find blatantly false and morally repugnant. The existence of fool’s gold and the propensity of some people to be taken in by it do not, however, cast doubt on the existence of real gold, but rather on some people’s faculties of discrimination. The fact that many people have value systems that do not appear particularly moral only increases the value and the marvel of good moral judgment.

You see, the wonder is not that we so often misidentify our society’s standards with what is just and right, especially when it comes to those rules which favor our particular class or group. After all, these standards are inculcated in us on a daily basis in innumerable ways and are often reinforced by the heavy weight of self-interest. What is remarkable is the human capacity -- in spite of this intensive societal indoctrination -- to perceive where justice demands change, to discover that one’s society or one’s peers are morally wanting. We can recognize right and wrong, and we recognize that it is altogether independent of whatever may happen to be majority opinion at any given time or place.

Whence comes this moral capacity? And at the very least does it not make us aware of another level, another depth, of reality?

Then there is our aesthetic sense. You can explain why the sky is blue with reference to absorption and refraction and the length of light waves. Or you can explain why this wave-length looks blue to us with details about our retinas and optical nerves and brain processes. But how do you explain why this blue sky looks beautiful to us?

This faculty of ours is generally taken for granted and consequently overlooked, and the importance of beauty in our lives is greatly under-rated. Beauty introduces an ethereal, uplifting breath into our lives. It affects our goals, our choices, our happiness. We find beauty not only in sunsets and grand vistas, not only in Rembrandt and Bach, but also in children’s laughter and grandmothers’ smiles, in acts of courage and self-sacrifice, in personal relationships and kindness and integrity. Whenever we allow ourselves to see past our own busyness and our own anxieties to recognize the beauty around us we allow ourselves an uplift that is more spiritual than we generally admit. (This is why beauty is an important aspect of the worship experience.)

To repeat the maxim that beauty is in the eye (or ear) of the beholder does not really help to explain this. Further, if you mean by this that the recognition of beauty is capricious or privatistic, without pattern or consensus -- well, that is just plain wrong. Similarly, explanations based on aesthetic principles such as patterns, color, balance, harmonies, etc., can be helpful in explaining why certain paintings or symphonies (for instance) are considered masterpieces, but this still doesn’t explain why we are able to recognize beauty at all. And any discussion just of the attributes of those things we consider beautiful is bound to fall woefully short of the depth and the richness of the reality we experience.

Again, we need to ask ourselves: whence comes this capability? What evolutionary purpose could it serve? And does it not make us aware of the non-physical as well as the physical realities of our universe?

The Pattern Part 4: Love

I now want to direct your attention to that aspect of "the pattern" that is perhaps best described by Robert Frost in "Mending Wall":

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall

That wants it down.

Frost was speaking of an old stone wall between apple trees and pines. My own experience is that this same observation would apply as well to other walls, to the walls of fear and hatred and misunderstanding that we humans build between one another.

As easily as these walls seem to grow, as consistently as they separate individuals, factions and nations, how can I suggest that there is a force that works against them? Must we not then posit an even stronger force working for them?

This is an important question. It deserves a careful answer. The difficulties it poses could be escaped with the easy but unchristian approach of crediting humans with all that is bad and God with all that is good. Certainly this has been done before. Or we could go one step further and credit the devil with all the evil, thus leaving humans responsible for nothing at all. Both of these approaches negate our responsibility for our own actions and ignore the reality of human will and our ability to do good or evil. We will not resort to either of these all-too-easy non-solutions.

What, then, do we say about our human propensities to selfishness and cruelty and plain mistakes? What do we say about these tendencies which, in combination with the fragility of the human psyche, seem to make walls necessary? It is true that the human spirit can be hard to break, but it is easily damaged. Survival often comes only at a high cost as we wall ourselves off from others in one way or another.

It is also true that at times we see wise and courageous souls bridge these barriers in ways that make walls seem weak and superfluous by comparison. But how can we say that the pattern, or even God, encourages one and discourages the other?

To begin with, we must accept the fact that we humans are capable of acting in an extremely wide variety of ways. Along with a large body of morally neutral acts, we are capable of behavior ranging from the inexpressibly wicked to the ineffably saintly. There is a very real difference between good and evil actions and this difference is not only in how these affect others. Our behavior and its effects interact with our own psyche as well. Just as we can expect certain types of behavior from people with certain types of personality, it is also true that certain actions help to develop certain types of character in us.

At this point I am going to make an unabashed value judgment. I claim with no misgivings whatsoever that some characters are better than others. And I most emphatically do not equate this with some people being happier than others. This needs to be said for two reasons. First, too many people equate happiness with pleasure or with other shallow emotions that come and go with the ups and downs of each day. Second, there is an absurd tendency to believe that our proper goal in life is this same happiness, and in fact some even equate it with "mental health" -- as if the highest achievement of the human spirit were to enjoy itself!

I claim that it is better for a soul to have a certain character. It is better for a person to attain wholeness and maturity. This can be seen in some people: they are at ease in the world in a way that far transcends material ease. They are able to offer love and hope and good humor to others who need it. They lend security and strength and offer hospitality in its broadest sense in a world where most are strangers. This is not to say that they do not suffer hurt and anxiety and depression -- of course they do. But their spirit has depth and breadth and is not defeated by external events.

This is the character which it is simply better for a soul to have. Something in us knows this, though we do not always acknowledge it. And for attaining this particular character, love works better than hate. For the all-important work of molding our most important possession, our own self -- which is in fact the only thing that is truly our own -- for molding this into something that has depth and breadth and substance, for nurturing it beyond the shallow and brittle and empty, acts of love and courage and self-sacrifice are needed. This simply cannot be accomplished by living and acting in pettiness or hatred or fear. We must approach life with those attitudes which lead to as well as proceed from this great breadth of soul, if we want to have this kind of spirit ourselves. Caring, giving and sharing, without cavil or self-serving, with love for others -- this is the way to develop a depth of character.⁴

Something in us recognizes this wholeness, this greatness of soul, either in others or in incipient form in ourselves, and desires it -- desires it and recognizes it as a higher, more important goal. When we strive for it we find that the pattern is such that we can only reach this goal through love.

Of course, we have other needs and other goals. To make the most of our potential, we need relationships that nurture our growth and development. We in turn can better nurture these needed relationships through love. The problem here, which may well be the problem for humanity, is that if we do not manage to meet our emotional needs through loving relationships we will try to meet them in other ways. Thus we may seek status or wealth or power to give ourselves a sense of worth. Or we may hide by being very busy in our work or house or hobbies, either afraid to reach out or unable to, avoiding the challenge and risk of life through uninvolvement, avoiding facing our own unhappiness through busyness. But this is not enough. Neither success nor busyness is enough.⁵ Our spirits suffocate with no more than this. Our walls look solid, but a close inspection shows no foundation shoring them up.

Of course, we can go further astray than this and find our driving force in hatred and bitterness. Indeed, whole nations have sustained themselves on this for generations, finding their meaning and purpose and -- if ever they triumphed -- satisfaction. But the cost! The cost in stunted growth, in twisted lives, in narrow distorted spirits, is appalling.

Those souls who would grow must either transplant themselves or overcome the poison in the very medium of their culture.

In summary: both in order to foster the relationships that nourish our own growth and in order to create in ourselves the broadest and best character, we do the best for ourselves when we act in that way which is also best for others -- in love. This is the way the pattern is, the way it works.

Even in the midst of anger and fear, of hatred and violence, when a billion years worth of instinct gears us up for either fight or flight, something calls for us to break the vicious cycle and instead to reach out to the other with caring and understanding. I have seen the walls we humans have built of fear and prejudice and misunderstanding. These walls are buttressed by years of suffering or superstition and by what are supposed to be some of our deepest psychological needs. These walls are fearsome; they are depressing and discouraging; they are an inescapable fact of life.

But I have seen these walls breached. And I have felt it. Something there is that does not love a wall, that wants it down. We may have physical appetites for food and sex and rest and emotional appetites for status and power, but there is something in the pattern that encourages us in another direction, that encourages us to breach the walls, that pulls us to love.

Where Then Is God?

We began our discussion of patterns to answer the question of where to look for God. We have looked at various aspects of the pattern of the universe: at the way infinitesimal entities consisting mostly of empty space make up a solid world; at the existence of not only life itself but also conscious life; at the presence of ethical and aesthetic faculties in us; and at the soft but persistent pull toward love. Each of these, properly considered, is an occasion for great wonder.

But do these various parts of the pattern prove the existence of God? Of course not. God cannot be proved or disproved in this way. Of course, neither can the existence of the tree in my back yard be "proved". You have to experience it -- you can see it by day or run into it in the dark. God cannot be seen as a tree is, but can be inferred or felt or run into.

One can respond to the marvelous realities that I have pointed out in one of two ways. One can say that these are all to be explained by natural law or by chance or by evolution, and nothing else lies behind them. Or one can say that another force or reality lies behind these. One can see confirmation here of a God whose presence or love one may have felt. These wonders fit with the idea of God. Those who see nothing but the immediately visible, those who do not see or infer God, must believe that the rest of us are hallucinating, have strong imaginations, or simply misinterpret reality. Those of us who do see or feel the presence of God, on the other hand, are forced to conclude that the others are either blind, or closed off to the spiritual realities of this world, or simply unlucky enough not to have experienced God.⁶

For those of us who are open to God these aspects of the pattern help to point to this reality, to the way in which God is in the pattern. God is the context within which we all live.

II. What Does God Do?

Q: If God is to be found in the context of our world, how then do we speak of God acting? What does God do?

A: If God is to be found in the context, if it is this context that makes all action possible, then in one sense God can be credited or blamed for every single thing that happens. But this is not true in any meaningful sense. It confuses "making things possible" with "making things happen". (Some readers -- precious few, I warrant -- will want to relate this to the difference between primary cause and sufficient cause.)

But then what do we mean by God acting, by God doing? If you want to look for God acting in a way outside of the natural processes of this world, for God going "zap!" so that you have an obvious and indisputable miracle -- well, then we need to go back to Chapter 3 and begin to work this through all over again. However, I will make two assumptions here: first, that you have absolutely no inclination to read the last hundred or so pages over again; and second, that you understand by now why someone who shares my common sense cannot conceive of God as acting in this way.

But if God doesn’t do anything in the traditional sense of supernatural acts, then what does God do? Here is one of the central questions of all theology: What does God do?

God encourages. I do not mean that God is sitting on the heavenly sidelines rooting for us, shouting such things as "Come on, Smith, love your neighbor!", or "Way to go, Jones!" I mean rather that God encourages all acts that are in keeping with the rule of love. I mean that through the processes of this world, including forces that transcend the physical (as we think of it), God is pulling/urging/coaxing each and every one of us in a certain direction. God does this as the context in which we live and through the processes of the world, not by going "zap".

Other aspects of God’s "immanence" or involvement in the world also fit in this category of God’s encouragement through the processes. Such themes as God’s grace and the activity of God’s love and forgiveness are ways that God affects us through the context. The divine pull toward love is a real and pervasive aspect of the world in which we live.

III. What Is God Like?

So far we have addressed the immanence of God -- God as present and active in the world. What can we say about the transcendence of God and the nature of God’s being?

Q: Can we say that God is infinite?

A: We must first admit that infinity is a difficult concept for us humans to grasp in any adequate sense. (Knowing how to use it in a calculus formula is not the same as understanding what it means.) We must also realize that we should specify, infinite in what respect? Size, strength, weight, or what? But insofar as we recognize "infinite" to mean that God encompasses the totality of being, is not bound by spatial and temporal limits as we are, is beyond what we see and know and beyond our ability to comprehend, then it is appropriate to speak of God as infinite.

Q: Is God omnipotent?

A: The question of whether God is all-powerful usually refers to God’s power to control events here on earth. And quite often people are asking, "Is God in charge?" If God can control events here but chooses not to, then this power is irrelevant to those who are asking this question.

So how do we answer this question about the power of God? Well, if neither our common sense nor our faith allows for an interventionist God, then we must respond by saying, "What do you mean? How is a question about power relevant to God?"

Indeed, we can no more talk about God’s omnipotence than we can about God’s gender or color. It doesn’t apply. God doesn’t work that way. After all, did not the Christ show us that worldly power, the power to control, is ultimately vain and empty? What has this kind of power to do with the divine?

Q: Is God omniscient?

A: In whatever way it is that God knows -- and it is surely not the same way that you and I know things -- I am sure that this knowledge extends to all of us. I am not sure that this knowledge extends to the future, but then I am not sure how the concept of time applies to God anyway.

Q: Is God a personal being? That is, is God an entity or unity that can be called a "person" in the broad sense?

A: Whole books have been written on what it means to be a person, but we all have a reasonably good idea of what it means. We might summarize it in this way: a person is a self-conscious being conscious of the world, of his or her self, and of the relationship between the two. A person is a unity that extends through time, a unity of mind and experience.

So the question is not whether God is some sort of giant human being. The question is whether God is a self-conscious unity.

To answer this question requires speculation in arenas unfamiliar to us. It is hard for us to envision the possibilities for conscious being outside the narrow confines of our own kind of existence. My own conclusion is that we can, and must, relate to God as personal being to personal being. This is the only appropriate way to do so. I am convinced that whatever sort of being God is, the nature of God’s being includes consciousness and self-consciousness, and very likely transcends our understanding of these as well. God’s attributes include self-awareness and the ability to relate to us as personal being to personal being.

This is a very important claim. On what do I base it? Neither on mystical revelation nor on theological necessity nor on human emotional needs. Rather, God’s relating to us as person to person seems to fit with what I sense of the world and of God.

Again, I do not mean that we have God zapping in with personal communications like: "John Brown, this is God calling. Attack Harper’s Ferry!" Rather, God relates to us as person in the context and through the processes of the world. The context in which we live is not impersonal.

It needs to be noted that two distinct claims have been made here: First, that God is a conscious and self-conscious being; and second, that there is an aspect of God that relates to us in our mode of existence as conscious personal beings, and that we can appropriately relate back to God only in this same way. The second is the more vital to our relationship to God, the one that makes it possible.

Q: One last question: does God care?

A: Now we are asked about God’s feelings! But it is a necessary question. If God were omniscient and infinite and a whole range of other superlatives, but did not care about us, then God would not be the God we worship and might not even merit the name of God.

But God does care. This is a basic part of God’s nature. Not only does God love us, it is even appropriate to say that, in pulling us to love through the context, God is love.

Obviously, the claim that God loves us is a statement of faith. It cannot be proven. But remember, neither can many other important parts of our lives be "proven". And how would you respond if your spouse or child or parent asked you to prove that you loved them?

Still, our faith claim that God loves us must be consistent with our understanding of the world. So we point to God’s encouragement or pulling of us to love, and to the other wonders, as facts that fit well with our feeling of God’s love.

A related claim which elaborates and strengthens our understanding that God loves us, is the claim that God suffers with us. What stronger form of caring could there be than this?

But how do we conceive of God suffering with us?⁷ There are actually three possibilities in keeping with our theology. First, we could posit that God is omnisciently aware of all of our hurts and sorrows, and that God’s desire for our well-being is such that this causes God to suffer the equivalent of emotional pain. This is certainly conceivable and understandable but it will leave some people uncomfortable with its anthropomorphism.

A second alternative is to envision the gentle pull towards love as not merely an action of God, but as a part of God, an aspect of God’s being. Our resistance to this pull, our moving in the other direction, would then be a pulling or even a tearing of the fabric of God. God is then conceived of as suffering directly instead of vicariously.

A third alternative is to posit that if God is in the context, then God must be in each and every one of us as well. We all share in the being of God; God’s being includes each of us. In this conception God experiences our suffering even more directly, for our suffering is God’s as well through our being a part of God’s being.

Each of these three is a suitable conception. And any one of them strengthens our understanding of how God cares for us.

IV. Images of God

So far in this chapter we have looked at some of the wonders of our reality that fit with a belief in God, we have briefly answered the question of how God acts in this world (in keeping with our common sense), and we have addressed a few questions about what God is like. In all of these we were dealing with concepts, with the realm of ideas that must be logical and consistent. We have already spoken of the necessity of speaking clearly and carefully about God.

But concepts are not the only way in which we convey our understanding and our truths. As we noted in the last chapter, images or metaphors are also important and sometimes do better at communicating than do concepts. So in this section I will put forth some images of God which fit with our understanding. These images are only partially developed. You are encouraged to further develop these yourself and also to think of different images which you find helpful to your understanding of God.

In talking about God with images we do not say that God is such and such, we say that God is like such and such (the same way that Jesus spoke about the Kingdom of God in his parables).

1. God Is Like the Sun

This is an analogy that has been used often and in a variety of ways over the centuries. And of course the sun has been worshipped as divine itself. Nevertheless, a helpful image can be found here.

We do not mean that God is like the sun in that it is distant and "up there", or in that if you come too close you will be consumed or if you look at it directly you will be blinded. Rather, God is like the sun in this way: it may seem far away, but its rays are all around us. Its effects are diffuse, pervasive. It made possible the world in which we exist and continues to make it possible. It creates the context in which we live. It not only sustains life, it also provides light to see and warmth for comfort. And (as an analogy to us) many plants are drawn toward the sun. They succeed only by growing sunward.

In these ways God is like the sun.

2. God Is Like Gravity

Before the tools of modern science, gravity could not be measured. We could only infer its existence. It cannot be seen. And yet there it most definitely is.

Gravity serves to hold things together. It is the attractive force which pulls bodies towards one another. It balances centrifugal forces to hold planets in orbit. It pulls things together, acting against the forces that pull things apart. Gravity is the pull, acting unseen through all creation. In these ways God is like gravity.

3. God Is Like the Magnetic Field

The magnetic field is invisible but surrounds us everywhere, encompassing the whole earth. But though it is all around us, it can only be detected by the right kind of sensitivity. Iron that is not magnetized will not respond to it.

And though it is all around us, it leads in a certain direction. Someone who is aware of it, who has a proper compass and who pays attention to this compass, can find their way.

In these ways God is like the magnetic field.

4. God Is Like the Water Cycle

We see water in our world in many different individual rivers and streams, oceans and ponds, puddles and raindrops. Yet it is all water. It all derives from and is a part of the water cycle. Thus do we derive from God, and thus does God participate in everything.

And God participates in us as the water cycle does. We may think of it as being "out there". But water is an integral part of us, a constituent part of every cell in our body.

In these ways God is like the water cycle.

These are but outlines of images, but perhaps they will help some to understand how we are conceiving of God. Certainly these and other images need to be developed.

And now, having considered how God acts, we can continue our consideration of Jesus of Nazareth as the functional Christ with the basic question of "Why Jesus?"

Notes:

1. While the approach taken in this chapter will speak of God being in the processes of this world, this is not "process theology" in a technical sense. Strictly speaking. "process thought" refers to philosophy or theology based on the ideas of Alfred North Whitehead. While process thought is congenial to my approach, I am not sure that I can subscribe to all of the claims it makes (such as those regarding purpose) and I see no advantage to exchanging Nicene jargon for Whiteheadian jargon (such as "concrescence" and "prehension" and "mental pole").

2. See Freeman Dyson’s essay "The Argument from Design" in Disturbing the Universe (Harper and Row, 1979). To be fair, also see Stephen Jay Gould’s argument about drawing too strong a conclusion from this in "Mind and Supermind" in The Flamingo’s Smile (W. W. Norton, 1985). (As we said, we are not dealing here with "proofs".)

3. I find it interesting that those most familiar with the course of evolution on this planet -- the paleontologists -- are divided as to the likelihood of intelligent being evolving on other worlds, but are apparently united in the conviction that if intelligent life were to evolve elsewhere it would not resemble us. This is because of the immense number of circumstantial "accidents" over billions of years that form our particular path to consciousness (including, perhaps, periodic cometary bombardment of the earth and resulting extinctions). If this is correct, the strange creatures of science fiction movies, with two arms and two legs and a head, are far more like us than anything we are really likely to meet "out there". (See Stephen Jay Gould, The Flamingo’s Smile [W. W. Norton and Co., 19831 pp. 403-413)

4. And is this not also the essence of faith? In traditional terms, we are saying that good works, rightly done, can lead to faith -- just as faith, rightly lived, will overflow in good works.

5. "Oh, captive, bound and double-ironed:’ cried the phantom. "Not to know that any Christian spirit working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may be, will find its mortal life too short for its vast means of usefulness. Not to know that no space of regret can make amends for one life’s opportunities misused! Yet such was I! Oh! Such was I!"

"But you were always a good man of business, Jacob’ faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself.

"Business!" cried the ghost, wringing its hands again. "Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence were all my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!" (Scrooge and Marley in Stave I of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.)

6. Those who are particularly interested in this question and who are patient and persistent readers may wish to consult Hans K¸ng’s Does God Exist? (Vintage Books, 1981)K¸ng considers the challenges from Feuerbach, Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud -- among others -- in a comprehensive overview of the question of religion and God in recent history. He argues that God does exist, that this cannot be proved, but that it is a decision we must make whether, in the end, to trust in reality.

7. Our success or failure in conceiving how this works does not, of course, determine whether or not it is a fact. But we ought not to postulate things like this without showing how they are compatible with the rest of our beliefs and with our common sense.

L. ..

Time to talk about God, I said. But no -- alas! First we must talk about talking about God.

It is frustrating to have to stop every few steps to examine our presuppositions and ground rules. But the alternative is worse. To charge ahead without a road map will only lead us to confusion. So before we proceed to talk about God we must consider several questions:

I. First, does our modern common sense even permit God-talk? We will (A) look at the extreme viewpoint which suggested that it does not, (B) look at some of the developments which make it clear that it does, and then (C) draw some conclusions about common sense and God-talk.

II. Once we have established the possibility of talking about God we need to look at (A) how the rules of logic apply to this use of language, and (B) what kind of verification is appropriate.

III. Finally in this chapter we will touch briefly on the difference between speaking conceptually of God and speaking in images, and the appropriate use of each.

I. Does Modern Common Sense Allow for God-Talk?

Let us begin by repeating our basic common sense of how the world works. We share a sense that we live in a closed causal universe. Events in this world are explained by reference to causes in this world. God does not go "zap:" intervening from "someplace else" into the processes of this world.

This is not to say that there are no phenomena beyond our powers of explanation. Indeed there are. But we assume that there is an explanation for each of these which fits our common sense, which we just don’t know yet.

Does this common sense that the world is a closed causal unit allow room for God? Some would say that our "modern scientific" common sense doesn’t allow for any reality that we can’t touch, weigh and measure. Have we, in fact, found ourselves carried inexorably to this extreme?

IA. The Road to Logical Positivism

There has certainly been an element of this in our culture in the last couple of centuries. There has been a tendency to try to explain every possible phenomenon in terms of the physical sciences. During this time physics and chemistry and biology amassed one discovery and conquest after another. Intelligent people got swept up in the feeling of triumph and declared not only that we could explain all physical processes this way, but that we could explain all of reality with these sciences. This led to a circular redefinition of reality. Once people accepted as an article of faith that modern science could explain the totality of our world, they had to say that anything which fell outside the scope of science isn’t real. This is the attitude that says, "If it can’t be studied and analyzed by chemists or physicists or biologists, it doesn’t exist."

It is very understandable that some people would be led to this extreme. Modern science is the basis of our technology, the basis of our material way of life. It depends on precise measurements, repeatable experiments and strict controls -- none of which is applicable to the spiritual realm. If you adopt this kind of science as the appropriate way of investigating all of reality, then you also close your eyes to anything not open to this sort of approach. Which may be quite a bit.

The question we have to answer is whether this attitude has permeated our common sense. Certainly we must admit that elements of it have crept in. But this is far different from saying that our modern common sense has adopted wholesale the view that only the material world is real. It has not. This view has had only a temporary sway over a minority of people. And in fact its high water mark was already past by the third quarter of the twentieth century, having reached its zenith at different times in different disciplines.

We have a strong urge to try to explain all of reality in one way, so it was probably inevitable that the methodology of the physical sciences would be carried into inappropriate areas. If we had to pick one symbolic high point of this invasion it would be the publication of A. J. Ayer’s Language. Truth and Logic in 1935. In this work Ayer propounded "logical positivism"¹ with his "principle of verifiability". He maintained that for a statement to be either true or false -- and thus, for it to have any meaning at all -- it must be verifiable. That is, we must be able to test any statement, must be able to prove it right or wrong. (Here is a principle right out of the classical physical sciences.) If it can’t be tested, said Ayer, it doesn’t have any meaning for us.

It was quickly pointed out that this would mean that a statement such as "the moon is made of green cheese" is meaningless. But while "the moon is made of green cheese" may have been unverifiable -- remember, this was in 1935 -- and may be an altogether silly thing to say, we all know perfectly well what it means. That’s how we know it’s silly. It is not meaningless. So Ayer decided that a statement need be only verifiable "in principle". That is, we do not actually need to be able to verify it at the present time with our present technology, but it must be possible that we could do so if we had the necessary capabilities, just as we found out for sure several decades later about the moon (for those who had lingering doubts).

But there are still a lot of statements that are not testable or verifiable even "in principle". Ayer would rule out as meaningless such statements as "God is good", "God is responsible for the evils in the world", and "God loves you". Now each of these three statements is debatable. Each has been subject to fuzzy thinking at times. Each has proven to be of interest to people and has in fact been the subject of intense debates. They are all impossible to prove or disprove empirically. They are, in fact, unverifiable. So logical positivism would say that they don’t mean anything.

But are they meaningless? What do you think? Do you have an idea as to what any of these three statements is saying? If you do, then Ayer is wrong.

Or, to give another example: a philosophy professor of mine claimed to have an invisible, weightless elf that lived inside his watch. As unverifiable -- and as silly -- as this statement was, you and I both know perfectly well what he meant. Which was precisely his point. It is simply not true that unverifiable statements cannot have meaning for us.

As for A. J. Ayer, within a couple of decades his book was relegated to the ignominious lot of a classic example to show undergraduates how not to reason. (See J. L. Austin’s Sense and Sensibilia [Oxford University Press, 1962].) Even in the skeptical world of modern analytic philosophy, common sense could not be dragged into adopting a world-view based on the physical sciences alone. Here and there, of course, different individuals reached this point (and some still do). But the tide had already turned, not least in the sciences themselves.

IB. Signposts on the Road Back

We will note three areas which serve to highlight the journey back from logical positivism and which also show that our underlying common sense does not itself rule out the spiritual.

(1) Modern (or "Post-Newtonian") Physics²

In the orderly world of Victorian physics there were particles and there were waves, and the two quite properly refrained from fraternizing, and all physical processes were at least in principle predictable. Since then our understanding of the basic pieces and forces that make up the world has undergone a revolution.

Without going into unnecessary detail let us just note two of the cornerstones of modern physics. First: the basic building-blocks of the universe cannot be neatly classified as either waves or particles in the traditional sense. Instead they behave sometimes as one, sometimes as the other. Our neat traditional dichotomies of matter vs. energy, body vs. mind, cannot be maintained at the most basic level.

Second: the result of a given action on a particular individual atomic particle cannot be predicted. That’s right, the certain predictability of cause and effect also disappears at the subatomic level. We are left with probability. On a large scale it can be a very strong probability, but it is probability nonetheless.

Our view of the physical world can no longer be what it once was. The neat certainties and easy distinctions of Newtonian physics turned out to be too neat and too easy and too naÔve. Even if we don’t remember -- or never learned -- what Einstein meant by general or specific relativity, we need to understand that theoretical physics has drastically changed our understanding of reality. In fact, physics now resembles metaphysics more than anything else, with its theories to explain how realities unobservable by us produce the visible world. More importantly, mechanical certainty has given way to probability and the matter vs. energy distinction has faded away.

Why does this matter? For two reasons: it takes away the simple, mechanistic understanding that hard, physical, certain reality was the paradigm by which we must understand the world. We can’t even understand the physical world this way! And secondly, it points to deeper realities underlying the visible world. If our common sense can accept this for physical forces then surely it does not rule this out for spiritual forces and entities.

(2) Holistic Medicine³

The medical sciences made such great strides in the past century that some physicians, concentrating on the vast amount of knowledge about our physical processes, forgot that there are other factors which affect human health. And some preferred to avoid such an "unscientific" area as human emotion. But this could not last for very long. The connections between our mental/emotional health and our physical health were just too apparent, with cause and effect running in both directions.

So the lesson was relearned. In the 1970s two movements in this direction made significant progress. The first is "holistic medicine", a general movement towards treating the whole patient instead of just physical symptoms. Unfortunately, in some areas "holistic medicine" came to mean anything that wasn’t part of Western scientific medicine. Thus it came not only to mean a concern for a person’s psycho-social (as well as physical) well-being, but it came also to include some practices which remain untested and which strike some as quackery. However, regardless of whether "holistic medicine" means to you the broader movement or the questionable fringe, the fact is that it has helped re-establish what many folks never forgot: that if we limit our attention to the strictly physical aspects of a person’s health, we limit our ability to adequately treat many physical conditions. The emotional/mental realm has power to affect the physical. Did anyone seriously doubt that people can -- and do -- die of broken hearts?

The second movement, much more specific, represents the inclusion of a more holistic approach in the medical establishment. It is the creation of the "new" physician specialty of "family practice". While a number of factors combined to establish this as a specialty -- complete with three-year medical school residencies and national boards and certification -- it represents a definite move away from treating human beings piecemeal. Family physicians are trained to consider the whole of an individual’s psycho-social situation in treating a problem.

Both holistic medicine and family practice represent a renewed recognition that our emotional health has a real impact on our physical health. This is important to our current argument because it shows that our common sense -- and even our medical science -- recognizes that even our physical health, much less reality as a whole, cannot be reduced to physical processes alone.

(3) Parapsychology

Under the rubric of parapsychology is grouped the study of such things as telepathy, clairvoyance, communications with the dead and other exotic phenomena and pseudo-phenomena. Personally, I do not believe in demons or magic or Ouija boards. In fact, I’m rather convinced that they are bunk. I am not so sure about ghosts, but have never (to my knowledge) seen one myself -- which state of affairs, I hasten to add, I have no urge whatsoever to alter.

Surely the only attitude to take towards claims in this area is a healthy skepticism. Of what possible relevance, then, is parapsychology?

If we are honest skeptics, and if we bother to acquaint ourselves with even a small portion of the available evidence, we will find -- even after we dismiss a lot of reports as pure rubbish -- that it is impossible to deny that there are some strange sorts of communication going on. (Or perhaps they only seem strange to those of us who were in danger of surrendering too much to the physical sciences.) The plain fact is that there are a number of people who have known immediately when a relative has died, or who were able to lead their families to their great-grandfather’s grave in the dark in a cemetery they’d never been to before, or who have sensed approaching danger in a very specific way. There may not be a great lot of people with these experiences, but there are far too many to deny or ignore. And some of them are very credible witnesses. The two people who I have known who had experiences of this type were rather skeptical sorts.

I would personally be much more comfortable if we could just deny that this sort of thing happens. But we cannot. The evidence is too compelling. These phenomena are even beginning to receive serious study at respected academic institutions.

The point here is not that ghosts may exist. The point here is rather that some people have experiences that involve a reality beyond our known physical world. And whether or not we choose to believe these people, we are willing to grant that it is possible that this happened to them and that it is worth our while to investigate some of these phenomena. Our common sense recognizes that reality is not limited to the physical universe.

IC. Conclusions on Common Sense and God-Talk

We began Section I of this chapter with the question of whether our common sense today allows for talk about God at all. I have briefly noted some aspects of modern physics, medicine, and parapsychology to point to what you probably already knew: there is nothing in our modern common sense itself which rules out our consideration of a spiritual reality.

It needs also to be said that common sense is not a single, monolithic way of thinking without variability or flexibility. It has been in some degree of flux for at least the last five centuries. But while there are times when the geography of our common sense may alter suddenly and drastically in one area of thought -- the earthquakes of Copernicus and Darwin, for instance -- it is more often like a glacier. Movement isn’t noticeable at all. You can only tell movement has happened by looking at the marker of its position a year or a decade or a century ago.

It is not unusual for a small segment to try to carry the mass of common sense with it to one extreme or another. But glaciers are not easily convinced. While a section of ice may lead in a new direction or to new limits, making the most noise and gaining the most attention, these peninsulas are also the most likely to be those that break off and fall into the sea as icebergs, floating away and disappearing.

The surrender of the whole universe to the physical sciences, represented by A. J. Ayer in philosophy (and by others in medicine and psychology) was a loud, daring little ice floe that tried to pull the glacier with it, failed, and fell into the sea. (Two other fringes of the glacier at present shall meet a similar fate, both trying to pull in the opposite direction of Ayer and company. One is mysticism taken to the extreme of being anti-rational, the other is the rear guard counteroffensive being conducted against evolution. Both will pull on the glacier, will fail to drag us along in spite of the noise they make, and will end up as icebergs, impressive but of nuisance value only.)

Meanwhile the glacial wisdom of our common sense has reasserted itself, having freed itself of an extreme, obstreperous, largely academic faction by shedding it into the sea. Does this modern common sense, viewing the world as a closed causal continuum and explaining physical effects -- with some notable exceptions -- with physical causes, allow for talk about God? Yes. Perhaps not the God of the Old Testament -- the glacier has moved a good way since then -- but yes, talk of God. Yes, because the strict dichotomies of matter vs. energy, body vs. mind, physical vs. spiritual, simply do not work. The two interact and are at times indistinguishable. Yes, because we recognize that there are mental and spiritual phenomena which cannot be explained in terms of the physical but which are nonetheless a real part of our world. Yes, because we recognize the power of the psyche to affect the body. Yes, because our common sense allows for something more beyond visible reality.

Our common sense does not allow for talk of a God that goes "zap" from "out there" somewhere, for a God who is a specific interventionist. But it does allow for a God who is in the context, who is somehow in and through the processes of our world, physical and spiritual, in processes that are much more varied and complex and wonderful than we have yet been able to comprehend.

II. Language, Truth and Logic

A. The Logic of God-Talk

Alright: our common sense allows us to talk about God. But talking about God is still different from talking about anyone else. This much is obvious. The question here is: is talking about God so different from talking about your best friend or your dog or Millard Fillmore that a different set of rules applies?

This is not a frivolous question. It is not uncommon for people engaged in theology to hold that human language, when applied to God, must have a very different meaning, since God is so very different from us -- different not just in degree but in kind. God is perfect and infinite, we are imperfect and finite. Finite words cannot be used of God without altering their meaning.

This sounds reasonable, but one has to be careful where it leads. For instance, I have had a very intelligent young man tell me that he believed that God foreordained all of our actions and also gave us complete freedom. I pointed out to him that as I understood these words, either we have our actions foreordained or we have freedom of choice. (After all, if someone’s already decided what we’re going to do it’s not really left up to us, is it?) My friend agreed that this was indeed so for the human use of these words but insisted that when used in connection with God fore-ordination and freedom, predestination and our own responsibility for our end, were compatible.

In other words, he was saying that when we use words to speak about God we change their meanings -- so much so that opposites are no longer opposites. This presents a couple of serious problems. First, it allows for cheap talk about God. You can say something about God without meaning what you say, without taking responsibility for it. For example, my friend admitted that his words were contradictory for humans, but not, somehow, when used of God. Or for example, if I were to say to you, "God is angry at you." You might respond, "Oh, you mean God has emotions like you and I, and a negative one is directed at me." But then I could simply come back with, "No, that’s not what I mean at all. It means something different when we’re talking about God."

The second problem with this approach is that we can’t be sure just what is being said about God. If the meaning of a word is stretched beyond recognition, if all we’re told is that it doesn’t mean the same as usual and opposites are no longer opposites -- then we no longer know what the meaning is. In which case it cannot have a meaning for us.

If this offends those who would play fast and loose with language, it delights our old friends the positivists. I can see them now: descending upon us from their iceberg, flags waving and bugles blaring, cries of "tally-ho!" filling the air. "There!" they proclaim triumphantly. "It’s as we said. You can’t talk about God. Of course our language means something different when applied to God. Therefore we don’t know what we’re saying, so it hasn’t any meaning. As we said, it’s impossible!"

Fortunately, this sort of hysterical linguistic nihilism is quite unnecessary. Language, while flexible, has a fairly simple logic. (I realize that many theologians seem intent on proving otherwise.) Whenever we use a word, there are three possibilities: (1) we use it in its usual sense, the meaning you would find in a dictionary; or (2) we use it in a way that is an analogy to its normal sense, an analogy that is clearly understood; or (3) we use it in a way that has no meaning at all, or -- what is the same to everyone else -- we use it in a sense that is known only to us.

So: language is flexible, but there are limits to this flexibility. As an example, we can speak of healthy people, healthy dogs, and healthy African violets. The word "healthy" means the same in each case, or close enough so that we know perfectly well what we’re talking about, even though the specifics of good health are quite different. I don’t check to see if your leaves are green, or if the plant has a cold nose. But I know in each case that the life systems are working well. (The "formal meaning" is the same in each case; the "material meaning" or content is different.)

We can take this example further. If I said that a balance sheet or a car was healthy, you would know that I meant that the one had a good ratio of assets to liabilities, and that the other was in good mechanical shape. But if I were to speak of a healthy book or a healthy rock, you wouldn’t know what I meant. I have gone beyond any apparent analogy. Out of kindness you might try to guess what I meant or decide I was making a joke. Or you might conclude that I was talking nonsense -- quite properly, I fear. For we can easily see an analogy between healthy people and healthy cars, but when we speak of rocks we have moved beyond any clearly understood analogy to the normal use of the word "healthy".

If we refer back to our three ways of using a word, to speak of healthy dogs and people is number one above, the normal use. To speak of healthy cars is number two, a clearly understood analogy. To speak of healthy rocks is number three; there is no clear analogy, so it is meaningless.

We can illustrate these same three possible uses in talk about God by saying that "God knows", "God sees", and "God reads". To say that God knows what we are doing is to use the word "know" in its usual sense: God is cognizant of what we are doing, through whatever processes God (as opposed to you and me) comes to know such things.

To say that "God sees what we are doing", however, is a bit different. In its normal use, "see" refers to a finite physical process involving eyes, nerves and brain which has the end result of a visual image. Certainly God does not "see" in this manner. But just as certainly we know that what is meant here is that God perceives what we are doing, however it may be that God does this. The analogy to the normal use of "see" is obvious. We understand how the meaning is modified by the subject, and there is no confusion.

But suppose we were to say "God reads about what we are doing". Hopefully, whoever we were talking to would be charitable. They might say, "I assume you don’t mean that God is paging through the New York Times, or otherwise visually taking in printed material?"

"Quite right’ we respond. "God doesn’t do that as we do."

So we sit there smiling, and they sit there puzzled. For unlike "seeing", in the case of "reading" the analogy from our particular finite physical processes to an infinite God is not clear.

If our listeners were persistent they might continue with, "You don’t mean God reads our hearts or our minds, do you, for you said ‘reads about’?"

"Quite right:’ we say again. "We don’t mean that."

But then what do we mean? Nothing identifiable. "Reading about" something implies involvement with the physical printed word or something clearly analogous. But nothing is clearly analogous here. If God does not read as we do, which we are assuming that God does not, then we must have something else in mind. But if this something else is not apparent, if there is no clear analogy, then we do not know the meaning of this. In which case it doesn’t have any meaning for us.

So, to repeat: the logical rules for talking about God are simple. Either we (and others) know what we are saying, or it is meaningless and we had better not bother to say it. And we know what we are saying if (1) we are using words in their usual meaning, or (2) we are using words in a way that is an apparent analogy to their usual meaning.

The only alternative to these two is the explicit redefining of words as we go -- in effect, making up our own language and providing a dictionary as we proceed. It may get cumbersome, but there is nothing in the rules of logic to prohibit this. However, we must note sadly that theology contains many more unknown languages than it does lexicons.

IIB. The Real Verification Problem

The intrinsic problem with God-talk is not that we don’t know what our words mean when we talk about God. This becomes a problem only when people are inexcusably sloppy with their language -- which has been far too often. The real problem with God-talk is: how do you know whether what you say is right? How do you verify it? How do you judge between conflicting statements about God? How do you know what to say in the first place?

This is the problem that made the positivists so uncomfortable that they tried to avoid it by declaring the whole business meaningless. (As Joshua Reynolds put it in the eighteenth century, "There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the real labor of thinking") However, we can keep this problem from getting out of hand if we remember that different kinds of statements are verified in different ways. You don’t verify the truth of "two plus two equals four" in the same way that you verify "that bird is a cardinal", and neither of these is verified the same way as "Millard Fillmore was a good president". "Two plus two equals four" is true by definition ("analytic a priori", if you wish). To see if the bird in question is a cardinal, you take a good look at it and check your Peterson’s field guide if you have any question.

Deciding whether Millard Fillmore was a good president is a little more involved. There are two steps here: first, to ascertain what Millard Fillmore did as president, which is not nearly so easy as ascertaining the size, shape and color of a bird; and second, to decide what it means to have been a good president in the early 1850s, which involves not only historical knowledge but also some interesting value judgments. So this statement about Fillmore rightly calls for a different kind of verification than the statement about the cardinal. The facts are not directly observable, but must be discovered -- and often inferred -- from the historical record. And there is no consensus as to which facts count for a good president, unlike the unanimity about how being red or blue, crested or uncrested, count for a bird being a cardinal.

Statements about God have the same verification problems as statements about Millard Fillmore, only more so, They cannot be confirmed by direct observation and there is a pronounced lack of consensus as to what observable phenomena count as evidence for which claims about God. But we need to remember what is appropriate. To demand that what we say about God be verifiable by direct observation or by an airtight process of logical deduction makes no more sense than to demand this of statements about Millard Fillmore. This means, however, that discussions about God must have a certain inherent tentativeness, a certain openness to question. We must accept this. But then, so do discussions about Millard Fillmore and any of our other presidents, and this has never stopped us from talking about them.

In fact, most of the interesting and important questions in life can only be answered with a certain degree of tentativeness. This is because they involve questions of meaning, value and purpose -- things which cannot be neatly weighed, measured or calculated. To a fair extent, propositions dealing with these areas are subject to verification in life, to confirmation through living. That is, your values and your faith are confirmed as they fit with your life experiences, as they bring meaning to events and help you find purpose, as they explain and cohere with what you see and feel and learn. They must still be in line with your common sense, but they cannot be confirmed for you unless they ring true for you in your heart.

Talking about God is difficult. But it is not inappropriately difficult (unless we make it so). The rules of definition and verification are appropriate to the subject matter, and problems in these areas are no more than we should expect when addressing a subject of ultimate importance.

III. Talking in Concepts, Talking in Images

We have addressed in section II the problems involved in speaking about God in concepts. But this is only one of the two ways we use to convey our ideas about something. We can speak in concepts or we can use Images; we can describe something or we can paint a picture of it. In the present case, we can either describe God directly, using words in their normal or analogous meanings, or we can talk about God analogously by using vivid concrete images (with their normal meaning) and saying, "God is like this."

In many cases for the sake of clarity and accuracy it is preferable to deal carefully in concepts, to explain and to define. But images and metaphors are also important vehicles of human understanding and sometimes do better at communicating meaning and getting to the heart of the matter. Jesus himself often chose images, painting powerful images in his parables: "the Kingdom of God is like Ö" And perhaps this was the right choice for someone more interested in faith than in doctrine.

Because theology does not adequately feed our imagination, and because our language is inadequate for encompassing the whole of spiritual reality, it is still helpful and perhaps necessary to use imagery as well as concepts to get across our understanding of God.

Notes:

1. For those interested in fine points, Ayer distinguishes between his own ‘logical empiricism" and the positivism of the "Viennese circle". The difference is little enough In any case, and is certainly not germane to our discussion. For that matter, I can’t remember why it was ever called "positivism", but that isn’t germane either.

2. A necessary note on the word "modern": some people use "modern" physics to mean physics from Newton up to -- but not including -- Einstein. I suppose this is the influence of all those college courses entitled "Modern Philosophy" or "Modern European History" which never get past 1850. One would then have to call the physics of today ‘postmodern". This is an intriguing adjective. But then what would you call the theories of the next century? "Post-post-modern"? Come, now. Are we so cowed by the last generation that we have surrendered "modernity" to be ever theirs? Or are we so taken with ourselves that we have to find a new word to fit us? This is silly. If modern physics must be called "post" anything, it is post-Newtonian.

3. 1f I had not just expounded upon the use of the word "modern" I would have something to say here about the missing "w" in this word.

Indisputable

When I say that Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ I mean that he is central to my understanding of God, of reality and of life. Jesus is the Christ because he plays this particular function or role for me. The question of a different "nature" or "being" has no interest. We do not have to appeal to a supernatural birth or a divine commission. We refer instead to simple historical fact.

For the fact of the matter is that the basic attitudes that make up my faith are based either directly or indirectly on Jesus of Nazareth. This is true for my understanding of religion and of the purpose of life. It is true for the principles with which I address questions of public and private ethics. These are all the result of my exposure to (1) the life and words of Jesus of Nazareth as contained in the Gospels; (2) the Church whose purpose and intent (if not whose actual accomplishment all of the time) is to promote and live according to his teachings and example; and (3) individuals who have tried to live out their lives according to the precepts of Jesus. These three sources shaped my basic attitudes. This cannot be disputed. And this makes Jesus of Nazareth and his heritage the most important focus to my whole approach to life. If, in addition, I recognize and embrace this fact, and commit myself to strengthening the efficacy of this focus and putting my whole life in line with it, then I accept Jesus as the Christ and I am a Christian.

Of course, it could be said that all of Western culture is pervaded by the direct and indirect influence of Jesus of Nazareth simply because of the dominant role of the Christian Church in shaping our heritage. Simply to acknowledge this historical fact does not make anyone a Christian. But to claim Jesus and his message as the central focal point of one’s own life -- not by default but by free and serious personal choice -- is to confess him as the Christ, and is what distinguishes a person as a Christian. Please note: we must claim Jesus’ message as our focal point not only with our words. There are far too many people who consider themselves Christians but whose lives are obviously focused on serving mammon or serving themselves. We must claim Jesus as our focus by the way we order our priorities and make our decisions and live our lives.

To the extent that we practice what we profess and that we profess the values of Jesus the Christ, it is beyond dispute that Jesus plays this role of focus for us as Christians. But is this sufficient? Is this adequate? Can it be enough to claim that Jesus is the Christ if by this we mean only that he is the one we choose to follow? What reason is there to follow someone whose status depends on our choosing to follow him, someone for whom we claim neither divinity nor infallibility nor pre-selection by God?

Sufficient

To answer this we must first of all consider what we are asking in the question, "Who is Jesus?" Throughout the centuries the Church has maintained, sometimes in so many words, that "Jesus is the answer." So when we say who Jesus is, we are saying what the answer is. And when we say what the answer is, we are saying what we believe the question to be.

For his immediate disciples the question was how to explain this man who made such an impact on their lives and who was obviously (to them) on a mission from God. They naturally looked to their Scriptures (the Old Testament) both to try to understand this man and also to meet their need to show that he was indeed the one who was prophesied to come. This last was soon taken for granted by Christians, but in each succeeding era the Church emphasized that aspect of Jesus of Nazareth which answered the most deeply felt questions of their age.

Thus for those whose primary concern was how to escape their bondage to sin, Jesus was the Savior who offered forgiveness. For those trapped in serfdom or slavery, it was belief in Jesus that offered the promise of a better afterlife. For those oppressed by the evil and finitude of this world, Jesus was the perfect and infinite God coming into our midst. To be the answer for people whose most deeply felt need was release from sin or escape from the evils of the world -- people whose common sense was different from ours -- it was fitting that Jesus should be sinless and divine.

But times change. The dominant questions with which we address life now do not have to do with how to save ourselves from sin or how to ensure ourselves the best destination after death. Not that these are inconsequential! I, for one, believe they are still extremely important. But they have become secondary to the question that consciously or unconsciously pervades our society: the question of meaning. Our most pressing and tormenting questions have to do with the discovery of meaning, meaning and purpose in the midst of the joys and sorrows, hopes and fears of this life.

So, back to our original question: is this functional manner of identifying Jesus as the Christ -- as he who is the focus of our basic attitudes and understandings -- sufficient? One might ask in return, "Sufficient for what?" The answer to this is perhaps obvious, but it is very important: it must be sufficient for our needs and our faith and our common sense, not for the needs and faith and common sense of some other people or some other time.

To some people it may seem to be claiming "more" for Jesus to claim that he was divine or perfect or atoned for our sins. But none of these makes sense to us, and to claim things which make no sense is not to claim more, but to claim nothing at all. Furthermore, none of these speaks to our deepest question. If we were hungry and someone offered us a work of art, saying it was worth more than food, our hunger would not be satisfied. Likewise, if we were seeking beauty but someone offered us a meal, saying food is worth more, we would not be satisfied. Food is not "more" to someone seeing beauty; art is not "more" to someone who is hungry. In this same way, to claim a special nature for Jesus of Nazareth or to say that he was sinless is not to claim more for him if what we are seeking is purpose and meaning. In fact, these claims miss the mark and are of no value to us at all.

On the other hand, if we were able to claim (in a way consistent with our common sense) that Jesus of Nazareth provides the answer to our deepest question and provides the center of our faith, then this would be to claim for him the most that could possibly be claimed for anyone. And this is precisely what we do when we claim that Jesus is the Christ, meaning that it is he, in the main thrust of his life and message, that serves as the center point of our faith and the focus to our understanding of the meaning and purpose of life.

Now if someone were to make the observation as a sociologist or historian that Jesus is the Christ, they would be making the objective (and basically indisputable) statement that he is the one whom Christians claim to follow. But for us to make the claim as Christians that Jesus is the Christ is to claim much more than this. It is to say that we orient our approach to life according to his message. And this is to claim that Jesus of Nazareth is right, that his perceptions are correct and his teachings true. In so doing we are making the audacious and even outrageous claim that the essential nature of God is love, that loving God and loving one’s neighbor as oneself are the basis for all right action, that returning love for hate and forgiveness for injury is a greater victory than vengeance or conquest, and that giving of oneself for others is the highest achievement. We are saying that these insights of Jesus of Nazareth are the Truth, and that by this Truth we define the purpose and meaning of our own lives.

Whatever may have been the case in past centuries, the question of meaning is the most important question in our lives today. Therefore to claim that Jesus of Nazareth, as the Christ, provides us with the answer is to claim the most that could possibly be claimed on his behalf. In fact, to say that Jesus is the Christ and to mean by this that he provides the compass, the focus, by which we find the meaning and purpose in our life, is to claim for the Christ a special role and value that can only be called sacred.

The Sacred

What is "the sacred"? What does it mean to be sacred? This is one of those concepts that is difficult to define but for which we have a reasonably good feeling. We know how we feel towards that which is sacred for us: it is special and set apart. It is "tabu", untouchable, not subject to being questioned in the same way as other things. It is of such value that it inspires awe and reverence.

Sometimes it is a place that is sacred: a temple or a mountain. These were originally places that belonged to God or where God was thought to dwell. Later these were places that were dedicated to God, to the service or worship of God. These places were often approached in certain specified ways that indicated reverence and awe.

For the Biblical literalist the text of the Bible is sacred in much the same way. It derives from God in a special way and shares somehow in the divine attribute of perfection. It is thus to be approached with awe and worship, not with analysis and criticism.

Certain objects are often considered sacred. This is generally due to their use in worship or to their association with holy people considered to have a special relationship to God. These objects are handled with special care and honor, treated with reverence.

Certain obligations are considered to be "sacred duties". These may or may not be duties to God. They are obligations that are unquestionable, that supersede all others, that must be honored even at significant hardship and cost.

I will not essay a definition of the sacred here. I do not know of one that I consider adequate; this may be a task for poetry rather than prose. Nevertheless, we have pointed to the ineffable height and depth of what it means to be sacred. And when I claim for Jesus of Nazareth the role of the Christ, the role of focus or compass for my understanding of God and of the purpose of life, I am claiming for him a role that is nothing less than this.

The fact that Jesus is right in his understanding of God and life would not in itself give him a sacred position. Something cannot be sacred unless it is sacred to somebody. It is our recognizing and embracing his message as giving us the deepest truths about God and reality that establish his as a sacred office. If our greatest question is one of meaning, then the one who provides the answer has a role that inspires awe, reverence and mystery. (We may take it for granted until we lack it, but the presence of meaning in our lives is a far greater mystery than is its absence.) In his role as the Christ, Jesus is set apart just as much as Mt. Sinai or the Great Temple, though his sacredness is in some ways more like that of a sacred obligation in that it cannot be located entirely outside of us. In the importance of his role, in his set-apartness, in the way we incorporate him into our value system, the Christ is clearly in the category of the sacred.

Why Bother With The Sacred?

Why bother with the sacred? It has been going out of fashion for several centuries now. We tend to associate it with superstition or with such things as the sacred cow or a sacred volcano. We expect to encounter it only in anthropological reports about "primitive" people.

Certainly we do not think of God as being located in a particular object or place. In fact it often seems that quite literally nothing is sacred anymore.

Why, then, do I -- the apostle of reason and common sense -- seek to revive this concept? Is this not one world? Is not God everywhere, in everything? How, then, can we give special distinction to anything by calling it sacred?

At one time it made sense to claim that certain places or objects were sacred. There was the Mountain of God, the Temple of God, the Ark of the Covenant. But -- again -- our common sense has changed, and this understanding of the sacred could not survive this change.

But if we cannot locate the sacred in particular places or objects outside of us -- what about finding it within us? In fact we all need the sacred to give our lives direction. Certain things must be set apart from and above everything else.

It is true that many people give this primacy to such things as comfort and security, to their physical appetites or to a desire for pleasure, fame and fortune. But these cannot support the weight we put on them. If we allow them to direct our lives they lead ultimately to spiritual emptiness and moral bankruptcy.

If we would give our lives a shape and meaning that is worthy of us we must guide them with higher values. We must recognize that that which gives direction to our lives is the "sacred" for us, and we must give this status only to that which is worthy of it.

But the sacred is not entirely within us. It is rather in the focus-giving relationship between Jesus of Nazareth and us who are Christians, in the role that he plays for us, that makes him the Christ. Reviving the concept of the sacred is the only way that we can do justice to the importance of this function of Jesus the Christ. (And since we can adequately describe Jesus’ functional role only by using the concept of the sacred, can we doubt that this role is a sufficient way of identifying who he is?)

At this point we need to say more about places and objects. It is true that they cannot be sacred in the sense of God being in them in a special way. But if they cannot be sacred in and of themselves, in this older sense, they can share in the sacredness of the meaning-giving role of the Christ. If a certain object or place is especially connected for us with the Christ function, if a place of worship highlights and strengthens this role for us, if a certain book such as the Bible originates and supports and elucidates it, then these participate in the sacredness of the Christ. This is a derivative sacredness, but a true sacredness nonetheless. Those places and things which for us are associated with the Christ function share in the sacredness of this role.

What About Revelation?

We have seen in this chapter that to identify Jesus as the Christ in this functional way is not only indisputable and adequate, but is also to give him the greatest distinction possible. We have turned aside from Christologies that were suitable to different ages and different questions. And we have put in their place a way of identifying Jesus that addresses our questions of meaning and that ties him once again with the sacred.

We ought to consider one more question here. It is common for theologians to speak of God as revealed (or self-revealed) in Jesus of Nazareth. How does this fit with our functional identification of Jesus as the Christ?

If to say that God was revealed in Jesus implies that God intervened in the world in a special way, that God went "zap", then we cannot go along with this. Our common sense will not allow it. But this does not rule out saying that God was revealed in Jesus in a special way if we mean by this that the special action was on Jesus’ part. And in fact this is just what we claim when we say that through his life and teaching we learn the deepest truths about the nature of God. We are claiming that in Jesus we find these truths revealed. That is what makes him the Christ.

There is a further possibility here. It may be that Jesus lived in such a way as to allow God, who is always striving for the actualization of certain goals, to achieve self-revelation. To put this another way: perhaps by acting in consonance with God’s intentions -- obeying God’s will, in traditional language -- Jesus provided the vehicle for God to reveal these truths to us. But this gets us back to the question of how God acts, which is the subject of the next two chapters.

I have by now dismissed as wrong the beliefs of a vast number of Christians. But please note: I have not said that these beliefs are unchristian. All too often, lacking the charity and wisdom of him whom we call the Christ, we have labeled as unchristian those who do not believe as we do. We call into question the faith of those who do not follow with us, those who do not echo our particular doctrinal line. But it is very evident in the lives of those around us that there is no necessary connection between believing correct doctrine and living a life of faith. You know as well as I do that the two cannot be equated.

In this chapter I will try to do two things: first, examine the difference between faith and doctrine; and second, show why saying a belief is a valid Christian belief is not the same as saying it is "right" in the sense of being consistent with truth. This will show why the wrong beliefs do not necessarily make a person unchristian, and why believing all the right things does not necessarily make someone faithful.

I. Doctrine vs. Faith

A. Faith

In an important way our faith can be said to be parallel to our common sense. This common sense is made up of the presuppositions which we use as we try to understand the world, the assumptions we make as we explain the workings of the universe. So, too, does faith consist of certain basic assumptions: assumptions about meaning and value, certain attitudes about the proper way to relate to people and to the world, and certain presuppositions about what is most important and most valuable in life.

Thus it is our faith that informs us that the most important goals in life are to love God and to love other people as Ourselves. It is our faith that tells us that right relationship with others is more important than personal gain, and that honesty, integrity and kindness are more important than comfort, pleasure and wealth. These and similar presuppositions are obviously of crucial importance in determining our actions and our other beliefs.

Our faith generally also includes some assumptions (or "primary beliefs") about the metaphysical nature of the universe. These are assumptions about ultimate reality that support our presuppositions of meaning and value. We might, for instance, believe that there is a God who holds the same basic values as we do. Beliefs such as this give coherence to our value system and reinforce our faith-attitudes towards others and towards life. As such, these beliefs are "primary beliefs". They are included in the basic presuppositions that constitute our faith.

However, while faith can include certain basic beliefs and can express itself in beliefs, faith can never be equated with any particular set of beliefs. Faith is not Just intellectual assent to a set of propositions. Faith is deeper than this, providing the underlying direction to one’s life.

Faith also includes trust. Like faith, trust includes certain beliefs. It implies certain statements about whatever or whomever you trust. But trust, too, is more than this. Again, it is an attitude, a way of relating to people and to the world, a basic orientation that cannot be adequately captured in any group of statements.

Christian faith is the complex of attitudes and approaches that leads one into right relationship. It is the understanding of the heart that leads one to forgive instead of seeking vengeance, to love instead of hate, to be open to others instead of closed, to seek the good of all instead of just one’s own well-being, to give of one’s self and one’s property for the good of others, and to feel that a God of love is pulling for all of these.

You have Christian faith when these basic attitudes are consciously and pre-eminently drawn from, based on, or focused by the teachings and example of Jesus whom we call the Christ or the body of the faithful that we call the Church, and when there is a deep commitment to living out these basic attitudes in your life.

Finally, we must note that even though our faith is primary -- underlying our beliefs and actions -- it is still subject to change. Just as with common sense, when our faith turns out to be inconsistent with our experience of reality, when the beliefs implicit in our faith just don’t fit, then our faith must undergo some adjustments. These may be minor or they may be major, but they must be made. The only alternative is to sacrifice the honesty and integrity of our intellect.

B. Beliefs

The distinction I make is between "faith" and "doctrine". The former can include beliefs, the latter consists of them. But those which are a part of our faith I call "primary beliefs". These are not derived from other beliefs or values. They are generally not debatable; one either accepts or rejects them as the presuppositions for other beliefs. Examples of this would be our presupposition that it is better to do right than to do wrong, or a general assumption on how to distinguish one from the other.

Suppose one person believes that the right course of action to take is that which increases their own power or wealth, and another believes that the right course is that which helps others and advances the common good. When they disagree as to what it is right to do, any discussion they have about this would probably be very frustrating. There is no common ground to which to appeal -- at least, none that is easily found. What we have here is a difference of faith, a clash of presuppositions or primary beliefs.

The beliefs that make up doctrine are not these primary beliefs. Instead, they either derive from these primary beliefs or else are constructed to explain them. It is this category of beliefs that we are contrasting to faith.

C. Doctrine

Whenever we try to explain our faith and put it into general concepts, whenever we put into words our other beliefs about religion, we have doctrine. And this is also where we run into common sense again. For when we use language and logic to state our beliefs and talk about our faith, we are applying our reason to our religion. We must be consistent with the common sense that underlies our reason just as we must be consistent with the faith that underlies our beliefs. Only then can our doctrine make sense and our reasoning be faithful. And the faith and common sense must be consistent with each other if we are to have continuity and integrity of self.

Thus, for instance, the central importance in our lives of the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth is a matter of faith. This importance is not an award we bestowed after a lengthy reasoning process nor a conclusion we reached by deduction. It is not subject to debate. As a result of upbringing, experience, relationships, learning, etc., it is a primary part of our system of value and meaning, of the way we orient our lives. The importance of Jesus of Nazareth in our lives is not subject to the rules of logic, It just is, as a matter of value.

On the other hand, the way we choose to explain this centrality of Jesus, the way we conceptualize it and put it into words -- this is a matter of doctrine. This explanation -- whether it refers to the nature of Jesus, or his role, or something else -- is subject to all the requirements of logic, consistency, and factuality that apply to any statement. Its implications and assumptions must be examined and are open to challenge and debate. And, not least in importance, we look for any such statement of doctrine to make sense, to fit with our common sense.

Thus it is that we can question whether doctrine is right or wrong, true or false, in a way that is quite different from the way we might question somebody’s faith. We might challenge a doctrine if we didn’t think that it represented the truth. But if we wondered about someone’s faith, it would be because of the way they acted. We would approach the two in quite dissimilar ways.

With this in mind, let us now make another distinction by examining how the question of whether a doctrine is right or wrong is different from the question of whether it is a valid Christian belief.

II. Being Right vs. Being Christian

We said earlier that the purpose of religion is to orient us toward right relationship with God and with our neighbors. Consequently, we cannot judge the validity of religious beliefs by asking whether they are true or whether they are consistent with some other beliefs or principles. Instead, we must judge the validity of religious beliefs by asking whether they help fulfill this purpose. If a belief helps lead to right relationship with God and neighbor then it can be considered a valid religious belief.

What is this? Am I saying that we cannot judge the validity of a religious belief by its truth or falseness? Did we not just say that doctrine is subject to the requirements of logic and truth and common sense?

Indeed we did, for indeed it is. But by examining a doctrine’s consistency with reason and truth we can only judge whether it is right in the sense of being factual or truthful. What I am saying now is that the question of its validity as a religious belief is an altogether separate question.

Do I, the champion of reason and common sense, maintain that reason, believability and even truth cannot judge the validity of religious tenets? Exactly so. Beliefs that appropriately fill the proper function of religious beliefs, that promote right relationship, must be considered to be valid religious beliefs regardless of their truth.

For an example, let us look at the Book of Mormon. If one examines it objectively there is no way to escape the conclusion that it is a pious fraud. It consists of cheap imitation King James verbiage about events that never happened in places that never existed, all supposedly translated from a mysterious book of gold that conveniently disappeared. Nevertheless -- now that I’ve alienated several million Latter Day Saints -- I must admit that I am impressed by the number of Mormons who have a faith that leads to right relationship. Since for many this faith is accompanied by a set of doctrines that includes belief in the literal truth of the Book of Mormon, we have to say that this can be a valid religious belief. Even though a belief in the Book of Mormon is mistaken, it is a valid religious belief so long as it is an integral part of a set of beliefs that promotes the right relationship which is the purpose of religion.

Similarly, the belief in the literal truth of the whole Bible is just plain wrong. But if this particular belief helps someone to take seriously the words of Jesus of Nazareth, and so helps orient them toward a life of love and service for others, toward right relationship, then I have to say that for this person this is a valid Christian belief. Remember Christian Belief Rule #1: a belief is appropriate for Christians if it is consistent with the message of Jesus the Christ and with the centrality of this message. It can be appropriate in this way without necessarily being true.

The Question of Truth

Does the truth or falseness of a religious belief have no bearing at all on its validity? Once all the disclaimers have been made -- that many religious beliefs are supremely difficult to test for truth because they refer to the supernatural or to that which it is beyond our mental powers to discern, or because (in the case of faith) they are values and not truth-claims -- once all this has been said, we still have to admit that yes, of course the question of truth enters in here. But it does so in a restricted, very personal way. A religious belief can only be valid for you, can only serve to orient you to right relationship to God and neighbor, if this belief has the ring of truth for you.

This has an equally important corollary. What does not seem true to one person may indeed seem true to another. Therefore a belief which we are convinced is false can be a valid religious belief for someone else, if indeed it helps to lead them into right relationship. Thus the question of truth is limited to this function here: a religious belief can only be valid for someone who perceives this belief to be true.

One Faith, Many Doctrines

Each of us, of course, considers our own opinions and beliefs to be right. Otherwise they wouldn’t be our beliefs. Naturally, then, we have to maintain that anyone who believes differently than we do is wrong. Nevertheless, I am quite convinced that many of these "wrong" and mistaken people, past and present, were and are dedicated Christians. It does not matter that we and they disagree on minor or even major aspects of Christian doctrine. Nor does it matter if you and I disagree in this way. What matters is whether a person lives a life directed towards right relationship with God and neighbor, with attitudes and understandings drawn from Jesus the Christ. This is what it means to have Christian faith.

If we were to say of someone that they are not Christian, we would mean specifically that their lives are not ordered in this way. This need not mean that they are better than anyone else or worse than anyone else. It means only that they do not have the values and attitudes of Jesus the Christ self-consciously at the center of their lives. To say that someone is Christian or not Christian is descriptive, not pejorative. The exception to this, of course, is the person who professes to be a Christian. If we say they are not, they will feel judged. Whether or not you profess to be Christian is up to you. But if you profess this without living accordingly, then you will be judged -- not by anyone else, but by your own life -- to be a hypocrite.

Since it is the faith that marks us as Christians, the life self-consciously lived in love of God and neighbor according to Jesus’ precepts, then we can disagree on doctrines and still share this faith. What matters most is the centrality of the Christ in our lives, not the doctrine with which we explain this centrality.

So let us disagree and argue about doctrine. We can do this and still admit that the other person’s mistaken doctrines are valid religious beliefs. And certainly doctrine is important enough to deserve our study and debate, for it is the way we try to understand and explain our faith. But at the same time we need to recognize that doctrine is not faith, and that the faith which unites us is more important than the doctrine which divides us.

After considering some of the traditional answers to the question of "Who is Jesus?" we will now move on to my conception of the centrality of Jesus of Nazareth. This is my explanation, my doctrine, of this distinguishing mark of our faith.

In considering the question of Jesus’ divinity the first thing we should do is try to state clearly the orthodox doctrine. This is not as easy as you may think. Even among people who consider themselves to have a perfectly orthodox belief in the Trinity and the Incarnation there is a good deal of confusion as to precisely what these mean. This should not be surprising, for the doctrine of Jesus as "God the Son" includes either some extremely fine nuances or (depending on your point of view) a good dose of contradiction and vagueness.

Nevertheless, I need to confess that I stand in awe and admiration of the orthodox dogma, particularly in light of the world-view, the Greek philosophy and the doctrinal debates that served as its background. I do not find it to be necessary or helpful for us today, but I admire it as the best possible answer to the doctrinal needs of its day.¹

If we extract it from the Greek philosophical language in which it was first framed, we might state the orthodox position as follows: "There is one God, one divine being. This one God, however, has three aspects, or presents itself as three "persons": the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. This is the Trinity, the one triune (three-in-one) God. The second person of the Trinity is called God the Son or the "Logos" (the Greek word often translated as "the Word", as in John 1). As an aspect of God the Logos has existed since the beginning, and at the birth of Jesus of Nazareth became incarnate in this human being. In this one individual there was a truly divine nature and also a truly human nature. The human was not made divine, nor the divine human, nor were the two somehow mixed, but both were in this one person. Nor can we say that the divine nature in Jesus did one thing and the human nature in him another, for all actions and experiences were those of the one individual, Jesus Christ, both human and divine"

This formulation satisfied a number of requirements. First, by the time it was formally adopted there was a long-standing tradition of worshipping Christ. This, of course, required that he be divine.

Second, it met the needs of most of the contemporary doctrines of salvation. These depended either on (1) the atoning sacrifice on our behalf of a perfect being, or else on (2) the incorruptible and eternal having come into our corruptible and finite flesh. The former required that Jesus who was crucified be divine; the latter required that God became human. The Incarnation satisfied both of these.

Third, the Scriptures seem to speak of Jesus in most instances as human, but in some cases as divine. The Doctrine of the Incarnation allows both of these to be true.

Fourth, it was taken for granted by the Greco-Roman philosophical world that God was immutable and could not suffer pain. By postulating the existence of two natures in this one person, the Doctrine of the Incarnation allowed one to say that the suffering of Jesus as reported in the Gospels was experienced by the one human-and-divine person through his human nature, which avoided a run-in with the prevailing wisdom of the time.

Thus the Incarnation met the needs of its day for worship, soteriology, and evangelism in a way not incompatible with the Bible. It represents a remarkable theological achievement.

The Incarnation Reconsidered

This doctrine of the nature of Jesus of Nazareth was not firmly fixed until the Council of Chalcedon in 451. Nevertheless, from the end of the first century it seems to have been generally accepted by the Church that Jesus was divine in one manner or another. On top of this, the Chalcedonian formulation itself now has more than fifteen centuries of tenure. Thus, one of two common reactions to it (when people bother to think about it at all) is this:

"How can anyone doubt the consensus of the Church, developed in the early years of the faith from the Biblical witness, confirmed in the teachings of scholars and saints through the centuries, and tested and proven in the living out of millions of faithful lives?"

However, the other common reaction to the Doctrine of the Incarnation reacts to its antiquity in a different way:

"How can anyone pay any attention to a doctrine that grew out of a Greek conceptual system being imposed on Jewish Scriptures, that was as foreign to Jesus as it is to us, that depends on concepts and a common sense that have gone the way of the Roman Empire, and that is about as understandable as if it were still written in ancient Greek?"

Both of these reactions are extreme, of course. And both ask too much of us. The first asks us not to think for ourselves, while the second asks us to ignore the past and not even consider beliefs which are still held by many contemporary Christians. Whether or not you share my admiration of the orthodox doctrine, we have to recognize that it represents an interpretation of God and Jesus which not only has had the allegiance of the vast majority of Christians in the history of the Church, but which also has a proven track record as a doctrine which can help people to lead faithful lives following the teaching and example of the Christ. Only for the gravest of reasons, and only with an appropriate sense of awe, ought one to dare to challenge this traditional understanding.

The reasons are grave indeed. So in spite of my trepidation, and in awe of tradition, and knowing that this gives an impression of audacity when what I feel is rather an obligation that I cannot avoid, I am impelled by my understanding (such as I am capable of) to raise this challenge. I find myself a servant or even a prisoner of the truth that I feel, to which I have no choice but to bear witness. In so doing, I find it necessary to challenge the orthodox doctrine of the divinity of Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ. I do this on four grounds:

(1) The orthodox doctrine is no more Biblical than some other interpretations of Jesus’ nature, and is in fact less Biblical than some.

(2) Even if this doctrine once made sense to the philosophical heirs of Plato and Aristotle -- a question beyond our purview here -- it no longer makes sense to us. I am not just saying that it is difficult to understand. I am saying that it cannot meaningfully be said, that it is impossible.

(3) If it could make sense, which it can’t, its meaning would violate our common sense.

(4) Last but not least, this doctrine is unnecessary. It is unnecessary to the message of Jesus or the centrality of Jesus. Furthermore, for some people it actually stands in the way of their receiving the message.

1. The Orthodox Doctrine Is Not Required By The Bible

When the Church fathers were formulating their Christology they were constrained by the fact that they were Biblical literalists. Because they took for granted that all scriptural references to Jesus were true, they had to come up with one doctrine of his nature that was in harmony with all these different passages. Since at times Jesus is spoken of in very human terms, and on occasion is spoken of as divine, the only solution was to conceive of him as somehow combining both the human and the divine.

In contrast to this, the actual (and liberating) fact is that we do not have in the New Testament a single, monolithic interpretation of Jesus. Rather, we have a diversity of interpretations. In this regard the New Testament demonstrates both the unity in essentials and the liberty in interpretation that are appropriate to the Christian Church.

The Gospels are unanimous about the centrality of Jesus the Christ: his central importance to our understanding of God and as our norm for living in right relation to God. But while they all agree on this centrality, the different New Testament authors have different ways of conceptualizing and explaining it. Matthew views Jesus as "super-prophet", the man chosen by God to fulfill the Old Testament prophecies, in the tradition of Moses and Elijah but surpassing even them in importance and authority as the culmination of the prophetic line. Mark and Luke differ from Matthew in emphasis: Mark depicts Jesus as a rather secretive Messiah, chosen by God to inaugurate the Kingdom of God, while Luke highlights more clearly Jesus’ mission to bring the gospel to people of all stations and all nations.

John is the only Gospel to portray Jesus as different in nature from the prophets, as more than the culminating high point of the succession of people called by God and commissioned with special tasks. Especially in the prologue (John 1:1-18), it is clear that John considers Jesus to be more than human. He shares somehow in divinity, but in a way that is not very clear, and which seems to owe much to Jewish "wisdom literature" (see Proverbs 8:22-31). Jesus was pre-existent as the "Logos", which is translated "word" but which means much more than that. The Logos is divine ("was God"), but is not the Deity ("was with God"). Jesus himself is quoted as claiming oneness with God, but when he is alive he always claims this same oneness with his disciples. So in sum, while it is clear that John considers Jesus to be more than human, it is not clear exactly what he has in mind.

Paul, as usual, says different things in different places. In Romans 1:4 he says that Jesus was "designated Son of God . . . by his resurrection from the dead". This implies an "adoptionist Christology" -- that is, that Jesus was a mortal man who after his faithful obedience to the cross was then designated (adopted) Son of God. In Philippians 2:5-7, however, he says of Jesus that "though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of man". This has many possible interpretations, but all point to a pre-existent Jesus who was more than human and somehow like God. In Colossians 1:15-16 Paul reaffirms Jesus’ pre-existence in words that (like the prologue to John) echo wisdom literature, as he through whom all things were created.

The non-Pauline Letter to the Hebrews also affirms this of Jesus, and goes on to say that he "bears the very stamp of [God’s] nature". (Hebrews 1:3) But the author speaks of Jesus not as God, but as son and heir, as higher than the angels. What we have here is a "ladder of being" not uncommon in ancient times: there is God at the top, with human beings below God but above all other animals, and there are also beings above humans. Angels, for instance, would fall in here. They are more divine than we but less divine than God. What Hebrews does (and perhaps John and Paul do as well) is to place Jesus next to the top of this hierarchy, below God but above angels and everybody else.

Now if you were to ask which of those is the Biblical position on the nature of Jesus of Nazareth, the answer would be "none of them". Instead, each of them represents a Biblical alternative for explaining the central importance of Jesus. And since we are not burdened with the need to come up with one good interpretation that incorporates all of these -- as is the literalist -- we are free to choose for ourselves the one which best helps us to understand Jesus and to respond to his message. In fact, we can go further than this. Since the constant in the New Testament is the centrality of Jesus and his message, and not any particular explanation of why and how he is central, we are then free to interpret this centrality in a way that meets the needs of our own day and our own common sense, so long as we remain compatible with the basic thrust of Jesus’ teaching.

In fact, only if we allow for the introduction of other non-Biblical conceptualizations can we accept the orthodox doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation as legitimate Christian options. It may be argued that these doctrines represent the development of Biblical ideas, but neither of them can be found in Scripture in their orthodox form. Obviously, if we allow one set of interpretations that is developed from positions found in the New Testament then we must allow others as well, so long as they are compatible with Jesus’ message.

2. The Orthodox Doctrine Is Impossible

The doctrine of the Incarnation, that Jesus of Nazareth was fully God and fully human, is simply impossible. It does not make sense. The words cannot be put together this way without doing violence either to their meaning or to the rules of logic.

To be human is to be finite, limited in knowledge, fallible, and imperfect. To be human also means to be aware of one’s finitude, and of one’s separation from others and from God -- sometimes painfully aware. If Jesus was human, then he was all of these -- and indeed this is how the Gospels portray him, experiencing anger, fatigue, uncertainty, reluctance, pain and even death.

To be God -- not just to share a spark of the divine, nor to be in God’s image, nor to be a lesser divine being like the angels, nor any of the other possible subversions of the orthodox doctrine,² but really to be God -- in any Christian understanding, this means to be eternal and unlimited, to be perfect in love and understanding. Now, either Jesus of Nazareth was limited, fallible and imperfect, or else he was unlimited, infallible and perfect. These two sets of attributes are opposites of each other. You can’t have it both ways; he was either one or the other. You can’t say of one person that he was both.

"Ah!" some will say. "That’s the paradox!" No, it isn’t a paradox. This is a very important point, so please take special note: a paradox is something which seems impossible but which is demonstrably true. Thus, it was a paradox when some scientist carefully analyzed bumblebees and concluded that according to the laws of physics they couldn’t fly. There was contradiction and apparent impossibility, but bumblebees kept on flying.

However, for an individual to be both perfect and imperfect is the reverse of this: it may seem true to some, but it is demonstrably impossible. And not just impossible according to our understanding of the laws of nature, which can be wrong (as with the bumblebee), but impossible according to the rules of logic upon which all our reasoning is based.

To say someone is both perfect and imperfect is like saying that you saw a square circle. This is an impossibility. Are you saying the circle was not round, in which case it was not a circle? Or are you saying the square was circular? This is not a paradox; this is meaningless nonsense, however imaginative it might be.

To say someone is both perfect and imperfect at the same time is to say that "X" and "not-X" can both be true. This is either to abandon the meaning of these words or else to abandon logic, and in either case this means we are speaking nonsense that can have no meaning for us.

The orthodox will reply that Jesus was limited, fallible and imperfect with regard to his human nature, but unlimited, infallible and perfect in his divine nature. This sounds nice, but what does it mean to have two natures? If it means having two minds and two wills and two characters, one perfect and the other imperfect, then it means there were two separate persons occupying this one body (or else Jesus was schizophrenic). On the other hand, if this was really the one person Jesus the Christ, as orthodoxy claims, then either this person was perfect or he was not. Either he was capable of sin or he was not. Either he had limited knowledge or he did not.

For instance, either he knew -- not believed, but knew -- that he would be raised on the second day after his death, or he did not know this. If he knew this then he did not face death as any other human, and he was not taking any real risk in allowing himself to be caught, tried and crucified. So in this regard he could not be considered fully human. If, on the other hand, he did not know he would be raised, and faced death in faith but without this knowledge, then how could he also be God? If the divine nature in him knew he would be raised, but he did not know this, then it was not his divine nature. If the divine in him knew something he did not, we are back to two persons.

So to say that Jesus was fully human and fully divine is not a paradox. It is instead like talking about a round square: it sounds good, and makes an interesting combination of images, but it is in the end without discernable meaning. Some people have tried to alleviate this by saying that his person was constituted by God the Son and his humanity was "impersonal". But this does not help much. Impersonal humanity is like a square without four corners: it might do better at being round, but it is no longer a square.

Others would respond that the problem here is that I am using words in their human meanings, whereas I ought to realize that when applied to God these words gain a different and deeper meaning. Let me say this: if you wish to redefine some of these words, that’s fine, as long as you can tell us the new meanings that you are using. The usual practice, however, seems to be to say that while one cannot say precisely what these new meanings are, one is nevertheless sure that they fit together in a way that makes sense. This, of course, is simply an effort to duck the requirements of logic. But if you do not know the meanings of the words which you are applying to Jesus, then you are merely saying "Jesus is X" and "Jesus is Y", X and Y being unknowns. This, of course, is to say nothing at all.

Even if this little matter of logic were surmountable -- which it is not -- and we were to admit that it is possible for Jesus, a human being, to be fully divine, we would still have to point out that he would not be fully human in the same sense as you and I. You see, I -- and, I suspect, you -- do not happen also to be God. I have the feeling that this is not simply a minor point, but that a central fact of the human predicament is precisely that of being and feeling separate from the infinite and eternal God. If this is so, then also to be God is not to experience the human predicament. And if Jesus did not experience our predicament, not only was he not fully human but his teachings and example are of questionable relevance to us.

3. It Violates Our Common Sense

You probably know what I’m going to say. Even if it were logically possible for Jesus to be fully God and fully human, it would still violate our common sense. If our common sense cannot conceive of God as an interventionist zapper then we certainly cannot conceive of God as somehow zapping in and becoming a particular human being. This might be appropriate for Zeus or Apollo, but not for the God of the Universe.

Mind you, I’m not saying that Jesus wasn’t more in touch with God or more receptive to God than most. I think he was, as I’ll try later to explain. And I’m not saying that God wasn’t in him, working in him or through him. All I’m saying is that if I can’t believe that someone being struck by a thunderbolt is an act of God, then neither can I believe that the man Jesus was God in person. It’s the same common sense.

4. It Is Unnecessary and Even Unhelpful

We have already seen that the orthodox belief in the divinity of Jesus of Nazareth is (1) only one of the possible ways of explaining his centrality that can be developed from the New Testament; (2) does not fall within the limits of what is logically possible; and (3) is contrary to our common sense. Besides all this, it is also quite unnecessary.

In Chapter 5 we established our two Rules of Christian Belief. Rule #2 states that a belief can be considered necessary for the Christian faith only if it is strongly implied in Jesus’ message or else is necessary to the acceptance of this message. Is either of these the case here?

Regarding Jesus’ message, there is a very impressive consensus among Biblical scholars that (whatever John and Paul might say) Jesus did not claim that he himself was God, either explicitly or implicitly. I can find no reason to challenge this consensus, and much to support it. So a belief in Jesus’ divinity cannot on this account be considered necessary.

Could it be necessary, then, to believe that Jesus is divine in order to accept his message? Perhaps. If you believed that the love and forgiveness and new life in God that Jesus offered would not be possible unless a perfect being suffered and died for us, or unless the incorruptible Deity entered the sphere of corruptible human flesh, then for you a belief in Jesus’ divinity might be necessary before you could respond positively to his message. However, not everyone believes one of these, so not everyone finds it necessary to believe in Jesus’ divinity. Jesus didn’t preach that it was necessary; his disciples (according to Matthew, Mark, and Luke-Acts) didn’t find it necessary; I don’t find it necessary; and many committed Christians through the centuries have not found it necessary. If you find it necessary then you are certainly welcome to believe it. Belief in Jesus’ divinity is certainly a Christian alternative, even though it is mistaken. (See the next chapter for the distinction between being right and being Christian.) But please don’t jump to the conclusion that because you find this belief necessary for your acceptance of Jesus’ message, it must therefore be required of all of us. This does not follow.

Indeed, there are many people who will be able to accept Jesus’ message only if it is not attached to a claim of his divinity. If we tie his message to a particular, unnecessary and illogical interpretation of his centrality, we are preventing this message from being a live option for people who might readily accept another, just as Biblically authentic, interpretation. As Christians we do not have the right to withhold the gospel from people in this way. Many centuries ago the Church used Greek philosophical concepts to evangelize the Greco-Roman world. Does not evangelism now call for an interpretation in keeping with our own common sense?

Furthermore, by regarding Jesus as fully human and therefore as not divine, we make it possible for his life to serve as an example for us. You see, if this person who sought out sinners, loved the unlovable, and forgave his enemies even as he died on the cross -- if he was divine, then I can shrug off his example as possible only for people who happen also to be God, and dismiss his teachings as fitting only for those who do not share my own predicament, that of being only human. On the other hand, if this man was human as I am, if he was a limited, feeling, fallible creature like myself, and he was able to live in this way and love in this way and give of himself in this way -- then so can I. And his teachings are then relevant, for they come from someone who shared my predicament. For me, and to many, Jesus’ relevance as an example and teacher is much more important to our acceptance of his message than is his divinity.

Where Do We Go From Here?

If Jesus is not divine, then where does his authority come from? How do we give him such a central place of importance? Who then do we say that he is? These are the questions we must take up next.

First, however: I have now stated the most serious of my differences with orthodox doctrine. I have said that with regard to the Incarnation it is inadequate, senseless and unnecessary, but also that I believe it is still a valid Christian alternative. This, then, would be an appropriate place to explore the relationship between doctrine and faith, and to explain the difference between being right and being Christian.

Notes:

1. The reader is recommended to The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition by Jaroslav Pelikan (University of Chicago Press, 1971) or A History of Christian Doctrine, Hubert Cunliffe-Jones, ed., (Fortress Press, 1980). John Cobb, Jr., also has a nice summary in Chapter 9 of Christ in a Pluralistic Age (The Westminster Press, 1975). None of these individuals should be held responsible for anything I say in this chapter.

2. Those who speak of God as immanent in all of us but fully immanent in Jesus of Nazareth present an alternative which escapes some of the problems of the orthodox explanation of Jesus’ centrality. But one must keep in mind that this is not the orthodox doctrine of the Incarnation, which represents Jesus as different from us in kind, not just in degree, and which does not say that God was in Jesus but that God became Jesus.

This will no doubt be considered a strange combination. Nevertheless,

I regard it as historically probable that something happened on that first Easter, something not too unlike the Biblical resurrection accounts. And I also maintain that what happened is not of any theological significance. In this chapter we will examine the case for each of these positions and then briefly suggest some consequences.

I: Historical Probability

Assume for the moment that we are careful, impartial historians, used to dealing only in probabilities. Let us examine the evidence and see what conclusions we can draw.¹

We should first of all look at the New Testament to see what the Gospels say happened on Easter. Being attentive to detail, as behooves careful historians, we notice that the testimony is confusing and even inconsistent: the post-resurrection Jesus appears and vanishes like a spirit (Luke 24:31, 36-7; John 20:26), yet he can eat solid food (Luke 24:43); he can be touched (Matthew 28:9), and he cannot be touched (John 20:17); it was indeed Jesus, but they do not recognize him at first (Luke 24:15f; John 20:14, 21:4). But we also take note that the Biblical accounts are in total agreement in making the same extraordinary claim: Jesus of Nazareth, who had been crucified, dead and buried, was alive!

This is the testimony. What can we conclude from this? Can we say because of the apparent inconsistencies that this testimony is false? No, for as careful historians we would expect an event like a resurrection to cause confusion. We know that disagreement about details does not mean that the main message is wrong. Messengers who observed a battle from different vantage points could differ greatly on how the battle was won, and still all be correct in reporting that the country has been saved by a great victory.

Can we then say because of the unanimity of the testimony that Jesus was indeed raised from the dead? No. As careful historians all we can say is that according to the record these early disciples claimed to believe that Jesus was resurrected.

How do we get beyond this to assess whether this belief was true or not? How can we judge the probability of the resurrection itself?

Not every one wishes to think about the historical probability of the resurrection. There are a number of people on both sides of the issue who dismiss this question, usually in one of three different ways: (1) The Biblical literalist cannot consider the question of the resurrection’s historical probability, for this would be to admit that the accuracy of the Bible is open to doubt. So the literalist avoids this by saying, "Of course it happened!" (2) At the other extreme there are people who argue that they have never seen a resurrection, and that therefore such things do not happen, and are therefore impossible, and so a resurrection couldn’t and didn’t happen to Jesus. These people can no more consider the possibility of an event different in kind from what they have experienced than Biblical literalists can consider the possibility that the Bible is wrong. So these people avoid this by saying, "Of course it didn’t happen!"

(3) A more imaginative approach has been taken by some theologians who have suggested that the resurrection was an act of God and therefore not a part of human history, and is therefore not subject to the judgment of historians. But this is not very persuasive. Either the resurrection happened to a human or it did not happen at all. And we know of it only because of the reported observations of the disciples. If these observations were not a part of human history, open to study by historians, then they didn’t happen.

Being careful and objective historians we are unable to take any of these ways to avoid the question. But if we can’t avoid it, how do we answer it? How can we assess the probability of this reported event of two thousand years ago? The written testimony is hardly objective -- it is all by one group of people with a very definite bias. How can we get behind this testimony to the event itself?

We can’t, at least not in any direct way. But does this mean we must give up any attempt to assess its historical probability? No. There is some important circumstantial evidence to consider.

It is not at all unusual for historians to have to content themselves with unobjective accounts of an event and to make use of circumstantial evidence to confirm or disprove these accounts. Centuries later this is usually all we have to go by. And it is often quite adequate to allow us to reach very definite conclusions.

This may surprise us, for we are used to the TV courtroom dramas in which circumstantial evidence is much maligned. But circumstantial evidence can be good, strong evidence. For instance, if Jones the underpaid bank clerk didn’t show up for work one Monday and was never heard from again, and a large amount of money was discovered missing in his department, we would all agree that this was a pretty good reason for suspecting Jones of the crime. If we then discovered that he was living high on the hog in Barbados, we would all think this was adequate evidence to consider Jones guilty unless he could offer an alternative plausible explanation of these circumstances. If he didn’t just come into an inheritance or win the state lottery, we could justifiably conclude that Jones has embezzled, just from circumstantial evidence. No one actually saw him make off with the money, but we don’t need that to prove our case. The evidence of the surrounding circumstances is overwhelming.

Thus, if a certain event or fact under question is the only plausible explanation of the known facts, of the surrounding circumstances and events, then we should certainly say that this event or fact is at least probable. Generally, we are not so cautious and would consider it proven.

Before and After

We can now consider the evidence. From Biblical passages which there is no reasonable cause to doubt we can draw this general account of the time in Jerusalem:

The disciples came with Jesus from Galilee for the Passover. Their expectations were undoubtedly high. Had not their teacher astounded all of Galilee with his teaching and healing, and drawn great crowds in the Decapolis, and confounded the scribes and Pharisees with his wisdom and authority? Had he not come through it all unscathed and even victorious? The possibilities in Jerusalem must have seemed limitless. Was it not the Holy City itself, with the one great Temple of God? Perhaps it was even time for God to fulfill some of the ancient prophecies and restore the throne of David. At the very least, Jesus would be received as the great prophet he was. This was the unavoidable feeling of Jesus’ disciples. If he did warn them of danger it certainly didn’t sink in.

Then there was the entry into Jerusalem. They may have spent the night before in Bethany, just a few miles away. Either there or in Bethphage he borrowed a donkey -- one might infer from the Synoptics that this was prearranged, complete with a password -- and so began his descent down the Mount of Olives in a way that seemed to fulfill the prophecy of Zechariah: "Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you . . . humble and riding on an ass?’ (Zechariah 9:9)

The accounts agree that it was a joyous and triumphant entry. The disciples, and probably a number of fellow travelers from the crowds coming up for the Passover, shouted hosannas. Crowds can easily get excited for celebrities, and they may have cried out such things as "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed be the son of David!", and they even spread "palms" in the road before him.

The first few days in Jerusalem must have continued to raise their hopes. He "cleansed" the Temple, enforcing the law by chasing out the money-changers and the pigeon-sellers while the temple police just watched, unable or unwilling to stop him. Again he confounded the scribes and Pharisees and he attracted crowds so large and enthusiastic that the authorities, concerned about him, were afraid to lay a hand on him in public. It must have seemed evident to his disciples that Jesus of Nazareth was bound for new heights of recognition and triumph. Who could guess what he might accomplish next?

Then, suddenly, it was over. The inconceivable had happened. His whereabouts made known to the high priest, betrayed by one of his own inner circle, Jesus was arrested away from the crowds. Tried at the high priest’s home that very night and before the Sanhedrin the next morning, taken to Pilate, rejected by the crowd and mocked by the Romans, he was sentenced to the debasing death of crucifixion and by sunset he was dead and laid in a tomb.

The reaction of the disciples was what we would expect. They were shocked, demoralized, and uncomprehending. In a strange city, bereft of their charismatic leader, identifiable as rustic Galileans by their accents, afraid of persecution and arrest to the point of denying Jesus, and most of all suffering grief-stricken shock and shattered dreams and hearts, they clung together for awhile helplessly and hopelessly. But soon they began to drift apart. After all, what purpose did they have anymore? Their hopes and expectations for their beloved prophet had been decisively and cruelly brought to an end in a way that had not seemed possible. They were defeated.

There is no reason to doubt the general accuracy of this picture. But there is also no question that just a short time later this same group of people was proclaiming that this Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah and had been raised from the dead. And we find them preaching this with enthusiasm, purpose and dedication -- and with such conviction that they were willing to risk persecution, imprisonment, and even death in order to make known their message.

Something Happened

Obviously, something happened. Something happened to cause this radical turnabout. There are two possibilities: either the disciples, in their mourning, conspired together to put one over on the world, or else they really believed that Jesus of Nazareth had been raised from the dead.

We have to ask ourselves which of these is more probable, putting aside our preconceptions and keeping in mind what we know of human nature. Can both of these possibilities explain the sudden turnaround of a grief-stricken and demoralized group of people? Can both possibilities explain the enthusiasm and contagious conviction which led to the rapid spread of Christianity? Can both explain the disciples’ willingness to suffer and die for the sake of this message?

No. It strains our credibility beyond the breaking point to try to explain all this as the result of an apostolic fabrication. Could you go out and preach with joy? Or risk death for a message if you had any doubts about it? If you had made it up?

In the face of the evidence the impartial historian is bound to conclude that the disciples did indeed sincerely believe that Jesus of Nazareth had been raised from the dead.

Obviously, then, we must also conclude that something happened to cause them to believe this. Something happened. This much is certain. The question is, what happened? What was the nature of this event? Was it really a resurrection?

If we are prudent and objective historians we cannot answer this question. Something happened which caused the disciples to believe that Jesus was resurrected. We cannot say precisely what that something was.

There are a couple of more things that we can say about this event with a fair degree of certainty. First, it is very probable that the tomb was indeed empty. Not only do the four Gospels agree on this, and not only do Mark and John point out that this in itself further saddened the disciples, but Matthew goes to the trouble of discrediting a tale started by opponents of the early Christians that the empty tomb was a result of the disciples stealing away Jesus’ body while the guards slept. (Matthew 28:11-15) Certainly no opponent of the Church would try to explain the missing body with a tale like this unless they felt they had to admit that the tomb was empty to begin with.

Secondly, there is little doubt that it was Mary Magdalene who discovered that the tomb was empty, either alone or with other women, and that it was she who first reported an experience of the risen Jesus. This same experience was then repeated by others, and before long there was enthusiastic preaching of the risen Christ.

In the role of objective historians we can conclude only that something remarkable happened on the first Easter, something that was capable of being interpreted as the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. We can never know just what his disciples experienced to convince them of this.

Personally -- that is, no longer sticking to the role of objective historian -- I believe that whatever happened was enough like the triumph of Jesus over death that to call it a resurrection has some legitimacy. And after all, it doesn’t really matter if it was an actual bodily resurrection, because a bodily resurrection has no religious significance.

II: Religious Insignificance

After pointing out the impact of the Easter event, we cannot now say that it was historically insignificant. Whatever its precise nature may have been, it provided the impetus for the movement that became the Christian Church. It has historical importance of the first magnitude. But this event, and its historical probability, do not have religious significance.

This statement flies directly in the face of what is probably the only consensus of Christians and non-Christians alike about the Christian faith: that it stands or falls on the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. But this consensus is wrong. We will examine the two areas in which the greatest importance is claimed for the resurrection: (1) the question of our salvation; and (2) the question of the identity of Jesus of Nazareth (which is of course related to the first question).

(1) Soteriological² Insignificance

"If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain?’ So says Paul in I Corinthians 15:14. He repeats this for emphasis just three verses later: "If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins." Paul is saying quite clearly that salvation from sin and death is directly dependent upon the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.

This is probably a common belief, but it places more weight on the resurrection than it can logically bear. Even if we were to grant (for the sake of argument only) that God could or would intervene in this way in earthly affairs, God’s resurrection of this one person cannot logically support the likelihood of salvation for the rest of us: (A) It cannot prove that God is able to save us from death and grant us eternal life; (B) it cannot guarantee that God is interested in doing this; and (C) it does not even show that God will forgive our sins.

(A) The resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth does not even show that God was able to grant eternal life to this one individual, much less to the rest of us. At the most, it shows that God was able to keep one person alive for a short time after physical death. That Jesus went on to eternal life is certainly not proven by his few days or weeks of post-death appearances on earth. This can only be accepted on faith. Of course, if we believe that God is creator/maintainer of the universe then we can have faith that God somehow preserves our lives after death. But we ought to be able to have this faith without demanding a proof -- for no proof is possible -- and quite independently of whether or not Jesus was raised from the dead. (If there were a connection between eternal life and a bodily resurrection shortly after death, this would be of little solace to the rest of us.)

(B) Even if the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth could show that God could grant eternal life -- which it doesn’t -- it still gives us no indication that God has any intention of granting this to any of the rest of us. After all, none of the rest of us happens to be Jesus Christ. (Again, we could note the apparent dearth of resurrections recently.)

Assuredly, we have faith that God loves us and that therefore God will grant us eternal life if this is possible and is best for us. But again, this is an article of faith. It can neither be proven or disproven by the truth or falsity of the resurrection accounts.

(C) It will be claimed that the resurrection of Jesus is vital to our salvation because the resurrection showed God’s acceptance of the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. This of course ties in with the idea that Jesus died in order that God could forgive our sins and so grant us eternal life. This is wrong (see Chapter 14). But even if you believed that since Jesus died on the cross, now God can forgive your sins, and you will be saved if you repent and believe -- what does the resurrection add to that? If God will forgive you for Jesus’ sake, isn’t that true whether or not Jesus was raised?

Or to look at it another way: what is there in the resurrection of this one man which implies the forgiveness of anyone? What is there in the Easter event itself that indicates this? Nothing. Only by referring to the preaching of Jesus (and the Church) do we hear about God’s forgiveness. We can only accept on faith that God forgives and accepts those who repent and turn. Jesus tells us this before the resurrection and entirely apart from it.

(2) Christological Insignificance

It could be argued that Paul was saying something else. In saying, "If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain," perhaps Paul meant not that our salvation depends on the resurrection itself, but rather that our salvation depends on Jesus being the Son of God, and this is what depends on the resurrection. After all, Paul says that Jesus was "designated Son of God . . . by his resurrection from the dead". (Romans 1:4) Indeed, do we not depend on the resurrection to show us that Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ, the Son of God? Isn’t this what makes him the Messiah? Certainly the Easter event played an important and probably decisive role in convincing his disciples that Jesus was "he who is to come", the promised one, the Messiah. We can understand why this was so. They had a common sense that accepted the idea of a God who intervened in human affairs on specific occasions for specific purposes. The resurrection of a dead person -- whatever its precise nature -- could be seen as a miraculous act of God. Furthermore, at that time many Jews (though not all) believed that God would effect a general resurrection at the end of the world. So they were prepared to recognize a resurrection as an act of God. And certainly the resurrection of one particular individual in advance of this could indicate this person’s importance or merit in the eyes of God.

But would a resurrection naturally prove to Jesus’ contemporaries that he was the Messiah? Did it make him the Christ? No. There was no expectation or tradition that would identify a resurrected person as the Messiah. And in many cases Jesus of Nazareth was the antithesis of the messianic warrior-king prophesied by Isaiah and others (see Isaiah 9 and 11). Why then was he given this title by his disciples? Perhaps because he was crucified by Pilate as "King of the Jews", a messianic title. Or perhaps because none of the possible titles fit very well -- there were a number to choose from -- and "Messiah" was the pre-eminent one.

In any case, we have already acknowledged the great historical importance of the resurrection. And part of this importance was that it convinced his disciples that Jesus was the Messiah. But does this mean that the resurrection made him the Messiah? And can the resurrection serve to convince us today that Jesus was the Messiah? These are two separate if related questions. The answer to both is "no".

There is no good reason to believe that the resurrection is what made Jesus the Messiah. There are no prophecies, no rules, that say this is how someone is "made" Messiah. And to say that Jesus was made Messiah by the resurrection is to say that he was not the Messiah during his earthly ministry.

Of course, if you wish to believe that it was the resurrection that made him the Messiah, this is your privilege. But you need to be aware that there are no good reasons for this belief.

But what about the resurrection as proof to us that he was indeed the Messiah? We have said that it convinced the disciples. But the fact that a bodily resurrection could have certain implications for people of the first century does not necessarily mean it can have these same implications for us today.

The return to life of a dead person today would be a great scientific curiosity. We would marvel at it. Suppose there were physicians in attendance who verified that indeed there were no clinical signs of life, and two days later this individual was alive: we would be amazed, but we would not feel compelled to speak of angels or to wonder if this person were a chosen one of God. It would tell us nothing of the validity of his or her religious teachings.

Our common sense does not allow us to believe that God intervenes in our finite physical processes in this way. Therefore a resurrection cannot be an act of God. And therefore it cannot say anything about Jesus’ identity as Messiah. It has no Christological significance, just as it has no soteriological significance.

Is the resurrection then unimportant? I am not saying that. It was of critical historical importance to the genesis of Christianity. It may have this same historical importance in the personal faith of some individuals today if it helps them to understand the nature of God’s love or the message of Jesus of Nazareth. And certainly the resurrection remains as an important symbol of God’s love and of the triumph of love over death.

But while our belief in a loving God can be symbolized by the resurrection, it cannot depend on the resurrection. Neither our belief in salvation through faith, not our confidence in God’s forgiveness, nor our affirmation that Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ, can depend on the resurrection. It proves none of these. It is essential to none of these. It simply can’t bear the weight that Paul, and so many since him, have wanted to put on it.

III: The Consequences

Thus far we have concluded that the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth (or something that resembled this) is historically probable and historically of great importance. I have confessed my own belief that whatever happened can reasonably be called a resurrection. But we have also concluded that it is not, and cannot be, of religious significance to us. What are the consequences of this?

1. At the end of the last chapter we concluded that in order for a belief about Jesus to be required for a Christian it must be either implied in his basic message or necessary for a positive response to this message. The resurrection is not implied in his teachings about God and faith. And since it is not religiously significant, a belief in it cannot be necessary to respond to Jesus’ message.

2. Therefore, if someone does not believe in the resurrection, neither we nor they themselves can consider them not to be Christian on this basis alone. We can only accuse them of poor historical judgment.

3. Therefore those who cannot believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth cannot use this as an excuse to reject Christianity. They must respond to Jesus’ message the same as anyone else, and either accept or reject his call to turn to God and love their neighbor.

4. Since Christianity does not depend on either the nature or the historicity of the resurrection, this should allow for a less emotional and therefore more fruitful consideration of the subject. And by affirming our common sense view that a bodily resurrection could not be a miraculous interventionist act of God, we can allow for the historical probability of the resurrection without denying our common sense.

5. Finally, while ruling out any religious significance for a bodily resurrection, we leave open the possibility that, to the extent the Easter event was an event of spiritual insight, it just may have had something to do with God.

Now, however, it is time to turn to another belief about Jesus of Nazareth that is often considered to be necessary. In Chapter 7 we consider the question of his divinity.

Notes:

1. A more detailed assessment of current scholarly argument about the resurrection may be found in Appendix B.

2. Soteriological means having to do with salvation.

At this point it seems necessary to pause for an important question. Is it possible to proclaim that the Bible is not perfect, that God does not act in the physical events of this world, and that miracles are religiously insignificant -- and still be Christian?

In this chapter we are going to go through several steps that will give us two general rules about Christian belief. These rules are very simple but very important. The first rule will tell us when a belief may be considered Christian. The second will state when a belief may be required of Christians.

Part of what we are asking here is what it means to be a Christian. This is a very basic question. To whom do we look for an answer? More important than what Luther or Augustine said, more important than what your pastor or the Pope or Billy Graham said, more important than what your family told you or what your fundamentalist or atheistic neighbor told you -- what did Jesus of Nazareth say?

In step one we will examine the question of whether in fact we know what Jesus said. It is necessary that we face this question up front. In step two we will consider the main thrust of Jesus’ message. In step three we will draw some conclusions about Christian belief and formulate our two rules.

Step One: Do We Know What Jesus Said?

We must begin by admitting that there is some serious question as to what Jesus did say. Whole books continue to be written just on this topic. While some people may think that the red print in their New Testament represents words taken down by stenographers as Jesus spoke, the fact is that the Gospels as we have them were written somewhere from thirty to sixty years after his death. Matthew and Luke both make use of an earlier written record of Jesus’ teachings, but we do not know when or by whom this document was written. (It is called the "Q Source", from the German word for source, "quelle".) There is also the fact that each of the four Gospel writers has a somewhat differing interpretation of Jesus, and so each puts a different slant on things. On top of this, Jesus is sometimes quoted as saying things that reflect a little too neatly the needs of the early Church. To give just three examples, there would seem to be legitimate doubts about such passages as John the Baptist’s recognition of Jesus as the Messiah, Jesus saying to Peter "on this rock I will build my church;" and Jesus’ very specific predictions of his death and resurrection. We will take a brief look at each of these to show why.

The story of John the Baptist is found early in all four Gospels. While it does not concern a statement by Jesus, it is a good illustration of the problem at hand. There is no question that Jesus was baptized by John. Jesus’ disciples would never have made this up, because it was an embarrassment to them. It was embarrassing because he who baptizes generally has greater authority than he who is baptized, and they had to admit that Jesus was baptized by John, not the other way around. No doubt they were reminded of this by the disciples of the Baptist.

So here was a need of Jesus’ early followers: to show that Jesus was the Messiah even though he himself was baptized by another man. They knew that John had said that "he who is coming is mightier than I," and they were convinced that Jesus was this person. And since John the Baptist was a prophet, he must have known who Jesus was, too. So wouldn’t it make sense to make this clear by having John say so himself? Thus we have the words attributed to him in Matthew 3:14 and John 1:29-34 (e.g., "This is he of whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who ranks before me, for he was before me?’" John 1:30).

But if John knew that Jesus was this person when he baptized him, why did he later on send messengers to ask Jesus, "Are you he who is to come?" (Matthew 11; Luke 7) It doesn’t make sense. And the earlier statements attributed to John are just too convenient to believe.

The second example we’re looking at is Matthew 16:18, where Jesus says to Simon, "You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church;" in response to Peter’s recognition of him as the Christ. We can safely assume that some such incident occurred which caused Jesus to confer upon Simon the name of Peter, or rock. But there is no evidence at all that Jesus had any intention of starting "my church". On the contrary, he was calling Jews back to their God, teaching in the synagogues and the Temple.

Again, however, the early Christians had a need. They had been kicked out of the synagogues and sought justification for the founding of a separate Church. They needed Jesus’ authority for it. No doubt Jesus said something about Peter and his other disciples which was later on remembered in this way. But this verse fits the need of the early Church too neatly, while at the same time not fitting with what else we know about Jesus, for us not to be skeptical about it.

The third example consists of the very specific predictions that Jesus made of his own death and resurrection. For instance, Matthew 20:18-19: "Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem; and the son of man will be delivered to the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn him to death, and deliver him to the Gentiles to be mocked and scourged and crucified, and he will be raised on the third day."

There are several reasons to doubt whether this is an actual statement of Jesus. First of all, it’s just too precise not to suspect the work of someone who knew exactly how things did, in fact, turn out. Secondly, the disciples give no evidence in their reactions to Jesus’ arrest and execution of having ever heard him say this. And thirdly, the early Church had a vested interest here. Crucifixion was an ignominious death meted out to enemies of the state. For this death to make sense to them it had to be seen as part of a divine plan, and as voluntary and intentional on Jesus’ part. What better way to show this than by his own predictions of it?

Surely Jesus foresaw danger and possible death in Jerusalem, and surely his disciples would later have read more into any forebodings. "Now we understand what he meant! He was predicting his crucifixion." It would be only natural that by the time it was incorporated in the Gospels a general warning by Jesus had become a very specific prediction of what his disciples knew came to pass.

We have looked at these as examples of specific passages that reasonable people could reasonably doubt the historical accuracy of. There is certainly sufficient reason to believe that the collection of Jesus’ sayings presented in the Gospels is not completely accurate. Some scholars, however, have taken this to the extreme. Citing specific examples and the passage of years before the Gospels were written, and the influence of authors, editors, and the early Church, they make themselves opposite counterparts to the Biblical literalists. They appear to follow the rule that if you can’t believe all of it, then doubt all of it. It has even been claimed that there is not a single complete sentence that we can be positive was uttered by Jesus of Nazareth.

But this is not very sensible. What may be a good reason to doubt a given verse or set of verses is not necessarily good reason to doubt whole chapters. To doubt for no good reason is as silly as believing for no good reason.

The fact is that the Gospels are not disconnected stories and sayings that could have been chosen at random here and there. The accounts we have of the ministry and teaching of Jesus of Nazareth fit together in a coherent way to portray a remarkable and insightful individual.

It is true that we do not know the precise date of the Gospels or the precise nature of their sources. It is true that it seems likely that Mark, the earliest of them, was written some three decades after Jesus’ death. But we have learned much about the strength of oral tradition in other societies, and how it can convey surprisingly accurate information over years and sometimes even generations. And in the case of the Gospels we are dealing with a time period well within individual lifespans. So while we cannot claim that the Gospels have the accuracy of video tape, and we cannot doubt that there are some errors due to oral transmission, there is also no reason to doubt that they contain a generally accurate picture of a man who made a very strong impression on his contemporaries.

So it is, too, with the influence of the early Church on the Gospels. Certainly there was some impact. And a prudent person can reasonably doubt those sayings which so precisely fit the needs of Jesus’ early followers, which do not fit with the rest of his message. But this does not give us any reason to doubt all the rest of Jesus’ sayings and actions.

We need to keep in mind what the question is. The question is not whether we have a precise record of exactly what Jesus did, and when and where and how he did it. For the most part we do not have all this. The question is, do we have an accurate representation of the kind of things that Jesus did, of the kind of life he lived, and of the main events in it?

And the question is not whether we have Jesus’ sayings in the exact words he uttered. There is no way of knowing this, and it doesn’t much matter. The question is, do we have the faithfully remembered ideas of this man who made such an impression on those who heard him? And the question is not whether we have his ideas rendered exactly right on every single issue addressed in the Gospels. The question is, do we have a coherent and accurate statement of his central message?

Yes, we do. An unbiased look at the overall picture makes it impossible to conclude otherwise. With what we now know about oral tradition we cannot use the time lapse before the Gospels were written to cast doubt on their general accuracy, even as we cannot guarantee their accuracy in every detail. We have a generally consistent account about an exceptional individual who had a great impact on his contemporaries. If it was not Jesus of Nazareth who taught these teachings and through his life and death gave impetus to this movement, if it was not this Jesus of Nazareth who was revered by the early Church as it passed on his precepts -- within the lifespan of those who knew him -- then who was it? Does it make sense to invent another person here when all the testimony points to Jesus, and when the Gospels paint a coherent picture of a man who lived and taught his powerful understanding of the love of God? Of course not. The only reasonable conclusion is that we do have a generally accurate picture of the way Jesus lived and of his central message.¹

The Exception: The Gospel of John

So: we have a generally accurate representation of the life and the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. In essence, we are saying that unless you can give a good reason to doubt a particular passage, there is no reason to doubt it. With this guideline we can be generally satisfied with the vast majority of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. These three have much in common, and in fact are collectively called "the Synoptics" because of their similarity.

The Gospel of John is different. Jesus talks differently in John than in the Synoptics. This is apparent even in the English translation. He speaks in a very stylized manner, he uses different concepts than in the other Gospels, and in places he is almost overloaded with symbols like the "bread of life" and "light of the world". It is apparent on even a cursory reading that something has happened here to the sayings of Jesus.

With some study, it is evident that John’s Gospel is the end product of significant theological thought. John has done more "theologizing" than the other three Gospels together. This doesn’t mean that what John says is necessarily wrong or necessarily right. But it does mean that what he quotes Jesus as saying has been filtered through a particular process, much more so than in the Synoptics. In effect, what we have here is Jesus quoted as saying what John thought Jesus meant to say. Maybe the intent is the same as what Jesus actually said, and maybe it isn’t. In either case, Jesus’ words here are definitely restructured by John’s theology.

What this means, of course, is that there is good reason to be more skeptical of what Jesus says in the Gospel of John. One must look at whether particular sayings are consistent with his teachings as we know them from the Synoptics. One must also look out a little more carefully than in the other three Gospels for the influence of the early Church and of the author’s own theology.

Step Two: What Did Jesus Say?

We began this chapter with the question of what it means to be a Christian and decided that we must begin with what Jesus said. We asked first of all whether we know what Jesus said. In step one we concluded that while there are particular reasons for doubting particular passages, we have a generally accurate representation of Jesus’ actions and (in Matthew, Mark and Luke) of his teachings. In other words, yes, we do know well enough what Jesus said. Now in step two we will consider the question of what Jesus said it meant to be a Christian.

Of course Jesus never answered this question directly. In fact, he never said anything about "Christian" at all. In the first place, Jesus was intent upon reforming Judaism, not starting a new religion. In the second place, this name was not given to his followers until some years after his death.

So we will ask a different question: what does it mean to be a follower of Jesus of Nazareth? But this is not really a different question. This is just another way of asking the same thing, for if it means anything to be a Christian it means to be a follower of Jesus the Christ.

What did Jesus ask of his followers? What did he call people to do? What response did he seek to himself and his message?

There are three passages in the Gospels which serve as particularly good summaries of Jesus’ teachings, though each in a different way. Each of them gets to the heart of the matter in a way that rings of authenticity. They are: the Great Commandment, the Sermon on the Mount, and the Great Judgment.²

I. The Great Commandment

And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question, to test him. "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?" And he [Jesus] said to him, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets. (Matthew 22:35-40)

This passage is found with slight variations in Mark and Luke (Mark 12:28-34; Luke 10:25-28). Incidentally, it’s a good example of the kind of differences between Gospels that is not important. In Mark it is a scribe that asks the question, not a lawyer, and Jesus’ phrasing is slightly different. In Luke Jesus throws the question back to the lawyer, so it is the lawyer who states the two commandments and Jesus who says he is right.

What is important is that in all three Jesus affirms the central importance of these two commandments. In Luke, he follows up with the parable of the good Samaritan, which gives an important expansion of our idea of who is our neighbor. The indisputable point here is that Jesus’ guiding principles were the love of God and love of neighbor.

II. The Sermon on the Mount

This second selection spells out more specifically what the Great Commandment says in general. It is the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5 through 7, paralleled in part by the Sermon on the Plain in Luke 6:17-49. In each case, though to a greater extent in Matthew, the occasion is used to pull together a collection of Jesus’ teachings.

Certainly it makes no difference whether the setting is a mountain or a plain, and after the Beatitudes there are only slight differences in wording.³ Many familiar teachings are included here: turn the other cheek, go the second mile, be reconciled with your brother, lay up treasures in heaven, judge not, and love your enemies -- not just your friends, but your enemies! Jesus lays out here the kind of attitudes and actions that he is calling for. He does not address doctrines but the kind of life we should live.

As if to confirm this, towards the end of "the sermon" Jesus comments on people who call him "Lord". This is of particular note because of that large faction of Christianity which seems interested only in whether you and I have accepted Jesus as our "Lord and Savior". What Jesus says is, "Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord’, shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven." (Matthew 7:21) This is paralleled by Luke 6:46, "Why do you call me ‘Lord’, and not do what I tell you?" The point is clear. Jesus is not as concerned with what people call him as with how they live. What he calls for in the Sermon on the Mount, and gives numerous examples of, is a life lived in right relationship with God and neighbor, in line with the Great Commandment.

III. The Great Judgment

The third passage that serves as a good summary of what was important to Jesus is the Great Judgment in Matthew 25. Here he paints a word picture of judgment day, when the son of man will come in his glory to judge the nations and shall separate them "as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats". Those on his right hand are then told why they are destined for heaven:

Those on his left hand are likewise informed that they are destined to eternal punishment because they did not do these things for "the least of these".

In his depiction of the Great Judgment, Jesus makes no reference to doctrine or belief at all. He does not mention belief in Biblical inerrancy or salvation by faith. He doesn’t even mention any beliefs about himself. The deciding factor as to whether someone goes to heaven or hell is the way they have dealt with other people.

In the second and third of these passages we find confirmation of the first. They are amplifications of the Great Commandment, examples of love in action. In his teachings and in his actions, we find this pervasive central theme of Jesus: love God and love your neighbor. This is what he preached to the crowds and expected of his disciples. This is what he lived for and what he died for. Certainly this is what he wanted most to pass on to his followers.

What then does it mean to be a Christian, that is, a follower of Jesus of Nazareth? First, of course, it must mean that you have made a conscious choice to follow him. This means to place his teachings and his example at the center of your understanding of how to live, of what is important in life, and of what God is like. If Jesus the Christ does not have this centrality for someone, then however good a person they may be, they can hardly claim to be his follower. Secondly, this centrality of Jesus’ message in your heart must show itself in your actions, in the way you treat people and in what your goals in life are.

Step Three: What Is A Christian Belief?

We began this chapter by asking whether we can hold certain beliefs and still be Christian. How do we decide whether something is a Christian belief?

What we are really asking here is, when is a belief appropriate for Christians? This brings us to Ross Christian Belief Rule #1: A belief is Christian (meaning that it is appropriate for Christians to believe) if it is (1) in keeping with the thrust of Jesus the Christ (as expressed in the Great Commandment), and (2) is also consistent with the life and teaching of this Jesus being central to our understanding of our relationship to God and to other people.

Can We Separate Jesus from John and Paul?

A multitude of learned and respected Christian voices will object to this. Perceptive people whose opinions I value will fulminate against me. They will point out that I have tried to separate the gospel of Jesus in Matthew, Mark, and Luke from the gospel of John, Paul, and Hebrews. They will say that this is ill-conceived, illegitimate, and impossible.

Many of these people are intelligent, sincere, and faithful. They are certainly defending an important traditional principle. They are also wrong.

They are right, however, about what I have done. As the criteria for Christian belief I have chosen the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, which are best conveyed in the first three Gospels. But they are wrong in saying this cannot be done. It must be done. The Church is not "the Church of John" or "the Church of Paul". It is not "the Church of the first century Apostles" or the "Church of the New Testament in general". It is not even the "Church of Jesus and John and Paul." We are the Church of Jesus the Christ.

To be Christian is to follow the Christ. This is why we must distinguish his teachings from the teachings of others. The message of Jesus must form the base, the keystone, for our religious understanding. Certainly the teachings of others may be added to this. Many wise and faithful men and women have passed on important truths to us. But any addition to the message of the Christ must first pass the test of consistency. If it is not consistent with what Jesus lived and taught then it cannot legitimately be a part of our Christianity.

This is true whether we are examining a belief put forward by you, or by me, or by St. Paul. This is true whether it was added today or 2000 years ago to what Jesus said. We cannot assume just because an idea is in the New Testament that it is consistent with what Jesus taught. This would be a lazy and dishonest cop-out on our part. There are certainly some great insights into what it means to be Christian given to us by other New Testament writers and by ancient teachers. But people were as capable of misunderstanding Jesus of Nazareth ten or twenty centuries ago as they are now.

Belief in Jesus Christ

Whatever problems there may be in deciding whether certain particular teachings in the Synoptics are attributable to Jesus, when we come to John and Paul there is a clear and certain difference. People are not just called upon to follow the teachings and example of Jesus. Instead, John and Paul add on to this a particular set of beliefs and insist that these beliefs are necessary to our relationship to God. Our status as Christians and our entry into heaven are made to depend on a particular belief -- a belief in Jesus Christ.

But how can this be, when the Christ himself never demanded this of people? "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life." So reads John 3:16, probably the most favorite Bible verse of all. Surely we as Christians must believe in Jesus Christ?!

But what are we being asked to believe? What is meant by "belief in Jesus Christ"? Is it like believing in Santa Claus? Does it mean simply to believe that Jesus of Nazareth lived and taught in Palestine? No, this is too trivial. This is accepted by all reasonable people and could hardly serve as the cornerstone of our faith.

What is generally meant by believing in Jesus Christ is actually believing certain things about him. When an orthodox Christian asks whether you believe in Jesus Christ they mean, "Do you believe that Jesus of Nazareth is the Son of God, the Messiah; and that he and he alone has freed us from the bondage of sin and death; and that he is divine; and that through him and him alone you can enter heaven, by believing all this about him?"

If we look at the words of Jesus of Nazareth as we have them in the first three Gospels we can see that (with the possible exception of being the Messiah) Jesus does not ask us to believe a single one of these.

But does he not demand that people make a decision and respond to him? Doesn’t he seem to say, especially in some of the parables and in his relationship with the scribes and Pharisees, that a person’s response to him determines their relationship to God? And so do not John and Paul and orthodoxy simply spell out the implications of this?

Indeed Jesus does demand a response to himself. And clearly he believes that much depends on this response. But is he concerned about the response just to himself as an individual person, in and of himself? Or does he rather consider this so important because a response to the messenger is a response to the message, because to accept or reject God’s messenger and God’s message is to accept or reject God?

It is clear to me that it is the latter. The message is what is of prime importance to Jesus. This is his emphasis over and over again in the Gospels. And as in the Parable of the Great Banquet (Luke 14:16-24), to reject the master’s servant is to reject the master. So to accept Jesus as God’s messenger is to accept the all-important message, and to accept God’s message is to accept God. To reject the messenger is to reject God’s invitation, which is to reject God. This is the importance of a person’s response to Jesus of Nazareth.

Since this is the case, since this is how Jesus pictures the importance of a response to him, any requirements we make about belief in Jesus Christ must be in accordance with this. We mean here, of course, beliefs about Jesus.

So here is Ross Christian Belief Rule #2: Since it is the message that is important, we can say that a given belief about the messenger is necessary, only if this belief is necessary to our acceptance of the message. Therefore, if you want to say that we must believe certain things about Jesus of Nazareth, you must show that these things are necessary to his message. These beliefs may be necessarily implicit in the message itself, or they may be necessary for a positive response to the message. But unless a belief about Jesus is one or the other we cannot claim that it is necessary, we cannot say it is a "required" belief in order for someone to be considered Christian. Essentially, we are saying that if you can follow Jesus without a particular belief, if you can answer his call to live according to the Great Commandment without this belief, then this belief is not required in order to be Christian.

Summary

In this chapter we have established two general rules about Christian beliefs. One identifies those which it is alright for Christians to believe, the other those which are necessary for someone to believe in order to be considered Christian. They are:

Ross Christian Belief Rule #1: A belief may be considered Christian (i.e., appropriate for Christians to believe) if it is consistent with the Great Commandment and with the centrality of Jesus of Nazareth to our religious understanding.

Ross Christian Belief Rule #2: A belief may be considered required of Christians only if it is necessarily implied in the life and teachings of the Christ or if it is necessary to accepting his message.

We can now answer the question with which we began this chapter: Yes, the views expressed in this book qualify as Christian. Not as beliefs that can be required of Christians, but as beliefs that are appropriate for Christians. There are no doubt many untraditional ideas that meet the criteria of Rule #1. This is also where many traditional beliefs fall. We must be careful about claiming that beliefs -- new or old -- meet the criteria of Rule #2. Most do not. And some traditional ones do not even meet the criteria of Rule #1.

Now we are ready to look at some particular traditional doctrines. We shall begin with the resurrection.

Notes:

1. If one wishes a more detailed study of the question, one can read Schiflebeeckx’s Jesus, in which it takes him 437 pages to come to this point: "All in all, we are led to conclude that the New Testament, not In spite of the diverse kerygmatic projects but because of them, gives substantial information about Jesus of Nazareth?’ (Edward Schillebeeckx, Jesus [Crossroad Publishing Co., 1979.1 p. 437)

2. ‘It is widely accepted that central to Jesus’ message was the Kingdom of God". I have avoided the use of this phrase here for two reasons: (I) The popular understandings of this phrase range from perfection on earth, to heaven, to the millenial rule of Christ after the Second Coming, all of which serve to confuse the issue at question here. (2) For most of this century it was assumed by scholars that Jesus’ references to the Kingdom of God referred to a future eschatological event: an imminent end to the world as we know it. But the scholarly consensus is now trending to the opposite viewpoint: Jesus did not preach the end of the world, and those passages which clearly refer to a Second Coming or end of the world are the creation of the early Church. (See Marcus J. Borg, "Jesus and the Kingdom of the God", in The Christian Century, April 22. 1987. p. 378 -- 380.)

Therefore, for Jesus, the Kingdom of God is concerned with a life lived now in response to God, in the presence of God. However, because of all the unhelpful connotations of the traditional phrase, the substance of this kind of life is better addressed by examining Jesus’ central themes as we do here, and in an expanded way in Chapter 16, rather than by using the phrase "Kingdom of God".

3. The Beatitudes, on the other hand, show a noteworthy difference in emphasis. Matthew refers to "the poor in spirit:, Luke to "you poor"; Matthew speaks of "those who hunger and thirst after righteousness", Luke of "you that hunger". Luke then follows with a set of woes to the rich and the full. This difference of concern between the poor in spirit in Matthew and the poor in Luke is one which deserves serious study and reflection.

Our belief in a loving God does not allow us to depict this Being as pulling strings to control events here on earth. Our common sense of how the universe works does not allow us to conceive of God as "zapping" into the normal course of natural laws. What, then, do we say about the Biblical accounts of miracles?

If God doesn’t go "zap" then we cannot simply accept all the miracle stories as true at face value. There are three different approaches to miracles generally used by those interpreters of the Bible who don’t simply accept them or reject them outright. These alternatives, we will see, boil down to a choice between explaining miracles away or ignoring them. We will begin this chapter by looking at (1) the "classic liberal" approach, which explains them away. Then we will consider (2) Rudolf Bultmann’s "demythologization", and (3) "demiracle-ization", both of which ignore miracles under the guise of interpreting them.

1. The Classic Liberal Approach

This first approach to dealing with miracles was especially identified with "liberal" scholars of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It was not confined to this era, however, and still has widespread appeal and usage. No doubt you have either used this approach yourself or have been exposed to it in others. It works like this: the report of a miraculous event is explained as being of a natural, unmiraculous event which was either misunderstood by witnesses or misinterpreted by those to whom it was reported. At the same time it is affirmed that what the Bible reports did in fact happen, or something very similar to it, albeit unmiraculously.

Thus, for instance, the stilling of the storm by Jesus is explained as a coincidental or predictable change in the weather following upon Jesus’ prayer for calm. The disciples, of course, saw the calm follow upon his prayer and interpreted coincidence as cause and effect. (It would not be unusual for an allusion to be made to the ignorance and superstition of the witnesses. This is both arrogant and not entirely inappropriate.) Similarly, Jesus walking on the water becomes his undetected use of a sandbar or sunken log which no one else knew was there. The feeding of the five thousand becomes a "miracle" of the heart: all those people in the crowd who were selfishly keeping their picnic dinners to themselves were inspired to share with others, as opposed to there having been an actual physical multiplication of the five loaves and two fish.

Another example of this approach was passed on to us by Mark Twain. This was delivered by a certain ship’s captain, who, says Twain, was a profound Biblical scholar -- that is, he thought he was. He believed everything in the Bible, but he had his own method of arriving at his beliefs. He was of the ‘advanced’ school of thinkers, and applied natural law to the interpretation of all miracles, somewhat on the plan of the people who make the six days of creation six geological epochs, and so forth. Without being aware of it, he was a rather severe satire on modern scientific religionists."¹

Twain overheard and recorded his interpretation of the contest on Mt. Carmel (I Kings 18), which, though perhaps a caricature, illustrates well the shortcomings of this approach. So I pass on to you here a portion of one of my favorite pieces of Biblical exposition. After explaining how Elijah (the captain calls him Isaac), as "the only Presbyterian", challenged all the prophets of Baal to a contest to see whose God could cause an altar to ignite, the captain turns to the contest itself, beginning with the prophets of Baal:

Now the usual point of this and similar interpretations is to shore up the Bible’s believability and to defend its accuracy to people for whom the miraculous has become unbelievable. But as admirable as this intent may be, and as laudable was the good captain’s sincerity of effort, the result of this kind of approach is to miss entirely the central point of the miracle accounts. The point of the account of the contest on Mt. Carmel is that the Lord is God and Baal is not. The point is not that Elijah could make fire. In defending the truth of this story with his "petroleum" explanation, the captain has changed it from a demonstration of whose God is God to a demonstration of whose prophet is cleverer (or perhaps sneakier).

The point of the miracle stories in the Gospels is to show that in Jesus, God was at work in a special way, and to affirm his unique authority. The point is not to show that Jesus could in fact predict changes in the weather, or appear to walk on water, or perform any other particular trick that might fool his disciples or the crowds.

Miracle accounts in general were not intended simply to relate the specifics of what happened, but to make it clear that God was at work here, intervening in worldly affairs in a special way, such that we should respond with faith and obedience. To interpret these accounts by concentrating on the event itself, and to explain this event as a misinterpreted unmiraculous occurrence, is to remove God from the story and so is to miss the point of it.

This is not to say that this sort of explanation is never valid or helpful. In some cases it seems obvious that we ought to make use of it. But it should be used to help us gain understanding of a passage, rather than being used to interpret it. By this I mean that this "classic liberal" approach can be used to explain the background, origin, or development of miracle accounts. It may give us an idea of what really happened, and so aid in our understanding of the Biblical stories. But we can’t assume, as many people have, that this is all that needs to be said in interpreting these stories.

For instance, it is probable that what happened at the Red Sea -- actually the Sea of Reeds -- had more to do with darkness and an east wind and chariots mired in the mud and the change of the tide, than with the vertical walls of water rendered so picturesquely by Cecil B. DeMille. (These more impressive walls of water seem to be a later elaboration on the Exodus tradition. See Exodus 14:19-29.) Personally, I find it helpful to arrive at this understanding of the event itself.

But we cannot interpret this passage by saying that what really happened was a narrow escape in a dark marsh. The point of the story is not just to give the details of how they escaped from Pharaoh’s grasp. More important here is the profession by the people of Israel that it was the Lord their God who delivered them out of Egypt. To interpret the Exodus by just "explaining away" God’s miraculous intervention is to replace a grand example of God’s caring for Israel with a plain old lucky escape, and to replace one of the central formative events of Judaism with an insignificant incident. So while "explaining" a miracle may help us to understand "what really happened", this explanation cannot give us a satisfactory understanding of what the Bible is saying.

2. The Bultmann Approach: Demythologization

While the classic liberal approach concentrates on the physical event and, in explaining what "really happened", ignores any deeper meaning involved in the miracle account, the approach developed by Rudolf Bultmann does just the opposite by ignoring the event in favor of the meaning. Bultmann, a German theologian active in the first half of the twentieth century, developed the aptly named approach of "demythologization". This approach merits our attention both because of the impact it has had and because many seminary graduates believe they use it themselves, though few actually do.

"Demythologization" does not refer to "myth" in its everyday sense of an imaginary legend or fairy tale. Instead, "myth" is used here in its technical sense to mean any story or account that makes reference to God or to the supernatural in general, especially in relation to events on earth and the affairs of humankind.

Obviously, with this definition of "myth" the Bible contains a substantial amount of material that is mythical. This presents a problem, said Bultmann, for with our different world-view today we cannot understand or believe these mythical accounts. He sought a solution to this problem by examining the Bible -- and the New Testament in particular -- to see if it presented a truth that did not depend on its mythical content. He concluded that it did, that the true purpose of myth here was to give expression to human self-understanding.

Bultmann’s reasoning went like this: he assumed that all statements are either (1) objective statements which are intended to provide information about the world, or (2) existential statements which are intended to confront the reader or listener with a decision about his or her possibilities of self-understanding. That is, all statements are either "this is what is" statements or "this is what you can be/ought to be" statements. Now, religious language in particular is addressed to answer the question of what ought to be rather than what is. Therefore, concluded Bultmann, religious myths are not intended to be objective statements -- "what is" -- but rather existential statements. So what we need is a translation of these mythical accounts into existential statements -- or, if you will, demythologization.

For example, the mythical accounts of Jesus’ miracles might be understood as pointing out his special authority and the need for us to respond to his life and message. The meaning of these accounts is obtained by demythologizing them. This is done by taking out the myth and translating the story into a challenge to answer Jesus’ call to a new way of life. Thus, Bultmann might say that the miracle accounts can be translated into the existential message that "authentic existence"² is a real possibility for you and me.

No one should question the value of demythologization in helping to point out for us the important meaning that is implicit in the miracle accounts. But as practiced in a strict and thorough-going way it has two major flaws as a tool for interpreting the Bible: first, it prohibits us from making any statements at all about God; and second, it fails to do justice to the language of the Bible.

First: Since any reference to God is by definition myth (in the sense of the word we are using here), demythologizing means translating all such language into existential statements without reference to God. By emphasizing the distinction between God-talk and other uses of language Bultmann misses the chance to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate ways of talking about God, and throws out the former along with the latter. To say the least, an approach that rules out all speech about God seems somewhat inappropriate as a tool for interpreting a book of religion.

Second: Even without this first defect, demythologization fails to do justice to the language of the Bible. The problem lies in Bultmann’s assumption that all statements are intended to be either objective information statements or existential statements. This assumption fails to appreciate the multifaceted richness of language and leads Bultmann to a false conclusion. Since Bultmann views religious statements as existential, this "either/or" attitude forces him to conclude that they are therefore not factual statements. Therefore, to demythologize a miracle story into its existential meaning is not lust to give us the existential implications of this miracle account. It is to make a complete translation of this account. Thus, for example, we would have to say that in relating the miracle stories the Gospel writers meant to challenge us with the possibility of authentic existence like Jesus’ for ourselves. And this much is certainly true. But if we claim that this is a complete translation, then we are saying that they did not also mean to say that Jesus walked on water or stilled the storm.

Certainly the writers meant to point out the authority and specialness of Jesus, and thus to challenge us with a certain response, a certain way of life. But this is not all. They meant just as clearly to say that Jesus did as a matter of fact still the storm and walk on water. The fact is that language is quite capable of making an objective fact claim and giving us existential meaning at the same time, and so demythologization misses half the meaning.

3. Demiracle-ization

A much more common approach is that which I call "demiracle-ization". I am unsure whether the relationship of this to demythologization is that of offspring, parent, or sibling. Many people who have read about Bultmann and who believe that they use demythologization are in fact using this third approach instead.

In fact the thrust of demiracle-ization is much the same as demythologization: to extract and emphasize the meaning of the miracle. The difference is that demiracle-ization does not rule out all references to God -- all "myth" in the technical sense. Instead, only those passages which are not in keeping with our common sense, such as the miracle accounts, need to be "translated" into different language.

Thus, for instance, the stories of Jesus walking on the water or stilling the storm can be said to be claiming that Jesus is the Son of God, or that he had special authority from God. Demiracle-ization would say that the point of these miracle accounts is that God was acting in and through this individual, and also, therefore, that we need to respond to him.

Certainly to this extent demiracle-ization serves a very important purpose. Too often we pay too much attention to the miracles themselves, when the real point of these stories is not that Elijah could bring down fire or that Jesus could heal people or walk on water. The point of these accounts is that God is at work in these people and events, that Elijah is the prophet of the true God or that Jesus is the one who can offer us God’s forgiveness and a new life in God’s love.

Too often we are distracted from the message of these stories by their miraculous nature. Whether or not you believe that the miracle accounts are true, we need to extract their meaning, to understand the religious significance they had for their contemporary audience. Otherwise they may appear to us only as marvelous tricks without any real meaning. So we need to ask, "What is the point of this miracle story? What is it trying to say about God or Jesus or a life of faith?"

The strength of demiracle-ization is that it can convey this meaning to us. Its weakness is that -- like demythologization -- it ends up translating miracles into other language altogether, and does, in fact, demiracle-ize the Bible. This is for many of us a comfortable way of dealing with miracles, since it allows us to make them disappear without having to come right out and say that we don’t believe them, that the Bible is wrong. But this is not quite honest. Furthermore, eventually someone is going to notice that we haven’t actually dealt with the miracles themselves, with the claim that God caused the water-soaked altar on Mt. Carmel to burst into flames or that Jesus walked on the water. Yes, the point of these is to say something about God, but the writers also meant to say that these events did in fact happen in just this way.

At this point we have several choices. Certainly we need to translate the miracle stories so that we today can understand their original significance. But in conjunction with this do we just ignore the miracles themselves? Or do we deny that they happened? Or do we use the "classic liberal" approach and explain them away?

Personally I think that a combination of "demiracle-ization" and the "classic liberal" approach can do justice to many miracle accounts. But there is another alternative that gets to the heart of the matter and avoids disputes over whether a certain miracle did or didn’t happen. This alternative is to apply the concept of "religious significance."

Religious Significance

What do we mean by "religious significance"? Religion has to do with our understanding of God, our understanding of our moral and spiritual nature and our relationship with God. It has to do with our understanding of how we ought to live and relate to each other and with how we do in fact live out these various understandings. Therefore, anything which affects any of these understandings or the way we live them out means something to our religion. It has religious significance.

Thus someone who taught that God loves us and that we ought to love even our enemies, and who lived in such a way as to help us see that this is possible, had teachings and a life that are religiously significant. However, if our understanding of God is that God does not act by "zapping" into the finite physical processes of the world, then accounts of events which violate natural laws cannot have any religious significance for us.

Therefore we do not have to argue that this kind of miracle account is completely translatable into a different kind of language or offer non-miraculous explanations. We do not have to take sides with those who claim that they must be true or with those who claim that they are literally incredible, for their truth or falsehood is irrelevant to our religion. They are religiously insignificant.

If a person can walk on water this is very curious and interesting and certainly out of the ordinary. But it is of scientific interest, not religious. It addresses our understanding of natural laws, not theology. The ability of someone to walk on water or ignite an altar gives us not a clue as to their qualification as a moral leader. It tells us nothing about the adequacy of their understanding of God. It does not affect our own understanding of God, or of ourselves, or of the right way to live. Someone walking on water has no meaning, no significance, for our religion.

However, miracles did have religious significance to the people of first century Palestine. It was entirely in keeping with their common sense to explain an event as the result of specific intervention by God. A miracle implied divine authority or approbation.

So it is proper and even necessary to ask, what was the religious significance of this miracle account to its contemporary audience? What is its meaning? What point is it making? But it is also proper and necessary at the same time to point out that the reported miracle can have no such significance for us.

The meaning of the miracle to its contemporaries may be important to us. For instance, the writer may be claiming that Jesus has the authority to forgive sins, or that God is working through this person. We may need to translate the miracle accounts into these kinds of statements to make sure that we do not miss their intended implications, for these implications may in fact be of religious significance to us. But the miracles themselves are irrelevant. They simply are not religiously significant.

Jesus On Miracles

Jesus himself apparently had an attitude towards miracles that had much in common with this. His comments on miracles are otherwise very puzzling, if not incomprehensible:

We might remark on several things here. For one, those of us with old fashioned Anglo-Saxon reserve might think it untoward for someone to talk about himself in this way. But Jesus of Nazareth taught "as one who had authority". No one could have followed his course and made his mark without supreme confidence that he was following the will of God. And he was, after all, making a particular point here.

For another thing, we need to point out that Matthew, in his version of this second passage, includes an explanation of the sign of Jonah; "For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale, so will the son of man be three days and three nights in the belly of the earth?’ (Matthew 12:40) But this is obviously a post-resurrection editorial addition, for besides demonstrating knowledge of the Easter event (albeit with poor arithmetic), it is entirely out of place here. Jesus is arguing against signs in this passage. As he pointed out, the only sign to the men of Nineveh was Jonah’s preaching, and they repented at this, knowing nothing about the whale incident. The queen of the South came to hear Solomon’s wisdom, not to see him perform miracles.

But the really remarkable thing here is what Jesus apparently did say. A "sign" is a sign from heaven, a miracle. And he said that no sign would be given to that generation, save only the sign of his preaching. And this is a real puzzle. For on the one hand we have accounts of a large number of miracles being performed by Jesus of Nazareth; on the other hand, we have this same Jesus saying that no sign would be given.

The simple solution here would be to dismiss one or the other, to say either that Jesus didn’t perform any miracles or that he didn’t really say that no sign would be given. But like most simplistic solutions where one is asked to choose between black and white, this ignores the gray areas that encompass most of reality. The truth is not going to avoid ambiguities just so we can feel comfortable.

We cannot agree with those who would say that since Jesus said this about miracles he must not have performed any signs at all. Admittedly, there is a documented tendency for miraculous stories to grow up around famous individuals. Admittedly, a good number of the miracle accounts may be exaggeration or misunderstanding or legend. But there is a consistency of emphasis on faith healings that is impossible to dismiss. Unlike the walking-on-the-water type of miracle, faith healings appear as an integral part of his ministry. It is clear that many who sought him out came not to hear his preaching and teaching but rather to receive or at least to observe a healing.

On the other hand, we cannot dismiss these sayings in which Jesus says no sign will be given. We cannot explain them away, nor can they be attributed to anyone else. No early follower of Jesus would invent a statement that calls his miracles into question and that implicitly admits that he failed to perform when challenged by the Pharisees.

There is a possible solution to this apparent quandary: that Jesus did in fact perform faith healings, at least early in his ministry, and that he intended them as "signs". For instance, the healing of the paralytic in Mark 2 is specifically intended "that you may know that the son of man [i.e., himself] has authority on earth to forgive sins," However, it developed that people were more interested in the signs themselves than in what the signs pointed to. That is, people were more interested in the apparently miraculous healings than in Jesus’ message to which the healings were supposed to bear witness. People came seeking signs, not to hear about repentance and forgiveness and love. They came seeking entertainment, not truth; a spectacle, not a way to live. No observer of humanity can be the least bit surprised at this.

When Jesus realized that most people were rejecting his message, even those who came out to see his signs, he became aware that the healings were not signs at all but were rather distractions from his all-important message.³ Here he was, bringing the good news of a new life in God, and people turned away from him! How could they hear the call to love and faithfulness upon which their whole lives depended and then demand something more?

Thus in the latter part of his ministry Jesus ruled out any signs. What was important was that people responded to his message. He realized that the faith healings were not of religious significance to people after all, for all they did was distract people from this message. Let them respond to the all-important life-changing truth!

Faith Healings

After saying that neither our common sense nor our faith allows for a "zapping" God, I have now suggested that Jesus did, in fact, take part in what we call "faith healings". Why this inconsistency?

First: there is no doubt that sudden and inexplicable healings of disease and infirmity do occasionally happen. Almost any physician will testify to that. And sometimes these sudden healings happen in conjunction with prayer and/or the laying on of hands, if not nearly so often as is claimed in Lourdes or by television evangelist healers. (It also needs to be said that this field of endeavor is unfortunately attractive to charlatans.) Nevertheless, the claims of such healings are so persistent that it is difficult to dismiss them all. It seems likely that the heightened excitement and conviction of the "faith healing" process could in fact bring about a physical effect.

Certainly it seems possible that a small percentage of those who are convinced they have been healed are correct, and certainly so strong a personality as Jesus of Nazareth could have elicited this response from people.

Second: this is not an inconsistency after all. In the last chapter we specifically noted that health and illness stand as a common sense exception to the requirement that finite physical effects have finite physical causes. In the case of both illness and healing, we recognize that the state of our mind or spirit plays a very important role. Spirit can affect our physical health.

Nevertheless, faith healings are not miracles in the classic sense. They do not represent an instance of God breaking into our affairs from outside. They are not a case of God’s deciding, "I will heal this one," and then going "Zap! Be healed!" (Remember, neither our common sense nor our faith allows for this specific intervention.)

Rather than representing a breaking in of some power from "outside", faith healings represent the tapping of a power that is present in our world and in us. If these healings do happen on occasion, then the potential for them is a part of the context in which we live.

Precisely because this kind of healing does not represent a miracle in the classic sense of a particular case of divine intervention from outside, it just may be of religious significance. Faith healings may inform our understanding of the power of the mind or indicate our connectedness with the spiritual. We may even see them as a part of our relationship with God.

Conclusion

Our conclusion is that miracles in the classic sense of specific divine intervention from outside do not have religious significance for us. We need to understand the religious significance of the miracle accounts to their original audience so that we do not lose sight of the point of these passages. It may also be helpful for us to reconstruct the historical, non-miraculous events that may be at the root of these accounts. And finally, we must remember that Jesus himself felt that "signs" were irrelevant to his message. As far as religion goes, miracles in the classic sense are indeed irrelevant.

Notes:

1. Mark Twain, "Some Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion", published with Tom Sawyer Abroad/Tom Sawyer Detective by Harper and Brothers. See pp. 234-7.

2. "Authentic existence" is a phrase that Bultmann borrowed from the German existentialist Heidegger, and which he believed represented the kind of life to which Jesus called us.

3. Could this also explain some of the secrecy apparent in his instructions to those he healed not to tell anyone?

Certainly we would all agree that we need a way of speaking about what God is and does that is both sensible and faithful. This is one of the primary goals of this book. But before we can arrive at this we first have to clear the way by understanding what God isn’t and doesn’t. And it is neither consistent with our common sense nor in keeping with our Christian faith to speak of God as a God who goes "zap". That is, it is neither sensible nor faithful to conceive of God as "meddling", as intervening on specific occasions for specific purposes in the finite physical events of our world.

Many sensible and faithful people believe that God does exactly this, either on occasion or by controlling every particular thing that happens. Therefore it is incumbent upon me to show how this is inconsistent with our reason and our faith. This is a relatively simple matter in connection with our common sense. But the question of consistency with our Christian faith will lead us to confront the darker areas of life as we deal with the problem of suffering.

Common Sense and the Zap

Let us return to our old friend the thunderstorm. Assuming that you agree that our common sense is that this phenomenon is to be explained by meteorology and not by referring to the wrath of God -- why? Why do we think this way? Why do we not consult oracles as well as weathermen?

Aside from the sociological answer that we think this way because we have been taught to by our society, there is also an important principle at work here. It is known in philosophy as the "principle of economy" or "Ockham’s razor".¹ The principle is this: that any event or state of affairs should be explained in the simplest way possible, and that once you have explained it one way, you don’t go explaining it yet again by postulating other "deeper" causes for it.

"Simplest" explanation does not mean simple in the sense that it is simpler to say, "God caused the thunderstorm’ than it is to try to understand ionization and humidity and the like. Instead, we mean that we should first try to explain finite physical events by looking for finite physical causes, by looking to the kind of cause that we know exists and operates in our world. These natural and human causes are "simpler" than any supernatural causes we might suggest. Thus, for instance, if we can come up with natural physical causes sufficient to explain an event, then we need not and ought not to postulate magic, miracle, or mystery.

Likely, you would say that this is just common sense. Quite so. But this was not always the case. Furthermore, besides being aware that part of our common sense is endowed with the fancy philosophical name of "principle of economy" (which doesn’t really matter), it is important that we are aware of the principles of reasoning with which we operate so we can ensure our own consistency (which does matter).

Now, Ockham’s razor in hand, let us return to the thunderstorm. We explain it as the result of physical atmospheric conditions. This is sufficient. There is no room for Thor, no need to guess at the anger of God.

But suppose during this storm someone is struck by lightning and killed. When this happens a large number of us drop our razors. We seek another kind of explanation. We may talk about fate or the will of God.

If a tree is standing alone in a field and is struck by lightning we are satisfied with a simple explanation of physical causes. But if a person happens to stand in the middle of a field or take shelter under this tree during this same thunderstorm and is struck by lightning, many of us suddenly require a very different kind of explanation. When personal suffering is involved, and especially when a person dies, we need to feel that there is a purpose for this, that there is "more" of a reason than just mere happenstance or bad luck. Often we reassure ourselves with the belief that God is in control, so this must be God’s will, and so (we conclude) there must be a good reason for it. The greater the impact on our own life, the greater our need to feel this.

But electrical charges do not distinguish between a tree and a person, so if you can explain the tree getting struck by lightning in a simple way, then the same explanation will hold for the person -- except you might wonder why they didn’t have enough sense to come in out of the rain -- even if this person is your spouse or your child. To look for another reason here, a "deeper" reason, is to try to find motives and goals in natural processes just as we would look for these in people.

Our common sense is that finite physical events have finite physical causes. If this is so, it does not make sense to suddenly postulate supernatural causes or metaphysical purposes when these events happen to have a strong impact on our lives. This is true whether we’re speaking of storms or floods or fires or wars or automobile accidents. It does not make sense to ask "why" of a storm or a fire. It does not make sense to ask why your child died when hit by a ton of steel moving at sixty miles an hour. We cannot expect that the laws of nature would make an exception in our particular case, or that they have a particular goal in mind.

It does, of course, make sense to ask "why" when it comes to the actions of human beings. This is one of two major exceptions allowed by our common sense to the general rule that finite physical events are explainable by finite physical causes. In a way, this does not constitute an exception: it is still the physical action of a human that brings about a physical result. But it does make sense to look for purposes and motives in a way that is not true of natural phenomena, and the cause in which we are interested is likely to be found in the thinking or feeling of another person. We want to know why the assailant shot at us, not why a hammer detonates gunpowder or how this causes a lead projectile to travel at high speed.

The second major exception to the general rule that physical effects have physical causes is in the area of health and illness. We recognize that our mind and body are interconnected, and that a person’s mental and emotional state can affect their physical health in a number of ways, and can even make a life-and-death difference under some conditions. One cannot get hepatitis without physical exposure to the virus, but we know that our recovery would depend in part on our own mental attitude. We also know that emotional stress or depression greatly increases our chances of developing a serious illness. The wise among us know that people really do die of broken hearts.

Our common sense is not tied to the purely mechanical, It definitely recognizes these two categories of possible non-physical causes for physical events. We shall address at a later point the question of how God may or may not act in connection with these two categories. However, with the possible exception of these two areas, we do explain finite physical events with finite physical causes. Therefore we must conclude that it is not consistent with our common sense to speak of God going zap in the physical world.

Our Faith and the Zap

Neither is it in keeping with our Christian concept of a loving Deity to speak of God as acting this way.

It is possible to think of God intervening in worldly affairs and physical happenings according to two different models: as a constant cosmic string-puller who controls each and every event of any importance (either by causing it or by consciously allowing it to happen), or as an occasional meddler and zapper, limited (perhaps by self-restraint) to intervening in a certain number of instances.

The first of these two conceptions, that God exercises control over at least all those events that are important, is commonly the underlying assumption for those who believe there are "deeper" reasons or purposeful explanations for those events that cause us joy or sadness. Consequently we will address this idea first. The problem we confront here is really the problem of suffering, for it is our hurts for which we most need some sort of justification, some satisfying explanation. I call this the problem of:

Pain, Honesty, and Faith

Pain, honesty, and faith. Separately, each one can be a problem for us. I know they have each been a problem for me. Together they have constituted a special problem. If you are neither blind nor self-deceived, together they constitute a special problem for you, too.

First, there is the problem of pain. At one time or another we are all hurt, and hurt badly, physically or emotionally or both. (I hope all your hurts are small ones. I doubt they will be.) And this presents a problem for us: how do we cope? Why did this happen to me? How do we make sense out of it?

Second, there is the problem of honesty. I mean honesty with yourself: you could also call it intellectual integrity. It means not denying what your eyes see or what your ears hear or what your heart feels or what your mind reasons. Even harder, it means not denying your eyes for the sake of your heart, or your ears for the sake of your mind, or either your mind or your heart for the sake of the other.

Third, there is faith. Perhaps if you do not bring in pain and honesty, if you do not insist that your faith face pain squarely and honestly, that it be consistent with what your mind reasons and your heart feels and your eyes see, then perhaps faith is no problem for you. But if we would have a faith that neither denies pain nor hides in dishonesty, then we must take a long, hard look at the fact of suffering. Let us begin by examining the desire we so often have for a justification or a "deeper" reason for our suffering.

"There Must Be A Reason"

There must be a reason. When disaster strikes, when tragedy tears the normal fabric of our lives, we demand a reason. We demand to know how this could happen, why it was allowed to take place. We want, and perhaps need, to know that there was a reason, that it was not merely senseless happenstance.

Why did the river overflow its banks? Why right here? Why weren’t we warned? Why was our house washed away? Why did Uncle Harry die?

Sometimes it’s enough to have the simple, causal, often mechanical answers that the razor allows as sufficient: the river overflowed because heavy storms dropped ten inches of rain in a forty-eight hour period just as the snow was melting. It flooded right here because of the contours of the valley. The weather service did issue warnings, but you refused to believe that the levee wouldn’t hold, that this could really happen here. Your house washed away because that is the natural result of two fathoms of water flowing against a frame house. Uncle Harry died because he never learned how to swim and so couldn’t make it through the water to safety.

Sometimes this kind of answer is adequate. When tragedy happens to someone else, when you’re not caught up in the immediate effects, when neither you nor those close to you suffer any great personal loss, this kind of answer is probably all you need. When the same disaster strikes many others as well as you, when you do not feel singled out by it, this kind of answer may well eventually seem adequate.

The crunch comes when you are singled out for pain and suffering: when your family is struck with cancer, when your child is hit by a drunk driver, when your spouse has an emotional breakdown, when you are paralyzed from the waist down for life. When anything like this happens the kind of simple causal answers we gave above are likely to seem totally and obviously inadequate. We may ask, "Why?", and in fact we may scream, "Why?", but we are not interested in hearing about the limits of modern medicine or the inevitable result of two thousand pounds of steel impacting on skin and bones. To a large extent our cry of "Why?" is not a question at all, but rather a cry of protest and anger and anguish. To the extent that it is a question, we are asking, "Why me? Why did this happen to me?"

A couple of factors contribute to our feeling that this question of "Why?" is a legitimate one that demands more of an answer than can be provided by matter-of-fact physical causes. For one, we seem to have the feeling that well-being is normal, that it is to be expected. No matter how often we may speak of counting our blessings, we usually do take them for granted. Though we would deny it, we feel that life "owes" us well-being and even happiness. Therefore suffering is felt as unfair and unjust, and our question of "Why?" takes on a moral tone that seeks an answer that would show us purpose and justice.

We also often feel suffering as a punishment. The reason we feel this way relates back to this same belief that we deserve good fortune, and perhaps also to our childhood experiences of reward and punishment, and to ideas about God doling out good and bad fortune alike. For whatever reason, suffering feels like punishment. And so we demand to know "Why?", though again this is more protest than question, for we know we haven’t done anything monstrous enough to deserve to be singled out for this kind of horrible punishment.

But if we cannot explain this suffering as a deserved punishment, most of us still find unacceptable and unbearable the alternative explanation: that there is no deeper reason for our suffering, that it is after all just a matter of happenstance and bad luck, that it is (in a moral sense) senseless. We want to avoid this conclusion. If we cannot avoid it by accepting that suffering is deserved punishment, then we often try to avoid it by saying that suffering is for our own good, or for the good of the world. After all, God works in mysterious ways. As long as we know that God is good and just and in control, then we know that what happens is for the best, even though we may never understand just how or why.

If suffering is either deserved punishment or else is for the ultimate good, then it makes sense to us. It is acceptable to us. And the assertion that all suffering, however great, is one or the other makes eminent sense if you believe that God is good and omnipotent, and that God exercises this omnipotence to control events here on earth. I, myself, cannot believe this. It would be dishonest: dishonest with what my eyes have seen, with what my heart has felt, and with what my mind is able to reason. Nevertheless, it is a time-honored conviction that has been expressed since ancient times.

"The Lord does not let the righteous go hungry, but he thwarts the craving of the wicked?’

"What the wicked dreads will come upon him, but the desire of the righteous will be granted."

"The fear of the Lord prolongs life, but the years of the wicked will be short?’

"The hope of the righteous ends in gladness, but the expectation of the wicked comes to nought?’

"The Lord is a stronghold to him whose way is upright, but destruction to evildoers?’

"The righteous will never be removed, but the wicked will not dwell in the land?’

"Be assured an evil man will not go unpunished, but those who are righteous will be delivered."

"No ill befalls the righteous, but the wicked are filled with trouble?’

"In the path of righteousness is life, but the way of error leads to death."

"Misfortune pursues sinners, but prosperity rewards the righteous?’

"A good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children, but the sinner’s wealth is laid up for the righteous."

"The wicked is overthrown through his evil-doing, but the righteous finds refuge through his integrity?’

(Proverbs 10:3, 24, 27-30; 11:21; 12:21, 28; 13:21-22; 14:32)

The good are prosperous and happy; the wicked suffer for their wickedness. The Lord who controls the fortunes of human beings doles out good fortune and bad in just portions to those who deserve them. God rewards goodness with a long and happy life and punishes evil with misfortune and suffering.

One has to admit that this is a thoroughly satisfactory system. Who could complain about a world where the good are rewarded and the wicked punished? It is desirable on our part and commendable on God’s part. It is everything you could want.

Of course, there is one fairly important problem with all this: the world just doesn’t work this way. No matter how desirable and commendable, things just don’t always work out according to this plan. You know this as well as I do. And in spite of the impression given by Proverbs many ancient Jews realized this too.

For a while any apparent inconsistencies in divine justice could be explained by making reference to miscreant ancestors. After all, had not the Lord said, "I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation"? (Exodus 20:5) So if you suffered some undeserved misfortune you could always figure that one of your eight great-grandparents had secretly performed some pernicious iniquity that was only now receiving proper retribution. Not that this would be likely to provide much personal comfort, but you could at least believe that this suffering was in fact deserved by your family and that the system of divine justice still prevailed.

But this sort of explanation could not endure the rise of individualism, the increasing sense of the worth of each individual for his or her own sake. The idea of one person suffering for the sins of another became an affront to people’s sense of justice and individual responsibility, and the prophets denounced it:

This is only fair, and returns us to the system of divine justice described in the Proverbs: the good are rewarded and the bad are punished in this life by the all-powerful Lord of human destinies. But if we can’t blame obvious exceptions to this system on the sins of our ancestors, then it is left defenseless against the harsh realities of life. The world simply doesn’t work this way. It is this problem that is squarely confronted in the Book of Job.

Job

"There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job, and that man was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil." (Job 1:1) This was Job, deserving of good fortune if anyone was. But then in the span of one day all his wealth was stolen or destroyed and all his children killed. Soon after he himself was afflicted with sores from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet.

In the prose introduction of this book this suffering is depicted as a test. God, after bragging about Job, grants permission to Satan to do whatever he wants to to test Job’s faith. ("Testing" is still a common explanation of suffering which we will consider later in this chapter.) However, the main body of the Book of Job does not try to explain suffering this way. Instead, it gives us a poetic picture of the head-on collision between the facts of life and the belief that suffering is a punishment from God. Job argues on behalf of reality while several of his friends take the side of this traditional belief.

Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar come to visit their suffering friend, as friends should. They are good religious men who know that God is just and in control of what happens. They are confident that they understand the workings of God’s justice; the good are rewarded in this life and the wicked are punished. So they are convinced that the suffering which afflicts Job can only be the deserved punishment for some evil he has done. And, therefore, they demonstrate their concern for Job by urging him to repent of these sins he must have committed, for only if he repents do they see any hope for their friend.

Job also believes that God has control over what has happened to him, but he knows that he has done nothing to deserve it, as do we the readers. He is innocent. Therefore, unlike his well-meaning friends, he is unable to applaud God’s justice. Not only does he suffer without being guilty of any significant sin but he also sees the wicked prospering around him. He knows this is so, and knows it is not just.

Job’s friends are not persuaded. They continue to insist that he does deserve this suffering -- he must! He has to be guilty, and he had better just quit protesting and repent. Their well-meant admonitions have the look of cruel and callous torment in the light of what we know.

No matter how much we wish that God would ensure good fortune for the good and bad fortune for the wicked, it just doesn’t work this way. This is a point of great importance made by the Book of Job.

But then how do we explain Job’s suffering? This, of course, is the question that bothers Job himself. He never doubts that his misfortune is under God’s control. In fact, he still has enough faith in God’s justice that he appeals for a hearing, confident that God will recognize his innocence, and so the injustice of his suffering, and so will revoke it.

As a rule, if someone in a position of power is responsible for the suffering of an upright and innocent person this would seem to provide a reasonable ground for accusing that someone of injustice. In this case, however, by insisting that he is innocent, it is God whom Job is accusing of injustice. So Job comes in for a stinging rebuke.

This is carried out by Elihu, a younger man who first vents his exasperation at the three friends for failing to properly answer Job, and then condemns Job for justifying himself instead of God. He doesn’t offer to explain how Job’s suffering could possibly be deserved, but simply asserts, "Far be it from God that he should do wickedness, and from the Almighty that he should do wrong. For according to the worth of a man he will requite him, and according to his ways he will make it befall him. Of a truth, God will not do wickedly, and the Almighty will not pervert justice." (Job 34:10-12)

Elihu apparently feels that this assertion is not subject to challenge by mere facts. Furthermore, he insists, whether or not Job may previously have been blameless, he is now guilty of rebellion and pride for challenging God’s justice and placing his own wisdom on a par with the Almighty’s. Job remains unconvinced, stubbornly holding to the fact of his own innocence and the logical implication that the God responsible for his suffering has acted unjustly. Again he appeals to God, and at last God answers him. But it is not the answer that Job had hoped for:

Job’s Cop-Out

Yes, Job backs down and repents. It does not matter that he is then blessed with wealth and children again. This was wrong of him. It is not what he ought to have done. It is, in fact, a cop-out, a clear and certain cop-out.

Not that Job or anybody else could reply to God’s challenge or answer God’s questions. The universe is indeed beyond our understanding. We do not know the beginning and end of it, nor its foundations, nor the God of it all, nor even in any adequate way our own role in it. We cannot presume to meet God’s challenge. We can only, with Job, humbly confess our ignorance, our limited view, our failings.

But if Job does not have all the answers, he still knows one important fact, and it gives him a big question that he should not so easily drop. God may know the depths of the universe, but Job knows he has suffered terribly and that he, a righteous man, did not deserve to suffer. So if God can ask, "Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?", then Job can ask -- and indeed if he is human he must ask – "Where were you, O God, on that day when all my herds were taken and all my servants and even all my children were killed? And where have you been since that day, while I suffered from heartbreak on the inside and a terrible disease on the outside, without aid or comfort? No, I was not there when you laid the foundation of the earth, but where were you when I was hurt and afraid and desperate and cried to you in vain?"

This is what Job must ask if he is to be honest about his pain and his convictions. I don’t like this question. It makes me feel uncomfortable and insecure. It reminds me of things I would rather not be reminded of. But the question is there, and if we are honest we must ask it: "If God is a loving and all-powerful God, then why does this God allow so much suffering to happen?"

What answer can God make to this? Or rather, what answer can we make on God’s behalf?

If we insist on holding God responsible for fortune and misfortune, health and disease, life and death, and if we also believe that God is loving, then how is it possible to explain undeserved suffering? Whether or not we would claim that any particular suffering is deserved, it is obvious that there is a significant amount of suffering that simply cannot be called either deserved or just according to any reasonable standard of justice. You cannot justify major suffering by pointing to minor moral failings, which all of us have, especially when many with equal or greater failings suffer less.

Is it possible to reconcile this undeserved suffering with a loving, "in charge" God? It would be, if this suffering could be explained as being in one way or another for the good. If suffering is not deserved, it still could be for the ultimate good, either of the individual or of the world. Only if suffering is for the good can we maintain that a loving God is in control of worldly events.

Before we attempt to explain or justify suffering, we must realize just what it is and what it can do to people. We must make sure that we have an adequate understanding of it. Surely we have all learned something about suffering firsthand. But we are also very good at repressing our memories of pain and agony, so we need to remind ourselves just what it can mean to live in the Valley of the Shadow of Death.

The Valley of the Shadow of Death

This is the valley in which we all live. The shadow cast by death into our lives gives us awareness of our own finitude, the knowledge that we will all die. I will die and you will die. This is your one fling at this thing we call life.

We all have to live with this knowledge. It means that when something happens to mar our one chance, when an accident or bad luck or illness or just circumstances determine that our one chance is to be twisted, or unusually painful, or abbreviated . . . well, that’s it. It’s once and for all. There is no re-deal of the deck, no court of appeal, no recourse to litigation. That’s it.

On the average, of course, the shadow is not as dark as this. But to the young widow with children to raise alone, to the man dying an agonizing and untimely death from cancer, to the person full of life and hope who is incapacitated by multiple sclerosis, or to the child who has to start his or her life with an uncorrectable birth defect, the average isn’t what matters. If the suffering that you have known has been the kind which passes after a few months or even -- how hard it can be! -- after a few years, remember that there are those for whom the cloud never passes.

Remember, too, what pain can do. Plain old physical pain is capable of great destructiveness. Serious pain in just one small part of your body -- the kind that sears and penetrates -- can act as a great weight on you. It drains your energy, eats away at your ambition, and drags on every movement you make. It wears you down and wears you out until all you want is just to be comfortable, until all you want is for the pain to stop. It eats away at your efforts to live the life you want and sabotages your efforts to pretend you are normal. When it flares up it radiates like poison through your whole system until body and mind alike are infected with it. You can get to the point where all you want out of life is just to be normally healthy, while at the same time you may know this is the one thing you will never be.

This is only simple, uncomplicated pain. We should not be surprised that it is usually complicated -- by depression, loneliness, frustration, financial difficulties, and other problems.

Incapacitation, even without any pain, can be just as bad. I doubt if you can really imagine what it’s like not to be able to use your body, not to be able to take a walk or play with your children or hold a job or make love, utterly dependent on someone else to look after you, dependent on their being willing to take the time to wait on your wants and needs. It’s not easy to imagine this. But there are people around you who don’t have to imagine it, who have to live with it as part of their one chance at life.

And then there is emotional suffering and crippling: the unloved, the lonely, the bereaved, the rejected; people with broken dreams and people with shattered psyches. The deep pain in the human soul sometimes caused by that which happens to us can cripple a person and destroy a life just as surely and effectively as any physical ailment.

If a person has difficulty coping with the "normal everyday" problems of life we may call it emotional illness. This may be a result of previous traumatic events in that person’s life or may be due to an inherited chemical imbalance in their blood. Too often we think that "emotional illness" means "craziness". It usually does not. What it does mean, more than anything else, is pain: pain somewhere in the depths of our psyches, pain that cannot always be rooted out or covered over, pain that in some cases never gives way to allow a person to live a normal life.

Perhaps only the extreme cases are this bad. If so, there are far, far too many extreme cases. And there are very many more which, if not this extreme, are still undeniable instances of major undeserved suffering.

Of course, we all have our favorite example of the hurt or crippled or deprived individual who through determination and valiant effort has managed to overcome all obstacles and go on to lead a useful and meaningful and maybe even a joyful life. These people deserve all manner of honor and commendation. But they are just a small percentage, the tip of the iceberg, that managed to struggle above water. The many who are not so lucky tend to be hidden away out of our sight.

As for those who are caught by events or stricken by an illness that cannot be overcome by hard work and will power alone, who are condemned to suffer the consequences -- yes, like you, I have been surprised and impressed at the good cheer and high spirits that even some of these people exhibit. And isn’t it nice how they don’t talk about their illness or their pain or their frustration or their despair?

But I learned something about this, learned it the hard way. Perhaps you already knew it. This happy front is not put on for your sake or mine. It is not maintained for the benefit of others at all. And though it is often maintained only with a good deal of effort and energy, it is worth all the trouble it might take. For this front of good cheer represents their pretense of normalcy, not primarily to others, but much more importantly to themselves. It is their defense against constantly confronting the fact of their own deeper misery, a valiant and -- thank goodness -- sometimes successful effort to deny and hide from the inescapable tragedy of their own lives.

We do not like to confront human suffering like this. I personally find it extremely painful. But if we are to be honest with ourselves we must remember just how dark the shadow is in some lives. We must keep in mind just what this suffering is as we consider the explanations that can be offered to reconcile it with the existence of a loving God who controls worldly events.

The Justifications of Suffering

It is possible to reconcile the existence of undeserved suffering with the existence of a loving God who is responsible for life and death, fortune and misfortune, only if all such suffering can be adequately explained either (1) as a test, (2) as being for the sufferer’s own good, or (3) as being for the greatest good of the world, being ultimately for "the best". I will argue that these explanations are inadequate and untenable. This is not to argue against God. This is to argue for God, to free God from some human ideas that do injustice both to God and to us.

1. Suffering as a Test

One possible explanation of suffering is that it’s a test. It is a test of our faith, put to us by God.² But if this is to fit with a loving God there must be a good reason, in keeping with God’s loving nature, for testing us. What could this reason be?

Why do we need to know? Why can’t we just say that God tests us with suffering for a perfectly good and loving reason, and we just have no idea what this reason could be?

Of course anyone who wants to can say exactly this. But for one thing, this is tantamount to saying, "I believe that God has a good reason for testing us because I want to believe this, regardless of how it fits with reality or reason?’ While anyone can say this, they ought not to expect the rest of us to be overwhelmed by their argument.

For another thing, when we have two propositions that appear on the surface to be irreconcilable the burden of proof is on those who would reconcile them. Certainly the evil of the suffering in the world and the loving control of God in the world are not easily and obviously reconcilable. Anyone who asserts that they are should at least indicate how this is possible.

So unless we are to substitute wishful thinking for careful thinking, we need to ask what would be the possible reasons for God to test us with suffering, and are these in keeping with God being good and loving? As far as I can see, there is only one good reason for ever testing anyone: to ascertain whether that person is qualified for, or deserving of, certain rewards or privileges. Thus, students must be tested to see if they have mastered a subject well enough to receive a passing grade. Before anyone is granted a driver’s license they have to show both that they are capable of driving a car and that they are familiar with the traffic laws, so they are tested in these two areas. Often a written or oral test is given to applicants for a job. In all these cases the necessary skill and knowledge are tested and the reward is granted or not, according to the results of the test.

So if God tests us, it must be a testing of our faith or our goodness out of a need to know whether we are deserving of certain possible rewards. Certainly this would be in keeping with love and justice as long as the tests were fairly administered and appropriately rewarded. But there are a couple of problems here.

Problem #1: This requires you to say that God would need to test our faith in order to know how strong it is. This means saying that God does not know everything, does not know our innermost selves or how we would react to certain events. If God knew this, the test would not be necessary. Of course, for some people it poses no problem to claim that God’s knowledge is limited in this way, but you should be aware that this is the implication here.

Problem #2: The test of suffering is not fairly administered and appropriately rewarded. It is not fairly administered because neither is it given equally to everyone, nor is it given only to those whose faith or goodness is seriously questionable. Remember Job.

And how could it be claimed that "passing" the test of suffering could be appropriately rewarded? We all know it isn’t always rewarded in this life. In fact, in too many cases it destroys a life. So any reward must come in an afterlife. But those of us who believe in an afterlife also believe that it is available at least to all the faithful. How then are the faithful who suffered more rewarded any more than the faithful who suffered less? Is it conceivable that those who suffered most in this short life are consequently better off for eternity? If so, then it is manifestly unfair that only some of us are put to this test.

Conclusion: for us to explain how a loving God could cause us to suffer as a test, we have to assume that God’s knowledge is limited, we have to explain the apparently random selection of people to be tested, and we have to postulate a complicated system of rewards in the life to come in order for the different degrees of severity of the test to be appropriately rewarded. And then we have to explain how it could be fair for some to have a chance at earning these rewards while others do not.

I do not believe that this is possible. It’s too cumbersome and too complicated. It forces us to view God as either a schemer or a random chance program. The concept of God that all this requires does not fit with the loving God of our Christian faith.

2. Suffering Is for Our Own Good

The second possible explanation is that suffering is for our own good. That is, while it may not be deserved as punishment it does bring about an over-all improvement so that we are better off because of what happened.

One clear example of this would be the person on their way to the airport for an overseas vacation who gets caught in a traffic accident and ends up instead in the hospital with a broken leg, only to find out that the plane they would have taken crashes and everyone aboard is killed. Obviously, the pain of a broken leg and a ruined vacation are more than offset by the saving of their life.

Another example might be the illness which strikes a dynamic, hardworking business person who has been pursuing material success to the exclusion of their family and other interests, to the exclusion of what is important in life. If a mild coronary or other physical illness forces them to slow down for awhile, and if this gives them the occasion to take stock in themselves and they realize that they have been forsaking the important things in life for the unimportant, then any physical pain and any damage done to their career would be more than offset by their recovery of a proper sense of values, by their recovery of their self.

Things like this do happen. Sometimes a painful experience turns out to be a lucky break for us. Sometimes a particular occasion of suffering clearly produces a very desirable result. Even more often, suffering provides a valuable lesson to us. It can improve our character, give us humility and patience, help us get to know ourselves, and enable us better to appreciate the suffering of others.

All this is true. Suffering can indeed lead to good. It may even be that some good can come out of most suffering. But that isn’t the question. The question is, does whatever good comes from suffering balance the bad of it to such an extent that we can honestly attribute it to a loving God?

In some cases it does. A saved life clearly outweighs a broken leg. And certainly there are many cases of suffering in which the pain is outweighed by a significant growth in maturity or sensibility, or by giving rise to a person redirecting their life. But we must be careful here. We must avoid saying that since the good from suffering outweighs the bad in some instances of which we are aware, therefore it must be true that the good outweighs the bad on all occasions. This would be an unwarranted generalization, for there are also instances of suffering in which there is either no discernable good at all for the sufferer or else too little to be worth the steep price.

Consider the all too common experience of losing a spouse through death. It may be that in time the widow or widower develops new abilities or a deeper faith or a better character or at least more sensitivity and compassion for others. Something good may well develop that otherwise would not have. But the loss of a spouse is a tearing, shattering experience, and I doubt that the benefits often outweigh the pain.

Or consider incapacitation of one kind or another. A couple of years of this are usually quite sufficient to teach a person all they can learn of patience and character and compassion. What about after that? What good can come from the additional long years of suffering? What possible good can repay a person for having to spend their one life in an invalid’s prison?

Or consider those who die young. What good could possibly come of this to the one whose life is cut short? This could only be for a person’s good if otherwise they either would have suffered unspeakably or would have turned evil and missed out on a heavenly reward. But then why would God allow others to suffer so or to turn to evil? And if God is in control, could this not simply be prevented instead?

In the end, I simply cannot believe that each and every young life that is snuffed out would otherwise have suffered great pain or turned to evil. I cannot believe that each and every event of undeserved suffering is outweighed or even balanced by the good that comes of it for the sufferers. Not by a long shot. My eyes, my mind, and my heart all tell me different. And this is just in response to individual cases of suffering, without even considering famine and plague, war and holocaust.

A common response to this runs something like this: "Of course we can’t see the good here. We don’t know everything. We don’t see with the eyes of God. We don’t know what would’ve happened to these people if they’d stayed healthy or lived longer. But if we can’t possibly know this, God does. With perfect knowledge God sees to it that the way things work out really is for the best, even if we don’t understand how.

This constitutes the third possible explanation of undeserved suffering for those who would believe that God is both loving and in control.

3. It’s For the Best

To say that "it’s for the best" is to claim that even though it may not be best for the individual sufferer(s), the consequences of this suffering are such that the world is better off because of it. This claim must be made of each and every case of undeserved suffering. This is easier than might be expected because the proponents of this line of thinking generally do not feel it necessary to suggest how this suffering could be for the best, only that it is.

As such, this explanation of how a loving, in-control God can be reconciled with suffering is more nearly an affirmation of belief than it is an explanation of anything. It appeals more to our emotional needs than to our logic. We are left to choose between two understandings of the world -- one in which a loving God is responsible for the suffering, which we can therefore be assured is "for the best", and one in which it is simply apparent that all this suffering could not possibly be for the best.

No matter how much I would like to believe that everything is for the best, I find this impossible to do. How could it be possible? How could it possibly be "for the best" for someone to die a slow and agonizing death from cancer? How can this kind of death be better for that person, or for their family, or for the world, than if they had died a less painful one? And even if occasionally some great spiritual benefit results in one of these cases, what about all the others? Is it really possible that there might be something unspeakably horrible in store for every single person who dies this way, or for the world, that only this kind of suffering and death can avert? Is it conceivable that the future of the world depends on the suffering of each and every one of these separate individuals? Is it possible that the universe is so constructed and is in such danger from some great unguessable horror that it is actually better off because of the traffic death in Iowa and the torture victim in South America and the starving child in Ethiopia? When these are multiplied by the millions?

I just can’t believe it.

It is not possible to reconcile belief in a loving God with belief in a God who is in control of events on earth. We must choose one or the other. Since Jesus the Christ ministered on behalf of the God of love and not in service to the God of earthly power, we who would follow Jesus must choose the loving God. We cannot faithfully believe in a God who is a constant string-puller and controller of earthly events, for to do so is to deny that this God is loving.

Can God Be An Occasional Zapper?

But what about God as an occasional zapper? Could not a belief in God as intermittent intervener be in keeping with our faith in a loving God?

I think not. If God intervenes only in some instances and not in others, we must ask why. It would be one thing if it could be shown that God was limited to certain interventions by some important moral principle or by the nature of the events or by God’s own limited abilities. If this were the case we could at least say that God does whatever is possible or advisable.

But if some cures or some reconciliations or some narrow escapes are the result of God’s intervention, then what do we say of similar cases where there is no cure, no reconciliation, no escape, no intervention? If God could intervene in some cases what could be the reason for not intervening in other cases where it is needed? We cannot say that God cannot do this if we are assuming that God has done so at other times. To say that "it’s for the best" is to fall back on the unconvincing arguments considered above. Certainly those who benefit from supposed interventions are no more deserving than many people who are not so fortunate.

God as an occasional intervener is as bad as God in full control of everything, giving us a picture of an arbitrary and capricious actor, at times withholding from the most deserving people help that is desperately needed. This is not reconcilable with our concept of a loving God.

Conclusion

In this chapter we have been forced by our honesty and integrity to confront the problem of suffering. This is not a pleasant task, but a faith which cannot do this is not worthy of the name. And we can repeat that usually life is not as dark as this for people. More importantly, we must clarify the role of our faith here. We are not called upon to explain or justify misfortune. What we are called to do is to bring our love to those in pain, to help those in need, to brighten dark days and dark lives with the light of our caring. This is the crucial role of our faith in response to suffering -- this, and to suffer with people in our caring about them. The duty of faith here is to be honest about the problem and so to be able to minister to those who hurt. And we can bring light and joy and love into people’s lives.

We began this chapter by saying that we need a way of speaking of God that is both sensible and faithful, and we have been forced to conclude that to speak of God as either controlling all events in this world, or as sporadically intervening to cause them, is neither. We recognized common sense exceptions in the areas of human motivation and some aspects of health and illness, which will be addressed later. Otherwise, however, we must conclude at this point that to speak of God as determining worldly events, as constantly or occasionally going "zap" into our normal processes, is consistent neither with our common sense nor with our Christian faith in a loving God.

This, of course, raises some questions about the miracles in the Bible. We will turn next to this and then to consequent questions about Jesus of Nazareth and Christian doctrine before returning again to a consideration of talk about God.

Notes:

1. William of Ockham was a 14th century philosopher/theologian who said, "Essentia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem’ whatever that means, and who argued that theology should be reasonable and logical whereas faith is a matter of faith and ought to show in your way of life. To which I say, "Right on, brother William!"

2. Some would no doubt explain suffering as a test of our faith by "the devil". But if there were a devil who could do this on his or her own, then God would nor be all-controlling and not be responsible for this suffering, which is the conclusion I reach anyway. If the devil needs God’s permission, then God is still responsible. (See Chapter 15 for more on the devil.)