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Winter 2011, Volume 5, Issue 1
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featuring
Quantum Mechanics
and Divine Action
God in the Gulag
How to Take the
Bible Seriously
A Proof for the
Existence of God
A Letter from the Editor
B
y the numbers, Dartmouth students are some of the brightest and most talented
people of our generation. We excel in academics: on tests, papers, quizzes, and projects. And yet, despite all our manifest intelligence, I think we rarely take the time
to reflect deeply and honestly on our worldviews. Each of us looks at the world in a certain
way, and this lens informs how we interact with and understand the world. As the Christian
novelist Flannery O’Connor wrote, “Your beliefs [are] the light by which you see.”
The Dartmouth Apologia invites all Dartmouth students to engage in the process of
reflecting on our worldviews. We at the Apologia subscribe to a particular worldview that
springs from and is nourished by Christian beliefs and practices. We aim to put that worldview before the Dartmouth campus, and we hope that those students who encounter it will
be moved to examine their own beliefs more rigorously and systematically.
The intellectual Christian tradition, consisting of the writings and thoughts of numerous men and women who understood and loved their worldview, is both broad and deep.
Through this journal, we hope to convey some of the richness of this tradition, not proselytizing, but contributing to the ongoing process of critical intellectual discussion that
has characterized the Academy since its founding. We believe that all Dartmouth students,
regardless of religious beliefs, can benefit from exposure to the Christian tradition, which is
passionate, rigorous, and critical.
In this journal you will find articles on subjects as varied as ancient philosophy, the
Russian gulag, and quantum mechanics. This diversity reflects in miniature the diversity
of the Christian worldview, and it demonstrates the relevance of the Christian worldview
to all of life and thought. In this issue’s guest piece, Dr. Johnson argues for the importance
of taking the Bible seriously. He writes, “The highest standards of critical thinking and
the deepest loyalty to the voice of Scripture are not thought to be incompatible but rather
mutually dependent.” These words capture the spirit of the Christian intellectual tradition,
which is characterized both by fidelity to the teachings and practices of the Christian faith
and by a commitment to critical reflection and rational exploration.
This harmony between fidelity and reasonable examination so well exemplified in the
Christian intellectual tradition is a model not only for contemporary Christians but to all
people who wish to fully understand their own beliefs. It is our sincere hope that, by reading this journal, you may be inspired to undertake a serious and rigorous exploration of
your own worldview.
Peter Blair
Winter 2011, Volume 5, Issue 1
Editor-in-Chief
Peter Blair ‘12
Managing Editor
Sarah White ‘11
Editorial Board
Charles Clark ‘11
Emily DeBaun ‘12
Lee Farnsworth ‘12
Business Manager
Brady Kelly ‘12
Production
Elli Kim ‘13
Minae Seog ‘14
Jessica Yu ‘14
Edward Talmage ‘12
Photography
Kelsey Carter ‘12
Contributors
Alexandra Heywood ‘11
Grace Nauman ‘11
Anna Lynn Doster ‘12
Brendan Woods ‘13
Luke Timothy Johnson
Peter Kreeft
Faculty Advisory Board
Gregg Fairbrothers, Tuck
Richard Denton, Physics
Eric Hansen, Thayer
Eric Johnson, Tuck
James Murphy, Government
Leo Zacharski, DMS
Special thanks to
Council on Student Organizations
The Eleazar Wheelock Society
Robert Cousins ‘09
Editor-in-Chief
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EUTHYPHRO’S DILEMMA AND 2
THE GOODNESS OF GOD
Brendan Woods ‘13
INTERVIEW 7
Peter Kreeft, Ph.D.,
Boston College and King’s College
TAKING THE BIBLE SERIOUSLY 10
Luke Timothy Johnson, Ph.D.,
Emory University
SCIENCE AND ORTHODOXY: 15
The Faith of Galileo
and Kepler
Grace Nauman ‘11
QUANTUM MECHANICS 19
AND DIVINE ACTION
Emily DeBaun ‘12
A PROOF FOR THE 24
EXISTENCE OF GOD
Peter Blair ‘12
GOD IN THE GULAG: 30
Christianity’s Survival
in Soviet Russia
Alexandra Heywood ‘11
FREE WILL, PREDESTINATION, 36
AND THE VALUE OF
CHRISTIAN DEBATE
Anna Lynn Doster ‘12
T
he Dartmouth Apologia exists to
articulate Christian perspectives
in the academic community.
EUTHYPHRO’S
DILEMMA
&the Goodness of God
by Brendan Woods
O
ne of the most persistent issues in the
philosophy of religion has been the origin
of our concept of “moral good.” While most
theists would agree that God has some influence on
our standard of good, there is disagreement as to the
nature of his involvement. The conflict generally goes
like this: in setting moral standards, is God reinforcing
the objective facts of what is right, facts determinable
through the processes of logic and experience, or is he
setting down standards that need not have any logical
or intuitive basis for us?
This apparent conflict, known as Euthyphro’s dilemma, has occupied philosophers and theologians since
Plato first described it in his Dialogues. Both positions
come with their own difficulties: If one takes the stance
known as the “first horn”—that God determines what
is good because he knows that it really is good—he
must acknowledge that there is a force beyond God.
This position seems to limit God and implies that his
will is constrained by some external logical or moral
law, thereby rendering false the classical Christian conception of an all-powerful God. Taking the second
horn, that God determines our notions of right and
good and morality, would be problematic as well. To
borrow a phrase from seventeenth-century philosopher Ralph Cudworth, implying that God arbitrarily
lays down what is right and good carries with it a set
of “unpalatable implications.”1 For one, it would seem
to mean that if God commanded us to murder or blaspheme, we would be bound to do so. Furthermore, for
Bust of Plato
2 • The Dartmouth Apologia • Winter 2011
]
School of Athens by
Raphael, circa 1510-12
God to command such seemingly horrific acts would
not be inconsistent with God’s essential nature; since
his will is arbitrary anyway, it makes no difference
whether God’s actions match up with our intuitions
or his previous commands. Additionally, the second
horn would take away the moral obligation of following God’s will; if morality is not really objective, then
God’s will would be no better than other moral systems. He would then simply be one among others who
could, by virtue of his power, enforce his own subjective will.
At first this may appear to be a fruitless philosophic
exercise. It attempts to make sense out of the definitions we have given to truly indefinable concepts. The
dilemma also ignores the Christian idea that goodness
is an essential aspect of God’s nature and that everything he commands is therefore in keeping with this
essential nature. And of course, this sort of logic is specious at best. It assumes that there are two distinct conditions (being morally good and being willed by God)
and that one condition must necessarily be a result of
the other. In doing so, this style of reasoning ignores a
host of other alternatives, including that the two conditions are really the same thing, that they are both two
equal parts of a larger whole, and that the conflict is really just due to limitations in the precision of language.
To see this weakness in the Euthyphro argument, we
must only apply the reasoning to other situations. For
instance, it may be true that I enjoy a certain movie.
One could ask the question, “Do you enjoy the movie
because it is enjoyable to you, or is it enjoyable to you
because you enjoy it?” Clearly, this is a ridiculous question. If we apply the dilemma’s style of reasoning to
situations like these, we find that it does not disprove
the existence of God any more than it disproves the
fact that I like a certain film.
Given the ancient origin of Euthyphro’s dilemma,
many Christian and non-Christian thinkers have offered solutions. There have been three main positions
taken by theologians. The first possible solution to the
dilemma is to take the first horn, a stance that has been
supported by Aquinas,2 the Cambridge Platonists like
Ralph Cudworth, and several modern philosophers
like Richard Swinburne. There are several nuances that
can characterize the first horn approach and address
the difficulties inherent in it. For example, the Muslim
philosopher Averroes offered an insightful analogy
that shows how objective morality still needs God. For
Averroes, God can be compared to a doctor whose aim
is “to preserve the health and cure the diseases of all
the people, by prescribing for them rules which can
be commonly accepted… He is unable to make them
all doctors, because a doctor is one who knows by demonstrative methods the things which preserve health
and cure disease.”3
Averroes’s analogy refutes the major atheist claim
that the first horn does not require God for objective
morality. While it may be true that a moral logic exists
and can be theoretically determined by the process of
reason, there is no basis for believing that we would
[
Winter 2011 • The Dartmouth Apologia •
3
be capable of finding it or even bound to it if we did.
We would be forced to arrive at moral truths through
empirical reasoning, a process that many philosophers
believe to be misleading. G.E. Moore’s concept of the
“naturalistic fallacy” highlights the unreliability of this
line of reasoning. To summarize, the naturalistic fallacy points out that it is impossible to draw normative
“ought” statements from empirical “is” statements; just beWithout the
cause the world is a certain way
does not mean that it should believe that
be.4 Without the idea of a any bearing
God, we would have no reason
to believe that our logical conclusions about morality
have any bearing on the truth of their moral content.
After all, humans throughout history have differed on
the content of true morality, and history provides us
with no shortage of instances that demonstrate the fallibility of human reason. Because logic on its own cannot be guaranteed to provide us with a reliable—if still
objective—morality, God is necessary to act like the
doctor and provide us with the reasons to accept the
logical conclusions of morality. So, in answer to the
atheist’s claim that the first horn denies the necessity
of God for an objective morality, the theist can reply
that God is still necessary for the proper functioning of
objective morality. Kant offers a moral argument that
has been slightly altered to accommodate this change:5
1. It is rationally and morally necessary to attain
the perfect good (i.e., for Kant, happiness arising out of complete virtue).
2. What we are obliged to attain, it must be possible for us to attain.
3. Attaining the perfect good is only possible if
natural order and causality are part of an overarching moral order and causality.
4. Moral order and causality are only possible if
we postulate a God as their source.
Theists have been able to make a reasonable case for
the second horn as well. Figures like Martin Luther
and John Calvin have focused on the logical impossibility of having a standard higher than God. As Calvin
pointed out, “If his will has any cause, there must be
something antecedent to it, and to which it is annexed;
this it were impious to imagine.”6 Luther agreed, identifying God as the “rule” that the first horn advocates
appeal to: “He is God, and for his will there is no cause
or reason that can be laid down as a rule or measure for
it, since there is nothing equal or superior to it, but it
is itself the rule of all things.”7
As mentioned above, the major objection to the
second horn—and the reason some philosophers see
4 • The Dartmouth Apologia • Winter 2011
]
Euthyphro’s dilemma as a refutation of the moral argument—is that it makes morality entirely arbitrary and
contingent on the whims of God. For many, it encourages an image of a flippant and ungrounded God, a
deity who decides what is right without regard to an
independent standard of goodness. Under the second
horn, we cannot call God good, the objection goes,
idea of a God, we would have no reason to
our logical conclusions about morality have
on the truth of their moral content.
because whatever he does we would be forced to call
good by definition. If God suddenly commanded us to
worship a different deity, or if he had given in to Satan
in the desert, we would have to accept it as morally
correct. Indeed, some see this horn as implying that
if we were in Jesus’ shoes in the desert, we would not
have any reason to stay true to God at all, for his commands would carry just as much weight as Satan’s.8 It
is important to note that these objections refer to our
intuitive and emotional conceptions of God. They do
not necessarily disprove the possibility that God could
be behind our morals, just that he is arbitrary in doing
so. It could very well be that God really is arbitrary in
his standards.
However, I would make the case that taking the second horn does not necessarily imply that God is a fick-
Illustration of Averroes from an illuminated manuscript
le moralist. For one, the second horn would not make
morality any more arbitrary under God than it would
be under the first horn. If God is not behind morality,
then logic or culture or some other motivation must
create it. A morality based on culture, logic, or another potential first horn cause would be just as random
as one based off of God’s will; when we consider that
man’s flawed skills of interpretation will determine
moral conclusions, we can see that a morality coming
from a “first horn” source cannot be considered any
less arbitrary than the second horn’s explanation of a
morality determined by God.
However, it is not clear that the God of the second horn truly fits what we think of as arbitrary. To
call God an arbitrary moralist would indicate that he
picks moral rules on a whim and sets moral standards
without any regard to the concerns of his people. This
is not the case. Biblical morality is largely in keeping
with our logical, cultural, and intuitive moral conclusions. The moral values advocated by Jesus Christ are
largely in line with both major historical moral tenets
like generosity, honesty, and piety and with the conclusions of utilitarianism and other attempts at a purely
logical morality. Additionally, to borrow the language
of utilitarians, a case could be made that Christian
morality provides for human flourishing more completely than do other moral systems. There is no doubt
that the world would be a much better place if everyone followed the Ten Commandments: murder and
theft would end, more families would remain intact,
and people would enjoy the increase in longevity and
happiness that comes with regular church attendance.9
We can hardly call a second horn morality arbitrary
given our standard usage of the word. If we assume the
second horn, then we can also acknowledge that the
If we define “good” differently
than Plato does, then Euthyphro’s
dilemma must be seen as false.
Christian God has created a consistent and accessible
morality that corresponds to our intuitions and logic
and which provides for our common benefit.
The two classical horns are therefore not as much of
a problem for Christian ethics as some atheists claim.
Nevertheless, there is a third possibility that would
make the choice between these horns unnecessary. The
rise of analytic philosophy, with its emphasis on rigorous and formal reasoning, has shed doubt on the logic
behind Euthyphro’s dilemma. Many philosophers now
see it as a false dilemma dependent on Plato’s own
particular definition of good and either recognize that
there are other possibilities beyond the two horns or
see a problem with the logical foundations underlying
the issue.
Engraving of St. Thomas Aquinas by Philips Galle 1578
To see the fallacy behind Euthyphro’s dilemma, we
must consider what it is we mean when we call something “good.” In the Euthyphro dialogue, Plato assumes good to be an abstract and independent state,
a quality that is either inherent in something or else
not at all present. For the dilemma to work as Plato
describes it, the concept “good” must be defined to
(1) exist outside of the concept “God,” and (2) exist
at a rank either above or below him. This is where the
“dilemma” seems to arise: if “good” exists at a higher
level than God, it limits his power (i.e., the first horn),
whereas if it exists beneath God it would be an arbitrary product of his will and would also be inapplicable to God himself (i.e., the second horn). This twopronged definition of good is the only one that can
produce a dilemma like Euthyphro’s.
If we define “good” differently than Plato does, then
Euthyphro’s dilemma must be seen as false. And indeed, the common conception of good is not the abstract and independent state that Plato imagined it to
be. Instead, we use the word good—or holy or pious,
words that are used in place of good in some translations of Euthyphro—in a relational way. We do a good
job of something when we do it as it was intended to be
done; someone does good by us when they act out of
respect and love for us; a person is a good person when
they act like a person is meant to act.10 For Christians,
[
Winter 2011 • The Dartmouth Apologia •
5
good (or holy or pious) describes one very important
relationship: that between a person and God. When
we act out of concern and respect and love for God, we
become good. Likewise, we call God good because he
does the same for us. It is because God always acts out
of love that we look to him as the standard of good.11
Christian ethics recognizes this difference between
good as a state and good as a description. Christians
are not deontologists and so do not pursue a set of
“good actions” that defines their moral system.
Instead, the basis for Christian morality is love of God
and neighbor. As a Dominican priest stated in a lecture he gave at Dartmouth College, the saints do not
follow the Commandments; the saints love God.12
It is from this love that they do the things they do
and—either consciously or unconsciously—follow the
Commandments. We apply the word “good” to the
saints because they were experts at their relationship
with God. They had a relationship with God that was
more in harmony with how we were intended to live
before the fall.
This is a very different conception of good from
what Plato assumed, and it is one that does not fit with
Euthyphro’s dilemma. The Christian conception of
good sees it as both an objective and a normative idea:
it describes something objective because it tells us that
the “good” person is living in harmony with how God
intended for him or her to live—i.e., by “loving God
with all one’s heart, and loving one’s neighbor as one
loves oneself ”—and it is normative because this is the
way we ought to live.
I would posit that if we conceive of good as having
an objective element—as describing how someone is—
in addition to its normative element, then Euthyphro’s
dilemma becomes irrelevant. Euthyphro’s dilemma
depends on there being exactly two alternatives: that
either God’s actions flow from the concept of good or
that good comes from God. The Christian response
to Euthyphro’s dilemma should start by rejecting the
second horn statement that good comes from God’s
will. However, this approach is not as limiting for God
as the first horn view is because it does not see good as
a concept outside of God. Instead, good is a descriptor
attached both to him and to us, not something apart
from God that must necessarily exist at a rank above
or below him. Good is simply a word that we apply
to describe the proper functioning of our relationship
with God and is thus not applicable in the way Plato
uses it in the Euthyphro dialogue.
When we approach Euthyphro’s dilemma with a
different conception of good—such as the definition
used by Christians—the dilemma falls apart. As we
struggle to achieve the love and respect for God and
neighbor that is in keeping with our intended nature
6 • The Dartmouth Apologia • Winter 2011
]
and which, if successful, will result in us being called
“good” people, God executes his relationship with us
perfectly. Euthyphro’s dilemma is no longer a dilemma, but rather a tautology. When we ask why it is that
we call God good, we must answer simply, because
God is good.
Ralph Cudworth, A Treatise Convening True
and Immutable Morality (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1996) 19-22.
2
“For the Divine law commands certain things
because they are good, and forbids others, because
they are evil, while others are good because they
are prescribed, and others evil because they are
forbidden.” Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae,
2a2ae 57.2.
3
Averroes, On the Harmony of Religion and
Philosophy, trans. George Hourani (London: Messrs.
Luzac & Co., 1976) ch. 3 line 174.
4
G.E. Moore, Principia Ethica (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1993) § 11.
5
Peter Byrne, “Moral Arguments for the Existence
of God” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
<http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-argumentsgod/>.
6
John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion,
trans. Henry Beveridge (Boston: Hendrickson
Publishers, 2008) 626.
7
Martin Luther, “On the Bondage of Will,”
Luther and Erasmus: Free Will and Salvation, ed. E.
Gordon Rupp and Philip S. Watson (Louisville: The
Westminster Press, 1969) 236.
8
William Wainwright, Religion and Morality
(Aldershot, England: Ashgate Publishing House,
2005) 76.
9
Donald E. Hall, “Religious Attendance: More
Cost-Effective Than Lipitor?” Journal of the
American Board of Family Medicine (2006) 19: 103109. SK Lutgendorf, et. al., “Religious participation,
interleukin-6, and mortality in older adults,” Health
Psychology (Sep. 23 2004): 465-475.
10
Some may say this assumes an Aristotelian
approach to metaphysical issues. However, I believe
that this is an appropriate assumption to make in a
discussion of Christian approaches to philosophy.
11
See Mark 10:18-21.
12
Father John Corbett, “Can You Be Happy and
Holy?” lecture at Dartmouth College, 31 January
2010.
1
Brendan Woods ‘13 is from
Glastonbury, Connecticut.
He is an Economics and
Philosophy double major.
An interview with
DR. PETER KREEFT
Conducted by Peter Blair
Dr. Peter Kreeft is a Professor of Philosophy at Boston College and
King’s College. He is famous for his work on “Twenty Arguments
for the Existence of God” and is the author of numerous books on
philosophy, theology, and spirituality, including Socrates Meets Jesus
and Between Heaven and Hell. Dr. Kreeft is noted for his work as a
Christian apologist and is a highly sought-after speaker, as well as a
member of the Advisory Board of the Catholic Education Resource
Center. He received his BA from Calvin College and his MA and PhD
in Philosophy from Fordham University.
You have stated [in Handbook to Christian Apologetics] that God’s existence can be proved. What
do you think is the best argument for his existence
and why?
The saints. That’s not a proof; it’s a direct perception. But we’re talking about arguments. There are
two kinds of arguments; one kind works better for
one certain type of person, the other works better for
another type of person. There are the exterior and the
interior arguments. There are the cosmological arguments, including the argument from first cause and the
argument from design, and there are the psychological
arguments, like the moral argument and the argument
from desire. I think they both work, but you have to
have a firm grasp of the premises before you can start
to the conclusion. And the way arguments are usually
attacked is by attacking the premises. So whichever of
those two sets of premises is stronger will be for you
the stronger argument for God.
For you personally what do you find, besides the
saints, to be the most compelling?
The argument from desire. We all have Augustinian
restless hearts. And if there is no God, life is meaningless, because there is no object of our deepest desire,
because nothing in this world quite satisfies it. So it
doesn’t quite prove the existence of God with absolute
certainty, but what it does do is that it brings you to
the point where it’s either God or nothingness. And
there’s no practical reason for opting for nothingness… I think a thousand years from now, if people
still remember C.S. Lewis it will be for that argument.
Because he is, I think, the very best writer in Christian
history, maybe next to Augustine, on the argument
from desire.
Even if you can establish the existence of a creator, how does one get to Christianity from there?
One looks at history. One asks, “If there is a creator,
has he acted in history?” He could. He acted to create
the world; he could act to reveal himself in the world.
And if he’s a person with a consciousness, it’s reasonable to at least hope that he wants to get in touch with
us as persons with consciousness. So you look at the
historical record, and you find that there are many
claims that God or the gods have intervened in history
and tried to communicate themselves to us. And of all
these historical religions, Christianity is the one with
the most arresting claim, the most interesting claim:
That God himself came down personally and uniquely
in Christ and demonstrated his love and saved us. So
if you’re a total agnostic and you’re just shopping for
a religion, I think you’d start with Christianity simply because it’s the most interesting one and either the
most outrageous claim or the most compelling claim.
And then once you look at the historical evidence,
once you look at the question of who Jesus is, things
like the Lord/Liar/Lunatic argument, the evidence
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Winter 2011 • The Dartmouth Apologia •
7
moves you very close to it… All non-Christians, except
maybe Nietzsche, think that Jesus is a wise and good
man, but not God. And as Lewis famously argued,
that’s the only thing he couldn’t possibly be. Because a
man who claims to be God and wants you to trust your
eternal soul to him and isn’t God is not a wise or good
man. He’s either a liar or a lunatic.
Chesterton had a variant of this argument, too, in
Orthodoxy, where he talked about how he never
read Christian thinkers; he only read atheist thinkers, and it was reading the atheist thinkers that got
him believing Christianity, because he found that
they all attacked the Christian church for different
things, so it either is a complex of all the diseases
possible in the world or it is true.
I’ve always been struck, too, by Genesis. It’s
always what people say contradicts evolution, but
even in Genesis there’s the idea of the progression
of creatures ending in man, which is exactly what
we find in evolution.
It’s exactly the same progression as evolution. And
furthermore, Genesis suggests evolution even of the
human body when it says that God formed Adam out
of the dust of the ground rather than just created him,
and then he breathed into his nostrils the breath of life,
the soul which came directly from God. So we have a
double origin.
Yes. The man who some thought was too fat and
some too thin, some too tall and some too short, most
likely it was they who were the wrong size.
I think that’s the point John Paul II made. He said
even if you can’t pinpoint the exact point at which
man’s physical shape became distinct from other
elements of creation, assuming evolution, there’s
still ensoulment, which would be considered
creation.
What do you think about the alleged conflict
between science and religion? Does evolutionary science rule out God and make a materialist
perspective obligatory?
Yes, it’s like boiling water. At one point there’s no
gas and at 212 degrees Fahrenheit there is a gas. So the
stuff that was ape became man at some definite point,
consciousness reflected back on itself and said “I,” and
at that point you have a human soul.
This is a total red herring. There is no such conflict; there can’t in principle be, since God wrote two
books, nature and Scripture, and he doesn’t contradict
himself. The historical record of the relationship between religious claims and scientific claims is enormously impressive. There has never been in the history
of the world a single real contradiction between any
of the doctrines of Christianity and any discovery of
science. So it’s a trumped up charge; it’s based on a lot
of misunderstandings and stubbornness. For instance,
the bishop vs. Galileo—they were both stubborn, but
there was no real conflict. And today’s creation vs.
Another common scientific challenge to Christianity is this idea of brain science ruling out the idea
of a mind independent of the brain, or any sort of
soul.
Which is exactly like the claim that counting the
letters in the Summa Theologica and mapping their
geographic position and their permutations and combinations in relation to each other proves that there is
no author, it just happened. No matter how much you
explore the material cause of a thing, that doesn’t still
give you the formal cause. Bergson, the nineteenth-
There has never been in the history of the world a single
real contradiction between any of the doctrines of
Christianity and any discovery of science.
evolution conflict is similar, there’s no contradiction:
Whether evolution is true or not, it doesn’t contradict
creation. God, after banging out the Big Bang, could
very well have done what Augustine said, planted seeds
in the world, potentialities, which gradually emerge by
natural selection. In fact, evolution is very useful for
theology. It’s evidence for design. If you see a species
emerging gradually into more complexity and more
consciousness so that they become more and more human, it looks as if there is a plot to produce us.
8 • The Dartmouth Apologia • Winter 2011
]
century French philosopher, has a parable of a race of
mathematical bees who claim to be able to explain everything mathematically. And a painter shows them a
great painting and says to the bees, “Explain this.” They
buzzed around the painting for a while and reduced it
to a mathematical formula, which took something like
three hundred pages. And the painter laughed, and the
bees said, “Did we forget something?” and the painter
said, “You forgot everything.”
William Buckley wrote an essay for “This I Believe”
on NPR and he said, “I find it easier to believe in
God than to believe that Hamlet was deduced
from the structure of a mutton chop.”
Or that the Summa Theologica happened because of
an explosion in a print factory.
The most compelling argument against theism seems to be the problem of evil. What is the
proper Christian response to this, as you see it?
Well, the problem of evil is first of all a real, lived,
practical problem, and therefore the response has to be
a real, lived, practical response, namely to work with
God against evil in this world as his soldiers. We’re first
of all in a war, and only secondarily do we strategize
and map the war and think about it. But as an argument against Christianity, the problem of evil works
only on a theoretical level, not on the practical level.
That is, we are in fact in a war between good and evil
whether there’s a God or not, and we have to choose
sides. But evil counts intellectually against God because you would think that if there’s a God who has
all power and all goodness, he would wipe out all evil.
And I think that conclusion does logically follow from
the premises, but it doesn’t tell you how he does it. He
could do it very patiently, with great respect for human
freedom and with a mysterious plan which triumphs
only in the end rather than by instant “MacDonald’s”
[Editor’s Note: “fast food,” or instant gratification] solutions, which is what Christianity says he does. So I
respect very much the argument from evil. There are
two kinds of atheists: the unhappy atheists, like Camus
or Sartre, who worry most about the problem of evil,
and then there are the happy atheists, like Hitchens
and Dennett and the rest, who don’t worry that much
about the problem of evil but say there’s a conflict between Christianity and science. That’s nonsense, but
the problem of evil is a serious problem.
I have always been struck by the approach that
John Paul II took in On the Christian Meaning of
Human Suffering: basically suffering is going to be
true in your life no matter what you believe; as an
atheist or a Christian you are going to have to suffer. So the question is, for me at least, Christianity
gives you a chance of making that suffering meaningful in some way, whereas if you don’t have that
worldview suffering is all there is to life.
And God could, but doesn’t, give us all the answers
as to the why. Job, the all-time classic about suffering,
ends not with God explaining himself to Job, but simply inviting Job to trust him, which is what lovers do.
Lovers don’t propose in syllogisms, they invite trust.
You have talked about morality being the basis of
society. How do you understand this moral basis
and how do you see it playing out today?
It’s what the Catholic tradition calls natural law. It’s
not based on any one religion. It’s found in all religions; it’s found outside religion; it’s what Paul talks
about in Romans 1 and 2, that God has left a witness
of himself in the human conscience and we all have the
power of conscience. The fact that all human beings
throughout time, place, and culture basically agree
about what things are good and what things are evil
shows that moral principles are much less controversial
than moral conclusions or applications. This is a very
impressive piece of witness. We don’t have that in theology. We don’t have a common argument about who
God is, whether he is good, whether he is one or many.
We have serious theological disagreements. But despite
those serious theological disagreements, we don’t have
serious moral disagreements. Whether you are an atheist or a Buddhist or a Catholic or a Protestant, you
know the Ten Commandments.
And this universal argument, the natural law, is
what society has traditionally been predicated
upon.
Yes, and we are now living in Western civilization,
in the first society in the history of the world which
has officially repudiated natural law, at least among its
intellectuals. So that is an unmitigated disaster.
How do you see the consequences of that?
Death. Society cannot live without that. No society
lives forever, the United States of America or Western
civilization will not live forever any more than any other society did. So I see only three possibilities. Either
we repent of our denial of natural law morality and
we’ll be revived, or we’ll persist in denying it and die,
or we’ll refute one of the best-know laws of history that
no society without the natural law can survive.
I think Matthew Arnold had this theory of culture,
and he talked about the anarchists and the loyalists. The loyalists are those who stick to these
universal principles and the anarchists are those
engaged in trying to subvert those norms and create a society based on anarchy, which is untenable.
The thing that’s new—there’s always been anarchists—is that anarchy has become a philosophy.
We’ve always been bad at obeying our principles, but
to glorify disobedience of our principles by means of
philosophy, that’s the new radicalism.
[
Winter 2011 • The Dartmouth Apologia •
9
Taking the Bible
Seriously
by Luke Timothy Johnson
A
mong religion’s educated (and semi-educated) despisers, the charge that someone “takes
the Bible seriously” serves these days to remove
the person from serious intellectual consideration. The
pious reading of the Bible is considered to be pretty
much on a par with studying tea leaves, analyzing astrological tables, or even reciting the Qur’an: a form
of intellectual stagnation and/or emotional regression.
Surely only stupidity or superstitious fear could allow
people to take seriously the shabby pretensions of these
ancient writings that have been shown, over and over
again, to be historically inaccurate, cosmologically ignorant, and morally deficient.
How, they ask, could people in the early twentyfirst century who routinely floss their teeth, use the
Internet, and take vitamins look for personal and societal norms in stories, laws, and poetry composed for
people who lived in tents, thought moss was leprosy,
and spared no rod lest they spoil a child—compositions, by the way, that prescribed for these advanced
readers that they kill witches, adulterers, and children
who curse their parents? For the educated elite, “taking
the Bible seriously” means not being taken seriously.
From the opposite side, and in neat symmetry, fundamentalist Christians use the charge of “not taking
the Bible seriously” as a way of dismissing the claim
of others to be Christian while not agreeing with the
fundamentalists’ particular construal of the religion.
Serious Christianity, such believers claim, is biblical
Christianity. The Bible is not only the inspired Word
of God—in every jot and tittle—but normative for
10 • The Dartmouth Apologia • Winter 2011 ]
every aspect of life. It is, furthermore, a perspicuous
norm: what it demands of humans is plainly stated and
requires no interpretation, only the obedient will to do
it.
People who want to pass as Christians—who
consider themselves liberal Christians and appeal to
other norms such as experience and intellect—are poseurs who do not “take the Bible seriously” as guides
for their life. They are actually more dangerous than
Christianity’s public detractors, for they sap the faith
from within. There is some clear inconsistency on both
sides. The cultured despisers reject taking the Bible seriously as a norm for life, but they take it very seriously
indeed as a threat to their own vision of a religionfree, or at least Christianity-free, universe. The Biblethumping Christians, in turn, claim to take the Bible
with utter seriousness as a guide to life, but in practice
rely much less on the careful reading of the Bible than
on general appeals to its authority, and their lives starkly fail to reflect some central biblical norms.
More remarkably, though, biblical defenders and
detractors have more in common than they might
think. They share, for example, a narrow referential
understanding of truth: if an ancient narrative does
not correspond to the historical facts, it is false and unworthy of consideration; if an ancient mandate is not
carried out in practice, it loses all value. The biblicist,
to be sure, insists that such non-verification does not
apply, and that therefore the Bible is “true,” whereas
the critic delights in pointing out the many ways in
Engraving of Origen
working near an
open Bible by Johan
Sadeler Fecit
which the Bible errs in its description of the world and
human events, concluding that it is therefore “untrue.”
Both parties are also selective in what they choose to
read: the defenders of the Bible focus only on its positive aspects and suppress all the embarrassments presented by the ancient writings, while the critics fixate
on the toxic elements in the text, ignoring all the ways
the Bible has been life-enhancing. Neither side assesses
the whole range of biblical evidence when considering
what it might have to say about any subject. Neither
side weighs the implications of the disparity between
contemporary concern and ancient witness: Biblicists
obsess over the relatively small amount of attention the
Bible gives to sex but conveniently ignore (or distort)
What is lacking in the conversation is
a sense of “taking the Bible seriously”
that has any real intellectual rigor.
the abundant testimony it provides with regard to the
use of material possessions; intellectual critics, oddly,
share the same obsessive attention to the issues of sexuality. Neither side ponders the even more interesting
fact that the Bible does not directly address many of
the questions that readers would like to put to it.
Corresponding to the narrow understanding of
truth, finally, both sides share a manner of reading that
might be termed primitively and resolutely literalistic:
the text is read in its English translation as a set of
propositions or declarations; little or no attention is
given to the original context or to the function of statements within that context. By original context, I mean
not only the historical and social circumstances addressed by the compositions but, at an even more basic
level, the linguistic constraints of the ancient languages
of composition, the literary context of statements in
their narrative or discursive settings, and the conventions of ancient rhetoric and poetics. As a result, metaphors are literalized (and killed), argument is ignored,
and the subtleties of ancient narrative techniques are
missed entirely.
In short, neither those today who are dismissive
of the Bible as intellectually serious while fearful of
it as religiously toxic, nor those today who embrace
the Bible as religiously true and morally uplifting, are
actually serious readers of the Bible. They resemble
lovers and despisers of Shakespeare who quote lines at
random, completely removed from Elizabethan culture and literary conventions, to show how the Bard
is either good or bad as an influence on culture today.
What is lacking in the conversation is a sense of “taking the Bible seriously” that has any real intellectual
rigor.
Because the extreme positions are so sharply and
shrilly stated, they draw attention to themselves and
(much to the delight of the ideologues advancing
them) manage to appear as the only available options.
But they are not. In fact, there has been a long tradition of intellectually rigorous reading of the Bible
within Christianity, a tradition that long predates
the phenomenon of fundamentalism (which is actually a reaction to modernism defined by the terms of
[
Winter 2011 • The Dartmouth Apologia •
11
modernism). It extends from Origen of Alexandria in
the third century to Rudolf Bultmann in the twentieth century and embraces such figures as Augustine,
Theodore of Mospuestia, John Chrysostom, Thomas
Aquinas, Erasmus, Luther, and Calvin. It continues today especially in schools of theology, where the highest
standards of critical thinking and the deepest loyalty to
the voice of Scripture are not thought to be incompatible but rather mutually dependent.
This ancient and continuing tradition is distin-
of readers. In contrast to both the extremes, this tradition of reading is above all a tradition of serious and
sustained reading, and it is precisely in the seriousness
of that endeavor that it “takes the Bible seriously.”
The first great figure in this tradition exemplifies
its characteristics. Origen of Alexandria (184-254) was
raised as a Christian during a time of persecution (his
father was a martyr and he himself died as a result of
torture) in the most intellectually alive and culturally
diverse city of antiquity. Alexandria, with its great li-
In contrast to both the extremes, this tradition of reading
is above all a tradition of serious and sustained reading,
and it is precisely in the seriousness of that endeavor that
it “takes the Bible seriously.”
guished from Christianity’s cultured despisers by its
positive embrace of Scripture as authoritative, but it
shares with the intellectual critics the conviction that
the Bible requires as rigorous an intellectual examination as any other cultural claimant. It is distinguished
from fundamentalism by its willingness to read all the
Bible’s texts with intellectual honesty and appreciation
for context, but it shares with Biblicists the conviction
that, especially when read so rigorously, the Bible continues to enhance more than hurt the minds and hearts
Medieval illustration of Origen from a book of homilies, circa 1160
12 • The Dartmouth Apologia • Winter 2011 ]
brary and museum, was the home of philosophers,
scientists, mathematicians, and artists. The several
schools of ancient philosophy competed for attention
and allegiance. In addition to the still-thriving forms
of Greco-Roman religion, Alexandria was home to a
large Jewish community, which produced the Greek
translation of the Hebrew Bible in 250 B.C. and an extensive apologetic literature based on that translation,
as well as several competing versions of Christianity,
including the Valentinian Gnostics.
Origen grew up with the best available education in
philosophy and rhetoric, and his writings show wide
reading and first-hand knowledge of the writings of
philosophers such as Plato. Origen’s fierce devotion
to his Christian faith was joined to a first-rate mind
that was also remarkably fearless and open to the truth,
however it might make itself known. He once declared
that it mattered little whether a truth was spoken by
Jesus or the apostles or Moses or one of the philosophers; if it were true, it was true, no matter its source.
As a teacher in the Catechetical School at
Alexandria, Origen found himself in the middle of
competing currents that are not entirely dissimilar to
those swirling around present-day Christianity. Within
the Alexandrian church, there was a sharp division between the intellectual sophistication of the Gnostics,
who despised simple believers and sought higher
truths for the enlightened, and those simple believers who clung to a literalism that led them to believe
things of God, Origen saw, that they would not have
attributed even to a wicked human being. Outside the
Christian community, Origen felt the still-vibrant tug
of Judaism and Greco-Roman religion, the appeal from
each still strong and more convincing than the claims
of the upstart and already divided Christian movement. Most challenging was the attack on Christianity
by a leading intellectual, the philosopher Celsus, who
shortly before Origen’s birth wrote a sustained polemic
Alexander the
Great founding
Alexandria,
Egypt in 332
B.C.
called The True Word against a sect that he saw as intellectually inferior, superstitious, and attractive mainly
to the dregs of society who didn’t know better. Sound
familiar?
The greatest portion of Origen’s astonishing literary
output has been lost. However, what remains, above all
his apology, Against Celsus, and his First Principles (the
pioneering effort at Christian theology that contains
his explicit hermeneutical reflections), and a number
The urgency of reading is
connected to the desire to
attend to what God speaks.
of smaller treatises and sermons, are enough to show
how fruitful was his distinctive combination of heart
and mind. A steadfast commitment to the faith of the
church (including the conviction that Scripture was
divinely inspired) and an equally strong commitment
to the most stringent sort of critical thought turned
precisely on that faith and that Scripture. With regard
to the faith, for example, Origen affirmed the shape
of the creed that came from the apostles. But he saw
that the creed left much undefined and that the role of
philosophical inquiry was to examine and extend those
areas. From this starting point, Origen developed one
of the most adventurous and intellectually
ambitious visions of how the interplay of
human freedom and God’s goodness might
interact with the origin and destiny of souls
to bring about a final triumph over evil and
the restoration of all things in God.
Origen’s influence is most powerful,
however, on those who have sought to
bring both faith and intelligence to the
reading of the Bible, for no interpreter has
ever exhibited both qualities so emphatically or dialectically. On one side, Origen
was convinced not only that the Bible was
divinely inspired, but that God spoke to
humans through these texts in the present
as well as in the past. On the other side,
he saw the actual texts of the Bible as far
from perspicuous. As human compositions
of the past, they present complex difficulties to the one trying to discern in them
what God wanted to say. The task of reading is therefore impelled by faith but also
demands of the reader every critical skill
available. The urgency of reading is connected to the desire to attend to what God
speaks; the need to read critically is connected to the specific difficulties presented
to specific texts. What makes Origen the
model for all faithful biblical interpretation is his refusal ever to take the easy way out, his insistence on
reading the texts as they were in all their difficulty and
ambiguity in order to ferret out the meaning that God
may have intended.
Origen himself displayed a formidable array of
critical abilities. He brought to the text of the Old
Testament the science of text-criticism learned from the
interpreters of Homer in order to establish as closely as
possible the original text. All subsequent text-criticism
of the Old and New Testament simply elaborates and
refines the steps first taken by Origen. He practiced a
form of literary criticism that demonstrated in great
detail, for example, the differences between the Gospel
accounts concerning Jesus. He displayed an acute linguistic sensitivity; page after page of his commentary
on the Gospel of John is devoted to a consideration
of the multiple meanings available for the phrase with
which John begins, namely, “in the beginning.” Origen
is remarkably modern in his appreciation for the limits
of historical knowledge; indeed, he comes close to a
post-modern position in his insistence that what really
counts is not “what happened” but “what is written” in
Scripture: it is the text that is the subject of inquiry and
God’s instrument for transforming readers. Origen regarded a quest for the actual events behind the texts as
fruitless and foolish.
[
Winter 2011 • The Dartmouth Apologia •
13
Above all, Origen brought a critical perspective to
the religious and moral adequacy of the biblical compositions. Schooled both by the moral sensitivity of
Greco-Roman philosophy and the religious perspective given by developed Jewish interpretation of the
Bible as a whole—not to mention his immersion in
the Gospels and letters of Paul—Origen saw clearly
that, when taken literally, the Bible makes statements
that are impossible, improbable, and morally objectionable. An important aspect of his serious reading of
the Bible, then, was working through such textual aporiae, seeking to discover the wisdom that God might
have hidden within the scandal of the all-too-human
text. Origen’s development of anagogical (“transposed”) readings was a function of the seriousness with
which he took the task of reading; if the literal sense
of the text was historical, cosmological, moral, or religious nonsense, then the text must be made to yield a
meaning consonant with the nature of the God who
seeks the salvation, not the destruction, of the human
soul. The point of reading for Origen was not information but transformation, a process that required of the
reader an intellectual and moral effort consistent with
the urgency of engaging the word of the living God.
Not all of Origen’s successors have had his great
learning, his acute intelligence, his moral integrity, or
his clear conception of the interpretive task. But there
has been within Christianity from Origen’s time to
our own a continuous tradition of readers who have
shared his loyalty to the faith and his willingness to engage it critically. I have already mentioned names that
would appear on any “hit-parade” of great theological
interpreters, but it is important to recognize that their
practice was not exceptional so much as illustrative.
They stood within a deep and broad stream of critical interpretation that both affirmed the power of the
Bible and recognized its potential for harm as well as
for good. Such readers have understood that neither a
simplistic affirmation nor a simplistic rejection of the
Bible is intellectually responsible and that only a vigorous and critical engagement with the specific language
of the ancient compositions in all their specificity will
enable readers to resist what was (and remains) toxic
within them, as well as celebrate what was (and remains) positively transforming in them.
It is a great pity that the skills and insights of this
reading tradition are so little known or appreciated
by those whose shrill voices dominate contemporary
polemics. Who is to blame? Those who practice these
skills today may be criticized for restricting their efforts
mostly to the safe world of the academy, leaving public
discourse on such matters to the charlatans who are all
too willing to parody true scholarship in their “shocking” publications. Even more deserving of criticism,
14 • The Dartmouth Apologia • Winter 2011 ]
though, are the Christians who claim to revere the
Bible yet have waged war against the use of critical intelligence in the interpretation of the Bible, fearfully
and ferociously purging seminary faculties and pulpits
alike of anything that looks suspiciously like brilliance
or imagination. Their insistence on reading the Bible
as though it were as transparent as a daily newspaper
is a form of childishness; their willful ignoring of the
long history of faithful readers who struggled with the
intellectual and moral challenges of Scripture before
them reveals a desperate religious immaturity.
Most depressing, perhaps, is the abysmal ignorance
of religion generally, of Christianity specifically, and of
Neither a simplistic affirmation
nor a simplistic rejection of the
Bible is intellectually responsible.
the Bible monumentally, exhibited by the noisy contemporary critics of all three. Present-day members of
the cultured elite are remarkable for the superficiality
of their knowledge of religious wisdom in any form. At
least the ancient critic Celsus made the effort to know
something about what he criticized and wrote from a
coherent philosophical perspective. In terms of genuine learning, rigorous argument, and moral passion,
both Celsus and Origen make present-day disputants
on the Bible appear as mere children whose moral obtuseness, sadly, is matched by ignorance.
Dr. Luke Timothy Johnson is the R. W.
Woodruff Professor of New Testament and
Christian Origins at Candler School of Theology
at Emory University and a Senior Fellow at the
Center for the Study of Law and Religion at the
university. He is known for his critique of the
Jesus Seminar and its stances on the “historical
Jesus” and has debated its members on several
occasions. He is the author of numerous volumes
of biblical commentary, as well as a well-known
speaker and lecturer. Dr. Johnson received his
BA from Notre Dame Seminary, an MA from
Indiana University, and a PhD from Yale. He
also holds a Masters in Divinity from the Saint
Meinrad School of Theology.
Science &
Orthodoxy: The Faith of
Galileo & Kepler
by Grace Nauman
C
ontributors to The Dartmouth Apologia
have frequently examined the relationship
between faith and science; in particular they
have explored what is known as the conflict thesis, the
idea that science and religion are inherently at odds.
One major way the Apologia has approached this issue
has been by looking at historical scientists and the ease
with which they balanced their faith and their scientific inquiry.1 Nancy Frankenberry questions the validity of such an approach, however, in the introduction
to her new book, The Faith of Scientists. Although she
emphasizes “how seamlessly the historical titans of the
scientific revolution – Galileo, Kepler, Bacon, Pascal,
and Newton… could interrelate their Christian faith
and their scientific discoveries,”2 she also argues that
it “will strike even the casual reader” that “pockets of
perplexity, elements of eccentricity, and unconventional forms within conventional Christian faith stand
out.”3 She suggests that though scientific figures such
as Galileo Galilei and Johannes Kepler may have been
devout believers, they may not have been “conventionally Christian.”4 Frankenberry’s assertion, if true,
could challenge much of the past work published in
the Apologia on this subject. If these scientists were not
“conventionally” Christian, not orthodox in their beliefs, can the Apologia’s writers use them as evidence
Oil painting of Johannes Kepler, circa 1610
[
Winter 2011 • The Dartmouth Apologia •
15
for the compatibility of religion and science? If these
great scientists were not orthodox Christians, does that
challenge the journal’s thesis that the claims of science
and faith are reconcilable?
Surely Frankenberry’s assertion would not contradict the Apologia’s argument entirely, since much of it
is based on the separate goals of the two intellectual
endeavors. Science empirically examines the world’s
physical properties, while religion addresses questions
of meaning, morality, and teleology. It is widely held
that the jurisdictions of these two fields do not overlap and that one cannot say anything useful about the
other. Frankenberry, paraphrasing Stephen Jay Gould,
puts it this way: “Scientific truth and religious faith
do not belong to the same dimension of meaning, so
science has no right or power to pronounce on faith,
and faith no right to interfere with science.”5 She
points out that this “view of science and religion…
has almost become the default position in the current
cultural debates”6 and that this distinction has been
recognized since before Galileo’s time. In other words,
both sides of the debate conventionally agree that religion and science address completely different spheres
of information.
Since the two do not overlap, there is no reason
a scientist cannot believe that Christianity holds the
answers to the questions science cannot satisfactorily
address. However, Frankenberry’s observation could
still challenge the idea that science and Christianity
are compatible. Even if it were theoretically possible
Portrait of Galileo Galilei by Justus Suttermans circa 1636
16 • The Dartmouth Apologia • Winter 2011 ]
to be both a scientist and an orthodox Christian, it
would be hard to argue that science and orthodoxy are
particularly compatible if few people ever found combining the two to be intellectually satisfying. Indeed,
Frankenberry almost suggests that scientific genius
goes along with religious eccentricity. What if true
Even at his most controversial
and “eccentric,” Galileo’s beliefs
and practices were compatible
with basic Christian orthodoxy.
scientific advancement is incompatible with orthodox
Christian faith? Fortunately, further examination of
Frankenberry’s examples indicates that many “historical titans of the scientific revolution” were much more
conventional and orthodox in their beliefs than she
implies.
Of course, all of this depends on our definition of
conventional and orthodox faith. The definition that
the Apologia has used since its inception and that has
been recognized by many Christians throughout time
is assent to the propositions outlined in either the
Apostle’s Creed or the Nicene Creed, which is found
on the last page of this journal. Frankenberry appears
to use a much narrower definition, seeming to view
“convention” as compliance with the specific doctrine
of the specific denomination with which the particular
scientist was associated. This is an appropriate methodology to her purpose, which is interested in teasing out exactly what each scientist believed from an
outsider’s perspective, but it is an unhelpful approach
for determining whether or not the scientists found
orthodox Christianity to be compatible with their scientific pursuits. Using the broader definition of orthodoxy recognized by this journal reveals that many of
Frankenberry’s examples of “unconventional forms” of
Christianity were actually quite conventional.
For instance, although Galileo’s approach to theology sometimes conflicted with the proscriptions of
the Catholic Church, his beliefs were quite compatible
with orthodox conventions. Galileo mainly conflicted
with the Catholic Church over who had the authority to engage in biblical hermeneutics. In the Catholic
tradition, only the Church Fathers had the authority
to interpret scripture, so conflict arose when Galileo
personally began interpreting Scripture in light of
his scientific discoveries. Although Galileo’s attempts
to reinterpret Scripture himself were not compatible
with contemporary Catholicism, Galileo’s belief that,
as Frankenberry explains, “the Bible was intentionally simplified by the Church so that lay people could
Accommodation, that it was acceptable
for “scientific truths … [to] help guide
biblical exegesis,”11 since the Bible was
not written merely for a scientific audience. If Galileo’s efforts to engage in
biblical hermeneutics himself did not
fit into the conventional Catholic paradigm of his time, his willingness to let
science inform scriptural interpretation
did.
Galileo’s engagement in hermeneutics conflicted with the Catholic tradition, but at the time the individual’s
authority to interpret the Bible for him
or herself was a question that divided
Christianity. Indeed, it was one of the
most divisive issues of the Reformation.
Since the most traditional statements
of orthodoxy like the Apostle’s Creed
and the Nicene Creed do not address
this issue, no final answer has been
reached, and Protestants and Catholics
have ultimately agreed to disagree.12
However, Galileo’s attempts at indiJoshua halts the sun access its meaning”7 was a conventional Catholic doc- vidual interpretation of the Bible are compatible with
and moon through trine even in Galileo’s time. The idea she describes, that
conventional Protestant orthodoxy and so can hardly
prayer during a
be described as outstanding “elements of eccentricity.”
battle against the the Bible is written in simplified and sometimes even
Amorites allegorical terms to be generally comprehensible, is
Though it may have been unconventional in Galileo’s
called the doctrine of Accommodation. This belief had particular religious climate, the ability of the individubeen established doctrine since the time of Augustine.8 al to interpret Scripture is an orthodox belief in much
For Galileo, the doctrine of Accommodation meant of Christianity. Even at his most controversial and “ecthat scientific understanding could be used to inform centric,” Galileo’s beliefs and practices were compatible
one’s understanding of scriptural passages, which ex- with basic Christian orthodoxy.
plained the fact that there were passages in the Bible
Frankenberry’s second example of an eccentric bethat seemed to contradict the heliocentric model of the liever is Johannes Kepler. Indeed, Kepler was considuniverse. The most famous example of this is Joshua ered a heretic in his lifetime, largely because his under10:12, where Joshua asks God to make the sun “stand standing of the presence of God during the Eucharist
still over Gibeon,”9 suggesting a sun that orbits the earth conflicted with that of contemporary Lutheran theology;13
according
to
Maximilian
It was Kepler’s study of the Gospels and traditional
this was
Christianity that prevented him from accepting the Lanzinner,
the only part of
doctrines espoused by the contemporary Lutheran Church. Lutheran orthodoxy that “Kepler
and that, some said, must be part of a geocentric solar could not accept in good conscience.”14 Although
system. According to the doctrine of Accommodation, Frankenberry claims that Kepler’s beliefs about the
this was not a problem, because a Bible written to be Eucharist “fell through the widening cracks” of oraccessible to all would not necessarily have to be con- thodoxy,15 other scholars present a very different
sistent with the astronomical discoveries of the distant perspective.
future. Galileo firmly believed that truth was revealed
Kepler was in conflict with the Lutheran church
both in the Holy Scriptures and through science, and specifically because he refused to accept the doctrine
that, in Frankenberry’s own words, “neither one can of the ubiquity of Christ, that is, the omnipresence of
ever be fundamentally in conflict with the other.”10 Christ’s body, which was central to the contemporary
He also believed, in accordance with the doctrine of Lutheran understanding of communion. According
[
Winter 2011 • The Dartmouth Apologia •
17
to Max Caspar, Kepler’s most definitive biographer,
Martin Luther created this doctrine when he broke
from the Catholic Church. Although Luther “repudiated Mass and rejected transubstantiation,” the actual
“sacramental permeation” of the bread “by the substance of the body of Christ,” he still wished to allow
for the substantial presence of Christ in Communion.16
Luther did not believe that the bread became the body
of Christ during the Eucharist service, but he still
wished to provide a doctrinal way for the bread to be
Christ’s actual body. Kepler’s studies of the Bible led
him to the conclusion that, as Caspar explains, “this
remarkable doctrine of ubiquity” is “untenable on the
grounds of the traditional Christology” because it required Christ to be physically present everywhere at all
times, a seeming impossibility for a Christ who was still
fully human.17 According to Lanzinner, “in [Kepler’s]
understanding of the wording of the Gospel, the body
of Christ was in Heaven—at the right hand of God.”18
If Christ were fully human, his body could not be in
more than one place at once, and the Lutheran doctrine of consubstantiation was wrong.
Studying the Church Fathers and other Christian
writers confirmed Kepler’s rejection of the doctrine of
ubiquity. He was especially affected by the discovery
that the doctrine of ubiquity was never held by the
Church Fathers or in any other branch of Christianity,
that “our aforementioned conflict was something
new.”19 The doctrine was unconventional as well as unbiblical. Here we see that it was not Kepler’s religious
eccentricity but rather his study of the Gospels and
traditional Christianity that prevented him from accepting the doctrines espoused by the contemporary
Lutheran Church. Indeed, later Lutheran theologians
would come to agree with Kepler—the doctrine of
ubiquity was soon dropped.20 This explanation presents not a Kepler of novel spirituality, but rather a
Kepler who held fast to orthodox beliefs in the face of a
Lutheran church that proscribed doctrines “untenable
on the grounds of traditional Christology.” Indeed, it
appears that it was not Kepler, but rather sixteenthcentury Lutheran theology, that was “eccentric.”
We see that it is still safe to say that some of the
most celebrated scientists of all time found orthodox Christianity to be a satisfying worldview that
complemented, rather than hindered, their scientific
endeavors. Galileo and Kepler join the ranks of many
other important scientists who found the orthodox
Christian faith compatible with their scientific work,
which stretch from Michael Faraday to Georges Cuvier
to Francis Collins. Each of these men and women illustrates that the Christian faith can go alongside scientific endeavor not only hypothetically and theoretically, but also practically and personally. This by itself is
18 • The Dartmouth Apologia • Winter 2011 ]
not a compelling argument for or against Christianity;
the fact that a few celebrated individuals believed a
certain thing does not make it true. However, each
of these men and women is a case study refuting the
sometimes-popular perception that science and religion are insurmountably incompatible. Each provides
another data point suggesting that science and faith are
not natural enemies.
See Andrew Schuman and Robert Cousins,
“Galileo Revisited: Part I: From Copernicus to the
Inquisition,” The Dartmouth Apologia 1.1 (2007):
8-10; Peter Blair “The Naturalist Dilemma and
Why Christianity Supports a Better Science,” The
Dartmouth Apologia 3.1 (2009) 6-9.
2
Nancy Frankenberry, ed., The Faith of Scientists
in Their Own Words (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 2008) ix.
3
Ibid.
4
Ibid.
5
Ibid. xiv.
6
Ibid.
7
Ibid.
8
Schuman and Cousins 10.
9
Joshua 10:12.
10
Frankenberry 4.
11
Ibid. 5.
12
David B. Wilson, “Galileo’s Religion Versus the
Church’s Science? Rethinking the History of Science
and Religion,” Physics in Perspective 1 (1999): 65-84,
68.
13
Frankenberry 38.
14
Maximilian Lanzinner, “Johannes Kepler:
A Man Without Confession in the Age of
Confessionalization?” Central European History 36.4
(2003): 531-45, 535.
15
Frankberry ix.
16
Max Caspar, Kepler (Mineola, NY: Dover
Publications, Inc, 1993), 25-26.
17
Ibid.
18
Lanzinner 537.
19
Kepler, qtd. in Caspar 49.
20
Caspar, 25-26.
1
Grace Nauman ’11 is from
Lebanon, Oregon. She is a
Molecular Biology major and
an English minor.
Quantum Mechanics
and
Divine Action
by Emily DeBaun
by Jen Freise ‘12
D
oes God act in the physical world? If
so, how? An atheist might say that if science
can explain an event, God is not a necessary
explanation for that event’s occurrence, and therefore
God neither acts in the physical world nor exists. On
the opposite end of the spectrum, a Christian might say
that if God is supernatural, he can operate outside of
physical means, and therefore his actions in the world
will necessarily violate physical laws. The philosophical implications of quantum physics, however, give a
different perspective. Quantum mechanics allows for
a type of divine action that does not violate the laws
of physics and yet accords with scriptural accounts of
God’s providence and miracles.
This article concerns itself with how God operates
within the laws of nature, or, as Robert Russell refers to
it, “noninterventionist divine action.”1 This piece does
not seek to prove definitively that such action occurs or
that it is the only way in which God operates; rather,
it shows that scientifically speaking, the door is open
for its possibility. Furthermore, this possibility can be
supported by biblical theology. To demonstrate how
quantum mechanics makes noninterventionist divine
action possible, we begin with the way in which classical physics rules out its possibility.
Classical physics, generally speaking, refers to physics formulated prior to the development of theories
about relativity and quantum mechanics. It includes
the work of Newton, Kepler, and Galileo, among
others. Classical mechanics is founded upon several
fundamental principles. The Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy identifies these as “the principle of space
and time, the principle of causality, the principle of
determination, the principle of continuity, and the
principle of conservation of energy.”2
Essentially, classical events occur in space and time;
the state of a classical system flows continuously from
previous states through a chain of causes governed by
conservation of energy. Classical physics poses a problem for noninterventionist divine action because it is
by nature deterministic. If a system’s state is entirely
controlled by previous states and a future state can be
precisely predicted based on the forces that influence
the current system, then the operation of the physical
world is simply a giant, deterministic causal chain.3 In
such a system, God could act in a way to alter forces
or change patterns of causation, but he would necessarily violate physical laws in tampering with the classical causal chain. This would constitute divine action, but not noninterventionist divine action. The
[
Winter 2011 • The Dartmouth Apologia •
19
The Wedding at Cana
by Julius Schnorr von
Carolsfeld, painted
c. 1820, depicting
Jesus turning
water into wine
deterministic nature of classical physics supports the
notion that God is not a necessary explanation for the
occurrence of physical events. Quantum mechanics,
however, paints a strikingly different picture.
Today, quantum mechanics centers on the notion
of a wave function, a mathematical formulation relating the time and position of an object. This wave function must satisfy Schrodinger’s Equation, a differential equation regulating the evolution of the system in
time. These mathematical formulations constrain the
system; different observable quantities can only take
on certain discrete (or quantized) values. The general
interpretation of the wave function itself is that it can
be used to determine the probability of a particle existing in a certain state. Essentially, the mathematical
formulation of quantum mechanics shows the possibilities and probabilities for a particular quantum state
but fails to predict, in the deterministic way typical of
classical physics, what a scientist will measure if he or
she attempts to extract information from the system.4
This limitation suggests a strange relationship between a quantum system and its observer. According
to the widely accepted Copenhagen interpretation
of quantum mechanics, a system is in an indeterminate state comprised of a superposition of all possible
states until a measurement is made upon it, at which
point the wave function is “collapsed,” and the system
20 • The Dartmouth Apologia • Winter 2011 ]
is forced to take on the measured value.5 A common
thought experiment to describe this is “Schrodinger’s
Cat.” If a cat is placed in a closed box with a quantum
device that has a fifty percent chance of releasing cyanide to kill the cat, the cat will be in a strange, superimposed state of both life and death until the box is
opened. When the system is plainly observed, the cat is
forced to be either dead or alive, as the wave function is
collapsed and the system takes on one of the two possibilities.6 Generally, a quantum system is indeterminate until a measurement is taken, at which point the
system takes on the measured value, which is one of
several possibilities whose probabilities are determined
using the wave function.7
This fundamental indeterminacy at the root of
quantum events is scientifically inexplicable. Though
the possibilities and probabilities of quantum events
can be determined, the choice of which possibility occurs appears to be entirely random. This makes noninterventionist divine action possible. According to
Nicholas Saunders, there are four potential ways in
which God could intervene in this situation. The first
possibility is that God “alters the wave function between measurements” by adding new possibilities to
the superposition of potential outcomes. Saunders rejects this explanation on the grounds that for God to
introduce new possibilities would be interventionist
because between measurements, Schrodinger’s
Equation deterministically dictates the progress of the
possibilities of the system.8 Saunders next mentions
the idea that God could himself “make measurements
on a quantum system;” this notion is also dismissed as
interventionist because it would require God to somehow set up the physical experiment and laboratory in
the first place.9 A third possibility is that God changes
the probability of different event outcomes. Saunders,
again, calls this interventionist because to alter the
probabilities would require changes to be made to the
wave function.10
The final possibility holds the most promise: God
may simply “determine the outcome of a measurement,” choosing which possibility is manifested out
of those given in the superposition prior to measurement.11 This is a reasonable proposition, since for God
to choose the outcome of a measurement would not
require him to violate any law of physics, but rather
to determine a path from among several natural possibilities. Philosopher Nancey Murphy supports this
idea, stating that the timing of a quantum event cannot be “internally or externally determined” without
“sufficient reason to act.”12 This means that a quantum
event will not occur for no reason; there must be a way
to distinguish between possibilities in order to give an
event a “sufficient reason” to choose one possibility
over another. She concludes that if quantum processes
are either entirely random or divinely determined,
only divine action could provide sufficient reason for
the event to occur. This is because God could externally evaluate and select one of the possibilities, while
a random process would have no “reason” to choose
one possibility over another and therefore would be
incapable of acting.13
Robert Russell also endorses the idea that God determines the result of measurements taken in quan-
that the quantum event is “ontologically indeterminate.”15 From all of this he concludes that it is possible
for God to uphold quantum processes through “direct,
noninterventionist action.”16
Saunders argues against the idea of God determining
the outcome of a quantum measurement, but not on
the grounds that it is interventionist. Rather, he claims
that for God to “ignore the probabilities predicted”
and to “control” what happens is to say that the probabilities we obtain from experiment determine, rather
than confirm, the probabilities predicted by the wave
function.17 Saunders writes, “…the probability laws
simply reform around whatever actual measurement
results have been obtained… this approach is characterized by an assertion that individual events are ontologically superior to laws.”18 This rejection, however, is
a rather unfair evaluation of the fourth quantum possibility for noninterventionist divine action. As Thomas
Tracy writes in his review of Saunder’s book,
A theologian interested in noninterventionist special divine action will not say that God ignores
the probability distributions predicted by quantum theory. Rather, the thesis would be that God
might act in the world by determining quantum
events within the ordinary probability patterns,
which do, after all, permit wide variation in
particular outcomes from instance to instance.19
It seems Saunders overlooks an important premise of
statistics; though certain outcomes have low probabilities, they are still possible. According to statistics, the
“law of averages” does not exist, meaning the aggregation of numerous event outcomes does not have to
match the predicted probability density, though it will
most likely come close. God would not be required to
“ignore” probabilities but could choose freely within
the possibilities without violating or invalidating probability distributions offered by the wave function. He
If quantum processes are either entirely random or divinely determined,
only divine action could provide sufficient reason for the event to occur.
tum systems. He defines measurements as “irreversible
interactions” with a quantum system that render the
Schrodinger Equation incapable of describing the system.14 Russell explains that when no measurement is
being taken, the Schrodinger Equation gives the “formal cause,” or arrangement, of the system, and the potential energy provides the “efficient cause,” or source,
of the evolution of the system. During a measurement,
the equation is no longer relevant, so Russell concludes
that there are indeed “material causes,” or physical
means by which the measurement is taken, but there
are not “efficient causes” of the interaction. From this,
he concludes, as does the Copenhagen interpretation,
could do this in a way that is purposeful, even if it appears random to scientists. For these reasons, Saunders’
critique of noninterventionist divine action at the level
of the quantum event measurement is unsuccessful.
This idea that God chooses the outcome of the
measurement falls within a “bottom to top” description of how God can interact with the world without violating laws of nature. By altering fundamental
quantum events, he is also able to control the macroscopic events to which they give rise without breaking the laws of physics.20 Both Russell21 and Murphy
support this concept. Murphy goes so far as to say
that “top to bottom” models of divine action, where
[
Winter 2011 • The Dartmouth Apologia •
21
a person experiences God’s intervention in a macro- divine direction can happen through natural causes.
scopic way or in the form of direct revelation, can also He cites Psalm 104:14, “You cause the grass to grow
be explained by this “bottom to top” notion. For ex- for the livestock and plants for man to cultivate.”27
ample, a sudden spiritual realization or remembrance Here it is clearly seen that God often provides for man
which a person experiences could be a product of a through natural processes, such as feeding him by
manipulation on the quantum mechanical level that causing food to grow. In the “preservation” component
impacts neurons that affect brain function and there- of God’s providence, Grudem cites Hebrews 1:3, “he
fore meaning perceived by the mind. She uses this as upholds the universe by the word of his power,”28 and
an explanatory tool for religious experience and thus Nehemiah 9:6, “You have made… earth and all that
extends quantum-level divine action to human experi- is on it, the seas and all that is in them; and you preence and everyday events.22
serve all of them.”29 Again, God is seen as preserving
Some may argue that this quantum possibility for and providing for his creation in an intimately physical
divine action is a “God in the gaps” argument, that way. One means by which God manifests his power is
is to say, an argument
through natural processes.
where divine action Scripture teaches that such
The idea of miracles as
is used to explain un“an exception to a natural
known gaps in a physi- divine direction can happen law” may cause Christians to
cal process that one
question the idea of noninthrough natural causes.
day will be filled in by
terventionist divine action.30
a scientific explanation. Russell distinguishes strongly Nancey Murphy addresses this issue, writing, “I prefer
between his argument for divine action in quantum not to use the term ‘miracle’ because it is now so closely
mechanics and “God in the gaps.”23 He writes,
associated with the idea of a violation of the laws of nature. I believe it could be shown that the primary reaAn epistemic gaps argument is based on what
son for current rejection of miracles, in fact, has been
you don’t know. It invokes God to explain things
this very definition.”31 Murphy contends for a notion
that we don’t yet understand but that science will
of the “miraculous” that includes incredible occureventually explain. Our approach is based upon
rences that do not violate nature. Noninterventionist
what we do know about nature, assuming that
divine action in quantum mechanics producing awequantum physics is the correct theory and that
inspiring macroscopic results could, indeed, be exit can be interpreted philosophically as telling
us that nature is ontologically indeterministic.24
plained by natural causes.32 However, the occurrence
Russell refutes this accusation by emphasizing that his of such an unlikely event, influenced by divine action,
approach is an interpretation of known information, places it in the “miracle” category.
Grudem also endorses the classification of such an
rather than a postulation about a gap in knowledge.
occurrence
as a miracle. He defines a miracle as “a less
Since the Copenhagen interpretation is widely accepted, and it states that quantum systems are “onto- common kind of God’s activity in which he arouses
awe and wonder and bears witness to himlogically indeterministic,” Russell can argue that the people’s
33
self.”
Grudem
defends this definition by pointing to
question of how the wave function collapse “chooses” a
three
biblical
words
associated with God’s “less comparticular measured value is not one that can or will be
mon
activity”—“signs,”
“wonders,” and “miracles” or
solved scientifically, and it can therefore be approached
“mighty
works.”
Grudem
says “signs,” biblically, are
philosophically.25 Additionally, all these claims about
things
that
draw
attention
to “God’s activity or powdivine action in quantum mechanics are not attempt34
ing to be “proofs” for God, but rather, to show the er.” In referring to Jesus’ transformation of water into
plausibility of a higher power’s influence over such wine, John 2:11 supports this definition: “This, the first
of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manicircumstances.
35
Having established that quantum mechanics pro- fested his glory.” Here, a sign is directly linked to the
vides an opportunity for God to noninterventionally “manifestation” of Christ’s “glory”; God’s “activity” and
act in the world, we proceed to a few scriptural ex- “power” are manifested in Christ’s36action. Grudem says
amples to support how the Christian can accept non- “wonders” are awe-inspiring acts; this is supported by
interventionist divine action as one aspect of the way Exodus 15:11, which says, “Who is like you, O LORD,
God works. The first such example is described by among the gods? Who is like you, majestic in holiness,
37
Wayne Grudem in his Systematic Theology as the “con- awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders?” Here,
currence” component of God’s providence. Grudem God’s ability to perform “wonders” elicits the speaker’s
defines concurrence as God’s “cooperation with” and awe and praise as he remarks on God’s uniqueness
“direction of ” creation.26 Scripture teaches that such in power and “deed.” Finally, “miracles,” or “mighty
22 • The Dartmouth Apologia • Winter 2011 ]
works” are occurrences displaying “divine power.”38
This use of “miracles” is seen in 1 Chronicles 16:11-12,
“Seek the LORD and his strength; seek his presence
continually! Remember the wondrous works that he
has done, his miracles and the judgments he uttered.”39
Here, God’s “wondrous works” and “miracles” are, indeed, associated with his power (“strength”) and his
intercession (“presence”). These biblically informed
definitions of “signs,” “wonders,” and “miracles” certainly do not exclude events with natural explanations.
Rather, any unusually amazing action performed by
God that elicits praise or awe or thanksgiving toward
God may be considered a miracle.40 Grudem says the
idea of miracles as only events that violate physical
laws is insufficient because it does not require God as
the causer of the event, limits the extent to which God
can intervene in the physical world, and reduces attention to many “actual miracles” leading to an “increase in skepticism.”41 In general, miracles, biblically
defined, do not require a violation of physical laws, so
Christians can view noninterventionist divine action
as one potential cause of miracles.
The ontological indeterminism that the
Copenhagen interpretation ascribes to measurements
taken on quantum mechanical systems allows for divine action that does not violate the laws of nature. It
provides the opportunity for God to intervene in the
physical world and combats the idea that a scientifically explained process can have no supernatural influence. At the same time, this noninterventionist divine
action accords with biblical notions of God’s providence and miracles. In essence, the indeterminism at
the root of quantum mechanics, the most fundamental
description of the physical world, reveals to both nonChristians and believers how God could intimately influence, without being bound or proved false by, the
laws of nature.
Ibid. 151-52.
Ibid. 152-53.
11
Ibid. 156.
12
Nancey Murphy, “Divine Action in the Natural
Order,” Philosophy, Science, and Divine Action, ed. F.
LeRon Shults, Nancey Murphy, and Robert J. Russell
(Boston: Koninklijke Brill NV, 2009) 283.
Russell 369.
13
Ibid.
14
Russell 369.
15
Ibid. 371-72.
16
Ibid. 374-75.
17
Saunders 154-55.
18
Ibid.
19
Thomas Tracy, “Divine Action and Modern
Science (review),” Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews,
<http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=1319>.
20
Murphy 285-86.
21
Russell 360-62.
22
Murphy 293- 94.
23
Russell 354.
24
Ibid.
25
Ibid.
26
Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology (Leicester:
Inter-Varsity Press, 2001) 317.
27
Psalm 104:14.
28
Hebrews 1:3.
29
Nehemiah 9:6.
30
Grudem 356.
31
Murphy 271.
32
Ibid.
33
Grudem 355.
34
Ibid. 356.
35
John 2:11.
36
Grudem 356.
37
Exodus 15:11.
38
Grudem 356.
39
1 Chronicles 16:11-12.
40
Grudem 358.
41
Ibid. 356.
9
10
Robert Russell, “Divine Action and Quantum
Mechanics,” Philosophy, Science, and Divine Action,
ed. F. LeRon Shults, Nancey Murphy, and Robert J.
Russell (Boston: Koninklijke Brill NV, 2009) 354.
2
“Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum
Mechanics,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
<http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-copenhagen/>.
3
Ibid.
4
David J. Griffiths, Introduction to Quantum
Mechanics (Prentice Hall, 2004) 1-5.
5
Ibid. 3-5.
6
Paul Davies, God and the New Physics (New York:
Simon and Schuster, 1983) 114.
7
Nicholas Saunders, Divine Action and Modern
Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2002) 142.
8
Ibid. 149-50.
1
Emily DeBaun ‘12 is from
Sandown, New Hampshire.
She is a Physics and English
double major.
[
Winter 2011 • The Dartmouth Apologia •
23
A Proof for the
Existence of
God
by Peter Blair
F
or many people today, the classical Christian
claim that God’s existence can be proven
through the exercise of reason is odd, if not
absurd. Nevertheless, within the rich Christian intellectual tradition, there are several arguments that have
been offered for God’s existence. Probably the most famous type of these arguments is all of the varied proofs
that fall under the heading of “the cosmological argument.” The general form of the cosmological argument
usually starts with some fact about the world, whether
it be that change occurs or that all observable entities
are contingent (that is, dependent) upon something
else. From this kind of fact, the argument proceeds to
conclude that, since every cause or every dependent
entity relies on a further cause or further entity, there
must exist a non-caused cause or a non-dependent entity which causes everything else or on which everything else is dependent.
There are an extraordinarily large number of versions of the cosmological argument, starting with the
arguments of Plato and Aristotle and continuing up
24 • The Dartmouth Apologia • Winter 2011 ]
to today, but the First Way of Thomas Aquinas stands
out as the classic, albeit poorly understood, example.1
In his Summa Theologica, Thomas Aquinas offers what
he calls his “five ways,” which are five ways he believes
God’s existence can be established by rational investigation into the nature of the world. Aquinas’s five ways
are merely brief summaries of the arguments; his proofs
rest on metaphysical doctrines that are explained and
defended in his other works. Consequently, if his five
ways are to be understood properly, they need to be
read in light of the rest of his work. Today, however,
many people have fallen prey to the unfortunate habit
of simply reading a short paragraph extracted from the
Summa and assuming they can understand his argument perfectly from simply that. This often leads people to think that Aquinas’s First Way is easily refuted.
In reality, when it is presented correctly, Aquinas’s
cosmological argument succeeds in proving that God
exists.
Aquinas’s First Way starts with an observation of
motion in the world. Motion in scholastic terminology
The lights of a city in motion
does not mean only physical motion but every kind of
change. Aquinas, therefore, begins with the idea that
things in the world change. The concept of change,
however, has a particular meaning for Aquinas. In
traditional Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics, every
material thing possesses both actuality and potentiality.2 Actuality is what a thing is or the properties it
has, whereas potentiality is what a thing could be or
what properties a thing could have. For example, a
young student who hasn’t learned much is in fact not
knowledgeable, but he has the potential to become
very knowledgeable. However, in order to become so
the student would need some kind of outside agent,
like a good teacher or a book, aiding him to change his
scholarly potential into actual intelligence or knowledge (that is, to actualize his potential). The student
could not reach his potential by himself; somebody or
something else who or which already possesses knowledge must help him.
This example illustrates the basic Thomistic analysis
of change, which is necessary background information
for understanding the First Way. Change, Aquinas
argued, is simply the raising of some potential to actuality.3 Change occurs when something that is possible or potential for a material thing becomes actual.
However, nothing can make itself actual, for potential “cannot raise itself to act.”4 Rather, something or
someone else already in actuality has to act on, with,
or for the material thing in question in order to cause
the transformation of the material thing’s potential
into actuality. Water has the potential to boil, but heat
must first be applied. The digestive tract has the potential to digest food, but first food needs to be eaten.
All change is therefore the transformation of a certain
potential to actuality (or act) caused by some external,
already actual agent.
With this background, Aquinas’s argument proceeds from a single observation of change in the present world. Take the example of making tea. The tea bag
in the boiling water raises the potentiality of the tea
to diffuse to actuality, the heat raises the potentiality
of the water to boil to actuality, turning on the stove
raises the potentiality of the stove to make fire to actuality, etc. Everything that is changed—that becomes
actual—is itself changed by something else that, as a
combination of actuality and potentiality, was itself
raised to actuality by something else. This is true for
each individual change that occurs in the world today.
The First Way then makes the standard observation
of the cosmological argument, namely that for any one
change there could not be an infinite regress of causes.
Something that is changed is changed by something
else, which is changed by something else, which is
changed by something else, and so on: Every material agent of change was itself changed. This chain of
causation cannot, however, go on indefinitely; it must
end somewhere. If it did not end, there would be no
explanation for how change occurs at all. If everything
in the causal chain is itself changed and there were no
[
Winter 2011 • The Dartmouth Apologia •
25
Apotheosis of Saint
Thomas Aquinas
by Francisco
Zurbaran, c. 1598
first agent of change in the sequence, then no change
would be possible. Father Thomas Crean gives a helpful analogy here:
There cannot be an indefinite line of intermediary causes with no first cause, just as a nail
cannot be knocked into a wall by an unending series of hammers, each knocking against
the next. There must be a first hammer wielded
by some free agent. There must be a beginning
of the line who gives the impulse that is ultimately responsible for the movement of the nail.5
Each agent of change can only change something else
because it itself has already been raised to actuality by a
prior person or object. Therefore, if there were no first
agent of change, then no further change could happen. Each link in the chain derives its causal power
from the previous link. Therefore, without a first link
none of the rest of the chain could have causal power,
because there would be no original actuality to impart
its causal power to the rest of the chain.
Here it is necessary to distinguish between two different types of causal series, those Aquinas calls per accidens and per se.6 Per se causal series are, like the example of the hammer and the nails above, causal series in
26 • The Dartmouth Apologia • Winter 2011 ]
which each link in the chain is dependent on the previous link, such that each link could not occur unless the
previous one did. This would be true even if the causes
happened simultaneously with each other. Each link
is totally and essentially dependent on the previous
one, so much so that it would cease to have any causal power at all once the previous link were removed.
On the other hand, per accidens series are linear and
temporal and contain links which are not essentially
dependent on the previous link. For instance, if two
parents have a child, the child becomes independent of
them when he grows older; his causal powers (to have
children himself, for example) are not dependent upon
his parents once he has matured. This distinction is
important because Aquinas at least theoretically allows
that a per accidens series could regress to infinity, since
each member of the series has independence from the
previous ones. But it would be impossible for a per se
series to do so, because “since the lower members of
a causal series ordered per se have no causal powers
on their own but derive it entirely from a first cause,
which (as it were) uses them as instruments, there is
no sense to be made of such a series not having a first
member.”7 So for every per se series that exists in the
world—and certainly we see many examples of series
where each cause needs the previous one—there must
be a first agent in that sequence.
It is clear that the first agent in the per se causal sequence must itself be changeless. If it were to change,
it would require an explanation or cause of its change
outside itself, and the regress would continue until it
terminated in something that did not change. There
has to be a hammer hitting all of the other hammers,
and that hammer must not itself be hit by another
hammer. If the first agent is itself changed, it would
no longer be first. Saying the first cause is changeless, furthermore, is just another way of saying that it
is not a composition of potentiality and actuality; it
must be pure act, as least as regards its existence and
its causative power.8 For if it were not pure actuality,
but rather a combination of potency and act, then
something else in act would have had to raise it to act
from potency, and then it, again, would no longer be
changeless or first.
It is precisely because the first cause must be pure
act that nothing material or natural can be the first
cause. Everything material that we observe is contingent, which is to say, a combination of potency and
act. It changes and dies, and because it might never
have existed, its potential for existence (or, more precisely, for example, the egg’s potential to be fertilized)
is only actualized by something else external to it. All
these considerations make it impossible for anything
in the universe to be the first cause.9 The first cause
making of tea) to the first cause. Because every change
that happens at every moment—from the first change
to the present day—is subject to the same analysis,
every single change is traceable to this being of pure
act. This means that this unmoved mover is keeping
the world in existence at every moment. If it ceased its
preserving activity even for a second, the world would
collapse into nothingness.10
Second, as the distinction between per accidens and
per se shows, this argument does not depend upon any
spatio-temporal premises or speculation (unlike, for
example, the Kalam cosmological argument). It works
even if the universe is eternal, for the same reasons
stated above. The argument does not trace back the
series of causes to some initial temporal event, like the
Big Bang. It traces the series of causes of a particular
change that is happening here and now to a changeless
first cause.
Third, this argument establishes that there can only
be one such ultimate first cause. One common critique
of natural theology is that all the various arguments for
God’s existence could be pointing toward different beings. However, the First Way demonstrates that the being who is the start of all changes must be immaterial
and pure actuality and must have necessary existence.
There could not, however, be more than one such being, for there would no way to distinguish between
them.11 One can only distinguish between beings
when one has some feature or quality that the other
lacks. Since there could be no distinguishing physical
It is precisely because the first cause must be pure act
that nothing material or natural can be the first cause.
must be a changeless pure act. Its existence must also
be necessary, for if it were contingent, it would, like
everything natural, have to be raised to the actuality
of existence by something else. Clearly nothing in the
universe meets these standards; nothing we observe is
either changeless, or pure act, or necessary. There must
therefore be some immaterial force or being outside the
universe that possesses these qualities. This, Aquinas
says, is the being we call God, and his argument clearly
affirms that God exists.
There are a few things to note about this argument
in order to clarify exactly how it works and what it
proves. First, the primary cause established by the conclusion is not simply some force that set the universe
into being at the start of time and then stepped back
to let it develop as it would. Instead, the causative
agent of Aquinas’s First Way is a sustaining cause. The
First Way proceeds from a single change (such as the
features between immaterial beings, the only possible
differentiating factor would involve some power or
goodness or perfection that one of the “gods” lacks and
the other one has. But a being who is pure act cannot
lack anything and therefore would be indistinguishable in principle from another “god.”
Fourth, this argument does not attempt to prove
that God is loving or merciful or just, or that God is a
trinity, or anything of the sort. It only seeks to demonstrate that there must exist a unique changeless being
of pure act and necessary existence. If it can get that
far, it has done its job. Further Thomistic metaphysical
doctrines would, when applied to this argument, also
prove that the being of the first cause is good and intelligent, but there isn’t space to address them here.
The above argument, as clarified, is probably the
strongest cosmological argument there is. Part of its
great strength lies in its ability to refute many of the
[
Winter 2011 • The Dartmouth Apologia •
27
common objections brought against cosmological arguments in general. The first objection rests on what
is called the “fallacy of composition.” This objection
states that it does not follow that because everything
in the universe needs a cause, the universe as a whole
needs a cause. As should be clear from above, even
if that objection is fatal to some versions of the cosmological argument, it is irrelevant to Aquinas’s First
Way, because the First Way traces the causal series of a
single, particular instance of change. It does not seek
to account for the whole universe’s initial coming into
existence (again, Aquinas did not think one could
prove using pure reason that the universe had a beginning), but rather for the ability of a particular change
to occur.
The second objection is usually phrased as a question: “Who caused God?” Aquinas would answer,
“Nothing.” If something caused God, then that something would actually be God. The very conclusion of
the First Way is that there must be some changeless
being of pure act and necessary existence that ends the
chain of change; it demonstrates that the first mover
(i.e., agent of change) must itself be unmoved (unchanged). God, according to this argument, is changeless, and it is the fact of change that Aquinas is seeking to account for with the First Way, so it makes no
sense to try to apply the premises of the arguments
to God. God is changeless, so there is no need to regress a further step on the chain to explain how God
changed. Nor does this mean that the argument contradicts itself, though some very basic cosmological
arguments may have a first premise that contradicts
its conclusion. For instance, if the first premise is that
everything has a cause and the conclusion is that something without a cause exists, then there might arguably
be a contradiction between that argument’s premises
and its conclusion. Aquinas’s First Way, however, if it
is to be expressed syllogistically, might be something
like this (this is only one among many possible ways
to formulate it):
1. Some things change.
2. Something is caused to change only by something else.
3. There cannot be an infinite metaphysical regress of causes. If there was no first agent of
change, there could be no further change.
4. Therefore, there is a first agent of change, which
could also be called a first mover.
There is clearly no contradiction here between the
premises and the conclusion. Therefore, the question
“Who caused God?” fails as a relevant objection to
Aquinas’s First Way.
A variation of the above objection appears in
Richard Dawkins’s book The God Delusion. Dawkins
writes: “A designer God cannot be used to explain organized complexity because any God capable of designing anything would have to be complex enough
to demand the same kind of explanation in his own
right... God may not have a brain made of neurons,
or a CPU made of silicon, but if he has the powers
attributed to him he must have something far more
elaborately and non-randomly constructed than the
largest brain or computer we know.”12
Basically, Dawkins is asking, “Who designed the
designer?” If the complexity of the universe demands
an explanation, so must the complexity of God. Really
this argument is better aimed at some modern version
of the argument from design, but Dawkins believes
it to be a decisive counter-argument to any proof of
God’s existence. As such a panacea to natural theology, however, Dawkins’s argument does not succeed.
Even if God actually were complex, this argument
Artist’s rendition of
the Big Bang
28 • The Dartmouth Apologia • Winter 2011 ]
would still suffer from several flaws. In fact, however,
one need not even address the flaws of the argument
because it is the understanding of classical Christian
philosophy that God actually is very simple. There are
two main reasons for this. The first is that God has no
“parts.” As immaterial, he is obviously without physical body parts, but in addition he has no “metaphysical
parts.”
For Aquinas, the statement, “God is a necessary
being” means that in God essence and existence is
the same thing. For all created, and thus contingent,
things, their essence and their existence are distinct;
one can picture the essence of a unicorn without know-
In God essence and existence
are the same thing.
ing whether a unicorn exists. Aquinas, however, argues
that if in a contingent being one’s essence and existence
are separate, then in a necessary being they must be
identical. Therefore, a necessary being’s existence is his
essence so that God is “nowise composite.”13 Aquinas
also argues that though we can distinguish in thought
between God’s goodness, his truth, his power, his intellect, his will, his existence, etc., in God himself there
actually is no distinction between these things. God’s
goodness is his truth, which is his will, which is his
power, and so on. God is a simple unity.
The second reason for God’s simplicity is that the
immaterial and the intellectual is always more simple
than the material and the physical. For instance, the
idea of something such as a cathedral is much simpler
than the thing itself, the physical cathedral. An idea
has no direction, size, shape, weight, or any spatiotemporal characteristics. It has no parts and no constituent material. In all these ways, it is simpler than
that which it represents. As Father Crean writes,
nothing complex about it. As God is an immaterial
being possessed of an intellect and a will, but not of
a body or any physical parts, there is every reason to
think he would be simple. It is certainly the case for
physical beings that the more tasks you must perform
and the more powers you exercise, the more complex
you must be. But for an immaterial intellect whose
simple acts of will preserve the universe in being, there
is no reason to suppose the same correlation between
power and complexity would hold.
When it is presented correctly and with all the appropriate clarifications and explanations, Aquinas’s
First Way emerges as a successful argument for God’s
existence. Not only has Aquinas shown that God exists, he has also vindicated the complementary model
of faith and reason. Aquinas’s argument shows that
natural theology is indeed a rational science, and while
it cannot prove the entire content of Christian revelation, it can nevertheless arrive at certain definite conclusions about God’s existence and his nature.
See William Lane Craig’s The Cosmological
Argument from Plato to Leibniz (New York: Barnes
and Noble Books, 1980).
2
Edward Feser, Aquinas: A Beginners’ Guide
(Oxford: Oneworld Books, 2009) 10.
3
Ibid. 11.
4
Ibid.
5
Thomas Crean, God Is No Delusion: A Refutation
of Richard Dawkins (Oxford: Family Publications,
2007) 38.
6
Feser 70.
7
Ibid. 71.
8
This comes from Aristotle, but it dovetails very
nicely with the Bible (see Exodus 3:14, John 8:58).
9
Feser 80.
10
Another congruence of Aristo-Thomistic
philosophy and the Bible (see Colossians 1:17).
11
Feser 121.
12
Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (New York:
Houghton Mifflin, 2006) 109.
13
Feser 127.
14
Crean 16.
1
A designer, so to speak, is just a being with a
design. So since a design is something very
simple, as the example of the cathedral shows,
a designer is just a being with something very
simple. So there is no reason why he himself
should be complicated... the designer must be
at least as “rich in reality” as the thing he designs, because before he produces it he must have
it in himself in a certain way. He must “have”
it in an intellectual way, in order to cause it
to exist in the world. In this sense, a designer
must have the same richness as what he makes.
But he need not have the same complexity.14
Peter Blair ‘12 is from Newton
Square, Pennsylvania. He is
a Government and Classics
double major.
Just as an idea is simple, so is an act of the will. A single
act of the will (as in, I will myself to think about math
now) is a very simple, uncomplicated thing. There is
[
Winter 2011 • The Dartmouth Apologia •
29
God in the Gulag:
Christianity’s Survival in
Soviet Russia
by Alexandra Heywood
I
n 64 A.D., approximately thirty years after
Christ’s death and resurrection, a raging fire swept
through the city of Rome. As rumors spread that
the fire had been started by the Emperor Nero, the
emperor chose as his scapegoat a small group of believers who called themselves Christians. Nero announced that the Christians had started the fire that
destroyed Rome and decreed that all Christians in the
city should be arrested and executed. According to Dr.
Sophie Lunn-Rockcliffe, lecturer at King’s College in
London, “Some were torn apart by dogs, others burnt
alive as human torches.”1 Christianity endured sporadic persecution by the Roman authorities, alternating with several periods of more intensive oppression
like Nero’s, until the fourth century. Yet the Christian
population during these years increased dramatically.
Sociologist Rodney Stark estimates that in the year
40 A.D., there were no more than one thousand professing Christians in the world. By 180 A.D., the one
thousand had grown to one hundred thousand, and
by the year 300 to six million.2 Nor did the persecution of Christians end in the fourth century; although
the Roman Empire and other nations subsequently
30 • The Dartmouth Apologia • Winter 2011 ]
adopted Christianity as their official religion, on many
other occasions Christianity has clashed with state
power. The French Revolution of 1789 sparked a period of dechristianization in France which included the
banning of religious holidays, the destruction of crosses and bells, the seizure of church lands, and the arrest,
imprisonment, and execution of priests. Christianity
remains a persecuted religion today, as Brendan Woods
illustrates in his article “Christianity and Culture,
Lessons from China” in the Spring 2010 issue of The
Dartmouth Apologia. Even amid these examples, the
Soviet Union’s effort to eradicate Christianity through
persecution stand out as one of the most determined.
Yet just as in Nero’s Roman Empire, Christianity in the
Soviet Union neither disappeared, nor was it significantly weakened, by decades of persecution. The character, loyal community, and sincere belief of Russian
Christians enabled them to maintain their faith and
even to gain additional followers despite all the efforts
of the Soviet government to eliminate them.
The Soviet attitude toward religion, and toward
Christianity in particular, was unceasingly hostile.
Karl Marx, the founder of Communism, saw religion
Anti-religious poster
depicting a Christian
stealing a Russian child.
as “the opiate of the masses,” believing that religion
was used by the ruling class to promise lower classes
a good life after death. Marx thought such promises
were invented to prevent the lower classes from seeking to establish a better life on earth through revolution. This outlook was wholeheartedly adopted by the
Russian Bolsheviks who came to power in the October
Revolution of 1917; they passionately pledged to “destroy all churches and prisons.”3 At least regarding
churches, this attitude persisted in Soviet policy until
the fall of the Soviet Union.4 Josef Stalin stated flatly
in the 1930s that, “God must be out of Russia in five
years.”5 Even as late as 1984, Soviet premier Konstantin
Chernenko vowed to “protect the ideological purity of
young people against the pernicious taint of religion.”6
The reasons for the Soviet leaders’ unrelenting
war on religion were both ideological and symbolic.
Beginning with Marx, the Communist movement had
rejected religious ideologies as inimical to their own. If
the Russian Communists were to succeed in establishing a perfect society on earth, they needed to eradicate
a faith that believed this to be impossible. Christianity
teaches that God alone is free from imperfection and
that the redemption and perfection
of the world is to be realized only
in the resurrection. The Christian
doctrine of original sin remained
in stark opposition to the view
championed by the Soviet government that, with appropriate direction, humanity could right itself.
Furthermore, Christians believed
God’s law to be higher than the
demands of the socialist cause;
they opposed the Soviet ideology
that glorified the common good
over the individual at any cost.
Metropolitan Sergii, who was imprisoned throughout the 1920s, declared, “Far from promising reconciliation of that which is irreconcilable and from pretending to adapt
our faith to communism, we will
remain from the religious point of
view what we are, i.e., members of
the traditional Church.”7 This traditional Church was also symbolically offensive to the Communist
Party, to whom it represented the
old, hierarchical world of the tsars.
To eliminate such a compromising element in society, the Soviet
government organized attacks that
infiltrated every layer of religious
life. Even as the Bolsheviks were still consolidating their
power, churches were closed, priests were ridiculed,
and believers were arrested. The Soviet government
used law, intimidation, and propaganda to suppress
Orthodox beliefs and practices. The first legal blow
to the established body of religion was an act passed
in 1918 which, among other things, removed the legal
entity of churches and forbade them from completing
monetary transactions and holding property. The Law
on Religious Associations followed in 1929 and placed
more restrictions on Christians. The law forbade evangelism, the printing of religious literature, making
donations to religious causes, and the attendance of
children at religious meetings. Religious organizations
could not sponsor or host any community events,8 and
people were only allowed to attend religious meetings
within a certain distance of their homes. Christians
faced regular “harassment, investigations, interrogations, demotion and dismissal from jobs, expulsion
from universities, and interference with worship,”9 and
atheist education for all young people was compulsory.
The chief weapons of the Soviet propaganda machine were the schools, Communist Party meetings
[
Winter 2011 • The Dartmouth Apologia •
31
that enforced political indoctrination, and the press.
Newspapers often reported on clerics who had recanted—usually under duress—and ridiculed the religious as stupid or pathetic. For instance, one newspaper named a girl, Gunta Kieksts, as a Christian and
printed her address underneath a caricature of her falling to her knees and grabbing the robes of a priest.10
Believers were regularly defamed and accused of blackmarketing, perverting minors, homosexual activity,
and other crimes under the Soviet code. Children were
the easiest targets for propaganda, since they had to
attend state-run schools where teachers were fired if
found to be religious. Schools had outings on Sunday
mornings,11 and children who admitted to attending
church received poorer marks.12 Because of the anti-religious tone of education, students frequently mocked
their believing peers. All children were taught to have
a higher loyalty to the state than to their families and
encouraged to denounce their parents for anti-Soviet
activities like attending church.
The punishment for being a Christian in the Soviet
Union was just as severe as the punishment for murder.
There were two groups of laws under which believers
were prosecuted. The first was for religious activity
Drawing from the journal of Eufrosinia Kernovskaya, a prisoner in the
Norilsk labor camp for ten years, depicting the overcrowding of cells.
32 • The Dartmouth Apologia • Winter 2011 ]
specifically, such as breaking one of the anti-religious
laws. The second was for political or civil crimes, including “parasitism,” “hooliganism,” “slandering
the Soviet system,” and “anti-Soviet propaganda.”13
Christians had to endure frequent searches and fines,
harassment that was made serious by repetition and
by the low incomes of those harassed. They were often fired from their jobs, demoted to menial positions,
and exiled or banished, usually to northeastern Russia.
Those who were arrested could be held up to one year
before a trial as the State “gathered evidence.” They
waited in overcrowded cells infested with rats, lice, and
bedbugs, sometimes in filthy water up to their ankles.
Many Christians endured interrogations and torture
by the KGB, including threats of castration, the electric chair, prison, confinement to a psychiatric hospital, and harm of family members.14
Christianity in the Soviet Union was forced to
endure under the hostile and often deadly conditions of the Gulag, a Russian acronym for The Chief
Administration of Corrective Labor Camps and
Colonies. Suffering itself did not come as a surprise
to Russian Christians; Christ taught that, “If any man
would come after me, let him deny himself and take
up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, and
whoever loses his life for my sake will
find it,”15 and again, “You will be hated
by all for my name’s sake. But he who
endures to the end will be saved.”16
The promises of support in suffering
that are found in Scripture sustained
many in the Church through difficult trials and decades of persecution.
In prison, interrogators often tried to
persuade Christian prisoners to recant
or to betray one another. Solzhenitsyn
recounts the story of an old woman
in the Butyrki prison who was interrogated night after night to reveal the
location of a priest. She told her tormenters: “There is nothing you can do
with me even if you cut me into pieces.
After all, you are afraid of your bosses,
and you are afraid of each other, and
you are even afraid of killing me… But
I am not afraid of anything. I would
be glad to be judged by God right this
minute.”17 Solzhenitsyn does not tell
his readers what happened to this old
woman, but like her, many Christians
found the courage to resist interrogation and refused to give up their faith
or betray their fellow Christians.
New inmates forced
to strip naked while
entering a labor
camp, from the
journal of Eufrosinia
Kersnovskaya.
Solzhenitsyn, himself a prisoner in the Gulag, observed that,
No camp can corrupt those who have a stable
nucleus, who do not accept that pitiful ideology which holds that “human beings are created
for happiness,” an ideology which is done in by
the first blow of the work assigner’s cudgel…
Tatyana Falike writes: “Observation of people
convinced me that no man could become a scoundrel in camp if he had not been one before.”18
Christians, Solzhenitsyn declared, “knew very well for
what they were serving time, and they were unwavering in their convictions! They were the only ones, perhaps, to whom the camp philosophy did not stick.”19
It is impossible to underestimate the significance of a
prisoner comprehending and accepting the reason for
his own imprisonment. The man who sees his imprisonment as a trial of faith or as an opportunity to serve
has a far stronger defense against the dehumanization
and scheming cruelty that often accompanied ten, fifteen, or twenty-five years behind barbed wire. Father
Tavrion Batozsky, who had been in various prisons
and camps for around thirty years, exclaimed, “If you
only knew how grateful I am God for my wonderful
life!”20 Solzhenitsyn describes the Christians’ “self-confident procession through the Archipelago—a sort of
silent religious procession with invisible candles… A
steadfastness unheard of in the twentieth century!”21
The Gulag could not touch these people who were
sustained by their faith that they were loved by God.
Indeed, it would seem as though they truly lived out
Jesus’ statement that man does not live by bread alone,
for in refusing to cheat their fellow prisoners, to collaborate with the guards, or to bully their way to a needed
bowl of oatmeal, they did not receive enough bread to
live on. Their faith subjected them to other dangers, as
well; nuns were often held with prostitutes and thieves,
suffering sexual abuse from guards and prisoners alike.
Camp officials would frequently focus their attentions on and harass religious prisoners with greater
frequency and cruelty through various punishments,
tortures, and sexual assaults intended to dehumanize
their victims.22 Nevertheless, these believers were not
dehumanized, for they saw their worth in Christ, not
in the sadistic treatment they received at the hands
of the guards; they looked at the world from Christ’s
perspective and found their strength in forgiveness.
Upon being asked how he survived months of torture
without becoming embittered, Father Roman Braga
said, “God bless [the torturers], if there are still alive
some of them. I forgave them at that time… Jesus on
the Cross forgave them… they don’t know what they
do… We forgive them because we want them to come
to God and become people.”23 Priests, monks, and
other Orthodox Christians reached out to criminals in
many ways, sometimes even at the behest of camp officials. Because it made the guards’ jobs easier, priests
and monks were permitted and even encouraged in
the 1930s to “reeducate” non-believing prisoners by
[
Winter 2011 • The Dartmouth Apologia •
33
Watchtower
by the fence
of a gulag
compound.
introducing literature to them and discussing morality.24 Furthermore, the ministry of Christians was not
limited to these sponsored activities. Priests would
often nurse sick men, sometimes criminals, back to
health. Ivan Alexandrovich Sazikov, a criminal who
was cared for by Father Arseny, told the priest: “I don’t
trust people in general. I believe priests even less. But
you, Pyotr Andreyevich, I trust. I know you won’t turn
your back on me. You live in your God, you do good
not for your own benefit, but for the sake of others.”25
Sazikov eventually became a Christian upon witnessing this same priest successfully halt a violent fight be-
Instead of the mass exodus away from the Church
that the Soviet government expected to result from the
persecutions that were heaped on Christians, men and
women continued to flock together to devote their
lives to God. In 1923 a secret census undertaken by the
Bolshevik government reported 3,126,541 people were
involved in religious organizations, compared to the
1,737,053 in 1910. One must take into account the fact
that these numbers represent only the believers who
were not afraid to reveal their religious participation
to an atheist government census.28 As the population
aged and as children were forbidden to attend church
Many prisoners observed that their Christian comrades had strength
in their faith and yearned to share in that hope and comfort.
tween criminals in the name of God.26 This kindness,
courage, and power—which stood out so starkly in the
labor camps—won the attention and respect of many
criminal prisoners who had never witnessed such traits
while they were free. Intellectual dissidents who were
imprisoned alongside Christians also started to engage
in religious dialogues with them, often impressed by
the education and intelligence of priests. Alexander
writes, “It seemed that for many the concepts of
God, science, and ‘intelligentsia’ were becoming more
closely related.”27 Many prisoners observed that their
Christian comrades had strength in their faith and
yearned to share in that hope and comfort.
34 • The Dartmouth Apologia • Winter 2011 ]
services and were educated in an atheist school system, these numbers cannot be explained by a merely
cultural adherence to Christianity. Historian Dmitry
Pospielovsky concluded that by the 1980s, the percentage of believers had either very marginally declined
or was in fact higher than during the years 1915-1917,
when the tsar was still in power.29 The church in Russia
had not survived as a relic but as a strong community
of believers.
The growth of Christianity in the Soviet Union
is evidenced by first-hand testimony, by historians,
and by the preservation of the Christian population in Russia through seventy years of determined
persecution. Christianity withstood the trials of those
years, as it has many other times of suffering, because
the believers in the Soviet Union knew that the suffering inflicted on them because of their faith was no
more than Jesus had predicted and undergone himself.
In the prisons and camps, non-believing prisoners observed the indomitable faith held by the Christians,
and many began to seek God themselves. As it has for
the last two millennia, Christianity withstood state
persecutions and has re-emerged in Russia after decades of public suppression; the number of Christians
is still small, but growing.
unemployment, as it is expressed in Article 209.
“Hooliganism,” found in Article 206, was applied
to resistance to searches. The more serious charges
of “slandering the Soviet system” and “anti-Soviet
propaganda” carried prison terms, not fines.
14
Buss 112.
15
Matthew 13:12-13.
16
Mark 13:12-13.
Aleksandr I Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag
Archipelago 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary
Investigation, vol. 1, trans. Thomas P. Whitney,
(New York: Harper & Row, 1974) 131.
17
Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago
1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, vol.
2, trans. Thomas P. Whitney (New York: Harper &
Row, 1975), 626.
19
Ibid. 310.
20
Jennifer Jean Wynot, Keeping the Faith: Russian
Orthodox Monasticism in the Soviet Union, 1917-1939
(College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2004)
138.
21
Solzhenitsyn, vol. 2, 623.
22
Wynot 136.
18
Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe, “Christianity and
the Roman Empire,” BBC, 6 June 2010 <http://
www.bbc.co.uk/history/ ancient/romans/
christianityromanempire_article_01.shtml>.
2
Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity:
A Sociologist Reconsiders History (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1996) 6-9.
3
Gerald Buss, The Bear’s Hug: Christian Belief
and the Soviet State, 1917-1986 (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1987) 137.
1
Beyond Torture: The Gulag of Pitesti, Romania,
DVD (Worchester, Pennsylvania: Vision Video,
23
During the Second World War, the government
declared an armistice with the church in order to
unify and strengthen the country as much as possible
while fighting against the Nazis. The state also
sponsored initiatives to infiltrate and control the
4
2007).
24
Wynot 138.
25
Alexander and Vera Bouteneff, Father Arseny,
1893-1973: Priest, Prisoner, Spiritual Father, trans. Vera
Bouteneff (Crestwood: St Vladimir’s Seminary, 1998)
21.
26
Ibid. 23.
27
Ibid. 20.
Orthodox Church that met with some success.
Karl Tobien, Dancing under the Red Star
(Colorado Springs: WaterBrook, 2006) 7.
6
Philip Walters, “The Russian Orthodox
Church and the Soviet State,” The Annals of the
American Academy of Political and Social Science
483 (1986): 143.
7
William C. Fletcher, A Study in Survival: The
Church in Russia 1917-1943 (New York: Macmillan,
1965) 25.
5
Wynot 95.
Dimitry V. Pospielovsky, Soviet Studies on the
Church and the Believer’s Response to Atheism, vol. 3
(New York: St. Martin’s, 1988) 223.
28
29
Howard L. Parsons, Christianity Today in the
USSR (New York: International, 1987) 161.
9
Ibid. 162.
10
Alexander Veinbergs, “Lutherism and Other
Denominations,” Aspects of Religion in the Soviet
Union 1917-1967, ed. Richard H Marshall, Jr, Thomas
E Bird, and Andrew Q Blaine (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1971) 410.
11
Ibid.
8
12
Alexandra Heywood ‘11 is
from Potomac, Maryland.
She is a Russian Language
and Literature major.
Buss 104.
Ibid. 144. Religious activity charges are found
under Articles 142 and 227 of the Russian Socialist
Federal Soviet Republic (RSRSR) Criminal Code.
The civil and political charges are found under
Articles 70, 190:1, 206, and 209 of the RSRSR
Criminal Code. “Parasitism” effectively meant
13
[
Winter 2011 • The Dartmouth Apologia •
35
FREE WILL, PREDESTINATION,
AND THE VALUE OF CHRISTIAN DEBATE
by Anna Lynn Doster
T
hough debates within the church can
sometimes be harmful and divisive, the benefits of such debates are often overlooked. One
example of this is the perennial debate about the relationship between the concepts of free will and predestination and their relation to the doctrine of salvation. This debate is not a recent one; disagreement over
the extent to which our salvation is foreordained by
God played a large role in the Protestant Reformation.
During this time, the corruption and abuse of certain
church practices, particularly the sale of indulgences,
prompted European theologians to question both their
views on theology and the doctrines of the Roman
Catholic Church. Approaching the question from different angles, scholar Desiderius Erasmus and monk
Martin Luther each argued fiercely for his interpretation of the doctrine of salvation. Though their arguments were inconclusive, their resulting letters and
publications provided incentive for others to turn to
Scripture for a better understanding of God.
During the sixteenth century, there were several
competing views within the Catholic Church on the
relationship between these two concepts. Perhaps the
most prominent of these theories originated in the
writings of St. Augustine in the fourth century and was
expressed most fully by St. Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas
believed that God worked in men through the mode of
36 • The Dartmouth Apologia • Winter 2011 ]
their being, which in men is free. That is, since a stone
is not free and has no will, it does not cooperate with
divine direction, whereas a person, who possesses both
freedom and will, does cooperate with the justifying
grace which God bestows on him or her. Essentially,
St. Thomas believed both that God efficaciously saves
a person and that each person freely chooses to cooperate with God. Once a person freely chooses to accept
the grace given him or her by God, he or she receives
salvation. This salvation is then “work[ed] out… with
fear and trembling”1 for the rest of his or her life in the
process of sanctification and perfection.
Perfection occurs through the three theological
virtues, faith, hope, and charity. The virtue of charity in particular is perfected through the performance
of good works. The Catholic Church teaches that one
cannot enter into heaven until one has reached perfection, because nothing imperfect can enter the sight of
God. Therefore, if one were to die in a state of imperfection, one must be purified of those imperfections before entering Heaven; these imperfections are cleansed
in Purgatory. According to Catholic doctrine, every
sin carries both temporal and eternal punishment.
The eternal punishment of Hell is remitted through
salvation, but temporal punishment is not. Therefore,
Purgatory also functions as a place for the saved to
suffer temporal punishment for their sins. During the
Portrait of a young
Martin Luther.
eleventh century, the practice of granting indulgences
became more widespread. Indulgences are penances,
activities such as pilgrimages, or charitable donations
to the Church or to the poor which are undertaken in
order to lessen the temporal punishment due to sin.
However, by the sixteenth century this practice had
become corrupted and many people saw indulgences
as a way to buy salvation, a misconception which was
abused by some members of the Catholic clergy.
During the turn of the sixteenth century, the spread
of these abuses led many Renaissance thinkers to reevaluate their understanding of this doctrine. At the
time, “Religion was so much a part of all aspects of
life in medieval Europe that it is difficult to view it
as a separate element in itself.”2 Therefore, turbulence
within the church resonated throughout society at
large. Revelation of security in God’s grace as a result
of his faith led Renaissance thinker and monk Martin
Luther to doubt the practice of indulgences and
prompted his Ninety-Five Theses. The Ninety-Five
Theses were Luther’s catalogue of disagreements with
current practices of indulgence, which he posted on
the castle church in Wittenberg, in the Holy Roman
Empire, on Oct. 31, 1517. By criticizing the practice of
indulgences, Luther called into question the nature
of Purgatory which, in turn, led him to consider the
question of how salvation is effected.
Most troubling to Luther was the Church’s
perception of God. During his monastic studies,
Luther struggled to accept the perception of God
shared by many clergy of the time. He increasingly
focused on God’s anger toward sin and his own
imperfection, feeling that he would be unable to
meet the standard of perfection required for salvation. He found the concept of free will as it
was being taught to be overwhelming, because it
portrayed God as an implacable judge upholding
unattainable standards of perfection for mankind.
Luther found an answer to his dilemma in the
book of Romans and in particular Romans 1:17,
“For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first
to last, just as it is written: ‘The righteousness will
live by faith.’” From this, Luther came to the conclusion that justification came from faith alone.
Luther’s conviction that humans are justified
by grace through faith alone rather than by good
deeds and life without sin led to his adoption
of the concept of predestination. Rejecting the
Thomistic view as it was taught by his contemporaries, Luther maintained that God simply selects,
or predestines, certain people who are set aside for
salvation. Therefore, rather than gaining justification and perfection through the practice of virtue,
Luther believed that only faith is necessary to gain
salvation. Instead, “He who hesitates not to depend
wholly upon the good-will of God, he totally despairs
in himself, chooses nothing for himself, but waits for
God to work in him; and such an one, is the nearest
unto grace, that he might be saved.”3 Luther disagreed
with the notion of salvation through any means of
human will, even when that will is efficaciously acted
Luther believed that only
faith is necessary to gain
salvation.
upon by the grace of God. Instead, he believed that
God is willing to preserve the immortal soul of people
who remain susceptible to recurrent sin.4 Above all,
Luther believed that God should be seen as a loving
father, rather than as an angry judge. He did not wish
to radically challenge the Church’s position on the mechanics of life after death, but rather to bring about a
change in the contemporary perception of God.
Around the same time that Luther was developing his views on predestination, another thinker,
Desiderius Erasmus, also desired to change perceptions
within the Catholic Church. Erasmus shared Luther’s
dislike of the current practice of indulgences and published several works expressing his views and desire for
[
Winter 2011 • The Dartmouth Apologia •
37
reform. However, while Luther eventually began to criticize many aspects of the
Catholic Church, including its doctrine,
sacraments, priesthood, and hierarchy,
Erasmus limited himself to recommending methods of reforming Church practices. The sentiments published in his
Praise of Folly are identical to the desires
of Luther himself; namely for the church
to be “cleansed not destroyed.”5 Initially,
Luther viewed Erasmus as a potential
ally, sympathetic to his views. However,
as Luther’s relations with the Church
grew more heated and eventually led to a
decisive split, Erasmus chose to maintain
a position of neutrality while remaining
a Roman Catholic. He wrote that his
position arose from dislike of dissension,
“because it goes both against the teachings of Christ and against a secret inclination of nature. I doubt that either side
in the dispute can be suppressed without
grave loss.”6 Ironically, his impartiality
earned him accusations on both sides,
with insults from Luther and censorship
of his writings by the Catholic Church.
However, regardless of his disagreements
with the church’s practices and ad hoc
treatment, Erasmus held fast to Catholic
doctrine. His desire for reform stemmed
from his wish for the church to return to greater
orthodoxy.
Though he shared Luther’s desire for reform,
Erasmus nevertheless disagreed with the position he
took on the doctrine of salvation; his essay On Free
Will became an instigator of debate through a series
of letters and essays. While the two never met in person, their private correspondence throughout the years
gradually grew into a public debate through a series
of essays published between 1524 and 1526. Luther
responded to On Free Will with an essay entitled On
the Bondage of the Will; later, Erasmus continued the
debate in Hyperaspistes. Though unfortunately detrimental to the friendship of Luther and Erasmus, their
debates exposed abuses in the Church’s practices and
helped to bring about reform.
In On Free Will, Erasmus elaborates upon the
Catholic stance that when a Christian is born again,
the “will is changed, and being gently breathed upon
by the Spirit of God, it again wills and acts from pure
willingness and inclination and of its own accord.”7
That is, those who willingly accept God’s grace and receive the Holy Spirit into their lives thereby gain the
38 • The Dartmouth Apologia • Winter 2011 ]
Portrait of Desiderius
Erasmus by Hans
Holbein the
Younger 1497
will to freely serve and love God. To illustrate his belief, Erasmus points to II Timothy 2: 24-26:
And the Lord servant must not quarrel; instead,
he must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not
resentful. Those who oppose him he must gently instruct, in the hope that God will grant
them repentance leading them to a knowledge
of the truth, and that they will come to their
senses and escape from the trap of the devil,
who has taken them captive to do his will.
Erasmus pointed to the disobedient’s “[coming] to
their senses and escape from the trap of the devil” as
proof of man’s freedom of choice once they have received proper education and God’s gift of repentance.
With education, Erasmus believed, came a logical acceptance of the forgiveness of God. Man was therefore
redeemable through realizing the need for and desiring salvation, along with the acceptance of God’s grace
through Christ Jesus. Therefore, in his opinion, deeper
instruction of classical principles, rather than deep
theological revision, was needed to restore the Church.
Luther strongly opposed Erasmus’s views on free
will and the methods he proposed for reforming the
Church. In response to Erasmus, he compares free will
to “a beast of burden that either God or Satan rides.
The will is powerless to choose which rider will mount
it, ‘but the riders themselves contend for the possession
and control of it,’”8 and he believed God’s strength to
be far greater than Satan’s. However, this view leaves no
room for people to freely choose to accept the will of
God. Peter Thuesen writes in his book Predestination
that, to Luther, “predestination offered ‘beautiful,
wonderful comfort’ because it relieved humans of
the burden of saving themselves through their own
merit. The salvation of the elect was effected through
contributing to the convocation of the Council of
Trent, which lasted from 1545 to 1563. During these
years, the Catholic Church evaluated and published
their theological stances, including those on free will,
election, and indulgences. To this day, the church
maintains its stance on the freedom of the human will
under God’s grace. In both the Catholic Church and
in Luther’s new church, the debate over this issue led
to a renewed interest in examining theological truths.
Though Luther and Erasmus’s thoughts on predestination and free will contributed to the division between
In both the Catholic Church and in Luther’s new church, the debate over
this issue led to a renewed interest in examining theological truths.
the merit of Christ.”9 Christians therefore had every
reason to serve God out of love and gratitude rather
than fear of temporal or eternal punishment. Luther
believed that free will gave individuals the choice to
obey or disobey God in their daily lives but had no influence over their salvation. This view of salvation as an
undeserved gift fit with Luther’s conception of a God
who would sooner love his people than condemn their
faults. Luther turned to Paul’s Epistle to the Romans,
which contains the longest discussion of election in the
New Testament, to stress his belief in God’s complete
control. In his defense to Erasmus, Luther takes special
note of Romans 9: 19-21,
the Catholic and Lutheran churches, their arguments
did help to shed light on corrupt practices within the
church, as well as stimulating the intellectual life of the
church. Their example shows that while disagreements
in the church can lead to division, such debates are also
essential for maintaining the orthodoxy of the church
both in doctrine and in practice.
Philippians 2:12.
William Estep, Renaissance and Reformation,
(Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans
Publishing Company, 1986) 105.
3
Martin Luther and Henry Cole, The Bondage of
the Will (Lexington, KY: Feather Trail Press, 2009)
29.
4
Peter Thuesen, Predestination (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2009) 224.
5
Estep 112.
6
Mark Galli, 131 Christians Everyone Should Know
(B&H Publishing Group, 2000) 344.
7
Martin Luther, Ernest Gordon Rupp, Desiderius
Erasmus, and Philip Watson, Luther and Erasmus:
Free Will and Salvation (Louisville, KY: Westminster
John Knox Press, 1969) 140.
8
Thuesen, 224.
9
Ibid. 151.
1
2
One of you will say to me: “Then why does
God still blame us? For who resists his will?”
But who are you, O man, to talk back to God?
Shall what is formed say to him who formed
it, “Why did you make me like this?” Does
not the potter have the right to make out of
the same lump of clay some pottery for noble
purposes and some for common use?
Because God is represented as the potter and man as
the clay, Luther reasoned that man can do nothing
outside of the abilities imparted to him by God. This
doctrinal issue was of utmost importance to Luther; he
saw refusal to accept God’s complete control over mankind as equivalent to denying God entirely. His beliefs rendered reconciliation with any differing line of
thought impossible, and this obstinacy eventually led
Luther and his followers to leave the Roman Catholic
Church completely.
Both Luther and Erasmus’s writings influenced
contemporary views of doctrine and led to reform in
the Church and a gradual weeding out of corrupt practices. Luther’s growing number of sympathizers soon
led to the Protestant Reformation and establishment
of the reformed Lutheran Church. Erasmus’s writings raised awareness within the Catholic Church of
the need to examine and clarify doctrinal views, thus
Anna Lynn Doster ‘12 is from
Cameron, South Carolina.
She is an Asian Studies major
and Linguistics minor.
[
Winter 2011 • The Dartmouth Apologia •
39
A Prayer for Dartmouth
This prayer by professor of religion Lucius Waterman appears on a plaque hanging outside Parkhurst Hall.
O Lord God Almighty, well-spring of wisdom, master of power, guide of all growth, giver of all gain. We make
our prayer to thee, this day, for Dartmouth College. Earnestly entreating thy favour for its people. For its work,
and for all its life. Let thy hand be upon its officers of administration to make them strong and wise, and let thy
word make known to them the hiding-place of power. Give to its teachers the gift of teaching, and make them
to be men right-minded and high-hearted. Give to its students the spirit of vision, and fill them with a just
ambition to be strong and well-furnished, and to have understanding of the times in which they live. Save the
men of Dartmouth from the allurements of self-indulgence, from the assaults of evil foes, from pride of success,
from false ambitions, from hardness, from shallowness, from laziness, from heedlessness, from carelessness of
opportunity, and from ingratitude for sacrifices out of which their opportunity has grown. Make, we beseech
thee, this society of scholars to be a fountain of true knowledge, a temple of sacred service, a fortress for the
defense of things just and right, and fill the Dartmouth spirit with thy spirit, to make it a name and a praise that
shall not fail, but stand before thee forever. We ask in the name in which alone is salvation, even through Jesus
Christ our Lord, amen.
The Reverend Lucius Waterman, D.D.
The Nicene Creed
We, the members of The Dartmouth Apologia, affirm
that the Bible is inspired by God, that faith in Jesus
Christ is necessary for salvation, and that God has
called us to live by the moral principles of the New
Testament. We also affirm the Nicene Creed, with the
understanding that views may differ on baptism and
the meaning of the word “catholic.”
We [I] believe in one God, the Father, the
Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that
is, seen and unseen.
We [I] believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only
Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light, true God from
true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with
the Father. Through him all things were made.
For us and for our salvation he came down
from heaven: by the power of the Holy Spirit he
became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and was
made man. For our sake he was crucified under
Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried.
On the third day he rose again in accordance
with the Scriptures; he ascended into heaven and
is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will
come again in glory to judge the living and the
dead, and his kingdom will have no end.
We [I] believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the
giver of life, who proceeds from the Father [and
the Son]. With the Father and the Son he is
worshiped and glorified. He has spoken through
the Prophets. We believe in one holy catholic
and apostolic Church. We acknowledge one
baptism for the forgiveness of sins. We look for
the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the
world to come. Amen.
40 • The Dartmouth Apologia • Winter 2011 ]
Photo byKelsey Carter ‘12