By Fr. Patrick Henry Reardon
I believe that next to the scriptures themselves, the next best thing to read as a Christian is the lives of the saints. From the beginning Jews and Jews who became "Christians" have looked to their forefathers and mothers in the faith as examples, heroes and guides. A skim of Hebrews 10 and 11 confirms this, along with many other examples. But they did not gloss over the foibles and follies of the saints, but saw them examples of the grace of God working itself out in their lives. Fr Patrick's book on the saints is something of a primer for all Christians to help introduce us, or just to remind us, that we are part of a great cloud of witnesses that are not only fine examples of repentance, faithfulness and perseverance, but also of one Body with us in Christ our Lord. As the early Christians would say, "One Christian, no Christian." We are saved together as a body, while the only thing we can do alone is go to hell. There are 14 main sections that focus upon various types of personalities from the bible, both Old and New Testaments. Each section contains about 10 or 11 devotionals that are each about 3 pages long. Topics include repentant saints, loyal saints, saints in need of improvement, saints in worship, suffering saints, clever saints, interceding saints, saints under pressure, gentle saints, zealous saints, visionaries, questioners, and persevering saints. For Protestant readers who may feel uncomfortable with the idea of talking about "saints" in a way that sounds too "Catholic", they may ease into the idea by knowing that it is more like a hall of fame that is held up as an ideal, just as St. Paul says, "Imitate me as I imitate Christ." There is no competition between the honor we give to the saints and the worship we give to the Holy Trinity. Besides, "God is glorified in his saints," the Apostle declares in 2nd Thessalonians 1:10. Moreover, this book is only concerned with saints from the bible, so that is safe enough if you are hesitant. Who knows, maybe you will find yourself wanting to know what the disciples of the Apostles thought about the faith and how they lived and died for it. While I highly recommend Butler's Lives of the Saints (4 Volume Matched Set) , they can be rather bulky and intimidating, and expensive. On the other hand, this slim volume is sure to become a standard as it is both educational and devotional, aimed at nourishing the soul without breaking the bank. Readers may find the following books useful as well: Any Friend of God's Is a Friend of Mine, St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Francis of Assisi: With Introductions by Ralph McInerny and Joseph Pearce, Father Arseny, 1893-1973: Priest, Prisoner, Spiritual Father : Being the Narratives Compiled by the Servant of God Alexander Concerning His Spiritual Father.
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Friday, August 7, 2009
The Mystery of Chirst: Life in Death
By John Behr
St. Valdimir's Seminary Press
Several years ago I was in a museum in Brussels that featured several of the nation’s famous Flemish tapestries. The scenes were of landscapes, battles, family histories and biblical events. While I was standing there looking at one which depicted the story of creation from Genesis, my father told me to look behind to the other side. There I saw a gnarled and incoherent mess of colored thread. My father said something to the effect of, “There’s the other side of creation. The stuff the Holy Spirit hovered over.” For whatever reason, that moment with my dad stuck with me, but now, after reading The Mystery of Christ: Life in Death by John Behr, that experience in the museum many years ago has taken on a theological significance. How that is exactly takes a little explaining.
Behr begins with a quote from Kierkegaard: “We only understood life backwards, but we must live forwards.” This he takes as the starting point for his discussion on what “doing theology” in the manner of the Apostles and Fathers is exactly about, which, he argues, is often misunderstood or rejected today. He writes
Most modern expositions of theology exemplify Kierkegaard’s observation that we understand backwards, yet fail to take adequate account of this fact. That is, they begin with the results of the theological debates of the early centuries, especially Trinitarian theology and Christology, but separate these theological formulas from the way in which they were in fact learned and from the exegetical practice, the manner of using scripture, in and through which they were articulated.
So by starting with the wrong premises of a fixed Scriptural canon or defined dogma we are drawn away from the true hermeneutical lens of the crucified Christ and replace him with our own ideas of him, usually the result of post-Reformation debates about authority or post-modern debates about “the real meaning of the text.”
Such historicism, secular or Christian, either presupposes what it is trying to debate and understand, thus missing the Christological nature of scriptural interpretation inherent to the Apostles and Fathers, or it rejects the search as too far removed from the sources to allow for any encounter with truth (which can be argued away through various deconstructions concerning socially constructed meaning and linguistic contortions). Or, to return to my museum experience, it is assuming that the image on the tapestry, if it is to even be trusted as a representation of something true, is obvious and always known, not understanding the process of working from the back to the front, even though the Apostles and Fathers had only known the gnarled threads until the crucified Lord opened the scriptures to them in the breaking of the bread (Luke 24). So for the Apostles and Fathers, only God can reveal His ways to mankind and it is in the context of the broken bread, the Eucharist, that we encounter Christ, which rightly proclaims His death until He comes again (1 Corinthians 11:26). As Behr observes
It is these two complimentary ways, the engagement with the scriptures and the sharing in the Lord’s meal…that Paul specifies that he had received…and then handed down to later generations.
Our scientific and historic methodologies, useful as they are, must not be used as first principles in our encounter and understanding of God, even if we are the recipients or byproducts of a tradition that encountered God crucified in the flesh. Only by seeing the crucified Lord as the starting point for understanding salvation’s meaning could the Apostles and Fathers retrospectively grasp the meaning of the Jewish scriptures. Christ is read into the Old Testament; or, rather, the Old Testament is read out of Christ. Christ’s revealed meaning of His death is the rainfall that brings the scriptures to bear fruit. And without His Spirit, the veil will remain over our eyes when we read Moses and the Prophets, as it does for those who put their preconception of God before the revealed nature of his death and resurrection, serving as “a stumbling block for some and foolishness for others,” as it does most strongly for Muslims who claim that God would never be caught dead in a body, ironically limiting God to transcendence.
From this hermeneutical lens of Christ, Behr draws out the implications of such an approach as found in the Fathers and Apostles. First, Christ’s death is already a victory, not the unfortunate event that had to happen in order to get to the resurrection, and much less the necessary Anslemian price to pay in order to satisfy the wrath of the angry Father. “The empty tomb is the confirmation of the victory wrought upon the cross. Christ’s exaltation, the lifting up spoken of by Isaiah, is precisely his exaltation on the Cross…” As the Orthodox sing each Pascha, “Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death.” And it is in the context of his victorious suffering that he is revealed as I AM, the Christ of God that mere flesh and blood cannot reveal to us (John 8:28).
Secondly, Behr extends the centrality of the crucifixion of God to the very premise of creation, which leads into an insightful discussion about the nature of sin, death, free will and grace. He argues convincingly from the scripture and Fathers that the incarnation and crucifixion were the original intent of God when He created us. Christ is the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world, the revelation of God and the purpose of our creation. Thus the cross is the axis mundi, around which the world turns and history unfolds. Again, God’s incarnate suffering is the main point and “for this we were created.” Therefore the Fall is part of the economy of history, and history is a part of the economy of salvation. Again, the Fall is not the mistake that made it necessary for God to take upon himself our wounded nature, as if it were a backup plan that God came up with after He recovered from the initial shock of Adam and Eve’s fruit debacle. It is the felix culpa.
This is a point worth lingering on a bit more since it gives us an insight into the Apostle’s way of “doing theology” often so foreign to our own. Karl Barth once remarked that Calvin’s main problem was in the fact that in the end he separated Jesus Christ from God. I didn’t fully understand this until I thought about it in conjunction with Behr. This is something that I tend to do when I assume that the crucifixion didn’t have to happen. It is looking at history in a manner foreign to the Apostles and Fathers. To quote Behr:
But to do this [separating God from Christ] would be to envision creation without Christ, a creation in which, had human beings not sinned, there would have been no need for Christ. In short it would posit a hypothesis or first principle other than Christ himself, who, as the crucified and exalted Lord, opens the scriptures so that we can see the whole of creation and its history in his light. On this basis, the apostle Paul can view the sinfulness of human beings- and even the very creation of Adam, “as a type of the one to come,” and the light which shone in darkness- within the overall plan of God which culminates in the Passion of his Son. “For he has made known to us in all wisdom and insight the mystery of his will, according to his purpose which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth…the eternal purpose which he has realized in Christ Jesus, our Lord” (Eph 1:3-11).
Thus the Apostles worked backwards to understand the Old Testament, their only scriptures, and the very foundation and purpose of the world in the light of Christ crucified and exalted. “‘Salvation history’ is written from the perspective of the cross [unlike historical narratives about how it ‘really happened’], with its totality- creation, human sinfulness, the giving of the law, the preparation, and the work of salvation- simultaneously revealed in and through the proclamation of the crucified and risen Christ, the eternal plan of God.”
A third point Behr emphasizes is the role of the Church as our Virgin Mother, with the Virgin Mary, the Theotokos, as the symbol of this bringing forth of God into the world while still betrothed, again working backwards form the crucifixion, or from the “tomb to the womb.” While defining ecclesiology as such was not of primary concern to the Apostles or earliest Fathers (not until St Cyprian perhaps), the lived reality of the Church as their Mother was continually observed. Through our baptism and regular participation in the Eucharist, they posit, the Church gives us birth and nourishes our new life in Christ crucified and exalted, as we are united to his death in the hope of the glory to come, provided we suffer with him (to paraphrase St Paul). By giving full ontological meaning to the Church as the very body of Christ, moving it beyond a vague feeling in my heart regarding an invisible connection with other Christians, Paul and our fathers in the faith challenge us to be united in faith and love, sharing one Eucharist and one baptism.
For myself, the dominical prayer that all be one is imperative and central, since the unity of the Church is that of one bride (Christ is no polygamist after all), and Behr challenges me to rethink the “least common denominator” approach to the question of “What is Church?” If all of creation takes place for the sake of knowing and experiencing Christ crucified and exalted, and if the Apostles and Fathers have handed down by their blood this proper understanding, then perhaps I can give them more credit than I often do in relation to the question of sacraments, episcopacy and liturgy. Certainly the denominations can do a better job at manifesting this oneness of the Bride based upon a closer understanding and incorporation of the Patristic liturgical mind.
Lastly, Behr takes up the command to glorify God in our bodies. In a way it is the answer to the question “So what?” after reading the previous chapters. Just as Christ crucified is the center of life’s meaning and the revelation of God’s character, so our own participation in this death and life must be based upon our own small deaths and bearing of the cross. This section includes an extensive discussion on the nature of the passions, sin, death, grace, will and the resurrection–all of which are questions that engage in the importance of the material body as equally spiritual and essential to our humanity, as it is to Christ’s. The struggle to manifest the victory over sin and death, by the grace of God, comes down to our own cross bearing with the promise of glory and rest for those who finish the race.
In conjunction with this book, I would heartily recommend reading Marianne Thompson’s The God of the Gospel of John, Martin Hengel’s The Cross of the Son of God, Oskar Skarsaune’s Incarnation: Myth or Fact?, as well as the works of St. Irenaeus, the latter being extensively discussed by Fr. Behr’s work.
John Behr is a priest of the Eastern Orthodox Church, Dean and Professor of Patristics at St. Vladimir’s Theological Seminary, editor of the seminary’s theological journal and its Popular Patristics Series, as well as the author of several books and dozens of articles.
St. Valdimir's Seminary Press
Several years ago I was in a museum in Brussels that featured several of the nation’s famous Flemish tapestries. The scenes were of landscapes, battles, family histories and biblical events. While I was standing there looking at one which depicted the story of creation from Genesis, my father told me to look behind to the other side. There I saw a gnarled and incoherent mess of colored thread. My father said something to the effect of, “There’s the other side of creation. The stuff the Holy Spirit hovered over.” For whatever reason, that moment with my dad stuck with me, but now, after reading The Mystery of Christ: Life in Death by John Behr, that experience in the museum many years ago has taken on a theological significance. How that is exactly takes a little explaining.
Behr begins with a quote from Kierkegaard: “We only understood life backwards, but we must live forwards.” This he takes as the starting point for his discussion on what “doing theology” in the manner of the Apostles and Fathers is exactly about, which, he argues, is often misunderstood or rejected today. He writes
Most modern expositions of theology exemplify Kierkegaard’s observation that we understand backwards, yet fail to take adequate account of this fact. That is, they begin with the results of the theological debates of the early centuries, especially Trinitarian theology and Christology, but separate these theological formulas from the way in which they were in fact learned and from the exegetical practice, the manner of using scripture, in and through which they were articulated.
So by starting with the wrong premises of a fixed Scriptural canon or defined dogma we are drawn away from the true hermeneutical lens of the crucified Christ and replace him with our own ideas of him, usually the result of post-Reformation debates about authority or post-modern debates about “the real meaning of the text.”
Such historicism, secular or Christian, either presupposes what it is trying to debate and understand, thus missing the Christological nature of scriptural interpretation inherent to the Apostles and Fathers, or it rejects the search as too far removed from the sources to allow for any encounter with truth (which can be argued away through various deconstructions concerning socially constructed meaning and linguistic contortions). Or, to return to my museum experience, it is assuming that the image on the tapestry, if it is to even be trusted as a representation of something true, is obvious and always known, not understanding the process of working from the back to the front, even though the Apostles and Fathers had only known the gnarled threads until the crucified Lord opened the scriptures to them in the breaking of the bread (Luke 24). So for the Apostles and Fathers, only God can reveal His ways to mankind and it is in the context of the broken bread, the Eucharist, that we encounter Christ, which rightly proclaims His death until He comes again (1 Corinthians 11:26). As Behr observes
It is these two complimentary ways, the engagement with the scriptures and the sharing in the Lord’s meal…that Paul specifies that he had received…and then handed down to later generations.
Our scientific and historic methodologies, useful as they are, must not be used as first principles in our encounter and understanding of God, even if we are the recipients or byproducts of a tradition that encountered God crucified in the flesh. Only by seeing the crucified Lord as the starting point for understanding salvation’s meaning could the Apostles and Fathers retrospectively grasp the meaning of the Jewish scriptures. Christ is read into the Old Testament; or, rather, the Old Testament is read out of Christ. Christ’s revealed meaning of His death is the rainfall that brings the scriptures to bear fruit. And without His Spirit, the veil will remain over our eyes when we read Moses and the Prophets, as it does for those who put their preconception of God before the revealed nature of his death and resurrection, serving as “a stumbling block for some and foolishness for others,” as it does most strongly for Muslims who claim that God would never be caught dead in a body, ironically limiting God to transcendence.
From this hermeneutical lens of Christ, Behr draws out the implications of such an approach as found in the Fathers and Apostles. First, Christ’s death is already a victory, not the unfortunate event that had to happen in order to get to the resurrection, and much less the necessary Anslemian price to pay in order to satisfy the wrath of the angry Father. “The empty tomb is the confirmation of the victory wrought upon the cross. Christ’s exaltation, the lifting up spoken of by Isaiah, is precisely his exaltation on the Cross…” As the Orthodox sing each Pascha, “Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death.” And it is in the context of his victorious suffering that he is revealed as I AM, the Christ of God that mere flesh and blood cannot reveal to us (John 8:28).
Secondly, Behr extends the centrality of the crucifixion of God to the very premise of creation, which leads into an insightful discussion about the nature of sin, death, free will and grace. He argues convincingly from the scripture and Fathers that the incarnation and crucifixion were the original intent of God when He created us. Christ is the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world, the revelation of God and the purpose of our creation. Thus the cross is the axis mundi, around which the world turns and history unfolds. Again, God’s incarnate suffering is the main point and “for this we were created.” Therefore the Fall is part of the economy of history, and history is a part of the economy of salvation. Again, the Fall is not the mistake that made it necessary for God to take upon himself our wounded nature, as if it were a backup plan that God came up with after He recovered from the initial shock of Adam and Eve’s fruit debacle. It is the felix culpa.
This is a point worth lingering on a bit more since it gives us an insight into the Apostle’s way of “doing theology” often so foreign to our own. Karl Barth once remarked that Calvin’s main problem was in the fact that in the end he separated Jesus Christ from God. I didn’t fully understand this until I thought about it in conjunction with Behr. This is something that I tend to do when I assume that the crucifixion didn’t have to happen. It is looking at history in a manner foreign to the Apostles and Fathers. To quote Behr:
But to do this [separating God from Christ] would be to envision creation without Christ, a creation in which, had human beings not sinned, there would have been no need for Christ. In short it would posit a hypothesis or first principle other than Christ himself, who, as the crucified and exalted Lord, opens the scriptures so that we can see the whole of creation and its history in his light. On this basis, the apostle Paul can view the sinfulness of human beings- and even the very creation of Adam, “as a type of the one to come,” and the light which shone in darkness- within the overall plan of God which culminates in the Passion of his Son. “For he has made known to us in all wisdom and insight the mystery of his will, according to his purpose which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth…the eternal purpose which he has realized in Christ Jesus, our Lord” (Eph 1:3-11).
Thus the Apostles worked backwards to understand the Old Testament, their only scriptures, and the very foundation and purpose of the world in the light of Christ crucified and exalted. “‘Salvation history’ is written from the perspective of the cross [unlike historical narratives about how it ‘really happened’], with its totality- creation, human sinfulness, the giving of the law, the preparation, and the work of salvation- simultaneously revealed in and through the proclamation of the crucified and risen Christ, the eternal plan of God.”
A third point Behr emphasizes is the role of the Church as our Virgin Mother, with the Virgin Mary, the Theotokos, as the symbol of this bringing forth of God into the world while still betrothed, again working backwards form the crucifixion, or from the “tomb to the womb.” While defining ecclesiology as such was not of primary concern to the Apostles or earliest Fathers (not until St Cyprian perhaps), the lived reality of the Church as their Mother was continually observed. Through our baptism and regular participation in the Eucharist, they posit, the Church gives us birth and nourishes our new life in Christ crucified and exalted, as we are united to his death in the hope of the glory to come, provided we suffer with him (to paraphrase St Paul). By giving full ontological meaning to the Church as the very body of Christ, moving it beyond a vague feeling in my heart regarding an invisible connection with other Christians, Paul and our fathers in the faith challenge us to be united in faith and love, sharing one Eucharist and one baptism.
For myself, the dominical prayer that all be one is imperative and central, since the unity of the Church is that of one bride (Christ is no polygamist after all), and Behr challenges me to rethink the “least common denominator” approach to the question of “What is Church?” If all of creation takes place for the sake of knowing and experiencing Christ crucified and exalted, and if the Apostles and Fathers have handed down by their blood this proper understanding, then perhaps I can give them more credit than I often do in relation to the question of sacraments, episcopacy and liturgy. Certainly the denominations can do a better job at manifesting this oneness of the Bride based upon a closer understanding and incorporation of the Patristic liturgical mind.
Lastly, Behr takes up the command to glorify God in our bodies. In a way it is the answer to the question “So what?” after reading the previous chapters. Just as Christ crucified is the center of life’s meaning and the revelation of God’s character, so our own participation in this death and life must be based upon our own small deaths and bearing of the cross. This section includes an extensive discussion on the nature of the passions, sin, death, grace, will and the resurrection–all of which are questions that engage in the importance of the material body as equally spiritual and essential to our humanity, as it is to Christ’s. The struggle to manifest the victory over sin and death, by the grace of God, comes down to our own cross bearing with the promise of glory and rest for those who finish the race.
In conjunction with this book, I would heartily recommend reading Marianne Thompson’s The God of the Gospel of John, Martin Hengel’s The Cross of the Son of God, Oskar Skarsaune’s Incarnation: Myth or Fact?, as well as the works of St. Irenaeus, the latter being extensively discussed by Fr. Behr’s work.
John Behr is a priest of the Eastern Orthodox Church, Dean and Professor of Patristics at St. Vladimir’s Theological Seminary, editor of the seminary’s theological journal and its Popular Patristics Series, as well as the author of several books and dozens of articles.
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back
By Frank Schaeffer
Having been introduced to Frank Schaeffer's writings and opinions in his post-evangelical phase of life, after he embraced Eastern Orthodoxy as the cure all for the social and theological blunders and missteps of modernity (which, he makes sure we know, is the result of Protestant individualism), I was curious to read a biography, especially after the reviews I read decried it as a patricide of sorts.
After putting it down just now I feel that the critics are in part correct. He certainly pulls no punches in his colorful treatment of his at times pious and at time abusive father, who rants and rages at Frank's mother's expense, who herself plays the role of martyr to the fullest extent. But to be fair, he pulls no punches when it comes to himself, either: a teen who sees through his father's duplicity, who is always looking for sexual outlet, who gets his teenage lover pregnant, who gets his father to sell out to the American televangelists and the pro-life movement (which he helped create), who shoplifts pork chops in his underpants to get by after he turns his back on what he sees as the misuse of Christianity by the `name it and claim it' Pat Robertson's of televangelism, etc. You get the picture. Yes, he is brutally honest about his family, but also about everything.
The value I find in this book is not only the honesty that one would find in any good memoir, but its honesty about a topic that is rarely criticized from someone on the `inside'. I have great reservations about the forms of modern American Christianity being pandered about and this book serves as a both a warning and, for some, a personal corrective to its destructive and idolatrous personality cult tendencies. It also reveals how odd and pandering the community is to fads, always seeking the zeitgeist in its own peculiar and curious reappropriation of cultural movements to take hold of it in their schemes to make the gospel relevant by cloaking it in cheesy rock music, bracelets, objects on cars and any of the other kitsch that only serves to belittle the reality of Christianity, offering its opponents so much straw for their arguments.
Lastly, I didn't care much for the ordering of the book, which seemed more like individual reminiscences at times than a chronological account; but that is just my taste. There remains a coherence to the well-written story.
Having been introduced to Frank Schaeffer's writings and opinions in his post-evangelical phase of life, after he embraced Eastern Orthodoxy as the cure all for the social and theological blunders and missteps of modernity (which, he makes sure we know, is the result of Protestant individualism), I was curious to read a biography, especially after the reviews I read decried it as a patricide of sorts.
After putting it down just now I feel that the critics are in part correct. He certainly pulls no punches in his colorful treatment of his at times pious and at time abusive father, who rants and rages at Frank's mother's expense, who herself plays the role of martyr to the fullest extent. But to be fair, he pulls no punches when it comes to himself, either: a teen who sees through his father's duplicity, who is always looking for sexual outlet, who gets his teenage lover pregnant, who gets his father to sell out to the American televangelists and the pro-life movement (which he helped create), who shoplifts pork chops in his underpants to get by after he turns his back on what he sees as the misuse of Christianity by the `name it and claim it' Pat Robertson's of televangelism, etc. You get the picture. Yes, he is brutally honest about his family, but also about everything.
The value I find in this book is not only the honesty that one would find in any good memoir, but its honesty about a topic that is rarely criticized from someone on the `inside'. I have great reservations about the forms of modern American Christianity being pandered about and this book serves as a both a warning and, for some, a personal corrective to its destructive and idolatrous personality cult tendencies. It also reveals how odd and pandering the community is to fads, always seeking the zeitgeist in its own peculiar and curious reappropriation of cultural movements to take hold of it in their schemes to make the gospel relevant by cloaking it in cheesy rock music, bracelets, objects on cars and any of the other kitsch that only serves to belittle the reality of Christianity, offering its opponents so much straw for their arguments.
Lastly, I didn't care much for the ordering of the book, which seemed more like individual reminiscences at times than a chronological account; but that is just my taste. There remains a coherence to the well-written story.
God and the New Atheism: A Critical Response to Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens
By John F. Haught
For those interested in the relationship between science and religion, John Haught is no stranger. He is one of the leading thinkers in the field and is known for his thorough understanding of all sides of the discussion, combined with a sincere humility before the subject. This book illustrates once again why he is very much worth having as a partner in dialogue. Though coming in at only 107 pages of text, God and the New Atheism packs a punch, showing that the “new atheism” is new only in the sense that it is a pale version of the stronger and more honest atheists of the Nietzschian variety.
Among a great deal of others, topics include:
Why the new atheists misdefine “faith” as belief without evidence, thus creating a straw man that they can knock over. But as it typical of the new atheists’ philosophical inability to be self-reflexive, Haught points out that under such a definition the atheists own epistemology breaks down and becomes a very small circular argument. All systems of thought must presuppose something, which the new atheists never admit or come to terms with. This is a fatal flaw in their critique of religious knowledge, or even their definition of faith, since they make the same “leap of faith” with their own premises. In fact, if we were to follow Harris and Hitchens’ claim to rid the world of faith we would also have to discredit their own world view, since it is also a faith based system. The irony is thick, and one discovers it on page after page of Haught’s work
Why the critiques of religion as found in the new atheists are actually watered down versions of older arguments. For example, Hitchens claims to have some great insight when he states that religion is all projection. Oddly, this is a very old theory indeed, often called ‘idolatry’ by the religious.
The misuse of the concept of evidence. Harris is all about evidence, but he defines it narrowly as what can be known through scientific discovery, thus limiting the type of knowing available to humans (and again his approach is self-sabotaging and just a circular as any other). And again, this empiricist naturalism is not new, just rehashed Russell and Freud.
Why the new buddies don’t really follow their atheism to its logical conclusion, as their predecessors (Nietzsche, Camus, Sartre, Stalin) had done. Thiers is bland and promises a utopia just like the religions they seek to replace, yet this is absurd in the real sense. Rather, the logical application of such systems of thought would be what was seen in Soviet Russia. History shows the dots connected very clearly. Harris et al seek to lead their readers to believe that an atheistic world would be one moving toward justice and happiness and equality, even claiming that Martin Luther King Jr. would have been better off had he not been a Pastor, and that his activism was somehow unrelated, or even in spite of, his Christian beliefs, because religion poisons everything! Yet this Pollyannic leap of faith has no evidence of support. On the contrary, the body count of the 20th century shows the brutality of régimes that have no moral compass. As Dostoevsky prophesied, “If God does not exist, everything is permissible.” The only logical outcome of atheism, and the most predictable based upon the evidence, is nihilism. At least when theists did what was considered ‘wrong’ (a concept without meaning in atheism, just as ‘right’ means nothing), there was a standard by which to judge them. Such is not the case with atheism, since the standard of the conscience is the only rule, and that is proven to be only a socially conditioned instinct. Reread Dostoevsky. It almost becomes comical, were the stakes not so high, when I read the new buddies, with their moral imperatives to reject absolute morality. For those of us who know that their approach is fundamentally flawed and full of gas, it is hard not to laugh out loud on occasion. The only thing stopping too much jocularity on my part is the fact that so many folks buy into their account of the universe without really knowing what it is that they are rejecting.
The misuse of Occam’s Razor by Hitchens. Because he functions out of a dualism between scientific and religious ‘knowing’, at any point when an explanation for anything is required, he takes the scientific. But his mistake lies in his materialist leap of faith, showing that he is unable to understand the multiple layers of meaning found in reality. Haught demonstrates how this makes no sense by using the analogy of a reader. If the reader only understands the images on the paper from the scientific point of view (ink, paper, dye, etc) and not the intent of the author (symbolic meaning, ideas, etc), the reader would miss the point. Although the scientific explanation is true, it isn’t true to the exclusion of the author’s intent. Likewise, Occam’s Razor is used to distinguish explanations of the same kind, not to create a false dichotomy between levels of meaning.
Why the new buddies offer only a partial attack on fundamentalist Christians from the run of the century and nothing more, and certainly not a viable critique of historical, muscular Christianity. Again, the straw is flying as they paint Christianity as somehow debunked by Darwinism. Silly. It is intellectually dishonest to do so, but intellectual honesty, or at least consistency, is not a hallmark of the new buddies.
Why it is illogical to believe as the new buddies do that God could be tested for, as in a tube or laboratory. Besides, “If science itself is the only way to provide such independent assessment, then the quest for proper validation only moves the justification process in the direction of an infinite regress” (45).
Why atheists can indeed be moral and do great things for humanity, but not because of any absolute standard of atheism. No one denies this, but the new buddies try to be martyrs for the cause at every turn, so they pretend to suffer for their beliefs under the accusation that they are immoral. Pretentious.
Why their explanatory monism, as a leap of faith, creates a flat world and leaves no room for the possibility of a personal God who actually cares about anything or has any sort of will.
My only complaint is that the suggested reading is so sparse. Perhaps Haught didn’t want to overwhelm the read of an introductory book, but it seems to me that more could have been added. Lewis’ Miracles and Abolition of Man, Hahn’s Answering the New Atheism: Dismantling Dawkins' Case Against God, Discerning the Mystery by Andrew Louth, The Restitution of Man: C. S. Lewis and the Case Against Scientism by Mr. Michael D. Aeschliman, Does God Exist?: A Dialogue by Todd C. Moody, Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies by David Bentley Hart or Science and the Myth of Progress (Perennial Philosophy) by Merhdad M. Zarandi.
For those interested in the relationship between science and religion, John Haught is no stranger. He is one of the leading thinkers in the field and is known for his thorough understanding of all sides of the discussion, combined with a sincere humility before the subject. This book illustrates once again why he is very much worth having as a partner in dialogue. Though coming in at only 107 pages of text, God and the New Atheism packs a punch, showing that the “new atheism” is new only in the sense that it is a pale version of the stronger and more honest atheists of the Nietzschian variety.
Among a great deal of others, topics include:
Why the new atheists misdefine “faith” as belief without evidence, thus creating a straw man that they can knock over. But as it typical of the new atheists’ philosophical inability to be self-reflexive, Haught points out that under such a definition the atheists own epistemology breaks down and becomes a very small circular argument. All systems of thought must presuppose something, which the new atheists never admit or come to terms with. This is a fatal flaw in their critique of religious knowledge, or even their definition of faith, since they make the same “leap of faith” with their own premises. In fact, if we were to follow Harris and Hitchens’ claim to rid the world of faith we would also have to discredit their own world view, since it is also a faith based system. The irony is thick, and one discovers it on page after page of Haught’s work
Why the critiques of religion as found in the new atheists are actually watered down versions of older arguments. For example, Hitchens claims to have some great insight when he states that religion is all projection. Oddly, this is a very old theory indeed, often called ‘idolatry’ by the religious.
The misuse of the concept of evidence. Harris is all about evidence, but he defines it narrowly as what can be known through scientific discovery, thus limiting the type of knowing available to humans (and again his approach is self-sabotaging and just a circular as any other). And again, this empiricist naturalism is not new, just rehashed Russell and Freud.
Why the new buddies don’t really follow their atheism to its logical conclusion, as their predecessors (Nietzsche, Camus, Sartre, Stalin) had done. Thiers is bland and promises a utopia just like the religions they seek to replace, yet this is absurd in the real sense. Rather, the logical application of such systems of thought would be what was seen in Soviet Russia. History shows the dots connected very clearly. Harris et al seek to lead their readers to believe that an atheistic world would be one moving toward justice and happiness and equality, even claiming that Martin Luther King Jr. would have been better off had he not been a Pastor, and that his activism was somehow unrelated, or even in spite of, his Christian beliefs, because religion poisons everything! Yet this Pollyannic leap of faith has no evidence of support. On the contrary, the body count of the 20th century shows the brutality of régimes that have no moral compass. As Dostoevsky prophesied, “If God does not exist, everything is permissible.” The only logical outcome of atheism, and the most predictable based upon the evidence, is nihilism. At least when theists did what was considered ‘wrong’ (a concept without meaning in atheism, just as ‘right’ means nothing), there was a standard by which to judge them. Such is not the case with atheism, since the standard of the conscience is the only rule, and that is proven to be only a socially conditioned instinct. Reread Dostoevsky. It almost becomes comical, were the stakes not so high, when I read the new buddies, with their moral imperatives to reject absolute morality. For those of us who know that their approach is fundamentally flawed and full of gas, it is hard not to laugh out loud on occasion. The only thing stopping too much jocularity on my part is the fact that so many folks buy into their account of the universe without really knowing what it is that they are rejecting.
The misuse of Occam’s Razor by Hitchens. Because he functions out of a dualism between scientific and religious ‘knowing’, at any point when an explanation for anything is required, he takes the scientific. But his mistake lies in his materialist leap of faith, showing that he is unable to understand the multiple layers of meaning found in reality. Haught demonstrates how this makes no sense by using the analogy of a reader. If the reader only understands the images on the paper from the scientific point of view (ink, paper, dye, etc) and not the intent of the author (symbolic meaning, ideas, etc), the reader would miss the point. Although the scientific explanation is true, it isn’t true to the exclusion of the author’s intent. Likewise, Occam’s Razor is used to distinguish explanations of the same kind, not to create a false dichotomy between levels of meaning.
Why the new buddies offer only a partial attack on fundamentalist Christians from the run of the century and nothing more, and certainly not a viable critique of historical, muscular Christianity. Again, the straw is flying as they paint Christianity as somehow debunked by Darwinism. Silly. It is intellectually dishonest to do so, but intellectual honesty, or at least consistency, is not a hallmark of the new buddies.
Why it is illogical to believe as the new buddies do that God could be tested for, as in a tube or laboratory. Besides, “If science itself is the only way to provide such independent assessment, then the quest for proper validation only moves the justification process in the direction of an infinite regress” (45).
Why atheists can indeed be moral and do great things for humanity, but not because of any absolute standard of atheism. No one denies this, but the new buddies try to be martyrs for the cause at every turn, so they pretend to suffer for their beliefs under the accusation that they are immoral. Pretentious.
Why their explanatory monism, as a leap of faith, creates a flat world and leaves no room for the possibility of a personal God who actually cares about anything or has any sort of will.
My only complaint is that the suggested reading is so sparse. Perhaps Haught didn’t want to overwhelm the read of an introductory book, but it seems to me that more could have been added. Lewis’ Miracles and Abolition of Man, Hahn’s Answering the New Atheism: Dismantling Dawkins' Case Against God, Discerning the Mystery by Andrew Louth, The Restitution of Man: C. S. Lewis and the Case Against Scientism by Mr. Michael D. Aeschliman, Does God Exist?: A Dialogue by Todd C. Moody, Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies by David Bentley Hart or Science and the Myth of Progress (Perennial Philosophy) by Merhdad M. Zarandi.
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