Catching my drift.

The banner at the top of this site declares, "This is a theology and philosophy blog written by an non-theist". I’m not sure that non-theist is the best descriptor for me anymore. I think I’m drifting…

With blog posts like “God : what are we talking about”, and  "Beyond Logical Theology"  I have been investigating the middle ground between theist and non-theist. 

Sometimes that means showing how we all “worship” something and sometimes its about showing that we all have to operate without that something in hand. The classic one is truth. Whenever we argue for truth we are worshipping it in a way, but we don’t possess it. Hence we all function as both theists and atheists, living with and without “god”, all the time. To agree with that you will probably have to smudge and stretch your old concepts of god. I know I did.

That’s how I encountered a type of goddish concept I believe in. It’s taking me a long time to articulate though. In fact I would say this is a process of discovery that really kicked off with "Worshipping a Small God" well over a year ago. I was told my concept of god was too small. I found that a profoundly challenging concept. Hence I wrote a post that asks “What does it mean to separate God from their hugeness? What does it mean to worship a powerless source of good or a small god?”

I had previously put God into one of two categories. First there is the God who commands the unraveling of all history for their own glory and threatens us in a first person voice through their holy books. They still strike me as a spooky side-show attraction, at best. At worst they are a demonic evil that we ought to oppose no matter what.

The other category for God is an impersonal one. They are something non-material, non-rational and just as irrelevant. Plato called them the unmoved mover. Physicists and philosophers have used this God throughout history as a tool to make their sums work. They’re like “dark matter” on legs. I’ve never denied the existence of this kind of God. I just tend to think that we should call them something else like the Tao or Quantum energy. The word God evokes too personal a figure for many people including me, to use here.

What I’m beginning to contemplate is something which borrows from the impersonal god concept their field like characteristics. Fields are like a force in natural science however rather than being created at a particular point, spending their energy and then extinguishing, fields continue. They are continuing qualities of space and time. Gravity is a field rather than a force. It has no beginning or end.

What I am taking from the personal god concept is that this field has an interest in life. This field values certain ways of engaging with life over other ways. As I put this into words I feel uncomfortable with it. I’m ready to take it back. Am I really saying that I believe in a cosmic field that cares? You can see why the non-theist label is slipping. (You can also see some of these thoughts developing in " A moral world".

So how have I got to this point? A significant first step is in recognizing that morality underpins everything. You can’t have science without a concept of good and bad science. You can’t be a scientist without having outrage at flagrant superstition. Science is at its heart a moral enterprise before it is even begun.

This is true of all thought. Morality has to precede thought, or surround it, or sustain it (choose your metaphor) because otherwise you can’t have good thought and bad thought. Before you can think, you have to care about thinking.

Now you could say that this caring is just some evolved characteristic of our brains. You could certainly make the case for its usefulness to encourage learning. When we care we pay attention. However, even if you recognize it as merely evolutionarily expedient to give a damn about the world, you can’t shake it off. If you try to you’ll crash all your other functions of thought as a consequence.

Even if it didn’t do that it, rejecting morality would “be” wrong. That’s something I explored in "It's OK to Kill" The wrongness of throwing away your morality precedes anything else and persists even after you have thrown away your morality. I believe that’s because the wrongness is not a product of our individual morality but an observation of the moral field from which our morality is drawn.

Woah…hold on. Morality as a pre-existing field in which all other thought (and intentional activity) is sustained; that’s pantheism not non-theism. The key distinction is that in pantheism everything is connected by something akin to a single perspective. The theos is that connective aspect. Perhaps perspective is too strong a word. Perhaps moral orientation is a better term. As I said in The Problem of Evil if you believe in an underlying moral nature to the world you are at least pseudo-theistic.

Historically one of my key reasons for being a non-theist is that disconnection makes the most sense of the world. I still feel like there’s something to emphasise there. Viruses and floods and monkeys have separate causes and purposes. They intersect to create the web of life but they aren’t in any way part of a gaian hive mind. They aren’t intentionally working in concert but are just made to work in some kind of concert by sharing an environment. That is part of the splendor of the world to me.

However now I’m talking about something that is a single will – the will for good – that permeates at least intelligent life. By intelligent I mean whenever life is making conscious choices. Choices require some level of thought and thought exists in a moral field.

A reasonable objection to all of this is that it isn’t real. I am only describing feelings and to be honest those feelings have contradictory feelings as well. My response to this objection is that asking if God is real is a different question for different concepts of God. If God is a bloke with a staff on a chair then they ought to have the sort of reality you can poke a stick at. If god is a moral field in which everything makes sense then the stick test doesn’t work. In fact I would go so far as to say that if you’re hung up on whether god is real you’re missing my point entirely. Is love real?

None of this means that I have any more time for the idea that we are born under Adam and Eves original sin for example. I also still don’t believe in reincarnation or any  enduring self after death I’m certainly not saying a) there is a moral field so b) when Paul the apostle tells women their voice in church is a disgrace they ought to believe him. That’s a lot of leaps, in the wrong direction too.

What I am able to do is enter into religious stories in a different way. I’m understanding the resurrection for example in a way that I wouldn't have before. People sometimes talk about the resurrection as an event that can’t be taken non-literally without losing all meaning. I wonder how the transformed body of Jesus can be considered literally at all. What does literally walked through walls mean? Think about it; it’s not walking as we know it that’s for sure.

Instead of worrying about the atomic weight of a risen Jesus, I am considering how whenever we act with moral intent we are acting in a way that is out of the normal flow of time and space. There is something eternal about compassion and embracing a life of compassion attaches us to that eternity. (Just think about when you do something good for a stranger.) Hence the promise of an eternal life for those who embrace love of others is true – it was never going to be sitting on a cloud but it’s still true.

This is a journey I’m on. Writing this blog puts that journey out into a public space. I don’t mind how that puts me at risk of public contradiction. I see it as growth.

You can expect that I will grow from this point too. I may recant everything I’ve written here and in the posts I've linked to. That would be surprising. For the moment I wonder if I need to change this blogs description at the top. Pretty please comment with your suggestions for a new tag line.

UPDATE: Currently cycling through some options. For reference the original description of the blog was;

This is a theology and philosophy blog written by an non-theist who has a deep respect for sincere theism.

Expect arguments that intelligent and integritous people exist on both sides of this supposed divide between atheism and religion.

I also aim to do theology and philosophy which is both humble and yet trying to be wonderful in the existential tradition.

(Original artwork from www.ambernowak.org/ )

A dialogue on Eeeevil.

My last post discussed "The Problem of Eeevil". My brother Simon wanted to reply to the topic but as his reply exceeded the word limit he published it on his own blog. My reply to my brother was also too long for any comments section so here it is as its own post.

It's always very exciting to discuss these issues further. It lets me clarify my thinking even if only for myself. I hope that's not too self-indulgent for any other readers.

I also get to spell out that I'm not really trying to set a logic trap for God, I think the problem of evil is a problem for objective morality ultimately. Further I think there is no easy solution. As my brother points out subjectivity has its own problems too.

Lastly one thing that lies outside both my and my brothers positions is the idea of a plurality of Gods which aren't absolutely Good. Basically we're both pretty much throwing the Pagans in with the non-theists in these posts based on our definition of theism. Ummm...sorry?

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Simon,

I am prepared to accept that the definition of evil is opposition to a perfect Good whom many including yourself (I think) call God. I realize I’m paraphrasing you here but it’s to relate it back to my post.

I don’t think this means that evil’s existence ceases to be a problem. The problem becomes where does “the will to oppose god” come from? Is it our invention? Did we think it up with our imagination? Does it issue from a rival God like power? Or paradoxically from a perfectly Good God themselves?

You see my question isn’t just why does God permit opposition to Good (evil) but how do we understand its source. How we can say that opposition to Good/God comes from a source other than Good/God and also say “God created everything without any competition and God continues to govern everything without any rival.”?

To express all this in a way you might be more familiar with, it is sometimes said that "our heart" is the source of our opposition to God. But is our heart capable of originating anything, of actually coming up with something new on its own? Is it a source? Or does everything only have one source in God?

Now firstly I need to say this isn’t and can’t be a fight between theists and non-theists. I make the cheeky and sneaky claim that once a non-theist moves away from moral subjectivity to moral absolutism then they have become a kind of theist (pantheist or deist). They can question the existence of evil but they also have to answer it. I also say that if a theist accepts that God doesn’t control the unfolding of history except through us then they have the kind of theism than a non-theist shouldn’t be bothered objecting to. I could also go further than I have and say that if the supreme rule of the universe (God) is not a moral character then they become a bit like physics and less like theism. Such a God is morally at least uninteresting. Let’s test them with science and be done with it. These are all bold claims but designed to show that these two opposites (theism and non-theism) essentially meet around the resolution of this issue. But where they meet is at different points.

To the body of your post… I think you are playing a bit of sleight of hand with the concept of free will. Perhaps it would be better to use the word “choice.” We do only hold people accountable for actions if they have made a choice.

So if we concede that people have choice then I set out how Good/God’s sovereignity is compromised by that in two ways. First by the internal nature of our relationship to Good/God;

“At the end of time all of us may be singing God’s praises regardless of our free will (choice). However, free will (choice) would still mean that at least two possible choices exist - we chose to be there or we were compelled.”

Note I have given God more power here than you seem to have. You seem to suggest that God’s sovereignty is unchallenged due to their capacity to hold us to account for evil choices but that is only power after the fact and only to punish. In such a situation we humans could radically change the end of history by all choosing to go to hell to spite God.

Secondly I raise what God’s sovereignty means to us – that our fate is in God’s hands. This is at stake if evil is a choice. If we believe God has ceded control to human choice even if only temporarily then our position is experientially no different to someone who doesn’t believe in God. Good/God is absent and cannot be relied upon to save us.

I do state that there are solutions to these issues. I am not proving God is impossible here. In fact I pretty much give a nod to a position I don’t hold but admire; that absolute goodness (God if you will) is deeply present in the world but not directly powerful.

As to God’s goodness the question I’m posing isn’t so much about why is God permitting evil as whether or not God is authoring it.  Did Hitler and co. come up with the idea of the holocaust in opposition to God’s plan for the twentieth century (and God wept) or did God come up with it? If the Nazi’s came up with it independantly of God then, at least in terms of those affected by it, God is not the only creator of human history. If God came up with it then God’s goodness is weakened considerably.

Now you may say that God’s goodness is unweakened by their being the author of the holocaust because our standards of good and evil can’t be thrown at God in that way. In which case you are standing in the middle of the nazi crowd yourself unable to say this is evil; the position you put me in actually.

Now the other bold claim I make is to say that even just calling Good essentially logical (or common sense) is to put non-theists in the same predicament as theists re: the problem of evil. It is perhaps wrong to say that this leaves them with only moral subjectivity as a solution. I could possibly come up with as many varied answers as I did for theists.

However it is precisely the realization that it is possible for educated, well fed, church going citizens to stand in the midst of a nazi crowd and call it good that caused Western philosophy to acknowledge the terrible truth of moral subjectivity. What was even more heartbreaking for atheistic left wing intellectuals were the horrors of Stalinism. Nobody wants to believe that their moral opinions are the consequence of their crowd but it’s historically evident that they can be. This is why I continue to plead for empathy over any moral system of statements about what is true evil.

Basically Simon I agree you stand on firmer ground when you believe that moral statements are discoverable facts. It allows you to "know" that all manner of things are either right or wrong. Perhaps you even feel that matters of degree such as how much we give to charity or spend on our luxuries have a morality that is a discoverable fact as well. It certainly indulges our instincts to feel that way. The alternative is a self-questioning shaky ground.

As you rightly point out it is a place with many problems…to quote you;

“…Why fight evil if it doesn’t really exist? Why do I feel that evil and right and wrong does exist if it is just an illusion? Am I comfortable with the idea that my concept of evil may just as well be good in a different time or place or culture? If there is no God then where is there any hope that evil will not win? If there is no God where is there any hope that evil will one day be fully dealt with?”

Once we see that our moral objectivity may just be a tempting illusion that’s exactly the rough road ahead .

Testify!

Whatever’s the opposite of writers’ block I’m suffering from it. I just seem to keep on writing and writing without much editing capacity and the results are not so good.

The following is one of several posts I’ve been working on and they all seem to have no end in sight. It’s scaring me. So I’m posting in the hope I break the trend. I don’t think it’s too painful to read but you could skip to the “aside” at the end if your short on time and you’d get the gist.

______________________________________________________________________________  

One of the perennial challenges of discussing spirituality with other people is when you encounter the person who expects you to treat their experience of the spiritual as evidence – the testimony as proof.

Just the fact's, Mam.

I’m fairly liberal when it comes to what constitutes evidence; I think we should compose our opinion of the world and god based on our experiences even if they aren’t repeatable under controlled conditions. Other peoples’ experiences that aren’t repeatable or even independently observable should also be allowed to influence our world view. That doesn’t mean that there is no standard to testimony at all however. It doesn’t mean someone can make any kind of assertion as their experience and call it proof.

If you want a testimony to be credible and evidential to other people you need to actually talk in facts. These facts are not interpretations of events but the “stuff” that leads into the interpretation. This includes subjective feelings, heck it can even include thoughts but those thoughts are treated as events. Here’s a basically decent testimony of a premonition complete with feelings and thoughts as events;

“I was walking along the beach on a sunny day and I felt a cold chill along my spine. Although I felt fine I had a thought pop into my head that I could die soon. I decided not to go swimming. Later I read the reports of shark attacks that day.”

Because the testimony stuck to facts we can consider them and come to our own conclusion. We can also spot missing details. An obvious question that comes to mind is whether there are frequent shark attacks at that beach or not. Another obvious question is whether the person avoids swimming for fear of death most days or just that day. Is this the one in a million premonitions that came true? Personally I don’t believe in premonitions however if there were rarely any shark attacks at that beach and if this person regularly swam there then this testimony would weaken my disbelief.

Here is a terrible example of a testimony;

“I have experienced Gods touch, his love and his mercy over and over again. Recieving his Holy Ghost, and being renewed are times I will never forget. Being able to be in his prescence should never be taken for granted. God has blessed me tremendously as a young person...” from http://www.wordsoftestimony.com/

This person has just strung together a series of conclusions with none of the “stuff” that led into them. “I have experienced God’s touch” and “God has blessed me” are interpretations of facts. Those facts may have been the sensation of a touch or a lift in mood or a run of good luck but the attribution of them to God is the conclusion. Jumping to conclusions adamantly and repeatedly is not good testimony.

I’ve included a decent testimony about a psychic phenomenon and a poor testimony about Christianity deliberately (and without difficulty). This is because a particular type of Christianity is the religion par excellence for both privileging the testimony as proof and doing it badly. This particular type of Christianity is labelled Evangelical; those churches of the Wesleyan legacy and the American revivalist traditions and their numerous offshoots. Due to their prominence in America these groups have had profound influence across the western world so much so that many denominations outside of a strict category of Evangelist contain members with a similar flavour.

The evangelical tradition is the inspiration for many amazing elements of modern Christianity. Although other Christians also opposed European slavery it was evangelicals who turned the tide. Many of the suffragettes were evangelicals. The Salvation Army is also born of the evangelical movement as was Alcoholics Anonymous, the YMCA, the social work profession, many Christian peace movements and so on. Evangelicals have challenged other Christians to roll up their sleeves and involve themselves in the need around them. Evangelical churches reversed a nineteenth century European trend that church was for the wealthy by growing new churches among the poor. In the case of African Americans and Hispanics, along with the missionary movement in Asia and Africa (a mostly evangelical enterprise) this has challenged the ethnic and geographical centre of Christianity as European.

The evangelicals also expanded Christian liturgy. Most Protestant Hymns were just reworked psalms prior to Evangelicals. Pop music and church music were very separate. An evangelical liberality in worship styles brought forth both Amazing Grace, and O When the Saints Go Marching In. Today Christian Heavy Metal, Rock, Folk and R&B music all owe their acceptance to evangelicals. On the one hand Evangelicals gave us the alter call, estatic worship and mega-churches. On the other the small home church and the pub church go back to them too.

Lastly personal testimony as evidence is also a legacy of this movement. Due to its evangelical nature (which means to spread the gospel) non-christians encounter personal testimony more so than quieter expressions of Christianity. Some people first encounter it on t.v. on many Christian panel shows or when approached by a street preacher or at a drop-in youth group. In such cases there may be no other knowledge of Christianity to compare it to even when the viewer converts. Subsequently modern generations of Christians see personal testimony as a core element of Christianity even though it plays little part in Orthodox, Catholic, High Anglican, Lutheran and Presbyterian traditions historically.

Personal testimony is so central in evangelical Christianity it can rival and exceed the importance of scripture. From About.com:Christianity;

“Skeptics may debate the validity of Scripture or argue the existence of God, but no one can deny your personal experiences with him. When you tell your story of how God has worked a miracle in your life, or how he has blessed you, transformed you, lifted and encouraged you, perhaps even broken and healed you, no one can argue or debate it. You go beyond the realm of knowledge into the realm of relationship with God.” (Their emphasis)

That’s an insanely privileged place for personal testimony to hold. I’m not even sure what the last sentence means exactly but you know it’s good. I can’t think of any other faith outlook that puts personal testimony on such a high pedestal except the equally conversion orientated Seventh Day Adventists or interestingly aggressive atheism.

As for doing it badly Christians who testify seem to suffer under an obligation to say that there is nothing metaphorical at all about their meeting Jesus. Some will tell you it was a real meeting of a real person, as real as they are meeting you. Those people will then say that Jesus entered their heart. Now either one of those statements is false or there would have been a god-awful mess. This obligation to effectively lie is the consequence of first of all the privileging of personal testimony amongst evangelical Christians. A personal meeting with God can in some churches be the difference between a real Christian and a pending one. This can even be referred to as a second baptism (baptism being a Christians ritual introduction to membership) so that without such a meeting you are only a nominal member. This pressures an evangelical Christian to amplify the personal basis of their faith.

I also think there is a wider cultural bias about the right basis for belief that Christians must contend with and that newer denominations are themselves riddled with. Perhaps it’s a by-product of the cultural reach of American individualism or maybe it’s a consequence of empiricism as the default way of knowing; maybe it’s the inevitable effect of Protestantism feeding back into itself; maybe it’s just diversity in the spiritual marketplace and our consumer role in it. Whatever the cause, we seem to expect people to believe in God for unique individual reasons in a way that was less common for people only a few generations ago. In addition this experience must be absolutely non-metaphorical. It must conform to direct sensory perception. This certainly afflicts the newest faith on the block, popular atheism, which equally treats a personal and empirical experience of God as the sole legitimate basis for belief. Christians who rise to this criticism of their faith are obliged to produce such an experience of God.

Personal testimony is also a key element of the other new faith which competes in the western world with Christianity –New Age beliefs. The problem for Christianity (as I see it) is those phenomenons included as New Age are just so much more amenable to this kind of evidential testimonial treatment. Whether it’s a premonition as testified to above, or psychic pets or the recollection of past lives these are phenomenons which are happily reducible to facts. They are discrete chains of cause and effect distinct from every day life with each link able to be described independently of the observer.

In fact New Age beliefs seem to me to be exactly those aspects selected from a range of broader traditions which are amenable to evidential testimony. Crystal healing are removed from any broader understanding of how spiritual and physical overlap. The I Ching is used to divine without a broader appreciation of Chinese thought. The New Age movement takes the rituals of Paganism or Wicca and throws them into a toolkit of “useful” things from completely different worlds such as an Egyptian motif tarot deck. Each selection though is pseudo-scientific enough to provide the basis for evidentiary testimony.

The experience of sinfulness and salvation, of changes in what seems important and insight into one’s own behaviour are never going to fit neatly into the sort of testimony that constitutes evidence because these are not independent facts occurring at discrete moments in time in chains of cause and effect. This may be why such elements of faith outlooks like Wicca are left out of New Age toolkits. Perhaps this is also why when such Christian experiences are competing with new age stories then the metaphorical language which sums up the whole experience has to be turned into a series of mundane facts, e.g. I met Jesus. He spoke to me. This would explain why such testimonies are so hollow of detail such as the sound of Gods voice or where they touched you; because these mundane facts are really metaphors.

Ultimately if Christianity remains committed to evidentiary testimony it will evolve Christianity into the type of faith that evidentiary testimony can express. Healings, prophetic messages (inspired premonitions) and full sensory experiences of a walking, talking Jesus will be more central to the faith because that is what can be talked about in a testimonial format. In those churches which most think of testimony as evidence we can already see this trend. It’s a sort of New Ageing of Christianity just as other faith outlooks have suffered.

On my very first post on this blog I expressed an interest in hearing about people’s experience of God. That interest remains and I’ve certainly heard a few experiences since then. I’ve written this post partly because I’m getting tired of slippery language that insists on being taking seriously without a standard for what evidential testimony is. But more so because I don’t like what the trend towards that language is doing to Christianity, a faith tradition I admire.

There are amazing stories to be shared by Christians. There are lives lived differently in response to a big idea like love one another and a reliance on faith to maintain that commitment. There is the feeling of coming home to the faith, of being disconnected without it and of understanding oneself best in the language of Christianity. I am more interested in these stories than those miraculous evidentiary moments that some seem to think an atheist needs to hear. But if you do insist on telling me that a corporeal Jesus held your hand then I will expect you to remember left or right.

An aside...(probably the best bit)

The Gospels contain a fascinating story about an apostle who needed personal physical proof of Jesus’ resurrection. Thomas is called the doubting apostle but it would be fairer to say that he is disbelieving. Without any doubt at all Thomas thinks that the other apostles are talking rubbish when they say that Jesus is alive. And Thomas has a pretty high standard of proof before he’ll change his mind.

Jesus then appears to the apostles, in a locked room none the less, and in accord with Thomas’ demand for proof places Thomas hand in the wound in his side.

Here’s the thing; I identify with Thomas. I like a guy who needs to experience something for himself all bloody and mucky too. In fact the comments about atheists and their privileging of personal experience in this piece are about myself. However I also think that this need is warping Christianity by producing false testimonies of Thomas like experiences. On the one hand I won’t believe until my hand in is in his side. On the other I don’t think Christians should make that the focus of their faith. Am I having my cake and eating it too here? What do I really want Christians to do?  Whatever it is I hope they don’t care enough to jump to it.

Science vs God (and The Coffee Table).

I was involved in a recent exchange of ideas which seemed to me to have at its heart a gross misconception about Science. The issue was whether Science could prove that God doesn’t exist. At the same time my partner is reading a book which describes Catholic opposition to birth control as superstition (implying that support for birth control would be scientific by contrast). I thought its time to set the record straight about what “science” does and how it does it. Unfortunately there’s no “straight” record of science to go by.

Science is itself a subject of sociological study. If you take Levi Strauss perspective then Science extends back into the proverbial mists of time. “Primitive” [1] science is just trial and error with some memory of results. “Modern” science is not so different – the note taking systems are usually more regulated and the questions are less concrete  at times – but the principle is the same.

In fact Science and religion are not distinct in any way for much of human history. Religion (at least in ancient times) was also about trial and error. You made a sacrifice to one God instead of another or in one way instead of another in the same way that you cooked a joint of meat over coals instead of flame or attacked your enemy from a hill top or a valley and then suffered the results. If you were a prophet or sage (a proto-scientist) and your advice ruined dinner or lost a battle then your model of reality was brought into question. With some swift talking you might be able to account for the discrepancy but your claims about God, magic, divination and destiny just like your claims about cooking and tactics were likely to fall out of favour in relation to other peoples. Similarly success brought credibility.

Now in addition to this role of science/religion – the role of producing direct results – religion/science had another role. This can be understood as social cohesion. Basically you could make a very good case that the Gods wanted the smartest woman in the village to be ruler. This could even be tried with success. If your explanation led to social unrest or if the smartest woman had usurped the angriest man then there was a possibility that your theory could be “disproven” by a violent vote.

That’s an unflattering example of the politicisation of science/religion. A more positive example is that two peoples may have competing claims over a fishing cove. The model of reality worth having would have enabled the peoples to share the cove without abandoning the warrior attitudes necessary to protect their other borders. Other models of reality may have been leading to wasted resources and possibly no-body being able to use the cove safely.

Nowadays we would call this kind of science/religion, political science. To modern eyes this fishing cove example appears completely different to problems about how fire operates on meat - but why? In both cases models of reality are being tested on the basis of their benifits. In primitive cultures science/religion are both remembered through story telling. We would be hard pressed to tell the difference between the stories which explain the hygiene rules of primitive cultures and the stories which explain who is the king and why there is one. This is not to say that cultures can’t “believe” their stories (holding them to be absolutely correct without a metaphoric quality). This too is no different to modern western cultures. However we now seem to have two different ways of storytelling, Science and religion which are supposedly hostile to each other.

The source of the split between science and religion is hard to uncover. Bertolt Brecht in The Life of Galileo suggests the split is a consequence of religious persecution of claims of new knowledge based on direct observation; in reaction these claimants have to become purely interested in knowledge for knowledge’s sake and abandon any goal of serving humanity to religion. This is what we call Science. Brecht is writing a commentary on his own atomic age however under the guise of history so this is not a reliable source. The play is compelling though and I recommend it wholeheartedly.

The split between science and religion may simply be a consequence of accelerated change and what Levi Strauss calls the shift from a cold to a hot culture. A hot culture celebrates winning whereas a “cold culture” tries to avoid anyone losing; celebrating in game terms “the draw”. Cold cultures are capable of mainintaining consistency for a lot longer than hot cultures which are far more adaptable. We can see this operating in regard to the conflict between generations. Cold cultures utilise traditions of elder respect and formalised rites of initiation to adulthood so that there are smooth transitions in leadership. Hot cultures are wilfully blind to generational tensions. Knowledge claims are meant to be evaluated regardless of their authors’ prestige and oppositional debate is highly valued. Knowledge production in a hot culture is akin to boxing with the expectation that one day some “young turk” will K.O. the previous champion, only to be K.O.d themselves one day.

It would be neat to say that Science has become a term to capture hot culture values while religion is the refuge of cold-culture values. Certainly there are associations which back up this claim; hypothesis vs. hypothesis to the death is the scientific approach while interpreting findings to fit in with previous revelation is religions game. However we enter a circular problem of definition. Basically we would have to conclude that religion in its hot states is being “sciencey” and science in its cold culture forms is becoming a “religion”. This is generally what occurs by advocates of science over religion. Their definition proves itself and is really just a championing of hot culture values. I think it is fairer to try and identify another distinction and then allow hot and cold culture values to explain how science in (mostly hot) forms and religion in its (less commonly hot) forms thrive or struggle.

Remembering that primitive science/religion is also sciences’ history, any distinction between science and religion to be found is not going to be a creed that begins and ends what is science. Instead we can see progressive (and contentious) clarifications of science that gradually distinguish it from religion until we have our current split. Three distinctions I can identify are the philosophies of Empiricism, Methodological Naturalism and Logical Positivism. Rather than viewing these as boundaries on science I see them as waypoints which indicate a direction. Scientists are never just those who completely adhere to these ideologies but the cluster of people who are close to them. To put it another way these philosophies are the flagships of the scientific enterprise of their times (and cultures).

 Here are my immensely crude summations of Empiricism, Methodological Naturalism and Logical Positivism. Firstly Empiricism states that the vehicle of knowledge is sense data alone. This does more than rule out other less fragmented pictures of what is known (ie. intuition). Empiricism resets the direction of knowledge creation as coming from the observer rather than from the observed object. It is observing that creates what we know of things not “being” by the thing itself. This means the natural awe generated by empiricism is really awe of one’s observational powers rather than of an external object; a big difference to a sense of being spoken to by nature.

An even bigger consequence of empiricism is a move away from the goal of knowing true reality. As all we can ever obtain is sense data generated by observation, then an underpinning reality represented by the sense data is only a possibility – it’s not a knowable thing. The strict empiricist would say this doesn’t matter. There may not really be a coffee table in the middle of the room, however the sense data of a coffee table like foreground image over the carpet, allows us to reasonably predict that running across the room will lead to some nasty sense data in our shins. Sense data is all we have and all we need. An underpinning reality is only a predictive model of future sense-data. This reduces the primacy of knowledge derived from core-to-core or soul-to-soul meetings between knower and subject. Such experiences (including religious ones) are rebadged as feelings/sensations. What was once a privelaged knowledge is, under empiricism, less than seeing.



That's some nasty sense data there.



This leads directly to methodological naturalism, the explicit practical assumption that the only types of explanations science should look for are ones which are predictable and which can be controlled for; essentially “natural” explanations. What this means is that the sense data of the coffee table image and the hurt shins should avoid explanations which wont obey laws that help us to avoid banging our shins or predict other sense data. This has proven to be a useful limitation for society as essentially rogue explanations which we can’t predict are unable to be applied by us to solve their own and other problems. If we assume that the coffee table is a physical object we can step around it and we can put a coffee cup on it for example. Methodological naturalism however makes a big assumption that all knowledge is supposed to be practically applicable and this assumption can portray not only God but free will as “useless” explanations.

Logical Positivism is the most controversial of our three philosophical waypoints for Science. In its strongest form this philosophy holds that a statement is meaningless unless its validity can be conclusively established by a finite process. Although this seems reasonable this principle soon came into difficulty. Can the validity of the statement “there is a coffee table in the room” be established? Most would say yes. Look there it is. But what about the statement, “there is no coffee table in the room”? We can imagine all sorts of tests that would prove this reasonably but conclusively? (What if the coffee table was magicked invisible?)

As the totalising philosophy its authors imagined it to be Logical Positivism hasn’t been a success. There are however legacies of Logical positivism that have defined Science. Statements for which no process for establishing any validity can be imagined have been recategorised as nonsense for the purposes of doing science. This extends to ethical judgements and much of metaphysics (including God). Related to this is the importance of falsibility. Falsibility, the ability to be proven false, is now a pre-requisite of any meaningful serious scientific hypothesis. Of course to the extent that the narrative of science is generally accepted as the means of producing knowledge then this nonsense description of metaphysics and the importance of falsibility is taken up by broader culture. If anything this seems to me to be provoking a backlash particularly in the areas of ethics where society wants to have more than personal preference as a guide.

So can Science prove there is a God or not? I hope that I have shown that Science just isn’t a discrete entity so saying what Science can or can’t do is only ever based on the Science of a particular culture and time. It’s possible that future philosophical pushes will create a Science that is deeply interested in supernatural explanations and metaphysics. If so that would be very different to what we have now. As it is now Science is disinterested in the supernatural and metaphysics precisely because they cannot be put to use by us. In the same way that primitive science/religion evaluated its own culture we are all in the process of evaluating whether that disinterest is a beneficial approach to reality.

Science as it stands now is also only interested in those hypotheses which can be disproven. Is God such a hypothesis? Can anyone (not just Scientists) prove God doesn’t exist? Or for that matter can anyone other than Scientists prove that God exists? If not wouldn’t that mean that believing in Gods existence is just a personal affair like aesthetics? Or even nonsensical? Before reaching that conclusion however we should ask whether believing something and being able to prove something are the same thing. I certainly don’t live my life as if they entirely are.

Lastly and most importantly science is not about the existence of things anyway. Science is about developing predictive models of reality. A scientist doesn’t think of their belief in the coffee table as the goal and conclusion of their research. The conclusion of their research is more likely to be a reduced incidence of shin injury and a place to put their coffee cup. If the coffee table is actually God or a chaotic ball of electrons or mostly emptiness but for all intents and purposes the label coffee table captures the sense data we obtain from observing it and are going to obtain from interacting with it... well who cares?

The real point at which Science encounters God is in the investigation of applications of a belief in God such as prayer and whether they are reliably supportive of Gods existence. This is how science investigates such phenomenon as  Tarot cards, Ouija Boards, Water Divining, Vitamin loading to prevent cancer, Drinking Milk to prevent Osteoporosis, nailing wood to hold it together and so on. “Does She work?” is the scientific question of God.

The original theological experiment; Elijah calls down fire from heaven.

So far any scientific study I have seen has failed to show outcomes from “using” God that support Gods reliability. When people (generally not scientists) suggest that science has proven God is nonexistent this failure to perform is the only reasonable thing they might be referring to. However aside from some faith healers, most modern theists don’t expect God to be “useable” in this way. As C.S. Lewis put it God is not a “tame lion” who answers our commands.

It’s something to note that if worshipping a God does not provide tangible benefits then modern religion has moved further from primitive science/religion than modern science has. It would be unrecognizable to ancient people (including the Hebrews for much of the Old Testament) that a God is not supposed to be evaluated on their efficacy. It may even be that acts of worship that don’t have any anticipated “pay-off” in terms of tribal and individual success are ultimately not sustainable. Time will tell.

Time will also tell if the real issue is not whether God exists at all. If we recall the other primitive purpose for models of reality is to produce social cohesion and minimise unnecessary conflicts. It may be that we will not miss God as a cure or cause of disease or as a bringer of military success or failure or as anything particular useful in themself. It may be that we will miss our belief in God and the social effects that has. That’s a political science question.     

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[1] This post is already too long to consider making it more comprehensive or self-critical. Please treat it as a rough introduction and accept the somewhat circular definition of primitive as pertaining to cultures without a marked division between science and religion.

How do we create?

In a recent conversation about God’s creation of the universe the statement “We (meaning us humans) don’t create” was made. It surprised me and didn’t feel right but I felt that to argue against it I had very little solid statements. After all "create" is a woolly term.

You click on “Create” to start a new Word document but is creating a file really creation? If so is it the Microsoft program doing the actual creating?  I would consider that the most mundane definition. Yet is that all there is to human creation as well – a programmed response? Or is there something else – the capacity to bring forth genuinely new possibilities?

What about when sand in a dust storm creates a swirling pattern? Is that the height of creation? The more I learn about uncertainty in physics the more I realise this is a different sort of creation to that of a classic linear program but it’s still not intelligent. What does intelligent mean though? Is there such a thing as creativity that is guided by intelligence? Or is intelligence itself guided (even chaotically determined) by a dumb creativity? Is intelligence just the swirl in the sand storm?

Originally this essay was a polemic against a certain understanding of humans as non-creative or as “bad” creators. In this understanding the only good creative acts of humanity occur when we become animated by a divine other. The classic story is that of the Muses. In other versions it is the Christian Holy Spirit. In yet other versions it is a life force that runs through us and the planet.

My greatest concern with this way of thinking is all the horrible burden of divinely inspired dross that we have to deal with because of it. If I write a self-help book that is considered God-inspired (or Angel channelled etc) how much harder is it for people to challenge my advice. If the only way for my advice to be worthwhile enough to publish is to attribute it to a divine other, then I am always bound to create (or rather not create!) this kind of unstoppable force.  It seems more honest and more accountable to acknowledge the author in the room; myself.

Still without a Muse or God (or for that matter a Devil) separate from myself how do I create? Where do the new things that seem to issue from me (or through me) come from? If creation is the province of the divine, then is it perhaps necessary to consider the “divine-within” to explain it?

There is a vein of Christian theology which can be tapped to describe this human divinity. Much has been made of the idea that we are “created in the image of God” particularly in terms of our creative capacity. Alfred Whitehead (Process Theology) and Paul Tillich are two very prominent theologians who might be worth reading in this regard. Alas I gave away my Paul Tillich text recently - only now seeing his relevance. That’s often the way with the books that sit on my shelf for years. 

There are also a range of theologies outside of Christianity which present the divine realm as essentially incomplete without humanity to shake it up. That afternoon television classic “Monkey Magic” illustrates how in Perfect Land Buddhism a stagnant celestial bureaucracy exists under the perfect Buddha spirit. It is as important that Monkeys irrepressible manner kicks over the norms of heaven as it is that their attitudes are reformed by Buddha spirit. Personally I always identified with Monkey in this fashion. In atleast some forms of Buddhism and Hindusim I would be free to, as there is no separation between ourself and demigods and Gods. The divine is not other at all.

The Khabbalah, a Jewish mysticism that has paralleled both temple and rabbinical Judaism, contains a theology built around the incompleteness of God. This is an incompleteness that is resolved in Christianity by the relational Trinity. In the Kaballah however it is humanity’s relationship with God that completes us both. (Sort of. I’m no expert on this and would appreciate correction.) In Khabbalism for God’s creative work to be enacted there is an absolute need for us to embrace our creative role. In this schema we are purpose built to create and God relies on us completing this purpose.

“New Age” philosophies tend to be deeply concerned with enabling human creativity. This is possibly because of their suitedness to the post-industrial economies that sponsor them and the importance of creativity in those economies. It is also possibly because the New Age is defined by a demand for utility by the individual “seeker”. To the extent that New Age philosophies borrow Hindu and Khabbalistic ideas they tend to emphasise a human divinity. To the extent that they borrow from Gnosticism instead they tend to accentuate the divine-other as a source for human creativity. Certainly this question is huge in the New Age literature but it is hardly answered consistently.

My own formulation of how I create is complicated. I do believe that original “stuff” can emerge from me. I don’t think I am ever a doorway to a divine force though. I guess I never think of my creations as being divine. Somehow I consider them both ordinary and yet new and spontaneous. In fact it seems to me to be the ordinary way of things to be creative. That's life.

I don’t know how I can evaluate whether what I create is dross or gold however. I think that’s impossible in an abstract fashion. Living is the real on-going test of my ideas. I guess that means my creations are never really “good” or “bad” merely useful or not. This further reduces any expectation of a divine source.

I also think that the classic image of the creative human is a very atypical one. They are idealised as alone on a mountain receiving that flash of inspiration or conjuring truth ex nihilo. I think it’s more ordinary to create with ones’ peers and from ones’ culture. Further I celebrate such a process. I have always preferred rhetoric over other art forms precisely because its quality is produced through its audience and never without them. There is something therefore about the usual image of individual creativity whether by God through us or by us, which excludes me.

When I consider the greatest creations of humanity such as writing itself these obviously don’t belong to any one individual. In an on-going fashion we continue to create writing and what it means. That’s what blogs are. When this sort of creation is the subject in question it again reduces the expectation of a divine source. There is something of the swirling sand in the dust storm about it after all.

In the same way I also don’t understand the opposite image of God the sole creator. As with any rhetorician, the quality of creation is produced through its audience and never without them. Actually if your medium is Life then audience participation goes off the chart.  If you’re creating life of course you’re co-creating with life because of just what life means. It’s more than a little like roleplaying dungeons and dragons. Sure,the dungeon master has all the maps and has devised a series of events but its the decisions of the characters which makes the story. So if you ask the question from the other side – If God creates how do we join in? – I come closer to a Khabbalistic answer to the question.

My kid just asked me “What are you writing, Dad?”

I replied “A difficult question. How do we create things?”

She thought about it and then stated as if obvious, “With our hands.”

“Yes”, I continued, “But where do our ideas come from before our hands?”

“Our heads,” said my daughter.

“Yes, but where do our ideas come from before our heads?”

My daughter was momentarily stumped. She actually said “A challenge,” before adding “Our eyes.”

She wasn’t entirely sure though. What would you have told her?

I Trust in God.



Just a minute...



I have a persistent fantasy in which I lay dying and an appeal is made for me to accept Christ as my saviour in order to save myself from damnation. Like many of my fantasies it’s basically a set up so that I can say something I think is profound. (Is that a writer’s thing?) In this fantasy I reply “I trust in God and I shall not fear the Devil.”

As I have a colonoscopy planned today and my higher than average risk of bowel cancer is on my mind I’d like to take the opportunity to explain myself. This will spare me the bother on my actual death bed. Hopefully this will clear up any confusion over what a non-theist is saying “I trust in God” for.

Firstly any celestial being I could consider God is not going to make both unreasonable and unnecessary demands on my integrity. The mark of a true God would be to encourage those intellectual attitudes which would help people, especially those vulnerable at point of death, to distinguish them from a non-entity or random djinn.  Such attitudes would include caution in offering allegiance to just any deity. So long as a God’s existence is dubious to me I think if they are actually God they would want me to be shy of proclaiming them. Anything less is consistent with a false God, not one with truth on their side.

This argument is strengthened by the realisation that boldly proclaiming God to exist while being doubtful is not just unreasonable but unnecessary. The twin ideas that your life continues after death and that God needs you to form a relationship with him before death are incongruent. If God’s existence or not is due to become obvious in minutes the simplest response is to wait and see. After all, the afterlife is eternal so the five minutes of obviousness I would need to happily recant my atheism shouldn’t be any bother. No? I have to worship an invisible God now because as soon as I die the super-efficient afterlife will have me whisked off to hell before I can yell out “I was wrong.” That’s ludicrous and completely unnecessary. I trust God to be better than that. I trust I can go to my death as an atheist and still work it out with God if I’m wrong. I even trust that a true God would want me to do just that if it was where integrity led me.

As for not fearing the devil, if there is any supernatural being who would accept my worship (let alone desire it) when that worship is due to the threat of eternal suffering then that supernatural being is the devil. Plain and simple, that’s exactly how the devil would operate. If the devil whispers in the ears of earthly kings they are going to be perfectly encouraging of scaring ones subjects with the rack and the stake. Even if that whisperer is in the driving seat of the whole cosmos and who gets into heaven or hell, then they’re the devil by character. I do my best not to pay them any heed as inspiration in life and I will try not to fear them on my deathbed either.

One of my favourite imaginings of the afterlife is that once you die you are greeted by a towering God King who perfectly corresponds to all those images of the angry patriarchal God we know so well. They carry a sceptre and sit on a throne and their face is stern. They command you to kneel and most people throw themself prostate. With no aching knees in the afterlife people can stay like that for eternity. Those who don’t get down and stay down are hit by laser beams from the great God Kings eyes and are destroyed. In my imagining the only way into heaven is to stand. It’s the ultimate act of trust in God and refusal to fear the Devil.

Now I don’t know that when the morphine runs through me and my death rattle fills my belly and a bikini-clad Christian orang-utan (the morphine remember) starts up converting me I won’t break like a baby. Maybe I’ll swear allegiance to the angry God King of my dreams in order to be spared those laser eyes. Maybe I’ll throw a bet their way or at least both ways. What I hope I say, what I believe I should say, is “I trust in God and I shall not fear the Devil.”

Does it matter? Paradoxically if I am right and there is no afterlife it matters less. If I am wrong then it becomes all the more important I stick to my non-theist guns. If life genuinely continues then I’d better not convert “for the hell of it.” That path leads away from any heaven I can think of.

Halleluiah and Amen.

P.S. Bum check was all clear. No cancer or even polyps.

The Prodigal God: My Rambling Response.

Aaaargh. I agree with this piece but I’m not happy with it. Why? I’ve published it partly to just get it out of my head. I have a lot of other things to think about and having this sit on my hard drive is stopping me. I recommend it for the dedicated only.

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My younger brother Simon and I probably seem similar from a distance. From the proximity of our relationship though it is as if we’re opposites in our theology and philosophy. You can read his blog here. You’ll see he’s intelligent and caring and humorous and ridiculously knowledgable on the bible.

Me and Simon love each other but often there’s scant common ground to our opinions. That makes for a very fertile ground to write on because he not only helps me to define my own views in argument but he shocks me into recognizing my assumptions. Simon occupies a perspective I genuinely care to oppose as well – I find it life-denying (in part), he finds it life affirming. He similiarly isn’t ambivalent about my views.  Hot heads have prevailed at times. Clear thinking requires respect and more than a little effort on both sides.  Basically its great for my writing!

Simon loaned me many months ago, The Prodigal God by Timothy Keller. This slim novel expands on a sermon Keller once heard and has repeated as a Presbyterian minister. Keller is also the author of the New York Times Bestseller “The Reason For God” and for him this sermon is the clearest possible exposition of the Christian Gospel.

In this response to Keller I’ve had two tasks. I’ve given my own view of the subject matter – the fascinating parable of the prodigal son in chapter 15 of the Gospel of Luke. I’ve also outlined Kellers views and tried to show how I think he gets it wrong. This would probably make an easier read as two seperate posts especially for those readers who just aren’t that interested in Keller’s mistakes. Kellers mistakes are not however as uncommon as you might imagine if you’re reading them here first – they are part of a certain Christian orthodoxy. Subsequently even if you’ve never heard his name I think he’s worth rebutting.

I also think this is another too long post. But telling you that hasn't made it any shorter.

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A response to Timothy Kellers' A Prodigal God.

Luke’s Gospel contains several parables. Arguably the most well known is usually referred to as the Prodigal Son. A younger son spends his share of his inheritance wastefully while his Father is alive. In poverty he returns home intending to beg for employment as a lowly hired hand. Instead, to his surprise, his father restores him to his household with a great celebratory feast. When the older son refuses to join in the celebration his father pleads with him to change his mind. 

In The Prodigal God Timothy Keller explores the meaning of this parable. Keller points out that the Prodigal Son is an extra-biblical title that focuses the story on the younger son and his reconciliation with his father. The parable (see for yourself in Luke 15) is about both younger and elder brothers perhaps even more so about the elder brother. Certainly, without neglecting the younger brother’s story, Keller’s focus is on the older brother.

In a nutshell Keller argues that the position of the elder brother is one in which he has sought to control his father through his own obedience. Put simply he feels “owed” in a way that is betrayed by his father’s forgiveness of his younger brother, hence his angry refusal to join the celebratory feast. In Keller’s interpretation the older brother is only doing good for himself. Keller contrasts this with obedience to the father motivated by submissive[1] love. Such obedience would not have permitted the older brother to resent the younger brother’s return to the family because he would not have felt entitled to resent anything. Keller takes us to other parts of the Gospel to argue that this submissive obedience is the prescriptive message of the parable.

Keller elaborates on this theme with a range of extra-biblical sources. Keller draws a sharp distinction between doing good for God and doing good for ourselves – for what God will have to give us if we are good. Keller’s strongest example of this is Salieri in Peter Schaffer’s play, Amadeus. Salieri declares God his enemy in response the rising star of Mozart eclipsing his talent. After all Salieri has served God dutifully while Mozart is decadent and irreligious. Because Salieri was only doing good for his own benefit however Mozart’s talent destroys his motivation.

It is clear however that Salieri’s story is not a good fit to the parable of the prodigal son.  For one thing Mozart isn’t repentant. More importantly though the elder brother in Luke 15 does not give up being “good” like Salieri does. He doesn’t refuse to do his chores or demand his inheritance from his father. That may come next but it isn’t in the story. Instead the elder brother refuses to celebrate his younger brother’s return. That refusal is the brother’s only transgression.

Keller is basically inserting too much into the story. From my own reading of Luke 15 the issue is not one of the elder brother’s right attitude towards the Father but right attitude to the brother. Specifically if we add nothing to the text then we see that the father expects his older son to be joyful for his sibling’s restoration to the family. In fact the father asks, in my favourite translation, the New English, “How could we help celebrating this happy day?” (Luke 15: 32) Joy in the younger brothers’ return is both unforced and inevitable.

What prevents the older son from being joyful is his sense of (in)justice. Perhaps even that is assuming too much. He says “You know how I have slaved for you all these years; I never once disobeyed your orders; and you never gave me so much as a kid, for a feast with my friends. But now that this son of yours turns up, after running through your money with his women, you kill the fatted calf for him?” So very specifically it is injustice of the sort that unfairly compensates him and unfairly rewards his brother that screws with his joy. He might be fine with a bit of injustice in his own favour.

These are two distinct sides to this injustice. Firstly the son may have resented his duties. That’s certainly indicated by the use of the word “slaved”. It’s as if all the time he worked at home while his brother whooped it up in decadent style he comforted himself with the belief in a greater regard by his father. This is the side that is explored by Keller. I wouldn’t exactly call it controlling but there’s definitely a contractual expectation held over the father in it. Notice however that it isn’t until his brother is welcomed home that he complains. The elder brother is not saying “I expected the fatted calf”, he’s saying, “I expected it before you would give it to him.” The issue is justice. The son expected the father to be just.

The other side to the injustice is the outrage that “after running through your money with his women, you kill the fatted calf for him.” The first side is about the injustice to the elder brother, the second is about the injustice to his father. The first can be contrasted with love for the father to some extent but the second is potentially consistent with it. The elder brother has no joy for his younger brother’s restoration in this regard, because he can’t let go of what the brother has done to the father. Once again it is a choice between joy or justice for the elder brother.

Any uncertainty that joy is the central message of the parable is banished by the preceding two parables in Luke 15. In the first a shepherd leaves his flock of ninety nine to search for one lost sheep. My New English Bible has the “delighted” shepherd cry out “Rejoice with me!” once he recovers his sheep. In the second parable of Luke 15 a woman holds a party with her neighbours over finding a single silver piece she had lost.

It is also very clear what all this rejoicing is meant to be about. Luke 15 begins with the Pharisees and doctors of the law grumbling about how Jesus “welcomes sinners and eats with them.” (Luke15: 2.) After the first parable Jesus says “In the same way, I tell you there will be greater joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine people who have no need to repent.” and after the second parable, “In the same way, I tell you, there is joy among the angels of God over one sinner who repents.” There should be no doubt then that what Jesus is saying is that the correct response to the restoration of a sinner to the family is rejoicing. Jesus is bringing to his grumbling audience’s attention that their sibling relationships with the sinners he is eating with is broken because of their lack of joy at their inclusion.

So what could produce this joy? I struggle to see how Keller’s submissive love of the father would lead to an unforced and inevitable rejoicing over a brother’s restoration. I’m not saying they’re inconsistent – but the former won’t produce the latter. In fact as I’ve mentioned above if the brother who is to be restored wronged the father then there is a tension between loyalty to the father and joy for the brother. Instead the problem lies in the relationship between the brothers. There is a lack of love. The three parables together are saying “You value a sheep, you value a coin, but your own brother you would rather see lost? Really? Where is the love?”

If you accept my above paragraph then you can see the contrast between joy and justice is actually between (brotherly) love and justice. I think this is a fascinating theme because I see it in my own life and I don’t consider myself unique in this regard at all. There is a common measure of morality which is set by how much you actually want people who you deem immoral to suffer. For example, a really good person would of course want a mass murderer to end up in hell. Only a bad person would want them to be in heaven.  If I have interpreted this parable correctly then Luke’s Jesus is actually saying that this measure is false. Here Jesus is asking his listeners to adopt a familial love towards sinners that is greater than their love of justice.

Let’s remember that when Jesus was preaching Jerusalem was an occupied city. Luke is commonly dated as being written within a decade prior to the temple’s destruction by Roman forces. The Pharisees like all Jews felt humiliated by regular Roman blasphemies against God.  If we imagine that some of the sinners sitting with Jesus might have been Jewish collaborators with the Romans doesn’t this give us a fresh sympathy for the Pharisees’ grumbling at the start of Luke 15. Such collaborators would be a good fit for the disgraceful behaviour of the younger brother. The older brother’s attitude is understandable in this scenario while the father’s is truly radical. To the Pharisees the father’s behaviour and Jesus’ would have easily seemed immoral. In fact it still seems immoral today.

Is there a lot between Keller and my interpretations? Not necessarily. Justice is enmeshed with control. I think of the helplessness I felt when I was on unemployment benifits and they were almost cut off for no reason. With some form of justice – even cruel justice – you can predict what will maintain your payments. You can have some control. So where I say justice you could insert Keller’s idea of controlling the father. I think you miss out on what sort of control we’re looking at though. Additionally I think there are two crucial differences between my own and Timothy Keller’s way of thinking.

The first difference goes to the nature of sin. Keller defines (redefines in my opinion) the elder son’s transgression purely in terms of his relationship to his Father. In this way Keller is sharing in a theological perspective that all sin is against God. In this view the wrongness of any interaction with God’s creation (other people, animals and the world) is only derived from the wrongness in our relationship to God that such an act speaks to. To use a simple analogy a work of art has no right to be in and of itself. Treating it disrespectfully or unlawfully is in both cases a crime against the creator and in the latter a crime against the state. God is understood to occupy both places in relation to us and it is this which creates sin in how we treat each other. While it’s not clear that Keller holds this opinion of sin in its entirety he adheres to it in his book.

I think there is a tragic aloneness to this perspective; the only relationship that matters is between ourself and God. If every person we meet are only met as opportunities to love God do we ever come to terms with their basic realness? We are living as if their basic realness is incidental to how we interact with other people – whereas to me it seems fundamental.

I also can’t shake the following dread; A purely vertical (us to God) basis for sin means that if we believe God has withdrawn his love from any part of his creation all bets are off. If the artist says “Meh, I don’t want that art work anymore,” we can’t say that endless, pointless torture of them is unjust[2]. They have no intrinsic moral rights. In practice this means that if we want to treat someone with absolutely no regard we merely have to declare them God forsaken. I would much rather anyone’s morality towards me was based on primitive empathy towards a fellow human being.

Of course as a non-theist I am likely to define sin as horizontal. Any wrong I do others is ultimately between me and them rather than me and God. However as I argued above I’m actually being more faithful to the text in Luke when I stress that the issue here is the love lost between the sons rather than a lack of love for the Father (God). Certainly there would be a great many Christians for whom their morality is based on seeing other people (and animals) as fellow beings – with the unity of their creator being the very reason for that empathy. I would consider embracing a radical siblinghood of all people to be a very theistic position and consistent with the parables of Luke 15. Yet this simpler reading is profoundly overlooked by Keller.

Secondly Keller is approaching the text to make a very specific theological argument. The only way a person could reach his conclusions is if they draw on theology outside of Luke 15. Keller does this so overwhemingly I don’t think you could say he gives Luke 15 meaning without also accepting that he takes the simplest meaning away.  Is Keller drawing on the same limited theological script to interpret all of the bible? That’s a possibility I can imagine because his script is recognizable as one that is often used in that way. That script is a doctrine known as the doctrine of free grace (also called anti-pelagianism). This doctrine is clearly supported in the Bible (particularly by Paul but also elsewhere) and I don’t mean to dispute its basis. However it is wrong to say that it is the only message of the Bible and that all the bible speaks to it.

Kellers’ idea that the older son’s real sin is to try to control the father with his obedience is merely a substitution for calling them a pelagianist (someone who believes they can earn their way to salvation). Keller claims that the presence of someone looking for the lost sheep and lost coin in the first two stories should point us to the missing “looker” in the third story - that Jesus deliberately doesn’t mention anyone who searches for the lost younger son so that we search the Gospel specifically for Jesus, the perfect older brother. This is sermonising from what isn’t there.

 Keller has to do this in order to introduce Christ (as the one who looks for us) into the parable. Keller has to introduce Christ to make the parable about an argument for accepting the free grace of God in contrast to attempting to work our way to God. I defy anyone to find a sensible position for Christ in the parable of “the prodigal son” without obviously altering the story. I think it’s a tragedy Keller distorts the parable to stress this one doctrine of Christianity when the simplest reading of the parable contains such incredibly amazing teaching – just not on anti-pelagianism.

Despite my criticisms this response/review was a challenge to complete precisely because I couldn’t maintain any great rage against the book. Timothy Keller is wrong in all the ways he disagrees with me (of course) but his theology is hardly evil, even if it potentially has unfortunate consequences. It is also true that Keller’s understanding of Luke 15 has very fortunate consequences. Keller challenges judgmentalism through the universality of sinfulness. Keller encourages a radical generosity through a belief in Christ’s purchase of us. One thing I am personally grateful to Timothy Keller for is leading me to reread the parable of the prodigal son.  I hope you will too.

P.S. Simon that gratitude extends to you - probably one of the very few who'll read this far.

[1] By submissive I do not mean that Keller means fearful submission. Kellers’ submission is based in overwhelming gratitude. Keller has to insert this gratitude however from other parts of the gospel into this parable. It is essentially gratitude for Christs atonement for our sins.

[2] Yes, this is an allusion to traditional understandings of Hell.

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