Under this heading, I intend to write an article on apologetics – “the reasoned defence of the faith.” It is a subject that demands our attention, for the attacks on the Christian religion are multiplying. Leading these attacks is a group of militant atheists whose names are increasingly becoming household words. I am referring to men like Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and others, who use every possible medium to spread their ideas – books, magazines, lecture halls, television, and Internet – and whose influence has been exploding in recent years. We meet them at every turn. So do our students.

Happily, the spate of books by atheists is more and more being matched by the volume of Christian apologetic writings and it is my intention to introduce a number of these. I will begin by describing a project, undertaken by an international committee of Reformed educators, to develop courses in apologetics for our schools. The first-fruit of this project is a bibliography with short descriptions of relevant writings. That work I will introduce in this article. I hope to review a number of books that do not (yet) appear on the list, or that deserve a more extensive introduction than is possible in an annotated bibliography.

Before turning to the main topic, however, I must give some background information on the current atheistic attacks.

The New Atheism⤒🔗

Hostility against the biblical faith is as old as Christianity. There was a lapse during much of the Christian Middle Ages, but large-scale assaults resumed in the modern period, beginning with the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. They continue apace. There is a difference, however, between the battle as it was fought in the Enlightenment and in subsequent centuries. In the eighteenth century most of the attackers were deists. True, there were atheists as well. There always have been, also during the Middle Ages. Even the Old Testament knows of people who said in their hearts, “There is no God” (Psalm 14). But by denying the supernatural, atheists were unable to answer the question about the origin of the universe and all it contains. Their influence was therefore limited. That drawback was removed, in the opinion of many, during the nineteenth century as a result of the triumph of evolutionism. Charles Darwin made it possible, according to contemporary scientist Richard Dawkins, to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist. And indeed, after Darwin the enemies of Christianity would increasingly be atheists. They would also increasingly look for scientific arguments to prove the non-existence of God.

One would think that in our postmodern age the struggle would have abated. After all, religiosity and belief in the supernatural are fashionable again and at the same time the question about ultimate truth has lost its urgency. Postmodern orthodoxy proclaims that there are no universal truths; that we are free to make up our personal ones. So why the intolerance? Why should atheists want to proceed in their struggle against Christianity? But in fact the struggle does continue and the militancy of the attackers is as great as it has ever been. More disconcertingly, their message is popular. The anti-religious writings of Richard Dawkins, evolutionary scientist at Oxford University and generally seen as leader of the new atheism, are best-sellers and so are the publications of his fellow-militants. The attacks of these men are as blunt as any in history. This is already evident in the titles of their books. Some examples:

• Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (2006);

• Daniel Dennett, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon (2007);

• Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (2007);

• Sam Harris, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason (2004);

• Victor J. Stenger, God: The Failed Hypothesis: How Science Shows that God Does not Exist (2007).

Why the Fury?←⤒🔗

There are, as I see it, at least three reasons why militant atheism has found it necessary to intensify the war in recent years. They are:

1. important developments in Christian philosophy,

2. recent scientific discoveries that challenge the old skepticism, and

3. the resurgence of militant Islam.

Firstly, the renaissance of Christian philosophy.

Christian philosophers in North America and England have since the late 1960s launched an increasingly successful defence of Christianity by demonstrating the rationality of belief in God. Perhaps best-known among them are Alvin Plantinga, Nicholas Wolterstorff, William Alston, William Lane Craig, and Richard Swinburne. In the July issue of Christianity Today, one of them, William Lane Craig, writes that as a result of this renaissance, “The face of Anglo-American philosophy has been transformed ... Atheism, though perhaps still the dominant viewpoint at the American university, is a philosophy in retreat.” This may sound a bit optimistic, but as Craig shows, non-believers also speak of the apparent “desecularization of academia that evolved in philosophy departments since the 1960s.” Concerned about this development, atheists have closed ranks against their Christian opponents.

Secondly, some twentieth-century scientific discoveries. The following have been of special significance:

a. The End of Determinism←↰⤒🔗

During much of the late-modern period atheists have, as I already mentioned, increasingly looked for scientific arguments as weapons in their war against Christianity. Until the early twentieth century they were fairly successful. The prevailing scientific model (mechanism) implied a belief in determinism (the idea that all events in nature, as well as all human thoughts and actions, are caused by an unbroken and unbreakable chain of prior events). This determinism implied, firstly, that divine intervention, including miracles, was impossible; and secondly, that human beings (who were no more than machines) could not claim freedom of the will. In fact, being machines, they had no will. Whatever they did, thought, or decided was determined by causes that were absolutely outside their control. In the early 1900s, however, physicists discovered that at least at the sub-atomic level events take place that have no discernable causes. Thinkers reasoned that non-determinism in the natural world may imply non-determinism in human thought and behaviour. They also realized that the new physics had seriously undermined the arguments against the existence of the supernatural.

b.The Big Bang←↰⤒🔗

Twentieth-century astronomical discoveries added to the naturalists’ problems. To avoid the need for a supernatural creator, it had long been scientific orthodoxy to assume that the universe had always existed. In the course of the century, however, a number of astronomers developed the so-called Big Bang theory of cosmic origins and demonstrated that the universe is expanding. This meant that the cosmos was not eternal after all. There had been a beginning and it seemed logical to conclude that there had been a creator as well. (True, some scientists have come with non-theistic alternatives to the standard Big Bang interpretation, but these tend to be speculative.) Largely because of the theistic implication, a majority of physicists and astronomers began by stridently opposing the new theory. Finally, however, they had to admit that the evidence for a beginning was overwhelming, and the Big Bang model is now generally accepted among scientists. (I realize that some of our readers will be surprised to hear that many an atheist objected to the Big Bang theory because it seemed to favour Christianity and that many a Christian welcomed it for the same reason; but that is nevertheless the case.)

c. The fine-Tuning of the Universe←↰⤒🔗

I have written about this before¹ and will not repeat myself here. I only want to remind the reader that the discovery of the fine-tuning, and the “anthropic principle” built on this discovery and on related ones, constitute, even according to self-proclaimed agnostics and atheists, the most striking evidence for a supernatural origin of the cosmos.

In short, the tables are being turned: one scientific discovery after another appears to support a non-materialistic view of the universe’s origins and history. This is shocking to militant atheists, who had always been convinced of both the infallibility of science and its tendency to support atheism. They have their work cut out for them.

Thirdly, atheists have intensified their assault because of the resurgence of militant Islam and, especially, the horror of 9/11 and of subsequent terrorist attacks in other western countries. This religion-based terrorism has provided a welcome argument against religion. Many of the militantly atheist writings, in fact, appeared shortly after the year 2001. And if fear of religion-fuelled terrorism plays a role in inspiring today’s militant atheism, it probably also helps explain why the anti-Christian writings become bestsellers, for the authors tend to paint all religions with the same brush. Christianity, according to them, is no better than Islam or other religions like Hinduism, Buddhism, Shintoism, and so on. And it is true, Christians also have been guilty of bloodshed and violence. Think of the crusades, the Inquisition, the religious wars, the African slave trade, western imperialism. The conclusion, for Hitchens and others, is that it is in the very nature of religion to poison and kill; that religious faith is a malignant virus and must be rooted out.

The New Apologetics←⤒🔗

Atheists are correct in accusing historic Christianity of its failings. True, arguments to relativize some of the accusations can be found. Apologists have pointed out, for example, that Christianity still provides a better basis for a peaceful society than atheism. Religion-based violence among Christians may have killed thousands but is primarily a matter of the past, whereas the victims of atheistic systems like Communism run into countless millions and the killings continue today. Also, episodes like the crusades may be regrettable, but they were at least in part responses to Muslim aggression and therefore not just offensive but also defensive in intent. History further makes clear that Christianity has been instrumental in guaranteeing personal freedoms, democracy, and the rule of law, whereas no atheistic system has ever done so. The atheists’ trust in such a system is therefore naïve at best.

But the fact remains that Christianity is widely being judged today by its failures, rather than by its accomplishments. Christian apologists have an important task in rectifying, or at least qualifying, the current picture. More importantly, they have a task to re-acquaint society with the central message of Christianity, which is by now all but unknown. Apologetics today involves proclaiming and explaining the gospel. At the same time it involves reminding Christians of the need for humility and a spirit of service. The time is gone when we could impose our moral views upon society. We must learn again – like the early Christians – to illustrate the truth of Christianity not simply by our talk, but also, and especially, by our walk.

Yet intellectual arguments remain necessary. And the good news is that interest in the reasoned defence of the faith is growing in tandem with the interest in atheistic arguments. The July issue of Christianity Today, to which I already referred, quotes in an editorial the following remark by apologist Lee Strobel:

It wasn’t too many years ago that scholars were writing off apologetics because we live in a postmodern world where young people are not supposed to be interested in things like the historical Jesus. The biggest shock is that among people who communicated to me that they had found faith in Christ through apologetics, the single biggest group was 16- to 24-year-olds.

The editorial further mentions overflow crowds of students at apologetics conferences in the United States, Canada, and Europe – often led by North-American and English apologists. Apparently today’s young people want to hear both sides of the issue; and apparently they are searching for universal truth after all. One wonders if postmodernism is in decline in academia. Some believe that it is. But perhaps it is precisely the postmodern openness to the supernatural that explains the wide current interest in arguments for both the non-existence and the existence of God.

Teaching Apologetics←⤒🔗

In any event, we live in exciting times. The intellectual and scientific attacks on Christianity may be more severe than they have been, but the scientific evidence in support of Christianity is also greater than it was in former ages. As one author writes (Hugh Ross, in The Creator and the Cosmos), in biblical times God often gave evidence of his existence in proportion to the level of resistance to his revelation and He appears to do so again today. The need to make our students and our entire community aware of the truly striking abundance of evidence against an atheistic materialism was behind the decision, mentioned at the beginning of this article, to develop a course in apologetics for our Reformed schools and to prepare for that work by issuing an annotated bibliography. The course in apologetics which the committee envisages should serve first of all, as we can read in the introduction to the bibliography, “as a means of helping students deal with the ongoing attacks upon the faith in our post-Christian society. It should not only, however, serve as a defensive strategy but also as an offensive one, enabling students to answer questions about and objections to the faith by outsiders (1 Peter 3:15).”

The bibliography, which is very much a work in progress, contains at present some thirty-five titles of books dealing with apologetics proper and with related issues such as worldview analysis and theory of knowledge. Each of the four sections is preceded by an introduction providing background information on the issues in question. Although the work is incomplete, even in its provisional phase it can serve to acquaint educators (and others) with developments in the field of apologetics. I hope that it will also encourage some of them to contribute to the work. The bibliography is (or should soon be) available on the website of the Teachers College: www.covenantteacherscollege.com

So much for the curriculum project. In the next instalment I hope to review one of the recent works on apologetics, namely The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Scepticism (2008), by Timothy Keller, the well-known founder and pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan, New York.

Timothy Keller, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Scepticism ←↰⤒🔗

(Penguin, 2008) 293 pages←↰⤒🔗

Timothy Keller is the founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan, New York. Established in 1989 with an initial attendance of about fifty, this church now draws some 5000 listeners each Sunday. It has also spawned more than a dozen daughter churches in metropolitan New York and contributed to the work of church planting worldwide. With its associate churches, Redeemer has illustrated the great opportunities that exist today for Scripture-based urban mission. At a time when many traditional churches in the western world are emptying, the new urban mission has experienced explosive growth, in New York and in cities across the globe. Keller writes that hundreds of orthodox-Christian churches have in recent years been planted in New York alone.

Keller’s book is inspired by his work at Redeemer. His target audience there is different from that of more traditional churches. It is multiethnic and consists mainly of young urban professionals, two-thirds of them single and practically all of them drawn from a community of “sceptics, critics, and cynics.” While attempting to understand their culture, Keller has withstood the temptation to buy into it and accommodate his message accordingly. He has from the beginning preached “the orthodox, historic tenets of Christianity – the infallibility of the Bible, the deity of Christ, the necessity of regeneration (the new birth)...”

That message draws people. But it is also controversial, certainly in a sophisticated, postmodern urban society. In the first part of his book Keller discusses some of the objections to Christianity he has to deal with. His goal in this part is to demonstrate that there are no sufficient arguments for rejecting Christianity. In the second part of the book he moves on to show that there are sufficient reasons for believing it.

Religious Polarization←⤒🔗

Before turning to some of Keller’s specific arguments, I will comment on his general approach. His book has been compared to C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity and there are indeed many similarities. Keller more than once admits his indebtedness to the English apologist. He is writing, however, in postmodern times, in a religious situation which is different from that of the 1940s and 50s. In Lewis’ days it was widely agreed that Christianity was dying out, whereas today there is evidence of explosive growth, especially among non-westerners, but also in some pockets in the western world. But that is only one side of the religious scenario of our days. The other side is that in this very epoch of de-secularization and religious expansion, religious scepticism and militant atheism also are growing apace. The world is getting more and less religious at the same time.

This makes the situation more volatile than it was some fifty years ago. Because both groups are growing fast, each feels threatened by the other and hostility increases. Respectful dialogue is rare. “We don’t reason with the other side,” Keller writes, “we only denounce.” Christians have to admit this to their shame. In today’s “culture wars” we tend to forget the biblical warning that the faith should be defended in a spirit of gentleness and respect. Christians should also, Keller reminds us, consider the reasons why such large sections of a formerly Christian society have turned their back on the faith. There is need for self- examination.

Dealing with Scepticism and Doubt←⤒🔗

If Keller is aware of ever-increasing religious polarization, he also notes similarities between the two opposing groups. The most striking one is that, strange as it may seem, both are motivated by belief – atheists as much as Christians. And people who believe encounter doubt – again, atheists as much as Christians. Rather than denying that this truth applies to them, Keller argues, Christians should take their own doubts seriously and at the same time pay serious attention to the doubts of others. “Only if you struggle long and hard with objections to your faith,” he writes, “will you be able to provide grounds for your beliefs to sceptics, including yourself, that are plausible.” It is this process that will make it possible for believers to respect, understand, and perhaps help sceptics.

The same advice, however, goes for the other side. If Christians must learn to look for reasons behind their faith, sceptics and atheists must recognize the role of faith underlying their reasoning and examine its grounds. For none of the many objections to Christianity can be empirically or logically proven. Statements such as “there is no God” or “science has disproved Christianity,” or “there can’t be just one true religion” are incapable of demonstrative proof. They are based on belief. Much of Keller’s book is devoted to arguing this point. He concludes that it is inconsistent for a skeptic to require more justification for the Christian faith than for his own beliefs.

The Question of Proofs←⤒🔗

Keller shows himself to be a man of his time also in his attack upon the typically modernist position that we can only be certain about anything, including the existence of God, if we have empirical, scientific proof for it. That position, although definitely outdated by now, is still held by militant atheists like Richard Dawkins and his associates and is among the reasons why even some non-Christians thinkers have criticized the work of these men.

The objection to this modern scientism is threefold. Firstly, the argument is self-defeating, for it is impossible to prove empirically that empirical proof is needed before anything can be considered true. In short, the argument itself is based on belief. Secondly, science can deal only with what can be observed, measured, weighed, calculated; its field of inquiry is the natural world, the realm of matter, not the supernatural and the spiritual. It can therefore prove neither the existence nor the non-existence of God. And thirdly, twentieth-century philosophers have drawn attention to the fact that science does not (and cannot) expect final proof even within its own realm. A scientific theory is verified not on the basis of absolute logical or empirical evidence, but because its explanatory and predictive power appears to be greater than the theory it replaces. Scientists, in sum, are looking not for airtight proofs, which can’t be had, but for the best “empirical fit.”

What goes for science goes for religion and other human knowledge. God alone is omniscient; we humans are finite and see reality as in a mirror, dimly. We live by faith. But the Christian faith is not unreasonable and to admit our finitude is not to endorse religious relativism. Just as scientists have the means to test and evaluate a scientific theory (although unable to demonstrate its absolute truth), so believers are able to give grounds for their religious faith. In fact, they are called to do so. And the intellectual criteria for justifying belief in God are similar to those for justifying belief in a scientific theory. Summarizing the arguments of Oxford philosopher Richard Swinburne, Keller writes:

The view that there is a God ... leads us to expect the things we observe – that there is a universe at all, that scientific laws operate within it, that it contains human beings with consciousness and with an indelible moral sense. The theory that there is no God ... does not lead us to expect any of these things. Therefore, belief in God offers a better empirical fit, it explains and accounts for what we see better than the alternative account of things.

Keller goes on to quote C. S. Lewis’ words, “I believe in God as I believe the sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” Keller adds,

We should not try to “look into the sun,” as it were, demanding irrefutable proofs for God. Instead, we should “look at what the sun shows us.” Which account of the world has the most “explanatory power” to make sense of what we see in the world and in ourselves? We have a sense that the world is not the way it ought to be. We have a sense that we are very flawed and yet very great. We have a longing for love and beauty that nothing in this world can fulfil. We have a deep need to know meaning and purpose. Which worldview best accounts for these things?

And again: “Christians do not claim that their faith gives them omniscience or absolute knowledge of reality. Only God has that. But they believe that the Christian account of things – creation, fall, redemption, and restoration – makes most sense of the world.” (The reader will realize that I have been dealing all along with intellectual reasons for the faith. Certainty of faith does exist, but is a divine gift, not the result of intellectual argument.)

Arguments←⤒🔗

In giving answers to specific objections to the faith, Keller refers to these two major points: the role of belief in human reasoning and the fact that human beings, though they can certainly find truth, are creatures and cannot see reality as God sees it. With respect to the objection that no truth exists, for example, he points out that this statement is self-defeating.

For why, Keller asks, should I believe the person who says it? How could he or she credibly proclaim as truth that there is no truth? Obviously, this type of statement is based on wishful thinking, on “belief,” not on logical or empirical proof. And the same applies to other objections such as that all religions lead to God, or that you can’t take the Bible message literally, or that a God who judges cannot also be a God of love.

Keller has also had to answer more traditional objections to the faith. Perhaps the most pressing of these is the existence of evil. It is the age-old question how evil and human suffering in the world can be reconciled with the existence of a God who is both all-good and all-powerful. Attempting to answer the question, Keller mentions the following:

1. We often admit that our suffering, agonizing as it may have been, has not been in vain. Isn’t it possible that from God’s point of view all suffering is ultimately for our good? If we have a God great enough to be angry at because He hasn’t stopped the world’s suffering, then we have a God great enough to allow it to continue for good reasons that we can’t know. We can’t have it both ways.

2. Evil and suffering may be seen as evidence not for the non-existence, but for the existence of God. If we were simply the products of mindless evolution, as atheists claim, we should not worry about evil, since natural selection and the struggle for survival demand endless suffering: death and violence and the destruction of the weak by the strong. Nature being “red in tooth and claw,” suffering is simply natural. If human beings find it unnatural, then they subscribe, consciously or not, to an ethics whose origins cannot be natural but must be supernatural. And a supernatural ethics implies a supernatural lawgiver.

3. The cross of Christ. In his Son, God Himself entered our suffering and pain so that “by His unspeakable anguish, pain, terror and agony” Christ might deliver his own “from the anguish and torment of hell” (HC, LD 16). When looking at the cross we may have no answer for the world’s suffering, Keller writes, but we do learn that this suffering does not happen because of God’s indifference and lack of love. “God is truly Immanuel – God with us – even in our worst suffering.” We learn also that suffering does not have the last word. Good Friday was followed by Easter and will be followed by the restoration of all things. “The Biblical view of things is ... not a future that is just a consolation for the life we never had but a restoration of the life (we) always wanted. This means that every horrible thing that ever happened will not only be undone and repaired but will in some way make the eventual glory and joy even greater.” In the words of C.S. Lewis: “They say of some temporal suffering, ‘No future bliss can make up for it,’ not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory.”

Creation and Evolution←⤒🔗

More could be said about Keller’s apologetics, also about the arguments in the second part of the book, which I have left largely unexplored, but space is limited and I hope that I have written enough to whet the reader’s appetite. I must add here that I do not expect everyone to agree with all that Keller wrote. A controversial point is his attitude toward evolution. Keller rejects the concept of evolution as an “All-Encompassing Theory” but thinks that God has “guided some kind of process of natural selection.” In short, he reveals himself (in tune with the large majority of Christian apologists today) as a theistic evolutionist. Unsurprisingly, that has bothered a good many of his evangelical readers. I myself place a question mark here.

This is not to say that I have easy answers to the question as to how Genesis 1 and 2 are to be explained. Although “young-earth creationism” appears to be widely accepted among us these days, there is no Reformed consensus on the issue, nor has there been in the past. Theologians of unsuspected orthodoxy such as Abraham Kuyper, Herman Bavinck, Klaas Schilder, and others, both past and present, have considered the possibility of an old (or older) earth. ² Nor does it seem that a consensus will easily be achieved. As Herman Bavinck wrote, no single person and not even a generation or an age may be able to resolve the questions that arise in connection with modern science; it is God who must, in the course of history, bring light into darkness.

And therefore, while questioning Keller’s conclusion, I understand his reluctance to make dogmatic statements on the issue. And I fully agree with him that, when we are evangelizing, the question of origins should remain on the back burner. We certainly should not begin, he rightly warns, by asking the sceptical inquirer to decide on the different positions that have been and continue to be held by orthodox Christians on the matter. Rather, we should urge him or her to concentrate on the central claims of Christianity. Once these have been accepted in faith, the time may come to evaluate the various options regarding the meaning of Genesis 1.

Antony Flew, There is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind ←↰⤒🔗

(Harper Collins, 2007) 222 pages←↰⤒🔗

Intellectual arguments cannot by themselves lead to a saving faith. That is the gift of the Holy Spirit alone. Intellectual arguments can, however, move an atheist to reconsider his beliefs and conclude that he may have been wrong. This happened to the English philosopher Antony Flew (1923), who for more than fifty years had been among the most influential twentieth-century atheistic philosophers. In 2004, however, at a conference in New York, he announced, to the horror of militant atheists worldwide, that he “now accepted the existence of a God.”

Although renouncing his atheism, Flew has not become a Christian. His religious pilgrimage, he says, has been a pilgrimage not of faith but of reason, “an exercise in what is traditionally called natural theology.” Taught by Socrates, he simply decided to “follow the argument wherever it leads.” In his case the argument, which was based on scientific evidence, led to belief in “a self-existent, immutable, immaterial, omnipotent, omniscient Being” – a Being that he says is similar to “the God of Aristotle” (who in turn can be compared to the God of deism).

But although Flew does not believe in the God of the Bible, he also does not deny the possibility of either his existence or his self-revelation. The book under review contains (in an Appendix) a dialogue between Flew and New Testament scholar N. T. Wright entitled “The Self-Revelation of God in Human History.” At the conclusion of this dialogue Flew states that he is “very much impressed with Bishop Wright’s approach,” even though he has not been fully convinced. But he does admit that divine revelation is not to be ruled out, since “you cannot limit the possibilities of omnipotence.” He is not sure, however. As he states elsewhere in the book, while some people claim to have made contact with the Divine Mind, he has not been able to do so – at least not yet. But he adds, “Who knows what could happen next?”

Flew and the Rebirth of Christian Philosophy←⤒🔗

Flew wrote his book with co-author Roy Abraham Varghese, a well-known Christian thinker who for years has explored the relationship between faith and science. In the book’s Preface, Varghese takes pains to distinguish Flew from men like Richard Dawkins and his associates – the so-called “new atheists” of the present decade. These men, he observes, refuse to play according to the rules and therefore have no place in the history of serious modern philosophy. They say little or nothing, for example, about the formal arguments for the existence of God, don’t bother to account for the origin of a law-abiding and rationally accessible universe, and proclaim (at least Dawkins does) that it is science which must decide about the existence or non-existence of God. Their approach is sufficiently outdated and outrageous to have aroused the contempt of serious philosophers, both Christians and non-Christians. Flew belongs to that group of critics. He questioned the validity of the approach also before his “conversion.”

Varghese’s concern is to describe Flew’s prominent place in the world of twentieth-century philosophy. There have been many other atheistic philosophers in his days – such as Nobel laureate Bertrand Russell, Sir Alfred Ayer, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, and Martin Heidegger (to name only the most famous). None of these, however, was specifically a philosopher of religion. Flew alone tackled the religious issue consistently and systematically and in the process, Varghese writes, he changed the framework of the discussion. He insisted, for example, that atheism was the default position, one that needed no defence. The burden of proof rested with theism. But by thus challenging his Christian opponents, Flew in fact facilitated the rebirth of Christian analytical philosophy to which I referred in the first instalment of this series.

It was especially North American and English Christians who responded to the challenge. A leader among the former was Reformed philosopher Alvin Plantinga, who proposed that theism (belief in God) is a properly basic belief, similar to belief in the reality of other basic things such the existence of other minds, or of what you perceive around you, or of what you remember about certain events in the past. In all these cases you trust your cognitive faculties. It is true, you cannot prove the belief in question, but to disbelieve its truth would, generally speaking, be insanity. So it is with belief in God.

Meanwhile the American Thomist philosopher Ralph McInerny reasoned that belief in God is natural because of the order and law-abiding character of nature. This, McInerny said, makes the idea of God almost innate and thus poses a strong argument against atheism. “So, while Plantinga argued that theists did not bear the burden of proof,” Flew writes, “McInerny went still further, holding that the burden of proof must fall on atheists.” It was these reactions, then, that marked the beginning of the renaissance of Christian philosophy. That event did not remain unnoticed. In April 1966 Time Magazine had printed with big red letters on a black cover the question, “Is God Dead?” But by 1980 the reversal was well enough known for the same magazine to proclaim that “God is making a comeback” – most strikingly so among Anglo-American philosophers.

The Mind of God←⤒🔗

Flew tells us that he made his first public argument for atheism in 1950. Paradoxically, he adds, that paper was presented at the Oxford Socratic Club, chaired from 1942 to 1954 by “the redoubtable” C.S. Lewis, “the greatest Christian apologist of the last century.” Flew’s attendance at this club did not shake his atheist beliefs.

That happened some decades later. But he did take to heart the Socratic maxim (to which Lewis also subscribed) that one ought to be relentless in following the evidence.

The main cause of his growing disbelief in atheism, he says, was the world picture produced by modern science. He highlights three aspects of the world that he now believes point to a God, namely the fact that nature obeys laws, the existence of intelligently organized and purposeful life, and the existence of the universe itself. He pays attention to important developments in each of these three areas, such as the Big Bang theory, the discovery of the fine-tuning of the universe, and the discovery of the DNA structure in the late 1950s, as well as the outcome of subsequent DNA research.

With respect to the first point, the existence of the laws of nature, Flew observes that we see not merely regularities in nature, but that these regularities are mathematically precise, universal, and tied together. Einstein spoke of this phenomenon as “reason incarnate” and explained its existence with reference to “the Mind of God.” The same answer was given by practically all the “new physicists” of the early twentieth century.

Both Flew and Varghese stress this point. It is widely proclaimed, also by the new atheists, that real intellectuals – specifically scientists and philosophers – cannot honestly believe in the supernatural science and reason, they claim, have disproved God’s existence. Richard Dawkins, for example, insists that Albert Einstein, though he spoke of an Infinite Intelligence and even used the word God in describing it, was in fact an atheist. Dawkins followed Flew here, who had earlier indeed described Einstein as an atheist. Later authors, however, refuted the charge and Flew blames Dawkins for ignoring the subsequent evidence. He quotes Einstein himself as saying that although he (Einstein) did not believe in a personal God, he was neither an atheist nor a pantheist. It was necessary on rational grounds, he insisted, to postulate a supernatural, infinite Intelligence.

And indeed, Flew observes, the orderliness and law-abiding character of nature pose an insurmountable problem for atheists.

The Universe Needs Explaining←⤒🔗

So do recent scientific discoveries such as the theory of the Big Bang and the fine-tuning of the universe. For Flew these discoveries constituted a turning point. He used to assume, he tells us, that the universe and its laws were ultimate and fundamental, something to be accepted as “brute facts” – that is, facts that do not allow for an explanation. But that was only possible (or so he believed) if one assumed the universe to be eternal. The Big Bang theory showed that it had a beginning, which meant that an explanation of its existence was necessary after all. The discovery of the fine-tuning of the universe added to the atheists’ problems. As I have shown elsewhere, ³ many an atheist tried to avoid a theistic explanation by proposing such expedients as the existence of a multiverse – an infinite number of invisible parallel universes which, because of their great number, would by mere accident include one universe that was fine-tuned for life, namely our own. And some try to get rid of the problems posed by the Big Bang evidence for a beginning by suggesting that the universe exists through an infinite repetition of Big Bangs and Big Crunches. They ignore the fact that such a hypothesis, even if it could be proven, does nothing to solve the atheists’ problem, since here too the question of an ultimate cause remains.

Flew’s answer to the multiverse hypothesis is that while it is logically possible for multiple universes with their own laws of nature to exist, this does not mean that they in fact exist. There is currently no evidence for a multiverse; it remains a speculative idea, and a rather desperate one at that. He quotes Richard Swinburne’s remark that “it is crazy to postulate a trillion ... universes to explain the features of one universe, when postulating one entity (God) will do the job.” Flew himself compares the atheist attempt to the case of a school boy “whose teacher doesn’t believe a dog ate his homework, so he replaces the first version with the story that a pack of dogs – too many to count – ate his homework.” Not only have atheists failed to answer the question how the multiverse came into being and how the laws of nature arose, they have in fact greatly complicated things for themselves. “If the existence of one universe requires an explanation,” Flew argues, “multiple universes require a much bigger explanation: the problem is increased by the factor of whatever the total number of the universes is.” Again quoting Swinburne, he concludes that “the existence of a complex physical universe of finite or infinite time is something ‘too big’ for science to explain.”

In sum, science qua science cannot prove God’s existence. But it is also true that the laws of nature, the existence and nature of life, and the existence of the universe itself can only be explained “in the light of an Intelligence that explains both its own existence and that of the world.”

Take and Read←⤒🔗

Flew has described in this book some of the important arguments of natural theology and he has done so in terms that the informed lay reader will be able to follow. I heartily recommend his book. I do so not merely because of its contents, as interesting as they are, but also and especially because Flew’s experience shows so clearly that science-based arguments against a materialistic, godless world picture can be intellectually persuasive. Christians ought to be aware of this fact and make use of the arguments. They must do so, as I mentioned before, both as a defensive strategy, in order to help fellow-believers deal with attacks on the faith, and as an offensive one, namely in attempts to convince unbelievers and sceptics of atheism’s absolute inability to explain the existence of the universe.

C. John Collins, Genesis 1-4: A Linguistic, Literary, and Theological Commentary ←↰⤒🔗

(P&R, 2006) 318 pages←↰⤒🔗

Today most of the attacks on Christianity are made in the name of science and most modern apologetic works therefore deal with the relation between faith and science. The interpretation of the book of Genesis often looms large in these works. A central issue here is the conflict between the biblical account of creation and the neo-Darwinist theory of evolution, but historical-critical attacks on the reliability of the Bible play an important role as well. In his book on the first four chapters of Genesis (which is addressed primarily to students of theology) Collins deals with these issues. He has also written a less technical work on the topic, entitled Science and Faith: Friends or Foes? (Crossway, 2003, 448 pages).

Collins has the academic qualifications to write on the relation between the Genesis account and the opposing scientific and Bible-critical theories. He has studied science and theology, possesses a master’s degree in both electrical engineering and divinity and a Ph.D. in Hebrew linguistics, and has devoted much study to the first chapters of Genesis. At present he is professor of Old Testament at Covenant Theological Seminary in St. Louis, where besides teaching Old Testament subjects he gives a course entitled “Christian Faith in an Age of Science.”

A theologian in the Reformed tradition who professes the infallibility of Scripture, Collins concerns himself not only with the secular attacks, but also with the controversies that exist among conservative Christians about the interpretation of Genesis 1 – specifically about matters such as the age of the earth and the length of the creation days. These controversies and in-house conflicts, he says, cause believers to miss the real focus of the biblical account. They are also unnecessary, since they are to a large extent the result of a misreading of the Hebrew text. He proposes a method that will guide the student, he promises, to a clearer understanding of that text – one that gives attention to differences in genre, to linguistic and literary details, and to the larger context of a passage. That same method he applies to the matter of the Darwinist challenges and to historical-critical attacks. I begin with the latter category.

Conflicting Creation Accounts?←⤒🔗

Collins uses his methodology to good effect in dealing with what biblical critics call conflicting creation accounts – one in Genesis 1:1 – 2:3, another in the rest of Genesis 2. He shows that the latter pericope, which records the creation of Adam and later of Eve and their stationing in the garden, is not a separate creation story but simply an elaboration or “close-up” of Genesis 1:27. He also explains the differences in the name of God in these two sections, with the first pericope speaking of “God” (Elohim) and the following ones (Genesis 2, 3) using the composite name, “the LORD God” (Yahweh Elohim). This is another point used by critics to question the historicity of the creation account and to claim that the author or editor used conflicting sources. Collins rejects that theory, showing that the change in the divine name is intentional and altogether relevant. In the first pericope, he points out, God presents Himself “in his majesty, power, transcendence, and ownership with respect to the creation,” whereas in Genesis 2 and 3 he reveals himself as the God who establishes a relationship with his creatures – indeed, as the God of the covenant. The use of the two names “makes it clear that the God who has yoked himself by promises to the patriarchs and their offspring (and hence to the first audience) is the transcendent Creator of heaven and earth.”

Authorship and Sources←⤒🔗

Also of interest are Collins’ conclusions about the sources and authorship of Genesis. Having discussed some versions of the documentary hypothesis, he gives a wealth of evidence to show that Genesis originated in the time of Moses (rather than in the period of the kings or even later, as modern scholars often suggest) and that Moses is the primary author of Genesis, and indeed of the entire Pentateuch – the first five books of the Bible. He further devotes a chapter to the communicative purposes of Genesis 1-4, drawing attention, among other things, to the possible relation between ancient-near-eastern stories of origins and the account of Genesis. He agrees with Gerhard Hasel’s well-known thesis that the Genesis account is in part a polemic against (or at least an alternative to and correction of) the Babylonian creation story. (For that interpretation see my series “Genesis 1 in Context,” Clarion, August 1, 15, and 29, 2003.)

World Picture and Worldview←⤒🔗

Much has been written about the fact that the world picture of Genesis, and of the Old Testament as a whole, appears “primitive” compared to the one we get from modern science. We read, for example, of a moving sun and a non-moving earth, of the moon as a lamp instead of a reflector of light, of the sky as a “firmament,” and so on. According to critics this again poses a serious challenge to the Bible’s truth claims. Collins’ answer is twofold. Firstly, he reminds us that the Bible describes things not “scientifically” but as they appear to our eyes. In other words, it uses phenomenological language. We do the same.

Even modern scientists will talk of a rising and setting sun, although they don’t believe for a moment that the sun moves around the earth. Another example of phenomenological description is the Hebrew word in Genesis 1:6-8 that is often translated as “firmament.” That word suggests that the sky is a hard canopy or vault, which is indeed what it can look like. Perhaps the first readers held that view, but that does not prove anything against the Bible’s truth value. The ancient world picture, including the ancient idea of physical cosmology, is not necessarily a part of the message being communicated.

Collins tells us – and this is the second part of his answer – to distinguish between world picture and worldview. The term world picture refers to a community’s shared experiences and to what people imagine the physical shape of the earth and the universe to be. A worldview, on the other hand, deals with questions of ultimate concern, such as those about the origin of the world, the existence of God, the nature and destiny of man. A world picture must be taken into account in order to communicate but is culture-bound and therefore temporary; a worldview does not have to be. It is quite possible, Collins remarks, that biblical statements reflect a world picture that is foreign to us – for example with respect to the shape and position of the earth or the nature of the moon or the sky – while at the same time communicating a worldview to which we still subscribe.

Length of the Days and Age of the Earth←⤒🔗

This issue divides not only secularists and Christians but is also a source of disagreement among believers themselves. Collins’ main concern, as suggested, is to bridge the latter divide. I found this part of his work somewhat disappointing. An advocate of an “older” earth, he does not come with insights that are really new, and it is doubtful that he will convince people on either extreme of the controversy – that is, young-earth creationists on the one hand and theistic evolutionists on the other. That by itself does not of course disqualify his interpretation. Although he by no means answers every question, I can agree with much of what he says. But the expectation that his new methodology would open surprisingly new vistas in this particular area remains unfulfilled.

Collins positions himself as an adherent of the “analogical days approach,” which, as he points out, was already held by earlier Reformed scholars, including the Dutch theologian Herman Bavinck. According to this position the days are to be seen not as calendar days but as “God’s workdays,” whose length is not specified but which were probably much longer than the normal twenty-four hour day. As arguments against the “normal day” interpretation the author mentions, among other things, the “crowded” nature of the sixth day (as described in both Genesis 1 and 2) and the fact that the seventh day lacks the refrain that ends each of the previous ones (“and there was evening and there was morning, the nth day”). If the seventh day is not an ordinary day, he concludes, we may assume the same for the previous six.

He also comments on the genre of Genesis 1, which he describes as an “exalted prose narrative” rather than a scientific account. Referring to the refrain concluding each of the six days, he observes that God is presented here as a workman who goes through his workweek, takes his daily rest (the night between the evening and the morning), and enjoys his Sabbath rest. “To speak this way is to speak analogically about God’s activity; that is, we understand what he did by analogy with what we do; and in turn, that analogy provides guidance for man in the proper way to carry on his own work and rest.” Our following of God in his work and rest “anticipates one of the ways in which the Bible views the process of human moral formation: as imitating God.” As so often in Scripture, God is described here anthropomorphically (that is, human characteristics are ascribed to him). Also elsewhere in the creation account God is presented in anthropomorphic language – namely in the verses that describe him as a potter or sculptor, forming man out of the dust of the earth, and in the statement that He “rested.”

Other Comments←⤒🔗

Collins offers comments on various other aspects of the Genesis account. They include notes on the appearance of the heavenly lights on the fourth day, on man’s being made in the image of God, on the meaning of the two trees in Genesis 2, on the way in which the woman’s “desire” will be for (or against?) her husband, on the question whether animals were carnivorous (flesh-eating) before the fall (Collins thinks so, giving what I believe to be convincing reasons), and on the related question whether there was animal death before the fall. He also comments on the meaning of the phrase “according to their kinds” in the creation account, questions the idea that the word “kind” is the equivalent of the more technical term “species,” and rejects the suggestion that the text, as young-earth creationism tends to assume, necessarily opposes the notion of new species developing from old ones.

Conclusion←⤒🔗

Collins’ book is well-written and not overly difficult, even for the non-theologian (although the other book I mentioned is indeed more accessible). Collins’ chief contribution to the topic under discussion in the present series is his attempt to base his conclusions on biblical exegesis. True, he does pay attention to the claims of modern science, but that is not in itself objectionable. New scientific data can and do affect orthodox biblical interpretation – think, for example, of the case of Galileo (who came with scientific arguments to show that the earth moves around the sun, a theory that at first raised objections among many Christians but that we now accept). The danger to be guarded against, and which Collins does keep in mind, is to allow science to dictate biblical interpretation.

All this is not to claim that the book gives us the last word on every issue, or that it will satisfy every reader. I already questioned the novelty of the analogical view the author promotes and its universal acceptability among Christians. Objections can no doubt be raised against other aspects of his exegesis. Questions may also be asked about his advocacy of Intelligent Design, tentative though that advocacy remains. But then, to refer once again to Herman Bavinck’s words of close to a century ago, the problems arising from modern science are such that not even a generation or an age may be able to resolve them. Collins’ book has brought us a few steps further in a number of areas and for that reason deserves our attention.