Reason for the Hope Within

Michael J. Murray

• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Year: 1998
• Print ISBN: 9780802844378
• eBook ISBN: 9781467429238
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

During the last two decades there has been a renaissance in the field of Christian philosophy. Unfortunately, most of this excellent work has not reached general readers.  Reason for the Hope Within was produced specifically to make available the best of contemporary Christian philosophy in a clear, accessible—and highly relevant—manner.
Fourteen of America's rising Christian philosophers cover many of the traditional themes of Christian apologetics as well as topics of special relevance to today's world:

• the problem of evil
• the possibility of miracles
• the existence of heaven and hell
• Eastern religions
• Religion and science
• Christianity and ethics

Reason for the Hope Within provides readers with the most up-to-date resources for thinking about and defending the Christian faith.
Contributors:
Douglas Blount
Robin Collins
J. A. Cover
William C. Davis
Scott A. Davison
Daniel Howard-Snyder
Frances Howard-Snyder
Trenton Merricks
Caleb Miller
Michael J. Murray
Timothy O'Connor
John O'Leary-Hawthorn
Thomas D. Senor
W. Christopher Stewart
 

1

Reason for Hope (in the Postmodern World)

Michael J. Murray

As indicated in the Introduction, this book is an attempt to present a broad-reaching Christian apologetic or defense of the Christain faith. Before we begin, however, it is of the utmost importance that we pause briefly to discuss exactly what it is that a “defense of the Christian faith” is supposed to do. Is it supposed to present us with arguments that will bring all non-Christians to their intellectual knees? Is it supposed to show without question that the Christian worldview is more compelling than any other worldview? In order to understand how this book should be used, we need to answer these questions first.

Defenses of the Christian faith of the sort we are offering in this book have two aims. The first, and I think primary, aim of such a defense is that it builds up the believer by helping him or her to understand the deep, puzzling, seemingly paradoxical riches of the Christian faith. Such building up helps believers better understand their faith and, more importantly, to appreciate in more profound fashion the glory of the Creator they love and serve. In addition, this deeper understanding helps them to share their faith with others. It can do this because the more intimately we understand what it is we are sharing the more intelligently and convincingly we can do so.

Ambassadorial Apologetics

The biblical notion of the Christian as ambassador for the kingdom of God is particularly instructive in helping to sort out the relationship between these two aims of apologetics. Imagine that you are the leader of a small island nation that is economically dependent on tourism. For you and your nation, it is very important to have ambassadorial representatives who will go to other nations in order to represent your interests and to portray your land in a positive light. Whom would you choose? I, at any rate, would choose someone who was both head over heels in love with their nation and who knew how to generate that sort of enthusiasm in others who had never before visited. Part of what is required to have those abilities is a very thorough knowledge of the land. You would need to be able to tell people all about the place and why they would love it as much as you do. The Christian ambassador in a way has similar aims. God wants believers to love their “homeland” and to know enough about it to be able to tell others about it effectively. And to do this we need to have a detailed understanding of the “lay of the land.”

Notice, however, that in both cases, we would want someone whose love for the homeland is primary; love which in turn motivates their wanting to know it inside and out. In other words, the president searching for his ambassador doesn’t want someone who simply sounds like he swallowed the almanac. Having the facts down is important, but the job can’t be effectively carried off if one is just a proficient reciter of facts. (Imagine a travel brochure that consisted of a photocopy of the relevant page from the world almanac. That, we can all agree, would not be effective advertising!) It is odd, then, that we often think of Christian apologetics in just this way. When I have taught adult Sunday school classes on apologetics I find many people who simply want to memorize all the relevant facts so they can go out in the world and recite them in just the right order. Their aim is noble, but the procedure is wrong. Like the ambassador, we need to become people who want to understand our “homeland” simply because we love the Lord and want to know him better. When we have gotten this far, we are ready to absorb the depths of the Christian faith which in turn makes us ready to share it with others.

I fear that putting it as I have above will make some readers think that evangelism is only for the experts. Far from it! While the Christian faith is as deep, puzzling, and unfathomable as any aspect of theoretical physics, the fundamental message of the gospel is straightforward. And as believers it is this simple message that we are compelled to share with the world. Nonetheless, we have all encountered people whose doubts about the Christian faith run deep. And although it is oftentimes difficult to know what to say to such skeptics, we are obliged to do what we can to honestly address their doubts. What follows in this book is an attempt to provide some assistance with this task.

As mentioned in the Introduction, our aim is to give the late twentieth-century church a chance to look in on the discussion of these matters that has been unfolding in the arena of academic Christian philosophy. In doing this, we hope that this book will act as a primer for an apologetic for the church as it enters the third millennium.

Recent Challenges to the Apologetic Enterprise

But before we turn to this task, let’s consider some recent challenges that the late twentieth century is offering to the project of “defending the Christian faith” or religious belief of any sort. These recently raised challenges come as much from within the Church as from without. As I discussed this project with a number of folks over the last few years, I often met with a remark that went something like this: no one will read a book like that because people just don’t ask those sorts of questions anymore. To this I responded “why not?” And the answer that came back (when there was an answer at all) would almost always point to one of the three “bogeymen” of our so-called postmodern age. These three bogeymen have as their task to scare people away from doing apologetics or even raising apologetic-type questions. And so, before we get down to business, it is only appropriate to pause long enough to say something about the bogeymen in order to allay our fears about them and give us confidence to press on.

The three bogeymen are skepticism, relativism, and antirealism. Christians are often at least acquainted with the first two; few have met up with the third (at least as far as they know). Below I will give a brief description of each and how each can be seen as undermining the project of Christian apologetics. After this I will take a look at each of these three challenges and say a few words about how the Christian should respond to them.

One more word before I go on. The aim of this book is to take what has been happening in the halls of academic Christian philosophy and make it accessible and useful to church leaders and laity. I am aware of the fact that no small number of professional Christian academics will have a look at this book, and no doubt at this chapter. My aim here is not to resolve all the intramural academic disputes about “presuppositionalism,” “deconstruction,” “metanarratives,” “paradigms,” “incommensurability,” “plausibility structures,” the “autonomy of human reason,” and the long list of other technical jargon-filled topics. I think the things I say here will carve out what I take to be a new position in much of the literature that worries about apologetics. But my aim is not to make heavy weather over that fact. My aim is simply to present what I take to be the very best and most current philosophical thinking about the epistemology of “worldviews,” presented in an accessible manner.

Bogeyman Number One: Skepticism

In general, a skeptic is someone who thinks that people are duty bound to refrain from coming to hold beliefs on some matter or other. Skepticism comes in a wide variety of flavors. Some think that the scope of our skepticism should extend farther than others. Mitigated skeptics think that we should refrain from coming to settled beliefs only about certain areas of knowledge; global skeptics, on the other hand, think that we ought to withhold belief on all matters (or at least all matters except one: that we should withhold belief on everything except the skeptical injunction). Some skeptics are more humble in their skepticism than others. That is, some skeptics think that we should withhold belief because, for example, we have not yet collected enough evidence about a certain matter to know the right answers with confidence (so, one might be “skeptical,” for example, about whether or not physicists have now identified the true fundamental particles in nature); others, however, might think that there is something about our human powers of inquiry that simply make knowledge about certain things absolutely impossible, no matter how much data we gather. Knowledge of some things, they argue, is just beyond the human intellectual capacities.

It should be clear, then, how at least some versions of skepticism might serve to undermine apologetics. If one thinks that religious or theological claims are ones that are simply beyond the reach of human intellectual powers or that the evidence available to us simply can’t settle the matter, then one will think that apologetics is simply doomed to failure. This is one issue that comes up semester after semester in my discussions with college students. Students are usually convinced up front, without ever having examined the matter, that these subjects are just not fit for resolution by us meager-minded humans. And so, a Christian who wants to defend his or her faith will need to say something about why skepticism does not undermine this project.

Bogeyman Number Two: Relativism

Relativism is a bit more insidious doctrine. A relativist holds that the truth cannot be known about some subject matter or other. In this way the relativist is like the skeptic. But the skeptic thinks that the problem is that we, for some reason or other, can’t (yet) get to the truth. The relativist on the other hand thinks that we can’t get to the truth because there simply is no truth to be known. Even this characterization oversimplifies matters a bit. An example will help us to sort out exactly what the relativist has in mind. Imagine that someone stops you on the street and says the following “I am with the ABC market research firm and we are doing a survey trying to determine which tastes better: vanilla or chocolate. Could you tell us?” You reply, “Well, I am not sure what you mean. Are you asking me what flavor I think is better?” “No,” the inquirer replies, “We want to know which is actually better, not just which one you think is better.” It is pretty clear that the person asking the question here is confused. They think that there is a single right answer to the question of which tastes better. But of course, which flavor tastes better depends on whom you ask. To me, chocolate is better, to another vanilla is better. The claim, “Chocolate tastes better than vanilla,” is neither true for everyone nor false for everyone. Whether it is true or false depends on whom you ask. And, in this sense, the claim is relative.

Put this way, you can see that what I said above is strictly speaking false. The relativist doesn’t think that there is no truth to be known. There is a truth to be known, but the truth in question is not intersubjective. That is, the same claim might be true for some folks and at the very same time be false for others. Most of us think that claims concerning manners or matters of taste are relative in this way. Whether putting your napkin in your lap at mealtime is good or bad is dependent upon the customs or beliefs in a given culture. Similarly, whether “Vanilla tastes better than chocolate” is true or false depends on whom you ask. Most of my students believe (at least initially) that all ethical claims are likewise relative or subjective. But some want to claim that religious claims are like this as well. If they are right, of course, then the project of apologetics, the project of trying to convince the unbeliever of the rational superiority of the Christian worldview, looks as silly as trying to convince the vanilla lover that chocolate really is better.

Bogeyman Number Three: Antirealism

Antirealism and relativism are not unrelated doctrines. But let me try to separate them as completely as possible here. A “realist” as I am using the term here is someone who thinks that there is an objective, mind-independent reality to be known, and that the beliefs that we come to hold about the world represent (or fail to represent) the world “as it is.” An “antirealist” on the other hand is one who thinks that the description of the world that we carry around with us is one that might be thoroughly adequate for our purposes, but they deny that this description maps onto “the way the world really is.”

A brief example will help us to get a grip on what the antirealist has in mind. Most of us are aware of a bit of physics, at least enough physics to know that perceiving the color of an object is something that happens when light reflects off an object with a certain wavelength. Visible light with short wavelengths appears purple, whereas visible light with long wavelengths appears red. Wavelength in both cases is a measure of the energy level of the light which is reflected. Short wavelength equals higher energy, long wavelength equals lower energy. To summarize our brief physics lesson, what happens when you see color is that light of a certain energy level bounces off some object and hits you in the eye!

Now let’s say that you are admiring your friend’s blue dress one day. What is it exactly that you are admiring here? “Well, the color,” you say. But imagine that I am a physicist, a physicist who then responds to you in the following way:

“You say that you are admiring the color, and I agree. But what this really means is that you are admiring the sensation of blue that you find inside your mind when you perceive that dress. You may think that is an odd way of putting it since you may think that the blue color you are admiring is not ‘in your mind’ but is a feature, property, or characteristic of the dress. But of course, you can’t be right about that. All that this dress does is reflect light of a certain energy. That light then cause nerves in your eye to fire in a certain way, and those patterns of firing generate a sensation in your mind, a sensation of the color blue. But this means that the color blue isn’t really out there in the dress. The dress is just a bunch of molecules reflecting energetic light. It is your mind that converts stimuli produced by the energetic light into a ‘picture,’ and in doing so it makes different wavelengths of light result in colored sensations of a certain sort in your mind. As a result, it is not that the dress is blue, it is just that the dress reflects wavelengths of light which your mind converts into a sensation of blue.

“If the point is still eluding you, think of it this way. There is no reason in principle why those wavelengths of light that you perceive as blue might not instead have been perceived as red. And the wavelengths you now perceive as red, might have instead given rise to sensations of blue in you.”

This physicist is explaining why it is that we should think that color is not really a feature of objects (or, you might say “in” the objects), but is instead a result of how we “digest” certain sorts of external stimuli.

This is not an easy point to see. But once one sees it one realizes how compelling this picture is. The same point seems to hold for other qualitative components of our experience. There is no “salty taste” out there in the world, there is just sodium chloride which gives rise to a certain sensation (a “salty” one) in me. Further, there is no hot or cold “out there in the world.” There are simply objects with molecules of varying energy levels. Energetic ones give rise to a sensation of “hot” in us whereas ones with less energy give rise to sensations of “cold” in us. The famous seventeenth-century philosopher René Descartes made this point by noting how odd it is that we think that boiling water really does have heat in it since it feels hot when we put our hand nearby, but that we do not think that pain is in the water, even though that is the sensation we get when we put our hand in the boiling water! Why do we think heat is in the water but not pain? Descartes’ solution is to say, as our imaginary physicist has above, that neither the heat nor the pain are in the fire. Both are merely sensations in us.

What does all of this have to do with antirealism and apologetics? Notice that our common practice is to think of the world as having objects that are really colored or really hot or cold even after we recognize the points made above. Our operating picture of the world puts these characteristics out there even though in our more reflective moments we realize that they really are not. I talk about the “blue dress” though I don’t literally mean “the dress which itself is blue.” In this way, you might say, I am an antirealist about color. While the view of the world that I carry around inside and work with every day attributes properties of color to things in the world, in reality, I think there is no color in the world. And this fits nicely with the definition of antirealism I gave above according to which “an antirea...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Foreword—Alvin Plantinga
• Introduction—Michael J. Murray
• 1. Reason for Hope (in the Postmodern World)—Michael J. Murray
• 2. Theistic Arguments—William C. Davis
• 3. A Scientific Argument for the Existence of God: The Fine-Tuning Design Argument—Robin Collins
• 4. God, Evil, and Suffering—Daniel Howard-Snyder
• 5. Arguments for Atheism—John O’Leary-Hawthorn
• 6. Faith and Reason—Caleb Miller
• 7. Religious Pluralism—Timothy O’Connor
• 8. Eastern Religions—Robin Collins
• 9. Divine Providence and Human Freedom—Scott A. Davison
• 10. The Incarnation and the Trinity—Thomas D. Senor
• 11. The Resurrection of the Body and the Life Everlasting—Trenton Merricks
• 12. Heaven and Hell—Michael J. Murray
• 13. Religion and Science—W. Christopher Stewart
• 14. Miracles and Christian Theism—J. A. Cover
• 15. Christianity and Ethics—Frances Howard-Snyder
• 16. The Authority of Scripture—Douglas Blount
• Contributors