What I’d Have to Deny to Deny Hell

published with permission from Tim Challies

Everyone is talking about the existence of hell. Is hell a real place? Is it a literal place of literal torment? It seems that this issue snuck up on us a little bit. Just a month ago a book came out titled Don’t Call It a Comeback. In that book several of the “young, restless, Reformed” authors (myself included) penned chapters discussing issues pertinent to the church today: the gospel, the new birth, Scripture, social justice, homosexuality. These are some of the big issues in the church today and tomorrow. But there is no chapter on hell (the index shows only 2 references to it).

And yet here we are with discussion raging on the existence and nature of hell. This weekend, as I thought about this controversy, I allowed myself a little thought experiment. What would I have to deny in order to deny hell? If I am ever to come to the point of denying the existence of hell, what will be the doctrinal cost of getting there? Though I am sure there is much more that could be said, I came up with four denials.
I Will Deny What Jesus Taught

Jesus believed in the literal existence of a literal hell. It is very difficult to read Luke 16 (the story of The Rich Man and Lazarus) and arrive at any other conclusion except that Jesus believed in hell and that he believed in a hell of conscious torment of body and mind.

The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried, and in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side. And he called out, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in anguish in this flame.’

Jesus also believed in the permanence of hell: “[B]esides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us.” In Matthew’s gospel Jesus speaks of hell as the furnace of fire, the place of weeping and gnashing of teeth. He calls it a place of everlasting fire. This would be strange language for a man to use if he believed that hell did not exist and that it was not a place of horrible torment.

If I am going to deny the existence of hell, I will need to outright deny what Jesus teaches and declare that he is wrong, or I will need to obscure what is so plain. I will need to make all of Jesus’ language symbolic and all of the meaning something other than what is clear. I will need to deny what Jesus says.

I Will Deny the Plain Sense of Scripture

Time would fail me here to provide an extensive look at the concept of hell in the Bible; time would fail me to look at each of the words associated with hell. But one does not need to be an expert on the Bible or on its original languages to see that it teaches clearly that there is life after death and that this life after death will involve joy or torment, it will involve enjoying the loving presence of God or facing his wrathful presence. This is stated explicitly in Scripture and it is stated implicitly. It is in the Old Testament and comes to full form in the New Testament. Those who wrote Scripture believed that hell existed and made it plain in what they wrote.

If I am going to deny the existence of hell, I will have to do a great deal of redefining, a great deal of reinterpreting. As with the teaching of Jesus, I will need to change what is plain to what is symbolic, I will need to take what is clear and make it obscure. There is no getting around the fact that a plain, honest reading of the Bible teaches the existence of hell.
I Will Deny the Testimony of the Church

If I am to deny the existence of hell, I will be denying what has been the near-unanimous testimony of the Christian church through the ages. From the church’s earliest days until today, hell has been understood as a place of conscious, eternal torment. The Westminster Larger Catechism offers an apt summary of what Christians have long believed: “The punishments of sin in the world to come, are everlasting separation from the comfortable presence of God, and most grievous torments in soul and body, without intermission, in hell fire forever.” Though this was formed in the days of Reformation, it depends upon the testimony of Christians who came before. And it informed generations that followed.

If I am to deny that hell is a real place, if I am to deny that hell is that kind of place, I will be turning my back on two thousand years of Christian history—on two thousand years of brothers and sisters in Christ who had great knowledge of Scripture. I’ll grant that there are times this is necessary; there are times that many Christians are wrong about many things. But such a decision must be made with great fear and trembling and only on the basis of overwhelming Scriptural evidence.
I Will Deny the Gospel

I cannot deny hell without utterly changing the gospel message. The message of Christ dying for the lost in order to save their souls will be meaningless. If there is no hell, there is really nothing to lose. And so heaven and hell must be brought to earth, they must be seen as present realities rather than future ones. The Baptist preacher J.L. Dagg said it well: “To appreciate justly and fully the gospel of eternal salvation we must believe the doctrine of eternal damnation.” If I am going to deny eternal damnation, I must radically rewrite the gospel. Gone is the gospel of sinners who have committed treason against God and who call upon themselves God’s just wrath. There are many gospels I can put in its place. But what is clear is that this gospel, this gospel of a substitutionary atonement must be a casualty. This gospel stands and falls upon the existence of both heaven and hell. Take away either one and you gut the gospel; it becomes meaningless and nonsensical.

If I am going to give up hell, I am going to give up the gospel and replace it with a new one.

Let me close with some words from the great theologian Robert Dabney. What he says here I believe as well. “Sure I am, that if hell can be disproved in any way that is solid and true, and consistent with God’s honor and man’s good, there is not a trembling sinner in this land that would hail the demonstration with more joy than I would.” It’s not that I want hell to be true, but that the Scripture makes it clear that it is true. It is not for me to dismantle the doctrine or to deny it; I am simply to believe it and to live and act as if it is true.

10 Questions with John MacArthur

published with permission from Tim Challies

A couple of weeks ago I asked the readers of this site to help me interview John MacArthur. I collected several of the best questions, added in a few of my own, and sent them off. Dr. MacArthur was kind enough not just to answer them, but to answer them very thoroughly.

Questions revolve around his new book Slave, the best Bible translations, avoiding scandal, the challenges he has faced in ministry, and the advice he would give himself if he could go back to the early days of his ministry. He also talks about time management, critiquing people “in our camp,” about theological crises, about the Reformed Charismatics and about Christians who deny a literal 6-day creation.

Without further ado, here is the interview with Dr. MacArthur:

Slave. What is it about this word that merits a whole book?

Sometimes one word can make an enormous difference. For example, the Latin Vulgate’s translation of metanoia (repentance) as paenitentia (penance) in places like Acts 2:38 led to all sorts of problems in the Roman Catholic Church.

The slave concept is a major theme in Scripture. In fact, believers are referred to as “slaves” hundreds of times throughout the Old and New Testaments. Yet, the American church is blind to this critical theme because most English versions translate the word as “servant” instead.

While it is true that the duties of slave and servant may overlap to some degree, there is a key distinction between the two: servants are hired; slaves are owned. Servants have an element of freedom in choosing whom they work for and what they do. The idea of servanthood maintains some level of self-autonomy and personal rights. Slaves, on the other hand, have no freedom, autonomy, or rights. In the Greco-Roman world, slaves were considered property, to the point that, in the eyes of the law they were regarded as things rather than persons. To be someone’s slave was to be his possession, bound to obey his will without hesitation or argument.

This reality has major implications for our understanding of the gospel. Christ’s call to follow Him is not simply an invitation to become His associate, but a mandate to become His slave. That message is especially needed in American culture, where a man-centered, feel-good, cheap-grace gospel has become so popular. But nothing could be farther from the biblical reality—a reality which is brought to the forefront by rightly translating that one word: “slave.”

In the past I’ve written many books that focus on a right understanding of the gospel—The Gospel According to Jesus, The Gospel According to the Apostles, Hard to Believe, and so on. But, as I note in my preface to Slave, “I have no doubt that this perpetual hiding of an essential element of New Testament revelation has contributed to much of the confusion in evangelical teaching and practice. In fact, I wonder if it wasn’t the reason I felt the need to write so many books to clarify the gospel. If this one reality had been known, would any of those books have been necessary?”

So, I see this as a vitally-important issue with far-reaching implications for how the gospel ought to be understood, preached, and lived.

In light of what you write in Slave regarding the proper translation of doulos, what is your preferred Bible translation? Is the correct translation of that word significant enough that it ought to impact the translation we choose?

I am thankful for excellent English translations like the NASB, NKJV, and ESV. But I do wish they had done a better job translating both ebed (in the OT) and doulos (in the NT) as slave. And I am glad that some new versions like the Holman Christian Standard Bible are doing this.

I have had some discussions with one major publishing company about updating their version to reflect the truth about doulos in the NT. They have told me that they will discuss it further with their translation committee. But I don’t know what will happen there.

While I don’t expect many churches to change their Bible versions over this issue, I do hope that pastors—when they preach through a text that includes doulos—will take the time to instruct their people as to what that word really means. I certainly hope they are doing their homework in the Greek, and not just relying on the English text. Lord willing, the Slave book will serve as a resource for them in that endeavor.

How does a minister in a prominent position manage to stay free from scandal and ruin in a culture of selfism and selfishness? What protections do you have in place that might help other ministers?

The key to avoiding scandal is living with integrity. If you live with integrity and a clear conscience, you never have to worry about potential scandal—because there are no skeletons hidden in your closet. Being above reproach in the eyes of others starts with being blameless before the Lord.

As important as it is to keep a good reputation in the community, it is a thousand times more important to safeguard your own personal character. The single most important battlefield in the struggle for integrity is your own mind. That’s where everything will actually be won or lost. And if you lose there, you have already ruined your character. Then it is only a matter of time before your reputation is spoiled, because a bad tree can’t bring forth good fruit.

Put simply, if you take care of the battle on the inside, you can trust God to take care of your reputation with the outside community.

While it is certainly helpful to seek accountability from other godly individuals (fellow elders, family members, etc.), it is even more helpful to remind yourself about the reality of divine accountability and future judgment. You can be surrounded by a lot of people to whom you are accountable. But if you lose the battle of accountability to God in your heart, you will never win it on the outside. The real battle is fought in the conscience and in the heart.

Looking back on those many years of ministry, what has been the greatest challenge you had to face, and how do you see God used it in your ministry?

My time at Grace Church has been a wonderful gift from God. Any difficulties I have faced have been far outweighed by the countless blessings and joys. Yet, ministry has not been without its challenges. For example, when I first came to Grace, there was an immediate need to identify and train up the godly men who would then make up our elder board. It was a long process, taking a number of years, but I knew it was a biblical priority; and it was an investment that has proven invaluable ever since.

Our elder team has faced other challenges in the years since. At times, there have been certain individuals in our congregation who have tried to cause division or who have left for unbiblical reasons. Things like that can be very painful and difficult, especially in the moment. But, in the end, we have always seen the hand of God’s faithfulness displayed. Moreover, those situations have deepened my love for my fellow elders, underscoring how important it is to have a plurality of godly men leading the church.

But to answer your question more directly, I think the greatest challenge any minister can face in ministry, especially in today’s world, is to maintain faithfulness to the Word of God over the long haul. There is always a temptation to tickle ears, follow trends, or grow lazy in weekly study. But since pastors are called to faithfully preach the Word, they must resist those temptations; and they must do so each and every week.

When a pastor maintains his commitment to the faithful study and preaching of God’s Word, nothing else will have a greater impact on his life and ministry. Not only will he be blessed, because his soul is continually being fed; but his people will also flourish, because there is nothing more relevant to their lives or necessary for their spiritual growth than the pure milk of the Word.

Sometimes pastors grow weary in the ministry, especially if they stay in the same place for a long time. But the key to avoiding debilitating weariness in ministry is personal spiritual renewal. If you fill up your own heart first so that your preaching is passionately alive to spiritual things, you can expect your congregation to be similarly alive to spiritual things. Such passion, of course, comes first and foremost through your own concentrated study of the Word of God. And here’s an important key: Don’t study to prepare sermons; study to know the truth, to rejoice in the glory and grace of God, and to be conformed to His will. Sermons should never be the primary goal of your Bible study; they should only be the overflow of it. When you study, seek an accurate understanding of who God is and what He expects—first and foremost, this is for your own devotion and holiness. And then, from the abundance, instruct your people, urging them to follow you as you follow after Christ.

If you could go back as the man you are now and offer one piece of advice to the man you were when you first accepted the pastorate at Grace, what would it be?

I would probably echo the words of wisdom my father shared with me many years ago.

Before I had even started my ministry here at Grace Community Church, my dad said to me, “I want you to remember a couple of things before you go into the ministry. One, the great preachers, the lasting preachers who left their mark on history, taught their people the Word of God. Two, they stayed in one place for a long time.” These were two good pieces of wisdom. When I first came to Grace Church, most people thought that I would only stay a year or two, because I had been an itinerant communicator to youth groups. But in my heart, I knew I wanted to do the two things my dad advised: one was to teach the Bible expositionally, especially to go through the whole New Testament, knowing, secondly, that such a goal would require staying in one place over the long term. I knew that was the only way I could continue to nourish my own soul, affect generations with God’s truth, and manifest integrity of life through long visibility.

You are obviously a busy man. What advice would you give to pastors on loving their wives and children amidst the many demands of the pastoral ministry?

It is critically important that the pastor give priority to his family. As Paul told Timothy regarding the qualification of an elder, “He must be one who manages his own household well, keeping his children under control with all dignity (but if a man does not know how to manage his own household, how will he take care of the church of God?” So, this is a priority that comes to us directly from the Scriptures.

The most important things a Christian father can do for his children are to love their mother in a Christ-like way (Ephesians 5) and to train them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord (Ephesians 6). And the most important thing he can do for his wife is to pursue Christ, and then to love and lead her out of the overflow of his devotion for the Savior. Thus, the fundamental key for being both a good husband and father is to be a godly man—one who fervently loves the Lord and is shepherding his own heart and mind with the Word of God. And that is intensely practical. To be an effective parent and a model husband, you must be faithful in your walk with Christ. Everything else in life flows out of that. Then your leadership in the home will be marked by an attitude of humble sacrifice and selfless service. As the Spirit uses His Word to sanctify your heart, you will be able to shepherd and care for your family.

There are other important things that fathers must do, of course—such as praying for their children, correcting them with patience and gentleness, instilling within them a love for the church, spending time with them, encouraging them, befriending them, and helping them make wise friendships of their own. But the heart of Christian parenting is being a faithful Christian.

That kind of genuine Christianity, daily lived out before those who know him best, brings great credibility to the pastor’s preaching and leadership in the church.

How can we best critique people who are “in our camp” and yet believe things different from us? Or behave in ways we do not appreciate? How can we know where to draw those lines?

Part of the responsibility of an elder is not only to teach and preach the truth, but also to warn the flock about error. We see this modeled by Christ and the apostles in the New Testament. When the gospel is at stake, and even when a core aspect of pastoral ministry or church life is at stake, it is important for us to warn people about falsehood and potential dangers.

When we disagree with people “in our camp” (which I understand to mean those who affirm a biblical gospel but differ with us on secondary issues), we have to respond on a case-by-case basis. And my response depends on the level of danger I believe that particular issue poses to those under my spiritual care. If an issue arises that could potentially threaten the congregation of Grace Church or the student body at The Master’s College & Seminary, I might say something to the congregation. If the issue is significant and far-reaching, I might write an article, a series of blog-posts, or even a book about it.

I don’t aspire to be a full-time all-round critic. The few well-known times when I have criticized people whom you might say are “in our camp,” my concerns have been motivated by a deep concern for those under my spiritual care. I feel a heavy weight of responsibility for them, knowing that one day I will give an account to the Lord for my stewardship of them; and I’m willing to be unpopular within the larger evangelical community if that’s what it costs to say what Scripture compels me to say.

One final thought to add is this: I believe that it is appropriate to respond publicly to that which has been taught publicly. If someone has published something in a book or on a blog or preached it in a sermon (which has then been made available online), it is now subject to public critique. I certainly believe this is true with regard to my own teachings. Anything I have preached or published (and therefore made public) is consequently subject to public criticism. And I don’t consider my critics to necessarily be unloving just because they disagree with me. In fact, I welcome their feedback, because it is part of the sharpening process.

What are the two or three most urgent theological crises that you see in the North American Church at present?

Two of my primary concerns are addressed in the next two questions. So I’ll save my responses to them for later. A third major issue that I see is the Arminian methodology that seems to characterize many in the Young Restless Reformed crowd in contradiction to their Reformed credo.

It is sadly ironic to me that those who claim to hold to a Reformed soteriology would simultaneously embrace ecclesiological and evangelistic methods that depend so heavily on current fashion, clever techniques, and human ingenuity. When pastors work so hard to be “cool” or “hip” or “trendy,” thinking that the way they talk or dress will make the gospel message more appealing to the lost, they betray an intrinsically Arminian perspective. Words like “relevance,” “innovation,” and “contextualization” have become buzzwords, even in Reformed circles, for reaching the “unchurched.” But these words expose a man-centered perspective that, I believe, is completely unbiblical.

How much better it would be to adopt the perspective of Jonathan Edwards during the Great Awakening. Edwards was surprised by the response to his preaching. He did not manipulate revival (like Finney did a century later). Rather, he focused on preaching the truth and trusted the Holy Spirit to do the work. If we are going to be Reformed in our soteriology, we should at least be consistent with how that works itself out in our practical ecclesiology—and particularly in our evangelistic srategy.

Since you wrote Charismatic Chaos we have seen the unexpected confluence of Reformed theology with charismatic beliefs (such as in the Sovereign Grace family of churches). If you were to write the book today, how would you affirm both love and critique for today’s Reformed Charismatics?

I would affirm my love and appreciation for C. J. Mahaney, Wayne Grudem, John Piper, and other conservatives in the continuationist camp. I consider these men to be friends and allies for the sake of the gospel. Charismatic Chaos was primarily written against the excesses of the broader Pentecostal and Charismatic movements. And those excesses are not what these men are best known for.

But, I would still challenge these men to reconsider their position on the charismatic gifts. I am convinced that the charismatic movement opened the door to more theological error than perhaps any other factor in the twentieth century (including liberalism, psychology, and ecumenism). That’s a bold statement, I know. But once you allow experientialism to gain a foothold, the results are disastrous.

Moreover, I am thoroughly convinced that the biblical description of the charismatic gifts is incompatible with the charismatic gifts practiced in Pentecostal and Charismatic churches today. For example, Acts 2 is explicit in describing the gift of tongues as the ability to speak previously unlearned foreign languages. The rest of the New Testament affirms this same understanding (as does the testimony of the church fathers). But that is the very opposite of the nonsensical gibberish that characterizes modern glossolalia.

So I would challenge them to explain why they hold on to a modern practice that, in reality, has no biblical precedent—especially when that modern practice is the gateway to all sorts of theological error.

One pressing issue in the church today is that of creation and evolution. Do you believe that a person can be genuinely saved and believe in some kind of theistic evolution? How serious a theological error is it to reject a literal 6-day creation?

It’s a very serious error in my estimation, because it attacks the authority of Scripture at the Bible’s very starting point. It employs a special hermeneutic in order to make the Bible mean quite the opposite of what it plainly states. And once you open that door, absolutely nothing is safe from the assaults of rationalism, skepticism, and rank unbelief.

I watch the propaganda being published by organizations like Biologos, and it’s hard to resist the conclusion that many of the people who are involved in that project don’t seem to be believers at all, given the large portions of Scripture they regularly have to explain away in order to justify their convoluted worldview.

As a matter of fact, the history of modernist rationalism is littered with vivid examples of why it is unsafe and spiritually destructive to subject Scripture to naturalistic presuppositions. I wrote on this topic in detail at the very beginning of my book The Battle for the Beginning.

But in answer to your specific question: I do think it is possible for a genuine believer to be confused or befuddled by scientific arguments regarding evolution and the age of the earth. (It is certainly possible for believers to be inconsistent in their beliefs—to hold all kinds of errors in varying degrees. That’s called cognitive dissonance.)

Well-meaning evangelicals have experimented with several ways to reconcile old-earth theories with Scripture. One of the more popular ideas (until Henry Morris exploded it) was that there’s a gap in the white space between Genesis 1:1 and verse 2, and (so the theory goes) that silent gap might accommodate countless ages of change and chaos in the universe. Spurgeon held to a version of the gap theory, and the original Scofield Bible embraced both the gap theory and old-earth cosmology with blithe enthusiasm. Of course we would not consign everyone who ever held such an opinion to the ranks of unbelief.

Nevertheless, as evolutionary theory has developed and devolved into untouchable dogma—a favorite weapon for the current generation of angry atheists—I don’t see how any sober-minded, well-grounded, fully-committed Christian who truly believes what the Bible teaches can long maintain faith in the various and ever-changing theories evolutionary scientists keep proposing. Biblical cosmology, the Genesis account of how the human race was created and subsequently fell, and the important parallels between Adam and Christ in the story of redemption—these are essential beliefs of Christianity; they have never changed; and they are diametrically opposed to every purely naturalistic theory about life’s origins.

Anyone who takes seriously the authority of Scripture must ultimately set the opinions of men aside and simply trust what Scripture says. The earlier we do that, the better. Frankly, I have never understood why someone who believes in the literal bodily resurrection of Christ would balk at believing all of Scripture, starting with Genesis 1:1.

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Many thanks to Dr. MacArthur for his willingness to do this interview.

The Young and The Don’t-Want-To-Be-Evangelical

Podcast: Download (Duration: 50:47 — 8.7MB)

Guest: Kevin DeYoung

The classification “evangelical Christian” means many different things to many different people.  To some, it means being a right-wing political activist who is trying to impose his religion on society.  To others, it means being one who pursues “social justice” in the “rhythm of Jesus”.  To the young, “evangelical Christian” means, well, perhaps something they really don’t want to be.

In the new book, ““Don’t Call It a Comeback: The Old Faith for a New Day”, editor Kevin DeYoung, senior pastor of University Reformed Church in Lansing, Michigan, along with a cadre of other prominent young evangelicals such as Justin Taylor, Tim Challies, Tullian Tchivdjian, and Greg Gilbert, seek to clarify the historical and doctrinal foundations and practical outworking of being an evangelical, and why the “old faith” is relevant to the younger generation.

Kevin DeYoung joins us this weekend on The Christian Worldview to explain how traditional evangelical Christianity is the answer for the next generation and how to communicate that truth with them.

Read more

Finishing the Race

published with permission from Tim Challies

Yesterday I shared the first part of a brief biography of Eric Liddell. Today I would like to complete it. In the first part we got as far as Eric Liddell returning to Scotland after winning two Olympic medals.

And here he is, just 23 years old, a sports hero who still had at least another Olympics or two in him. He could have played professional rugby, he could have kept running. The world was before him. But he shut it all down and gave it all up, heading to China so he could preach the gospel. And here is a second lesson I see in his life. He was willing to give up everything for the sake of the gospel. Would you be willing to give up fame and money and popularity and everything else in order to heed the call of God? Let’s not make light of this and pretend like it was an easy thing. He was giving up everything most of us dream of. And it seems like it wasn’t difficult for him at all. He knew what God was calling him to do and he had no regrets, no second thoughts. Could you do that?

1925 marked the beginning of Eric Liddell’s second career, the one he cared about far more than the first. He had loved running, but now he was to be a teacher, and best of all, a teacher who could share the gospel with his students. He became a science teacher at Tientsin Anglo-Chinese College. This was a college that catered to the sons of many wealthy Chinese politicians and businessmen. The college’s founder thought this would be a way of reaching the next generation of rulers with the gospel.

Eric’s parents were serving in that very area, so for the first time in many years, Eric got to live with his family—his parents, his younger sister and his younger brother. Rob had married in the meantime and was heading to a different part of China to work as a doctor and missionary. It wouldn’t be long before Eric also started pursuing a wife.

There was just one problem.

The girl he was in love with was ten years younger than he was. Florence MacKenzie was her name, a child of a missionary from Canada. Her dad, Hugh MacKenzie, had been sent to China by the United Church. Now Eric started to notice Florence, or Flo as she was called. He started to make sure he was home when Flo came to the Liddell home for a piano lesson and he started to drop by the MacKenzie home fairly often, just to hang out. He was successful enough in all of this, or awkward enough, more likely, that no one guessed that he was interested in Florence. It was three or four years before he started to become bold, figuring then that Florence was old enough to pursue a relationship. He finally did ask her to marry him and when he did, she was so surprised that she made him repeat the question. She had no idea he was in love with her. But she was thrilled and said yes. There was just one problem—she wanted to be a nurse and her father insisted that she finish her training before she could marry him. And that would take four years. From 1930 to 1934 she studied right here in Toronto. Eric and Florence saw each other a couple of times in these years, but only for short visits. But finally the years were over, she was a nurse, and she returned to China. They were married on March 27, 1934. Eric was 32 and thrilled to finally be married.

At this point Liddell had only ten years to live, though they didn’t know it at the time. He and Florence settled well into married life and God eventually blessed them with three children, all girls. By this time he had decided to leave teaching and to dive into more straightforward missionary work. While there were missionaries serving the cities, there were not very many in the countryside, serving the small towns and hamlets. He decided that God was calling him to this kind of ministry. He took up work in the area of Siaochang, a tough place to be since there was still little peace in China. Communism was starting to grow and a kind of civil war broke out between the Communists and the anti-Communist Nationalists. Much of Eric’s work involved traveling long distances to visit small churches and encourage the pastors. He would also organize conferences for those preachers and would do evangelistic work on his own.  And all the while he crisscrossed the country, passing one army and then another one, with wars raging all around.

In 1937 it got far worse. Japan attacked China, invading the country and committing horrible atrocities against its people. Eric found himself in the midst of this fighting and was called upon to try to rescue Chinese citizens who had been wounded. In such times he showed great bravery, one time traveling 40 miles to save a man who had been badly wounded but not quite killed and bring him all the way back to the hospital.

By early 1941 the situation was so unstable that Eric sent his family back to Canada. The World was at war and it would be just a few months more before Japan waded into it as well. China was becoming a very dangerous place to be, but Eric felt that he needed to stay there, to minister to the people he loved. He had been born in China and he would die in China. When Japan attacked the United States in December, Eric, like all foreigners, was placed under house arrest, not able to travel around and not able to have any real freedom. He was an enemy in the country he loved. In 1943 he and all the other London Missionary workers were sent to  an internment camp in Weihsien, about 600 miles away. And here they would remain until the end of the war. The quarters were rough and cramped, with four men sharing a tiny room 9 feet by 12 feet. The missionaries tried to carry on life as usual, teaching, preaching and otherwise carrying on a semblance of normal life. All the while they were able to send only short 25-word letters to home and these would often take 6 months or more to travel to Canada.

Eric was a popular person in this camp. He took it upon himself to preach the gospel and to work with young people. He discipled many young people, especially teenagers. He preached, the taught, he helped organize events that would help overcome the boredom of being captives in a small compound. The kids came to call him Uncle Eric and they loved him as if he was a true uncle.

By the closing days of 1944, though, a change came over Eric. He began to experience terrible headaches and even began to lose his temper on occasion, something no one had ever witnessed before. Doctors at the compound suspected he might have a brain tumor. There was no medical treatment available there, so they just had to wait and see.

By February he suffered a small stroke, confirming what the doctors thought—he must have that tumor. On February 21, while talking to a friend, he suddenly collapsed and slipped into a coma. That night, at 9:20 PM, he died. His last words were, “It is surrender.”

And those were appropriate words, because his life was all about surrender. Here’s the third lesson from his life: the importance of total surrender. Liddell spoke often of surrender; it was one of those terms he loved to use and loved to apply to all of his life. He knew that God had called him in a radical way; he knew that God demanded all of his life. He wanted to surrender all he was and all he had. He wanted to be used by God in whatever way God could use him. At that prison camp a friend asked him, “Did you ever pray to win a race?” No, he said, he didn’t ever pray to win a race. But he sure would pray before he preached the gospel. He prayed far more for those short speeches than for those great races. He would surrender himself. Win or lose, he wanted God to be glorified. He felt that God would not be glorified in racing on Sunday and he completely surrendered himself to that. And that is how people remember him today, as the man whose Christian principles outweighed everything else.

You know, if ever there was a man for who these words are appropriate, it was Eric Liddell. “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that Day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing.” Eric Liddell knew all about the victor’s crown, he knew all about the gold medals and the cheering crowds. But he got what he wanted most of all; he got that crown of righteousness. He finished race and he kept the faith. His most famous run lasted 47.6 seconds, a world record, but his legacy continues not because of that race and that victory, but because of the one he didn’t run. His legacy is built on his faithfulness to God.

Chariots of Fire

As I was preparing this short biography I watched the film Chariots of Fire. I think it’s likely that the more you know about Liddell, the less you’ll enjoy the movie. Or maybe I’m just a bit of a jerk. But since most people know Eric through the movie, let me correct it in just a few places.

• He was not as bad a runner as the movie indicates. They almost lampoon his running style. Video of Eric shows that he really did not have terrible form. He did have the odd habit of throwing back his head at pivotal moments, but he did not thrash his arms as badly as the film shows.
• In the film his sister is shown to be a real shrew, but in reality she was quite supportive. She was also in China for most of Eric’s life, so was not such a constant presence.
• Eric did not discover on the way to the Olympics that he was going to have to run on Sunday. He actually found out months in advance and had lots of time to prepare himself. Of course this also means that he had a lot more time to face critique.
• Just for fun, watch the final race and you’ll see that the piece of paper he is handed is sometimes in his hand and other times not. He starts with it and ends with it, but in the middle it’s clearly not there!
• The movie attempts to contrast Liddell and Abrahams, but in doing so it shows both men as far less than they really were.
• Oh, and it shows them with medals. At the 1924 Olympics the medals were actually mailed to the winners months later; there were no medal ceremonies back then.

I guess the long and short is that it’s a good movie, but it’s still a movie. It’s meant to tell a good story, not necessarily a true story.

Want to learn more about Liddell? Here are a couple of recommendations:

• Pure Gold by David McCasland. A good, general biography.
• Running the Race by John Keddie. A good biography that focuses a bit more on his sports accomplishments.

Running the Race

published with permission from Tim Challies

Over the past few weeks I’ve posted a couple of short biographies I wrote this summer. I want to post just one more—this one about the olympic runner and missionary Eric Liddell.

What may be most interesting about Eric Liddell is that he is remembered for something he didn’t do far more than than something he did. And he did some great things! He was one of the best rugby players in the world, one of the fastest men in the world, a two-time Olympic medalist. He was a profoundly godly guy, a pastor, a missionary. And yet he is known for what he did not do.

His story begins in China in 1902 and ends in China in 1945, so he lived from the turn of the century, right near the end of the Victorian era, to almost the end of World War 2. He was born in January of that year in Tianjin, the second son of James and Mary Liddell. His father was a missionary with the London Missionary Society, that great organization that sent so many missionaries around the world (perhaps the best known of them being David Livingstone who is best remembered for what someone else said to him!). His parents were Scottish Presbyterians and were noted for their zeal for evangelism, something that was not very popular in the part of Scotland they had come from.

China at the time was a very unstable place. This was just two years after the Boxer Rebellion, when Chinese nationalists took up arms against foreigners. They were particularly angry at Christians, killing hundreds of them including nearly 200 missionaries. Hudson Taylor’s China Inland Missions was hit hardest with 58 of their missionaries being put to death.

By 1902 the situation had stabilized and the Rebellion had been put down, but China remained a dangerous place to be. Shortly after Eric was born the family moved to Siaochang, a particularly dangerous place and an area that had seen a great deal of suffering during the Rebellion. James was to help rebuild London Missionary buildings and properties that had been destroyed. He also traveled through the area, preaching in public and encouraging the pastors of local churches in the area. That work continued until 1907 when the Liddell family returned to Scotland for a furlough.

In those days a missionary tended to work for six or seven years and would then get a year off. James and Mary had been in China for nearly eight years and were overdue for their furlough. So they packed up a few of their belongings and made the long journey back to Scotland. This was the first time the children had been anywhere but China.

Missionaries had a tough job back then and the work came with one strange tradition. When the parents went overseas, they usually left their children behind, especially if those children were boys. Mom and dad would go overseas for seven years and would not see their children for that entire time. The Liddells were no different, so after that one-year furlough was up Eric and his older brother Rob were taken to the School for the Sons of Missionaries (the name was soon changed to Eltham College). Their father registered them and then headed back to China. Mary wanted to wait a bit longer to make sure the boys adjusted well, so she remained behind for several months before she, too, went to China. Eric wasn’t quite seven years old when he was left behind, knowing that he would not see his parents for 6 years. Rob was 8.

So think about what it meant to raise children as a missionary. You would have your children with you for 5 or 6 years when they were very young. Then you wouldn’t see them for another 7 years. Then you’d see them for a year. Then you’d be gone for another 7. By the time you got back, they’d practically be all grown up. These missionary parents might spend only 2 or 3 years with their children before the children grew into adults and moved on with life. Eric and Rob would grow up at this school instead of with their family.

Eric was a good student but an even better athlete. Actually, in many cases the track and field days at the school read like an all-Liddell event. When Eric didn’t win first, his brother did. And the other one almost always won second place. That must have been kind of depressing for the other boys. In one track meet they placed first and second in cross country, long jump, high jump, hundred yard dash, hurdle race and quarter mile.

It was some time in these years that Eric became a Christian. In 1917 he and his brother both became members of a church and presumably made some kind of public profession of faith. He didn’t talk about how he came to know the Lord, at least not that I could find. But it seems that he was raised in a Christian home and, at some point in his teen years, came to that place where he decided that the faith of his parents would be his faith as well.

When the boys were finished at this school, they both headed to the University of Edinburgh, Rob to study medicine and Eric to study science (because Rob was a year older he went a year earlier). Rob had decided that he wanted to follow his father to the mission field and Eric was still deciding what he would do. He began university in 1921.

It was here that a student walked up to Eric and said, “I understand you did some running at Eltham College.” “A little” Eric replied. The guy suggested Eric try out for the track team. Eric really wasn’t that interested but eventually said he would show up if the other guy gave him a little training. Eric really knew very little—he didn’t even know about proper warms ups and cool downs. He would just start running without warming up and would stop dead after finishing a race. In his very first meet, though, he won the 100-year race and came in second in the 220. People started to notice him.

Within two years he was a well-known university athlete, one who excelled in both rugby and running. In fact, he was playing for the Scottish national rugby team in international tournaments, trying to beat England, France and other countries. And it was this year that he made what he said was the hardest decision of his life. One day a man named D.P. Thomson came to Liddell’s home to ask if he would consider speaking at an evangelistic meeting the next Friday. Eric was a very quiet guy and one who was afraid of public speaking. He paused for a moment but realized that he could not say no. And so, despite his fears, he went out and did it. And God blessed that work. Suddenly he wasn’t just an athlete but a Christian athlete. And the better he became as an athlete, the more speaking he was asked to do. He came to see that his success in sports had opened to him a platform to talk about his faith.

At one point a journalist came and asked him about the key to his success as an athlete. Liddell’s reply was, “It’s the 3 7’s!” The guy had no idea what this meant so Eric replied—it’s the seventh verse of the seventh chapter of the seventh book of the New Testament: “Each has his own gift from God, one of one kind and one of another.” He regarded his ability to run as a special gift from God and one he had to use for God’s glory. If you watch the film Chariots of Fire you’ll hear him say “I believe God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast. And when I run I feel His pleasure.” These are probably the most famous words attributed to Liddell. I tried to find out if he really said them or if they were just words created for the movie. As far as I can see, they are only movie words, but even if they don’t really come from him, they are consistent with what he believed and what he lived. God made him fast and by using his gift, he felt God’s pleasure. If God made him fast, he felt that he had better use that gift for God’s glory.

If we look for lessons in the life of Eric Liddell, I think this is the first one we’ll find. He was a remarkably normal guy—soft-spoken, shy, quiet. He wasn’t at all brilliant and didn’t have an amazing theological mind. But through all that normalcy he was able to do what he loved to do, he was able to use his gifts, to bring glory to God and to enjoy the pleasure of God. He was not a great speaker, certainly no Wesley or Whitefield, but people loved him for his sincerity. No one ever doubted that he meant what he said. He was utterly normal and utterly sincere.

1924 was to be an Olympic year with the events being held in Paris. Already in the years leading up to the Olympics there was talk of Eric being appointed to the British team. And sure enough he was selected to run the 100 and 200. Not only that, he was favored to win or at least to medal in them.

Several months before the Olympics began, though, he found out that the 100 yard heats were to be run on Sunday. And here is where he made the decision that would forever mark him. Liddell was a strict Sabbatarian, one who believed that the Lord’s Day was to be kept holy. He believed it was sinful to play sports on that day or to do work on that day. For him, running was both play and work and he would not violate his conscience. This was not a difficult decision—it wasn’t one he labored over. When he found out that he would have to run on Sunday he informed the Olympic committee that he would not and could not do it. Period. Not surprisingly he took a little bit of heat for this, but he never wavered. He simply wouldn’t run. And this decision is what he is known for even today; he is known as the athlete who didn’t run a race.

Eventually it was decided that instead of running the 100 and 200, he could run the 200 and 400. Now the 400 was an event he had run in the past, but it was not one he had trained for. He would have only a few months to prepare himself for an event the others had been training for for years.

Those months passed quickly and the Olympics began.

First up was the 200. When all was said and done, Liddell took the bronze in this event, coming in behind two American runners. If you’ve watched Chariots of Fire you’ll remember Abrahams. He was the British runner who was favored to win this event, but he came in flat last in the final run. The British papers almost seemed to miss Liddell’s bronze, instead lamenting Abraham’s failure. Of course Abraham would come back to win the 100.

After picking up his bronze, Eric had to focus on the 400. Many people consider the 400 the most difficult running event. The 100 is about pure speed with little endurance. The 200 is much the same, though endurance factors in a little bit. The 400, though, is an effort to maintain top speed not for 10 seconds but for 45 or 50. It becomes a question of who can decelerate the least in the final stretch of the race when muscles are burning and oxygen is depleted. Liddell got through the heats and found himself in the finals on the outside lane. As was his habit, he walked to each of the other runners to shake their hands and wish them well.

And, well, you know how the story ends. Liddell took off like a jack-rabbit, setting a pace everyone knew he couldn’t sustain. Except that he did. He never gave up that lead and came across the finish line in first place. He now had a gold to go along with his bronze. And he was now a true Scottish hero. He was celebrated everywhere he went, something that made him intensely uncomfortable. But he also realized that it opened doors and he took advantage, speaking about the gospel as often as he could.

Two days after returning home from the Olympics he graduated, and though he ran for another year, he knew that his career as a runner was coming to an end. He wanted to head back to China to do the Lord’s work there. He spent a year pursuing a theological degree. In 1925, his course completed, his running days done, he headed for China.

To be continued…

Counterfeit Bonhoeffer

I’ve made no secret of the fact that I enjoyed reading Eric Metaxas’ biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Actually, it’s one of my all-time favorite biographies; it’s readable, engaging and it deals with a fascinating part of history. But lately I’ve come across a few articles by experts in Bonhoeffer who say that it’s just plain wrong—it’s a portrayal of the man that is geared toward evangelicals and, in seeking to make the reader happy, it succumbs to all sorts of errors.

Richard Weikart of California State University says that Metaxas “serves up a Bonhoeffer suited to the evangelical taste” and notes with disbelief that in “an interview with Christianity Today Metaxas even made the astonishing statement that Bonhoeffer was as orthodox theologically as the apostle Paul.”

As orthodox as Paul? Metaxas does not seem to know that in his Christology lectures in 1933 Bonhoeffer claimed, “The biblical witness is uncertain with regard to the virgin birth.” Bonhoeffer also rejected the notion of the verbal inspiration of scripture, and in a footnote to Cost of Discipleship he warned against viewing statements about Christ’s resurrection as ontological statements (i.e., statements about something that happened in real space and time). Bonhoeffer also rejected the entire enterprise of apologetics, which he thought was misguided.

Weikart suggests that Metaxas simply got in over his head—that he did not take the time to properly understand Bonhoeffer’s theological context of German liberalism. “I trust that Metaxas is my brother in Christ, but unfortunately he simply does not have sufficient grounding in history, theology, and philosophy to properly interpret Bonhoeffer. This is not just my opinion. Victoria Barnett, the editor of the English-language edition of Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, wrote a scathing review of Metaxas’s biography. In her opinion, Metaxas ‘has a very shaky grasp of the political, theological, and ecumenical history of the period.’ She then calls Metaxas’s portrayal of Bonhoeffer’s theology “a terrible simplification and at times misrepresentation.”

Weikart goes on to offer a partial list of errors, saying that it “is hard to give much credence to someone writing about German history who thinks that Bonn is in Switzerland or that Hitler was democratically elected into office or that Germany was not yet a police state in August 1934.” Here is how he concludes:

Metaxas, then, has presented us with a sanitized Bonhoeffer fit for evangelical audiences. Evangelicals can continue to believe comfortingly that Bonhoeffer is one of them, and that his heroic stance against Hitler was the product of evangelical-style theology. This view is nave, but many wish it to be so. They might prefer Metaxas’s counterfeit Bonhoeffer to the real, much more complex, German theologian who continued to believe in the validity of higher biblical criticism, who praised Rudolf Bultmann when he called for demythologizing the New Testament, and who in his prison writings called for us to live “as if there were no God.” In 1944, toward the end of his life, Bonhoeffer admitted that he was a theologian who “still carries within himself the heritage of liberal theology.”

Clifford Green is another Bonhoeffer scholar, and one who has edited several volumes of Bonhoeffer’s Works. He says that Metaxas resorted to outright denial of some of the things we know to be true about Bonhoeffer and his theology and then offers this critique:

Metaxas writes as an omniscient narrator, a mind reader who knows Bonhoeffer’s every thought and feeling. (Is this just a literary device, or does it reveal how much the author projects his own views into the mind and actions of his subject?) For example, at the height of the church struggle, Bonhoeffer caused an uproar when he wrote: “Whoever knowingly separates himself from the Confessing Church separates himself from salvation.” Metaxas assures us that Bonhoeffer did not think this was explosive and “never imagined that it would become a focal point of the lecture.”

The purpose of his article is to say that Metaxas essentially hijacked Bonhoeffer, tearing him out of his own time and context and rewriting him in such a way that he would appeal to contemporary evangelicals.

I did not want to believe what those authors (and authors) are saying about Metaxas and his biography. But I am inclined to believe them as they bring the weight of scholarship and experience. They may well be right in suggesting that Metaxas got in over his head; and they may be right in suggesting that the true Bonhoeffer was simply too unorthodox to appeal to the likes of me—the kind of person who read, enjoyed and enthusiastically recommended the book.

Having said that, I think that some caution is in order. Scholarship can bring dimness just as it can bring clarity. I suspect we will need to wait to see how Metaxas and other scholars react to this early criticism. It would be as big a mistake to immediately believe men like Weikart and Green (because they claim to know Bonhoeffer better) as it would be to believe Metaxas (simply because he wrote a popular book). I believe that time will bring a lot of clarity—the kind that comes when people debate issues like this one.

And yet I find it quite easy to believe that an author, either deliberately or inadvertently, could create a character who was appealing, even if less than accurate. I don’t think we would need to look too far into the biography section of a bookstore to find just that kind of character. Sometimes the truth just doesn’t sell as well as a half-truth. And I’m afraid that we evangelicals may just prefer a safe and friendly character over an accurate one.

Spiritual Gifts: All for Then and Some for Now?

Podcast: Download (Duration: 50:48 — 8.7MB)

Guest: Dick Johnson, Bible Teacher, Chapter and Verse Ministries

TRANSCRIPT

“Now concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I do not want you to be unaware.”

1 Corinthians 12:1 is precisely the goal of The Christian Worldview Radio Program this weekend: to make you more aware of spiritual gifts — what they are, which one(s) you have, and how you can effectively use them for God’s glory.

Dick Johnson, Bible teacher of Chapter and Verse Ministries, will help us answer these questions and bring clarity to the hot topic of “cessationism vs. continuationism”. In other words, are some of the spiritual gifts that were present in the first century church, like speaking in tongues and physical healings, still applicable for the church today?

Continuationist viewpoint: Wayne Grudem interview with Tim Challies: Part 1 | Part 2
Cessationist viewpoint: Phil Johnson article

The Manhattan Declaration – Revisited (Tim Challies)

Last week saw the release of The Manhattan Declaration, a document crafted by Chuck Colson, Robert George and Timothy George and signed by a long list of Evangelical, Catholic and Orthodox leaders. I have not been able to gauge the interest in the Declaration or whether it has had an immediate impact. But I have seen a bit of buzz about it through the Christian blogosphere. Today I want to address it, even if only briefly.

Here is a brief description of the document:

Christians, when they have lived up to the highest ideals of their faith, have defended the weak and vulnerable and worked tirelessly to protect and strengthen vital institutions of civil society, beginning with the family.

We are Orthodox, Catholic, and evangelical Christians who have united at this hour to reaffirm fundamental truths about justice and the common good, and to call upon our fellow citizens, believers and non-believers alike, to join us in defending them. These truths are:

1. the sanctity of human life
2. the dignity of marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife
3. the rights of conscience and religious liberty.

Inasmuch as these truths are foundational to human dignity and the well-being of society, they are inviolable and non-negotiable. Because they are increasingly under assault from powerful forces in our culture, we are compelled today to speak out forcefully in their defense, and to commit ourselves to honoring them fully no matter what pressures are brought upon us and our institutions to abandon or compromise them. We make this commitment not as partisans of any political group but as followers of Jesus Christ, the crucified and risen Lord, who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

It is, then, a declaration on these crucial issues of the sanctity of life, the sanctity of marriage and the sanctity of religious liberty. Among the more notable signatories, at least to readers of this site, is Dr. Albert Mohler, President of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Unfortunately a portion of The Manhattan Declaration site is down now so I cannot refer to the list of signatories to reference other names.

Some Evangelicals have chosen to decline signing the Declaration on the basis that it is a joint statement by Evangelicals, Catholics and Orthodox leaders. I am among those whose conscience will not give me freedom to add my name to the 100,000+ who have already signed.

Rather than write a lengthy defense of my refusal, I thought I would direct you to some useful articles.

John MacArthur offers this explanation as to why he will not sign. “It assumes from the start that all signatories are fellow Christians whose only differences have to do with the fact that they represent distinct ‘communities.’ Points of disagreement are tacitly acknowledged but are described as ‘historic lines of ecclesial differences’ rather than fundamental conflicts of doctrine and conviction with regard to the gospel and the question of which teachings are essential to authentic Christianity. … [It would] relegate the very essence of gospel truth to the level of a secondary issue. That is the wrong way—perhaps the very worst way—for evangelicals to address the moral and political crises of our time.”

James White writes “There is no question that all believers need to think seriously about the issues raised by this declaration. But what is the only solution to these issues? Is the solution to be found in presenting a unified front that implicitly says ‘the gospel does not unite us, but that is not important enough to divide us’? I do not think so. What is the only power given to the church to change hearts and minds? United political power? Or the gospel that is trampled under foot by every Roman Catholic priest when he ‘re-presents’ the sacrifice of Christ upon the Roman altar, pretending to be a priest, an ‘alter Christus’? Am I glad when a Roman clergyman calls abortion murder? Of course. But it exhibits a real confusion, and not a small amount of cowardice, it seems, to stop identifying the man’s false gospel and false teaching simply because you are glad to have a few more on the ‘right’ side of a vitally important social issue.”

Frank Turk also declines, saying “It assumes a big tent for the definition of what it means to be a ‘believer’, assumes that law is greater than grace in reforming the hearts of men, and provides moral reasoning that those who are unbelievers have no reason to accept — because they are unbelievers. And in making these three items “especially troubling” in the ‘whole scope of Christian moral concern’, it overlooks that the key solution to these moral concerns is the renovation of the human heart by supernatural means established by the death and resurrection of Christ.”

To varying degrees I agree with each of these critiques though on the whole my thoughts line up mostly closely with John MacArthur’s. In my view, this line says it all: “Going back to the earliest days of the church, Christians have refused to compromise their proclamation of the gospel.” It is good to speak of the gospel, but what does the term mean if used by Protestants, Catholics and Orthodox? Each has their own understanding of the term—the term that stands at the very heart of the faith. I just cannot see past this issue.

I see that there is much more to lose than to gain in joining together across these denominational boundaries. I would not and could not sign it.

The Greatest Show on Earth

It has been a couple of years since Richard Dawkins’ last major work, The God Delusion (my review). That book was a long-time fixture on the bestseller lists and served to establish Dawkins as the foremost spokesman for the New Atheists. Dawkins has long had two related emphases in his writing and speaking: the non-existence of God and the evidence in nature that evolution is responsible for all that exists. Where The God Delusion emphasized the former, his latest book, The Greatest Show on Earth, emphasizes the latter. It is primarily a counter-attack to advocates of Intelligent Design, and represents Dawkins’ attempt to provide natural evidence for evolution. He says simply, “Evolution is a fact, and this book will demonstrate it.”

It will not surprise you to hear that I was not convinced by Dawkins’ evidences for evolution. I will not provide a rebuttal of those evidences here since I know that others who are more qualified than I am will do just that. Instead, in just a few paragraphs, let me share a few of my thoughts on this book and what I consider its more prominent flaws.

Overall, there is a thread of arrogance in many of Dawkins’ arguments. On the one hand Dawkins wants to show how science continues to make vast and important discoveries; he wants to show that science is living and always advancing, disproving old theses in favor of new ones. On the other hand he wants to act as if all we know about evolution we know for certain. So when we see that the retina in the human eye has the appearance of being installed backwards, we can therefore state with certainty that this is the case and that it is the result of a mutation that was overcome by fortuitous adaptations in the human brain. In other words, the human eye is a mistake. But how are we to know that an advance in science, two years from now, will not show that this is no accident but is just that way it has to be—or, to borrow from the world of software, that it is a feature instead of a bug. He relies on science to prove what is absolutely true or false, never pointing out how often science has been wrong in the past and how often a new advance overshadows or disproves an old one. The history of science gives me little confidence that, in the end, he will be proven correct even with an issue as simple as the human eye.

Dawkins holds up the invariability of DNA code across all living creatures as evidence of shared ancestry (since the genetic code is shared across all living things—it is what is written in the code, not the code itself, that distinguishes one creature from another). But when I look at the same thing, I see that it points in the opposite direction. I see it, quite obviously, as evidence of a common artist. If I look at two paintings and see that they bear a great degree of similarity to one another, that they feature similar scenes and a similar brand of realism or abstraction, I do not assume that one painting evolved from the other or that together they evolved from a common ancestor; instead, I assume that they have come from the hand, the brush, of the same artist. I can grant that there is a sense in which man is related to ape and aardvark—we share a common designer. The fact that my DNA resembles that of any other living creature simply reinforces this fact. Believing in Creation does not demand that we suppose God did not reuse any parts or that every creature has to be entirely different from every other creature. One who believes in God as Creator can affirm that he is the designer and that he based all living things on common elements.

One thing I noted often in the pages of The Greatest Show on Earth is that it is often difficult to know where fact ends and speculation begins. When Dawkins says that a kind of beetle has, over evolutionary time, evolved to resemble the ant it preys upon, do we know this is the case, or is Dawkins simply filling in what he considers a logical hole? Can he prove that this beetle began looking like something other than it is now using the same scientific rigor he demands of Creationists? Or is this just speculation? In this book he rarely distinguishes between the two. Needless to say, this leads to a fair bit of potential confusion.

There is a deep and obvious irony in Dawkins’ constant use of words of agency. In his worldview there is, at least in nature and in the universe, no planning, no design, no invention, no creation, no purpose. Everything has come to be through a long process of chance. Yet throughout the book he constantly softens this harsh reality by borrowing the words of agency and purpose. Why? Could it be that the world just too hard to contemplate without injecting some kind of higher purpose into it? But there is more. Very often he turns to examples or metaphors to explain what he is trying to communicate and, again, almost invariably these examples depend on some kind of agency. So, for example, he will discuss how there came to be so many varied breeds of dog, each descended from the wolf. This may be an evidence of evolution, but if so, it evidences a designer who made the decisions about which breed would have long legs and which would have short ones, which would have big ears and which would have small ones. It was human agency that shaped each of these breeds of dog! How can this then stand as an example of the agent-less, impersonal forces of nature? Again and again he falls into this trap.

All this caused me to reflect on how cold, how stark the world would be without some kind of agency. A scientist can conjure up in his mind ways of describing the world without God, but he has a lot more trouble explaining it. Design seems to scream for a designer, elegance for agency. Even Dawkins cannot deny that the world gives the appearance of design; so his task is to prove that the most obvious explanation is not the correct one. I would challenge Dawkins in his future books not to use this cop out, not to say photosynthesis was “invented” by bacteria more than a million years ago. This is an unfair condescension that perhaps just proves that he cannot maintain his line of reasoning with any kind of consistency. Always he denies a designer, yet so often he perhaps-inadvertently invokes one.

In this book I see the importance of what we can call worldview—the way each of us understands the world, the way each of us interprets all of life. Dawkins’ worldview demands that there is no God and that everything came to be without the assistance or oversight of a designer. Not surprisingly, then, everywhere he looks he sees evidence to support his presuppositions, just as a Creationist looks to Creation and sees evidence of God. If I go out hunting for bigfoot, convinced of his existence, I will inevitably find evidence to support my theory. I will find vague footprints and half-eaten meals, each of which will prove to me that I am hot on bigfoot’s trail. My presuppositions shape my conclusions. So this book shows me again that it is impossible, or near-impossible, to overcome our worldviews.

This book shows that Dawkins is still angry, still shocked that anyone could be so hopelessly confused as to believe in God and to doubt naturalistic evolution. In fact, he refers to such people as “history-deniers,” people who see the evidence, spit on it, and turn instead to their comfortable old deities. “No reputable scientist disputes it,” he says, but of course he would use circular logic to define a reputable scientist. He would never admit that a scientist could be reputable and deny evolution. Here we have the same old Dawkins. Sure he tries a new approach, but ultimately it is more of the same.

Is there value in reading The Greatest Show on Earth?. I am inclined to think that there is, at least for some people. I find it useful to read books written from an opposing viewpoint since they provide a very natural “check” for me. They help me wrestle with not only what I believe but how I express what I believe. This book gave me a lot to think about in that regard. And, though Dawkins insisted that the unbiased reader will close the book convinced of the validity of evolution, this was not the case for me. Then again, does the unbiased reader even exist? We’ve already shown that Dawkins is far from unbiased himself.

The Housing Boom and Bust

At a time of global economic crisis, in all of the talk of a subset of that crisis, the housing boom and bust, it is easy to lose sight of the fact that the cause of that bust is so very simple. “Behind all the esoteric securities and sophisticated financial dealings are simple, monthly mortgage payments from millions of home buyers across the country.” When the housing payments slowed or stopped, sometimes by necessity and sometimes by choice, the boom turned to a bust. Real estate markets that had seen an unparalleled explosion of growth suddenly saw a catastrophic fall. Behind all the talk of stimulus and bailouts and increasing billions and trillions of dollars is normal people unable to make their $1000 or $2000 monthly mortgage payments.

In The Housing Boom and Bust, conservative economist Thomas Sowell looks to the housing bust and asks the simple, bedrock question: Why did so many monthly mortgage payments stop coming? His answer is as simple as it is lucid. The mortgage payments stopped coming in because during the housing boom, a time where interest rates were at historic lows, mortgages had been given to people whose prospects of repaying them were, at best, very poor. While the banks deserve some of the blame, they were in fact forced to hand out risky loans by government policies that imposed arbitrary quotas set by people whose concern was far more political than economic. These people, in the name of affordable housing and under the banner of political correctness, demanded that loans be provided to people who, under normal circumstances, could not afford them. This pressure caused financial institutions to hand increasingly “creative” (read: risky) mortgages to increasingly risky (read: poor) clients. When normal times resumed and interest rates rose, so too did payments. When payments rose, they became unaffordable and millions of people simply walked away, unable or unwilling to cover the new costs. “Why pay a $500,000 mortgage on a $300,000 home?”, they reasoned. Faced with a glut of foreclosures, banks began to offer homes at fire-sale prices, driving down costs across the market. The bubble burst, the banks began to fail and the government began printing vast quantities of money to stimulate the economy and to bail out the banks. The story continues.

In just 148 pages, Sowell explains where this crisis came from and the events that caused it all to come to a head. Along the way he powerfully exposes the cause of rising housing costs and the folly of affordable housing. As he has done repeatedly elsewhere, he exposes the fallacy of racism in lending institutions, showing that much of the blame must be laid at the feet of politicians. “Politicians in Washington set out to solve a national problem that did not exist–a nationwide shortage of ‘affordable housing’–and have now left us with a problem whose existence is as undeniable as it is painful.” Of course Sowell also proposes a way out of the mess and those who know him will not be surprised to learn that he lobbies for laissez-faire, allowing the economy to sort itself out without massive government intervention.

As he looks to the government’s reaction to the crisis, Sowell’s predominant concern is that the government, led by President Obama, will follow the words of chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, who said, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. … it’s an opportunity to do things you could not do before.” The government has an almost unparalleled opportunity to use this crisis to “fundamentally and enduringly change the institutions of American society.” Yet the reality is that, for all their flaws, these institutions have had an incredibly successful track record over the past two centuries, this crisis notwithstanding. “What is now being proposed is to jettison all that for the sake of untried theories, because of an economic situation that has arisen in a relatively few years as a result of government interventions with a terrible track record that have led to a crisis that now provides an opportunity for more of the same–in the name of ‘change’.” As the government increases its control over the American economy it essentially buys up the freedom of its people with their own tax dollars.

In The Housing Boom and Bust Sowell provides a plain-English explanation of the economic disaster and one that anyone can read, understand and enjoy. Though the book must have been written in a hurry, it shows none of the usual marks; instead, it is well-written and well-edited. Published just a couple of months ago but dealing with today’s issues, it reads almost like a newspaper or magazine article. If you, like me, have tried and failed to understand the cause of the crisis, this is the place to begin. Sowell is a steady and trustworthy guide.

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