The blog series that began with Darwin’s Doubt and Intelligent Design is a reflection on Stephen Meyer’s book Darwin’s Doubt: The Explosive Origin of Animal Life and the Case for Intelligent Design.
The series of blogs is now also available as a single PDF document at DARWIN’S DOUBT is Meyer’s Doubt.
You can find links to all my blog series which have been converted into PDFs at Blog Series PDFs.
This is the third and final blog in a series looking at the book Darwin’s Doubt: The Explosive Origin of Animal Life and the Case for Intelligent Design by Stephen C. Meyer. The first blog is DARWIN’S DOUBT and Intelligent Design. The previous blog is The Science that Doubts Darwin.
Stephen Meyer presents in his book the science that doubts Darwin – this is not scientific evidence he has manufactured, but evidence that scientists committed to Darwinian evolution have brought forth which challenges some aspect of the current theory. He presents this science to call into question the materialistic basis of the science itself and then offers Intelligent Design as a solution to issues which Darwinism itself cannot right now answer. Evolutionary scientists have debated the evidence and the questions raised but most so far have not seen his solution – Intelligent Design – as truly solving any problematic issue that science raises. Most scientists do not see materialism as being the problem which needs to be solved.
So whereas evolutionary scientists and Intelligent Design defenders might both point to problems with aspects of Evolutionary Theory and the extant evidence in the fossil record, they are miles apart in the philosophical issues which Meyer in the last part of his book presents as an argument for Intelligent Design. Meyer attempts to use the fact that some scientists question some aspects of Evolutionary Theory to suggest that there are major cracks in the Theory and its collapse is inevitable. But as far as I can tell despite recognizing some problems with the Theory, most scientists accept it as the best approximation of reality that humankind has been able to develop to this point. Meyer is a Philosopher of Science, and in this part of the book he deals more with the philosophy of science, trying to show why he believes Intelligent Design is science based on scientific principles, reasoning and logic.
Meyer’s criticism of science is exactly that it has made a philosophical commitment to atheistic materialism; this is a philosophical commitment not a scientific law.
“In this case, however, those wearing the mental blinders have elevated an unwillingness to consider certain explanations to a principle of scientific method. That principle is called “methodological naturalism” or “methodological materialism.” Methodological naturalism asserts that to qualify as scientific, a theory must explain phenomena and events in nature—even events such as the origin of the universe and life or phenomena such as human consciousness—by reference to strictly material causes. According to this principle, scientists may not invoke the activity of a mind or, as one philosopher of science puts it, any “creative intelligence.” (Kindle Loc. 7125-29)
Meyer criticizes what he sees as rationally inconsistent the scientific commitment to materialism even when he feels the scientific evidence might suggest an intelligent design in the universe. However, believers adhere to faith in God even in the face of contrary evidence, inexplicable events, failure of the faithful to live up to the ideal, or the silence of God in face of pleas for Him to intervene in certain situations. There is no basic difference in how we adhere to what we believe. Meyer is firm in his conviction however that scientists are wrong to be so steadfast to their philosophical position:
“In 1997, in an article in the New York Review of Books, Harvard geneticist Richard Lewontin made explicit a similar commitment to a strictly materialistic explanation—whatever the evidence might seem to indicate. As he explained in a now often quoted passage:
We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.
The commitment to methodological naturalism that Lewontin describes, as well as the behavior of scientists in cases such as Sternberg’s, leave no doubt that many in science simply will not consider the design hypothesis as an explanation for the Cambrian explosion or any other event in the history of life, whatever the evidence. To do so would be to violate the “rules of science” as they understand them.” (Kindle Loc. 7170-83)
It may be a point of frustration for believers that some scientists are committed philosophically to materialism. But our task remains the same: to witness to what we believe is true and through our lives to offer some compelling reason for non-believers to reconsider their position and to at least consider the possibility that there is a God who created the universe. We have to show by our own lives that belief in God contributes positively to our daily existence and to the wellbeing of the world. Meyer makes his case as to why he believes Intelligent Design is consistent with the principles of natural science. It is a position which many believers can sympathize with as we already accept the notion that there is a Creator God. But, the real test case is whether those committed to scientific materialism come to see in his arguments reason to at least consider the possibility of design in the universe and a Designer who place it there.
Meyer pushes his argument that intelligent design logically is as scientific as materialistic evolution:
“There is another compelling, if convention-dependent, reason to regard intelligent design as a scientific theory. The inference to intelligent design is based upon the same method of historical scientific reasoning and the same uniformitarian principles that Charles Darwin used in On the Origin of Species. The similarity in logical structure runs quite deep. Both the argument for intelligent design and the Darwinian argument for descent with modification were formulated as abductive inferences to the best explanation. Both theories address characteristically historical questions; both employ typically historical forms of explanation and testing; and both have metaphysical implications. Insofar as we regard Darwin’s theory as a scientific theory, it seems appropriate to designate the theory of intelligent design as a scientific theory as well. Indeed, neo-Darwinism and the theory of intelligent design are not two different kinds of inquiry, as some critics have asserted. They are two different answers—formulated using a similar logic and method of reasoning—to the same question: “What caused biological forms and the appearance of design to arise in the history of life?” It stands to reason that if we regard one theory, neo-Darwinism or intelligent design, as scientific, we should regard the other as the same. Of course, whether either theory is true or not is another matter. An idea may be scientific and incorrect. In the history of science, many theories have proven to be so.” (Kindle Loc. 7293-7305)
Meyer makes some good points and logical sense. But then I am already a believer in God, and his reasoning does not really change my thinking nor does it cause me any cognitive dissonance. All thinking believers are faced with the fact that science and scientific materialism are not only competitors to the Christian faith but pose serious challenges to our understanding of truth and the Scriptures. Personally, I find the arguments of theistic evolutionists to be more satisfying than Intelligent Design. But theistic evolution is also more comfortable with the fact that science and faith approach the world and truth from different philosophical perspectives and we may never be able to reconcile the two perspectives. Intelligent Design adherents seem more intent on trying to insist that faith and science, or sometimes more specifically that a literalist reading of Genesis and science are completely compatible. I am not a biblical literalist, and am at home in a world in which the assumptions and goals of materialistic science and Christianity are simply different and on some points irreconcilable. I don’t believe the Genesis account of creation is science in the modern sense nor do I think it ever was intended to be that. But the fact that there is scientific truth which is not found in the Bible or even challenges Biblical claims does not to me disprove the existence of God. I think what science does effectively challenge is a literalist reading of Genesis and some simplistic beliefs about God. But even in the Bible itself we find people inspired by the Holy Spirit struggling to find God in the midst of historical reality and truth: “How long, O Lord..?” “Why do you remain silent, O Lord?” Faith in God does not always make coping with life easier or more simplistic. In can complicate life when we wrestle to figure out where God is when we need Him.
To me science is interested in researching and explaining the empirical creation. Christianity, like most religions, is claiming that there is a non-material/spiritual world/realm as well. Believers are interested in the material creation as it is made by God to be good/beautiful and to be united to divinity. This last aspect is not the interest of science. Science digs ever deeper into the depths of material creation, but I would say ignores the spiritual realm. I believe a human (and to be human) is more than biology and chemistry. To reduce humans to physics is in fact reductionism for it does not tell the whole story of being human. I think conscience and consciousness and free will do exist and they are every bit as important to understanding a human and what it means to be human as is biology, chemistry and physics. Christianity is trying to make sense of the world by bringing its ideas of the soul, God, the immaterial world, and the spiritual into its understanding of material creation. We believe the created world is far richer and deeper then the limits of its empirical nature imply. Because we believe there is meaning to life and that it means something to be human, we look to answers beyond the limits of science and the material world.
Science based in materialism does have fundamentally different assumptions about creation than does faith, based in the accepted testimony of believers. Believers seek meaning and purpose which science cannot reveal. Science would be interested in design in the universe if it led to further understanding the material world. But when one tries to take the empirical world and show that it points to a non-material creator, science loses interest. And if the scientists are committed to atheistic materialism, they are going to see references to Intelligent Design as simply a ploy to get them to believe in the non-material world, but not truly science.
Meyer’s books was the best I’ve read defending the tenets of Intelligent Design, but it does not make me abandon theistic evolution in favor of Intelligent Design. I think his effort is really geared at those whose faith is shaken by the claims of science and who want it to be true that science and religion are teaching the same truth and therefore cannot disagree. The scientists who criticize his efforts as a veiled way to reintroduce religious beliefs back into the work of science probably have good cause to think what they do. The evolutionary scientists who have criticized aspects of the theory of evolution show that they are not afraid to challenge the theory and they are interested in establishing the truth about the empirical world to the best of the ability of scientific materialism. Their unwillingness to consider Intelligent Design tells me that they remain unconvinced that ID can help them out of any dilemmas caused by the fossil evidence. While some scientists have a hostility to religion, it still falls on us believers to offer clear and compelling reasons to the non-believers as to what blessing faith brings. Those who are trying to reconcile their faith with science may find Intelligent Design to be helpful. Other believers may find theistic evolution to satisfy the two realms of understanding the universe – a spiritual and an empirical. The fruit of Meyer’s efforts is not going to be whether believers find his arguments convincing, but whether non-believing scientists feel compelled to reconsider their commitment to scientific materialism and methodological naturalism. Even most of those who have questioned certain tenets of the neo-Darwinian Theory have remained faithful to its basic principles and have not been convinced that accepting design in the universe changes anything.
Intelligent Design is an argument that appeals to some believers trying to build a bridge between biblical faith and scientific materialism. Unfortunately for the most part those on the materialism side of that chasm have not been been swayed in their thinking and aren’t willing to walk on that bridge which they feel has no real foundation under it.
This is the second blog in a series looking at the book Darwin’s Doubt: The Explosive Origin of Animal Life and the Case for Intelligent Design by Stephen C. Meyer. The first blog is DARWIN’S DOUBT and Intelligent Design.
Meyer presents in great detail the scientific problems with the theory of Darwinian Evolution. In fact, several prominent scientists have expressed their own doubts about the Theory of Evolution based upon its inability to explain what we know about biology or based upon its failure to account for the known fossil record. Where Meyer diverges from the majority of these scientists who question the Theory of Evolution is they continue to search for explanations only in material causes, while he has accepted the notion that there is design or intention built into biology and which can be observed through the long history of the development of life on earth. Below are a select few of the scientific reasons he offers which call into question the Theory of Evolution as it is commonly taught. He is piggybacking on the work of various scientists who have put forth questions about whether the current theory of evolution can in fact account for the known evolutionary evidence. He is bringing all of the various questions together to make his case stronger. Keep in mind that scientists committed to current evolutionary theory are also familiar with these objections, but have not concluded that the current theory needs to be abandoned. They tend to believe that eventually the theory and evidence will compliment each other by altering the theory not by completely abandoning it.
One problem for Darwinian evolution is how to account for the appearance in cells of the mechanisms that allow cells to function both individually and as part of an organ or organism. To date, according to Meyer, science cannot explain how the sequencing of characters might have occurred.
“The type of information present in living cells—that is, ‘specified’ information in which the sequence of characters matters to the function of the sequence as a whole—has generated an acute mystery. No undirected physical or chemical process has demonstrated the capacity to produce specified information starting ‘from purely physical or chemical’ precursors. For this reason, chemical evolutionary theories have failed to solve the mystery of the origin of first life—a claim that few mainstream evolutionary theorists now dispute.” (Kindle Loc. 63-67)
The origins of life itself from inanimate materials is for Meyer a key problem with Darwinian evolution. He is convinced that accepting the notion of Intelligent Design can explain how life could have emerged – it was intended to emerge. For materialists of course his argument is a “God of the gaps” idea which science will eventually overcome: we simply do not know YET how they happened but we will eventually be able to offer a materialist explanation for how they happened. Meyer, however, argues:
“To those unfamiliar with the particular problems faced by scientists trying to explain the origin of life, it might not seem obvious why invoking natural selection does not help to explain the origin of the first life. After all, if natural selection and random mutations can generate new information in living organisms, why can it also not do so in a prebiotic environment? But the distinction between a biological and prebiotic context was crucially important to my argument. Natural selection assumes the existence of living organisms with a capacity to reproduce. Yet self-replication in all extant cells depends upon information-rich proteins and nucleic acids (DNA and RNA), and the origin of such information-rich molecules is precisely what origin-of-life research needs to explain. That’s why Theodosius Dobzhansky, one of the founders of the modern neo-Darwinian synthesis, can state flatly, ‘Pre-biological natural selection is a contradiction in terms.’ Or, as Nobel Prize–winning molecular biologist and origin-of-life researcher Christian de Duve explains, theories of prebiotic natural selection fail because they ‘need information which implies they have to presuppose what is to be explained in the first place.’ Clearly, it is not sufficient to invoke a process that commences only once life has begun, or once biological information has arisen, to explain the origin of life or the origin of the information necessary to produce it.” (Kindle Loc. 104-15)
“To those unfamiliar with the particular problems…” Meyer presents a great deal of scientific evidence, but it appears his target audience is not scientists, but the non-scientist. So those hoping that science might support their faith, might find Meyer’s arguments convincing. I, for one, am a non-scientist. I think he does a great job presenting the known scientific information. However, the strength of his argument is better measured by whether scientists themselves, who already are familiar with the scientific challenges to Darwinian Theory, conclude that Meyer is correct and that Intelligent Design is the solution to the Theories problems. So far, though perhaps a growing number of scientists admit to problems with evolutionary theory, few have abandoned it in favor of Intelligent Design.
To summarize, Meyer writes:
“As an increasing number of evolutionary biologists have noted, natural selection explains ‘only the survival of the fittest, not the arrival of the fittest.’” (Kindle Loc. 156-57)
Meyer looks at a number of scientific papers which dispute his claims, says they do not disprove what he is arguing.
“Upon closer examination, however, none of these papers demonstrate how mutations and natural selection could find truly novel genes or proteins in sequence space in the first place; nor do they show that it is reasonably probable (or plausible) that these mechanisms would do so in the time available. These papers assume the existence of significant amounts of preexisting genetic information (indeed, many whole and unique genes) and then suggest various mechanisms that might have slightly altered or fused these genes together into larger composites. At best, these scenarios ‘trace’ the history of preexisting genes, rather than explain the origin of the original genes themselves (see Fig. 11.2). This kind of scenario building can suggest potentially fruitful avenues of research. But an obvious error comes in mistaking a hypothetical scenario for either a demonstration of fact or an adequate explanation. None of the scenarios that the Long paper cites demonstrate the mathematical or experimental plausibility of the mutational mechanisms they assert as explanations for the origin of genes. Nor do they directly observe the presumed mutational processes in action. At best, they provide hypothetical, after-the-fact reconstructions of a few events out of a sequence of many supposed events, starting with the existence of a presumed common ancestor gene. But that gene itself does not represent a hard data point. It is inferred to have existed on the basis of the similarity of two or more other existing genes, which are the only actual pieces of observational evidence upon which these often elaborate scenarios are based.” (Kindle Loc. 3948-60)
Meyer thinks the rich information we now have about DNA in fact shows that how DNA works and is made cannot be accounted for by Darwinian evolution. There is no mechanism that can account for how life emerged or how macro evolution can occur. For basically the current science shows that genetic mutation usually ends in death, not in the development of new forms of life.
“If mutating the genes that regulate body-plan construction destroy animal forms as they develop from an embryonic state, then how do mutations and selection build animal body plans in the first place? The neo-Darwinian mechanism has failed to explain the generation of new genes and proteins needed for building the new animal forms that arose in the Cambrian explosion. But even if mutation and selection could generate fundamentally new genes and proteins, a more formidable problem remains. To build a new animal and establish its body plan, proteins need to be organized into higher-level structures. In other words, once new proteins arise, something must arrange them to play their parts in distinctive cell types. These distinctive cell types must, in turn, be organized to form distinctive tissues, organs, and body plans. This process of organization occurs during embryological development. Thus, to explain how animals are actually built from smaller protein components, scientists must understand the process of embryological development.” (Kindle Loc. 4815-22)
Additionally genetic science has shown that genetic development is far more complicated than first imagined by science. The development of life is not as simple as information processing by genes for there exist multiple layers involved in the genetic process.
“But building a new body plan requires more than just genetic information. It requires both genetic and epigenetic information—information by definition that is not stored in DNA and thus cannot be generated by mutations to the DNA. It follows that the mechanism of natural selection acting on random mutations in DNA cannot by itself generate novel body plans, such as those that first arose in the Cambrian explosion.” (Kindle Loc. 5269-72)
“The neo-Darwinian mechanism does not account for either the origin of the genetic or the epigenetic information necessary to produce new forms of life. Consequently, the problems posed to the theory by the Cambrian explosion remain unsolved.” (Kindle Loc. 5359-61)
Meyer summarizes his arguments:
“Clearly, standard evolutionary theory has reached an impasse. Neither neo-Darwinism nor a host of more recent proposals (punctuated equilibrium, self-organization, evolutionary developmental biology, neutral evolution, epigenetic inheritance, natural genetic engineering) have succeeded in explaining the origin of the novel animal forms that arose in the Cambrian period. Yet all these evolutionary theories have two things in common: they rely on strictly material processes, and they also have failed to identify a cause capable of generating the information necessary to produce new forms of life. .” (Kindle Loc. 6289-93)
For Meyer the great test case which Darwinian theory fails is the sudden appearance of so many new life forms in what is called the Cambrian explosion.
“The features of the Cambrian event point decisively in another direction—not to some as-yet-undiscovered materialistic process that merely mimics the powers of a designing mind, but instead to an actual intelligent cause. When we encounter objects that manifest any of the key features present in the Cambrian animals, or events that exhibit the patterns present in the Cambrian fossil record, and we know how these features and patterns arose, invariably we find that intelligent design played a causal role in their origin. Thus, when we encounter these same features in the Cambrian event, we may infer—based upon established cause-and-effect relationships and uniformitarian principles—that the same kind of cause operated in the history of life. In other words, intelligent design constitutes the best, most causally adequate explanation for the origin of information and circuitry necessary to build the Cambrian animals. It also provides the best explanation for the top-down, explosive, and discontinuous pattern of appearance of the Cambrian animals in the fossil record.” (Kindle Loc. 7085-92)
For Meyer the problem science faces is not that it lacks theories or data, but rather that it is philosophically limited by and blinded by its commitment to atheistic materialism. Science has bound itself to showing the material cause for everything in the universe, and thus cannot admit to what it cannot explain, nor can it allow itself to think outside this restrictive box. So it continues to search for theories and explanations which ignore some of what the known evidence points to – that there is design in the biological life of our planet. However one may account for it, design is built into life.
Scientific materialism on the other hand is interested in a different set of questions. It might be similar to finding an ancient music score. We see the signs and symbols telling the ancients how to play the music. Yet we have no idea how to translate the written symbols into sound. Science is more interested in what the symbols tells us that can then be translated into music. What should the music soundlike? Intelligent Design says the music is proof of a composer, but for science that doesn’t help us know how to play the music, how to read and interpret the score. This is where there is a huge chasm between what Meyer is arguing versus what science seems interested in. Even if we has the musical score there is a vast difference between seeing it on paper and hearing a symphony orchestra performing it.
Next: Signs of Design
In Darwin’s Doubt: The Explosive Origin of Animal Life and the Case for Intelligent Design, Philosopher of Science, Stephen C. Meyer (founder of the Discovery Institute and advocate for Intelligent Design), offers scientific evidence which questions the Theory of Evolution and advocates for why he believes Intelligent Design can in fact explain the existing fossil evidence (particularly the Cambrian Explosion) for which Darwinism cannot fully account. Meyer says the problems with neo-Darwinian theory can be readily accounted for by the notion of Intelligent Design. It should be noted that a number scientists who do accept the overall concept of evolution have publicly pointed out problems with the theory – so what Meyer is offering is not news nor a surprise to scientists committed to neo-Darwinian theory.
The impasse is that even many of the scientists who have serious reservations about evolution still stick with purely materialistic explanations of how life evolved on earth. Meyer thinks that is a limit imposed on science by atheism but is not itself a scientifically verifiable premise. It is a philosophical assumption. He says many of the dilemmas existing in the evolutionary theory of scientific materialism can be readily resolved by simply acknowledging that intentional design is part of what happened. Of course for those who deny the possibility of design, they cannot by their own belief system admit to the possibility of a designer. Meyer argues that one does not have to acknowledge the God of the Bible, even if one sees design in the universe. His argument is that in fact design (and thus intention) are obviously there even if we cannot account for it. He does not assume all explanations must be found in materialistic explanations so is willing to look beyond scientific atheism to understand creation. And just like not every scientist agrees with the current theory of evolution, not every Intelligent Design advocate believes in a 6000 year old earth. Meyer wants everyone to be clear that Intelligent Design is not related to the ideas of biblical literalist’s New Creationism which insists the world is only about 6000 years old based on the history gleaned from the Bible. Many atheists who oppose Intelligent Design try to lump the two ideas together, but Meyer points out this is a ploy to discredit the science supporting the ideas he presents for Intelligent Design. He seems to accept the notion that the universe is in fact billions of years old. However old the earth may be, Meyer is not convinced that the time periods are enough for macro evolution to have incurred as envisioned in Darwinian theory.
The first half of Meyer’s book is his look at the scientific challenges to evolutionary theory. The last part of the book is more a philosophical argument for Intelligent Design. Meyer summarizes his scientific evidence against the current theory of evolution this way:
“This book has presented four separate scientific critiques demonstrating the inadequacy of the neo-Darwinian mechanism, the mechanism that Dawkins assumes can produce the appearance of design without intelligent guidance. It has shown that the neo-Darwinian mechanism fails to account for the origin of genetic information because: (1) it has no means of efficiently searching combinatorial sequence space for functional genes and proteins and, consequently, (2) it requires unrealistically long waiting times to generate even a single new gene or protein. It has also shown that the mechanism cannot produce new body plans because: (3) early acting mutations, the only kind capable of generating large-scale changes, are also invariably deleterious, and (4) genetic mutations cannot, in any case, generate the epigenetic information necessary to build a body plan.” (Kindle Loc. 7644-50)
According to Meyer an increasing number of prominent scientists admit that the evidence we currently have cannot account for how life might have original arisen, nor can it account for the Cambrian explosion. In the next blog we will look at some of the evidence Meyer offers. But he admits that scientists still are committed to finding a materialistic explanation for everything, and with this philosophic commitment, they will not even consider the merits of Intelligent Design. In a future blog I’ll offer a few quotes from Meyer on why he considers Intelligent Design to be true science, and why he sees a commitment to materialism to be a philosophic not scientific choice and belief.
“During the nineteenth century, biologists regarded the adaptation of organisms to their environment as one of the most powerful pieces of evidence of design in the living world. By observing that natural selection had the power to produce such adaptations, Darwin not only affirmed that his mechanism could generate significant biological change, but that it could explain the appearance of design—without invoking the activity of an actual designing intelligence. In doing so, he sought to refute the design hypothesis by providing a materialistic explanation for the origin of apparent design in living organisms. Modern neo-Darwinists also affirm that organisms look as if they were designed. They also affirm the sufficiency of an unintelligent natural mechanism—mutation and natural selection—as an explanation for this appearance. Thus, in both Darwinism, and neo-Darwinism, the selection/variation (or selection/mutation) mechanism functions as a kind of “designer substitute.” As the late Harvard evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr explains: “The real core of Darwinism . . . is the theory of natural selection. This theory is so important for the Darwinian because it permits the explanation of adaptation, the ‘design’ of the natural theologian, by natural means.” Or as another prominent evolutionary biologist, Francisco Ayala, has put it succinctly, natural selection explains “design without a designer.” (Kindle Loc. 6315-27)
Scientists tend to discredit Intelligent Design as not truly answering the questions science is asking about how things did, can or do happen in the existing world. Claiming there is design built into the universe just creates a different mystery and at best solves nothing in their minds, but, even worse, adds a non-material being into the equation which does not help science understand how the empirical universe works. A number of scientists who have identified themselves as theists and who accept evolution have tended to doubt the current theory of Intelligent Design for similar reasons. Theistic scientists tend to assume science has to look for materialist causes as science is in fact focused on the material world. They accept the existence of a Creator God but do not try to make God part of any scientific formula or equation. Intelligent Design on the other hand accepts that the very existence of a Creator explains some aspects of the material world which science cannot account for by its current theories. For ID defenders simply saying there is a Creator is sufficient explanation for some mysteries. Materialistic science looks only for cause and effect in the material world, and does not see how claiming there is design in the universe helps us understand how the material world in fact works.
New Testament scholar Larry W. Hurtado offers some thoughts for why he believes the Gospels are reliable as a historical testimony to the life of Jesus Christ. While some scholars try to undermine the authority of the Scriptures for establishing who Jesus is, and prefer to rely on Second Century gnostic documents to form their ideas of Jesus, Hurtado feels there is good reason to read the canonical Gospels as the most reliable witness to what Jesus did and what He taught.
“The narratives are also studded with individuals given specific identities. There are named figures such as Jesus’ twelve disciples and Jairus, Lazarus, Bartimaeus, Nicodemus, Barabbas, Caiaphas, and Pontius Pilate. But even un-named figures are identified specifically and memorably, such as the woman with the blood flow, the clever Syrophoenician woman with a daughter in need, the Gerasene man with a legion of demons, the woman who was ‘forgiven much’ and lavished her gratitude upon Jesus in a dining scene, the man with a demoniac son who confessed belief and his need of help in believing, and the scribe who was ‘not far from the kingdom.’ In short, this all amounts to a shared programmatic effort to locate Jesus in a specific historical, geographical, and cultural setting. It represents an insistence that the Jesus whom the writers and intended readers of these Gospels reverenced (who include Gentile and Jewish believers in various locations in the Roman world), and were to see as linked with God’s purposes in a unique way, is quite definitely Jesus of Nazareth. He is not some timeless symbol, not a mythical figure of ‘once upon a time,’ but instead very specifically a Jew whose life and activities are geographically and chronologically located in a particular place and period of Jewish history in Roman Judea.[…] He is not simply a powerful wonder-worker, an impressive teacher and debater, and/or a heroic leader of his followers; he is the special vehicle of the purposes of God, which involve (ultimately) the transformation of the world, the judgment of evil, and the vindication of those who ally themselves with God’s purposes.” (Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity, pp 266 + 269)
I recently wrote a blog series based on the book BAD RELIGION: HOW WE BECAME A NATION OF HERETICS by Ross Douthat. The first blog in that series is is A Recent History of American Heresy. That series is now available as one document at A Recent History of American Heresy (PDF).
You can find links to all my blog series which have been converted into PDFs at Blog Series PDFs.
This is the fifth and final blog in this series considering the book BAD RELIGION: HOW WE BECAME A NATION OF HERETICS by Ross Douthat. The first blog is A Recent History of American Heresy. The previous blog is The Heresy of God and Mammon.
In his book, Ross Douthat examines in great detail a number of ideas that have become broadly accepted in American Christianity, whether liberal or conservative. He examined two tendencies in American religious thinking – Messianism and apocalyptism – and how they have become part of both the political left and right in America, switching back and forth depending on which political party is in power. Thus politics and religious thinking have become enmeshed in odd ways in the daily life of Americans.
This has happened simultaneously with other developments in religious thinking in America including an intellectual search for a Jesus other than the one traditionally taught by Christianity – a Jesus more to the liking of some scholars as well as a number of Jesuses all created to satisfy the ideas held by various individuals. He also presents the role that money, Mammon, has come to play in American religion, and how it becomes a competing god from whom we hope to received constant blessings of prosperity even if we do lose our souls. One of the noted developments in this way is what Douthat calls the theology of the God Within. Former Harvard Professor Harvey Cox said in the age just prior to this new theology:
“Religious man was born to be saved, but ‘psychological man is born to be pleased.’” (p 231)
Religion ceases to be the way in which we learn to please the Lord God, and instead becomes something that pleases “Me”. The religion focused on the self makes “Me” to be the real god whom I serve. The new heresy involves the complete acceptance of individualism with post-modern rejection of any narrative which can guide or unite all human beings. It is a completely consumerist theology – religion is there to please me, and I will shop for and shape religion until it does.
“But at the deepest level, the theology of the God Within ministers to a different set of spiritual needs, and tries to resolve a different set of contradictions, than the marriage of God and Mammon. Whereas the prosperity gospel suggest that material abundance is the main sign of God’s activity in this world, the apostles of the God Within focus on internal harmony—mental, psychological, spiritual – as the chief evidence of things unseen. Whereas the prosperity gospel talks about prayer primarily in terms of supplication, the theology of the God Within talks about it primarily in terms of meditation and communion. And while the prosperity gospel insists that evil and suffering can be mastered by prayer, the God Within theology suggest that true spiritual enlightenment will expose both as illusions. The prosperity gospel is a theology of striving and reaching demanding; the gospel of the God Within is a theology of letting go. The prosperity gospel makes the divine sound like your broker; the theology of the God Within makes him sound like your shrink.” (p 217)
Sociological studies of young people reveal the following about what young people shaped by the God Within Theology believe. They have labeled these beliefs as “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism. . . . the God of MTD ‘is not demanding,’ the authors note. ‘He actually can’t be, because his job is to solve our problems and make people feel good. . . . Niceness is the highest ethical standard, popularity the most important goal, and high self-esteem the surest sign of sanctity.” (p 233) This new “creed” of the youth of America has five main tenets:
“1. ‘A God exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth.’ 2. “God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.’ 3. ‘The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.’ 4. ‘God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when God is needed to resolve a problem.’ 5. ‘Good people go to heaven when they die.’” (p 233)
Additionally, the religious trend has been accompanied by a growing self-absorption and self-centeredness. The extreme individualism already present in American culture finds a powerful expression in religion which focuses on the needs and desires of the individual. (See also my blogs Designer Religion and Which Christ Do We Believe In?)
“This growing narcissism has been a spur to excess on an epic scale. The narcissist may find it easy to say no to others, but he’s much less likely to say no to himself—and nothing defines the last decade of American life more than our inability to master our own impulses and desires. A nation of narcissists turns out to be a nation of gamblers and speculators, gluttons and gym obsessives, pornographers and Ponzi schemers, in which household debt rises alongside public debt, and bankers and pensioners and automakers and unions all compete to empty the public trough.” (p 235)
And as studies continue to show the increasing levels of narcissism in American youth, other virtues disappear.
“’We found the biggest drop in empathy after the year 2000,’ one of the University of Michigan researchers noted—which is to say, just as My Space and then Facebook came online.” (p 236)
As Douthat reports American Christian youth come to look more and more like a product of American culture. In Genesis humans are created in the image and likeness of the Holy Trinity, in the American idea god and humanity become shaped in the image and likeness of “Me”. This is of course the heretical element he is concerned with – a watering down of traditional Christianity to better suit the times and values of 21st Century Americans – individualist, consumerist, prosperous and narcissist.
Dothat also sees this abandoning of traditional Christian teachings as also opening the door to a merger between some Christians, Mormons and conservative politicians. He particularly cites how Glenn Beck, a Mormon, has worked hard to make this merger work for his own political agenda by downplaying theological differences and making political convictions the priority in the spiritual realm. Mormonism is a religion invented in America that resonates well with the ethical values that Americans frequently approve.
“To the extent that the chasm between Evangelicals and Mormons can be bridged, the heresy of God and country is the obvious place to fling out a rope bridge. This is exactly what Beck did during his Fox News run. From his boosterism for The 5,000 Year Leap to the blend of civic religion and nondenominational Christianity on display at the Lincoln Memorial, the entire Beck project represented a subtle invitation to Evangelicals to get over their anxieties about Mormonism by finding common ground with the Latter-day Saints in a shared appreciation of the Father, Son and the Holy Constitution.” (p 263)
Douthat is not opposed to conservative values or success. Just the opposite – he favors a more traditional Christianity in America influencing American politics. His concern is that the religious trends in America continue to cast aside traditional Christian values and beliefs in order to create a more convenient marriage between “religious” Americans and conservative politics. Douthat identifies himself with conservative thinking and politics and is recognized as a conservative by others. He also is clear that there is a difference between American political conservatism and traditional Christianity.
“The future of American religion depends on believers who can demonstrate, in word and deed alike, that the possibilities of the Christian life are not exhausted by TV preachers and self-help gurus, utopians, and demagogues. It depends on public examples of holiness, and public demonstrations of what the imitation of Christ can mean for a fallen world. . . . Only sanctity can justify Christianity’s existence; only sanctity can make the case for faith; only sanctity, or the hope thereof, can ultimately redeem the world.” (p 292)
Christianity in America has the difficult task of having to resist allowing the media to shape what it is and what it should be while at the same time witnessing to what the essential core meaning of who Jesus Christ is. God became flesh. God became human in Jesus Christ in order to make humanity all that God intends for humans to be. We are to share in the the divine love and life of the Holy Trinity. The media images of Christ and Christianity are all reductions of the truth, and thus are all heresies. Humans are created in the image and likeness of God, and Jesus Christ fully reveals what that means and how we can conform to that image. The hope for Christianity is not to try to conform to whatever image of religion the mass media thinks is most attractive, but for us Christians each individually and collectively as the Body of Christ to be the icon of Christ for the world.
An example of the difference between religion as God portrays it and religion as the media wants it to be is found in 1 Kings 19:11-13 where the Holy Prophet Elijah encounters God. The media would certainly want the encounter to be in all the hype, in the spectacular, in the bizarre, in the superstar, in the mighty forces of nature. God however reveals Himself in the still, small voice, something the media would ignore because it could not be portrayed in some attention grabbing way.
And he said, “Go forth, and stand upon the mount before the LORD.” And behold, the LORD passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and broke in pieces the rocks before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice. And when Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave.
When we only read or pay attention to those parts of the Scripture with which we agree or which we like, we listen to ourselves not to God. It is how we depart from Christ and embrace heresy.
The miracle stories of Jesus Christ have been very popular with Christians throughout history. One need only note the frequency of their occurrence in the Orthodox Church Sunday lectionary – there is a preponderance of miracle Gospel lessons over the teachings of Christ. In the twelve Gospel lessons from the Matthew cycle of Sunday readings in 2014 only one lesson is from the Sermon on the Mount while eight of the lessons are miracles of one sort or another. And this repeats year after year, so those who attend church only or mostly on Sundays hear just a tiny portion of the Gospel proclaimed in community and what they hear is mostly miracle stories. Sometimes when a miracle story is reported with slight differences between the four Gospel writers, two versions of the same miracle end up being read on Sundays during the course of the year (the Gaderene swine for example is read in both the Matthew and Luke cycle). Some people are attracted to the miracles of Christ more than to His ethical teachings especially since they may not have an interest in submitting their lives to His Lordship but want the power of miracles anyway. Some seek miracles (magic?) in their own daily lives through Christ, the Holy Spirit, the saints, miracle workers, relics or whatever can bring such mystical power into their lives.. For these folk miracles are the most important aspect of faith, but it has been pointed out that the focus on miracles in one’s daily life may be a sign of spiritual immaturity or even a lack of real faith in God. In recent times, Fr. Theodore G. Stylianopoulos comments:
“It is noteworthy, however, that in Samaria, where his preaching was fully successful Jesus did not perform any miracles, perhaps suggesting that true faith does not need miracles. More or less the same idea is expressed by Jesus’ second miracle in Galilee, the healing of the official’s son. ‘Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will by no mean believe.’ ” (Sacred Text and Interpretation, p 119)
Christ proclaims the Kingdom of God in Samaria and people respond to the Gospel in faith even though He performs no miracles. In Galilee Christ warns that the seeking of miracles may in fact prevent people from truly believing. Faith is a relationship with God. Are we seeking only the gifts or do we seek the Giver? The pursuit of miracles may be because we don’t really want a relationship with God who may then put demands on us and on our lives Christos Yannaras says that true faith is a relationship of trust and in that sense “a miracle nullifies faith” because then we no longer have to trust for we have received the proof and then surrender our will to the power (AGAINST RELIGION, p 15). St. John Chrysostom points out that though St. Paul had the power to perform miracles, he rarely used that gift and prefered to convince people about the truth of Jesus Christ by arguments from scripture. Thus for St. Paul, people coming to believe in Christ without experiencing any miracles was preferred evangelism rather than impressing people with miracles.
“Chrysostom fears that if people turned to the gospel out of awe at seeing thaumaturgic acts, then faith would be rendered inconsequential. …The apostle always could perform miracles, but only chose to do so in cases of serious need. This Paul is the ultimate ascetic who includes in his renunciatory portfolio his miraculous abilities, which he forgoes for the sake of the greater good, the salvation of the whole world. And the achievement he gains from this strategic choice – convincing people to believe in the gospel from arguments rather than signs – is, paradoxically, the greatest sign of all.
‘You see how again (Acts 28:23) he close their mouths, not with signs, but with appeals to the Law and Prophets, and everywhere he does this—although he could have done signs, as well, but finally it would not be a matter of faith. For this is the great sign: to persuade people from the Law and the Prophets.’ ” (Margaret Mitchell, THE HEAVENLY TRUMPET: JOHN CHRYSOSTOM AND THE ART OF PAULINE INTERPRETATION, p 293-294)
St. John Chrysostom writes that for Christians acts of charity are superior to miracles for Christ commanded us love others but didn’t order us to do miracles:
St. John Chrysostom
“If there is no love, other blessings profit us nothing. Love is the mark of the Lord’s disciples, it stamps the servants of God, by it we recognize his apostles. Christ said: ‘This is how all will know you for my disciples.’ By what? Tell me. Was it by raising the dead or by cleansing lepers or by driving out demons? No. Christ passed over all these signs and wonders when he said: ‘This is how all will know you for my disciples: your love for one another.’ This gift of love must also be achieved through man’s own earnestness and zeal. Christ said, that His disciples are recognized not by miracles but by love.” (St John Chrysostom, The Fathers of the Church: On the Incomprehensible Nature of God, pgs 52-53)
So the issue may be exactly what people are seeking in their lives: to become disciples of Christ (which is what Christ wanted and what the apostles worked for) or to experience miracles (which is often what people prefer: contact with ‘magic powers’). While some seek miracles in their lives, what the New Testament authors thought was more important is that we witness to our faith in Christ by our behavior so that others recognize us as disciples of Christ by the way we love one another. People will know we are Christ’s disciples not by our performing miracles but by the way we love one another. But even beyond that, Christ warned that being able to perform miracles is in fact no sign that you are a disciple of His.
“Not every one who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you evildoers.'” (Matthew 7:21-23)
So you can even do miracles and Christ can declare you to be not His disciple but rather an evildoer! That is something for miracle lovers to think about. Miracles may not even be a sign of the kingdom. Christ says more important is that we love one another as he taught us so that others can see we are disciples of His. Being His disciple, loving as He taught us to love, is more important than performing miracles or having miracles in our lives. Being around others who have miracles in their lives may not be putting ourselves in relationship to Christ and his disciples. This will seem counterintuitive to some, but it is a clear teaching of the New Testament and of Christianity.
Fr. Alexander Schmemann offers us insight into how to understand these truths, and to seek Christ instead of just seeking miracles from Him or His saints.
“Indeed, something strange happens here with religion: instead of help, we are given the cross, instead of promises of comfort and well-being, we hear the certainty: ‘They persecuted me, they will persecute you.’ And when we hear the Gospel about the Pharisees who derided the crucified Christ – ‘He saved others, he cannot save himself! He is the king of Israel; let him come down now from the cross and we will believe in him’ (Mt 27:42) – are we not immediately reminded of the derision and accusations that are heard today: ‘So, wasn’t your God able to help you?’ And indeed, as long as we expect from God only this type of help, only miracles that would eliminate the sufferings from our life, then these accusations will continue. And they will continue because any cheap pill is certainly better able to relieve a headache than prayer and religion. And we will never understand the mystery of the Cross as long as we expect this type of pill from religion– be it for something trivial or important. As long as this is the case, regardless of all the gold or silver with which it is covered, the Cross remains what the Apostle Paul said at the dawn of Christianity: ‘a scandal for the Jews, and folly for the Gentiles’ (1 Cor 1:23). In our given situation the ‘Jews’ represent those who seek only help from religion, while the ‘Gentiles’ are those who seek clever and easy explanations. And in this case the Cross is truly a scandal and folly.” (Alexander Schmemann, O DEATH, WHERE IS THY STING? , pp 49-50)
See also my blogs: Miracles: Signs and Portents, Not Magic, What is a Miracle?, and Charity is Greater than Miracles
This is the 4th blog in this series considering the book BAD RELIGION: HOW WE BECAME A NATION OF HERETICS by Ross Douthat. The first blog is A Recent History of American Heresy. The previous blog is Some More American Heresies.
Perhaps the most obvious arena in which American Christians have had a different attitude than Christians historically have had is in relation to wealth. Christ, the itinerant preacher, Himself lived a rather impoverished life and never pursued wealth. He taught that one cannot serve God and mammon (Matthew 6:19-34; Luke 16:13-31). The New Testament has several warnings and woes for those who are rich or who pursue wealth (for examples, see Luke 6:20-25; 1 Timothy 6:9-10; James 1:10-11). And the Epistle of James portrays the rich as those who persecute the Christians and who face a wrathful judgment from God (James 2:6-7; 5:1-6).
Some may argue that the New Testament’s negative attitude toward wealth may have something to do with how unevenly it was distributed in the ancient world and how those with wealth may have persecuted the Christians. America, on the other hand, they might argue, has been committed to a broader distribution of wealth (even if it only trickles down!). America has economically grown because of its banking policies including its lending policies and has created a middle class who share in the benefits of the country’s wealth. As a nation America has none of the reservations about wealth that we find in the authors of the New Testament.
Douthat in his book describes one of the most prominent heresies active in American religion today as the “prosperity Gospel”, the theology of “God and Mammon” which says you don’t have to choose between the two masters, but can in fact serve them both (or perhaps in American thinking, make them both serve you!). America has embraced completely prosperity as a sign of God’s blessings and has ignored almost completely sins and temptations that the Bible associates with wealth including greed and idolatry (Colossians 3:5) and that prosperity (Mammon) is competing with God for out loyalty.
“The prosperity gospel … is a message that’s tailored less to the very rich than to the middle and working classes—to people who are hardworking but financially insecure, who feel that they have to think about money all the time because they’re trying to make more of it, and who want to be reassured that their striving is in accordance with God’s plan rather than a threat to their salvation. … is just as likely to involve ministers who prosper by flattering their upwardly mobile, American Dreaming congregations, telling them to keep on striving and praying, because God wants them to keep up with the Joneses next door.” (p 190)
While indeed wealth can be a blessing, it can also be a temptation, and it is possible for a man to lose his soul and gain the world (Luke 9:23-27; Matthew 16:24-26; Mark 8:34-38). Wealth comes for Christians with both spiritual risk and responsibility. The American Christian embrace of wealth is often completely uncritical and seems to assume wealth can only be a good. Americans can be very thankful for their prosperity, but when wealth is governed by selfish, self-centered behavior it becomes wanton and destructive.
“This is where the union of God and Mammon goes astray, ultimately: it succumbs to a naiveté about how riches are often accumulated and about the dark pull that money can exert over the human heart. And its sunny boosterism leads believers into temptation, equipping them for success without preparing them for setbacks—which in turn makes failure all the more devastating when it finally, inevitably arrives.” (p 207)
Whereas in early Christianity, greed was one of the seven deadly sins, in America greed is often glossed over or given more euphemistic titles of blessings, prosperity and wealth. Greed was seen as a deadly passion in Orthodox writings, but it becomes fashionable and desirable in American spiritual parlance. For Americans there seems to be little sense that enough is enough. And certainly wealth does not automatically produce virtue in anybody. Rather, wealth is no cure for greed, and can lead to jealousy, fear, hyper-vigilance and making self-preservation at all costs to be the greatest virtue. In Orthodox Holy Week hymns it is the betrayer Judas Iscariot who is said to be a lover of money. He is the poster child for the notion that you cannot serve God and Mammon.
Douthat also sees the embrace of wealth by Christians to have another temptation: the idea that wealth can solve all the world’s problems. This he suspects is what happens to liberal Christianity’s embrace of taxes and big government: money leads to utopian ideals.
“But like many forms of liberal Christianity, the marriage of God and Mammon half-expects somehow to undo the Fall, through the beneficence of Providence and the magic of the free market. In its emphasis on the virtues of prosperity, it risks losing something essential to Christianity—skipping on to Easter, you might say, without lingering at the foot of the cross. . . . Christianity risks becoming an appendage to Americanism—a useful metaphysical thread for a capitalist society’s social fabric, but a faith that’s bound, perhaps fatally to the rise and fall of the gross domestic product.” (p 205)
Wealth does come with some blessings. Christians welcomed the blessings as they turned to building churches and engaging in mission and ministry throughout the world. Douthat’s concern is that prosperity can blind us to its temptations and even to understanding what is important, for fund raising can become a goal in itself by which we measure the success of the Church. Yet Christ never established fund raising as a measure of Christian success.
“[The prosperity Gospel] is particularly well suited to successful church-building, where it translated into what the sociologist Michael Hamilton has memorably described as a theology of ‘more money, more ministry.’ … but from post-World War II era onward…. a more entrepreneurial approach. As Hamilton writes, ‘leaders of evangelical organizations scrambled to lay claim to as much of the new American wealth as they could’ – not for their own enrichment (or not always), but for the sake of spreading the Gospel.” (p 197)
The Church thus becomes more and more shaped by the methods, structures and models of American business, and becomes measured by those same standards as well. Success becomes numbers and especially financial success becomes the sole measure of whether God is blessing something.
“The one who pursues money will be led astray by it.” (Sirach 31:5)
There is much wisdom in the adage that says, “Money is a good servant but a bad master.” I interpret Douthat to be wondering aloud whether money is the servant or has become the master in much of American religion especially in those involved in the media market.
Douthat expresses another concern:
“… the marriage of god and Mammon is nothing more than Social Darwinism with a religious face.” (p 203)
Survival of the fittest in the religious world: those survive that have or can obtain money. ‘Thems that have, get more.’ ‘The oppressed are also to blame for their own condition.’ But in that formula, where is Christ the impoverished preacher of Galilee and where is the Gospel which calls us to deny ourselves in order to follow Christ?
Then Jesus said to them, “Whose head is this, and whose title?”
They answered, “The emperor’s.”
Jesus said to them, “Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” (Mark 12:16-17)
This is the third blog in this series considering the book BAD RELIGION: HOW WE BECAME A NATION OF HERETICS by Ross Douthat. The first blog is A Recent History of American Heresy. The previous blog is Some American Heresies.
Faced with rapidly changing political, moral and religious values in the last half of the 20th Century, some American Christian leaders tried an accommodation to the emerging culture to help make the church seem relevant to the times, while others tried to resist what was becoming the new norm in American religious thinking. But for Ross Duthat both efforts to deal with declining church numbers and a changing culture in the 1960s and ‘70s failed to see that unbelief was not the greatest threat to Christianity, but rather that all forms of Christianity were embracing heretical ideas thus distorting Christianity by conforming it to American values rather than trying to be the salt of the earth and a light to the nation. A blurring between church and state occurred for some American Christians as they endeavored to defend a notion that this is a Christian nation. Conservative Christians embraced conservative politicians, and the conservative politicians looking for votes welcomed these Christians into their ranks. The benefit for the Church, Douthat points out, was not that clear cut as is obvious during the presidency of George W. Bush:
“Having a conservative Evangelical in the White House, it turned out, didn’t necessarily make it easier for conservative Christians to win converts or to gain ground in moral and cultural debates. Indeed, in certain ways it seemed to make it harder. The president’s very public piety made it easy for his detractors to lay the blame for the administration’s policy failures at the door of Evangelical Christianity itself, so that the more things soured for the Bush administration, the more they soured for Evangelicals as well. And the extent to which Bush’s religious style ultimately polarized the country rather than uniting it hinted at deeper problems facing the Evangelical community—problems that limited their ability to fill the space that the Mainline had once occupied and that placed sharp constraints on their influence and growth.” (pp 136-137)
And as the image of the conservative church became tainted, conservative Christians further embraced American methods and values to try to correct the church and lead the nation. The media driven culture favors extroverted expressives as far more attractive for the “news.” Controversy of any kind attracts viewers and so controversy and frenzy is favored over substance. So Douthat comments:
“Worse, no sooner had Barack Obama succeeded Bush in the White House than there was an immediate search for the next political hero or heroine, the next godly Evangelical come to save the republic from itself. Many of the candidates for this role (including Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, and Rick Perry) embodied Evangelical politics at its worst: the tendency toward purely sectarian appeals, the reliance on the language of outrage and resentment, the conflation of partisanship with Christian principle and the confusion of the American political system with the Church itself.” (p 141)
An over emphasis on seeing America as a Christian nation caused some to distort exactly what the Church is and is supposed to be. Media hype begins to determine who rises to leadership and even what the nature of leadership ought to be. A ‘superstar’ model of politician and televangelist emerges – not in the image of Jesus Christ but in the image of who are the most attractive kinds of people for the attention seekingAmerican media. It all creates a christianity without humility which truly can carry the label: Made in America!
And while the American church and American Christians conformed themselves to the growing political partisanship, they failed to see that the interests of the Church were distinct from the interests of political parties, or that Christ had very ambivalent attitudes towards political power as seen in His proclaiming a kingdom not of this world. The Gospels in fact portray the power of the kingdoms of this world as really becoming to the Evil One (Luke 4:5). Satan made no exception for America in that claim. Regardless, many Christian began to feel the only real power of the Church is political power, a problem Christians in the 4th Century were not prepared to deal with when Constantine embraced Christianity. Byzantine emperors boasted that their armies could defeat Satan! And while many Americans would laugh at such a preposterous idea, American presidents also proclaimed that they could defeat evil. Distinctions between church and state, human hubris and godliness, or folly and evil all become blurred so that some imagine the state is doing what the church is supposed to do. They embrace the state as doing God’s will until they realize the state is also approving things the Church cannot. So as Douthat described it the political party in power has messianic delusions while the party out of power is proclaiming the apocalyptic end of the nation. And, it doesn’t matter which party is in and which is out for they easily change these ‘religious’ roles.
Meanwhile outside of American Christianity’s enmeshment with America’s political divide, other streams of thought within the theological world were also at work in the Church in America. A number of Christian scholars basically abandoned the Christian faith in favor of some supposedly neutral scholar position from which they could critique the Christianity. They rejected the “Jesus of faith” and pursued a search for a “historical Jesus.” This was a Jesus based in pure rationalism, who turned out to look a lot like 20th Century materialists might create Him. They made Jesus in their own image and sold the idea to America through books and movies. They endeavored to abandon anything that seemed in their minds mystical or theological and replace it with a more human and rational Jesus.
“Understandably, few of the thinkers invested in the quest for a ‘real Jesus’ want to admit that their journey backward through the Christian past dead-ends somewhere in the early second century, generations shy of Nazareth and Calvary. But this refusal has led the whole project inexorably downward—from scholarship into speculation, and rom history into conspiracy theory.” (pp 170-171)
Despite claiming to be in search of the ‘historical Jesus’, these scholars have to ignore the historical fact that their Jesus was an invention of a later century than the one portrayed in the Gospels. This historical Jesus may have been more palatable to these scholars stripped of faith, but the Jesus they created was not the Christ proclaimed in the First Century and which Tradition had faithfully preserved and handed down through the centuries. Nevertheless many American Christians were eager to abandon Tradition which faithfully preserved the earliest images of Christ in order to embrace a Jesus they were inventing and investing with ideas of their own.
Fraternized 