Bible, Theology & Philosophy

There is, of course, a whole world that exists in time and space independently of our minds and perceptions. Things that have extension through space we call objects. Alterations in those objects we call events. These objects and events together are what we typically call facts. The world of facts has real existence whether we perceive it or not, and in that sense it can rightly be called objective.

In principle every event and object is accessible, either immediately to our senses or else through the extension of our senses through instrumentation and other media. We can observe distant galaxies through telescopes, minuscule amoebae through microscopes, speeding electrons in cloud chambers, and so forth. The sheer number of facts that we could observe in any instant is so incalculable that, for our purposes, it might as well be infinite.

Most of these facts, however, escape our notice entirely. Even now you are sensing facts of which you are unaware. Perhaps you have failed to notice the sound of the air moving through the ductwork around you. Perhaps you have overlooked the texture of the ceiling or the intricacies of the pattern in the carpet. Almost certainly you are unaware of the weight of your clothing upon your body. The moment I mention such things, you notice them instantly, but until I did they were completely outside your consciousness. At any given time, we are taking account only of the tiniest proportion of the facts that are available to us, even when those facts are actually stimulating our senses.

The facts that we do sense often turn out to be different than their appearances. You are now reading what you perceive to be words on a computer screen, and you perceive the individual letters of which those words are composed. If you were to examine the characters more closely, however, you would discover individual pixels being lit with different colors. At a sufficient degree of magnification the letters would disappear and you would perceive only the pixels.

When you watch a movie, you perceive the appearance of objects in motion. No motion is actually occurring, however. You are really observing a succession of still photographs being presented in rapid sequence. Because each image registers slightly longer on your retina than it actually appears on the screen, your brain is able to meld this succession of stationary objects into an illusion of motion.

I am an evidentialist. Having said that, I can sense that I am about to be surrounded by a host of theologians who will gladly lower their heavenly weapons at me. But before you classify me with David Hume and Bertrand Russell, let me explain what I mean. I believe that all humans apprehend truth in part through evidence (what some would call “hard evidence”). Dr. Bauder’s articles on Subjectivity and Objectivity have aroused my interest to write on the same subject. This is not meant as a contradiction of what he has said. I hope, likewise not to take anything away from what he is planning to write. Dr. Bauder was my faculty advisor, and pushed me to develop intellectually in ways I had not anticipated. I owe him a great deal for instructing me how to better tackle theology. So consider this as part of a conversation he started. I simply am entering the conversation with a different perspective.

I am an evidentialist by the definition I have given for two reasons (I would say “common sense” is one, but I know that would create more arguments than it is worth). Here are the reasons:

1. God created us to apprehend reality and thus arrive at truth (while not all truth) through the senses.

We are fascinated by scientific measuring devices and their ability to bring us knowledge: say a thermometer or a compass. Scientific measuring devices are basically (often crude) imitations of measuring apparatuses in humans, animals and plants. In humans, these measuring devices make up part of our sensory organs. For example, the rods and cones (over 100 million of them) in the retina of the eye are photoreceptors. Each registers the smallest particle of light, a photon, when it comes in the visual pathway. The incredibly high sensitivity of the retina is the reason you should not look directly at the sun.

Aristotle began his Metaphysics with the statement, “All men naturally desire knowledge. An indication of this is our esteem for the senses; for apart from their use we esteem them for their own sake, and most of all the sense of sight…. The reason of this is that of all the senses sight best helps us to know things.” Through the senses we perceive reality quite correctly, and, combined with our current knowledge, arrive at new truth.

David’s actively measuring retinas helped him perceive the glistening reality of the night sky. Sensory experience combined with David’s knowledge of God as creator, plus the aid of the Holy Spirit caused him to produce a profound sacred statement: “When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, The moon and the stars, which You have ordained, What is man that You are mindful of him, And the son of man that You visit him?” (Psalm 8:3-4). David knew about God’s visitations to humans recorded in salvation history. It was David’s sensory experience that got him thinking and filled him with wonder at God’s condescension.

People are often surprised—sometimes to the point of disbelief—when they are told that the distinction between objectivity and subjectivity was not a significant concern prior to the Enlightenment. Yet it is so. Granted that generalizations pose risks, from the ancient world until the beginning of modernity the majority of people assumed that they somehow participated in what we would now call the construction of reality. They assumed that the world as they perceived it was an appearance, and that the appearance represented some conjunction of reality and the perceiver.

Consider a rainbow. A rainbow can be seen. It can be described. If one knows the distances of objects on the horizon, it can even be measured. Its colors can be distinguished and their intensity gauged. Yet, as anyone who has tried to find the end of a rainbow knows, it is not “out there.” It exists in a world of appearance, but not in some world detached from and purely external to the perceiver.

Premoderns thought that all appearances were like the rainbow. The entire perceived world, whether seen or heard or touched or tasted or smelled, was always and everywhere shaped by the perceiving mind. Consequently, the distinction between the perceiver and the thing perceived was not absolute.

By this, they did not suppose that no world existed externally to and independently of their awareness. They were quite sure that it did. What they lacked, however, was a direct means of encountering that external reality. The enterprise of philosophy arose (at least in part) because of the desire to find ways of working past perceptions to a knowledge of things as they really were.

That approach to reality (it is called a “metaphysical dream”) began to disintegrate in the late Middle Ages, and it was finally rejected with the beginning of modernity in the Enlightenment. No one was more influential in its rejection than René Descartes. He thought himself capable of positing a distinction between the perceiver and the perceived, or, more correctly, between that which thinks and that which is thought about. The former (the perceiver or that which thinks) is the subject. The latter (that which is perceived or thought about) is the object. For a thing to be objective, it must exist independently of conscious awareness or perception.

Many conservative Christians are still fascinated with objectivity. For example, they insist upon the objectivity of truth and, consequently, upon the objectivity of meaning. The objectivity of truth implies the objectivity of meaning because truth is normally understood to be a property of propositions. To the degree that the meaning of propositions is subjective, the truth-value of what they express also becomes subjective.

Subjectivity is too dreadful for some to face. They fear that a significant element of subjectivity would render both human communication and divine revelation completely relative. To put it rather woodenly, they assume that if meaning is subjective, then anything can mean anything. Verity becomes an illusion.

In spite of such seemingly dire consequences, we might well ask whether this insistence upon the objectivity of meaning is true to our own experience of communication. Is it really the case that (as one radio commentator is fond of saying) words mean things? Is this the end of the matter?

This question can be answered in many wrong ways. For example, some postmoderns argued that words cannot mean things. They note that when we look for meanings, we do not usually look for the things that the words are supposed to mean. Instead, we look in dictionaries or lexica. Such reference tools do not define terms by their relationship to objective realities, but by their relationship to other terms. A word is defined by other words, which are defined by still other words. Eventually, dictionaries begin to reintroduce into their definitions the very words that they have already defined. If one chases definitions far enough, one eventually ends up back where one started.

Structuralists suggest that language is a web of meaning. It is ultimately self-referential. Deconstructionists believe that this web takes the form of ideology, which is used by power structures to manipulate people and legitimate their own interests. Consequently, deconstructionists seek liberation by untangling the whole web.

You’d think that it would be easier to change jobs within an institution than to change institutions. I thought it was going to be. And it probably is—but that’s not how it feels right now. Things are more complicated than I had envisioned.

I’ve moved across country several times. Back in 1979, Debbie and I loaded all our worldly goods into a twelve-foot U-Haul trailer, hitched it behind our 1976 Chevy Nova (with a 250 straight six), and headed from Iowa to Colorado. We left at noon with temperatures in the upper 90s. Pulling that kind of a load, it was a challenge to keep the little Nova from overheating. Fortunately, the weather turned while we slept overnight in Omaha, and we drove through a cold rain all the way into Denver. While we unloaded the trailer, we actually watched snowflakes falling (in June!).

Six years later we found ourselves and our toddler headed in the other direction. This time I drove a Ryder truck filled with furniture. I towed one car behind the truck while Debbie’s brother drove the other. When we reached Newton, Iowa, we found an entire crew from Immanuel Baptist Church ready to help us unload. I’ll never forget the feeling when one of the deacons greeted me with “Welcome to Newton, Pastor.” God allowed me to minister to that congregation for the next six years.

The next move came at the end of 1990. Feeling the need to continue my education, we left for Dallas. During the intervening years, however, we had added another child and accumulated enough stuff to fill a four-bedroom house. We sold or gave away whatever we thought we didn’t need (need being a relative term, of course), but we still had enough to fill the largest van that U-Haul would rent us. Again we towed one car while Debbie drove the other. We managed to stay in touch using CB radios.

When we arrived in Dallas, there was no one to meet us. Without help, I had to unload everything myself—even the piano. It’s amazing what you can do if you rent a good dolly.

Republished with permission. Originally appeared in Think on These Things, (Dec.-Jan 2010-2011). Read Part 1 and Part 2.

New Testament Support for Penal Substitutionary Atonement

As Our Substitute

We will begin by surveying some of the New Testament references that speak of Christ dying as our substitute. 2 Corinthians 5:21 heads the list: “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” Some have termed this “The Great Exchange” as the Sinless One took our sin upon Himself and gave us the righteousness of God. The implication is that this spiritual transaction is made possible only through the sacrifice of Christ. I Peter 2:24 adds detail, “He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds you were healed.” Christ then became sin on our behalf (i.e. in our place) at the Cross, for it is there that He bore our sin in His body. He did so to free us from sin and bring us righteousness, but our healing was made possible only because of His wounds. I Peter 3:18 reiterates the same thought by saying, “For Christ died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, so that He might bring us to God…” In Roman 5:8 Paul writes, “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” Christ death was “for us.” His death accomplished what nothing else could. Jesus Himself speaks of penal substitution when He states that He came “to give His life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). And John the Baptist declared Jesus “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29).

Republished with permission. Originally appeared in Think on These Things, (Dec.-Jan 2010-2011)

In Part one of “The Atonement Wars” a number of atonement theories having found favor at various points in church history were explained. These included the moral influence theory, Christus Victor and the Ransom to Satan theory. While I reject the last of these theories, the other two have biblical backing and thus fill out our understanding of why Christ went to the cross. However, I believe the central teaching of Scripture in regard to Christ’s cross-work is best defined as the Penal Substitutionary Atonement (PSA). It is PSA that is facing resistance from many who would be happy to embrace the cross as a moral example of love or a victory over the forces of evil. Yet the Bible teaches that while Christ’s death was a great example and resulted in the defeat of evil forces, more importantly His death was necessary in order that our sins might be forgiven and we be reconciled to God.

Definitions and Challenges:

Wayne Grudem provides this helpful definition,

Christ’s death was ‘penal’ in that he bore a penalty when he died. His death was also a “substitution” in that he was a substitute for us when he died. This has been the orthodox understanding of the atonement held by evangelical theologians, in contrast to other views that attempt to explain the atonement apart from the idea of the wrath of God or payment for the penalty for sin.¹

Millard Erickson says it plainly, “The idea that Christ’s death is a sacrifice offered in payment of the penalty for our sins sic. It is accepted by the Father as satisfaction in place of the penalty due to us.”² Erickson further refines the doctrine, “By offering himself as a sacrifice, by substituting himself for us, actually bearing the punishment that should have been ours, Jesus appeased the Father and effected a reconciliation between God and Man.”³

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2011 marks the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible. The King James Bible has shaped the English language, inspired political and religious thought for generations and, arguably, changed the world.