How the ontological argument succeeds

I. 

Anselm prays the ontological argument. Direct address to God is the perfect mode in which to argue for God’s existence. “Come now, O Lord my God. Teach my heart where and how to seek you, where and how to find you.” Anselm carefully crafts his argument, like a finely tooled machine. He then sets it within a cathedral. The wheels turn and the bell peals. In a hall already alive with the murmuring of prayers, the argument sounds. It adds its voice to petitions and supplications. The reverberations reflect off the surfaces of icons and the tombs of the Christian dead: praise to the God greater than all of our thoughts.

II.

“This is not an argument that immediately compels assent.” (David Bentley Hart)

III.

J. L. Mackie is unconvinced. What good is a necessary being, standing there in one of the darker corners of the universe, mocking our ontological mutability with its incessant there-ness? Such a being is only reflexively necessary, but not necessary for anything. An essence that requires existence evinces only a truncated necessity. The ontological argument is no cause for belief.

IV.

“I beseech you, Lord: let me not sigh in despair, but let me breathe hopefully again.” (Anselm)

V.

Faith seeks understanding. Not blind, faith is a way of seeing. “I do not seek to understand in order to believe; I believe in order to understand.” Faith seeks by peering into dim mirrors and contemplating arcane texts, it places its fingers on the surface of relics, feeling out the cracks where divinity seeps through.

VI.

Anselm presumes to define God. But he does so by describing a window that opens out into an inexhaustible mystery. The argument draws its strength only from God’s greatness — a greatness apprehended by faith. God exceeds thought: “you are not merely that than which a greater cannot be thought; you are something greater than can be thought.”

VII.

“That than which it is impossible to conceive anything greater is not a being among other beings, not even the greatest possible of beings, but is instead the fullness of Being itself, the absolute plenitude of reality upon which all else depends; and manifestly it would be meaningless to say that Being lacks being or that Reality is not real.” (Hart)

VIII.

The argument has no apologetic utility. Abstracting it from its prayerful setting and dissecting it as a piece of pure logic is like removing the eye of a painted portrait and treating it as an anatomical diagram. Set properly within the face of prayer, it shines out as an expression of wonder at the divine greatness. 

IX.

Anselm names and renames his book. It is first fides quaerens intellectum. With no author beneath its title, the little work goes out to converse with the world. When it returns, ruffled and marked all over with marginal notes — new thoughts gathered from abroad — Anselm lifts it up and gives it a new name: proslogion. A word that journeys forth.

X. 

Anselm’s argument fails only when we treat it as an argument. It does not seek converts, but fellow pilgrims. As it turns our minds to God’s greatness and to prayer, it succeeds.

XI.

“Come now, insignificant mortal. Leave behind your concerns for a little while, and retreat for a short time from your restless thoughts. Cast off your burdens and cares; set aside your labour and toil. Just for a little while make room for God, and rest a while in him.”

The stripping of the cross: the cosmic cross of early Christianity and the naked cross of modern theology

One of the strangest tactics of the early Christian apologists was the habit of attaching symbolic and allegorical meanings to the cross.

The early third-century dialogue by Minucius Felix gives voice to the Roman revulsion towards anyone who would venerate “a criminal put to death for his crimes, and the wood of the death-dealing cross” (Octavius 9). The Christian speaker replies that Christ’s followers do not worship the cross; it is only pagans who worship bits of wood. Yet he adds that the cross is not only a symbol of death. The Roman military signa and victory trophies are also designed in the form of the cross. And one sees “the sign of the cross” inscribed on nature and culture: the mast of a ship, the spread oars, a worshipper with outstretched arms. “In this way the order of nature [ratio naturalis] leans on the sign of the cross” (Octavius 29).

Minucius Felix borrowed these examples from Justin Martyr, who around the middle of the second century had offered a fulsome account of the cosmic significance of the cross. The form (schēma) of the cross, Justin says, is written into the order of nature and of Roman culture alike:

For consider everything in the cosmos. Without this form they could not be governed or interrelated. The sea is not traversed unless this token of victory – a sail – remains safe in the ship. The land is not ploughed without it. Diggers and craftsmen do not do their work except from tools which have this form. And the human form differs from that of the irrational animals only in the way it stands erect with hands stretched out – and also in the way the nose extends from the forehead, providing breath for the living creature, and showing no other form than that of the cross…. And the power of this form is shown by your own symbols on what are called standards and trophies…. Without realising it, you use these [crosses] as the signs of your rule and power. (First Apology 55)

Not long afterwards, Tertullian used the same arguments to point out the irony of Roman contempt for the cross. “All those rows of images on the standards are ornaments hung on crosses. Those hangings on your standards and banners are robes upon crosses. I commend you for your thoughtfulness! You didn’t want to consecrate crosses naked and unadorned” (Apology 16).

By the fourth century, the instinctive revulsion for the cross had begun to recede in Greco-Roman culture, and Christian apologists took more freedom than ever in adorning the cross with symbolic meanings. When Athanasius wants to prove that death by crucifixion was “fitting” for God’s plan, he produces an impressive array of cross-symbols. The outstretched arms show that Christ has united Jews and Gentiles in himself. It shows that Christ has opened the way to heaven. It shows his triumph over the demonic powers of the air: “only the one who ends his life on the cross dies in the air” (On the Incarnation 26).

Gregory of Nyssa disregarded Athansius’ arguments and preferred the earlier cosmic reflections of Justin Martyr. The cross, Gregory says, is a symbol of the way the Logos unites the disparate elements of creation. Gregory suggests that St Paul was imagining a cosmic cross when he said that every knee would bow “in heaven” and “on earth” and “under the earth” (Phil 2.10), and when he prayed that the Ephesians would come to understand the “depth” and “height” and “breadth” and “length” (Eph 3.18). “In shape [the cross] is divided into four parts in which a way that the four arms converge in the middle. He who was extended on it at the time God’s plan was fulfilled in his death is the one who binds all things to himself and makes them one” (Catechetical Oration 32).

Though Gregory seems only half-persuaded by his own arguments – he notes that he is only repeating what he has heard from other Christians – he makes a clear statement of the reason for attaching such symbolic meanings to the cross. It is because of christology: “In the death we should see the human element; but from the manner of the death we should seek to penetrate its divine significance” (Catechetical Oration 32).

It is true that the cross was a brute fact in history. It was wood planted in the earth. But a merely wooden cross would be a half-truth. It would show the fact of Jesus’ death without conveying its meaning. Gregory’s references to St Paul are admittedly fanciful, but he is nevertheless quite right to assume that there was never a stage of early Christianity in which the cross was not already a theological symbol.

Neither St Paul nor the writers of the Gospels regard the cross as a brute fact. The cross could not at any rate have been a brute fact for anybody in the first century. Crucifixion was never just an unpleasant way to die. It was a symbol of Roman power. That symbol was every bit as public and as well-understood as the military standards borne by legions of soldiers. The first Christians had to think symbolically about the cross, since their Messiah had already been forcefully absorbed into the symbolic system of imperial power. One way or another the death of Jesus meant something, and what it meant was symbolised by a cross.

The tactics of the early Christian apologists are strange to us now. Nobody today would explain the significance of the cross by comparing it to a ship’s mast or the unity of the four cosmic elements or the shape of a person’s nose. But even at their most fanciful, these apologetic experiments contain an important half-truth: the cross is more than a brute fact in history; it is part of a system of meaning involving God and creation and everything.

If one strand of the history of early Christianity is the story of the transformation of the cross from a Roman symbol into a Christian symbol, then a strand of the history of modern theology is the story of a concerted effort to strip the cross of its accumulated layers of meaning. What modern theologians want is a naked cross, the brute fact of wood planted in earth and soaked with human blood. If it is to be a symbol at all, let it be a symbol not of life and religion and culture but of power and oppression.

The Romans invented the cross and the Christians stole it from them. Modern theologians have returned it to its original owners.

This stripping of the cross was a valid and necessary exercise in a world whose systems of power had been so thoroughly Christianised that the cross had come to resemble, more than ever, a standard raised before a marching army. The transformation of the cross into a Christian symbol had been a half-truth. But the stripping of the cross in modern theology is a half-truth too. If we see the cross only as a symbol of power and oppression, we should ask whether we have gone so far as to turn ourselves into Romans instead of Christians.

It is good that modern theology has taught us again to see the cross as “foolishness” (1 Cor 1.18). But we also need eyes to perceive “God’s might and God’s wisdom” (1 Cor 1.24) in the brute and foolish fact of the cross. To see the human element, as Gregory of Nyssa said, while also “penetrating its divine significance.”

Michael Ramsey Prize winner: David Bentley Hart

This year the prestigious Michael Ramsey Prize for theological writing has gone to David Bentley Hart for his book Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies (Yale University Press). The £10,000 prize was awarded today by Rowan Williams.

Williams described David Bentley Hart not only as "a theologian of exceptional quality" but also "a brilliant stylist":

This book takes no prisoners in its response to fashionable criticisms of Christianity. But what makes it more than just another contribution to controversy is the way he shows how the most treasured principles and values of compassionate humanism are rooted in the detail of Christian doctrine. I am pleased that we have identified a prize winning book that is so distinctive in its voice. It is never bland. It will irritate some, but it will also challenge and inspire readers inside and outside the church. No one could pretend after reading this that Christian theology was lacking in intellectual and imaginative force or in relevance to the contemporary world.

It's true: Hart is an extraordinary prose stylist and a brilliant controversialist. He's a unique voice in contemporary theology. Grumpy, elegant, outrageous, and delightful – often all at the same time. Though this isn't my favourite of his books – I don't think it's as good as The Doors of the Sea, for example – it's great to see his writing recognised in this way.

The other shortlisted books were:

• Thomas E. Reynolds, Vulnerable Communion: A Theology of Disability and Hospitality (Brazos Press)
• Christopher Cocksworth, Holding Together: Gospel, Church, Spirit (Canterbury Press)
• Richard Harries, The Re-enchantment of Morality (SPCK)
• Angel F. Montoya, The Theology of Food: Eating and the Eucharist (Wiley-Blackwell)
• Robert Hughes, Beloved Dust: Tides of the Spirit in the Christian Life (Continuum)

Has anyone read that last one by Robert Hughes? It sounds really impressive, but I haven't got a copy yet. If anyone has read it, I'd love to know what you thought of it.

Ten propositions on the God hypothesis

by Kim Fabricius

1. The story, possibly apocryphal, is both famous and paradigmatic. Summoned by Napoleon to give an account of his recently published Mécanique Céleste, the mathematician and astronomer Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749-1827) was asked by the emperor why, unlike Isaac Newton, he had not mentioned God in his treatise on the gravitational forces of the solar system. “Sire,” replied Laplace, unmoved by Newton’s divine designer, “I had no need of that hypothesis.”

2. Apparently, however, many contemporary scientists and philosophers do. After a century or more, the “God hypothesis” is making a comeback – and not just by the champions of ID – as an apologetic response to the “God delusion” of Richard Dawkins and the New Atheists. But what if the God hypothesis is itself a delusion? I think that it is. Picturing them as dark, frozen stars, Laplace was one of the first physicists to postulate the existence of black holes. A collapse into intellectual oblivion would be a fitting destiny for the God hypothesis.

3. Of course proponents of the God hypothesis do not offer it as a demonstration or proof of the existence of God. However, rejecting not only the conflict model (Dawkins) but also the neutrality model (Gould) of the relationship between science and religion, they argue that the empirical evidence of both physics and biology actually points to the existence of God, and therefore that in the “war of the worldviews” (Francis Collins), theism is more rational than naturalism.

4. I share with these thinkers their rejection of both the conflict model (based, pathologically, on a metaphysical prejudice) and the neutrality model (based, epistemologically, on the fact/value dichotomy). I also applaud some of the philosophical and historical points they make: e.g., that science no less than religion presumes a fiduciary framework, and that belief in a rational God who creates an orderly universe looks to be a foundation stone in the edifice of modern science. But after the curtain falls, and before they can take their bows, I head towards to exit.

5. To put it simply: the God hypothesis cannot be the God hypothesis – at least if this God is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of Jesus Christ. In fact, apart from the gloating of the godly laity at the scientific episcopate beating up Dawkins in his own cathedral, the thing I find most objectionable in “modern attempts to relate the observed cosmos to traditional religion,” as Professor Roger Lambert puts it to the precocious evangelical and computer scientist Dale Kohler in John Updike’s Roger’s Version, is “the sheer, sickening extravagance of it.” The God hypothesis – it is “churning the void in the hope of making butter.”

6. A hypothesis is an explanation – but God is not an explanation. Nicholas Lash proposes a declension narrative: “During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the word ‘God’ came to be used, for the first time, to name the ultimate explanation of the world. And, when it was in due time realized that the system of the world was such as not to require any such single, overarching, independent explanatory principle, the word ‘god’ was dispensed with, and modern atheism was born.” Ironic, or what? Christianity is, in the title of an early book by D. Z. Phillips, Religion without Explanation (1976).

7. A hypothesis is either probable or improbable – but the existence of God is neither probable nor improbable; indeed the non-existence of God is inconceivable. A deity who might not exist is contingent and therefore not worth the name of Yahweh (Exodus 3:14). Kierkegaard drives the point home: “God does not exist, he is eternal.” That is the truth behind the unfortunately named ontological argument (Anselm’s “proof” is, in fact, a prayer). At least it is for believers, who, if they engage atheists on the field of probabilities, are acting in bad faith, i.e., in either a fraudulent or downright idolatrous manner. The Creed does not begin “On balance, we believe …”

8. Or again, a hypothesis is provisional: it always concludes with the words “Until Further Notice”. A hypothesis issues from the facts as they are known. But quite apart from the fact that God is not a fact, new facts may always be discovered that suggest that a hypothesis is mistaken, and has to be discarded or reframed. Can we have faith in a god the evidence for whom we must ever be checking and rechecking? There I am, perusing the science section in Waterstones, when suddenly I cry, “O shit!” and, faith shattered, run screaming from the shop. The tentative do not say, “Here I stand.”

9. In short, advocates of the God hypothesis mistake the nature of God and the grammar of faith. At best you get a designer god who is not the Creator, let alone the Trinity. And while the argument for a designer god is buoyant when it directs us to the wonder, beauty, and intricacy of the world, it sinks without trace before the inexplicable and intractable reality of evil. It is telling, revealing that John Lennox, the author of God’s Undertaker (2007), who while burying Dawkins builds the most persuasive case I know for the God hypothesis, is completely silent on the problem of theodicy. Come to think of it, I would direct those who sincerely seek God to suffering, not science; and finally to the cross, not the computer.

10. As for the grammar of faith, one can know God only in practice, not in theory, with commitment, not disinterestedly. One can only know God by confessing, praising, and loving God. Science can only stand at the bus stop, checking Paley’s watch (now digital), and telescopically peering at the corner which Godot never turns. R. S. Thomas, the Welsh poet of the Deus absconditus, who grappled with science and the philosophy of science – and jotted ratty comments in his copy of Paul Davies’ God and the New Physics (1983) – knew better:

    I have waited for him
    under the tree of science,
    and he has not come.

One can only wait for God under the tree of prayer: “Veni, Creator Spiritus!”

Are the gospels reliable? A letter to a young inquirer

A guest-post by George Hunsinger

Dear N.,

Very good to hear from you with your interesting dreams and questions. I think your questions represent those that many have today. I don't know if I can answer them to your satisfaction, but here is how I look at them myself.

You write: "I don't think there is a good reason to believe in Jesus as the Christ because the accounts of him are historically non-convincing for two reasons (a) these are not his accounts but accounts of him from flawed men..."

This comment seems to assume that we cannot believe in Jesus without "good reasons" and without evidence that is "historically reliable". It also seems to assume that we would be better off with writings directly from Jesus himself rather than from his followers, who were flawed like the rest of us. I can see that this line of thinking seems reasonable. I don't think it is sufficient, however.

First, there is the question of what it would be "reasonable" for someone to believe. Although good reasons can actually be given of the kind you seem to be seeking (more on that in a moment), I don't think any such reasons, by themselves, would ever be enough for someone to have faith in Christ. This is a very important point to which I will need to return, because it has to do with the nature of faith. Here I am commenting somewhat more on the nature of reason. Even the best of reasons, I am saying, would be insufficient. That is because believing in Christ is not just the same as believing that Caesar crossed the Rubicon.

Although there is certainly an element of historical fact at stake in Christian belief, knowledge of historical facts is knowledge of a particular kind. It never gets us beyond the weighing of probabilities. Christian belief does not fall into that category. It does not finally come down to probability assessments.

Even if we had documents written by Jesus himself, we would still need to go well beyond mere historical "probabilities" if we were to commit our lives to him as our Lord and Savior, in life and in death, which is what the gospel says is required of us. (And required of us unconditionally.)

Second, at the level of historical probabilities, I think the Christian faith has to meet a minimal standard, but only a minimal standard. Although it involves historical elements, faith also involves elements that do not fit neatly into the category of "history". The historical aspects are not unimportant, however.

The minimal standard that needs to be met is that these historical aspects or (often implicit) historical claims cannot be shown to have been decisively disproved. If it could be shown, for example, that Jesus did not die on a cross but instead in an old age home in Palestine or that his body still lies a-mouldering in the tomb, I think that would count as decisive disproof. I think it is reasonable to conclude, however, that attempts of this kind, which over the last 250 years have been legion, have not been successful.

Christ's resurrection could theoretically be disproved by historical evidence, but it could not be proven on historical grounds alone, because, in the nature of the case, it confronts us with something more than a merely historical claim — something much more terrifying and radical.

In the end I think the historical evidence remains ambiguous and inconclusive, taken as a whole. There is not a lot of data to go on, which allows the evidence to be read either positively or negatively. Positively, certain lines of plausibility can be established for the "factual" claims of the gospel on historical grounds, but negatively, on the other hand, these lines of reasoning are always open to challenge and doubt. There is, again, not enough evidence to work with one way or the other that would allow us to come to unshakable historical conclusions.

Nevertheless, a strong historical case can indeed be made in favor of Christ's resurrection, for example, but not one that I think is beyond "reasonable" doubt. Reason, in any case, reaches its categorical limit here. Affirming or denying Christ's resurrection — or better, affirming or denying the Risen Christ — is well beyond the competency of mere reason.

Let me mention two recent scholarly works, one by Richard Bauckham, the other by N. T. Wright. In his very intriguing book Jesus and the Eyewitnesses (2008, 540 pp.), Bauckham makes a strong case for the general reliability of the gospels. I don't think the case is as iron-clad as he does, but I do regard it as impressive. Bauckham presents a very strong and learned argument that, contrary to much modern scholarship, the gospels did not arise very long after the fact.

N. T. Wright's The Resurrection of the Son of God (2003) is an even more massive tome (750 pp.). Every NT passage on Christ's resurrection is analyzed scrupulously for its historical reliability. I think Wright finally overstates his case, even more so than Bauckham does his. Nevertheless, again, I think that even with a more nuanced assessment of his findings, this is a formidable achievement.

A more popular but still scholarly work would be Fabricating Jesus: How Modern Scholars Distort the Gospels (2008) by Craig A. Evans (290 pp.). I again have the same kinds of reservations. In other words, I don't reject his arguments out of hand but I take them with a grain of salt. They are impressive but inconclusive, though they show why the minimal standard that I set forth earlier has actually been met, and more than met. An older work that still holds up fairly well, I think, would be F. F. Bruce, The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? (85 pp.). This well-written little book, which first appeared around 1960, has recently been reissued. I read it as an undergraduate.

The point is not that works like these have knock-down arguments. They don't. Knock-down arguments in this world are rare. The point is rather that the historical claims of the gospel are susceptible to a respectable defense. Again, however, I think that in the end these kinds of considerations are only secondary, and are at best merely preliminary.

You also write: "Furthermore (b) these stories are not necessarily trustworthy. Did they remember wrong? Were they even there? Even if they remembered right (how could they after so long?) and were actually there, did they misinterpret Jesus (of course, we know from their own accounts that they consistently did)."

What I am trying to suggest is that everything finally depends on what kind of documents the gospels and other NT writings are. They are not really historical reports. They do not fall into the category of report but rather into the category of witness. They all present themselves, in various ways, as witnesses to the Risen Christ. The picture of Jesus in the gospels, for example, represents an overlay of the Risen Christ upon the "historical" Jesus, because the point is that the historical Jesus and the Risen Christ are finally one and the same.

The Christian faith is far more a matter of radical conversion than it is of rational persuasion. The claim that a marginal Jew who was put to death on a cross should have been raised from the dead so that he now reigns as Lord and Savior is never going to be plausible to rational or evidential considerations. It is always going to be foolishness, as Paul himself confessed: "For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men" (1 Cor. 1:22-25).

The NT cannot be read intelligently unless it is read as a spiritual book, as opposed to a merely historical document. The truth to which it bears witness necessarily transcends every ordinary rational mode of perception. Unless the doors of perception are opened, and we begin thinking in a whole new framework, it will never make any sense.

It is finally not we who read the NT, but the NT that reads us. It calls us and our detached role as would-be authoritative, evidence-weighing spectators radically into question. That is why it is so dangerous. Many of those original "unreliable" witnesses to the resurrection of Christ, like Peter and Paul, went to their brutal deaths as martyrs. "When Christ calls a man," wrote Bonhoeffer, "he bids him come and die."

No one who is not willing to take this risk should venture to read the NT. But many of those who have turned to it spiritually have found, throughout the centuries, that they end up saying with Peter: "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life" (Jn. 6:68). I suggest that you might want to read the opening chapters in The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Sweet dreams,
George

Theology FAIL: Richard Swinburne proves the resurrection

A conversation yesterday reminded me of Richard Swinburne's 2003 book, The Resurrection of God Incarnate. Using Bayesian probability and lashings of highfalutin mathematical jargon, Swinburne argues that "it [is] very probable indeed that God became incarnate in Jesus Christ who rose from the dead" (p. 214). His mathematical apologetics for the resurrection boils down to the following argument:

1. The probably of God's existence is one in two (since God either exists or doesn't exist).
2. The probability that God became incarnate is also one in two (since it either happened or it didn't).
3. The evidence for God's existence is an argument for the resurrection.
4. The chance of Christ's resurrection not being reported by the gospels has a probability of one in 10.
5. Considering all these factors together, there is a one in 1,000 chance that the resurrection is not true.

It's almost impossible to parody this argument (since in order to parody it, you would have to imagine something sillier – a daunting task!). But let me try:

The probably that the moon is made of cheese is one in two (since it is either made of cheese or it isn't); the probability that this cheese is camembert is also one in two (since it's either camembert or it isn't); and so on...

Donald MacKinnon on apologetics

“The philosopher is not an apologist; apologetic concern, as Karl Barth (the one living theologian of unquestionable genius) has rightly insisted, is the death of serious theologizing, and I would add, equally of serious work in the philosophy of religion.”

—Donald M. MacKinnon, The Borderlands of Theology: An Inaugural Lecture (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1961), 28.

Whose rationality? Which apologetics?

Okay, I’ve never been an enthusiast for apologetics. But some time ago I wrote a little article for the Case magazine on an “Apologetics of Imagination” (summarised here) – a proposal for a kind of Barthian, non-foundationalist approach to apologetics. The Aussie theologian Andrew Bain then published a lengthy critique, entitled “An Apology for Imperialist Apologetics.” His main point was that my proposal is too postmodern and too relativistic; that I evacuate truth from Christian speech. Drawing on Oliver O’Donovan’s view of authority, Andrew Bain argued that I was undermining the gospel’s own commitment to Christ’s “imperial” lordship. So anyway, the new issue of the magazine includes my response to this critique. In case it’s of interest, I’ve reproduced the full text here:

Whose Rationality? Which Apologetics? A Reply to Andrew Bain

In his “Apology for Imperialist Apologetics,” Andrew Bain observes that the Christian message sometimes requires “strong, forceful rhetoric,” and that Christ’s imperial authority should not be downplayed in the interests of a peaceable apologetics. Indeed, he notes that to “eschew strong assertions of Christ’s rule” would simply be to misrepresent the gospel, since the gospel proclaims Christ as Lord, not merely as one option alongside others.

I could hardly agree more. When I criticised a rhetoric of violence and called for an ethics of apologetic discourse, my point was not that Christians ought to be nice, or that we should speak the gospel only in a soft tone of voice. On the contrary, I believe the Christian message is concerned with truth – and that means universal truth. The gospel is nothing else than an announcement of the universality of a particular event in history. To say the word “God” is to speak of reality as a whole, and it is thus to speak a truth which concerns everyone without exception. To be a Christian is to be seized irresistibly by this truth, and so to become a witness, a subject militantly committed to the universal reach of this truth.

To say that the gospel requires “forceful rhetoric” and “strong assertions” is thus saying still too little: it requires my very life, so that even my body is seized and commanded by the militancy of the gospel’s truth. That is why, etymologically, the “witness” is precisely the “martyr”: the rhetoric of the gospel unfolds not merely as strong speech, but as the most radical bodily gesture which performs truth’s powerless victory and boundless reach.

My critique of rhetorical violence was not, therefore, a summons to soft-spoken niceness. Bearing witness is not always a nice business (when done properly, it ends in a bloody death). My point, rather, was that our gospel-speaking should look more like imaginative story-telling than like rational argumentation. It should sound more like an invitation and a summons to decision than like a proof which constrains and coerces.

In his celebrated book, Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, Alasdair MacIntyre notes that there is no universal rationality which could adjudicate between the claims of rival traditions, since any given rationality is always already constructed and mediated by a particular tradition. This means that there is no neutral rationality. Every seemingly innocent appeal to a neutral, objective rationality conceals the hegemony on which such rationality depends. As John Milbank rightly remarks, “every supposedly objective reasoning … disguises the power which is its sole support.”

The crucial question, therefore, is whether the Christian message is itself transformed into something quite different when it is submitted to quasi-objective (Kantian) rational norms, or when it becomes an instrument of coercive reason; whether an apologetics of rational persuasion undercuts the fundamental character of the gospel as a call to decision and a summons to freedom.

Let me put it another way: where there is rational persuasion there is no longer any need for decision, since I am simply compelled by force of reason. A rhetoric of peace and freedom, on the other hand, is a mode of speech in which the gospel’s decision-character is preserved and maintained, so that the gospel is articulated as a call to conversion, a summons to a radical reorientation of life (which includes a reorientation of reason itself!), so that the whole world is now re-envisioned through the lens of the gospel.

This is the approach which I labelled an “apologetics of imagination,” and which John Milbank rather playfully describes as the endeavour to “persuade people – for reasons of ‘literary taste’ – that Christianity offers a much better story.” To proclaim the gospel is to tell this “better story” – a story which is, empirically, one narrative alongside others, but which functions as a kind of metanarrative, since its truth reaches out and comprehends all things within itself.

To grasp this story (with its own internal coherence and rationality), one must be grasped by it in a moment of decision. This decision is what the gospel calls conversion. To clarify the nature of this decision is the task of apologetics.

Can we prove the resurrection?

Can we ever “prove” the resurrection of Jesus, either historically (e.g. Pannenberg, N. T. Wright) or probabilistically (e.g. Richard Swinburne) or scientifically (e.g. various nutty apologists)? In my view, such “proof” is neither possible nor desirable. For resurrection is not a natural or historical possibility, but it is precisely a contradiction of the whole order of the possible. It is not one event alongside other events within world-history, but it is the end and boundary of history as such.

I’m not talking here, of course, about a Newtonian notion that the world is a closed causal system (so that “divine intervention” is impossible by definition). Instead, my point is simply that the resurrection must be understood theologically, as the eschatological act of God in which the existing structures of the world are torn open and something wholly new is brought into being.

Since the resurrection contradicts the very structures of reality, it could be called an impossible event – impossible in the strictest sense of the word! It is not a “historical” event, since it punctures the linearity of history and confronts history with its own shattering “end.” In short, the resurrection of Jesus from the dead is both the dissolution of the world and the startling creation (ex nihilo?) of a new cosmos. It is the end and the beginning, the last and the first.

All this means that the concept of “resurrection” can never be introduced as the most likely explanation for any historical data. To introduce the resurrection in this way is simply to forget the very meaning of “resurrection”. All such apologetic strategies aim to reduce the resurrection to one particular possibility within the structures of being and history – so that the resurrection is “proved” only by first being rendered innocuous.

We might seek to prove historically that the tomb of Jesus was found empty, and that the disciples had certain experiences after Jesus’ death. Such historical proofs have their own significance – but they are in no sense proofs of the resurrection. Similarly, it’s worth remembering that the early Christians narrated stories of the empty tomb and of the appearances without once attempting to narrate the event of resurrection itself. (Contrast this to the final scene of Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ, where the camera gives us direct “objective” access to the event – and in this very “objectivity,” the event is rendered meaningless, absurd, and godless. At precisely this point of the film, it becomes clear that Gibson’s Christ is in fact a pagan figure, and that this figure is encountered in the objectivity of voyeurism rather than in the subjectivity of faith.)

When the early Christians wanted to speak of the resurrection, they realised that the event can be named only by speaking (or stammering) of God – after all, as Karl Barth has put it, the word “resurrection” is really just a paraphrase of the word “God.”

An apologetics of imagination

The new issue of the Sydney magazine Case (published by the Centre for Apologetic Scholarship and Education) features articles by Richard Bauckham, Michael Jensen, Greg Clarke, and others. It also includes my essay on “An Apologetics of Imagination,” where I argue that “what Christian apologetics has often lacked is an ethics of apologetic discourse, a probing ethical investigation into the modes of speech that are best suited to apologetic dialogue.”

Against certain forms of apologetics, I suggest that “the task of apologetics is not one of rational coercion, but of imaginative invitation. It is the invitation to envision – or rather, to re-envision – the world through the lens of the gospel of Jesus Christ…. The fundamental mode of such apologetic discourse, therefore, is one of peace and freedom. It is, in the words of David Bentley Hart, a ‘rhetoric of peace,’ grounded on an awareness that the gospel itself has already crossed the closed circle of an ‘economy of violence’ and a ‘war of persuasions whose guiding impulse is power’…. It is precisely by resisting the irresistible – by choosing rhetorical peace over a rhetoric of violence and coercion – that we allow our hearers to be opened to the compelling imaginative power of a Christian vision of the world…. Such apologetic dialogue thus finds its goal in the authentic expression of human freedom and selfhood – in a fully personal response to the liberating message of the gospel.”

Ten propositions on the resurrection

by Kim Fabricius

1.     I got me flowers to straw Thy way,
    I got me boughs off many a tree;
    But Thou wast up by break of day,
    And brought’st Thy sweets along with Thee.
    (George Herbert, “Easter”)

The resurrection in propositions? May the poets forgive me!

2. The most prosaic of approaches to the resurrection are those apologetics modelled on courtroom drama: the authors invite the gospel witnesses to take the stand, elicit their testimonies, cross-examine them, explain away any inconsistencies or contradictions, dismiss the counter-evidence – and the defence rests: that Christ is risen is beyond reasonable doubt. But Rowan Williams objects – and the objection is sustained: “As far as the historical question goes, it is clear that the scholarly analysis of the resurrection narratives has not yielded a single compelling resolution to the numerous difficulties that the texts pose.”

3. And (to switch metaphors from the courtroom to the operating theatre) were the operation successful, the patient would be dead on the table. How so? Because the resurrection is “a paraphrase of the word ‘God’” (Karl Barth) – and God is ultimate mystery. God is no deus ex machina who, in raising Jesus from the dead, provides dramatic closure, or, for that matter, secures a happy ending.

    It was by negatives I learnt my place.
    The garden went on growing and I sensed
    A sudden breeze that blew across my face.
    Despair returned but now it danced, it danced.
    (Elizabeth Jennings, “The Resurrection”)

4. Am I saying that the resurrection was not an historical event? That depends. If your understanding of “historical” is based on the famous criteria of Ernst Troeltsch – probability, relativity, and analogy – then, no, it was not an historical event. But why, asks Wolfhart Pannenberg, accept these criteria? Why accept a definition of history that rules out, ab initio, the singular and unique (and its presupposition of an ontology incarcerated in immanence)? Why, pace Bultmann (who here follows Troeltsch), indeed. Yet Pannenberg also maintains that the conventions of modern historiography, including its procedures of proof, can successfully be applied to the appearances of the risen Jesus, such that we can infer the resurrection from the evidence. And this is where I part company with Pannenberg and join Barth. The resurrection is historical – i.e. it happened in space and time – but it is not historically demonstrable. The resurrection is, in principle, historically falsifiable, but not historically verifiable. With Moltmann, its verification can only be eschatological.

5. “The point of the appearances is precisely the arising of faith in the Risen One. He did not show himself to everyone, he did not become an object of neutral observation. Nor can one say that the appearances presupposed faith in him. Rather, those to whom they occurred became believers.” True, “in every case knowledge of Jesus is presupposed, and that means that the question of faith has already been raised…. But the witness of faith is recognised only when one accepts his witness in faith” (Gerhard Ebeling).

6. Was the tomb empty? Of course! Not least because “no Jew would have used the word ‘resurrection’ to describe an afterlife in which the physical body was left to the grave” (George Caird). The (liberal) notion of a “spiritual” resurrection is irredeemably docetic. It is the perishable, corruptible physical body that must put on immortality (I Cor. 15:53). Nor should we miss the gnostic understanding of creation – and the new creation – that is implicit in a Jesus who is risen only in our hearts – or, for that matter, in the kerygma (Bultmann). “Let us not mock God with metaphor”:

    Make no mistake: if He rose at all
    it was as His body;
    if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
         reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
    the Church will fall.
    (John Updike, “Seven Stanzas at Easter”)

7. I sense the same docetism in those who would elide the resurrection with the cross. It is quite true that the resurrection is not the reversal of a defeat but the proclamation of a victory, not the abrogation of the cross but its inner meaning. So Jüngel is quite right to say that “the message of the resurrection does not cancel the logos tou staurou but gives it its proper weight.” But he is quite wrong to conclude that the resurrection is not a discrete event subsequent to the crucifixion. Von Balthasar’s theology of Holy Saturday stands as a warning to such a collapse of Easter Sunday into Good Friday. And so too is I. H. Marshall’s recent insistence on the importance of the resurrection, as well as the cross, in a truly biblical theology of the atonement.

8. It is characteristic for the risen Christ to greet his disciples with the word shalom: “Peace be with you!” He calms their fear – of retribution, perhaps? After all, these were the men who, despite their protestations of loyalty, had abandoned their master to his fate. Perhaps now it was payback time for their betrayal? And what of Caiaphas and Pilate and all who had connived in the murder of Jesus – might we not expect a risen Terminator: “I’ll be back – and this time it’s personal”? Christian pacifists are often accused of arguing their case from the Crucified who refuses the way of violence. But the power of pacifism equally comes from the Risen One who refuses the way of vengeance. “Jesus is judge because he is victim; and that very fact means that he is a judge who will not condemn” (Rowan Williams).

    So let us love, deare Love, like as we ought,
    – Love is the lesson which the Lord us taught.
    (Edmund Spenser, “Easter Sunday”)

9. The risen Christ meets no one without calling them to witness and service. The meaning is in the mission. In fact, the resurrection of Jesus leads to two missions. Did you ever notice that, according to Matthew (28:11), it is the soldiers, professional killers, who first bring news of the events at the tomb to Jerusalem – to the chief priests, who then bribe them and commission them to spread a lie about what had happened (28:12-15)? By contrast, in the closing verses (28:16-20), Jesus commissions the disciples to make more disciples, teaching them what they had learned from Jesus (in particular, Ulrich Luz suggests, the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount). Lies and violence, very lucrative – that is the one mission. Truth and peace, very costly – that is the other mission. On this mission, the risen Christ said, “I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

10. Finally eschatology (of course!) – or doxology. “Jesus,” says Robert Jenson, “is risen into the future that God has for his creatures. What certain persons saw after his death was a reality of that future.” Which is another way of saying that Jesus is risen into the glory of God. The resurrection is, as it were, the coming attractions of the Coming Attraction, the human being fully alive who is the glory of God (Irenaeus).

         In a flash, at a trumpet crash,
    I am all at once what Christ is, since he was what I am, and
    This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, patch, matchwood, immortal diamond,
              Is immortal diamond.
    (Gerard Manley Hopkins, “That Nature Is a Heraclitean Fire”)

Some things worth knowing

• What should you do with Anselm’s ontological argument? Now you know.
• What is forgiveness all about? Now you know.
• What is the point of apologetics? Now you know.
• Why is it wicked to solve the problem of evil? Now you know.
  
• Have you found God? Now you know.

CASE in the academy

The Australian institute CASE has just put out the latest issue of its quarterly magazine. It’s packed with good stuff, including articles on Alfred Kinsey, Stephanie Dowrick, Bono and Nick Cave, and theology and evolution (and a short piece by me on humanism). The definite highlight is the essay by Matheson Russell: “Why Concepts Can’t Always Be Trusted: On Deconstruction and Reformation,” Case 8 (2005), 12-15. Russell argues for the theological significance of phenomenology, and he presents one of the most lucid, most engaging and most accessible introductions to postmodernism that I’ve come across.

CASE is the Centre for Apologetic Scholarship and Education. It’s hosted by New College at the University of New South Wales, and it promotes “apologetic scholarship” in the best and broadest sense—i.e., scholarship that engages constructively with contemporary thought across the whole spectrum of academic disciplines.