On Desire and Ethics

To Samuel on Desire and ethics

Dear Samuel,

I will try to answer briefly... You have, though, focused on a long tradition about this issue.  It's as old pre-Socratic Greek philosophers and as current as Postmoderns.

I will answer between your questions.

I tried to formulate some of my thoughts into questions (basically they are about desires and moral values): what is desire? 

What is desire? is a very good question.

Some pre-Socratic Greeks thought that desire was a problem.

The Stoics tried to master it through discipline (both intellectual and ascetic) and reason.  They believed that everyone was a part of a pantheistic whole.  We were all "seeds of the Logos" (the Whole, reason).  We have to put our baser nature (desire) down and live as rational beings. Stoicism was popularised by Cleanthes and some like Pythagoras.  It was later revived in Roman times by Epictetus, a slave, and Marcus Aurelius, an emperor. The Stoics were cosmopolitans which means against nationalism, since all were "children of one father."

The Skeptics (Diogenes the "dog" philosopher) tried to free people from desire by using "Zen" like questions, showing people that they could not answer ethical questions from reason.  Alternating, opposing arguments led to a state of equipollence, balance (equal value) between the arguments, i.e. being unable to decide.  They called that state "epoche."  Reaching epoche allowed one to give up arguments and find peace or ataraksia (the state of not being bothered by such questions).  Once you knew, for instance, that nationalism was stupid you could stop fighting.  This tradition continued to Sextus Empiricus in Rome and on to David Hume in the 18th century.

Epicurus taught that we should use ascetic practices and mental exercises to overcome desire.  He was not so much a philosopher in the sense of leaving behind a body of knowledge, but he used asceticism and some thought to encourage his followers to be moderate in their desires.  Too much desire leads to unpleasantness.  If you eat too much, your stomach hurts. Therefore, you should be moderate in satisfying your urges.

Plato taught that epithumia, the passions, were bad.  Epithumia (which lodged down in groin) led to stupidity and unbridled behavior.  He also taught that thumos was bad. Thumos or anger was located in the heart and the lungs drew off the heat from the anger.  

The neck was small to prevent the influence of the passions and anger from affecting the reason.  Plato's view is similar to Pythagoras' views.  Reason is divine.

Socrates had a "demon," who guided him to good. At the same time he taught moral virtue as opposed to wanton sexual desire.  He rejected paedophilia and decried it in other, like the Athenian elders.  For this reason he was sentenced to death for "corrupting the morals of minors," telling them not to be engaged in such behavior.  Plato's dialogues the Phaedo and the Phaedrus deal with this. At the same time his dialogue the Philebus, deals with desire from a different stance.

Eros was not specifically or only sexual desire.  It wasn't either a base desire necessarily.  All things have eros, which includes the desire to survive and grow, to reach the goal for which they exist or were created.

Aristotle developed the idea of desire further and this led to the idea of virtue.  Desire must be controlled by moderation and reason. The Golden Mean was to be sought.  However, each being has a telos or goal within towards which desire carries it.

Later Thomas Aquinas would use Aristotle's idea of virtue to develop moral theory further.  A modern Thomist, Alsdair Macintyre, has furthered this view.  Aquinas' view is that virtue is inbuilt in creation.  He has a sort of teleology which guides each being.

What do we find underneath our desires that govern them? 

This is as we say, the million-dollar question.  Is sexual desire or epithumia behind our behavior?  Sigmund Freud thought so.  His diagnosis of our problems is trenchant, while his plan for overcoming them is unsuccessful.

Jacques Lacan, a French psychoanalyst and philosopher, followed Freud and gave him a postmodern twist.  For Lacan all desire is sexual and all urges are pointless.  We cannot control our urges.  We are controlled by them, but we don't even know what we seek.

Can desire fully be explained in a naturalistic way using only matter, space and time? 

Of course, humanists would say yes.  Freud would say yes. In antiquity Epicurus was an atheist, as was the Roman thinker, Lucretius.

I think, though, that this is not quite right.  Our bodies do drive us, for instance, to sexual procreation, but the love between a woman and a man transcends this mere physical drive.  Tenderness and faithfulness show it is false to say that physical desire is all that is involved in love.  At the same time the amount of sexual immorality and unfaithfulness shows that sexual drive can be out of control.

How did people explain desire in human history, both in ancient and contemporary times? 

I have mentioned the pre-Socratics, Plato and Aristotle, as well as some more recent thinkers, Freud and Lacan.

Perhaps it is also worth noting that Augustine saw desire as good, one could desire God, for instance.  Medieval mystics and Thomas Aquinas saw desire for God as a sort of teleological ascent to one's Beloved.

Where do we get our moral values from? 

I have mentioned the Greeks and Romans, but your question now concerns types of ethical theories.

Consequentialists say that what is "right" is what results in the consequence we seek.  So, what is good is what gets me to a certain goal.  This is somewhat like Pragmatism.  If I want to seduce a girl, lying would be ok by this view.  

However, some philosophers feel that there is no other way to explain our behavior in the face of no moral commands from a deity.

One of the other main views is called Deontological.  The Deontological view says that certain things are duties.  Immanuel Kant says that we must act in such a way that our action can be made universal law. (His so-called "Categorical Imperative." He says this maxim (or law) is a thing we know intuitively.  We seek in ourselves and we find this law. It is autonomous.  It is not from without, from nature (as Aquinas and Aristotle try to ground it, so-called Natural Law) or from a deity (Divine Command ethics).  We don't need God or even a knowledge of the external world to be moral. We are, according to Kant, involved in a project of moral self-perfection and don't need God or outside help to achieve it (though we may need all of eternity; his proof for "heaven").

The other main theory is the Divine Command Theory.  It says that we are creatures and God is our creator.  He gives us laws, instructions for moral behavior (e.g. "Thou shalt not murder.").  This god could be Jehovah or Allah.  Christian moralists tend to be committed to the Divine Command Theory.  On the other hand, many Roman Catholic moral theorists, like Alsdair Macintyre, follow Aristotle and Aquinas and appeal to Natural Law.

What are the best naturalistic explanations for the ground of moral values? 

This is hard to say.  Best... What is it you want to do or defend?  If you are a Pragmatism, the Consequentialism probably seems best: what gets me to my goal is best.  But at the same time some Christians say that our actions have consequences so even a Divine Command Theory has a component of consequentialism. (See John & Paul Feinberg, Ethics for a Brave New World.  See my ppt which is attached for a brief summary.)

There are those like Herbert Spencer who believe that our behavior can be explained by a sort of Darwinian survival of the fittest.  Religion and ethics allow humankind to flourish and survive.  If we band together, we can overcome many obstacles and flourish.  Marriage as an institution is not divine. However, it is the best way to procreate and for the human species to survive.

NeoKantians, like Hermann Cohen and Paul Natorp, would appeal to the Moral Law Within, a Universal Maxim (law), the Categorical Imperative (which is found within one's consciousness without religion). Here the appeal is to an autonomous ethic.

Why do human beings have desires conflicting with their own moral values? 

In my view this is the easier question.  Genesis 2 & 3 - the Fall into sin.  Adam and Eve brought death and disease onto humankind.  We suffer death, disease and morally repugnant desires as a result of our inherited sinful nature due to their misdeeds. 

Blaise Pascal, a 17th c. French philosopher, said without keeping two things in mind you could not understand humankind: the glory of humanity and the ignominy of humanity.  We can create almost like gods, but we do things to each other (for instance, torture), which animals do not do to each other.  He argues we are demiurges, creators similar to God, but limited.  At the same time we are fallen and slaves to our passions.

I come across these questions when I try to challenge the naturalistic worldview in my mind. I want to understand how these questions have been dealt with in history and what the major views are in our time regarding these questions. I wanted to share this with you if maybe you have a book in mind or any kind of resource for me, but if I can find enough time in the future, I may be able to take it as an independent course. Thanks.

A beginning point is to read the Feinbergs' discussion of Moral Theory, chapter 1 of Ethics for a Brave New World.

You could read Colin Brown's Christianity and Western Thought Volume 1.  You could leaf through his discussions of moral theories.

A big fat book on the pre-Socratics, which is quite good in many respects, is Martha Nussbaum's Therapy of Desire. It is a more technical and academic book.

I have found Alsdair Macintyre's After virtue interesting, but both books are somewhat difficult.

More recent Evangelical appraisals of moral theory vary a lot.  Dr. Ron Michener and Dr. Patrick Nullens at the ETF in Belgium have written a book called The Matrix of Christian Ethics.  It has been ordered, but is not in the Tyndale library yet.  They are informed by Postmodern thinkers.

Glen Stassen and David Gushee discuss these things in their Kingdom Ethics as well. Their discussion of value and moral behavior is written throughout their treatment of the Sermon on the Mount.

I must confess I haven't read either yet.

My mentor, William Desmond, wrote an interesting book on this topic called Ethics and the Between.  He wrote a trilogy of books: Being and the Between, Ethics and the Between and God and the Between.

His view is an interaction with Hegel's panentheistic teleology and his own reactions.  He is hard to read at first, but once you get the hang of his style and system he is quite illuminating.

I hope this helps.  If you want to do an independent study I would be happy to help guide you.

Warmly in Christ,

Dr. Phil

The Brown's Chicken Massacre and Expert Testimony

People v. Luna, 2013 IL App (1st) 72253
Appellate Court of Illinois
Filed: April 25th, 2013
Precedential Status: Precedential
Citations: 2013 IL App (1st) 72253
Docket Number: 1-07-2253

¶ 34       Cecilia Doyle, chief of the Biology-DNA section of the ISP laboratory, testified as an expert in the field of DNA analysis. As explained in greater detail in the analysis section below, Doyle used STR DNA analysis on the swabs from the two bones and was able to obtain a nine-loci DNA profile from the bones. She explained that in 1998, the laboratory was only looking at 9 allele locations for DNA profiles and did not advance to 13-loci DNA testing until 1999.

  ¶ 35     The testing revealed that each sample contained DNA from multiple contributors. Doyle testified that a DNA profile, viewed on a graph called an electropherogram, normally has just two peaks at any one area of the DNA (i.e., any locus), because half of the DNA is inherited from the mother and half from the father. When an allele (i.e., an area of genetic variation that analysts measure and use for comparison) is detected at a particular locus, it is represented by a peak plotted at a point on the electropherogram. Here, Doyle saw more than two peaks at two of the nine loci tested, indicative of a mixture. To bring up more alleles from the “minor profile” (the one with lower peak heights), Doyle repeated the analysis using more of the sample. That test revealed alleles at four more loci.

https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/3148408/people-v-luna/
Accessed 22 April 2020

On January 8, 1993 Juan Luna and James Degorski entered Brown’s Chicken, a restaurant, in Palatine, Illinois, USA.  They ordered the two owners and five employees into a cooler and a refrigerator room and shot them all in the head.  When the owners and employees did not return home, relatives called police. Police showed up at the restaurant and found the bodies.  A sum of about $1900 (now about $3400) was taken.

The crime went unsolved until a girlfriend of Degorski came forward and implicated Degorski and Luna. The reason that Luna was convicted of all seven murders was his DNA which amazingly was still among the chicken bones of some of the chicken he had eaten.

As we read above: “Cecilia Doyle, chief of the Biology-DNA section of the ISP laboratory, testified as an expert in the field of DNA analysis.” Doyle’s analysis of these two chicken bones established beyond a reasonable doubt that Luna had been on the scene of the crime and eaten some meat of those chicken bones.  His DNA was present. Luna confessed in 2002, nine years later.  He was finally convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment in 2007. Degorski was also convicted in 2009 and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Because of a new scientific technique of DNA analysis developed after the murders, Doyle was able to prove Luna had been at the scene of the crime.  Her testimony and evidence proved he had murdered these seven people. Her education: a Bachelor of Science in Biology from DePaul University in Chicago and a Masters of Science in Molecular Biology from Northeastern Illinois University gave her the tools to make this very highly skilled, expert judgment.

We trust expert such expert witnesses because they have special knowledge and skills to prove or establish things that we who do not have that knowledge or skills cannot prove. 

In my last note I introduced the idea of Richard Swinburne’s Principle of Credulity.  I would like to consider a second form of this principle.  Again I cite from David K. Clark’s book, To know and love God.

When someone tells me something that seems to him true, it probably is true, and I may take it as true, especially if he is an expert in that field of knowledge, unless either he or I know of some special disqualifying circumstances or evidence to show that what seems true is not actually true.

Swinburne as cited by David K. Clark. To know and love God. (Grand Rapids, MI: Crossway, 2003), 66.

In this form of his Principle of Credulity Swinburne introduces the idea of an expert testimony. It’s a bit broader than that, but that is one feature of it.  In fact he says that we may believe anyone who tells us something as being true, as long as we do not “know of some special disqualifying circumstances or evidence to show that what seems true is not actually true.”

In other words, if Joe says to me, “Phil, today is Tuesday.” I can believe him and I am likely to believe him; he’s a friend.  However, with us being quarantined due to Coronavirus, I wonder about his statement and happen to look up at my computer at the time and date bar and see, actually, it’s Wednesday.  He has lost track of his days. Unlike a prisoner in his cell making marks on the wall, Joe has not kept careful track.  Normally I trust Joe.  He’s a reasonable guy.  He’s known to be trustworthy.  But in these circumstances he has for obvious reasons lost track of his days.

So we may believe anyone, educated or uneducated, white or black, male or female, whomever as long as we know of no “special disqualifying circumstances or evidence to show that what seems true is not actually true.”  He or she doesn’t have to be an expert.  They could be anyone.  Anyone can tell us the truth.  Unfortunately, almost anyone can lie to us.  If we have some reason to suspect that someone is confused or lying, we must check their statements against evidence (in my case the date line on my computer).

The issue of an expert is harder, at least for most of us.  Most of us will not question a doctor’s diagnosis or prescription, unless we have some real reason, say that another doctor disagrees.

However, sometimes we can be stubborn and refuse to believe a trustworthy expert.  Some people think that anyone with a college education is untrustworthy.  Only people of the working class are trustworthy.  This may be due to not understanding what the experts are actually saying or it may be due to the fact that expert is opposed to some of our cherished beliefs.

This is a two edged sword.  We must judge whether an expert may speak authoritatively in a certain area or not. If the expert speaks within his or her field of expertise and we reject the expert’s testimony, then we would simply be fideists, believing what we want with no evidence.

Simply because someone is educated or uneducated doesn’t make them a credible or incredible source.  We must examine what they say and who they are.  This is what I would call the “Expert Form” of the Principle of Credulity.

A popular figure in the late 20th century and early 21st century was the astrophysicist, Dr. Stephen Hawking.  He was a living legend.  Stephen Hawking had a PhD in astrophysics.  He was an expert in that field.  He could speak credibly (not unerringly, but credibly) in his field.  We would be wise to believe his astrophysics. I’m sure I could not really judge his scientific works as I don’t have the math or science background to judge his works.

At the same time I doubt that Stephen Hawking knew anything about the Russian religious philosophy of the Silver Age, the topic on which I wrote my doctoral dissertation.  At least in 2004 I was an expert in that field.  I know who Sergei Bulgakov was and Vladimir V Solovyov and Pavel Florensky and the Brothers Trubetskoi, as well as Nicholas O Lossky on whom I wrote.

If Hawking were to argue with me about what Sergei Bulgakov said in his book the Lamb of God, I would be skeptical.  Since I didn’t write my dissertation on Bulgakov, I might need to check his statement, but I would know where to go and how to find it.

But suppose Hawking said something about fusion and black holes. I am familiar with these ideas, but I am not an expert. I mentioned before my friend, Dr. Robert, who is an immunologist.  Imagine if I said to Hawking, “My friend, Robert, would understand that.” If Hawking were incredulous and replied, “But he is an immunologist.  He only has an MD!” I’m sure Hawking would be surprised to know that my friend, Robert, also has a Masters in Nuclear Engineering and a PhD from MIT in plasma physics (besides his life long interest in astronomy). It would be a qualifying credential.  Robert can speak authoritatively about immunology and plasma physics.

Imagine again that I was discussing the South Pole with someone and I said that my friend, Dr. Mark, would know.  That person might reasonably say, “How would an MD who practices gastroenterology know anything about the South Pole?” Well, Mark was stationed as a Navy doctor for one stint at the Naval base on the South Pole.

So, naturally we tend to accept the word of someone in their field of expertise.  It makes sense. I can’t know about immunology.  I’m too old to go back to medical school.  I have to rely on someone who is trained. If someone cares to know about Plato’s dialogue The Timaeus or to study the first epistle of St John, I can help.

As another negative sort of example, when I was a Master’s student at the Catholic University of Leuven (Louvain) in Belgium I mentioned having lived in Yugoslavia during the Bosnian war (which was still going on) and having traveled in Macedonia and Bulgaria during the Communist period.  Some other American students thought that I was “blowing smoke” and trying to impress people.  However, when I sat down and started speaking Russian with a Russian from Ukraine, they stopped talking about my pride (but still didn’t like me as I was competition in their minds).

Yet they had every right to question my “expert testimony.” I sounded like just another American. I speak as an American with no noticeable accent.  They knew other braggarts.  They didn’t know my history.  I was unusual. (I still am.)

So back to Hawking… Because Stephen Hawking was a brilliant astrophysicist he was given a lot of space to make all sorts of pronouncements.  Other well known atheists have used their credentials in some field, philosophical or scientific, to bash Christian belief.  Some feel that for this reason we cannot trust a person who has advanced education.

In fact the answer is both easier and harder.  Hawking had every right to advance his theories about astrophysics.  He had a PhD in the subject.  However, others in the same field had every right to question or challenge his ideas.  I don’t. I must rely on someone else to deal with his astrophysical ideas.

I am reasonable to trust his cosmological, astrophysical ideas.  Cosmology is the study of the cosmos, the universe. As Hawking dealt with various astrophysical ideas about the universe his credentials gave him credibility.

 However, when Hawking expounded about the origins and beginning of the universe, he was no longer speaking in his field.  This is harder. He was an astrophysicist and he believed that he had reasons for his beliefs about the origins of the universe.  People tended to believe him for this reason.

But cosmology is not cosmogony.  Cosmogony is an attempt to explain how the universe came to be and why.  Cosmology may answer the how (the mechanism), but it cannot answer why (“Why is there anything rather than nothing?” Where did the stuff, the “matter,” of the universe come from).

When one passes from cosmology to cosmogony one moves from science to philosophy or religion.  Both philosophy and religion offer answers to these questions.

Hawking offered a naturalistic, materialistic explanation.  He argued that there was not point in asking when the universe began.

“Asking what came before the Big Bang is meaningless, according to the no-boundary proposal, because there is no notion of time available to refer to,” Hawking said in another lecture at the Pontifical Academy in 2016, a year and a half before his death. “It would be like asking what lies south of the South Pole.”

Natalie Wolchover, “Physicists Debate Hawking’s Idea That the Universe Had No Beginning” June 6, 2019. Quantamagazine https://www.quantamagazine.org/physicists-debate-hawkings-idea-that-the-universe-had-no-beginning-20190606/ Accessed 22 April 2020

Some believe that the universe just popped into being in a Big Bang.  We might agree that there may have been a Big Bang, but we may still ask: “Where did the ‘stuff’ or matter come from?”

Philosophers and religionists offer explanations about where the stuff came from and who the designer was, if there was one. Theists (philosophers and religionists who believe in a Creator God) argue for a God who created the matter and started the universe.  Atheists and naturalists argue that matter just was and is and that order is the result of some sort of evolution.

My point is that we must judge whether the friend or expert are correct.  We may believe their word, their testimony, unless or until we are challenged, until we learn of a disqualifying circumstance or evidence against their claims.

We are reasonable to trust university, medical school trained immunologists to tell us what to do in a pandemic.  We are reasonable to trust a stock broker about when and how to invest in the market.  We are foolish to trust a stock broker to give us wise advice about immunology, just as we would be unwise to trust an immunologist to say which stocks will rise.

We may believe anyone we want until we know of some circumstances or evidence which disqualify that person’s claim.  But to cling to believing someone’s statements, when circumstances say otherwise is foolish and blind belief.

The Principle of Credulity

She dipped her fingers in the water bowl and made the sign of the cross again, leaving a bead of the holy Water on the forehead of her mask. 'You're an ignorant, credulous fool,' she snapped at me. I did not pursue the argument. The different faiths always insulted each other thus. Many pagans accused the Christians of similar behaviour at their so called ‘love-feasts', and many country people believed that the Christians kidnapped, killed and ate children. 'Arthur's also a fool,' Morgan growled, 'for trusting Guinevere.’ She gave me an unfriendly look with her one eye.

Bernard Cornwell. Enemy of God: a novel of Arthur. (New York, NY: St Martin’s Griffin, 1996), 224

I have been teaching this idea of the Principle of Credulity to my theology students for almost a decade. I first encountered the idea in a book by David K. Clark, To know and love God.  Clark is  a professor of philosophy at Bethel Seminary in Minnesota, USA.

Clark borrowed this idea from Richard Swinburne, who was a well known British Christian philosopher.  The idea itself is rather simple, though it has huge implications.

Clark quotes Swinburne:
 
When something seems to someone to be true, it probably is true, and he may take it as true, unless he knows of some special disqualifying circumstances or evidence to show that what seems true is not actually true.

Richard Swinburne, The Existence of God (Oxford: Clarendon, 1979).

This can be put perhaps more simply by saying, “You may believe anything which seems true to you until someone challenges you.”

What Swinburne and Clark have in mind is that we all start thinking from “somewhere,” to use a Postmodern phrase. We all have our foundational beliefs.  We can’t do otherwise.  You have to think, and you will think, and you will think according to beliefs you think are true.

In other words you are entitled start where you are, to think as you do.  However, you may not continue to believe something that has been challenged.  To cite again Swinburne, “unless he knows of some special disqualifying circumstances or evidence to show that what seems true is not actually true.”

The point is that it is irrational to believe something which you know to be false. It is incredible (same root word as credulity - credo - I believe) to believe the moon is made of green cheese.  We have no problem with accepting that that sort of belief is incredible, not worthy of belief or trust.

The rub comes when someone challenges a belief which we hold most dear.  Notice Swinburne’s book is entitled The existence of God.  Swinburne wants to (and many believe he does) defend belief in God.

When a cherished belief is challenged we must give evidence for our belief.  If we do not or will not, we become guilty of fideism or blind belief.  If a person believes that some well beloved pastor is an honorable person, and then evidence comes out that that pastor has been involved in extramarital affairs, to refuse to believe credible (trustworthy, believable) reports (say a court conviction) is fideism.  It is blind belief, not based on evidence.

If someone were, for instance, to question the historicity of the Gospels, we must then produce evidence to show that it is trustworthy.  We could turn to articles on apologetics.com. For example, the article by Gary Habermas, “Why I Believe The New Testament Is Historically Reliable”
 http://apologetics.com/blog/apologeticscom/why-i-believe-the-new-testament-is-historically-reliable/ We could also turn to the Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics by Norman L. Geisler et alia.  We could turn to a brief, somewhat dated book The New Testament Documents: Are they reliable?” by F.F. Bruce, a New Testament scholar at the University of Manchester, UK.  Or we could turn to Craig Blomberg’s magisterial study, The historicity of the Gospels. 

We can introduce the “bibliographic test.” I briefly mention only two factors: the number of manuscripts and the distance between writing and the events.  We can say that the New Testament has more manuscripts (copies) than any other ancient book (say Cesar’s Gallic Wars) and has a closer time period between events and the age of the copies (probably in some cases less than 100 - 150 years). 

I cite a section of Geisler’s Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics:
 
     More Manuscripts. Catalogued Greek texts include eighty-eight papyri manuscripts, 274 uncial manuscripts, and 245 uncial lectionaries. Those early uncial manuscript witnesses are extremely valuable in establishing the original text of the New Testament. The other 2795 manuscripts and 1964 lectionaries are minuscule.

     This is an astounding number and variety. It is not uncommon for classics from antiquity to survive in only a handful of manuscript copies. According to F. F. Bruce , nine or ten good copies of Julius Caesar’s Gallic War survive, twenty copies of Livy’s Roman History, two copies of Tacitus’ Annals , and eight manuscripts of Thucydides’ History (Bruce, 16). The most documented ancient secular work is Homer’s Iliad, surviving in 643 manuscript copies. Counting Greek copies alone, the New Testament text is preserved in some 5686 partial and complete manuscript portions that were copied by hand from the second (possibly even the first) through the fifteenth centuries (see Geisler, chap. 26).

Norman L. Geisler. Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1995, 24.

The point here is to say that we can give positive evidence, bibliographic evidence, scientific evidence to show that the Gospel and New Testament are trustworthy documents, trustworthy eyewitness records.  We do not believe them because we want to or because they are something we have inherited.  We believe them because we have evidence to refute false claims leveled against them.

I think it is worth citing Geisler’s Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics again.  This time I cite the section which speaks of the gap between writing and the events.
     Earlier Manuscripts. One mark of a good manuscript is its age. Generally, the older the copy, the closer to the original composition and the fewer copyist errors. Most ancient books survive in manuscripts that were copied about 1000 years after they were composed. It is rare to have, as the Odyssey [of Homer] does, a copy made only 500 years after the original. Most of the New Testament is preserved in manuscripts less than two hundred years from the original (P45, P46, P47), some books of the New Testament dating from little over one hundred years after their composition (P66), and one fragment (P52) comes within a generation of the first century. The New Testament, by contrast, survives in complete books from a little over 100 years after the New Testament was completed. Fragments are available from only decades later. One fragment, the John Ryland papyri (P52), is dated 117–138. See the article NEW TESTAMENT, DATING OF .

Norman L. Geisler. Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1995, 24.
The reason that the gap between copies and originals is important is that some suppose that myths arose around the teacher Jesus after his death.  They speculate that his followers invested him with supernatural powers and even rising from the dead.  Some scholars have advanced the idea of the “demythologization” of the Gospels, for instance Rudolph Bultmann.

Must we as believers in the Gospels simply roll over and accept this thinking?  We believe the Gospels tell us the truth about Jesus and his resurrection.  Must we give up our faith in the face of this attack or must we simply believe in spite of this challenge to our faith?

If all we do is to hang on stubbornly to our belief despite this attack, we are fideists. We believe blindly, without evidence in an “incredible” set of ideas.

But this is not the only option.  We can produce evidence like that above to show that we have the original events recorded better than in some secular books of that period and our copies are more close to the time of these events.

Because the gap between the copies and the originals is so small, there was no time for legends to develop.  That normally takes hundreds of years, not 50 - 100 years.  Paul adjures his hearers saying, “After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep.” 1 Corinthians 15:6  Jesus appeared to more than 500 people “most of whom are still living,” If people didn’t trust Paul, they could ask these eyewitnesses.

The Apostle Peter speaks similarly before the Sanhedrin, the Jewish high council, “We are witnesses of these things, and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey him.” Acts 5:32  The Apostle John says, “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life.” 1 John 1:1

The Apostles urged their hearers to check out the facts.  They didn’t just imagine these things.  They can be attested to by people still alive who witnessed them.

So there was no time for a gap large enough to allow the development of a myth.

Let me return to the Principle of Credulity. I will cite it again:
 
When something seems to someone to be true, it probably is true, and he may take it as true, unless he knows of some special disqualifying circumstances or evidence to show that what seems true is not actually true.

Richard Swinburne, The Existence of God (Oxford: Clarendon, 1979). (Clark 66)

When should we believe something which seems to be true to us? Unless or until we are challenged and told that that belief is incredible, untrustworthy.  Then we have an option: either produce evidence for our belief or retreat to fideism, blind belief. The first is a wise and honorable route. The second is either born of sheer laziness, ignorance or fear.

Not everyone is a Christian apologist.  Not everyone can answer these questions. This is why we have people who study and work to be able to answer them.


We trust Christian scholars who answer these questions for us.  Just as I trust the doctor who says, “You have a flu virus. Take these antibiotics, drink plenty of fluids and rest.” I am not an MD.  I am a PhD.  If you want to know about medicine you must talk to either of my friends Dr. Mark or Dr. Robert.  Dr. Robert in fact is a researcher in immunology!

I would trust Dr. Robert’s word about any virus over mine. If you want a clear explanation (I hope) of the Credulity Principle, I can do that.  If you want proof about a virus, you should look to Dr. Robert.

I have moved now from one version of Swinburne’s Credulity Principle to another.  The second form has to do with the trustworthiness of a specialist or scholar.  I will deal with it in the next edition of this treatment of the Principle of Credulity.

Before I finish, though, I want to add one thought.  We sometimes say, “That’s incredible!” When I was younger and Nadia Comaneci got a 10 in the Olympics, that was “incredible!”

However, sometimes “incredible” has another connotation, another nuanced meaning, “stupid.” There are still people who believe the Earth is flat.  That seems “incredible,” that is stupid.  We all know that’s not true.

Christians don’t want to be stupid or incredible in that sense.  That Jesus rose from the dead is incredible, but it’s not stupid or unbelievable.  We can believe it because we have eyewitness accounts which are historically trustworthy.  We are not fideists.  We do not believe because we are gullible.  We believe because we have good evidence for what we believe.

If we are unwilling to entertain any attacks on our beliefs, we retreat into fideism, blind belief.  As one of my beloved professors, Dr. Gleason Archer, said, “If nothing counts against your faith, nothing can count for it.”  This may seem counterintuitive, but his point was that if you would not allow your beliefs to be challenged, then you would be a fideist, you would believe blindly.  When challenged we have an opportunity to rise to the occasion and learn enough facts to defend our faith or we can fall into blind belief.  The choice is ours.

More on CS Lewis and "Learning in wartime"

From Lewis’ sermon

War makes death real to us: and that would have been regarded as one of its blessings by most of the great Christians of the past. They thought it good for us to be always aware of our mortality. I am inclined to think they were right.

All the animal life in us, all schemes of happiness that centered in this world, were always doomed to a final frustration. In ordinary times only a wise man can realize it. Now the stupidest of us know. We see unmistakable the sort of universe in which we have all along been living, and must come to terms with it. If we had foolish un-Christian hopes about human culture, they are now shattered.

Phil’s thoughts

Earlier I defended, using illustrations from my life as a teacher and academic, the idea that students should go on learning and teachers should go on teaching in a crisis, like war or the COVID pandemic. If students don’t go on learning and teachers don’t go on teaching, knowledge and ability may be lost.  Though we have extensive databanks available to us now and devices to store all the knowledge, we have to have someone who knows where to find that knowledge and how to use it.

In college at Penn State I had an abortive year as a physics major.  It was abortive, because mainly, I am just not that good at math. I was really trying then. I don’t even bother now. One of the things which frustrated me, as I grappled with triple integrals to describe magnetic fields, was that once you had mastered these triple integrals, you discovered there were books of “math tables,” which would give you the answers (nearly, if you set up your integral correctly and plugged in the right numbers).  I struggled to do this all “by hand” without anything more complicated that an early Texas Instruments calculator, which did trigonometric functions (which was an improvement on the slide rule).  It seemed cruel to expect freshman to be able to do these integrals with a pencil and paper when upper class men used the “math tables.”  I passed the calculus classes with a mean score of 60, a C. Now there are programs which can do these calculations, even handheld calculators.

Earlier our students at Tyndale (and I decades earlier in seminary) have had to learn biblical Greek and Hebrew the “old fashioned way:” by memorizing vocabulary, declensions (in the case of Greek) and verb conjugations.  We had and they now have to be able to reproduce those endless lists of conjugations and declensions: present tense, imperfect tense, past tense, aorist tense, perfect tense, pluperfect tense...nominative case, genitive case, accusative case, ablative case, dative case, locative case, instrumental case...  Tyndale students often find it a real pain.  All struggle and some barely pass.  Yet there are Bible programs (like Olive Tree which I have and Accordance which they have) that have “point and click” functions: point your mouse over the word, click and the word is defined and the grammatical information is immediately visible.

So why did we study earlier in this painful way, learning calculus with a pencil and a pad of paper and a language with flash cards and memorization?  Because, someone needs to know how to set up the “math tables” to reach and answer.  Someone needs to correct the “point and click” function in the Bible program, if the answer is wrong.  Many times the answers are not so simple. It’s not simply a “perfect tense with a waw consecutive.”  Maybe the meaning shifts.

If all the books were burned, all computers fried, all databanks were corrupted and the electrical grid bombed, for civilization to go on, someone must learn and memorize.  Someone must know how to set up the math tables or how to work without the electronic devices.

During this time of the COVID crisis many of us who are far from “home” may feel like we must go home.  Some of our students were planning to go home to marry this summer.  But if they do and they cannot return, it might mean the end of their studies.  We ourselves had to make the difficult decision to remain in the Netherlands this summer fearing that if we left we might not be able to return in the late summer to continue our ministry of teaching at Tyndale.

We from western countries don’t often feel such existential angst or fear.  When a loved one is sent to military duty in Iraq, all of the sudden we are aware of armed conflicts.  There are still armed conflicts which continue in countries like Ukraine where “separatists” in eastern Ukraine continue a “shadow” war.  In Syria, while the world’s attention is diverted, war continues between Islamist extremists and the Syria government.  War goes on in Libiya.  Armed conflicts go on in Nigeria, Cameroon and Myanmar.

The COVID pandemic is frightful and frightening.  Many, many people have died and it is horrific.  Many, many brave people have stepped forward to fight it: retired medical personnel, medical staff working extra shifts and accepting dangerous assignments.  In the light of this: Shouldn’t all seminarians drop their studies and go to help?  What good are “encouraging” sermons in the midst of this crisis?

Lewis reminds us that the eternal and things of eternal significance, and that includes poetry and music, arts and literature, go on being eternally significant even when our focus becomes tragically terminal, awfully fatal.  

Lewis’ sermon was trenchant in his day.  Before WWI and WWII many optimists and some Christians (“Postmillennialists”) believed that heaven on earth could be realized.  Technology and medical science were making life easier and longer (especially for western colonial powers).  But technology and even medical science must be servants and not masters of humankind.  We don’t live for convenience or even for military superiority. We don’t live for good health in and of itself.  We don’t pursue medicine merely to live longer.

Lewis’ words are wisdom grown out of misery.  He had served in the trenches of WWI.  He knew the Spanish Flu epidemic, which ravaged Europe and the US.  He preached this sermon in 1939 during WWII. He knew the fantastic military machinery which was being developed and enhanced:  jets, long range bombers and eventually the atomic bombs.  By the end of WWII millions had died. In a period of four days in 1945 almost 500,000 would die from only two bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Regardless of what we think of these developments and these wars, one thing was clear: humans could be more cruel to other humans than beasts could be cruel to beasts (if that word applies to beasts).  Death, Lewis tells us, is not something to be staved off, but is a certainty.

I have cited above from this sermon, and earlier I put up a quote from Lewis’ novel, Out of the Silent Planet, which reflect Lewis’ thoughts on death.  We as moderns and postmoderns don’t like to talk of death.  Due to our medical advances we seem to think we can “cheat” death, somehow avoid it all together.  Lewis was a clear sighted thinker.  He knew death when he saw it.

War has not been fought on US soil since the Revolutionary War and the US Civil War in the mid 19th century.  The US Civil War was horrible and brutal, but it was only for a relatively brief period. War in Europe ended in 1945 and apart from the Yugoslav conflict, the so-called “Bosnian” War, in the early 1990s and the present conflict in Ukraine, there have been no wars in the memory of western European people under 70. Younger people in Europe haven’t known the horror of war except through their grandparents’ stories.  Americans have known body bags returning from Vietnam, Korea, Iraq and Afghanistan, but the US has avoided fighting wars on its own territory.  

Thus, US citizens rarely face “untimely” death, except for death due to disease, accidental deaths and natural disasters, for example hurricanes. So, the COVID pandemic is a shock to US citizens and to younger Europeans.

As we face COVID we often act as if it were an animate being. We try to make it an enemy we can attack and opposes.  We try to take measures to control it, to “destroy” it, but we are in the end only hiding from a “grim” reality: we shall all die.  Sooner or later, as Lewis say, we shall all die.

Death was more real to ancient and medieval people partly because death happened all around them and at home.  There were no hospitals.  Women died in childbirth. Men died in battle.  Accidents were often not “fixable.” Surgery was not yet a science and an art.  The Black Death ravaged millions over a period of hundreds of years.

What I write is bleak.  What Lewis wrote was bleak.  But his point and mine is that life is not endless.  We shall all die.  The issue, then, is: What will we do with life?

If you are a nurse or a doctor, do your job by all means! I honor you and your calling.  However, if you are “only” a calculus teacher, a literature teacher, a music teacher, or an elementary Hebrew instructor, live your life for God using your skills which he gave you.  Extend and preserve knowledge.  Pass on your knowledge and skills. More importantly pass on your wisdom.

We may not actually need smarter people.  However, we surely need wise people and we seem to lack them.  Politicians bear immense weight and immense responsibility.  They need not only good facts, they need the wisdom of how to deal with the facts, how to do good and not evil.

I am blessed to be in the “business,” the ministry, of teaching people for service in Christian ministry.  They need for example, in my opinion, though they might differ with me, things like basic philosophy (a hew and cry goes up!), Greek, Hebrew, and hermeneutics (the science of interpretation).  They need to know church history and systematic theology.  They also need to learn how to counsel and preach.

But all of these skills and all of their talent will one day end.  Justin Martyr’s ended.  Augustine’s ended.  John Calvin’s ended.  Hendrikus Berkhof’s ended. Ours will one day end.

However, we hope that the “deposit which has been entrusted to us” will go on being passed from hand to hand as long as humanity exists.  We trust that the skills we have taught and the feeble wisdom we have will help the next generation to guide one more generation and another until Christ returns.

To live with your mortality before your eyes is horrifying.  We personally have lived this way when living in a country at war.  We have seen it in the eyes of those who have fled as refugees from a war.  We have seen it in the eyes of friends and relatives who were dying.

But we have also seen peace and acceptance, even in the eyes of loved ones who were dying.  We have seen trust in a loving Savior who died for them.  They may have been afraid, but in the end they resigned themselves to God’s will and to an inevitable, if sooner than expected end.

We have life as a gift.  It is never, this side of heaven, an endless affair, nor are we promised an endless life here on earth.  Lewis notes that everyone’s death ends their career. 

I’m sure I had read Lewis’ words before I got to Leuven, Belgium, though I didn’t remember them per se.  However, when I was studying there at the University at the Institute of Philosophy I had a class in Personal Identity.  We, as students of philosophy, were invited to consider in fact just who we were.  I recall this professor, as a lovely man, who was a kind and gentle person but one who asked unsettling questions. If we are our memories, what are we when we are so demented that we cannot remember ourselves?  Our professor read us a couple poems and then told the story of a poet with dementia who loved to have his poetry read to him but had no recollection of having written it.  My professor later suffered a stroke after his retirement.  When I saw him a couple years ago, he said to me, “I’m sorry I don’t remember you.  I have had a stroke.” He was his same kind, gentle self, even if his “professional tool,” his brain had failed him.  His kindness and gentleness remained. I dare say, his character remained, even if his memory did not.  He had passed on his knowledge, but he also left a deep impression of kindness and gentleness, of humanity towards others.

Our Christian faith tells us that we are more than mere mortal beings.  We are not just biochemical machines with an epiphenomenon of consciousness.  We are both physical and spiritual beings.  Ultimately this body will die, whether by COVID 19 or “ordinary” cancer.  But this mortal body is not all that we are.  It is a “mortal coil,” but it is only part of who we are.

We are also spiritual beings.  We are a unity of body, spirit and soul. (I don’t speak technically here so don’t whomp me with the distinction between bipartite and tripartite beings.) We live here on earth, but we will live again!

One day we shall live a resurrected life in a new body on a new earth in a new heavens.  Just as Jesus rose from the dead, we too shall rise from the dead to be “clothed” with an immortal body.  We long on this earth for that immortality, but it will not come to us short of death or Christ’s return. In the meantime we must “muddle on.” We must struggle with Greek and Hebrew verb conjugations, math tables, and chemical formulae.  We owe it to the next generation of God’s children here on earth.

“Death, where is thy victory? Grave, where is thy sting?”

For Lewis’ original sermon see

https://bradleyggreen.com/attachments/Lewis.Learning%20in%20War-Time.pdf

Accessed 18 April 2020

“Lewis preached the sermon “Learning in War-Time” at St. Mary the Virgin Church, Oxford, on Sunday, October 22, 1939.”

https://www.cslewis.com/learning-in-war-time/ 

Accessed 18 April 2020

CS Lewis on "Learning in wartime"

From CS Lewis’ sermon “Learning in wartime.”

To be ignorant and simple now -- not to be able to meet the enemies on their own ground -- would be to throw down our weapons, and the betray our uneducated brethren who have, under God, no defense but us against the intellectual attacks of the heathen. Good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs to be answered. The cool intellect must work not only against cool intellect on the other side, but against the muddy heathen mysticisms which deny intellect altogether.

Phil’s thought

I have read a lot of nonsense about how educated and intellectual people are to be rejected and despised by “ordinary” Christians. I can’t understand what the alternative is. We should be ignorant and stupid? Not everyone can be educated or intellectual. In the sermon excerpted above Lewis compares a Christian intellectual’s duty to study (a student at Cambridge in his case) to that of a “charwoman,” a cleaning lady. Neither is more holy, but both are required. For a cleaning lady to shirk her duty would be just as bad as for a Christian intellectual to fail to study.

Now due to the COVIS virus I find myself asking the question Lewis’ students asked (in a slightly altered form): How can I study or teach during a pandemic? Lewis’ students felt pressure to go to war. Shouldn’t I give up my intellectual pursuits to help care for the sick?

I have asked this question in another form in recent years: “Should I study and teach when there are 71 million migrants, many war refugees who need my help?” Shouldn’t I dedicate my life to helping to save them physically and spiritually? My trip to the Moria Migrant Detention Centre on the Greek island of Lesvos made this all the more real.

I also faced this question as a teacher and student during the “Bosnian” war, the war in former Yugoslavia. Should we not open our dormitory in Vienna to refugees? I argued, “No,” since we hardly had enough room for the students as it was and our duty was to teach and to learn. When we lived in Novi Sad during the Bosnian war (academic years 1992-94) I was asked to help people escape by taking them in my car out of the country and to house refugees in the apartment I had rented for a classroom. I was asked to help carry sacks of flour and other goods to help refugees. I refused to transport people or house refugees (or “draft dodgers”) because I reasoned that if I was caught then I would be expelled from the country (Serbia, at that time called Former Yugoslavia) with no hope of return. I was on a temporary residence visa. I did help with food distribution some, but I focused on preparing lessons and teaching.

One day a fellow in our church asked me angrily why I wasn’t helping with carrying the heavy sacks. I asked him whether he had read Acts 6. (He was a new Christian.) He said he hadn’t. I said, “Come and talk to me when you have.” Afterwards he came and said, “I see now!”

I am educated and an intellectual. I strive to use my gifts: intellect, education and opportunity to help equip others for ministry. I think ignorance and stupidity (I don’t mean lack of intelligence, I mean being unwilling to learn) are not an answer to atheistic liberalism. As Lewis says we must answer unChristian pretension and nonsense.

Even if there is a pandemic going on now, one day it will end. Even if the Black Death, the Bubonic Plague, which raged across Europe intermittently for four hundred years, eventually ended. Luther and others went on teaching and studying. As my mother would say, “This too shall pass!” However, intense and frightening our temporal situation seems, WWI or WWII or the COVID pandemic: “This too shall pass!” We cannot ignore our duty whether study or nursing, whether pure science or medicine.

As Lewis notes elsewhere in the sermon, we shall all die, sooner or later (though I would add unless the Lord returns first). Whether we die relatively quickly from a bullet or a disease or die at an advanced age from a long, protracted illness, we shall all die.

We must choose to live and die for the glory of God, either sooner or later, but either way we must use those gifts God has given us and follow his calling in our lives. Whether we defend the faithful against the acid attacks of nonbelievers on the Resurrection of Christ or whether we fight an invisible virus, we must do all the the glory of God and the good of humankind.