"Morality and Christian Theism" by H.P. Owen was originally published in 1984 by Religious Studies. In this thoughtful and engaging work, Owen explores some reasons to think specifically Christian theism best explains morality.
Al-Ash’ari doesn’t reject the use of reason, but he does wish to reject the Mu’tazilite approach, but not to stop doing theology. Rather, he wished to use it for the defense of a more traditional doctrine. He uses reason conspicuously. But the relation between reason and revelation is approximately the opposite way round from how al-Jabbar describes it. Al-Ash’ari operates on the assumption that the Qur’an and the Traditions are to be interpreted literally wherever this is possible. He acknowledges that the Qur’an does also sometimes speak metaphorically, but he thinks the literal interpretation should be used when it isn’t impossible.
His second major criticism of the Mu’tazilites is that they hold the Qur’an to be created, whereas al-Ash’ari holds that it was recorded in time, but is itself eternal. The most important point for our purposes is that al-Ash’ari does not think we are justified in holding revelation to some standard of interpretation external to it. God gives guidance, he says, to the faithful, and not to the unfaithful (infidels). The Qur’an has a verse that teaches that the Prophet warns both the one who follows and the one who does not, the unfaithful one. Al-Ash’ari concludes from this that guidance and warning are different. The revelation warns both faithful and unfaithful, but only guides the faithful, and there are some warnings also that are given only to the faithful. The point is just that al-Ash’ari can’t allow what the Mu’tazilites assert, namely, that the guidance gives all human beings what they then recognize as means to what their reason already prescribed for them.
We can relate al-Ash’ari’s position about the sources of theological knowledge to the four traditional sources of Islamic law: the Qur’an, the Traditions, the consensus of the faithful, and analogical deduction from Scripture. Of these the first two are given by revelation. For al-Ash’ari, the third (consensus), as it applies to theological knowledge, is also given by special divine grace. But this is not because of a general truth about communities of religious believers, but because of a special dispensation given to Muslims. The fourth source, analogy, is likewise strictly restricted in its theological use to what is implied by the revealed texts themselves. Sometimes we can tell from a scriptural prescription what God’s reason is for prescribing in this way, and sometimes we can apply that reason to cases analogous to the original case. But the point is that al-Ash’ari, in accepting these four traditional sources, is not putting them under two mutually independent headings, revelation encompassing the first two and reason the second two. Rather, the second two depend for their authority on special revelation.
All three of our authors have an important place for both revelation and reason, but they describe the relation between the two sources of knowledge differently. The term ‘revelation’ is a convenience, but is potentially misleading. It would be better, but cumbersome, to talk about God’s deliverances through the Scriptures and the Traditions.
6.3.1 “‘Abd al-Jabbar”
Al-Jabbar makes a distinction between necessary knowledge and acquired knowledge. Necessary knowledge, unlike acquired knowledge, is known immediately and is known by all sane adult human beings. This includes knowledge from sense perceptions and rules of logic and knowledge of one’s own mental states. The most important for present purposes are certain moral truths and reliable reports. An adult with sound mind necessarily knows the evil of wrongdoing, the evil of being ungrateful to a benefactor, and the evil of lying if it is not intended to bring about benefit or to repel harm. One also knows the goodness of compassion and giving. These moral principles are the basis for rational obligations. Knowledge of reliable reports is also necessary for knowledge, and is required for religious obligation, which is a part of obligation not known by reason—like the obligation to pray and fast.
So al-Jabbar gives a kind of priority to reason over revelation. Neither revelation nor reason makes something right or wrong. But the right that revelation indicates, reason sees is instrumental towards a right that reason already knows. We know by necessary knowledge that we should choose our duty, and revelation tells us that prayer is conducive to this end. There is a difference between intrinsic wrongs and things that are wrong by relation to their consequences, such as the wrongs of the Law, which are only wrong inasmuch as they lead to the performance of a rational wrong or ceasing to perform certain duties. This does not mean, however, that revelation is redundant. One may not know, before being told, how to achieve the end in question, and one also may be insufficiently motivated.
The opponents of the Mu’tazilites tended to object that the moral principles that are supposed to be necessarily known, and so known to all sane adults, are in fact not known by all. There is, in fact, widespread disagreement. For example, the nomadic Bedouins of Arabia approve the practice of plunder. But this does not mean that there is disagreement here about the principle that injustice is prohibited; it’s just that Bedouins have a different conception of private property. But it’s hard to see that the objection from disagreement can be overcome in this way. To be sure, ‘injustice’ is named together with the wrong and so anyone who agrees that some act is unjust is going to agree that it is wrong; but the relevant disagreement is surely about what kinds of act are unjust.
So take lying. One might object that this is not something about which all sane adults agree, and indeed many of al-Jabbar’s own opponents disagreed with him, holding that it would be right to lie to save the life of a prophet. But the case of lying is anomalous here, and it may be that the operative conception of lying is already evaluatively laden. There is nothing implausible, Hare writes, about holding that there are very general principles that are very widely shared across human cultures, as long as one does not insist that they generate absolute prohibitions.
According to al-Jabbar, we need to distinguish rational worship and religious worship. Both kinds involve obligations that are assigned by God. This seems to imply that we can worship rationally by obedience to the principles that are necessarily known, even if we do not know about God, and even if the obedience is not consciously directed towards God. On this view, it is only in relation to religious worship that God must be “described with every and each action,” to use al-Maturidi’s terms.
A Twilight Musing
(See Num. 11:4-10; John 6:30-34, 48-51)
“We have lost our appetite; we never see anything but this manna!” (Num. 11:5b).
When we read in Numbers 11 the account of the Israelites complaining about the miraculous daily manna from heaven, we are amazed at their perversity in rejecting God’s miraculous daily supply of food for them. How could they be so quickly desensitized to this miracle of God’s provision? How could they fail to be thankful, even for the daily task of gathering the manna? But before we are too critical of the Israelites, let us examine how we regard Christ’s body, the symbolic Bread of Heaven, presented to us in the Lord’s Supper.
There are significant associations in John 6 between the manna in the wilderness and Jesus as the Bread of Life. He says that He is “the true bread of heaven,” and that His disciples must eat of His body and drink of His blood. Our partaking of the Lord’s Supper is a symbolic implementation of this truth, for in it we are repeatedly refreshed with spiritual food from heaven. Have we become blasé about this regular provision by God for our spiritual nourishment? Are we bored with renewing our thanks for the gifts of God through Christ? And, if so, are we not as profane and sacrilegious as the Israelites were?
We resent it when our children are not thankful for the food and other daily supplies that are so regular and abundant that, like spoiled brats, they take them for granted. It is to guard against that kind of insensitivity that we habitually offer thanks at meal times. One of the traditional names for the Lord’s Supper is Eucharist, meaning “thanksgiving.” Each time we partake of the Lord’s Supper, we acknowledge and celebrate the supreme gift of Jesus Christ. If in partaking of this feast we are not acutely aware of the faithfulness and sufficiency of God’s gifts, we, too, become petulant children, turning up our noses at the Bread of Heaven, God’s true, life-giving Manna.
When we partake of the bread, representing to us the body of Christ, we affirm the wondrous fact that our death-bound bodies have been transformed into receptacles of the Spirit of Life. We have already died, and the life that we now live is Christ in us. While we reside in this fallen world, His sinless human body becomes ours, too, and the Holy Spirit that dwells in us is our guarantee that we will also share in His resurrected body, after we have “shuffled off this mortal coil.”
We acknowledge our inability to feed ourselves spiritually every time we partake of the Lord’s Supper together, and we admit that we are all needy creatures, not worthy even to have the crumbs from God’s table. But that attitude puts us in the right frame of mind to realize how privileged we are to be invited to eat and drink with Jesus.
The fare God offers here goes beyond even the miraculous manna in the wilderness and water pouring out of a rock. The new person in Christ must be fed by the Holy Spirit, who will produce in him or her the proper characteristics of the healthy new life: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Gal. 5:22-23). If these qualities are manifested in our lives, we know that we have truly communed together at the Lord’s table.
Image: By Juan de Juanes - [2], Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=23065137
Al-Maturidi’s complex views on human freedom and divine command are best understood through three distinctions that he makes, distinctions between two kinds of power, two kinds of divine attitude, and two kinds of divine decree. Let’s start with the two kinds of power. Of these, the second kind of power is relatively straightforward. It’s the power not definable except as the power to perform the act at the time of the act. But acknowledging this kind of power is consistent with acknowledging a different kind of power, the first kind. What is this kind? It’s the human capacity to act in two opposite ways.
Al-Maturidi says God makes us responsible for things that are hard and easy, steep and level, and gives us principles by which to attain every virtue. He holds that everyone knows that he is the one who chooses to do what he is doing, even though the theological determinists deny this. The picture of the two powers we are given is that the first power precedes the act, and it is a power to choose, and the second power performs the act and is concurrent with the action. Both powers are the gift of God. The action that is taken by the second power must be the action that is chosen by the first power, since al-Maturidi says the action is performed “through” the choice made by the first power.
This brings us to the second distinction, between two kinds of divine attitude. It’s similar to the earlier distinction between decreeing and determining in the sense of producing something and decreeing and determining in the sense of commanding it. But whereas al-Ash’ari resists the implication that there exist things of which God disapproves (because he doesn’t want to attribute weakness to God), al-Maturidi gives us a way to take the distinction inside God’s will, without losing God’s global providential control. This solution distinguishes between satisfaction and will in general. But this isn’t intelligible until we have described the third distinction al-Maturidi makes, namely, the distinction between two kinds of divine decree.
The first decree is the definition with which things come into existence. In something like this sense God has said, “Surely we have created everything by a decree.” About the second kind of decree, al-Maturidi says, “Nor with regard to the second is it possible for human beings to determine their actions with respect to time and place, nor does their knowledge attain this. And so in this respect, too, it is not possible for it to be by them, such that their actions do not come to be from God.
What is the difference between these two kinds of decree, which we can refer to (somewhat imprecisely) as the “absolute decree” and the “detailed decree”? It’s noteworthy that the “absolute” decree is an evaluation that is all good for the object because the decree comes from divine wisdom and knowledge. The “detailed decree,” though, is of the coming-to-be of good and evil, beauty and ugliness, wisdom and foolishness. When al-Maturidi talks of the distinction between satisfaction and will, he has in mind (under “will”) that everything is good that is created by the absolute decree in its final connection with everything else in the history of the universe, and is under God’s working all things together for good. But when each type of action is put together with its results and circumstances, but still isolated from the final disposition of the whole universe, it can be good or evil. [Is the intimation that in ultimate context it ceases being, say, bad when it was bad before? That seems to confuse something being good versus something being used for good. An evil redeemed doesn’t mean it’s not evil.] God chooses to reward in accordance with the “detailed decree” only what satisfies Him and to punish only those “He does not like.” But God by His absolute decree and in His absolute power turns even the evil that we choose into good. [How can evil change into good?] One way to put this would be to use a distinction al-Maturidi does not: a murder can still be wrong even though God turns it to good. [Yes, and this is exactly the confusion: it’s not turned into something good, but it’s rather used to bring about some good.] Hare says if this is al-Maturidi’s picture, he has a way to repair the fissure in the providential circle that would otherwise result. It will still be the case that we can attribute the whole final circle to God’s good care.
Image: "Islam" E. Musiak. CC License.
A Twilight Musing
We have a politician on the national scene who consistently speaks in superlatives, a practice which leads to some skepticism about when the superlative is really applicable to the thing he’s talking about—sort of the “boy who cried ‘Wolf!’ principle. We all have some temptation to exaggerate in order to enhance people’s perception of our talents and accomplishments, but we always run the risk of being caught out by doing so. The only being who can legitimately speak in, or be spoken of, in superlatives is God, and that occurs frequently in Scripture. Take Eph. 1:17-22 as an example, in which Paul prays for the Ephesians,
that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come.
Note that the greatness of God’s power toward believers is “immeasurable”; that Christ has been seated “far above all rule and authority” and “above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come,” that is, for all eternity, without end.
A little later in the epistle, Paul prays again that the disciples in Ephesus will be “rooted and grounded in love, [and] may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God” (Eph. 3:17b-19). Paul is not one to speak in moderate terms when he refers to what God has done and is doing for those in Christ; he wants all of his readers to “comprehend . . . the breadth, and length and height and depth” of “the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge.” But that understanding is not to be achieved by human effort, but by the superlative “power that is at work in us,” which is able “to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think.” The fountainhead of such an immeasurable outpouring of God’s Spirit is the atoning death of Jesus, an unfathomably extravagant gift of the Father, an unbelievably radical act of obedience by the Son. As Paul says in Romans 8, “If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” (8:31b-32).
In the Apostle’s description of his own response to such extravagant love we see the challenge for all of us to be similarly committed, without restraint or reservation: “Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ” (Phil. 3:8). In another place he describes being fully possessed by the Spirit of Christ, keeping nothing of his former self, so that “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal. 2:20). Jesus Himself expected an extravagant commitment from those who proposed to follow Him, calling His inner twelve to leave their occupations to become fishers of men, bidding a rich man to sell all he had and give to the poor, and challenging people to put the kingdom of God ahead of all other earthly ties.
I will conclude with a poem that depicts a contrast between moderate, conventional responses to Christ and a radical, all-giving act of love. In the scriptural account on which the poem is based, Jesus draws a symbolic parallel between her action and Jesus’ own pouring out of Himself on the cross: “She has done a beautiful thing to me . . . . She has done what she could; she has anointed my body beforehand for burial” (Mark 14:6, 8). We should remember her when we’re tempted to be merely moderate Christians.
The Broken Jar
(Mark 14:3-9)
The ointment with abandon
Runs down His cheek,
Sweetly joining tears of love
Set flowing by her extravagance.
Beauty and prescience
Are mingled there,
While spare and cautious faces
Grimace at the waste.
They advocate the shorter way—
Slipping pennies to the poor,
And making sure the books are kept.
But Jesus wept
That one should share His sacrifice,
And break the jar to pour out all.
--Elton D. Higgs
(Jan 9, 1977)
A Twilight Musing
It is best to learn early that we are not loved by other human beings solely because of what we are. At best, we may be loved for what people perceive us to be or want us to be, but most often we are loved because of the lover’s needs, not our own. Only God loves because of who He is, and only God can be loved because of who He is. Only God is capable of loving because of what we need, rather than because of what He needs. These facts should not make us cynical about human love, but they should make us realistic about the limitations of it.
The Apostle John gives us the proper orientation to love in I John 4, making clear that true, unselfish love is possible only because God went first in loving, providing the foundation and pattern of love between human beings. “In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another” (1 John 4:10-12). One could say, “Because God loved us, we also are able to love one another.” We can take the risk of loving another, trusting that doing so has value, even if it results in disappointment and betrayal. That’s exactly the risk that God took when He loved fallen humankind. And because “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit” (Rom. 5:5), we can take that risk, too.
The danger of loving as humans is that we so easily embrace one of the false loves that commend themselves: Raw sexual passion cloaked as a romantic, transcendent attachment that justifies pushing aside all other obligations. Possessive love that smothers rather than nourishes the other. All-absorbing love for an ideal, one’s country, or wealth. These idolatrous “loves” keep us from exercising the true love that God has poured out into our hearts so that it can spill over into others’ lives, enriching both them and us—love that breaks down barriers and compels us, in humility and gratitude, to love the God who “first loved us” (I John 4:19). Only thereby can we be delivered from the bondage of idolatrous love and the fear of rejected love.
Image: "Love" by Mikhail Chekmezov. CC License.
This past year I taught 9th grade Ancient Literature for the second time. My first year teaching this curriculum I spent too much time in Homer, and did not make it to tragedy; this year, my goal was to pace the course correctly and work through the most significant plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. Along the journey, I discovered an unexpected blessing of teaching Greek tragedy: no other literature I have taught highlights quite so well the reality, the unavoidability, and the consequences of sin. I spent seven weeks with sixty 9th graders discussing questions of justice, inherited guilt, atonement, reconciliation, and grief. As a Christian educator in a secular school, I feel a burden to urge my students to consider topics I believe will prepare them for the gospel, and teaching Sophocles led to just such a discovery.
In setting the context for Oedipus Rex, I explained the play’s basic assumption that the plague in the city of Thebes resulted from a violation of the universe's moral law; the action of the play then, is a mystery solving the crime and rooting out the perpetrator. When the story unfolded and Oedipus’ guilt became increasingly plausible, I learned one of my students was a fervent relativist. He asserted adamantly that every person has a value system and that no one value system is preferable to another. People are good or bad based on how well they achieve their chosen values. This student left me scratching my head; how could I steer him towards truth without coming right out and telling him he is wrong? How do I guide him dialogically to discover that his thinking is insufficient? Fortunately, Sophocles himself resolved my dilemma.
That night, the students read a section of Oedipus Rex which made the incestuous relationship between Oedipus and Iocaste unmistakable; my student came in the next afternoon with a new declaration: “Mr. Herring, that’s wrong!” “Whether it fits his value system or not?” I responded. “Yes - that, that right there, is wrong.” Leave it to the Greeks—their licentiousness notwithstanding—to enshrine moral rock bottom in their literature. The battle for truth is in no way won; I suspect this student and I will go back and forth on the nature of truth for the next three years. But his declaration of “wrongness” struck me: Sophocles reached for a universal category in his drama, and in so doing he communicates down through the ages to our own “secular age.”
There is a sense in which it is harder to teach virtue than it used to be; teachers of years past could frame their moral instruction capitalizing on a common biblical literacy. Today, the idea of “loving your neighbor” because “God first loved you” simply does not compute without lengthy preparation. If we have lost the common cultural framework of biblical literacy, however, we are not left to our own devices to begin re-establishing the categories of sin and guilt. These are universal human experiences, and they underpin the best literature.
Sophocles can teach us moral fundamentals; sleeping with your mother and producing children offends the universe, human sensibility, and civic law. In Antigone, Sophocles has the title character appeal to the “unwritten laws of God” to justify her actions. In this line lies the glory of human literature as a moral teacher. On the other hand, therein also lies its insufficiency. Poets can discern sin, just as Paul calls the law the teacher of sin. Incest, pride, atheism, child murder: the tragedians illustrate the wrongness of these things. And yet, they can point to nothing more certain than the “unwritten laws of God” to prove the wrongness of these actions. These tragedies pull on a common human awareness of wrong actions, but fail to answer the desire for something clear, certain, and definitive.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the divine wrote down the rules? And then clarified them for us? This of course is exactly what we have in the Bible. We have the clarity of the Ten Commandments and the extensive development of practical outworkings all grounded in the nature of a loving God who created all things and knows our best interests. Suddenly, we have a sense of why hubris is dangerous: because God made us humans for a certain place, and the man of pride reaches for more than God intended. In the overreach lies the dangerous fall. Incest, too, offends the created order, wherein God intended human beings to form new covenant communities to diversify across the earth so that new facets of his image are revealed across creation. Scripture also shows us an alternative for guilt. We run not away from the angry Greek gods of Sophocles but to the loving God who through bloodshed atones for our wrongdoing. The Bible looks to the same universal problems and longings Greek tragedy addresses, but with hope.
After seven weeks in the wonderful poetry of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripedes, I reached three conclusions. First, tragedy operates in a pre-evangelistic manner. The stories are simple, but so well-crafted that the reader becomes imminently mindful that he may have committed some great evil unawares just like Oedipus. Second, tragedy highlights a missing certainty in 21st century post-postmodernity. Reading Oedipus Rex worked to “blow the roof off” of my student’s assumptions that morality is completely relative, beginning a further conversation about the existence of moral truth. Third, tragedy is like a cancer diagnosis without chemotherapy; it provides no hope. Without the gospel, without the real word from a real God, we are left with Oedipus in despair over what our understanding reveals. Unless God is real and the Bible is true, we stand with Nietzsche gazing into the abyss of existence with no authentic response but despair.
Pascal famously wrote of a “God-shaped void” in every human heart; Greek tragedy can illuminate this void, but does nothing to fill it. In seeking some sort of atonement, Oedipus blinds himself, Iocaste commits suicide, and (in a later play) Antigone ends the evil of her existence by hanging herself. Tragedy looks at the human experience, sees the reality of sin, and concludes that nothing but despair remains. Where the tragedians despair, the gospel proclaims hope. Christ himself enters our tragedy and in the greatest eucatastrophe in human history reverses the tragic into the salvific.
Image: Bénigne Gagneraux, The Blind Oedipus Commending his Children to the Gods, Public Domain
Image credit: Jeremy Daniel
We had been told to wait in the lobby of the second floor for Max McLean to arrive, which he did about fifteen minutes later. After one performance and before another, with a Q&A sandwiched in between, I marveled in advance at his generosity of time. We didn’t want to waste his energies, so we dove right in after quick introductions. He’d freshly turned 64 a week before, as it happens, which happened to be the age Lewis was when he died, but McLean exudes vitality and shows every appearance of being able to keep going like this for quite a while.
To prepare to interview him, we’d read all the interviews he’d done we could get our hands on, and in so doing we discovered that, from a young age, he’d suffered from a fear of public speaking, a severe form of social anxiety, sociophobia. As a certified introvert I wanted to ask about this because, seeing him on the stage performing, nobody would ever imagine this. He had actually turned to theatre originally in college to overcome his fears; we wanted to know if the fears were gone or if he’d simply learned to manage them.
“I think that if I’m not prepared the anxiety will come back. The fear makes you really prepare. I find that there’s an enormous fear of failure. I don’t think I’ve gotten over that.” Asked whether he considered himself an introvert or extrovert, he said he is definitely an introvert, getting his energy from reading and his quiet time. “Absolutely,” he added for emphasis.
After college McLean studied acting in London, always having been impressed by British actors and their use of language. Interesting to note, too, are the various English thinkers and writers who have left an impression on McLean—from Shakespeare to Shaw, Eliot to Chesterton, Spurgeon to Lewis. He will be returning to England this summer for Oxbridge, a triennial Lewis conference held at Oxford and Cambridge Universities, and doing some of this performance there.
Prior to McLean’s conversion to Christian faith, he admitted that he’d tried to read the Bible but it made no connection; he couldn’t find a way of getting into it. “It was just a flat book. It could have been an engineering book, but it wasn’t a book that captured my imagination. Once Jesus became alive to me, I read the Bible differently. I read John’s Gospel; I thought Jesus was going to come out of the pages. He was a story, a human being that was a hero and an overwhelming one. So my emotions were engaged.”
So why are theatre and story so powerfully effective at capturing the imagination of people, and why is that important? McLean replied, “Well, that’s the critical thing, because the imagination serves up the raw material of what we think about. Romans 1 tells us we all have the knowledge of God. There’s that thing about how we all have eternity in our hearts. And these things are intact—like I mentioned in the Q&A that people want to talk about these things but they don’t know how to talk about them—so I think that the theatre captures people’s imagination and stirs the imagination—which then asks, could this be true? And then a person is more willing to invest intellectual capital. You know, you’re not going to invest intellectual capital unless your imagination is engaged, unless you want to know more. So I think theatre is an extraordinary tool for that.”
In pursuing this goal, by what intentional steps does the FPA strive to engage a diverse audience? “People make their own choices about their entertainment options. So essentially we don’t do it in a church. We do it in a theater. We advertise in the New York Times, we advertise in the subway. We advertise at NPR. I think the main thing is this: our best audience is somebody . . . who’s able to use relational capital to say, ‘Okay, come with me to see this play, because you’re not going to be embarrassed. It’s going to be a safe space, and you’re going to enjoy it.’ And if they don’t want to engage, no harm done. You know, you go out to dinner, and when they have questions, that’s great, and when they don’t have questions, that’s great too.”
McLean thinks the theatre can do great good, but only if it’s done well. We’d been struck by the plethora of rave reviews his work had consistently garnered, by reviewers both sacred and secular. Accolades and awards are commonplace—from the DC Metro Arts to the Washington Post, the Chicago Critic and Splash, the Indianapolis Monthly to World Magazine to Stagebuddy and The Weekly Standard. Adjectives among reviewers describing his work abound like “fascinating,” “smart,” “brilliant,” “masterful,” “winsome,” “delightful,” “captivating,” “satisfying,” and “moving.” We asked him to talk about the importance of striving for excellence in his work.
“Doing it in New York . . . New York is kind of hyper in that way. To do theatre in New York is such a challenge, and if you make it known that it comes from a Christian worldview the bar just gets really much, much higher. And then to consider doing it in such a way as to engage a diverse audience in this highly polarized world that we’re in right now, it’s almost impossible. So you depend on these kind of things: the writing, the acting, the stagecraft . . . you don’t want it to be turned off at that level or you won’t get a fair hearing. And a fair hearing might be ‘I’ve heard it, I listened to it, I think it’s rubbish, but it was really well executed.’ As opposed to what mostly happens: the execution is terrible, and nobody even bothers . . . or the message is so trite that it’s just immediately dismissed. So what we do, in order to accomplish our mission, we spend a lot of time thinking about what material has the best possibility to reach a diverse audience, then we have to execute it to the highest levels that our budgets will allow. Which means that we hire all our designers. They’re professionals. Just like you go to the best doctor, the best dentist, we hire the best sound designer, the best set designer . . . because you don’t want it to be dismissed at the execution level. You want the message to be heard, and you don’t want anybody to say, ‘Oh, I’m not going to listen to the message because the messenger just doesn’t care.’”
We thought it particularly interesting that one of the most recurring descriptions we’d read of his work was “funny,” and especially all the references to self-deprecating humor. Why, we asked, does this seem to function so well as an ice breaker and bridge builder with his audience?
“Well, humor is a reaction. It doesn’t lie. I mean, there are things you can do to create it, depending on your sense of humor. So much of modern comedic humor is based out of anger, and putting somebody down. Lewis’s humor is based on wit, and surprise, and also his own making fun of himself. He didn’t take himself that seriously. He did, but he tried to act like he didn’t. So I think that humor does tear down barriers, that if you can get to it, that if you’re good enough to find the humor, theatre is built on it. . . . I do think it’s a very high priority. Chesterton thought humor was the bloom of his argument.”
Having seen McLean at work, I must say: if anybody can demonstrate that life is a comedy and not a tragedy, McLean’s channeling Lewis can. Still, he admits to mixed results among certain atheist reviewers. Plenty of “generous atheists” have accorded his work accolades because they enjoy a good time. Still, particularly among those who seem to think they have a stake in the game, there’s resistance. “A real true blue atheist is one for whom the possibility of the supernatural world breaking into the material world is just considered impossible. So any other possibility is more probable than the supernatural. That’s really hard core.”
When up against that level of settled conviction that theism isn’t so much as possibly true, perhaps McLean’s work is exactly what’s needed to chip away at the wall. Rather than just more discursive argument that only heightens defense, something that’s engaging, entertaining, and aesthetically pleasing might be what’s needed to break down the barriers. McLean agrees, adding: “People have these moments of joy, moments where the supernatural breaks in. Because there are two spheres. There’s the sphere of love, which isn’t just biochemistry.”
Using performance art to wake people up, stir curiosity, and generate conversation is what McLean and the FPA are all about. This summer this show will hit the road; readers are encouraged to find out if it’s showing near you; and if so, sell all you have and see it! It’s a world-class production, and it’s eminently worth it, irrespective of your worldview. And this fall in New York a new production will begin, again based on Lewis: “Shadowlands.” I think this may necessitate another death-defying trip to the City.
McLean has written, “I’m keenly aware that, despite the best of intentions, as soon as the word ‘Christian’ appears within an artistic context, red flags go up. That, obviously, creates a challenge.” He continues:
During our first season of four plays in New York City, several reviewers expressed misgivings. Realizing that the work was from a Christian perspective, one critic wrote “my heart sank.” Another made the understatement that “presenting what is unequivocally come-to-Jesus fare to a general audience is no easy thing.”
In both cases, it was the play itself that turned them around. The first declared, “I expected a preachy bore, not the deliciously witty, theatrical treat that still resonates and amuses the day after.” He went on, “I expect that, like the first, [the next production] will be entertaining, very well staged, canny, and imbued with serious Christian thought and an earnest invitation to introspection.”
The second reviewer began by clarifying his background: “I’m Jewish by birth, liberal by conviction, and an atheist by observation and introspection.” He went on to say “how much I admire the approach of Fellowship for Performing Arts. . . . They do their work through a careful combination of good story-telling—craft comes first—and avoiding overt preachiness, allowing any message implicit in the material to take care of itself.”
Such feedback is reassuring. Art hints at the deeper structures of reality. FPA desires to create theatre that contributes to a better understanding of it. To do that requires honest, clear-eyed storytelling that entertains and engages its audiences. If a work doesn’t do that, regardless of intent, it really doesn’t matter what else it does.
It’s inspiring to see a faithful worker in this field, laboring in the hardest of venues, speaking truth and spreading light. He and the FPA deserve our admiration, support, and prayers. He’s someone who knows, like Orson Welles knew, the power of story and the importance of the imagination to wake people up, evaluate their assumptions, and generate conversations worth having. For McLean, though, the message to look up is not one of fear, but of soaring hope.
In that connection, one might wonder what C. S. Lewis was doing in jolly England when Welles did his radio performance. I don’t know. But I do know that, just hours before, Mars came up in some of his correspondence. Evelyn Underhill, famous for her works on mysticism and a convert to Anglicanism in 1921, had written a letter to Lewis that arrived on October 26th of 1938. He replied to her on October 29th, the day before Welles’ American broadcast. Here is what Underhill had written to Lewis:
May I thank you for the very great pleasure which your remarkable book Out of the Silent Planet has given me? It is so seldom that one comes across a writer of sufficient imaginative power to give one a new slant on reality: & this is just what you seem to me to have achieved. And what is more, you have not done it in a solemn & oppressive way but with a delightful combination of beauty, humour & deep seriousness. I enjoyed every bit of it, in spite of starting with a decided prejudice against “voyages to Mars.” I wish you had felt able to report the conversation in which Ransom explained the Christian mysteries to the eldil, but I suppose that would be too much to ask. We should be content with the fact that you have turned “empty space” into heaven!
In chapter 5 of Out of the Silent Planet, Ransom is in the spaceship on the way to Mars: “He had read of ‘Space’: at the back of his thinking for years had lurked the dismal fancy of the black, cold vacuity, the utter deadness, which was supposed to separate the worlds . . . now . . . the very name ‘Space’ seemed a blasphemous libel for the empyrean ocean of radiance in which they swam . . . it was the womb of worlds, whose blazing and innumerable offspring looked down nightly even from the earth with so many eyes—and here, with how many more! No: Space was the wrong name. Older thinkers had been wiser when they named it simply the heavens.”
Lewis’s reply to Underhill, written on October 29th, after expressing his alarm and delight at hearing from such a notable writer as she, went like this: “I am glad you mentioned the substitution of heaven for space as that is my favourite idea in the book. Unhappily I have since learned that it is also the idea which most betrays my scientific ignorance: I have since learned that the rays in interplanetary space, so far from being beneficial, would be mortal to us. However, that, no doubt, is true of Heaven in other senses as well!”
True to form for a guy who recognized that a convert must gravely count the cost.
A Twilight Musing
Then I consider the difficulty of mending broken human relationships, I’m reminded of the nursery rhyme about how “all the king’s horses and all the king’s men/ Couldn’t put Humpty together again.” Any professional counselor is able to relate cases of marital or other interpersonal conflicts where the alienation of the parties from each other is so deep as to seem irreparable. In such cases, the counselor will try to help each party to understand how the matter appears to the other person or persons, since the conflict developed in the first place and deepened because each side assumed that its way of seeing things is the norm. Therefore, each one interprets every action and argument of the other to be either dishonest or perverse. If the two are to come together again (that is, be reconciled), one or both of them must take the risk of reaching out toward the other.
Matt. 5:23-25 lays out the importance of reconciliation among humans who are spiritual siblings: “So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift.” These words are addressed to people who purport to be followers of Jesus and therefore are expected to respond to His words as a spiritual command. In that light, it is significant that the person who knows he is alienated from his brother has an obligation that goes beyond whether the “something against you” is valid or not. Even if (in the honest opinion of the one being accused) the brother who has taken offense is wrong, it is so important to take steps toward reconciliation that one is not even to participate in a worship service until every effort is made to bring about reconciliation. This is a step that goes beyond the common sense of trying to settle a dispute out of court, rather than run the risk of losing a lawsuit. What Jesus commands in this case is in the same spirit of not insisting on one’s own right that is commonly referred to as “going the extra mile” (see Matt. 5:28-32).
There is no way in human terms to understand the basis of Jesus’ teaching about selflessness in the Sermon on the Mount without reference to a much larger and more significant reconciliation that has been brought about by God’s initiative. It is only as a reflection of that move of God toward us that we can effectively carry out reconciliation between humans.
But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation. (Rom. 5:8-11)
Paul uses this truth as a rationale for how we as believers are to act:
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. (2 Cor. 5:17-19)
John pointed out that we love (indeed, are even able to love) only because God has first loved us (I Jn. 4:7-12), even to the extent of sacrificing His Son when we didn’t deserve it. In the same way, we also seek reconciliation with others because God has first gone more than “the extra mile” to be reconciled with us, even while we were fallen creatures. Another aspect of basing our response to others on what God has done for us is demonstrated in the parable of the ungrateful servant who, though forgiven an unpayable debt by his master, refused to forgive a much smaller debt owed by a fellow servant (Matt. 18:21-25). Jesus pronounces God’s judgment on the unforgiving servant, and He states this condemnation even more bluntly in a comment attached to His giving of the Lord’s Prayer (Matt 6:14-15): “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”
Loving our siblings in Christ, even beyond what is reasonable, forgiving them beyond what they deserve, and seeking them out for reconciliation beyond what seems justified are God-enabled reflections of His unlimited desire to be in fellowship with us. These principles are especially difficult to apply in a culture and a society which places a very high value on standing up for our rights, but if we are to have the privileges of fellowship with God, the price is a willingness to give up our “rights,” if necessary, in order to be reconciled with our brothers and sisters in Christ.
Note: A word of caution is in order about applying the normal principles of reconciliation outlined above. A desire for reconciliation should never become a means of enabling an abusive person to continue his or her behavior. Nor should an abusive person be allowed to use emotional blackmail to pressure a tender-hearted reconciler to submit to abuse. Being a willing victim of physical or emotional abuse is never an acceptable price to be paid for some kind of surface reconciliation.
Image credit: Jeremy Daniel
Like others who have been privileged to see what next transpired, I was thrilled and transported. It was as if C. S. Lewis himself walked onto the stage. The makeup was exquisite, and the resemblance to Lewis uncanny. Even the voice was near perfect—I remember having listened to one of the few extant recordings of Lewis a year ago. McLean intentionally didn’t aim at enunciating quite so thick an accent as Lewis actually had, explaining why after the play in a Q&A session. For an American audience, in particular, this was a smart decision to avoid it becoming a distraction. McLean’s classical training in voice paid its dividends.
Most people are likely familiar with what happens when watching an inferior performance, show, or movie; it’s hard not to hold it at arm’s length because there’s something mildly insulting and off-putting about the shoddy craftsmanship. In patent contrast, we also know what it’s like when we watch a particularly excellent performance: we’re drawn in, we lose ourselves in the story, we become thoroughly engaged. This was my experience as I sat and watched FPA’s production. A virtuoso performance, it was by turns instructive and convicting, insightful and hilarious, poignant and memorable.
The crisp monologues by the pipe-wielding Lewis recounted the tale of his conversion, chronicling how, step by methodical step, he traversed a path from skepticism to belief. Included in the account were the seminal figures of his life: his father, his brother, his teacher the “Great Knock,” and literary influences from Yeats to Chesterton to George MacDonald, whose Phantastes “baptized” Lewis’s imagination prior to his conversion.
Lewis’s aversion to Christianity was hard for him to square with the fact that so many of his favorite writers, whose writing tasted most real, were Christians. His hard-thinking friend Owen Barfield’s conversion to Christianity upset Lewis, yet Lewis found Barfield’s logic unassailable. Too many aspects of life, to be taken seriously—from consciousness to morality to reason itself—require rock bottom reality to be intelligent. Coghill helped Lewis see the virtues as relevant to understanding reality; Tolkien enabled him to see that Christianity is the True Myth; and gradually Lewis became open to the Absolute, then to Spirit, then to God, then to the Incarnation, each incremental step ineluctably inching toward greater and greater concreteness. Acutely mindful that it took God’s initiative to draw him, Lewis finally relented to the Hound of Heaven, admitting defeat, allowing himself to be vanquished by love, and not the least bit happy about it.
In contrast with any theology of “cheap grace,” or an accommodating Christianity that readily capitulates to swirling cultural whims, blithely smearing the name “Christian” on views conditioned by secularity rather than scripture, Lewis seemed intuitively to grasp from the start that real Christianity would be costly, that its implications were radical, that its demands were all-encompassing. Little wonder he counted the cost, and, after finally relenting—first to theism, then to Christianity—he was, by his own admission, the most reluctant and dejected convert in all of England. Far more quickly than most, he was able to apprehend the paradox of Christianity: to find life we must lose it, to live we must die, and that ultimately we can’t hold anything back.[su_pullquote align="right"]Lewis seemed intuitively to grasp from the start that real Christianity would be costly, that its implications were radical, that its demands were all-encompassing.[/su_pullquote]
The play was simply spectacular, and we loved it. Most of the audience stayed for the Q&A, and about ten or fifteen minutes after the play was done, McLean re-emerged, this time as himself rather than Lewis. It was a remarkable metamorphosis! Donning salmon slacks and a coal shirt, his hour as Lewis was clearly over, and now it was time to hear from the actor and writer himself. He joked about his pants, exuded confidence, showed relaxed body language, sat in the chair, and patiently fielded questions from the audience. His answers were perspicacious and trenchant, revealing him to be well read and often quite eloquent and erudite.
Asked about obstacles doing a play like this in New York, he said that theatre is a great venue to have these sorts of conversations. He’s convinced that people want to have such dialogues, but are often unsure how to do it. He spoke of his admiration for Lewis, despite admitting that some of Lewis’s writings were an acquired taste, demanding effort to apprehend them well. He had largely relied on Lewis’s own words for this play, but had to work hard to thin out some of Lewis’s diction and elaborate explications to make the ideas more widely accessible and understandable.
The result, to my thinking, was a veritable “greatest hits” woven together masterfully. I had enjoyed the play immensely, and the Q&A only enhanced my appreciation for McLean, and in a few moments Marybeth and I would get the chance to speak with him personally.
King Arthur’s Queen Guinevere baffles him. Like Arthur every other man is perplexed too. We don’t know what makes her tick or what she wants. In the Broadway play ‘Camelot’ King Arthur muses to himself. He cannot figure Guinevere out. I so identify with him. King Arthur remembers Merlin the Magician teaching him about the animals. Merlin turned him into a beaver to teach him about beavers. Arthur says, ‘I should have had the whirl to change into a girl to learn the way the creatures think’. ‘How to handle a woman?’ he wonders. ‘Ah, yes’ he remembers. Merlin said, ‘The way to handle a woman is to love her, love her, merely love her…’
The prolific crime and mystery novelist Ruth Rendell knew what woman want. The hero in her novels is Chief Inspector Reginald Wexford. Chief Inspector Reginald Wexford exemplifies what woman want in man. She used to get tons of female fans telling her they wanted to marry Chief Inspector Wexford. Ruth knows the reason: Chief Inspector Wexford answers what woman want (1) he makes them laugh (2) he ‘likes women very much and always has time for them’. (W Post, Obituaries, May 3, 2015)
Jesus fulfills a woman’s deep want and need more than any man. Why have so many women over history followed Him? He did what Ruth Rendell said: he shows he likes women. A revolution occurred because He dignifies them. He accepts women as having standing. As men, Jesus gives women access to Himself. He always has time for them. He pays them attention. I want to try to show how the account of Martha, Mary and Jesus makes this clear. How their want of Him made Him the one thing necessary in their lives.
Jesus entered Martha and Mary’s village of Bethany. Bethany is just over the crest of the Mt. of Olives. Martha ‘welcomed’ Jesus into her home. Martha is the only woman I can think of who invited Jesus into her home. Taking the initiative to do so took self- confidence. It tells us she was friendly toward Jesus and his ministry. Jesus did not decline Martha because she was a woman. Perhaps Martha could do it because her home was large enough to accommodate Jesus and his disciples.
Martha’s sister Mary was also there. When Jesus entered, Mary followed the Lord. She took her place at His feet. She begins listening to what he was saying. This is radical. Jewish teachers were generally opposed to women learning. Jesus not only lets her sit at his feet. As we shall see, he expects her, a woman, to listen and learn. This is still controversial in 2017. The Taliban says the Moslem Quran does not allow women to be educated. If Jesus entered your house, would you be sitting there with him? Where was Martha?
Martha was ‘distracted. She is overburdened by the various tasks of hosting guests. She is anxious to provide a fine dinner and comfortable hospitality for her special guests. Every host knows the tension between being with your company and attending to the ongoing preparation for dinner. Guest’s hands and feet need washing; heads need oil; towels for drying; fire for cooking tended; meat prepared and cooked; the vegetables, the bread, the deserts, and water drawn. The tables have to be set with your best utensils and crockery/china. The candles filled with oil and lit. Flowers put in vases.
Our first Thanksgiving dinner as newlyweds Pam and I hosted my parents. It was nerve-wracking for Pam. Pam had never prepared a turkey in her life. This was her first dinner for the in-laws. She knew none of the recipes my parents enjoyed. She baked a cake from scratch. It was three layers. When I cut the cake, it crumbled into bread crumbs. She had iced the outside, but forgot to ice between the layers!
After all, Martha is entertaining Jesus! The Prophet who taken the world by storm! Martha is just plain stressed out. She wants to give him an impressive dinner. But she is feeling put upon. With all that needs to be done, her sister is sitting there with Jesus. Martha leaves her preparations and makes her way to Jesus. If she appeals to Jesus, Jesus will tell Mary to help. Mary will listen to the Master. The Holy One will enlighten Mary to her injustice and selfishness. ‘Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself?’ Tell her then to help me’. ‘Tell her to do her share.’ Tell her to pitch in. ‘Many hands make work light’ my mother would say.
But the Lord answered her, ‘Martha, Martha’. Saying her name twice shows his strong interest in her. There are many people around him but He considers her. ‘Martha, Martha, you’re worried and distracted about much.’ You’ve been thrown into undue disorder and trouble. These ‘worldly’ matters are too much oppressing you. Things have gotten out of perspective. You’re in overload. For a lot of people, life moves at a chaotic clip. It’s an all too typical woman’s – yes, man’s too – but particularly a woman’s concern today. She is working a stressful job; she’s trying to be a good mother/wife. Women typically bear the brunt of the responsibilities of family and home. Maybe she is also taking a night class to work on her degree. I heard of a single woman holding two jobs; her father had Alzheimer’s in a care facility; her mother who lives with her has a health issue; and she is raising children. ‘Martha, Martha’.
Was Martha ‘multi-tasking’? She was trying to juggle multiple tasks. ‘Multitasking’ is our word for today for juggling the overload of many duties. ‘Multitasking’ is doing two or more cognitively complex things at the same time. Dr. Frances E. Jensen, a U of Penn neuroscientist, says ‘multitasking’ is a myth. Yes, you can chew gum and watch the baby at the same time. That’s not multitasking. But you cannot make cordon Bleu and solve a problem with your boss on the phone at the same time. If you try to do them at the same time your brain has to switch back and forth constantly. You do neither well. Focusing on more than one complex task is virtually impossible. If you’re a teen – or Tom Thomas – it is impossible!
‘Martha, Martha, you’re worried and distracted about much.’ Are you too? Jesus continued. ‘But one is necessary’; ‘there is one need; ‘there is need of only one thing’. Simplify. ‘Mary has chosen the good portion’. The word ‘portion’ connotes ‘food’. Jesus puns, ‘Mary has chosen the better food.’ What food did Mary choose? Jesus…the bread of life. She chose to sit with and listen to Him. What food did Martha choose? The bread…of the kitchen. Given the choice between life’s duties, responsibilities, vocations, and avocations and Jesus, Jesus ranks above them all. Which are you choosing? Which is your practice? Which is your first priority? Is everything else second to Him? What if Martha had done that? Driven, Type A people are asking who would have provided the beautiful arrangements of food and drink? Better to have Jesus and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich than a Better Homes and Garden banquet without him. Jesus consistently messages this: to the rich young ruler: sell everything, give to the poor, then come and follow me; to the man who wanted to bury his father before following Jesus. Jesus said, ‘Let the dead bury the dead, follow me.’ Martha doesn’t realize who is in her midst. Few people do. In him is ‘the fullness of deity dwelling bodily’…the One who is before all things… ‘the one who is to have first place in everything’ .
Here is the man women want – the man women need; a man who likes women; loves women; wants them to learn from Him, to be with Him and He with them. He would rather have Martha than a well- appointed home; He would rather have Martha than appetizing cuisine; He would rather have her than fine hospitality. He wants Martha for herself; not for anything she can give him. Where have you heard of such a man? Where have you heard of such a holy man, or spiritual leader? Take the holy one the Buddha as an example. The Buddha said to his disciple Ananda: ‘Women are stupid, Ananda; that is the reason, Ananda…why women have no place in public assemblies…’
Jesus shows as much interest in her as a man. He invests in her worth: invites her to join his circle; wills her to be his disciple; believes she is just responsible as a man to God; just as capable of hearing, understanding and learning as a man. This is a watershed for woman in history.
Women respond to Jesus. He’s what they want. He’s what they need. They’ve heeded his word to Martha. They have made Jesus their first portion –the one thing necessary. He has fulfilled their deep want and need. Probably in greater numbers in church history than men…in different ways: as wives…as mothers…a martyrs…as activists…as writers…as teachers…as evangelists…in mission…to great effect. Perpetua was a 22 year old new mother. She was imprisoned by the Romans with her infant for declaring she followed Christ. The proconsul told her he would release her if she said, ‘Caesar is lord’. Her father begged her to lie. She would not. She said, ‘Jesus is Lord’. She so wanted Jesus, when made to decide, she chose him above her father, her child, and her own life. Her witness lives on today.
Mademoiselle De La Mothe, better known as Madam Guyon, was a teenage girl in Paris. She was smart and beautiful. She was tall and well built. She had a Grecian countenance, high forehead and brilliant eyes, and a noble sweetness. She thought a lot of herself. She spent a good part of the day in front of the mirror. At 17, she fell deathly sick. She was not expected to live. As she languished, her sins haunted her. She realized her self had been her religion. She knew she was out of favor with God. She recovered. See sought God. The only way she knew to try to get God’s acceptance was earn it: she began to do good works. It didn’t take away her sorrow for her sin. Then she came to understand loving Jesus Christ is a matter of the heart. Then she came to know personally Jesus Christ not by doing righteous works, but by faith. Now, she said, ‘For I had now no sight but of Jesus Christ’ . She was sorrowful of her wasted past. Why was she so late in finding Jesus? ‘Why’ she wondered, ‘have I known thee so late? Alas, I sought you where you were not, and did not seek you where you were!’ She wrote the name of her Saviour in large characters and attached it to her person. She wanted to be reminded continually of Him. She wrote poems and letters for Christ. She influenced circles of Christians and mystic theologians like Francis Fenelon.
What do women want? What do you want? They want the One who accepts and honors them; the One who wants to be with them; who wants them to be in his company and they in his; the One who loves them - they want Jesus Christ! He is the one thing necessary. Is He for you the One necessity?
Image by Georg Friedrich Stettner († 1639) - Van Ham Kunstauktionen, Public Domain, Link
It was Halloween Eve, Mischief Night as it’s often dubbed, the penultimate day of October in 1938. At a time when the radio was the main source of news and entertainment, the big draw that evening was the legendary Edgar Bergen and his ventriloquist dummy Charlie McCarthy. Popular lore says that a musical interlude in Bergen’s performance led many radio listeners to surf the channels and tune in to what would subsequently be called the most famous radio broadcast of all time.
Perched high in the Columbia Broadcasting Building on Madison Avenue, a precocious 23-year-old impresario Orson Welles was orchestrating a coup of the airwaves. Already reputed as Broadway’s most brilliant rising star, Welles made this particular Sunday anything but restful, directing the terrified eyes of his rapt listeners to quite the ominous October sky. It was a scant nine years before, almost to the day, that Black Tuesday had initiated the Great Depression, whose painful ripple effects were still felt. With Hitler’s foreboding rise to power and Europe so susceptible to his domination and imminent encroachment, the future was uncertain; people were already on edge and accustomed to hearing bad news.
Image credit: Jeremy Daniel
That night, by the time they started listening to this storied adaptation of H. G. Wells’ War of the Worlds (1898), much of the audience had missed the opening introduction identifying it as a dramatization. Welles’ magisterial depiction of an alien invasion in Grover’s Mill, New Jersey induced panic in lots of quarters, accounts varying as to its extent. The show was strategically punctuated by realistic breaking “news bulletins”; by a sudden impromptu and pregnant, protracted and deafening silence initiated by Welles himself; and by another voice actor emulating the rhythm and cadence of Herbert Morrison’s immortal heart-rending eyewitness radio report of the Hindenburg’s fiery destruction just a year before.
For a few hours, the show simply terrified a nation already fraught with fear. Amidst subsequent media outrage and furious calls for greater FCC regulation, Welles feigned shock and dismay over the tumult his broadcast had produced. In truth the whole scenario would catapult him into the stratosphere of international fame, issuing him his ticket to Hollywood.
On the one hand, the remarkable episode furnishes a cautionary tale against the power of propaganda; on the other, more positively, it’s a reminder of the remarkable ability of drama and story to capture and mesmerize the imagination and move the will. The broadcast was a production of the Mercury Theatre, founded by Welles and John Houseman (later of Paper Chase fame as Professor Charles Kingsfield), located on West 41st Street in New York City, a mere half mile from where my wife and I recently watched a different drama unfold—one more tethered to actual history.
H. G. Wells wrote War of the Worlds in 1898, forty years before the Mercury Theatre’s radio adaptation. The year of Wells’ book in England also marked the birth of C. S. Lewis in Belfast, Ireland, and it just so happens that the play that we recently saw was a one-man show about the great Oxford don’s reluctant conversion to Christian faith.
Inexplicably navigating the frenetic, frantic Manhattan traffic by sheer force of will and a deft defiance of physics, our taxi driver dropped us off at the Acorn Theatre on West 42nd Street. Until then we’d assumed the Amtrak train hurling along in northern Virginia at breakneck speed might be the most terrifying part of our journey, feeling suspiciously like the Knight Bus in Harry Potter’s London. The Acorn Theatre is part of “Theatre Row,” headquartered in the heart of NYC’s Theater District.
Surviving that harrowing freak show of vehicular congestion made receptive our hearts to the transcendent and miraculous, and indeed a magical afternoon at the theatre was about to ensue. It was less than an hour to the matinee show time. We were excited to relish the performance we’d heard so much about already, and just as enthused at the prospect, afterwards, of meeting its star, Max McLean, who co-directed the show with Ken Denison. His publicist had neatly arranged our post-show interview.
After procuring our tickets, we made it to the third floor theatre, its set smartly arranged as a cozy book-lined office replete with desk, virtual pictures on the back wall, and a requisite cushy chair—just the sort of environment for the bookish Lewis to make an appearance. The ostensible location is Lewis’s study at Magdalen College, Oxford, 1950. While we admired the décor and became acclimated to the surroundings—feeling more than a little giddy as quite the sophisticated NYC theatre-goers—I perused the play’s brochure.
The performance, it was explained, is a production of the Fellowship for Performing Arts (FPA), which was founded by McLean in 1992, and which aims to create theatre from a Christian worldview that engages a diverse audience. It has developed and presented award-winning plays such as The Screwtape Letters, which I saw in North Carolina some years ago, never imagining at the time I’d later get to meet McLean personally, aka Screwtape. Other productions—staged in theatres and performing arts centers in New York, London, and across America—have included The Great Divorce, Mark’s Gospel, Martin Luther on Trial, and of course this one: C. S. Lewis Onstage: The Most Reluctant Convert. The outfit has also produced critically acclaimed audiobook narrations of classic Christian works, predicated on the power of not just reading scripture, but hearing it.
I read with particular interest the brochure’s “Note about the Play,” which helpfully explains the subtitle. In 1950, Lewis received a letter from a young American writer expressing his struggle to believe Christianity because he thought it “too good to be true.” Lewis responded, “My own position at the threshold of Christianity was exactly the opposite of yours. You wish it were true; I strongly hoped it was not. . . . Do you think people like Stalin, Hitler, Haldane, Stapledon (a corking good writer, by the way) would be pleased on waking up one morning to find that they were not their own masters . . . that there was nothing even in the deepest recesses of their thoughts about which they could say to Him, ‘Keep out! Private. This is my business’? Do you? Rats! . . . Their first reaction would be (as mine was) rage and terror.”
The Note goes on to say that this was Lewis’s mindset before he “gave in,” as he put it. Lewis had embraced ideologies like materialism, atheism, naturalism, determinism, and reductionism—views that hold in common the conviction that all of life, every action, emotion, or perception, is susceptible to deflation. Each can be reduced to pre-existing physical causes all the way back to the Big Bang. There is no need to appeal to a supernatural source. God is not required to explain or define origin, meaning, ethics, or destiny. “For many years, Lewis was a defender of this view. And given his rhetorical gifts and love of debate one could see him fit into the ‘New Atheist’ camp with the likes of the late Christopher Hitchens or Sam Harris.”
This play, it was explained, would explore Lewis’s dramatic conversion from this position to Christianity. McLean, the author of the Note, adds that he thinks Lewis’s vibrancy and resonance as a Christian apologist is rooted in this experience. The primary sources for the play, the Note continues, would be Lewis’s autobiography, Surprised by Joy, as well as his Collected Letters, a three-volume veritable treasure trove of insights and rich historical nuggets. McLean wrote the script by carefully cobbling together Lewis’s disparate words into a seamless tapestry and compelling narrative with a readily discernible and inherently fascinating trajectory. In addition to the primary sources, McLean also relied on several of Lewis’s books and essay collections, including The Problem of Pain, The Weight of Glory, Mere Christianity, God in the Dock, Present Concerns, and Christian Reflections. And he acknowledges his debts to various biographies and critical insights by Douglas Gresham (Lewis’s stepson), Walter Hooper (editor of Lewis’s literary estate), Devin Brown (from Asbury University), Tim Keller (whose church McLean attends in NYC, a church that has several pastors with specific ministries for the artists in the congregation), Alan Jacobs (Wheaton), Jerry Root (who’s written a book on Lewis and the problem of evil), Andrew Lazo, George Sayer, David Downing, Oxford’s Alister McGrath, Armand Nicholi (author of a book comparing and contrasting Lewis and Freud), Sheldon Vanauken, Kenneth Tynan, and A. N. Wilson, among others.
Finally, I read that the play takes place prior to the publication of Lewis’s first Narnia story and well before he met his wife, Joy Davidman—which introduces the tantalizing possibility of a sequel. My appetite thus whetted, I was primed to see the show.
Guest article by Dr. Livingston Greystoke
Bishop S. I. Newman stood at the Gate of Heaven. There Saint Peter met him. We are privy to their conversation which I report just as it occurred.
St. Peter: Who are you?
Bishop Newman: Who are you? Where am I?
St. Peter: I am Peter, the Lord’s apostle. You are at the very entrance of heaven. I can tell, Mr. Newman, you are surprised to see me. Did you think that what we now see extending out through that Gate to eternity was a myth? You did teach, quite consciously, the Lord Jesus was a mental projection of the needs and hopes of us disciples. Certainly, you did not expect to meet Him – or me - here, did you? I assure you, Mr. Newman, we are quite real.
Bishop Newman: You can understand why I made such an assumption. Our most brilliant scholars in the most esteemed academies using the most contemporary historical analysis convinced me. I was just using my God-given reason to consider the texts. God would not want me to commit ‘intellectual suicide’ in reflecting on what people wrote about him – or her – or it- whoever.
St. Peter: Reason is one thing, prejudice another. And, isn’t reason exercised together with faith? After all, ‘without faith it is impossible to please God’. Let me ask you. Why should you be admitted through these gates?
Bishop Newman: Since you asked, all modesty aside, I rose to the top of the clergy ranks; colleague among colleagues; leader of leaders; most devout of the devout, esteemed by clergy and lay; viewed to have an unusual set of leadership skills; an apt expounder of relativizing the Scriptures for our day; and passionate for the issues which oppress. What might have been my most important attribute, I was recognized as having the gift of being able to make myself acceptable to all. I strove to fulfill Jesus’ greatest passion - unity in the Church! This was no easy task. Glory be to God what God inspired in me!
St. Peter: Were you not like brother Paul? He regarded ‘everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord?’ He determined to ‘never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ’. Didn’t you hold back from preaching the cross? You thought it foolishness so you didn’t preach it! Though it is foolishness to the pagans brother Paul preached it anyway! You should have known the cross is the power of God to those being saved. You thought talk of the cross as a necessary, objective substitutionary sacrifice for sin a crass antiquarian throwback to medieval days.
Bishop Newman: But I was so moved when I administered the Eucharist and passed the cup, saying, ‘The blood of Christ given for you. Amen’. It was a numinous experience.
St. Peter: But you lived as an enemy of the cross. You promulgated the rejection of the authority of God’s Word by urging persons to indulge their lusts and make their god the belly. You, of all people, the ecclesial leader of God’s people, have led the weak into licentious ways. You have encouraged extra-marital sex by advocating the right to homosexual practice. You ought to know unrepentant ‘fornicators’ will not be at home here! You promised freedom but gave slavery!
Bishop Newman: I was extremely passionate on behalf of those upon whom the shadow of the cross falls. I stood with the oppressed and the ‘have-nots’ against ‘the haves’. I challenged systems of discrimination and injustice. I politicked for the care of creation and climate justice. I struggled against the criminalization of abortion. I supported the absolute right of a woman to choose to abort a fetus at any stage in her womb. I fought hard against the erection of structures of homophobia and heterosexism. I have protested against discrimination based on gender identity – transvestites should be welcomed in every pulpit! Prejudice against any chosen, loving sexual practice must not be indulged.
St. Peter: Bishop S. I. Newman, your compassion for the humble, the lowly, the poor in body and spirit is admirable. Nonetheless, for you, what is bitter is sweet; what is dark is light; what is false is true. You have the form of religion but not the power. You know the politic but not the Person. You are a teacher of the law without understanding either what you say or the things about which you assert. You have come to the wrong Gate. Your own words speak against you. You will neither fit nor be happy here. Adieu.
********************
A Twilight Musing
We’re all familiar with the first baptism of Jesus at the hands of John the Baptist, who had to be assured that it was necessary for Jesus to be baptized, in order “to fulfill all righteousness” (Matt. 3:15). Jesus set the pattern of baptism as a mark of the beginning of the Life that God gives, and a special manifestation of the gift of the Holy Spirit after His baptism was seen as it descended “like a dove” and came “to rest on Him” (v. 16). That was followed by a heavenly voice saying, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased” (v. 17), archetypically reflecting our purity before God as we begin our walk with Him.
But Jesus spoke of a second baptism that He had to undergo, concerning which He was anxious, even while He recognized its necessity: "I came to cast fire on the earth, and would that it were already kindled! I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how great is my distress until it is accomplished!” (Lk. 12:49-50). He mentioned this baptism again when He responded to James’ and John’s request to have special seats of honor beside Jesus when He comes into His kingdom. Jesus answered,
You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or to be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?” And they said to him, “We are able.” And Jesus said to them, “The cup that I drink you will drink, and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized, but to sit at my right hand or at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared. (Mk. 10:38-40)
This passage establishes a link between Jesus’ second baptism and the cup of suffering that He prayed fervently to be delivered from in the Garden of Gethsemane (Lk. 22:39-46). Obviously, Jesus saw His coming suffering as a second kind of baptism, and when we couple this with statements in the epistles about not only the inevitability but the appropriateness of suffering by followers of Jesus, we see that we, too, must expect to go through a second baptism.
John the Baptist seems to be contrasting the two baptisms when he says of Jesus, "I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire" (Matt. 3:11-12). I take the reference to the baptism in the Holy Spirit to be the water baptism that Peter promised his hearers in Acts 2:38 would be accompanied by “the gift of the Holy Spirit”; and the baptism in fire to be the second baptism, the suffering that purifies and tempers and makes stronger the character of Christians. Submitting to the first baptism is cause for rejoicing and praising God, and new Christians are often appropriately exuberant, feeling the reality of having been cleansed from all sin. But just as Jesus had to go through a second and very different baptism before His walk on this earth was done, so we who follow Him must embrace the baptism of suffering that brings us to maturity in Christ.
Jesus tried to instruct His Twelve Disciples about what lay ahead for Him (and them), but they were obtuse and spiritually insensitive.
And he began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again. And he said this plainly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and seeing his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, "Get behind me, Satan! For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man." (Mark 8:31-33)
Believers often share Peter’s resistance to the progression from the joy of the first baptism to the second baptism of mature suffering. It’s significant that later on, after many years of leadership in the early church, Peter speaks with great perceptiveness about the fire of the second baptism: “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ's sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed. If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you” (I Pet. 4:12-14).
So, just as Jesus experienced His first baptism and the accompanying endowment of the Holy Spirit as the beginning of a new life of service and ministry, so we who confess faith in Him experience the rite of baptism and the empowerment of the Holy Spirit as a joyful entry into our new life with God. But God also calls us to share His Son’s experience of the second baptism, which is the necessary entrance into the completion of God’s purposes for our lives on earth. Jesus told His disciples that they would suffer with Him (“If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you” [Jn. 15:20]), and those who preached the Gospel afterward also made clear that confessing Christ and being baptized in water will eventually, as the believer matures, lead to a second baptism of suffering. Paul says, “The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him” (Rom. 8:16-17). And again: “For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake” (Phil. 1:29).
What a pregnant clause, “It has been granted to you.” The gift of suffering in the likeness of Christ is as much a manifestation of God’s grace as the gifts of eternal life and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit that we received in our first baptism as new believers. The second baptism in the fire of trial is redemptive rather than destructive only because our Savior has been there before us and sanctified our suffering. He was willing to be born in the flesh so that He could be anointed in power in His first baptism; and He was willing to submit to the “second baptism” of innocent suffering and death for the sake of all mankind. It is following his path from baptism in water to baptism in fire that marks us as fully redeemed children of God and sisters and brothers of Christ.
Of al-Ash’ari’s ten objections to the Mu’tazilites, three have to do with the matters discussed here (human freedom). The Mu’tazilites assert that human beings create evil, they think that God may wish what is not and that what He does not wish may be, and they think that they alone, and not their Lord, have power over their works. Al-Ash’ari responds that he who doesn’t will the existence of anything except what exists, and nothing exists except what he wills, and nothing is remote from his will, is the worthier of the attribute of divinity. If there are under His authority the existence of things of which He disapproves, this shows an attribute of weakness and poverty. Such a being would be weak in comparison with the sovereign omnipotent God of the tradition.
It’s tempting to think of al-Ash’ari as privileging God’s omnipotence over God’s justice, but this is not how he sees it. He is completely convinced of God’s justice (though he thinks we have to be careful not to think it is the same thing as human justice), and he’s convinced that we are responsible for our actions, and that God rightly holds us responsible. To understand this, we need to describe his notion of “acquisition.” This is the view that a single act can both be created by God and “acquired” or performed by a human being. We can distinguish between the one who lies, who is not the one who makes the act as it really is, and the one who makes it as it really is (namely, God) who does not lie. Similarly, we can make the distinction familiar from experience between cases of casual constraint and cases where we have the power to act, and so responsibility for our action. Al-Ash’ari calls these two cases “necessary motion” and “acquired motion,” and he gives the examples of shaking from palsy or shivering from fever, for the first case, and coming and going or approaching and receding, for the second.
We can ask al-Ash’ari whether God creates evil (or wrong). The answer is not straightforward. Has not God, then, created the injustice of creatures? Al-Ash’ari replies that God created it as their injustice, not as His. But then we deny that God is unjust? Al-Ash’ari replies that one who’s unjust is not unjust because he makes injustice as another’s injustice and not as his. The same reply comes with the question about whether God creates evil and whether God creates lying. God creates evil for another, and lying for another, but God Himself can’t do evil, or lie. Does this mean that God has decreed and determined acts of disobedience? Here al-Ash’ari makes another distinction, between decreed and determined acts of disobedience in the sense that He has commanded them. This is the difference Hare identified in Chapter 2 between two different kinds of prescriptions, namely, “precepts” (or “prohibitions”) and “directly effective commands.”
Someone might worry about God’s commanding things when God does not provide the recipients of the command with the power to carry it out. The interlocutor asks, “Has not God charged the unbeliever with the duty of believing?” Al-Ash’ari answers that He has. But this does not mean that God has given the unbeliever the power of believing, because, if God had given that power, the unbeliever would believe. It seems to follow that God enjoins on him an obligation that he cannot fulfill. Here, al-Ash’ari makes another distinction. Strictly, an inability is an inability both for some act and for its contrary. A stone has the inability to believe, because this inability is also an inability to disbelieve. But the unbeliever has the ability to disbelieve, and so does not strictly have the inability to believe. Al-Ash’ari considers an objection to this account of inability: namely, that he has denied that a power is for an act and its contrary. How can he deny this of powers and affirm it of inabilities? The reason is that, on al-Ash’ari’s conception of power and inability, they are necessarily concurrent with their exercise. The exercise of the inability both for the act and the contrary (to believe and to disbelieve) makes sense (as in the case of the stone). But the exercise of the power both for the act and the contrary does not make sense. It would require a thing to have two contrary attributes at the same time. His opponent could try to reverse the argument and say that it is obvious we have the power both to act and not to act, and so a power can’t be necessarily concurrent with its exercise. This dialectic will continue with the next section (on al-Maturidi).
On the surface, it may seem that one who is downcast because of his lack of accomplishment or his moral inadequacy is being self-deprecating. It is equally possible, however, that he is engaging in a subtly perverse game of “unholier than thou.” It may be a retreat from the obligation of godly sorrow by sharing with others a problem for which no solution is sought nor will one be accepted.
How important it is that we learn to give over to God those activities in which we feel especially capable! Pride focuses on what we have done for God; humility focuses on what God has done for us and through us, in spite of—and sometimes because of—our weaknesses. Let us rather say, “Better to be a failure for God’s glory than a success for my own glory.”
One cannot hope in this life to have answers to all his questions, for even life in Christ brings as many questions as answers. But one can, through giving his life to God, at least participate in the mystery. That is a great adventure!
One cannot stop at the level of his own relative moral goodness in considering evil. Evil and its consequences are transcendent; that is the reason that bad things happen to “good” people and good things happen to “bad” people. Actually, we are all victims of (as well as participants in) Evil, and only the transcendent God can combat it. The book of Job was probably written to show that even though the Hebrews’ religion was mostly concerned with human moral matters, it was a transcendent Evil One they had ultimately to contend with.
Mankind’s basic desires are paradoxical. On the one hand, people want security, which involves the regularization of life and therefore the abridgment of freedom and spontaneity; but, on the other hand, they also want freedom, adventure, and individuality. Perhaps one has truly fulfilled himself only when security and freedom become one for him. Is that not what God offers when we give up to Him so that He can give us back our true selves?
A certain amount of agnosticism is a necessary part of intellectual humility. One must find a tenable mid-point between complete knowledge and complete ignorance. That is merely another way of saying that we must have enough shared knowledge to communicate with each other, but must not aspire to the power of an intellectual tyrant. Agnosticism must be approached from a desire to assume the responsibilities of reason, rather than from a desire to avoid affirming anything.
There are many infernal counterparts to Divine Order, but these appeal to man’s desire to have everything perfectly defined so that he can be a master of knowledge. Satan’s order is only of the intellect, a merciless order demanding that everything fit into it—nothing is left unexplained, except that which remains to be explored by future research and consideration. God’s order, on the other hand, is ultimately defined by His Personality (if one can use the words “defined” and “personality” at all in regard to God). And yet, at the same time, God’s order invites the operation of intellect in apprehending it, but in a way that is free to accept things that go beyond its understanding. The order of Satan finally becomes so hard that it is brittle and shatters, while the order of God has the resilience of ongoing life and the extra dimension of intuitive truth.
What does proper Christian motivation consist of? This is a trickier matter for a professional person than for a laborer, for a professional person must define his job as well as do it, and there is more opportunity in the latter case for one to waste time. Motivation has to do with a focused perception of goals coupled with feelings of responsibility, or perhaps of selfish ambition. Purely human motivation nearly always comes from a need for self-aggrandizement, and even that motivation which is thought to be idealistic is often merely a cloak for feelings of doubt about one’s worth. [su_dummy_text]Christian motivation, then, springs from the paradoxical situation of being at the same time comfortable with oneself because God accepts him as he is, and uncomfortable enough to work hard. We should be uncomfortable when we fail to make the most of the opportunities and gifts that God has given us. But it goes beyond that. We must come to understand—to feel—that what we do with our opportunities is an act of love, a response of thanksgiving toward God.
The first half of one’s life is spent in coming to realize that he is not as good as he thought he was. The second half is spent in learning to live with that realization.
Image: "I wrote you" by 50 von 36," CC License.
That happened to James? James was our Lord’s brother. Sometime after Jesus’ death, James was known for being on his knees praying. Before Jesus’ death James was known for his unbelief. Before I get to James, let me ask you this: what happened to David Wood? What happened to Saul, the Pharisee hunter of Christians? What do any of these questions have to do with the resurrection?
David Wood’s dog was hit by a bus and died. His mother was terribly upset. David was not. It was just a dog. A few years later his friend died. He felt no sorrow. He saw how others were feeling and sensed maybe he should feel sorrow. David was separated from his feelings. He couldn’t empathize with others. He was diagnosed a sociopath. On top of this, David was an atheist. Right and wrong didn’t matter to him. One day David’s life came into focus. He brutally attacked his father and beat him with a hammer until he thought him dead (he wasn’t). He was imprisoned for ten years. David is now a missionary, reconciled with his father, and has an earned Ph. D. from Fordham University. What happened to him?
Before I answer this question and the one about James, let me ask you this: what happened to Saul, the Pharisee hunter of Christians? Let me refresh you regarding Saul. Saul was a contemporary of Jesus’ apostles. He was a Jew of the tribe of Benjamin. From the age five Saul was strictly educated in the Old Testament law. At age of thirteen, he studied Scripture under the Jewish scholar Gamaliel. Gamaliel was the Alan Derschowitz Harvard law professor of the day. He prepared Saul to teach the law. Saul became so zealous for the law he surpassed his Pharisee peers. He would even kill for the Law.
In fact, Saul took a leading role in hounding the church. He went to Christians’ houses. He hauled them – even women – to prison. Saul said, ‘I was violently persecuting the church of God’…I ‘was trying to destroy it’ (Gal 1: 13). He took cool pleasure in the stoning of preacher Stephen. He held the coats for others to throw stones. (Acts 8:1)
Then, suddenly, something happened. People said, ‘He who formerly was persecuting us is now proclaiming the faith he once tried to destroy?’(Gal 1:23)Is not this the man who made havoc in Jerusalem…?” believers asked (Act 9:21) He now goes by the name of Paul. He testifies in the synagogues Jesus ‘is the Son of God’. He argues Jesus is the Messiah. (Acts 9:22) What gives? How could one so passionately against Jesus turn so for him? This brings me to James.
What happened to James? In 2002 an archaeological discovery was made. A first century ossuary box was uncovered. An ossuary box contains the bones of a deceased person. This box had this inscription on it, ‘James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus.’ Whether or not it is authentic is still being studied. No matter, Jesus had four brothers, one whose name was James. Not a lot is known about James. James was the physical son of Joseph and Mary. He, his brothers, and mother Mary traveled with Jesus early in his ministry. But Jesus did not win him over. There was conflict between Jesus, James and his brothers. They did not believe him. They thought anybody can claim to be a Messiah in the country where few see him. ‘If you do Messiah works, show the world’. Prove yourself. Do your miracles in D.C., not in Tight Squeeze! Jesus went to his grave with his brother James a skeptic.
But what happened to James? The next thing you hear James is on his knees praying. He is with his mother Mary and Jesus’ disciples in the upper room. Ancient testimony says James was frequently found on his knees begging forgiveness for people. His knees were hard like a camel’s. James is now called ‘James the Righteous’. He is the leader of the Jerusalem church. On account of Jesus, James was stoned in 62 AD. What happened to James? Once a skeptic …now a martyr.
Here’s the answer: Take Paul first: he saw the risen Jesus Christ. At midday when traveling to Damascus a light shone on him. The light was brighter than the sun and encircled him. He heard the Voice speak to him, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?’(Acts 26: 14) Paul asked, ‘Who are you Lord?’ ‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.’ (Acts 9: 5) Paul testified, Jesus ‘appeared also to me.’ ‘Have I not seen Jesus our Lord?’ Paul asked (1 Cor 9:1). Seeing the resurrected Lord Jesus instantaneously turned Saul around. The resurrected Jesus turned Saul into Paul.
What happened to David Wood? In prison he ran into Randy, a Christian. Randy articulated his reasons for believing in Jesus. It made David’s unbelief seem silly. David wanted to refute Randy’s faith. So David began reading the Bible. Jesus’ resurrection bothered him. Why would the disciples risk death to testify to the resurrection if they didn’t believe it? He also read in the Bible Jesus is the resurrection and the life; the Son of God can set you free. David knew he had many psychological, spiritual, and moral disorders. He couldn’t help himself. Who could? Only Jesus, the One God raised, could.
What happened to James, the Lord’s skeptical brother? The apostle Paul gives the answer: ‘Christ was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he …appeared to James…’ (1 Cor 15: 7) Our risen Lord Jesus appeared to James! The risen Lord Jesus revealed himself to his brother. Jesus Christ showed himself visibly, bodily to James and to Paul. Nothing else would reverse a James. Nothing else would reverse a Saul: not hallucinations; not delusions; not mental dreams; not a myth; not conversion disorder or any combination thereof. Jesus appeared bodily, visibly. Our risen Lord turned James the skeptic into James the Just!! The bodily risen Jesus transformed Saul into Paul. The meditation on Jesus’ resurrection in concert with the risen Jesus radically changed a sociopath into a missionary. For nothing else would they have endured and kept true: through insults, ridicule, rejection, mockery, beatings, suffering, and martyrdom: Paul beheaded and James stoned.
You too can know the risen Lord Jesus. He says, ‘Look at me. I stand at the door. I knock. If you hear me call and open the door, I’ll come right in and sit down to supper with you.’ Let Him in.*
*Gary R. Habermas and Michael R. Licona’s book, The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus has been an instrumental resource in the above.
Image: "Ossuary of James the Brother of Jesus" CC License.
The worldwide Women’s Marches earlier this year brought to the fore once more the tangled morass of arguments and battles about sexuality launched in the 1960s. Marchers interviewed by the news media were eager to assert that the marches were not just about women’s rights per se, but about justice in all matters pertaining to freedom of choice and equality of opportunity. They did not want anybody’s identity to be determined by anything other than each person’s self-definition. There is certainly some common sense to the principle of equal opportunity and not being defined by incidental characteristics. Indeed, as Christians we are taught that we are all one before God, to be valued by each other as each of us is by God, without regard to race, gender, or socio-economic standing. But the current militant arguments on gender turn back on themselves and involve unrealized—or at least unacknowledged—contradictions, because their proponents are sometimes zealots for radical free will and at other times fervent determinists.
The early 20th century granting of voting rights for women gave women a formal voice in the shaping of social and political policy, a privilege which was used to protest against all other forms of discrimination against women. Western women had their boundaries of activity in society further expanded by being called to work in factories during two world wars in the 20th century. Added to that, WW I signaled the deliverance of women from the stereotyped image of sexual innocence promoted by the Victorians, and the “Roaring Twenties” brought much license in women’s public appearance and behavior. After a brief re-emphasis on the domesticated female in the fifties, the baby boomers of the sixties took full advantage of the availability of “the pill” to promote sexual freedom, which enabled women to experience full sexual expression without the “threat” of being taken out of circulation by pregnancy. With the reproductive handicap removed, feminists at this point were able to argue that traditional sexual roles are not biologically determined, but are merely the cultural constructs of self-interested and self-perpetuating patriarchal power. And if the biology of sexual identity is incidental rather than essential, people are free to decide for themselves how their sexual roles are to be defined. Sexual identity is determined by what one wills it to be, not by biology at birth.
It’s obviously a short and seemingly logical step from this position to what we have seen in the latest stages of this sexual revolution: if one’s sexual orientation or desire is contrary to his/her biological identity, what of it? Biology is incidental, so if I choose to follow an inclination to be other than what my biology implies, and I decide to form a sexual union with someone of my own gender, or even to change my gender, it is my right to follow my own willed sexual path. The irony of ending up here, of course, is that homosexual militants insist that they are born with the sexual orientation that they identify with, so they should be allowed to accept the way they were born and not be told that it ought to be otherwise. (Ironic, isn’t it, that the same deterministic principle doesn’t apply to one’s biological sexual identity?) Which is it to be, choice and willed action, or submission to destiny and predetermining influences?
The most recent militant push for self-defined sexual identity, the supposed right of individuals to decide their proper gender for themselves, abandons even the pretense of logic. This project assumes that it is an individual’s right to force other people to act toward them in complete acceptance of a self-defined, counter-physical gender identity, so that they are allowed to mix with the biologically opposite sex in the most intimate of public places, the restrooms. (Those who have gone through medical gender-change are a different matter, practically speaking, although their situation still involves moral questions to be dealt with.)
Ironically, all of this sophistry, by seeking to erode common-sense methods of determining gender, threatens to destroy true liberty rather than to expand it. If there is any real “freedom to choose” in human beings, it does not consist merely of an anarchy of possibilities that creates infinite islands of individuality. Rather, the power of choice enables meaningful directions of the will toward participation in a world ordered by both natural and moral law. Just as the scientist works in the context of a natural order that sets boundaries to what he concludes from his research, so are there necessary boundaries to defining who we are and deciding how we ought to conduct ourselves. Desire and preference are not self-validating reasons for rejecting those boundaries, nor will they change the disruptive consequences of non-bounded choices.
While God certainly draws people to Himself via apologetic arguments and evidences, He certainly has many more resources in His arsenal than that. This truth is illustrated beautifully in the recently released movie The Case for Christ. The movie is set in Chicago in 1980 and tells the story of the conversion to Christianity of the well-known Christian author Lee Strobel (played by Mike Vogel) and his wife Leslie (played by Erika Christensen). Neither Lee nor Leslie were Christians when they married. Lee was having much success in his career as a legal editor for the Chicago Tribune, and both he and his wife were quite happy in their lives as unbelievers. But when God used a chain of events—that did not involve apologetic arguments and evidences—to stir Leslie to the conviction that Christianity is true, Lee was forced to come face to face with the truth claims of Christianity for the first time and reexamine his atheism.
The movie captures in a powerful way the intense spiritual struggle that is often involved in coming to Christ, and it wonderfully depicts how the Holy Spirit works in a multitude of ways to break down the barriers of sin in unbelieving hearts to prepare people to accept the gospel. While Leslie encountered God in a more emotional way through events and Christian friends that God providentially placed into her life, Lee’s conversion illustrates how God can use a combination of arguments, evidences, and personal experiences to soften the heart of even a highly skeptical atheist. Leslie’s conversion and newfound passionate love for God sent Lee on a personal mission to use all of his investigative skills as a reporter to gather the evidence needed to convince his wife that she was caught up in what he considered to be a “cult” that is not rooted in facts. But this journey did not unfold as Lee planned. Lee interviewed experts in such fields as theology, philosophy, psychology, and medicine; however, what he discovered did not allow him to rest easy in the confident unbelief that he had always maintained.
The movie is gripping and entertaining from start to finish. Unlike many Christian movies that leave the viewer cringing, the story is put together well and features quality acting. The film does not force apologetics into the story; rather, solid apologetic evidence for the resurrection of Jesus is sprinkled into the story in a natural way as Lee travels down his road to faith in Christ. While the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus is crucial to Lee’s conversion, the Holy Spirit brings him to faith via a multi-pronged plan that includes events that Lee experienced at work and within his family. There are a number of emotional scenes in which the personal spiritual battle that Lee is facing is palpable and moving, and the movie does well to illustrate how coming to faith is not merely a matter of coldly weighing out the evidence. Moreover, the turmoil that Leslie faces as Lee remains committed to his unbelief will resonate with many who have come to faith in Christ but feel the stress of not being able to convince loved ones to do the same. Indeed, the loving and patient way that she responds to this turmoil and balances her love for Christ and her love for Lee is one of the most instructive aspects of the film.
Ultimately, this film has much to offer for both believers in Christ and unbelievers. For believers, it reveals what a powerful tool apologetic evidence can be and how the Spirit makes use of it to impact certain unbelievers and draw them to the truth. It also reveals the importance of Christians loving unbelievers unconditionally and being a living testimony to them. In this way, it reminds those Christians who tend to think of evangelism as a matter of purely logic chopping and apologetic evidence that unbelief is never merely about evidence—it involves the heart and moral and emotional dimensions as well. At the same time, it reminds those who think of evangelism as a matter of simply “loving people to Jesus” without answering their hard evidential questions that this approach is inadequate for some unbelievers; some people need to have their intellectual questions answered before they will come to Christ. The film highlights how God is sovereign and is constantly working in providential ways to help unbelievers realize the truth of the gospel, and people can legitimately come to faith through evidential and non-evidential means. For unbelievers who see the film, it will introduce to them highlights of some of the best historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus and will expose them to the names of leading scholars in Christian apologetics—people like William Lane Craig and Gary Habermas. The movie also is sympathetic and fair to the unbelievers who are portrayed in it and does not demonize them—a criticism that can rightly be made of the 2014 Christian film God’s Not Dead, for example. Unbelieving viewers should also be able to appreciate the movie as a well-told and well-acted tale of two people who faced wrenching turmoil in their lives and in their marriage. From a plot standpoint, the movie holds its own and is engaging even apart from the fact that the story centers around religious aspects, though an unbeliever may not find it to be as much of a feel-good story as a believer would. While the love story between Lee and Leslie can be appreciated by any viewer, hopefully the love that God has for humanity shines through to the unbeliever as well through this film. In the final analysis, this reviewer highly recommends the film.
CaseForChrist In theaters April 7, 2017. http://thecaseforchristmovie.com/ Based on the true story of an award-winning investigative journalist-and avowed atheist-who applies his well-honed journalistic and legal skills to disprove the newfound Christian faith of his wife... with unexpected, life-altering results.
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“The message of the gospel—God’s act of forgiveness and salvation in Jesus—is rooted in hesed. Hesed describes the disposition of God’s heart not only toward His people but to all humanity. The love of God extends far beyond duty or expectation. His forgiveness of sin fulfills a need that is basic to all other needs in the relationship between human beings and God—the restoration and continuation of fellowship with God in Jesus Christ. God’s hesed manifested in forgiveness makes a relationship with Him possible. That forgiveness comes to us freely as a gift from God based on the sacrificial act of Christ.”
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