Review of William Sorley's "Moral Values and the Idea of God"

Review of William Sorley’s Moral Values and the Idea of God

by Jeff Treder


Over most of my life, in a desultory but dogged way, I have been pondering some of the fundamental questions of philosophy:  How, if at all, does a human being differ from other objects, including other animals?  How do we gain knowledge?  What kinds of things can we know?  Are moral categories objects of knowledge?  Can we know for sure that we know anything at all?  How?

Recently in this ambling quest I was led to a book published in 1921 by the British philosopher William Sorley called Moral Values and the Idea of God. This book originated as a series of lectures delivered at Cambridge University in 1914-15, subsequently revised for publication. (It’s out of print, but I got a nice age-spotted second edition through Abe Books.)  I wasn’t sure if I would find it valuable or even readable, but it turns out to be, for me at least, pure gold. It’s written in formal philosophical language and so isn’t easy going, but Sorley’s writing is as clear as his thinking (clear writing generally reflects clear thinking—and unclear, unclear). This book is the best treatment I’ve ever seen of the family of questions in the previous paragraph, and reading it was like having my own half-formed ideas transformed into a full and coherent exposition.  In what follows I will be setting forth my own thoughts on the subject as well as summarizing Sorley’s argument, and the two are largely the same thing—though no summary can do justice to five hundred carefully reasoned pages.

Even in Sorley’s day, and all the more since then, the dominant worldview among philosophers and other intellectuals has been what is generally called modernism, lately joined and to some extent supplanted by postmodernism.  One main thing these two variants have in common is a rejection of philosophical absolutes, particularly absolute intellectual value (that is, truth) and absolute moral value.  Sorley’s book focuses on the second of these, moral value, as the valid and appropriate way to establish the first.  As I have suggested, Sorley was swimming against the current in his own time, and that current has since become a torrent.  The important thing, though, is not how popular an idea is, but whether it’s true—indeed, in this case, whether there even is such a thing as truth.  One basic liability of modernism’s subversion, and postmodernism’s outright denial, of the possibility of our knowing truth is the self-referential fallacy involved:  Trust us, folks, there is no such thing as truth, and that is the truth.

Sorley’s critique of modernist epistemology (theory of knowledge) begins by pointing out its incompleteness. Especially as represented by materialism (also known as naturalism), this epistemology asserts that all our knowledge derives from our sensory experience of the natural world.  This knowledge is inherently limited, contingent on the limits of both our experience (the data received) and our ability to analyze and interpret it.  Thus far, Sorley agrees.  But then he notes and emphasizes that the materialist account of our experience leaves out one of the major components of that experience, indeed the primary component.  We are not just beings that receive and react to sensory input, we are self-aware beings.  Like God, in whose image the Bible says we are made, we are inherently aware that “I am” (see Gen.1:27, Ex.3:14; this reference to the Bible is my own, however; Sorley builds his argument without reference to divine revelation).  Bound up inextricably with our self-awareness is the thinking process itself; we are reasoning beings who are capable of considering various possible actions, making decisions, and acting on those decisions.  We are not merely things, and not merely animals—though we are those—we are persons. As persons, we have two further and momentous characteristics, which are both as indelible a part of our primary experience as is our awareness of the natural world. These are interpersonal communication and moral values.

First, in our sensory survey of the world around us, among the great variety of sensory objects we discern, we normally encounter other beings who, we discover, are self-aware persons just as we are.  And the way we discover this common personality is through our capacity for language, both sign language and the much more capacious and sophisticated resources of spoken language.  Soon we discover that these other persons have the same ability we have to remember, to reflect, to compare, to purpose, to plan and strategize, and to act toward the fulfillment of those plans and stragegies.  (That list, of course, could be extended.)  We may wonder whether other animals—say, foxes and whales—share these abilities with us to some extent.  Answering this question is problematic and limited to speculation precisely because other animals do not share with us the ability to communicate as persons (or, as with chimps, the extent to which they share it is defined by its extreme limitation).  As philosophers since the ancient Greeks have noted, humans are the animals distinguished by being rational (at any rate, capable of reasoning), and we know this about ourselves mainly because we talk with one another.

Our status as rational beings leads to the second momentous aspect of our primary experience as persons. In interpreting some particular action as being rational or irrational, we are judging, first of all, the extent to which the action achieved its purpose.  If I wish to survive in the arctic, it would be irrational to shed my parka.  Very often, however, we are judging not only the action but the purpose itself.  If I point a gun at my fellow arctic voyager and force him to shed his parka, I may have achieved my purpose, but in a jury of my peers, some are apt to condemn both my action and its purpose as being contrary to the dictates of reason.  To them, murder (actual or attempted) is irrational.  Other jurors, though, might demur and view my action as fully rational—I knew what I was doing and intended to do it—but it was immoral, evil, wrong.

Untangling this dispute is difficult because the dispute reflects not just the definition of terms but complications in the history of our civilization.  In earlier times (and in Sorley’s view, and still today in many cultures) the intellectual consensus was that our reason perceives and acts upon both natural law and moral law.  Natural laws reflect and describe the order we find in the physical universe, while moral laws reflect and describe the order we find in the human universe, the world of human beings. At a very basic level, our language expresses this distinction in the difference between what “is” and what a person “ought to do” (we do not say, in any serious way, that rivers or bears “ought to” do anything).  Modernist materialism and postmodern hyper-skepticism, however, deny the real or objective or absolute existence of this moral order. In their worldview, there is no compelling evidence that such an order actually exists or even could exist, and therefore when we make moral judgments, we are only expressing our own opinion, our own subjective values.  There is, in this view, nothing more to be expressed.  Indeed, when materialism follows its own logic, it concludes that all our consciousness—including what may seem to us like reason and personal values—is actually only an epiphenomenon of electrical activity in our cerebral cortex:  an illusion.  Our personality, in the sense that Sorley and philosophers in general use the term, is an illusion.

Returning to the jurors trying my case:  Supposing they are not philosophers and don’t pay much attention to their worldviews, some of them may, perhaps unwittingly, assume the more traditional view that the moral order is real and that we can and should (ought to) obey it.  They will say that murder is both immoral and irrational:  irrational, that is, not in the sense of “without reason” (they think I did know what I was doing and did intend it) but “against reason” (rationality itself declares that I ought not to have done it).  At the other end of the spectrum, some materialist or postmodern jurors, holding, perhaps unwittingly, that moral values are purely subjective, may say that murder, along with crime in general, is a social problem or malfunction and ought to be dealt with as such.  Murder may be the ultimate social problem, but it cannot be more than a social problem because human society is not part of any higher order.  Some jurors may even think that murder is ipso facto evidence of mental illness; my action was irrational in the sense of “without reason,” and I ought to be subjected to psychiatric evaluation.  Still other jurors, perhaps the majority, will see-saw in their thinking between these two worldviews.

Notice that I have represented the materialist/postmodern jurors as thinking, just as much as the traditionalist jurors, that I “ought to” be treated in such-and-such a way.  From whence do they derive this “ought”?  Isn’t it rather like an atheist praying?  This question brings us to the heart of Sorley’s critique of materialist ethics.

Consider an extreme moral crime, such as the torture and murder of babies or children.  Is there anyone with a materialist/postmodern worldview who would think, “I consider such a thing terrible and absolutely unacceptable, but it might be all right for someone else to do it if it seems acceptable to them”?  Or would he or she be apt to think, “Our society condemns such behavior, but we have no grounds on which to condemn some other society in which torturing babies is regarded as acceptable behavior”?  These attitudes represent moral relativism taken to its extreme, and in fact you will find almost no sane person who thinks that way.  That being so, however, we are left with the question of the grounds on which the moral relativist does in fact condemn the heinous acts of other individuals or other societies.  The answer, I think, is that in practice we find that people’s thinking on such matters is usually inconsistent and confused.  In theory they might accept the modernist/postmodern worldview, while in practice they often forget the theory and borrow some absolute moral norms—like the atheist praying.  That people are inconsistent and confused is no revelation, but neither is it a good way to be.

But why?  Why do people whose worldview has no place for absolute ethics often feel the need to borrow them?  Sorley’s analysis of our human experience, I think, supplies the most probable answer.  In his description of our experience, as I noted above, our reason perceives and acts upon both natural law and moral law.  Natural laws reflect and describe the order we find in the physical universe, while moral laws reflect and describe the order we find in the human universe, the world of human beings.  The difference between natural and moral law is that objects in the natural universe (including our bodies) have no choice about whether to obey, for instance, the law of gravity.  Natural “laws” are really a generalized description of how objects in the natural universe do in fact interact with one another.  In the human universe, on the other hand, when we perceive a moral law—an “ought”—we always have the choice whether or not to obey it.  As persons, that is, we are free in a way in which, as objects, we are not.  We can and do choose how to interact with one another.  As persons we have capacities which merely natural objects do not have:  emotions, mind, will, and conscience.

Emotions, to some degree, we undoubtedly share with the higher animals. To what extent we share minds—the power to think—with them is impossible to determine with certainty, as I said before, due to the absence of communication; but the evidence we have suggests that, to any meaningful degree, we share it with ourselves alone (and, of course, if God exists, with God).  Our will is the specific capacity to make choices based on both our sensory information about our physical environment and our mental perception of the moral law—that is, both what we can do physically and what we ought to do, or refrain from doing, morally.  And our conscience is the capacity which directs our will in making moral choices; specifically, our concience tells our will to choose the good and reject the evil.  The extent to which we disobey our conscience is the measure of our moral corruption.

Our conscience, however, is vulnerable to prolonged opposition.  It weakens as our will hardens against it.  We become hardened in our pride or greed or bitterness or self-pity.  Without any change in this process—repentance—we die spiritually, losing the vital heart of our humanity.

I want to emphasize here, as Sorley also emphasizes, that what he describes as our universal human experience of moral values is not something that he, as a moral philosopher, is making up.  Human beings really do value such virtues as love, honesty, humility, faithfulness, kindness, mercy, and generosity.  We really do reprehend evils like deceitfulness, faithlessness, cowardice, and cruelty.  These are essential elements of our primary human experience.  To be sure, our perception of these values differs to some extent from one culture to another, but that circumstance reflects the same deficiency as does our personal failure to consistently follow our conscience.  We fall far short of perfect, that is, both as individuals and as societies, and there is variety in our imperfection.  (The Bible, of course, explains the reason for this, but Sorley bases his argument on human experience itself, apart from divine revelation.)  Our various individual and societal imperfections, however, by no means imply that moral values and moral law do not exist. Our longing, as human beings, for moral improvement, both personal and societal, itself implies a source and a goal for that longing.

According to Sorley, then, there is decisive evidence in human experience that an objective and absolute moral law exists.  But we humans are subjective (“I am”), finite, and morally imperfect.  Our moral values are subjective in the sense that they are our values, our personal perception of absolute moral value.  And they are relative in the sense that they have meaning only in relation to other persons—other humans or God—as well as in the sense that our achievement in living up to them is imperfect.  But they are not merely relative or merely subjective or merely societal.  We can arrive at this conclusion for two reasons, one positive and the other negative.

Positively—and this is the substance of Sorley’s main argument—our human experience considered and understood in its fullness supports, and indeed requires, the conclusion that an objective moral order exists.  Negatively, the course that the mainstream of philosophy, popular as well as formal, has taken in the century since Sorley wrote Moral Values and the Idea of God exemplifies the intellectual and existential problems entailed in the rejection of moral absolutes. The abandonment of absolute truth produces immediate intellectual incoherence (it’s true that nothing is true).  If there is only “my truth” and “your truth,” we are misusing language in identifying truth with opinion.  Insofar as “my truth” and “your truth” mean “my reality” and “your reality,” our worldview has shattered into endless fragments—which of course is exactly the world-view of postmodernism. Meaning itself has become meaningless. Human communication, essential to human personality, founders in the chaos of incoherence.

This incoherence spreads ruinously when all absolute moral values are abandoned.  We are left with an unstoppable reductionism, like Shakespeare’s “universal wolf” which eats everything until at last it eats itself (Troilus and Cressida, I, iii, 121-124).  Moral values are reduced to personal opinion or feeling or taste.  Human persons are reduced to just animals.  Animals are reduced to just complex objects.  Objects are reduced to atoms, atoms to quarks, quarks to quanta of mass/energy.  Even if those quanta have managed to evolve into a human brain, they still can’t attain to personality, because personality doesn’t exist to be attained.  The loss that we miss most in this reductionist orgy, I think, is exactly this loss of personality. But to retain personality—humanity—we must recognize that moral values exist, objectively and absolutely, and that we are subject to them.  They are over us, in a way that only the existence of God can adequately explain.

There are other possible worldviews besides the two under consideration here (Hinduism, for instance).  But between these two, the alternative is either/or.  There is no coherent compromise.  And the rejection of moral law itself produces incoherence.  Not only do moral values exist, but we, as human persons, can’t exist without them.

Justice: An Inner Dialog

by Jeff Treder

I’ve been chewing some more lately on the subject of justice, and have decided to objectify my inner conversation through a three-way dialog.  One of the participants I’ll call Righty, another Lefty, while I myself will serve as a sort of moderator.  All of the views expressed are ones that make sense to me; I can understand why someone would hold them.  As will be seen, I agree with some more than others, for reasons which will become clear as we go along.  

Jeff:  To consider the subject of justice, let’s take a clear-cut and serious example.  A man kidnaps, tortures, rapes, and murders a woman.  Afterward a man, allegedly the same, is arrested and charged.  There is eyewitness and DNA evidence against him, along with other strong circumstantial evidence.  There is little if any doubt that he did it.  If true justice were done in this case, what would be the outcome?

Righty:  Well, what does justice mean?  In my view it’s a moral concept having to do with what a person deserves or merits.  Wrongful actions inherently deserve hurtful consequences, just as right actions deserve praise and reward.  Ultimately this concept is rooted in the moral character of God as Creator and Judge of the universe.  It may survive the loss of belief in God, but I think in that case it will inevitably be weakened and compromised, continuously and increasingly.  As for your malefactor, justice dictates that he should reap what he has sown.  If he were a thief, he should be compelled to repay what he has stolen.  As a rapist and murderer, what he deserves is to be put to death.  The only question is whether his death should be easier than his victim’s or similarly painful.

Lefty:  Tortured to death?  That’s barbaric!  Anyway, you’re glossing over some serious issues here in your rush to judgment.  Our juridical axiom of “presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt” exists in order to protect the innocent from the overweening power of the State or the frenzy of a lynch mob.  The trouble with capital punishment is that it forecloses the question of doubt finally and forever.  The only standard that could justly sentence a defendant to death is “no doubt whatsoever,” and I don’t think it’s humanly possible to establish absolute certainty.  Even confessions can be false for any number of reasons.  And as for your thief, since you brought it up, what if he stole a million bucks and blew it all in a long Vegas weekend?  How could you make him repay?  Working on the road gang for minimum wage?  At $10 an hour it would take him 30 or 40 years to repay the million, all of which time he’d be living at public expense.

Righty:  Yes, just exactly why I think—

Jeff:  Whoa, we’re getting sidetracked here.  The thief is an interesting judicial problem, and maybe we can look at it later.  But let’s get back to our murderer.  Righty, what about this matter of the impossibility of establishing his guilt with absolute certainty?

Righty:  It’s an important consideration, I admit.  And since I believe in God, I am assured that this rapist/torturer/murderer will get exactly what he deserves in eternity, just as soon as he dies, whether that is sooner or later.  As Macbeth observed, however, “in these cases / We still have judgment here.”  Even if God is going to deal with us justly in eternity, we shouldn’t use that to evade our social responsibility, as I’m sure even Lefty will agree.  Now, I fully understand the “absolute certainty” argument against capital punishment, but I don’t agree with it.  If the jury is unanimously convinced by the evidence as far as is humanly possible—that is, if they are humanly certain—that he is guilty as charged, then he should be executed.  Notice that this raises the bar higher than “beyond a reasonable doubt” while still not requiring godlike certainty.

Lefty:  I take your point but I don’t agree with it.  Condemning someone to death does amount to playing God, for all your hairsplitting.

Righty:  No, it’s doing our human best to give the convicted man, his victim, her family and loved ones, and our society what they all deserve.  It’s making our best approximation to divine justice, which is what I think we’re supposed to do.

Lefty:  Since you’re so fond of divine justice, why not pay attention to what Jesus said:  “Do not judge lest you be judged.”(Matt.7:1)  “Let him who is without sin among you cast the first stone.”(John 8:7)

Righty:  You’re quoting those out of context.  The first one has to do with personal relationships, not public justice.  The second one came when Jesus was interrupting a lynch mob—well, a stoning mob, anyway another kind of injustice.  Context, my friend, context!

Jeff:  All right, you two aren’t going to agree on this, but I think you’re both making good points, and at least we’ve clarified where you both stand.  But Lefty, what about this matter of “just deserts”?  Do you think that some kind of absolute justice exists, whether or not it’s rooted in God’s character?

Lefty:  I’m rather agnostic when it comes to absolutes.  They may exist, just as God may, but I don’t think we have any reliable way of knowing that they exist or just exactly what they are.  As the philosophers like to put it, we humans are inescapably contingent beings (I’ll sidestep confusing the issue with “absolutely contingent”).  Our knowledge, even at its best and fullest, is necessarily incomplete and imperfect.  Our mental awareness and acuity appear to be evolving along with our physical form, but evolution is an extremely gradual process.

Jeff:  So there’s no such thing as absolute justice?

Lefty:  Not in our world, at any rate.  We do our best according to the moral understanding we have developed over the centuries.  Overall, I think our understanding has steadily improved, extremes and aberrations like Nazism and Communism notwithstanding.  The world over, it’s safe to say, our sense of justice today is far more refined and enlightened than that of, say, the Babylonian or Roman or Mongol empires, or Europe during the middle ages.

Righty:  Sorry, that’s self-serving nonsense, because without any absolutes, you have no benchmark by which to measure moral progress.  What does “more refined and enlightened” mean if it doesn’t mean progressing toward some defined goal?  If it means nothing more than that’s how it seems to you, then it’s merely a matter of opinion.  I’ve no doubt that the Romans or Mongols would have preferred their brand of justice to yours, and who’s to say which is better?  What does “better” mean when there’s no benchmark?  Moral relativism may give some people like yourself comfortable feelings of superiority, but those feelings rest on a will o’ the wisp.  

Lefty:  Sorry (back at you!), but the truth is that all our feelings and judgments rest on a will o’ the wisp.  Your precious absolutes are the ultimate mirage.  We humans make it up as we go along—always have, always will.  Our ability to conceive of perfections and absolutes is simply an indication of the extent to which our minds have evolved so far.  To be able to imagine something, however, in no way establishes that such a thing actually exists.  Unicorns!  Leprechauns!

Jeff:  Excuse me, but aren’t we wandering from the subject?

Righty:  Not at all.  He’s saying we have no grounds on which to judge and punish our rapist creep except that we—we enlightened ones, that is, or maybe even we the majority —don’t happen to like what he did.  It offends our moral sense.  What moral sense is that, you ask, and where did it come from?  Well, it just evolved along with the chimps, or as Lefty here puts it, we just made it up.

Lefty:  Rinse out your sneering tone of voice and I’d say that you, even you, have managed to get it pritnear right.  Given, as I believe, that your Ten Commandments or whatever other absolutes you may prefer are just as “made up” as every other moral idea that humans have ever come up with, you have stated my case fairly enough.  Prior to the Enlightenment it was almost universally assumed, in the West at least, that kings rule by divine right and judges (the king’s appointees) judge according to divinely given rules.  That was the theory; the practice was even worse.  Since the Enlightenment we have generally understood that human societies are the result of a social contract, a contract that works better when people enter into it knowledgeably and willingly.  In earlier times, and still in many places today, the contract was effectively limited to a small elite of the rich and powerful.  The spread of democracy is the cure for that disease—not a perfect cure but the best we have.  Only to the extent that democracy—of the people, by the people, and for the people—flourishes, only to that extent can we achieve any meaningful social justice.

Righty:  Eloquent, but even Lincoln believed that genuine justice must be grounded in God’s character and supremacy—see his Second Inaugural Address.  Democracy is fine, I’m all for it, but true justice can only be manifested in any society, democratic or otherwise, to the extent that we adhere to divinely revealed moral absolutes.  Get into that relative ethics quagmire and you’ll find some crafty defense lawyer having his way with a morally confused and debased jury, while a liberal judge smiles and nods, and your torturing, murdering thug gets off with a highly flexible prison sentence, thank you very much.

Lefty:  Divinely revealed?  Has the separation of church and state just become unseparated?

Righty:  Ah yes, the celebrated wall of separation.  Bill of Rights, right?

Lefty:  No, my tricky friend, the phrase comes from a letter of Thomas Jefferson.  But it has become accepted over time, particularly through Supreme Court decisions, as the cornerstone of our understanding of the first amendment’s establishment clause.

Righty:  Let’s see.  The first amendment reads, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.…”  Jefferson’s statement about a wall of separation between church and state was made in an 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptist Association of Connecticut.  The Baptists had heard a rumor that the Congregationalists, another denomination, were going to be established as the national religion.  This was alarming to people whose forbears had emigrated in order to escape persecution by the established Church of England.  Jefferson made it clear in his letter that the meaning and intent of the separation was that the government would not establish a state church or otherwise legislate anyone’s religion.

Lefty:  And likewise no religious group could call the shots in the political arena.

Righty:  Correct. No shot calling. But that doesn’t mean having no voice or no influence.  Free exercise!  The main thing here, though, is that your “cornerstone” of our understanding of the establishment clause exists only in this presidential letter.  It has no constitutional basis, in spite of the efforts of some modern jurists to twist freedom of religion into freedom from religion.

Lefty:  Religion is essentially a private thing, a matter of individual conscience.  It should be kept separate from the arena of public policy, both to protect religion from government interference and to protect public policy from sectarian wrangling and “faith-based” legislation—a prospect whose possibilities one shudders to imagine.

Righty:  Your thinking is seriously confused, as usual.  Religious beliefs, like political opinions, are both private and public—privately formed and publicly expressed.  (In both religion and politics, of course, some people are more expressive than others.)  Everyone has religious beliefs.  Even atheism is a religious belief:  “no God.”  Everyone, in other words, has fundamental presuppositions about the nature of life and reality.  These beliefs may be vague, perfunctory and unexamined; they may be adopted uncritically from one’s family or social group; but every mentally competent adult has them.  They are basic to our humanity.  Furthermore, our moral ideas depend directly on these fundamental beliefs.  The Buddhist’s moral thinking is based on his Buddhist worldview, the Christian’s on his Christian worldview, and the atheist’s on his atheistic worldview.  Even legislators legislate according to their personal moral framework, which derives from their basic beliefs.  In this regard, private and public form a seamless, unbreakable continuum.  I too get nightmares about faith-based legislation when the faith is godless and therefore morally ungrounded.

Lefty:  No, no, it’s you who are confused.  “Faith” in this context means belief in some unseen, unseeable, supernatural realm.  The secular person, whom you stigmatize by the loaded term “atheist,” simply bases his thinking, his worldview as you put it, on the world we can all see, hear and touch, the empirical world.  This is the worldview we all share in common; it unites us, whereas religious beliefs, just because they are intangible and untestable, tend to divide us.  This secular, empirical worldview is foundational to modern science, with its incomparable success in increasing human knowledge (exponentially) and enhancing human well-being.  And because this secular worldview is what we all have in common, it’s what our public policy ought to be based on.  Basing public policy on sectarian religious beliefs would lead in short order to chaos, lunacy, and probably civil war.

Righty:  No, no, NO!  You don’t see it, do you?  You’re saying we all share your secular worldview, but most emphatically, brother, we don’t!  Well of course, we all perceive the same natural world—we do have that in common.  But that doesn’t define my worldview or that of most human beings.  There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your (secular) philosophy, Horatio.  From my point of view, you’re walking through life with blinders on.

Jeff:  OK, OK, all this is pertinent, I realize, but we do need to bring the focus back to our alleged malefactor at some point.  As a Christian, I agree with Righty that the secular (or atheistic or agnostic) worldview is just one among many, that it too is based on a belief system, and that it has no grounds for privilege in the public arena.  Until quite recently natural science was based on a theistic worldview, and even today many scientists are theists.  But what does all this have to do with the question of justice as it pertains to the man in the dock?

Lefty:  Justice!  I’m glad you brought it up.  Your example is a bad man who is almost certainly guilty of vicious crimes.  In most American courts today he will receive a severe sentence, probably life imprisonment.  Righty’s scenario of a slap on the hand is an alarmist fantasy; the O.J. Simpson case was a rare and unfortunately high-profile aberration, and the problem there was botched police work.  In many countries today our man would be executed for either the rape or the murder.  But I have a problem with such a man being used as the example on the question of justice.  Far more important, it seems to me, are the billions (literally) of people who have committed no serious crime and yet are treated unjustly by a sordid alliance of corrupt governments and wealthy corporations, as well as oppressive religious regimes and entrenched racism.  At least half of the women and children in the world are treated unjustly—what about them?  I call this positive justice, and its gross deficiency is a much worse problem than your example of negative justice.

Righty:  Your idea of positive and negative justice, again, only confuses things.  It’s all justice pure and simple—or injustice.  I agree that many and perhaps most of the world’s people are dealt a bad hand, but whose fault is that, and what do you propose to do about it?

Lefty:  Whose fault!  If your God exists, it’s his fault to start with.  But that’s hypothetical.  The obvious answer, of course, is that it’s the fault of all the corrupt, brutal, self-serving officials along with their pals, the blood-sucking plutocrats.  Political revolution is always a tempting solution, but in practice that usually winds up trading one set of oppressors for another.  As I said before, the spread of democracy seems to be the best available solution in an imperfect world.

Righty:  Two points in rebuttal.  First, when God created the first humans he gave them a perfect world.  Their rebellion and that of everyone since them is responsible for all the subsequent misery.  God, in Jesus Christ, is the solution, not the problem (Bible primer lesson).  Second, I have a hard time taking all your moral hand-wringing seriously for the same reason I’ve already given:  you’re playing tennis without a net, or trying to tell time with no numbers on the clock face.  The clock is round, and how can you tell which end is up?  You can’t.  As you’ve admitted, your idea of morality is that we make it up as we go along.  You think we’re getting progressively better at it, but that’s just your opinion and the opinion of like-minded folk.  Where everything is relative, well, everything is relative.  When there’s no way to orient the clock, Nero’s or Joe McCarthy’s version of the correct time is as good or bad a guess as yours.  Your moral compass says that way is north, and you follow it without realizing that the magnet has failed and the arrow is meandering.  When you give up moral absolutes, the lights have gone out and you’re groping in the dark.  What partial light you do enjoy comes from the fading sunset of the God you’ve stopped believing.

Lefty:  Please, stop multiplying metaphors and tell us what your solution to rampant injustice is, if any.

Righty:  I agree with you that democracy—I would specify the American form of democracy—is the political system which tends to maximize justice and minimize injustice.  And I agree that ours is a very imperfect world where even the relatively best political system will be laced with injustice; but I think I have a more accurate understanding of just why that is.  When people reject God and opt for self-interest, self-aggrandizement and self-righteousness, rampant injustice “follows as the night the day.”  There is no solution apart from repenting and returning to God.

Lefty:  I can hardly believe this.  Are you actually saying that there is no way we can improve our political and social arrangements, and therefore the only answer is to light a candle and murmur Hail Mary’s?  Why that God and not some other—Allah or Krishna or Jupiter?  Religion has succeeded in holding back progress for countless centuries and in many parts of the world still does, and religion is your solution?  Sorry, but you’ve lost my vote.

Jeff:  All right, it’s clear that you two will never be on the same ticket.  I think it’s time for some summing up.  Lefty, I think your heart’s in the right place, but your logic, at least when it comes to ultimate issues, is Swiss cheese.  Righty, I tend to agree with you more, simply because I believe in God as you do.  Your logic is strong, but I wish you could match Lefty’s concern for the injustices (real, absolute) inflicted perennially on the poor and weak by the rich and strong..  If you did, you would be following Jesus more closely.

It has become quite clear that the main thing that divides you two is, as Righty put it, your worldviews.  And the decisive difference there is whether or not you recognize (acknowledge, believe in, take into account, revere) God.  But Lefty’s question is a good one:  Why the Christian God and not some other?

A god is by definition a supernatural being.  The God of the Bible is, in addition, a being of infinite knowledge and power.  The only way we could possibly have trustworthy information about such a being—the biblical God or any other—is by revelation.  The reason I believe the biblical God is that his self-revelation in the created universe, in human history, and in the Bible itself (that unique and incomparable book) is immeasurably more rationally convincing and emotionally and spiritually satisfying than any other alleged divine revelation.  And, equally, it is more rationally convincing than any argument I’ve ever seen attempting to discredit it on skeptical or naturalistic grounds.

God is also the one who reveals and establishes moral absolutes:  love, mercy, honesty, truth, purity, justice.  Righty’s reasoning about the ultimate futility of a moral code with no absolutes—the endless ambiguities and uncertainty, the self-deceptions, the reduction of moral principle to mere opinion—seems to me unanswerable.  At least I have yet to encounter a convincing response.  How can you orient the clock to tell the time?  How can you navigate with a demagnetized compass?  As Dostoevsky put it, if God is dead, everything is permissible.  Who is to say otherwise, and with what authority?  Big Brother can declare that love is hate and war is peace, and what can the moral relativist reply?  I don’t agree?  I don’t like that?  What he can’t say is, That is wrong.  “Wrong” is a moral absolute.  Even “relatively wrong” is meaningful only if it means “approximating absolute wrongness.”  Another try is to say that we determine our moral standards by societal consensus, but that doesn’t work either, because it merely substitutes group opinion for personal opinion.  Anyway, who besides teenage girls wants to be ruled by groupthink?

The determined moral relativist, I suspect, will finally say something like, “Since there are no moral absolutes (because all alleged divine revelation is actually human imagining), it’s true that the ultimate source of all moral reasoning and moral standards is a person’s own reasoning and standards.  Morality is ultimately personal.  Social morality becomes coherent and workable insofar as people are able to agree on it.  That’s the way it is, and I’m comfortable with it.  It isn’t perfect, but nothing else is either.”

I understand this point of view, but I think it’s philosophically dubious owing to the orientation problem.  It leaves us having to say that Hitler wasn’t evil or wrong, his values were just different from ours.  Which reminds me of that saying, “Different is different, not better or worse.”  It’s a wise saying when the subject is non-moral, like one’s taste in food or clothing—de gustibus non disputandem.  On moral matters, though, it leads to “anything goes.”

This brings us back to our indicted rapist-murderer.  Because Lefty doesn’t believe in moral absolutes, he’s loath to “play God” by allowing for capital punishment.  More generally, I think, moral relativists tend to be uneasy with punishment per se, probably because it’s linked logically with justice, and justice is only truly meaningful when understood as an absolute. “Relatively just” means nothing unless it means approximating true, absolute justice.  Since I do believe in absolute justice, rooted in the justice of God, I agree with Righty’s view that “if the jury is unanimously convinced by the evidence as far as is humanly possible—that is, if they are humanly certain—that he is guilty as charged, then he should be executed.”  I also agree with his explanation that we would thus be “doing our human best to give the convicted man, his victim, her family and loved ones, and our society what they all deserve.  It’s making our best approximation to divine justice, which is what I think we’re supposed to do.”  It’s not a perfect solution, but as both my alter egos acknowledged, it’s not a perfect world.  It is, however, the best available solution.  Since he took a life, he should surrender his own life.  Besides, that way he will never again have the opportunity to harm anyone else, which wouldn’t be the case if he spent 30 or 40 years in prison (at public expense) or out on parole.

In an imperfect world, I agree with both my alter egos that democracy is our best available form of government.  As Winston Churchill pithily put it, “It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.”  In a democracy more or less evenly divided between moral absolutists and moral relativists, it will be hard to find any consistent agreement on practical justice, especially in the extreme case of murder and capital punishment.  So the debate will go on.  Which is better than having debate foreclosed by anyone except God himself.

Snow White

Snow White and the Seven Sins

by Jeff Treder

Author’s note:  The Seven Sins as named in this story are those identified by the medieval Catholic Church as the seven “cardinal sins.”  Even today it would be hard to improve on their selection.

Once upon a time a king and queen had a baby daughter.  The King was busy with regal matters so he left the naming of the child to the Queen.  The Queen was the sort of person who would name a girl Snow White—she was vain, pretentious, and silly—and so she did.

Little Snow White turned out to be a very pretty girl with appropriately blonde hair, and the Queen did her utmost to rub her own vanity off onto her daughter.  She dressed her in the fanciest clothes, fixed her hair a hundred different ways, had the court painter incessantly doing portraits of her, and told her six times a day that she was the prettiest girl in the kingdom.  As Snow White was only human, she naturally blossomed into a conceited snob.

One day the Queen died of a bad temper.  The King wore black for a while but could hardly help being relieved.  Snow White now needed a stepmother, and the King resolved to do better this time.

And so he did.  He married the sweetest, nicest, kindest stepmother in the whole kingdom.  She was modest, good-natured, cheerful, and generous—in every way the opposite of the former queen.

Snow White couldn’t stand the new Queen.  The woman was impossible—she simply wouldn’t understand what a very special person Snow White was, and she stubbornly refused to attend to Snow White’s special needs and desires.  No matter how much Snow White pouted and whined and screamed, her wretched stepmother went on smiling and being kind and reasonable.  Finally Snow White could endure it no longer.  She threw a mallet and a vase at her stepmother (they missed) and ran out of the castle, shrieking that she was going to hide in the forest and never come back.

She was so worked up about it that she ran until she really was lost.  The forest was dark and dense, with tangles and twigs and thorns that clutched at her and tore her dress, and strange noises that tormented her.  Now Snow White was genuinely frightened and miserable.  She stumbled and thrashed her way through the underbrush, bawling all the while.  The little forest animals didn’t know what to make of her.

Presently she came to a clearing where there stood a little old cottage.  Instead of being cute and quaint and colorful, however, it was grim and gray and run-down, with cobwebs in the windows and bats flitting round about it.  Snow White wasn’t at all sure she liked the looks of it.  But she was desperate, so she went warily up to the door and knocked.

There was no answer
.
She knocked again, and the door creaked and sagged and fell open.  Snow White jumped back as a few more bats flew out through the doorway.  Then she approached again and peered inside.  In the dim light she could just make out some dirty, ragged old furniture and a lot more cobwebs with spiders attached.  She was just deciding that the cottage must be abandoned when she heard an awful sound coming from the forest, a kind of wailing and moaning of many voices singing different songs all out of tune.  It got louder and closer, until suddenly a procession of figures emerged from the forest, kicking up dust and shoving each other as they wailed their songs.

Snow White shrank inside the doorway as these strange figures approached the cottage.  Each one looked different from the others, but they all were hideous—so gruesomely ugly that she couldn’t even tell whether they were men or women.  She cringed in horror at the sight of them; and yet she watched with a certain fascination.  Strange as it might seem, she had grown by this time to be more attracted to ugliness than to beauty.

It was with mingled horror and fascination, then, that she saw these seven figures come up to the door and halt.

“What is this?” cried one.  “Our door stands open!”

“Burglars!” yelled another, “Thieves!  Robbers!”

“Are they still here?”

“If they are,” another one screamed, “we’ll fry them in bacon grease and boil them in vinegar!”

Snow White was alarmed at this and called out, “No—wait—it’s only me, Snow White.”  And she stepped out where they could see her
.
“Ah,” said one, “Snow White.  Yes, it is you, isn’t it.  We have been expecting you, my darling.  Why have you waited so long to come and visit us?”

Snow White began to stammer something when another of the creatures interrupted her.  “That’s all right, dearie.  You’re here now, that’s what counts.  Come into our humble dwelling and make yourself right at home.”

“Welcome!” cried another with a coughing, cackling laugh.  And they all crowded around her and pawed at her and pushed her into the middle of the room and slammed the door.  Some candles were lit.  The creatures surrounded her, leering and muttering and snickering and winking.  She brushed off her dress and tidied her hair and tried to assume the haughty dignity that she thought befits a princess.

“The time has come,” said one of them, “for introductions.  We know who you are but you don’t know who we are.  Like you, we are all very special people, very special indeed.  And I am the most special of all.  I am called Envy.”

The creature called Envy bowed and grinned.  It was gaunt and emaciated, with large, dark, haunted eyes.  It had sharp-pointed teeth, and its long fingernails, painted crimson, resembled bloody claws.  Its whole body was laced and looped and encrusted with costume jewelry.  It reeked of cheap perfume.

“You have many things to learn from me,” Envy went on in a nervous whine.  “I will teach you to notice things.  You will learn to observe and assess the beauty, wit, and wealth of other people.  This will become a consuming passion with you.  You will never be content as long as anyone else has anything worth having.  You will dream of the day when all of it is yours, and scheme about how you can poison the happiness of others in the meantime.  Yes, my dear, there are many things you will learn from me.”

“That’s enough!” shouted another, shouldering Envy aside.  “Give somebody else a chance to talk!  Like me, for instance.  Take a good look at me, sweetheart:  I’m Anger.”

Anger never stood still, but was forever fuming and gnashing its teeth and kicking chairs and grabbing at flies and squashing beetles.  Snow White could never seem to get a good look at it.  What she noticed most were its flashing eyes.

“Listen to me, kid,” Anger growled, “and I’ll give you some good advice.  Don’t ever listen to what people say, all their reasons and excuses and apologies.  That’s all bunk.  Blast ‘em to bits—that’s what they deserve.  Take that goody-goody stepmother of yours.  If I were you I’d throw a brick at her.  Serve her right.”

Snow White was about to say that she had already thrown a mallet and a vase at her when a cold-eyed, black-clad figure spoke in a cold voice.

“There are other methods that are more rational and efficient.  Find out what things are important to her, and deprive her of them.  If she likes companionship, drive away her friends.  If she values quiet, give her constant noise.  If she enjoys flowers, tear out all the flowers in her garden.  Then she will soon enough learn to know misery as you know it.  I am Cruelty:  I speak from experience.”

“I believe it is my turn now,” said another creature, an obese, bloated one with squinty eyes and puffy fingers.  A diamond-studded tuxedo was stretched taut over its bulging flesh.

“I am Greed, and my advice is better than any you have yet heard because it is concerned with no one but yourself.  What do you care for your stepmother?  Forget about her.  Think about yourself, your own needs and desires.  Think of all the things you want, the things you deserve.  Think of fine clothes and precious jewelry, the richest foods and choicest wines.  Think of the money that will buy all this and more, much, much more.  Contemplate that money, dream of it.  When your desire for it is strong enough to consume your heart, nothing will stand in your way.”

Greed finished speaking and licked its fat lips.  Next to it was a figure slouched in a chair, with long stringy hair, black teeth, and long black fingernails.  It made a wan gesture and spoke wearily.

“What’s the use of it all?  Really, girl, doesn’t it exhaust you just listening to these demons?  They call me Laziness and think it an insult.  But what does all their flurry get them?  Worn out, that’s what.  If you’re really your own master, why make it hard on yourself?  Take it easy—take everything easy.  That’s all I have to say.”

“I beg your pardon,” said another, “but honestly, you have no self-respect.  Allow me to introduce myself, my dear.  I am Hypocrisy.”

Hypocrisy gave a sweeping, old-fashioned bow.  It wore a mask that was something like a Buddha, something like a death mask.  It was tall and stooped, wearing a shiny robe that reflected everything like a shimmering mirror.

“I believe I know your heart as well as I know my own.  What you desire above all is success in the eyes of the world:  to have all those whose opinions really matter fear you and admire you.  If they fear and admire you enough, they will line up trying to please you.  What you must do is always show them the face best calculated to inspire fear and admiration.  Never show weakness, never admit a fault.  I know it works, for I too speak from experience.”

Snow White was much impressed with all of these, but it was the seventh one that took her breath away.  It was even taller than Hypocrisy, with a flinty countenance and shadowed brow:  the visage of a darkened angel.  It was clad from shoulder to foot in a velvety purple robe.  It fixed Snow White with a commanding eye and spoke in a voice of silk and steel.

“My children do not always agree among themselves, but they all agree with me.  I am the source.  I am Pride.  I do not offer advice.  I do not need to entice my followers.  These that you see are merely the first generation of my children.  Beyond them are millions upon millions.  And you are one.”

Snow White could scarcely find her voice.  “How can that be?” she whispered.  “My parents are the King and Queen.”

“You have long since turned against them in your heart.  You have chosen to follow me.  You are my true child.”

Snow White didn’t know whether to be flattered or ashamed or elated or terrified, so she was all of these at once.

“Look at her, though,” muttered Envy, “fancy clothes and all.  Must think she’s still the apple of somebody’s eye.”

“She’ll learn her place soon enough,” sighed Hypocrisy.

“We’ll teach her!” growled Anger.

“What do you mean?” cried Snow White.

Cruelty took her by the shoulders and turned her toward the sink, where she saw pile upon pile of greasy, filthy, moldy dishes and pots.  They towered up into the spidery darkness near the ceiling.

Snow White gasped and shook her head.

“You have to work your way up in this organization, darling,” Greed smiled.

“Exhausting but true,” yawned Laziness.

So from that moment forth and for a considerable time, Snow White learned the meaning of labor.  From dawn till dusk and late into the night she washed, scrubbed, scraped, rubbed, lifted, tugged, scoured, brushed, swept, mopped, and dusted.  But the more she did the worse it seemed to get.  The piles of dirty dishes grew larger instead of smaller.  The shelves and tables and floors got more and more filthy.  And the filthier things got, the more the others yelled at her to work harder.  Anger kicked her and Envy spat at her.  They all told her how lucky she was to be there.  She should show more gratitude.

Snow White was too tired to be grateful.

Meanwhile, back at the castle, the kindly Queen was sparing no effort in trying to find her, but all to no avail, until one day when an old appleseller named Humbert said he had found out that she was living in a cottage deep in the forest.  The Queen at once prepared to send her best soldiers and woodsmen into the forest to rescue Snow White.

But Humbert said, “I’m afraid, your Highness, that she won’t come willingly.”

The Queen was saddened by this, for she was reluctant to use force.

“However,” Humbert went on, “I have an apple here that may be just the thing.  A very rare apple it is, for it grows on but one tree in the world.  It is called the Apple of Repentance.  If your Highness will permit, I will be glad to see if I can persuade her to eat it.”

The Queen sent him off with her blessing.  After a day’s journey through the forest, he arrived at the dilapidated cottage and knocked on the door.  Snow White, being the only one there at the time, answered it.
“Yeah,” she snapped, wiping her grimy brow with a greasy sleeve, “what is it?”

Humbert bowed.  “Apples for sale, Milady—round, red, cool, juicy apples.”

“Got no time for apples,” she said and started to shut the door.

“Ah, but this one,” he continued, “this one is a rare apple indeed.  Whoever eats the whole of it is sure to live happily ever after.”

This caught her attention.  “Happily … ever … after …” she muttered to herself.  In truth, no matter what the others said, and no matter how she tried to kid herself, she was not happy living in the cottage.  Most of the time, in fact, she was bone-weary, frustrated, and furious—but too daunted by Pride and Cruelty to show her fury.

“How do I know it’ll work?” she demanded.  “How do I know it isn’t poisoned?”

“Milady, if this apple fails to bring you true happiness, you may take this head from my shoulders.”

“You better believe I will, too,” she snarled.  “All right, how much is it?”

“Consider it a free gift,” he said, handing it to her.

She turned it in her hand and scrutinized it skeptically.  “It better work,” she grumbled.  And she took a bite.

“Ugh!  It tastes awful!” she coughed.  “It is poisoned!”

“I assure you, on pain of my life, it is not poisoned.  It will offend your sense of taste, since you have lived so long in this cottage.”

“But it isn’t making me any happier!”

“Ah,” said Humbert, “remember:  you must eat the whole of it.”

Snow White was not at all sure she trusted him, but her life in the cottage had made her long for genuine happiness in the worst way, even if it meant eating a bitter apple.  Even, in fact, at the risk of eating a poisoned apple.  So she chewed it up and  choked it down.

And now she knew she was poisoned.  Her whole body, from the inside out, was wracked with excruciating aches and burning pains.  She fell to the ground writhing and groaning.  But she gasped:  “I’d … rather … die … than …” and she fainted into a deep sleep.

Humbert lifted her onto his apple wagon and carried her on the long journey through the forest back to the castle.  The King her father and the Queen her stepmother rejoiced to have her back but feared lest she should never awaken from her slumber.

“She will awaken into new life and joy,” Humbert told them, “only when she is kissed by the True Prince, the son of the King of all kings.”

Months passed.  Autumn turned to winter and winter to early spring, and Snow White slept.

One day in April the True Prince rode up to the castle on a spirited stallion.  One look at him and the King and Queen knew he was the promised deliverer.  He came up to the bed where Snow White lay and looked upon her.  In sleep she had grown more beautiful than ever before, and a peace she had never known was in her face.  The True Prince loved her and felt compassion for her.  He bent down and kissed her lips.
She opened her eyes.  “It’s you,” she said.  And she loved him.

All the people of the kingdom feasted and celebrated for seven days when Snow White wed the True Prince.  Then he took her into his own kingdom and they lived

Happily … Ever … After.

The Loser

The Loser

By Jeff Treder


One thing that was going on throughout Jesus’ time on earth was contention with demonic forces.  From the flight into Egypt to avoid Herod’s paranoid brutality, to the temptation in the wilderness, to all-night prayer vigils, to casting demons out of people, to Gethsemane and Calvary, the struggle against Satanic evil was a constant in Jesus’ life.  It was, after all, the center of his purpose in coming to earth, to free humanity from our bondage to sin.  We are used to seeing the great rescue mission from our own point of view, that of the captives being delivered.  Sometimes we try to imagine what it might have been like for the Father, watching his beloved Son suffer through humiliation, torture, and grisly death.  But what did the whole thing look like from the Satanic point of view?  Maybe something like this:

The Satanic High Council knew the prophecies as well as anyone, and so they were on high alert status as the time for Messiah’s appearance drew near.  They had covered every plausible contingency, and so it cannot be held against them that their implacable adversary chose a wholly implausible way for Messiah to enter the stage of human history.  It was, indeed, the sneakiest and most undignified plan ever concocted, to have him who is supposedly King of kings be born to common peasants in a smelly barn.  The whole thing smelled to low hades like a false alarm.

If this chicanery took the High Council by surprise, however, they were quick to take advantage of it and seize the high ground.  With their customary vigilance, they had installed one of their own as king in Judea—under the Romans, to be sure, but Rome was under their sway as well.  So Herod promptly ordered the slaughter of all male infants.  Unfortunately, the peasant parents somehow caught wind of this and spirited the infant Jesus away to Egypt.  But the very fact that they were already reduced to such desperate measures must have made it obvious to them that their clever scheme was doomed from the outset.

Some time later, when the peasant couple thought it might be safe again, they snuck back home to their village of Nazareth.  This time the High Council was fully aware of their every move, and deliberated carefully what the wisest course would be.  It quickly became apparent that the foolish peasants were playing right into their hands, dragging this would-be Messiah off to a dusty hole like Nazareth.  It wasn’t even on the map!  There were smiles all around the Council.

Years passed, then decades.  Events, or the lack of them, had clearly demonstrated the High Council’s wisdom.  Yet they were wise enough not to let success lull them into complacency.  Their spies in Nazareth filed regular reports, though in truth these were dull enough.  Jesus was a sickeningly good boy, cheerful and dutiful and hardworking in the carpentry shop.  The spies were bored and disgusted.  But the High Council was satisfied.  A goody-goody peasant laborer was hardly a threat to Caesar.  As Messiah material, definitely a non-starter.

Around thirty years after the baby-born-in-barn fiasco, a humorless rabble-rouser named John started raising a ruckus, calling on the people to repent because the kingdom of God was near at hand and the long-awaited Messiah was about to be revealed.  The High Council kept a close eye on this scruffy blowhard, but were not much concerned.  Although he attracted quite a following, most of them were no-account riffraff just like him.

But then, right out of the blue, he pointed to Jesus, that ill-bred, uneducated nobody from nowhere, and hailed him as the true Messiah!  This time the High Council was right on top of things and quickly sized up the situation:  one shabby non-prophet plus one pathetic non-Messiah adds up to zero.  As John was baptizing Jesus, however, another bolt from the blue!  A voice rang out from the heavens, declaring:  “This is my beloved Son!”  And out of heights beyond seeing, a white dove circled down and settled on the dripping carpenter from Nazareth.

At the sound of that voice, a wave of panic and dread swept through the Council, but they rallied valiantly and didn’t let it show.  Was it possible?  If so, it meant that the Unmentionable One was up to something very strange indeed.  But as they studied this odd turn of events, they soon realized that nothing really had changed—or if it had, the change was in their favor.  Their adversary had tipped his hand and showed it was a loser.  The only reason the Council hadn’t foreseen this strategy was that it was such a no-brainer.  And now the Unmentionable One was committed to it!

Naturally the High Council surrounded Jesus with spies from this point on.  His first move was totally pointless:  He wandered out into the desert—alone, exposed, defenseless.  Such a juicy opportunity demanded a maximum counterstroke, and so Satan himself, the All-Wise and Magnificently Exalted Grand Imperial Potentate and Supreme Leader of the High Council, announced that he would handle it in person.  For several weeks he toyed with Jesus—the poor dope hadn’t even thought to bring along any food or water!  Employing all the cleverest temptations, he twisted him around every finger on both claws.  Even though Jesus turned out to be obstinate and ornery beyond belief, Satan was able to report back to the Council that they had definitely sent this ragtag Messiah a message.

Jesus’ next move confirmed this.  Undoubtedly shaken by his close brush with catastrophe, he shied away from the cities and made no attempt to recruit supporters among people of power and influence.  He gathered around himself a group of mostly illiterate losers just like himself and began teaching them a lot of absurd notions about turning the other cheek and giving away your flea-bitten clothing.  The High Council was well satisfied with this.  Wisely taking no chances, however, they sent their agents out on thousands of missions with the task of prejudicing the religious leadership against Jesus.  This turned out to be even easier than they thought.  And, in a brilliant coup, they even managed to infiltrate an agent of their own into his inner circle—and the fools gave this two-timer charge over their money!

Not everything went so easily for the High Council, though.  In spite of all the infernal battalions opposing him, Jesus allegedly performed many impressive miracles and was able to attract crowds by the thousands.  But the miracles were mostly witnessed only by the worthless rabble, and who cared how many of them he impressed?  All in all, the Council was pleased with the success of their strategy of forcing the Unmentionable One’s openly heralded Messiah over into the margins of society, where he could pose no real threat to their establishment.

After a while, however, they grew tired of this one-sided game and decided to end it.  They would show, once for all, the folly of their adversary’s strategy, and they would swat his pitiful Messiah like a fly.

So they jerked Judas’s chain and he betrayed Jesus to the Jewish authorities.  The upstart carpenter was arrested, roughed up, taunted, and interrogated through the night, and that was just for warmups.  In the morning they turned the soldiers loose to whip him with studded thongs until his shoulders and back were shredded and bloody.  Then they forced a wreath woven from thorns down onto his head so the thorns dug into his scalp.
 
They led him before the Roman governor, who wondered why these demented Jews bothered him with such a paltry criminal.  Jesus said little in response to the charges beyond mentioning to his captors that legions of heavenly warriors stood ready to rescue him, if once given the word.  This shook the High Council momentarily, until they saw that no such thing was happening, and realized he was bluffing!

Then they licked their lips and got down to the real business.  Jesus was condemned to be crucified, a method of torture designed to maximize suffering and degradation, reserved for slaves and the vilest criminals.  The mob was whipped up into a frenzy of blood lust.  The soldiers made Jesus drag his own cross up to Calvary hill, then threw him down on it and started hammering the spikes through his hands and feet.

At this point, something utterly new, utterly mysterious, began to happen.  With each blow of the hammer, the High Council’s authority over the earth was shaken, and as it was shaken it began to slip and loosen.  The soldier wielding the hammer, of course, knew nothing of this.  The Council members themselves might have noticed it—and if they had, they would certainly have declared a major emergency.  But by this time they were too entranced and intoxicated with their orgy of vengeance.

Jesus was lifted up on the cross between two condemned thieves.  For this spectacle, the Council had summoned all the demonic armies to bear witness, and now thousands upon thousands of them screamed themselves hoarse.  Long had they waited and struggled and fought for this day of triumph, and now at last, almost unbelievably, it had come.  And so they gazed on his naked, bleeding body, and gloated every time he gasped in agony for breath.  Stormy darkness enveloped the land at midday, but the demonic hordes and their triumphant leaders only celebrated more wildly.

Then Jesus whispered to his Father, asking forgiveness for his torturers.  The chains of demonic power over the earth were breaking and falling away everywhere, but no one noticed.  Finally Jesus cried out, “It is finished!” and yielded up his spirit.  A mighty roar of victory rose from the delirious host of hell, and they went on and on celebrating their withered little hearts out.

It was, in fact, several more days before the awful truth dawned on Satan and his gang, that they were actually celebrating Jesus’ victory, which meant their own defeat and destruction and doom.  And now it was forever too late to do anything about it.

Self-Interest and Sacrifice

Self-Interest and Sacrifice

by Jeff Treder


Three Economic Systems

Ever since modern economic structures were developed in the period around 1500-1800, three economic systems, each supported by theory, have evolved and vied for dominance: mercantilism, capitalism, and socialism. Since all three are ways of conceptualizing and organizing the same fundamentals—the economic life of human beings in society—they have many things in common, such as production, trade, and monetary systems.  But they are distinct, and in many ways mutually opposed, in their emphases.

Mercantilism stresses economic competition among nations and holds that a nation’s wealth is measured by the amount of bullion (especially gold and silver) owned or controlled by the state.  Colonization is a valid source of wealth, and the nation’s agriculture and industry should be maximized so that its exports can be maximized and imports minimized.  Individuals and organizations may own wealth, but the state controls the economic life of the nation and therefore may intervene, through taxation, tariffs, or other economic actions, in ways that favor some people more than others.  Mercantilism is often regarded as simply the early, unrefined stage of capitalism, but it has enough distinctive features for a category of its own.

Capitalism arose during the eighteenth century largely as a critique of and reaction against the perceived limitations of mercantilism.  Capitalism emphasizes private or corporate (as opposed to state) ownership of businesses, industries, agriculture, and trade and distribution systems; banks also should be independent of state control, and in general, state regulation of the nation’s economic life should be kept to a minimum.  In contrast to mercantilism, capitalism sees global wealth not as a fixed sum—and hence competition among nations for that wealth as a zero-sum game—but as an aggregate of resources capable of indefinite growth through economic, technical, and financial improvements.  Free trade among nations, as opposed to protectionism, is seen as the best way to maximize global economic wealth

Socialism, in turn, arose during the nineteenth century explicitly as a critique of and reaction against the perceived injustices of capitalism.  Whereas mercantilism called for state ownership of bullion and control of the nation’s economic life, and capitalism sought to free the nation’s economic life from state control, socialism mandates state control and ownership of the national economy.  In theory, the socialist state can range from democratic to totalitarian.  Particularly in its Marxist form, one of socialism’s main goals is the eventual unification of the whole global economy under the control of a single state government.  Thus where mercantilism stresses economic competition among nations, and capitalism sees free economic competition among individuals, corporations, and nations as the best way to maximize wealth, socialism seeks to replace economic competition with firmly controlled cooperation among all economic players.


A Growing Quandary

In recent times, especially since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the interplay among these three isms has been highly interesting.  During the 1990’s, mercantilism seemed to be obsolete and socialism eclipsed, probably for the long term, because capitalism had proven itself to be in fact what it claimed to be in theory, the best way to maximize global economic wealth.  To be sure, the rich got much richer, but the rising tide seemed to be raising smaller boats (if not yet all boats) from South Korea to Chile to—above all—China.  Capitalism still had its problems—the savings and loan crisis (1988-91), the Asian financial crisis (1997-98), and the dot-com bubble (1999-2001) among others—but it weathered these storms and appeared to have developed, if indeed it does not possess inherently, self-correcting mechanisms (or, alternatively, our economic masterminds had learned all they needed to learn from the Great Depression).  All during this time, though, the financial sector of our economy was growing a gigantic, unregulated (even unmonitored—what they call “opaque”), and ingeniously fraudulent “shadow banking” system.  This system, made up of investment banks, hedge funds and high-rolling billionaires, operates like a casino on a gargantuan scale. In this casino, traders electronically gamble untold trillions of dollars—mostly other people’s dollars, such as pension funds invested by managers who got duped by a crapshoot marketed as a triple-A security (credit rating agencies are in on the con).  In return for this service, the croupiers (bankers) skim off multi-million-dollar fees.  The global financial crisis of 2007-08, which ushered in the “Great Recession” of 2008-?, has renewed serious questions about whether capitalism is intrinsically unstable and whether, as capitalist economies grow, they are inevitably prone to ever greater scams, bubbles and crashes.

Meanwhile, just when the bumpy ascent of capitalism—promoted, led and dominated by the United States—got most of the attention, a sort of neo-mercantilism (often called state capitalism) was making a comeback.  The world’s economic life has changed greatly since England, France and the Netherlands were duking it out in the seventeenth century, but the neo-mercantilists seem to believe that it’s still basically the same competition among nations.  The ferocity of the competition may be masked by all the guises of diplomacy, but essentially, in their view, it is still and always will be ferocious.  And the zero-sum calculus of mercantilism is becoming more plausible as vital commodities, especially oil, start becoming more scarce.

This neo-mercantilism has emerged in various forms and with varying intensity in different nations.  In post-war Japan, the state has always been hand-in-glove with major industries, protecting and promoting the most successful companies (or making them successful through crony-based favoritism) in order to build a huge export-driven economy.  In Russia during the Putin era, an authoritarian, ultra-nationalistic state power controls the nation’s economic and political life.  Although Russian industry is decrepit and globally noncompetitive, the nation is rich in natural resources, particularly oil and natural gas, and the Putin government seeks to use these resource exports agressively (including the threat of withholding them) both to increase state wealth and, as far as possible, to bend foreign powers to its will.

The big dog among neo-mercantilists, though, is China.  China has more than four times as many people as the United States, sixteen times more than Germany, a fact that is hard to really grasp but which underlies all of China’s strengths and weaknesses. An authoritarian, superficially “Communist” government oversees a dynamic, labor-intensive, export-driven industrial capitalism.  The Chinese economy can continue to grow, and the government remain securely in place, only as long as they can keep finding markets for their growing output of exports. But the shaky, shadowy condition of the global financial system, together with the onset of commodity depletion, puts that prospect in doubt.  The dubious symbiotic relationship between China and the United States, with the U.S. massively buying inexpensive Chinese exports and China massively buying U.S. debt, has run its course.  The binge is over, or at least is winding down, leaving both of the world’s two largest economies with a headache.

A disillusioned realization appears to be unfolding that each of these three economic systems has fundamental, vitiating flaws, and there is no alternative system waiting in the wings.  Mercantilism envisions a world of endemic zero-sum competition among nations for resources and markets, an environment virtually certain to result in warfare.  Capitalism has multiple flaws.  It promotes a devil-take-the-hindmost ethic producing billionaire plutocrats, a struggling middle class, and lots of losers.  It is a system based on trust, but its captains past and present have proven themselves egregiously untrustworthy. It accommodates systemic fraud and fosters a delusional, manic-depressive mentality among investors and financiers, resulting in an apparently inevitable cycle of booms and busts. And its need for continuous economic expansion has helped to produce a world with too many people, diminishing natural resources, and environmental pollution and destruction.  More economic growth can only worsen these troubles.

The main problem with socialism is that it concentrates power at the governmental top, so that the well-being of the many depends on the wisdom and beneficence of the few—a loser’s gamble.  A further problem is that this governmental power is administered through huge bureaucracies, which are inveterately and notoriously inefficient.  Indeed, socialism is inherently inefficient because people are primarily motivated by self-interest, and calling on them to subordinate self-interest to the interest of the collective, or trying to force them to do so, is swimming against the current. But this takes the discussion to another level, to a consideration of human character.

One of the basic tenets of capitalist theory is that people are primarily motivated by “enlightened self-interest,” and when individuals and corporations are free to act according to that self-interest, the market works to “grow the whole pie”; there will be ups and downs, but the historical trend is upward.  Although the current economic crisis has highlighted capitalism’s problems, it hasn’t really cast any doubt on the idea that self-interest is a primary human motivation and the primary economic motivation. The “enlightened” part is a feature of eighteenth century “Enlightenment” optimism and may be discounted, but a thoughtful consideration of human history, especially economic history, supports the conclusion that human beings generally act according to their short-term self-interest as they perceive it.

Short-term is the predominant time frame. Certainly some people follow long-term plans some of the time, but few 30-year-olds are seriously preparing for their retirement.  And we can only act in our self-interest as we perceive it; we have no other vantage point. As for self-interest itself, the historically unparalleled success of capitalism in producing economic growth is sufficient proof of its motivational power. But if capitalism is flawed in ways too fundamental for us to fix, and if neo-mercantilism reminds us too much of old-fashioned imperialism, and if socialism produces manacled stagnation, what can we do?  So far, the solution preferred by Western Europe, Canada, and (to a lesser extent) the United States, is to water down capitalism with a certain amount of socialism, in hopes that we can reap the benefits of both.  Of course we also reap the detriments of both, and, more pointedly, the solution doesn’t get to the root of the problem. The problem is human motivation, or, in more long-established terms, human character, human nature.
 
Why, after all, doesn’t socialism work as advertised?  On paper, democratic socialism is more admirable than any kind of capitalism; considering the needs of others before your own is a high ethical principle in most religious and ethical systems.  Capitalism produces wealth because people are self-interested, but it is based on rivalry and therefore it inexorably foments social injustice and disharmony.  Socialism, on the other hand, is a sort of ideal system which would work well, which would come naturally, as it were, if people were more ideal than they are, more unselfish and generous.  We laud the wisdom of America’s founding fathers in diffusing and balancing governmental power, but those safeguards were wise and necessary precisely because people are self-interested and corruptible, and many of us are power hungry: capitalist robber barons or socialist commissars at heart.


Fundamental Choices

What would it take, then, for people to become less self-centered?  Basically, it would require some measure of self-sacrifice—that is, each individual willingly giving up some of their own wealth (money, time, energy, pleasure, power) when their conscience tells them doing so will benefit the people around them or those they are in touch with.  This insight, though, has been with us for a very long time, since it is nothing other than the Biblical concept of love. “Love your neighbor as yourself.” (Matt.22:39) “Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves.” (Rom.12:10)  “If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose.   Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves.” (Php.2:1-3)  Selfishness, self-interest, and self-centeredness are contemporary terms for spiritual pride (“selfish ambition or vain conceit”).  Love is the antithesis of spiritual pride, and true love is inherently and essentially self-giving, self-sacrificial.  This is why the concept of sacrifice is so deeply ingrained in the Bible’s message from Genesis to Revelation.  This emphasis on sacrifice is often misunderstood and denigrated, but without such sacrifice, we have no antidote to injustice and its resultant hatreds.

Supreme love involves supreme self-sacrifice, actualized once for all by Jesus Christ.  “This is how we know what love is:  Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.” (1John 3:16)  Apart from that love, we are left with our self-centered world where capitalism produces rivalry, injustice, and cancerous growth, and where socialism doesn’t work. There is enough residual incorruptness in human nature that in practice we see capitalism ameliorated by social welfare programs and socialism muddling through.  The source of that amelioration, however, is still love and nothing else.  Sift through all of human history and you will find no other source of love—credible, proven, actual—comparable to Jesus Christ.  He not only tells us to love one another and models that love perfectly, but through his resurrection from the dead and his outpouring of the Holy Spirit, he gives us the power to follow him. He transforms our motives, first through crisis at our conversion (the conversion of Paul in Acts 9 is typical, if unusually dramatic) and then through process as we “work out our salvation” (see Php.2:12-13) during the rest of our life.

It may seem that we have jumped categories here, from economic history to religion and spirituality.  The categories are just an analytical convenience, however.  Everything connects.  Human experience is ultimately one thing, and it is bigger than economics.  Seeing human experience as nothing more than economics and politics is exactly what has led to the current impasse.

We can’t educate ourselves out of the impasse.  “Educate” comes from Latin roots meaning “to lead out.”  The concept is originally a moral one, meaning that the wise lead the ignorant out of their moral ignorance.  But who are the wise?  Not the savants of our economic systems—the evidence is complete.  We are in the old bootstrap dilemma.  As usual, Jesus said it best: “If a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a pit.” (Matt.15:14)

Our choices in this matter are fundamental and few, just as they have always been.  Self-interest or sacrifice.  Pride and greed over against love and generosity.  Like oil and water, they don’t mix.  There is no happy medium between them.  In the long term, because of who God is and how he works out his purpose in our lives, personal sacrifice is in our own best interest as well as in the interest of those we benefit.  But in the short term, where we live our lives day by day, it is still sacrifice and contrary to our natural “selfish” view of our best interest.  These antithetical ways of acting are, more essentially, antithetical ways of being. The choices are made by people, by individuals, moment by moment, and over time they add up.  We become the sum of our choices.  This truth is more than three thousand years old and always relevant:  “I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses.  Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him.  For the Lord is your life, and he will give you many years in the land ....” (Deut. 30:19-20)

Two Views of Salvation

Two Views—One Way—of Salvation

by Jeff Treder


A Really Long Dispute

Calvinism and Arminianism are terms that the history of Christian theology has given us to label the two main sides in a debate that has been going on for nearly two thousand years, kindling schisms and discord (sometimes degenerating into violent persecution) along the way.  The issue was first clearly defined in the fifth century, when the main antagonists were Augustine and Pelagius.  A thousand years later it was the main bone of contention between Luther and Erasmus, and then, during the next century, between the followers of John Calvin and Jacobus Arminius.  The issue may be framed most simply as the question whether it is God or man who determines which ones among us are finally saved and finally lost.

Both sides believe that their understanding of Biblical revelation is correct.  Calvinists hold that God’s sovereign works of election, predestination, and regeneration determine who is saved and who is lost. Arminians hold that God genuinely offers salvation through faith in Christ to everyone, and each person’s response to the gospel message determines whether he or she is saved or lost.*

*In support of Calvinism, see John 6:37-39, 44, 65, 8:34, 43-47, 10:14-15, 25-28, 15:16, 17:2, 6-9, Acts 13:48, Rom.3:11, 8:8, 9:10-24, 1Cor.1:22-31,  2:14, Eph.2:4-5, 8, 1Thess.1:4-5, 2Thess.2:13-14, , 2Tim.1:9-10, 2:10.

In support of Arminianism, see Matt.28:18-20, John 1:29, 3:16, Acts 1:8, Rom.10:10-21, 1Tim.2:4, 2Peter 3:9, 1John 2:2.

Perhaps the first thing to observe here is that our salvation does not depend on how we answer this question, or even whether we do.  Fighting over it was a tragic and cruel aberration.  Still, the issue is historically momentous and continues, in various ways, to divide Christians.  A well-founded resolution of it would be a blessing.

One hint that such a resolution may be possible comes when we notice that whichever way we answer the question, the final outcome is the same.  If, as Calvinists think, God chooses those whom he will save and enables them, through regeneration, to believe in Christ, then they do believe and, through divinely enabled perseverance, are finally saved.  If, as Arminians think, God accepts (elects) those who choose to believe in Christ and who go on following him to the end, then these are finally saved.  In either case, those who trust in Christ and persevere in him are finally saved, and those who do not are lost.  The outcome is the same either way.  It seems most unlikely that this coincidence is accidental or insignificant.  But just what does it signify?

A second step toward resolution comes when we observe that the Calvinist view is based on those Scriptures which reveal God’s purposes and actions in saving human beings, while the Arminian view is based on Scriptures which spell out our responsibility in being saved. Moreover, few if any Arminians would deny that God elects and predestines those who are saved (though they believe he does so in response to human choices), and few if any Calvinists would deny that each of us, to be saved, needs to exercise faith in Christ at our conversion and for the rest of our life.  In other words, there is much that they agree on.  The point of disagreement, however, is still sharp:  Whose choice, God’s or the individual person’s, initiates that person’s salvation and determines whether it is carried through into eternity?
  
The third step toward resolution is the hard one. Each camp needs to give up certain tenets of their creed which, under examination, prove to be Scripturally untenable.  Both sides might respond to this that they are being asked to surrender their high ground, to give up the whole store. I don’t think it’s as drastic as that, but let’s consider it and see.


What Calvinists Should Yield

Calvinists should give up the “once saved, always saved” form of assurance of their salvation, at least as this is commonly understood.  The problem with this assurance is that it presumes that I can see my own destiny just as God sees it. Calvinists and Arminians agree that God, being omniscient, knows exactly who will finally be saved and lost.  But most Calvinists believe that God discloses to each of his saints that he or she has been chosen for salvation—gives them this assurance, by faith, in their mind and heart.  Calvinists rest this belief on some of the Scriptures most treasured—and rightly so—by almost all Christians:  for instance, Jesus’ declaration that he knows his sheep and they know him, and no one can snatch them out of his hand (John 10:25-30), Paul’s ringing affirmation that nothing can separate us (that is, the elect) from the love of God in Christ (Rom.8:28-39), and John’s statement that “I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life.” (1John 5:13)

The first two of these passages state something that is certainly true of the elect, but they do not address the question of whether I myself am one of the elect.  And the verse from 1John is a good example of the general truth that each Scriptural passage needs to be interpreted in the light of other Scriptures which teach on the same subject.  In this case, there are many New Testament passages which teach that we “have eternal life”—that is, will be finally saved—if, and only if, we persevere in our faith to the end of this mortal life.  One of the clearest is Heb.3:14:  “We have come to share in Christ if we hold firmly till the end the confidence we had at first.”*

*See also Matt.24:13, John 8:30-32, Acts 14:22, Rom.11:22, 1Cor.15:2, Col.1:22-23,

        1Thess.3:5, Heb.3:6, 10:36, 1John 2:19.

Along with these, there are other passages which warn us in the strongest possible terms against the complacent assumption that I am one of the elect.  In the words of Jesus:  “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.  Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’  Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’” (Matt.7:21-23)  (See also Matt.13:3-8, 18-23, Rom.11:17-22, 1Cor.10:12, Rev.3:14-18.)  The psychological situation in this belief that I am elect (or doubt thereof) is very subtle and has fascinated thinking people ever since the time of Christ.  The practical danger is that assuming I am chosen can lead me into a lenient view of my own sin, which over time can harden into spiritual pride and a seared conscience, as exemplified by the Pharisee praying in the temple (Luke 18:9-14).

Now we must consider whether these passages undermine or even contradict those “assurance” passages which, as I said, we rightly treasure.  They do not, for two reasons.  First, as Calvinists correctly remind us, the final perseverance of the elect is effected and guaranteed by the power of God.  Second, even though I (any I) am not omniscient and thus cannot know with certainty whether I am one of those chosen for final salvation, we all live in the present moment, and I can choose to follow Jesus in that moment.  In that moment, where we always actually live, I have full assurance of my salvation by the power of God in Christ.  As the Scripture declares (Joel 2:32, Acts 2:21, Rom.10:13), “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”  If I am as yet unsaved, I don’t have to worry or even know about election, I just have to want salvation through Christ and ask God for it—“repent and believe.”  Throughout my life in Christ I can always call on him in my heart in the here and now, which is the time—the only time!—when “the Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.” (Rom.8:16)  No one, nothing at all, can separate me from my Savior in the circumstance (time and place) in which I really live.  As to the future, which I can neither know nor control, I can, and must, simply trust in God—that is, live by faith and hope, as the Bible constantly admonishes us to do. (See Matt.6:33-34, Rom.8:22-25, 15:13, 2Cor.4:16, 5:7, 6:1-2, Php.4:6-7, Heb.3:12-14, 4:7-11, James 4:13-15.)  This attitude guards us against a foolish and perilous complacency, on the one hand, and a demoralizing lack of assurance, on the other.

Our trust in Jesus, moment by moment, year by year, is the outworking of our eternal election and predestination.  “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” (Eph.2:10)  Divine predestination and our daily life in Christ are one and the same thing, seen from two infinitely different perspectives:  God’s eternal viewpoint, revealed in Scripture, and our viewpoint, experienced in all the exhilarating, heartbreaking, confusing ups and downs of human life.  This is why Peter tells us to work on building spiritual virtues in our life, in order, over time, “to make your calling and election sure.  For if you do these things, you will never fall, and you will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” (2Peter 1:5-11). This serious, persistent building of our assurance in Christ is a very different thing from complacently assuming that we are “eternally secure.”

What Arminians Should Yield

For their part, Arminians should give up the idea that God chooses his people based on their prior choice to receive Christ.  Underlying this doctrine is the belief that, even in the aftermath of Adam’s fall, people have free will such that they are able to respond posivitely (or negatively) to God’s offer of salvation in Christ.  In fact the Bible does consistently imply that we have free will, but there is one crucial, explicit exception: It denies that fallen people are able to love and serve God apart from a prior work of divine grace in their innermost being.
 
The Bible expresses this spiritual inability most clearly in a number of “cannot” statements.  First, in our fallen condition we cannot sufficiently understand what the issue is—namely, our need for salvation.  “The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.” (1Cor.2:14)  Second, we are spiritually blind and cannot even see the light of the gospel when it shines on us:  “The god of this age [Satan] has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ ....” (2Cor.4:4)  Third, we are enslaved to sin (John 8:34).  Since sin is essentially hostility toward God (Rom.3:10-18, 8:6-8), we are not free to embrace what Christ has done for us.  Fourth, outside of Christ we are spiritually dead (Eph.2:1-5).  Just as people who are physically dead can’t respond to any stimulus or appeal, people who are spiritually dead can’t respond positively to God, even when the gospel is presented to them—apart, that is, from a sovereign work of God within their spirit.  That is why Jesus said we must be born again (John 3:3,7).  I can’t give birth to myself, physically or spiritually, or even ask for it.  God has to do it for me, and then I can thank him for it; our very ability to trust in Jesus is a gift of God (Eph.2:8).  When Paul writes, “For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son” (Rom.8:29), the foreknowing cannot mean merely foreseeing which spiritually blind, bound, hostile, dead people will choose to believe in Christ, as Arminians teach.  “Foreknew” here means “loved and chose in advance,” as the context in Romans 8 confirms.

   Before God regenerates me, I honestly don’t want to be “saved” or “born again”; my “no” to Christ is genuine and sincere.  I can’t want what I don’t want, will what I don’t will.  As C.S. Lewis has memorably written, “There are only two kinds of people in the end:  those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done.’ All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell.” (The Great Divorce, ch.9)  Our innate enslavement to self and sin is Hell in preview: being hoodwinked and hopeless and not even realizing it, let alone having the desire or ability to do anything about it.  And that is why God’s grace in Christ is such wondrously good news.  “If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8:36)—free at last to choose life over death.

One of the main promises concerning the New Covenant was that God would give his people a new heart—meaning a new attitude of reverence, gratitude and love toward him (Jer.24:7, 31:31-34, Ezek.36:26-27)—which is exactly what we needed and could not do for ourselves.  That is how ordinary, fallen, self-centered people become his people.  The leopard can’t change its spots (Jer.13:23), but God can change them.

Positively, the New Testament states repeatedly that God’s choice (election) determines who is saved.  His choice is based on his grace alone, not on our character qualities, good or bad, nor on any of our prior actions or choices (Deut.9:1-6, Rom.9:14-18, 1Cor.1:26-31, Eph.1:4-6).  Romans 9 is only the most unyieldingly emphatic of these statements.  The attempts of Arminian theologians to get around this are strained and should be abandoned.  Election is God’s prerogative.  Out of all the nations he chose Israel.  Jesus chose his first disciples and told them plainly, “You did not choose me, but I chose you ....” (John 15:16)  He chose Paul before Paul chose him (Gal.1:15).  What else but pride would make us think that we are any different?

But there are a few Scriptures which appear to say that God wants everyone to be saved, and so appear to support the idea that God offers salvation to all and leaves the decision about who will be saved to each individual.  The most notable of these are 1Tim. 2:4, which says that God “wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth,” and 2Peter 3:9, which says that God “is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish, but for all to come to repentance.” (NAS)

The first interpretive principle we need to adhere to is that the word of God does not contradict itself.  The second principle is that the primary guide to interpreting any particular statement is what the rest of Scripture says on that subject.  As previously noted, the New Testament repeatedly affirms that God sovereignly regenerates those individuals he has chosen to save.  That is the predominant view of apostolic witness on this subject.  Out of numerous examples, three brief ones may suffice here.  Paul tells the Thessalonian believers that he thanks God for them “because from the beginning God chose you to be saved through the sanctifying work of the Spirit and through belief in the truth.” (2Thess.2:13)  Similarly, Luke reports that when Paul and Barnabas preached the gospel in Pisidian Antioch, the result was that “all who were appointed for eternal life believed.” (Acts 13:48)  And Jesus describes the Holy Spirit’s work in regeneration like this:  “The wind blows wherever it pleases.  You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going.  So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” (John 3:8)  The main point of the comparison is that the new birth isn’t something we ask for or anticipate; rather, the Holy Spirit works sovereignly and secretly, and we become aware of the new birth after the fact by its effects in our heart and mind, especially our attitude toward the gospel message. God’s work in election and regeneration precedes and enables the human response of faith in Christ.  That being so, however, and since in fact not everyone is saved, how can it be consistent for Scripture to say that God wants to save everyone?

The answer is that it doesn’t actually say that.  When Paul writes that God wants “all men” to be saved, the meaning is the same as when Jesus said that “I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself.” (John 12:32)  The meaning is not that everyone who has lived since Christ’s crucifixion will be saved or will hear the offer of salvation (neither of these is factual), but that God will save people from all around the world regardless of gender, race, nationality or social status.  We get a glimpse into the fulfillment of this promise in Revelation 5, when the saints sing praise to the Lamb:  “with your blood you purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation.” (v.9)  God the Father saves his elect by drawing them to Christ (through heart-renewal, as we have seen).  As Jesus said, “All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away. ...  No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day.” (John 6:37,44)

Similarly, when Peter says that God “is patient toward you, not wishing for any [that is, any of you] to perish, but for all to come to repentance,” his words are addressed “to those who through the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ have received a faith as precious as ours.” (2Peter 1:1)  The meaning here, in context, is that Jesus will not come again until all the elect have come to faith, which agrees with Paul’s statement that “I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they too may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus, with eternal glory.” (2Tim.2:10)  God has decided to use human means—people telling other people about Jesus—as the primary way to accomplish his eternal purpose in election.  This is why Jesus gave his followers the Great Commission (Matt.28:18-20) and told them “you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” (Acts 1:8)  The gospel itself “is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes ....” (Rom.1:16)

A classic example of how this works is Peter’s message on the day of Pentecost.  He preached the brand-new gospel to a large crowd, and

when they heard this, they were pierced to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Brethren, what shall we do?”  And Peter said to them, “Repent, and let each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.  For the promise is for you and your children, and for all who are far off, as many as the Lord our God shall call to Himself.” (Acts 2:37-39, NAS)

There is no doubt about who did the heart-piercing—that is the work of the Holy Spirit—and little doubt that those who were pierced by the message were only a segment (though possibly a majority) of the crowd.  They were those whom (“as many as”) God was calling, through Peter’s voice, with what theologians term the “effectual call,” the one that invariably works, through the power of the new birth.


The Sum of Our Choices

One of Jesus’ sayings gives an even deeper insight into this question of who gets saved and how:

“I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure.
“All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” (Matt.11:25-27)

Am I one of these “chosen ones”?  The only true answer is another question:  Do I want to be?  Do I want God to be eternally glorified and worshiped, and I myself to be among the worshipers?  If so, I have only to look up, simply as a child, and receive and be received.  In a genuine, nontrivial sense, I can choose to be chosen—but only in humility and trust.  In any other frame of mind, I won’t want to be chosen.

But doesn’t this “choosing to be chosen” contradict God’s sovereignty in election and regeneration?  No, but the reason is subtle.  I said before that all our choices as we follow Jesus are the temporal outworking of God’s eternal choices; he works in our heart and mind, patiently over time, teaching us to make the right choices (see Titus 2:11-14).  We don’t begin making moral and spiritual choices at our conversion, however.  We begin making them about the time we learn to walk, and most human cultures recognize an “age of accountability” around the early teens, when we begin taking responsibility for these choices.  Paul has told us to “work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.” (Php.2:12-13)  God’s work in his people begins at our conception, and he is involved in all our choices before, during and after our conversion. Yet we ourselves are making our choices—I choose, freely and genuinely, to nab that cookie—and as adults we are held responsible for them.  All human beings make hundreds of moral choices, big and little, right and wrong (more or less) every day, and over a lifetime they cumulatively form our character, who we are. We become the sum of our choices. While the sovereign God has chosen our destiny (divine election), we have chosen it too, whichever way we go.  (See Lewis’s The Great Divorce for vivid illustrations of how this works in practice.)  In logic, this is not contradiction but paradox—two statements which seem contradictory but which are nevertheless both true.  In this case, as in several other fundamental issues in Biblical theology (such as the Trinity and the dual nature of Christ), the paradox is resolved only in the infinite mind of God, and we either accept the truth of both statements (God chooses freely and we choose freely) by faith or reject it in unbelief.

Many of us long for salvation for years before we discover or recognize, and then embrace, the way of salvation.  This yearning may be inchoate and uninformed, but it is real and strong, and as it grows it begins affecting our choices.  Jesus spoke about this stage in our experience when he said, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day.” (John 6:44)  Our yearning and God’s drawing are the same experience seen from infinitely different perspectives; they are the prologue to our daily walk of faith; they begin the temporal outworking of divine predestination.  The main effect of this “yearning” experience is to undermine our adult pride (self-esteem, self-assurance) and expose the simple, vulnerable, lost child that we really are, particularly in relation to God.  In the simultaneity of yearning and being drawn we find, again, not contradiction but paradox in the mystery of salvation—the connection, mysterious to us, between God’s sovereignty and our responsibility. Even when satisfied, this yearning (and being drawn) never ends; we can never get enough of God.

On the other hand, of course, many of us grow into adulthood with no yearning for God or salvation, and if we hear the gospel message, its aroma is a stench to us (see 2Cor.2:14-16).  Indeed, unless and until God  renews our heart, this describes all of us, as God’s word tells us:

As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.  All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath.  But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. (Eph.2:1-5)

Either way, whether or not God renews our heart and gives us spiritual life, we all get what we want.  Whether in the long run we will enjoy having what we want is another issue. In our fallen condition, “want” is more important to us than “enjoy,” because fallenness is self-centeredness.  Even if I am miserable, the misery is mine.  This bottomless pit of self-righteous self-pity we have observed in other people and experienced ourselves (“all of us”).  It is the spiritual death from which God’s grace rescues us.

Our yearning for God is not limited to people raised in Christian homes or in a supposedly “Christian” culture.  It doesn’t depend on the circumstances (period, region, culture) in which God places us, or even on whether or not we ever hear the gospel message.  Plenty of “pastor’s kids” have no such yearning, though they may go with the flow and even (God alone knows) wind up saved, while plenty of people raised as Hindus, animists or atheists do yearn for “the unknown God.” (Acts 17:23)  In drawing his people to himself and saving them, God is not limited by human limitations. He commissions and uses human witnesses for this purpose, as he used Peter on the day of Pentecost, but his power to save is not constrained by our weakness.  When Jesus told his disciples how great a hindrance worldly wealth is to entering God’s kingdom, “they were greatly astonished and asked, ‘Who then can be saved?’  Jesus looked at them and said, ‘With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.’” (Matt.19:25-26)  Some of us will be surprised by our company in heaven.

Finally with regard to the Arminian view, it’s worth noting that the Bible never speaks of God offering salvation through faith in Christ.  To be sure, when the gospel is preached or taught, we rightly understand that a genuine offer is made to the listeners.  But Scripture never puts it that way.  The ones making an offer are always (including a uniquely special case) God’s people, offering sacrifices to God in the temple under the Old Covenant, and under both covenants offering praise and worship to God.  The Bible speaks of God saving his people, choosing and redeeming and justifying and purifying them, blessing them and providing for their needs, but not of God offering salvation.  The one offering that God makes is this:  “How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God!” (Heb.9:14)  God the Son, having become the Perfect Man, offered himself in sacrifice through God the Spirit to God the Father.  This is the redemption that God has provided for us, and we are told, as our response, to “offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship.” (Rom.12:1)
The reason why the Bible never speaks of God offering salvation in Christ is evident.  An offer can be either accepted or refused.  But fallen people, as we have seen, are incapable of understanding and accepting the gospel without first being given a spiritual heart transplant.  We need more than an offer.  We need to be made “a new creation” (2Cor.5:17) by the will of the Father, the sacrifice of the Son, and the power of the Holy Spirit.

Conclusion

  For the reasons just given, then—of which the foremost is fidelity to God’s revelation in the Bible—Calvinists should give up the “once saved, always saved” form of confidence in personal election, and Arminians should give up the idea that fallen people can choose to be saved without a prior work of God (election and regeneration) on their behalf.  If both sides can acknowledge that the final outcome is the same either way, and also acknowledge that Calvinists emphasize those Scriptures which reveal God’s part in our salvation, while Arminians emphasize those which tell us our responsibility, then there is hope of a merry meeting in the broad middle ground of reconciliation.

This understanding of the issue also answers the question of whether God’s promise to us in the New Covenant is conditional or unconditional.  Actually, it is both.  From God’s perspective—stressed by Calvinists—it is unconditional:  His chosen people will certainly be saved eternally.  From our perspective—stressed by Arminians—it is conditional: We will be finally saved only if, like Christian in Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, we persevere to the end.  Since we are finite, not omniscient, we cannot see the future—particularly our own future—with certainty.  Because of what God has done for us in the incarnation, death and resurrection of Christ and the giving of the Holy Spirit, however, we can confidently leave the future in his hands and walk with him in the eternal present.  We are all “sinaholics,” and as such we need to deal with our life one day at a time, following what Jesus told us: “Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.  Each day has trouble enough of its own.” (Matt.6:34)  As I walk by faith (personal trust in Jesus) moment by moment, God enables me to take the next step, and the next, all the way.  Building our relationship with the Three who are the Holy One is the most tremendous, demanding, all-consuming adventure of our life.  It was in light of this that Paul encouraged the believers in Philippi to “continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.” (Php.2:12-13)  And he could assure them that “he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” (Php.1:6)

Our opening question was whether it is God or man who determines who is finally saved and finally lost. Calvinists correctly maintain that God’s decision is primary, and Arminians rightly emphasize that our eternal destiny is realized through a lifetime of our own unforced choices.  The union of these two views can only be achieved by accepting that God’s truth at the point of union is paradoxical to our finite intelligence.  Eternity, just like God himself, remains mysterious to us.  But where the eternal and the temporal meet, where the infinite intervenes on the finite, when God himself becomes a human being, what else should we expect?