Book Review: The Gospel in the Marketplace of Ideas by Ben Williamson

Preliminary Thoughts

Trying to figure out how to share the essential contents of the gospel of Christianity in a way that a secularized culture can understand can be a daunting task to take on. I remember in my military experience encountering different people who vocalized different but similar perspectives on Christianity. Some would say, ‘Believing in Jesus is a nice thing and I’m happy for you’ to ‘How can you believe a bunch of fairy tales?’. These two people both arrive at the same conclusion (Christianity is not for me) but have different approaches for how they arrive there. The first person who thinks that believing in Jesus is a nice gesture but won’t commit himself to becoming a follower of Christ probably harbors the notion that religious belief or commitment is more about sincerity, heartfelt attitudes, or perhaps preferences. As long as a Christian is sincere in what he believes, this person thinks, I have no beef with him being a Christian. He might even think it’s alright if the Christian is a Christian regardless of whether his beliefs are true because the unbeliever thinks that sincerity and heartfelt attitudes matter more than truth or fact. He also might think that whether you become a Muslim, Hindu, Jew, Buddhist, or Christian is really a matter of preference. If you like the Christian religion or the other religions, then you are free to help yourself to any or mixture of those religions. However if you do not like them, you don’t have to adhere to those religions.

The second guy might buy into the idea that Christians are welcome to believe what they want if it gives them meaning, hope, and purpose for life but he won’t become or even consider becoming a Christian because he does not think Christianity is factually credible. It is ‘fairy tales’ that really lay at the heart of the Christian faith. If people like Christianity because it helps them despite the fact it is rooted in false beliefs (i.e. Jesus’ resurrection from the dead), according to the skeptic, then they are welcome to it but do not try to convert me because I care about fact, evidence, and logic, not faith. I have no doubt that many of us have encountered at least two kinds of people. How do we communicate to them successfully and remove their blinders that are blocking them from seeing the gospel message of Christianity the way it actually is? That’s what this book The Gospel in the Marketplace of Ideas is about.

The two authors of this book are Paul Copan and Kenneth D. Litwak. Paul Copan is the Pledger Family Chair of Philosophy and Ethics at Palm Beach Atlantic University in Florida. He has written Is God a Moral Monster? And wrote An Introduction to Biblical Ethics: 3^rd Edition with Robertson McQuilkin. Kenneth D. Litwak is currently adjunct professor of New Testament Studies at Azusa Pacific University and Asbury Seminary. He is the author of Echoes of Scripture in Luke-Acts: Telling the History of God’s People Intertextually.

Summary

There are overall ten chapters in the book. Chapter one lays out the contents of each chapter in summarized form. Chapter two interacts with an objection that Paul failed at his attempt at Athens to reach the Gentiles and this is apparently reflected in 1 Corinthians 2:2 where Paul said that he wanted to “know nothing but Christ and him crucified”. Some even have pointed to Paul’s claim that he did not preach with “excellence of speech” and human reasoning, but by the power and Spirit of God (P. 21). Copan and Litwak masterfully explode the idea that Paul rejected philosophical reasoning or thought in his ministry.

Chapter three is concerned with the various backgrounds in Athens in their cultural, philosophical, and religious affiliations and commitments. In chapter four Copan and Litwak shift our focus of concern from the 1^st century A.D. to a kind of modern day Athens. This would involve “using Athens and Athenians metaphorically to refer to people and their cultural, religious, academic, political, philosophical, and social context in our own world.” (P. 15). Chapter five deals with the particular focus, strategy, and end goal Luke – the author of Acts - had in mind when he had recorded Paul’s speech and incorporated it into his work of Acts. In chapter six, for the group(s) of people who had a sympathetic ear to Paul’s speech, it is important to understand their belief structures – religiously and philosophically – in order to appreciate why they would have responded positively to Paul. Chapter seven explores some of the different views Paul simultaneously held as a devout Jew and committed Christian. Chapter eight “examines Paul’s approach to his Athenian audience in detail so that we can see what principles or practices Luke wants us to follow.” (Ibid.)

Finally chapters nine and ten incorporate the necessary background for understanding today’s Athens and applying the lessons we can learn from Paul’s situation to our current situation in the American, secularized culture.

Taking it all away

There is a valuable insight I gleaned from this book that somewhat repeated itself many times over. Namely, no beliefs can ever be understood as much as they should be without examining the relevant historical, religious, political, and philosophical contexts of that time period. Basically, I cannot understand or appreciate a belief or teaching anywhere whether in the Gospels, Paul’s letters, Plato’s Dialogues, Secular Humanist Manifesto, and so on without understanding the different contexts they are or were situated in. In short, beliefs are rarely formed in a vacuum. If I want to understand certain elements of the Apostle Peter’s words of encouragement in his opening first letter, then I need to somewhat have an understanding of what was happening during that time period. Why would Christians need words of encouragement to persevere and not give up if times were easy and convenient?

Ways to Benefit Believers

I declare that every Christian needs to read this book. I have not read any other book that so clearly and systematically laid out the necessary and sufficient groundwork for pre-evangelism and evangelism work. As Christian philosopher and apologist William Lane Craig has often stated, “…the gospel is never heard in isolation. It is always heard against the background of the cultural milieu in which one lives.” (http://www.reasonablefaith.org/in-intellectual-neutral).

One vital way this book can be of tremendous help to believers is by making them realize the importance of understanding the viewpoints that dominate and by-and-large control the public square. J.P. Moreland who famously wrote the book Love Your God With All Your Mind said that one of the ways one defeats fortresses (opposing views to Christianity) as mentioned in 2 Corinthians 10:4 is by arguing against them. Christians must understand how the entire framework of naturalism, which is the view that only physical entities are real and nonphysical entities – if they exist at all – are determined to be what they are based on the physical structures of the universe, penetrates all areas of thought and decisions in life.

This book would be suitable for any college student who is going into any NON-stem (Science, Technology, Engineering, & Mathematics) related field such as the arts, literature, philosophy, history, archaeology, music, psychology, and so on. I also think every pastor needs to read this book because it will greatly benefit him in understanding how to integrate cultural issues with Christian teaching and thinking so that his congregation can have something to reflect on in their working situations. Overall this was an outstanding book.

Naturalism and the Moral Argument

One might think that if one is a metaphysical naturalist he must be a moral relativist or nihilist. Briefly, moral relativism states there are no objectively moral truths or norms that are binding on all people but rather these truths are relative to each culture and individuals. A moral nihilist goes further in saying that right and wrong are complete fictions. It’s not content to say that right and wrong are relative to each culture but rather they are complete constructs and have no objective basis in reality. Are naturalists necessarily committed to either of these two options? Well not necessarily. For example Peter Singer and Sam Harris, who authored The Moral Landscape, along with other pro-choice philosophers, are adamantly opposed to ethical relativism. They think we can know truths pertaining to what right and wrong is. How so? It is probably based on how they define knowledge. They would probably agree that the statement “Inflicting pain on a person without justification is objectively morally wrong” is objectively true. They would deny that it is only true for some people and not others.

Now Christians are also committed to the truth of this statement but for different reasons. Christians believe that it is the fact we have a certain nature – made in the image of God - that determines what we are and our value. Since natures are unalterable and our value is based on possessing that nature, our value is fixed and not determined by our experiences or functions. We can lose the ability to exercise certain functions (think, feel, etc.) and still be a person and have intrinsic value. Yes we ought not inflict unnecessary pain on others but the ability to feel pain is not the necessary or sufficient condition for being a person and having intrinsic value. We can violate someone’s rights even when they cannot feel pain at that particular moment.

So how can the naturalist be confident that we can have knowledge of moral truths? I believe that it is because he takes pain to be an essential component for constructing an ethical theory. Since animals and human beings have the ability to feel pain and we can have knowledge of experiences of pain that are connected to brain states, secularists believe they are justified in using that as a platform for constructing our ethical theories. So morality is not relative after all because it is rooted in scientific knowledge. Since scientific knowledge is objective and determines our ethical knowledge, our ethical knowledge is real knowledge insofar it conforms to our knowledge of the human brain and other factors.

And as a result of all this, the areas of life where we can acquire most, if not all, of our knowledge is by our five senses through the methods of the different sciences (chemistry, biology, physics, neuroscience, cognitive science, etc.). Anything else that falls outside of those categories might be true but would not count as knowledge.

All these factors weigh in on a controversial issue, namely abortion in different ways. First, secularism adopts a functionalist view of human persons. It is how you function, not who you are by nature, that determines whether you are a person. Metaphysical naturalism claims that the decisive factors for defining a person are things like self-awareness, experience of pain and pleasure, and a fully functioning brain. Why? It is because these are things that we can have knowledge about. We can directly access these characteristics of human beings through the methods of some scientific disciplines. We cannot detect or access any essences or natures through the sciences. So, according to these naturalistic thinkers, these things are irrelevant towards understanding what a human person looks like. Peter Singer who teaches at Princeton University has said that the capacity to feel pain is what makes us persons. And since other higher functioning animals like chimpanzees and dogs can feel pain like we do, appealing to human nature or essence to distinguish ourselves from them is arbitrary and unjustified. Human nature or essence, he says, is irrelevant towards understanding what makes you and I a person.

There are a few points one can take away from all of this. First, it seems that we as Christian apologists can bring a two-punch line approach in constructing an effective moral apologetic that would challenge the naturalist or secularist in his worldview and its impact on ethics. First, we could argue that, even though the naturalist affirms that deliberately inflicting pain on someone is objectively morally wrong – because on his view only persons who have the right brain capacity or desire not to feel pain are actual moral subjects – he cannot justify why it would be morally wrong to deliberately impair someone’s ability to be sentient and feel pain, inflict severe bodily damage on them, and kill them afterwards. This can be easily applicable to the issue of abortion. Since the unborn embryo and fetus are not considered persons via the naturalist’s definition of personhood, this act could not be objectionable since, on his view, no person with rights has yet emerged, much less been harmed. Since no moral subject has emerged, no rights have been violated and no harm has been done. What would exactly be wrong, if the naturalist is right, with operating on the fetus’ brain to prevent it from ever possessing the capacity for consciousness, self-awareness, feelings of pain and pleasure, and so on?

Lastly one could claim that a naturalistic ontology and epistemology actually undermines the ability to have moral knowledge of any sort since the possibility of moral knowledge requires the existence of immaterial, intrinsic, and universal moral norms which naturalism denies. So one could target the naturalist’s epistemological commitments and argue that his own worldview undermines any apparent objective claim to knowledge concerning moral truths. One might as well be a moral nihilist. But then again, moral nihilism is completely unlivable as a practical ethic for a stable society. So one should reject it.

Reflections on Divine Foreknowledge: Four Views

The topic of God’s knowledge of the future and human free choices has been around for a long time and will continue to be a matter of considerable debate. The fact that this remains a hot point of contention within Christian thought should give us a few reminders. First, given that this is essentially an in-house debate issue, there is solace in knowing that there is room for disagreement on certain details while still maintaining Christian orthodoxy (right belief). Indeed, most disagreements among Christians – Protestants and Catholics particularly – usually involve differences of interpretation and explanation of certain key doctrines that all of us hold in common.

For example, everyone believes that God is eternal. Eternity is considered to be a necessary or essential attribute of God’s nature. An essential attribute or property is an attribute that something or someone cannot lack and still be what it is. So with the issue of eternity, theologians and philosophers disagree on God’s relationship to time, which is part of the issue of divine eternity. Some think that God is outside of time and hence sees all events at once (i.e. Augustine of Hippo) whereas some hold that God is in time and only causes events that are presently occurring, not events that will occur (i.e. William Lane Craig). So as I said, there is room for dispute on the question of whether God is in or outside of time.

The second reminder that I think would be beneficial is that even though this issue involves much complicated terminologies and concepts, it has great practical importance for living life as Christians. All Christians educated and uneducated, live their lives based on certain theological formulations they have developed in certain ways. So theological and philosophical reflection on deep, mind-expanding issues can be a way of helping us grapple with how we live life in light of certain beliefs we hold.

Another point is that this discussion helps us fulfill a central command from Scripture that Christ gives to us in Matthew 22:37: Jesus said to him, ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ The Christian life is not entirely about displaying acts of kindness, compassion, mercy, graciousness, concern for the afflicted, or engaging in prayer and evangelism. Though all those areas are absolutely crucial for a vibrant Christian life devoted to the Lord Jesus, they are not the only areas of how a Christian life should be lived. Christians are called to develop their minds or intellects as a way of exemplifying love to Jesus Christ. If we want to honor God with our minds, then we are obligated to do all that we can to sharpen and improve our minds in two key areas.

The first area is in critical thinking. God is not impressed or honored by sloppy ways of reasoning. We need to learn how to recognize truth from error and correct principles of reasoning from fallacies. This is not something we will automatically learn from Scripture. Why is that? Because (1) Scripture is not a text on logic or reasoning although it contains areas where that is accomplished and (2) a person may not improve in his or her reasoning skills no matter how much Scripture he or she memorizes or studies. God has given us resources outside of Scripture that can help us in this area. The second area is in seeking to increase in knowledge and learning. The ability to gain knowledge is a deep component of the human nature. Since we are called to mature and develop ourselves as the Holy Spirit enables us, increasing in knowledge and learning is a great example of how that can be manifested.

On the third point of discussion, the issue I am raising has some apologetic value. One of the central problems that are pressed against Christians concerning the problem of evil is the issue of reconciling divine foreknowledge with human freedom. Many atheists no doubt would think that the Christian’s inability to solve the vexing apparent outright contradiction in affirming a strong notion of divine foreknowledge and human freedom serves as a sufficient reason not to believe in Christianity. Sure some Christians might retort and say that atheism implies mechanical determinism in which every decision we make (physical, mental, etc.) is causally determined by the laws of physics and chemistry. Of course that could imply that rationality itself would be a farce. How would one ever rationally affirm atheism if atheism implies the absence of rationally guided processes? In any case, this area of exploration deserves much attention from Christians. If we are going to build any worthwhile bridges in reaching our culture, then we are going to need to do some serious homework. With that in mind, I will briefly summarize the contents of the book and give some feedback of my own.

Summary

There are four sections to the book in which each contributor lays out his case: Open-Theism, Simple-Foreknowledge, Middle-Knowledge, and the Augustinian-Calvinistic view. After a contributor presents his case, the three remaining contributors offer critiques of his case in the 3 subsequent chapters. Since my primary concern here is a brief explanation of the different views articulated in the book, I will only focus on the cases that are presented and leave it to the reader to examine the critiques in the book.

In chapter one Greg Boyd builds his case for Open Theism. Open Theism (hereafter OT) says that even though God is perfectly omniscient (perfectly knows only and all truths), He does not know certain events that will occur in the future because He has decided to let the future remain “unsettled”. On Boyd’s view, if God exhaustively foreknows all future events, then they are settled and hence cannot fail to occur. Boyd believes this would be incompatible with human freedom in the libertarian sense. Libertarian freedom basically says that an agent A does action X freely if and only of A can choose not-X or simply refrain from doing X. To affirm exhaustive foreknowledge would be to deny human freedom and would seem to explain away many passages that depict God as “changing his mind” or “regretting some actions He did in the past” as anthropomorphic (attributing human qualities to God). Boyd argues that the only way to preserve libertarian freedom is to deny exhaustive divine foreknowledge.

In section two David Hunt argues the simple foreknowledge view that really states that God “simply” knows the future. One of the problems that Hunt tries to address and adequately deal with is the problem of human free choice. The problem is similar to what Boyd explicates in his chapter on OT, namely that, if God infallibly foreknows what I will do tomorrow, then I cannot refrain from doing that which God foreknows what I will do. It is what we could call an inescapable fact. Hunt thinks that divine exhaustive foreknowledge is compatible with libertarian freedom based on two considerations. First, Hunt rejects the idea that one cannot be free if he or she cannot choose contrary to what he or she has actually chosen. He believes this is an unwarranted assumption. Second, Hunt thinks that even if one cannot choose contrary to what he or she has chosen, that does not prove that he or she was forced to choose. So Hunt believes that divine foreknowledge is compatible with being free even though human freedom does not entail the possibility of choosing to the contrary.

In the third section William Lane Craig argues the Middle-Knowledge view. This is the one I have been mostly exposed to though my knowledge of it is still surface level. The basic idea is that God has three kinds of knowledge prior to creating the world: natural, middle, and free. Natural knowledge is knowledge of all necessary truths (truths that could not have been false) like 2+2=4 or all bachelors are unmarried and so on. Middle knowledge is knowledge of counterfactual statements, which take the form “if…then…” An example would be “If Ben had not met with Chris Daniel, then he would not have received the internship.” Or “If Pontius Pilate were governor of Judea in 30 A.D., he would have freely crucified Jesus.” Middle knowledge includes counterfactual truths of free decisions by human beings. Free knowledge is God’s knowledge of the world He has actually created. So what does this mean? Well a few things.

First, Craig believes that middle knowledge can explain how God’s knowing the future can safeguard human freedom without obliterating it. Since Molinism, the view being articulated here, affirms that God knew these counterfactual truths of creaturely freedom before He created the world, these counterfactual truths could not have been determined or been what they are because of God’s will. They are in essence independent of His will just like the truths he knows by virtue of his natural knowledge. Second, Craig believes this can also provide an adequate account of how God can have a strong providential control over history that is usually attributed to Calvinism while affirming libertarian freedom usually affirmed by Arminians. Since God’s decision to create this world was based on His middle knowledge – which already includes future free undetermined decisions – and not His divine will, God is not responsible for the sin in the world but rather was “forced” to deal with the cards of counterfactuals of creaturely freedom he was dealt.

Lastly we have the Augustinian-Calvinistic perspective. Paul Helm argues in three ways that Christians should give up the libertarian freedom view and adopt a compatibilist view of human freedom. Put simply, compatibilism states that being causally determined to do what you do is compatible with your doing it freely. What are his three arguments? He argues from divine efficacious grace in the context of salvation, divine perfection and principle of simplicity, and the logical inconsistency between affirming an exhaustive account of foreknowledge and libertarian freedom.

The first argument states that if one exercised his or her freedom to accept God’s saving grace, then he must have done something to merit salvation. Since freedom involves actions of the will, and an act of faith is allegedly an exercise of our wills, it follows that faith has to be a gift from God and not something we exercise on our own. From divine perfection and simplicity, Helm says that if knowledge of only necessary and future truths is sufficient to provide a rich concept of divine omniscience, then it becomes futile to add middle knowledge to the collection. And lastly from the logical inconsistency between affirming an exhaustive account of foreknowledge and libertarian freedom, Helm is essentially arguing the same conclusion that Gregory Boyd articulated in his chapter on Open Theism.

Some Feedback

To be brief, I found the book to be extremely stimulating and mind expanding. The authors I find to be equally brilliant and intelligent in their articulations and critiques of each other’s works. In going back to my intro, I think this book needs to be read and discussed by Christians who are concerned about this problem. This book has challenged me to consider other points of view that I did not really take very seriously before. This book also showed me that no view is closed to critique or criticism. While every argument in philosophy will always have critics on the other side that does not mean that all objections are equally valid. Some objections might completely miss the mark and some are somewhat on point and others are head on. I do not know if this is an area where I will conduct serious reading and research. I have to be really sold on an idea before I launch into an in-depth analysis and examination of that area of thought. With that being said, I have enjoyed this book in many ways and will probably read it many times in the future to improve my understanding of the issues involved.