Have We Outgrown Christianity?

Dr. Arend Hintze and I had a conversation on Atheist Central a few months ago about whether or not theology is logical, and we decided to continue it on our blogs. Although this is a fascinating subject to me, it occurred to me that a blog post titled, "Is theology logical?" would probably bore most people to tears, so I decided to take it in a more relevant direction (hopefully you don't mind, Arend). Have we outgrown Christianity, and what role does logic play in making that determination?

The issue of whether we take the Bible "literally" often comes up, but this is a misleading question because nobody takes the Bible completely literally. For example, when we read John 6:61, where Jesus says, "I am the living bread that came down out of heaven," none of us (I think) pictures a winged loaf of bread soaring down from the sky. We all know that it is symbolic, and a literal interpretation would be incorrect. The correct way to interpret it would be to look at it in the context of the whole Bible, and if we do so we will understand the deeper meaning, that Christ is our spiritual sustenance. In the Old Testament, he was the manna the Israelites ate in the desert, and in the New Testament, he is the bread of Holy Communion. But Deuteronomy 8:3 and Matthew 4:4 tell us that bread is just symbolic: "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God." We live physically by food, but spiritually by the word of God.

The correct interpretation of that verse was not literal; it was symbolic. And we interpreted it in light of the Old Testament as well as the New Testament--in the context of the whole Bible. We didn't just take it at face value.

So the question really should be whether or not we take the Bible seriously. Is it the inspired word of God? That is, do we think it's objectively true or do we dismiss what we don't like or understand?

That is fundamentally a logical question, because if we don't think it's true, why do we believe it? There is absolutely no reason to believe something false, and the Bible makes significant statements of fact. It says that Jesus was the Son of God and that he rose from the dead. Furthermore, it claims that he is the Way and the Truth and the Life--not just a Nice Idea.

A while back I read an interview of Christopher Hitchens where the interviewer claimed to be a Christian. But she didn't really believe that Jesus was the Son of God or that he had risen from the dead, so Hitchens had to break the news to her that she was not a Christian. And I relate more to his logical thinking than to her mishmash of vaguely Christian ideas. As C.S. Lewis said, "Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important."

So for Christians to pick and choose what to believe in the Bible is not logical because it implies that it doesn't contain objective truth. And if it isn't objectively true, we might as well reject the whole thing.

Is the alternative to take everything literally? No, because not everything is intended to be literal, and some things may be both symbolic and literal, with an emphasis on the symbolic. The New Testament is a fulfillment and interpretation of the Old, which foreshadows, typifies, and prophesies Christ. If we read the whole Bible we will understand the context and interpretation of many difficult parts. There is an objectively correct way to interpret everything and we can find it if we read the Bible, letting the Holy Spirit instruct us.

The question often comes up whether something in the Old Testament actually happened, and although I generally assume that it did, logically that is not the important thing (nor can we prove or disprove it). When Jesus said in his parable, "A certain man had two sons . . ." we don't immediately start asking, "Is this really certain? Who is this man? Are you sure he didn't have three sons? Why no daughters?" Some will even say that if something didn't happen exactly the way it's portrayed in the Old Testament, God lied. But that is a false dichotomy, because a literal interpretation might be incorrect, like the "living bread out of heaven" example. The Bible is exactly the way God wants it, but we have to read it correctly, without logical fallacies. Logic has been defined as "a tool for distinguishing between the true and the false," so of course we have to use good logic while studying the word of God. And when we do, it makes a lot more sense.

If a particular interpretation of the Bible is self-evidently inconsistent with reality, we have two options aside from rejecting the Bible: We can pretend that the problem doesn't exist or we can take that as a clue that our interpretation might be wrong. To me the latter option is a greater expression of faith than the former, because it says that the Bible can withstand our most rigorous and honest scrutiny and will only bring us into a deeper and more consistent understanding of it. The former attitude is to shrink back from what such scrutiny might reveal. How can we insult God by doing that? Hebrews 10:38 says: "But My righteous one shall live by faith; and if he shrinks back My soul has no pleasure in Him."

The word of God has to be fundamentally logical if it is true, and it has to make more--not less--sense the more we grow up intellectually. This is why nobody seriously considers the primitive polytheistic religions when they are searching for truth. Holding to a childish faith after we reach adulthood is like trying to squeeze into the clothes we wore as children. We will look ridiculous and it will garner us no favors with God. 1 Corinthians 14:20 says: "Brethren, do not be children in your thinking; yet in evil be infants, but in your thinking be mature." And mature thinking will, with the help of God, bring us ever closer to the true meaning of his word.

Does Our Sinful Nature Come from God?

Y=X asked:

According to Christian theology the sacrifice of Christ is necessary for us to be saved. This appears to imply that no human can live sin free. This suggests to me that humans are sinful by nature. Is it correct to say that this nature comes from God?


The power to choose comes from God, and with it the power to do evil. There is no possible way for us to have free will without the ability to abuse it. And the abuse of free will leads to evil in the world. C.S. Lewis explains it this way:

"We can, perhaps, conceive of a world in which God corrected the results of this abuse of free will by His creatures at every moment: so that a wooden beam became soft as grass when it was used as a weapon, and the air refused to obey me if I attempted to set up in it the sound waves that carry lies or insults. But such a world would be one in which wrong actions were impossible, and in which, therefore, freedom of the will would be void; nay if the principle were carried out to its logical conclusion, evil thoughts would be impossible, for the cerebral matter which we use in thinking would refuse its task when we attempted to frame them."


However, free will is not absolute because we inherit the sinfulness, or brokenness, of our ancestors. Their propensities to addiction become ours, and we take on their personality flaws. I was just reading that there is a new field called "epigenetics," where scientists are finding that choices we make affect the expression of our DNA even for the next generation. So there is actually a connection between choice and DNA. As the narrator of the novel Gilead says, we "live in the ruins of other generations." None of us have within us the potential to reach our full humanity.

But God planned from the very beginning that he would take upon himself the consequences of free will by giving full reign to evil during his passion. The penalty for every sin that was ever committed or will ever be committed was paid in full by him. He did for us what we could not do for ourselves, and "rendered powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil" (Hebrews 2:14).

He also broke the domino effect of generational sin by becoming the first perfect human. Not only was he fully God, but he represented humanity at its highest and best. And by his blood we were redeemed from the "futile way of life" handed down by our ancestors (1 Peter 1:18), to receive his Holy Spirit and become like him--the "firstborn of many brethren" (Romans 8:29).

But in order to receive his Holy Spirit, we have to surrender the will that is set against him. "Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with Me" (Revelation 3:20). And the more we yield to his Spirit, the more our will conforms to his. He will give us his shalom--or harmony with him, ourselves, and other people, and he makes us fully human and fully free.

The Sacrifice of Christ

I answered the following question on Atheist Central and figured that I would cross post on my own blog:


If God forbids human sacrifice, why did he allow Jesus to be a human sacrifice?


Although human sacrifice is wrong, self-sacrifice is the highest virtue. Just about every culture recognizes this, and John 15:13 says, "Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends."

God was not the one who killed his Son on the cross. He simply gave him over to the forces of evil in order to pay our debt, letting evil run its course, and thereby defeating it. When he died, the veil of the temple tore in two, and we can now partake in his victory over sin and death by entering the "Holy of Holies" through faith.

But in addition to the theological significance of the cross, it was a dramatic expression of God's love for his enemies. Before his death, Jesus said, "Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing" (Luke 23:34). And 1 Peter 3:18-20 tells us that after his crucifixion, Jesus went straight to the "spirits in prison" who rebelled against him during the days of Noah and died in the flood, and he made his proclamation of peace to them. So the cross was the pinnacle of self-sacrificial love, where the King Kings died willingly between two criminals.

And although God desires all to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth, each one of us is like one or the other of the criminals. One said, "Are you not the Christ? Save Yourself and us!" But the other said, "Do you not even fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed are suffering justly, for we are receiving what we deserve for our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong.' And he was saying, 'Jesus, remember me when You come in Your kingdom! And He said to him, 'Truly I say to you, today you shall be with Me in Paradise'" (Luke 23:39-43).

The Prism of Faith

If salvation is by faith, what do we make of Matthew 12:50: "For whoever does the will of My Father who is in heaven, he is My brother and sister and mother"? And 1 John 2:4: "The one who says, 'I have come to know Him,' and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him; but whoever keeps His word, in him the love of God has truly been perfected"? And James 2:19: "You believe that God is one. You do well; the demons also believe, and shudder. But are you willing to recognize, you foolish fellow, that faith without works is useless?"

Does it mean that salvation is by faith and works? No, it simply means that faith which doesn't produce good works is not real faith. Good works is evidence of faith, and we will ultimately be judged by our works (1 Peter 1:17). Galatians 5:6 says: "The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love." And John 14:15 says: "If you love Me, you will keep My commandments."

Faith is like a prism that separates white light into a spectrum of colors. Just like the colors of a rainbow are evidence of light shining through a prism, good works are evidence of the Holy Spirit working through faith.

That means that trying to earn our salvation by good works is like drawing a rainbow with crayons. That's not what God is looking for because it is not evidence of his Light in our lives. And it leaves us feeling either self-righteous or discouraged because it has no power to change our hearts.

The absence of good works likewise means that our lives are devoid of his Light. Faith without works is dead (James 2:26). And dead faith is no faith at all.

God invites us to come to him and receive what he has to give. He wants to give us his love, so that doing his will comes naturally. He wants to give us his peace, so we are no longer at war with ourselves. And he wants to give us his joy, to empower us to live fully.

And he will give us the prism of faith if we ask him for it.

God's Nature

One of the most terrible examples of God's judgment of sin is the story of Noah's ark. Even though it has inspired the decor of many a nursery with pictures of a bald, bearded man squeezed into the ark with cartoon-eyed animals, it is anything but sweet. When the earth had become too violent and corrupt, God decided to destroy all flesh, except those in the ark. 

The water came from the "fountains of the great deep" as well as "the floodgates of the sky" (Genesis 7:11). What is this "great deep"? Other Bible passages indicate that it is the ocean. Wikipedia confirms this event: 

Burckle Crater is an undersea crater likely to have been formed by a very large scale and relatively recent (c. 2800-3000 BC) comet or meteorite impact event. It is estimated to be about 30 km (18 mi) in diameter ^[1], hence about 25 times larger than Meteor Crater.

The comet would have struck the Indian Ocean, between Madagascar and Australia, causing a mega tsunami. 

But I digress, because I've spent so much time talking with atheists recently that I can no longer say anything without backing it up. As soon as I had written the first sentence I heard voices in my head insisting that scientifically the flood couldn't have happened. 

I really wanted to talk about the two parts of God's nature that are so closely intertwined that we cannot separate them: his justice and his mercy. First, there is God's justice. Victims require justice. Nobody sins in a vacuum--sin not only affects other people, but it spreads like a cancer. "The sins of the fathers" are truly visited upon the children, as psychotherapists can attest to. The children bear the scars and inflict them on their own children. 

Although our justice system recognizes that criminals are often deeply broken, crime has to be punished and society has to be protected. But sin injures even when no punishable crime has been committed. And sin and suffering are inexorably linked, even where the link is not direct. 

So God who is just and good will some day do away with all sin and evil. Nothing and no one who causes people to stumble can have a place in the New Earth (Matthew 13:41). In the same way that God flooded the earth during the time of Noah, he will put an end to the current earth. And in the same way that he gave Noah clear instructions on how to build the ark, he gives us clear instructions in his word on how to receive "the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus" (1 Timothy 3:15). 

After the flood, he put his rainbow in the sky as a sign of his covenant of peace and mercy. And after his crucifixion, when evil seemed to have prevailed, he went "and made proclamation to the spirits now in prison, who once were disobedient, when the patience of God kept waiting in the days of Noah" (1 Peter 3:20). At that darkest moment of human rebellion, he extended his offer of peace to the corrupt people who died in the flood, demonstrating that his mercy triumphs over judgment. 

Letting Our Light Shine

In Matthew 5:14, Jesus says to his disciples: "You are the light of the world." What is our calling as followers of Christ? It is very simply to let his light shine in and through us, so that people will see our good works and glorify our Father in heaven. Nothing more dramatic than that.

But we're not the ones doing the good works and therefore deserving the glory. We are to be vessels for God's light, so people will see him. That means abiding in him and resting in his will. He will take care of the rest.

Jesus also told his disciples: "You are the salt of the earth," and followed up with the sobering warning, "but if the salt has become tasteless, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled under foot by men (Matthew 5:13)." Imagine going through life being "trampled under foot by men" for our faith, and having it all be for nothing. Our spiritual vitality has to be powerful enough to transform us and those around us. If our faith is just a hollow creed, we're worse off than without it.

But if we can stay close enough to God to maintain our "saltiness," he will take care of all the rest. We don't have to worry about the barriers we face. God will break them down. Even when every foe is aligned against us, we must remember that although we are utterly powerless, he who is in us is greater than he who is in the world (1 John 4:4). We are called only to abide in Christ and be vessels for his pure light.

The Interpreter's Bible says:

There is no despair because the group is small: a pinch of salt is effective out of all proportion to its amount. There is no hermit strategy: the disciples are to stay in the world, touching even its unworthy life, if they would redeem it. There is no call to a sensational witness; salt is inconspicuous, ordinary, and admixed with common things.

A sensational witness is not necessary, but the steady light within us is.

Will We Have Free Will in Heaven?

The agnostic blogger I mentioned a few posts ago just made an excellent argument that I would like to address here. I said: "Inherent in the power to choose is the power to choose evil. There's no way around it. To say that God could have given us free choice and also made it impossible to choose evil is like saying that he could have made 2 + 2 = 5. It is intrinsically impossible."

He replied: "I think you just proved that Heaven cannot exist!"

On the face of it, he certainly seems right, and a few months ago his response might have stumped me. If God can give us free will in Heaven while still making sin impossible, he could have done it on Earth. And if we don't have free will in Heaven, why do we have it here, with all the evil and suffering it entails?

This is actually a question that I've already given some thought to in the past few weeks, in an effort to reconcile the Calvinistic-leaning and Arminian-leaning Bible passages in my mind. I've arrived at a conclusion, although I am by no means saying that this is the full answer. I'm only saying that although the blogger made a good point, it didn't put me into checkmate. There is a theologically accurate way out of the logical dilemma.

Not only will we have free will in Heaven, but we will be perfectly free; however, we will not choose evil. How can these two things coexist, particularly given my earlier argument? Because a redeemed believer is a completely new creation that exists only by virtue of having surrendered the will and let God fill him or her. This also leads to perfect freedom, which I discuss here. When God fills us, he changes our hearts and minds, so that we want to do his will. If we desire to do his will, that means we will not sin. Why would we do something wrong if we are not tempted? However, this gift of a new heart is contingent on surrendering the will freely, because God did not create robots.

So every person in the world has a will and can choose to rebel against God. But since we are born into original sin, nobody can choose to fully obey him. Sin in our hearts makes it impossible. However, we can surrender to him when he draws us to himself--that is, we can give ourselves to him and let his Spirit fill us. And when we do, he changes us from the inside, which means sin loses its grip.

Everybody in Heaven has a completely surrendered will, which allows Christ to fill them and work through them. And because their hearts and minds have been renewed, they have no desire for sin, even though they started out with the same propensities for sin that we all have. They have lived through the curse, and sin no longer has any power over them.

So on the one hand, God works through us when we surrender the will, but on the other hand, this sets us completely free. God's sovereign grace and perfect human freedom meet at the apex of absolute surrender. And that is how we will spend eternity.