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The Dutch philosopher, Baruch Spinoza, lived approximately 350 years ago. He was one of the fathers of The Enlightenment, and his thinking paved the way for what came to be known as “Higher Criticism”. He disallowed any notion that God’s supernatural hand was responsible for the formation of the Bible and insisted that the Bible be critiqued and analysed in the same way as any other historical manuscript. This thinking gave momentum to “liberal theology” which relegated the Bible to nothing more than a piece of fallible human writing, which, being fallible, is revisable. This has led to a large number of Protestant clerics in the Western church becoming “revisionists”.

Revisionists differ from reformists. Revisionists feel free to revise consistent principles taught by Scripture e.g. those surrounding sexual ethics. Reformists, in contrast, want to return people to the consistent principles of the Bible.[1]

History has shown that a significant downside of revisionist thinking is that it empties churches. It is not hard to see why. Revisionist clerics have dispensed with the hope of the resurrection, the hope of God’s coming kingdom, and the reality of God acting in people’s lives. As such, they offer no hope. The only thing they can do is to preach morality – a morality that has no firm basis. This bland diet has been responsible for killing off the Protestant church in the West.

Fortunately, you do not have to kiss your brains goodbye to be a biblical Christian. There are good reasons for challenging Spinoza’s thinking (and the liberal revisionism it spawned), and there is rational evidence for believing that a divine hand was involved in the formation of the Bible. Here are three of them: 1) Patterns 2) Prophecy, and 3) Power.

Patterns

Despite the Bible being written over a thousand-year period, it knits together to form a consistent, coherent story. Right from the start of the Bible, God introduces “patterns” which are reinforced throughout Scripture. Significantly, these patterns all reach their fulfilment in Jesus.

One of the repeated patterns is the concept of a sheep being sacrificed. This theme is first introduced when God provided a sheep (specifically, a ram) for Abraham to sacrifice at Mt Moriah instead of sacrificing his son, Isaac (Genesis 22). This began the theme of God providing a sheep for sacrifice. This pattern is continued in the story of the first Passover. On this occasion, the blood of a lamb was daubed on the doorframes of the huts of the Jews who were enslaved in Egypt. This blood meant that the judgement of God (the death of every first-born creature) would “pass over” the Jews and not harm them.The significance of a sheep being sacrificed reached its crescendo when Jesus came. He is referred to in all the gospel accounts of his life as the “Lamb of God.”

Two other concepts (or patterns) that keep re-occurring are, 1) the pattern of “covenant” (which reaches its fulfilment with Jesus at the last supper), and 2) the concept of “atonement” (of something dying in your stead to pay the price for your sins) – which was what Jesus did).

Prophecy

The hand of God in forming Scripture is also seen in the existence of biblical prophecies.

The Bible records numerous prophecies being fulfilled centuries later. Most notably, it includes prophecies about Jesus, prophecies incidentally, that Jesus expected us to see and appreciate (Luke 24:25-27; John 5:39). 

There are also prophecies concerning nations and cities. Ezekiel prophesied that the city of Tyre would be flattened and its stones and timbers thrown into the sea, never to be rebuilt (Ezekiel 26:3-14). This must have seemed highly unlikely at the time. However, about 260 years later, Alexander the Great demolished the city to build a causeway to an offshore island in order to defeat the Phoenicians who were based there. The old city of Tyre remains flattened and desolate to this day, as the new city of Tyre has been built in a different location.

Power

The third piece of evidence indicating the hand of God in the formation of the Bible is the power the Bible has demonstrated throughout history for its ability to transform individuals, families, cities and nations for their good. Authentic biblically-based Christianity has brought civility and goodness wherever its principles have been adopted.

There are good rational reasons for believing that the hand of God was involved in the formation of the Bible. We are therefore not at liberty to revise its consistent principles.


[1]       It is worth noting that Christian renewal movements in world history have never failed to return people to biblical principles, i.e. to bring reform.

The Christian church is a paradox.  It is simultaneously a community of people who are (or should be) infused with the presence of God’s Holy Spirit who empowers their ministry and grows the character of Jesus within them (Galatians 5:22-23; Ephesians 4:15-16,).   Yet it is also composed of fallible, failing and unfaithful human beings (Colossians 2:19).   As such, what you see in the institutional church (both today and in history) depends on which bit of the church you are looking at – the true church or the unfaithful church.   One is beautiful, and you see in it the sacrificial love that transforms people, families, communities and nations.   The other is vile and you see the worst of things: the Crusades, the Spanish inquisition, the sectarian violence of Northern Ireland, and more recently, the abuse perpetrated by sex addicts who have infiltrated church institutions in order to predate the vulnerable.

This brings us to the first point: Christianity is authentic only when it reflects the teaching and values of Jesus Christ.   It is inauthentic when it doesn’t.   It is as simple as that.   This brings to mind a quote by the English writer, philosopher and lay theologian, G.K. Chesterton.   He wrote: “TheChristian ideal has not been tried and found wanting.   It has been found difficult; and left untried.”[1]

The toxicity of the unfaithful Christian church in history should in no way be minimised, but it is also true that it has been exaggerated, particularly in recent years by today’s celebrity atheists who claim that religion has caused most of the world’s wars.[2]   So, what is the reality? According to the Encyclopedia of Wars, out of all 1,763 known/recorded historical conflicts, 121, or 6.87%, had religion as their primary cause.[3]   In the last 100 years, it has been the very unchristian ideology of Hitler, Stalin, Chairman Mao and Pol Pot that has killed most people.  It is significant that scholarly works such as that by Tom Holland (an agnostic) have reported on the extraordinary civilising affect of Christianity on Western Human History.[4]   He reminds us that Christianity has been responsible for our hospital system, legal system, educational system and our social welfare. 

One of the greatest dangers for the Christian church occurs when it becomes institutionalised.   When this happens, it can be easy for people take their eyes off Jesus and allow themselves to become corrupted by power and greed.   Despots throughout history have tried to use Christianity to legitimise their ambitions and claim to power – and this includes leaders of church institutions.   It is sobering to remember that Jesus’ fiercest enemies were the leaders of the religious institution of his day.

The other reality that needs to be appreciated is that no Christian is perfect.   Every Christian is a “work in progress,” therefore all of us need God’s continual forgiveness.   Christians are in the process of being transformed as they surrender more and more to Jesus’ lordship (Romans 12:1; 2 Corinthians 3:18).  Having said this, people should be able to look at Christians and see something of the grace and truth of Jesus (2 Corinthians 3:18; 1 Peter 2:12). 

You too should expect it, and probably have – perhaps without knowing.  Here’s a little exercise to illustrate this.   Picture yourself stepping out on a dark city night in a none-too-salubrious precinct… and four swarthy men step onto the street behind you.   How would you feel?   And here’s the thing: Would you feel any better if you knew that those four swarthy men had just been to a Bible study?

The reality is, God is good for you.  The Australian journalist, Greg Sheridan, popularised this phrase with his book, God is Good for You.[5]

Organisms in the plant and animal world will generally seek to kill off anything that threatens their ability to thrive.  They will eat or enslave other organisms in order to survive.   In this dangerous world, everything comes under the all-consuming instinct to dominate, thrive and reproduce.  Here’s the thing: When human societies discard Christianity, they invariably default to the behaviour of the plant and animal world.   When Christian principles are absent, you get Cambodia’s “killing fields.” When Christian principles are absent because the church has been corrupted or muzzled, Auschwitz happens.   When Christian principles are absent, it becomes expedient to kill forty-seven million people through starvation in order to institute a collective farming ideology in China.   Without the morality, hope and principles of Christianity, humanity falls back into the harsh pragmatism of the animal and plant kingdom.  The truth is, when people stop ruling “under God,” they will seek to rule like God.

Despite the West gradually letting go its Christian heritage, it still retains an “encultured” understanding of Christian values which it instinctively holds to be right – generally.   However, without a true Christian foundation, it cannot last.   The eroding of Christian notions of “truth” and “right” will gradually result in the West becoming uncivil.   This inevitability was one that greatly troubled the atheist philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche.  He despised Christianity, but feared what society would look like without it.

So, what can we say in conclusion?  Perhaps this: A mouse visiting a cookie jar is not a cookie.   In the same way, a person attending a Christian institution is not necessarily a Christian.   Real Christianity does not feature abuse.   It features Jesus dying on a Cross to take the blame for all those things that would disqualify you from sharing in God’s eternal hope.   Please see the difference.


[1]       G.K. Chesterton, What’s Wrong with the World(1910), Part 1, Chapter V.

[2]       Richard Dawkins begins his book,The God Delusion, (Bantam Books, 2006) by quoting John Lennon’s song “Imagine” (1971) which portrays a world with no religion or wars.

[3]       Alan Axelrod and Charles Phillips eds. (2004). Encyclopedia of Wars (Vol.3). Facts on File. “Religious wars”, pp 1484–1485.

[4]       Tom Holland Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind, (Little, Brown, 2019).

[5]       Greg Sheridan, God is Good for You,(Allen Unwin, 2018).

Australia’s latest census data has just been released with headlines in the press proclaiming that there are now fewer Christians than non-Christians in the nation.   I had a rueful smile at this.   Jesus once told a deeply disturbing parable.  (A parable is a story that teaches a spiritual truth).   He spoke of there being two gates.   One was wide, and an easy path led through it.  The majority of people went down that path.   But there was another gate, a narrow gate, which led to eternal hope.   Only those who sought it out, found their way through it and found life.   So, the reality is: authentic Christianity has never been in the majority, even in times when “church-going” was the social norm in society.  Authentic Christianity involves asking Jesus for forgiveness, and it involves making him the leader of your life.   Being a Christian is no easy option.   Jesus made that plain.   This is particularly the case now that Christianity is no longer “on trend”.   Christians today have to expect to be scorned and maligned – particularly in films and in the media.

According to Jesus, only a minority will discover the truth behind the order we see in the cosmos.   Only a few will discover a hope that lies beyond the harsh realities of this life.   Some will be convinced that there is a higher power, but that the truth is too hard to fathom. Others have an ideological difficulty with any one religion being right – which, of course, is a neat way of not allowing any truth to exist at all. Everything is reduced to being a construct of the human mind. For others, God is inconvenient to their lifestyle choices. They want sexual freedom and the ability to lie-in on a Sunday morning.   So they wrap themselves in poorly researched atheistic clichés, and roll towards the wide gate.

The unconscionable behaviour of sexual predators who have infiltrated the Christian church, has greatly encouraged people’s distrust of the institutional church… and if that has affected you, I’m more sorry than I can say.   If it is of any comfort, God hates it too.   The vile, addictive compulsion of predators is not what characterises Jesus Christ.   Jesus is the guy who hung on a cross for you.   Do please see the difference.   If you’ve not checked Jesus out and discovered why he came – I invite you to do so.

There is a sense in which I welcome the census data.   The reality is: God is refining his church.   He is clearing out the dead wood of those who are merely religious rather than those who love Jesus and are obedient to him.   The traditional denominations are quickly losing their nominal Christians, as well as (sadly) losing some of their elderly saints due to old age.   But other denominations are growing.    The reality is, there are many churches that are faithfully preaching the Christian gospel to those who really want to know.   The trick is to find one and be part of it.

But I must also confess to a growing sense of sadness at the census results.   The reasons for this are two-fold.   The first is: it risks a secular society pointing to the numbers and saying that Christians are now so insignificant that they don’t deserve special status as school chaplains (something which has already happened), or have tax breaks because of the social work they do, or have the Christian ethos of their schools protected.   (The fact that there are record enrolments of students at faith-based schools – presumably because parents view the state’s secular morality with some alarm – should, however, cause governments to think a bit!)

The second reason I view the “unchristianising” of Australia with concern is that Christianity has revolutionised the world’s thinking about justice; obligations to the poor, education for all, gender equality, working for peace and hospital care.   All of these things are a product of a Christian culture.   The trouble is, these values have been around for so long that we take them for granted.  Please don’t.   (If you doubt this, you will discover a study of pre-Christian Rome enlightening.)   A brief glance at the autocratic despots around the world is also instructive.   One of their defining features is that they reserve to themselves the right to determine what is true (irrespective of reason or facts).   The reason they can do so is that they see no greater authority beyond themselves.   They have no God to guarantee what is good and true.   It would be tragic indeed for Australian society to lazily disintegrate into a values-free “dark age” or become a society ruled by despots.   It’s not a future I want for my grandchildren.

The census data says that the dominant generation in society is now “Millennials”.   As I recently said to someone very dear to me: There are some things that are easier to ignore when living with the flush of youth.   But there will be a time when you will wonder about your meaning, about why the universe bothers to exist, and whether there is such a thing as eternal hope.

If you look through the narrow gate, you will see a man dying for you on a cross in order to give you that hope.  If you look through the wide gate, you will see nothing at all.

I’ve been reading Psalms, a remarkable collection of songs, some written over three thousand years ago.  Because they were written over many hundreds of years, they are a record of how the Jew’s belief in God developed over the centuries.

It is significant that despite the time-span in which the psalms were written, the theology they espouse dovetails together to form a unified narrative.  Arguably, the main unifying feature of the Psalms is their strong focus on love – both the love of God for his people, and the love of the people for God. The Psalms are a strong reminder that the Jewish God was not a precocious god to be feared, like the gods of the surrounding nations such as Chemoth or Moloch – both of which demanded child sacrifices.  The pre-eminent attitude of the Jews towards God was to be “love.”  This is perhaps surprising, given that the Jewish God could not be seen or even be represented by an idol.  So, it is therefore reasonable to ask: How could this love develop?

The answer is simple and significant.  The motivation to love came from the overwhelming conviction that God was active in his people’s history.  The Jews experienced God chastening them, teaching them, providing for them, and above all loving them.

This simple truth has huge implications for the traditional main-line churches of the Western world.  Since the Enlightenment, the Western church has been infected by Deism, which has masqueraded as Christianity behind the mask of “Christian liberalism.”  The Western church’s main-line denominations are currently reeling drunkenly from its influence. Liberal church after liberal church has collapsed and died under the weight of the meaninglessness they preach.  Liberal theology has no room for a God who acts in history.  It cannot allow that God may choose to override his laws of nature and do something that impinges on the life of his people.  Similarly, liberal theologians cannot allow Jesus to be anything other than a moral example.  They have forbidden Jesus from being any more special than themselves.  They don’t believe that Jesus did any miracles, or that he rose from the dead.

The relevance of this is, I hope, apparent.  The God of liberal theology would have totally failed to earn the love of his people in the Old Testament.  For many Old Testament saints, their experience of God acting in history was their only source of hope, as many of them had not yet developed a theological understanding of life after death.

The failure to acknowledge God acting in history means that the liberal God remains impersonal, distant and not much more than a theory.  This helps explainwhy worship in liberal churches rarely shows much evidence of love for God.  Rather, it is characterised by formalism and a sense of duty.  It is difficult to reconcile this relational bleakness with the primary commandment of Jesus who taught us to love God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength.

In recent years this emotional sterility has prompted some contemporary liberals to “gee things up” a bit by doing creative things in worship that feature the wonder of creation.  When I attended a liberal theological college, this expressed itself in people doing “meaningful things” with tree leaves, candles and floaty scarves.  It seems that when people feel they cannot worship a personal God, they compensate by sacralising his creation.  Whilst honouring God’s handiwork is a good thing, worshipping nature is certainly not.  The old-fashioned name for doing so is “paganism”.

The crucial question, then, is this: Can we believe in a miraculous God?

It is actually too late to ask this question as we already live in a miraculous universe.  The laws that govern the existence of life have required a balance of nuclear, electromagnetic and gravitational forces finely tuned to the level of several trillionths of a degree.  And, here’s the thing: Our existence continues to require “miraculous” intervention in order to avoid our planet becoming as sterile of life as the rest of the universe (as far as we understand it).  In other words, the fact that you exist is a pretty fair indication that God has intervened with the laws of nature in order to suit his purposes.  Even the English astrophysicist, Fred Hoyle, (an atheist) wrote: 

A commonsense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature.[1]

God is active in history and has revealed (and is revealing) himself in history.  We have seen him peerlessly as Jesus.

It is truly the case that God can be known… and therefore loved.


[1]       Fred Hoyle, ‘‘The Universe: Past and Present Reflections’’, Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics 20 (1982): 16.

Are we slaves predestined to be as we are, or do we have free choice? This is one of the great questions of humankind. The American science writer, John Horgan, has written an article entitled, “Does Quantum Mechanics Rule Out Free Will?”[1] in which he talks about “superdeterminism”. 

Superdeterminism is a concept first proposed by the Irish physicist, John Bell. He was troubled by three things: 1) the apparent randomness of quantum events, 2) the phenomenon of quantum entanglement (where what is done to one sub-atomic particle is instantly mirrored in another particle that it was once entangled with – even though they are now a great distance apart), and 3) the bewildering fact that the form of a sub-atomic particle depends on whether or not it is being observed by a “consciousness”.

Bell said that the scientifically untidy problems of probability, interconnectedness, and the mystery of the role of consciousness in quantum physics, all disappear if it is understood that everything is pre-determined, so that it cannot be anything else. In essence, he suggests that the reason things don’t look to be predetermined, is that we don’t yet know enough. When we know more, we will know that things haveto be what they are.

At first blush, this conviction simply appears to be a “faith statement”, a hoped-for scenario that is impossible to verify. As such, I’m not sure it is persuasive. Bell and his disciples seem to be looking for a mechanism that will return the mysteries surrounding reality to a deterministic prison where scientific reductionism can once again regain control. One wonders if ideological factors rather than scientific ones motivate this theory.

At the heart of the matter is the question of how to reconcile the deterministic (cause and effect) patterns we seen in science with the untidy realities of consciousness and randomness that are also seen in science. At the foundation of all these questions is the mystery of human existence. Did a consciousness intend us to exist? Is there a telos, a meaning and purpose to our existence?

It is significant that whilst science struggles to answer these questions – having to choose between scientific reductionism and what looks to be metaphysical consciousness, Christian theology does not. In fact, superdeterminism could, in its broadest sense, be considered to be a euphemism for God. This is ironic given the suspicion that the concept was devised to obviate the need for God.

Christians believe that fundamentally, everything exists because of the consciousness of God. They also understand that a rational universe exists because God is rational and wants to be understood, at least in part, through his creation (Psalm 19:1-4; Romans 1:19).

If superdeterminism is given an atheistic overlay, it can be used to give support to the idea that the essential pre-requisites of the universe have existed eternally without reason… and that everything that happens in the universe is predetermined by physical laws that have arisen by chance. An atheist might note that quantum “entanglement” suggests that everything is interconnected, from which they infer (somewhat spuriously) that everything is pre-controlled. There is therefore no such thing as free-will.

What all this highlights, of course, is the mystery surrounding who, or what, is the “first cause” or, in Aristotle’s words, “prime-mover” of the universe – or whether a first cause even exists.

The American theoretical physicist, John Wheeler (1911-2008) was one person who was convinced, through his science, that a causative “consciousness” exists, and that because this consciousness wanted humankind to develop, we are “participants” in a grand plan.

The celebrity atheist, Richard Dawkins, does not agree. His is a deterministic world. We are just a chance collection of atoms. Somehow, these atoms have stumbled on the ability to assemble themselves into genes, and we hapless humans simply have to dance to their tune.[2]

In essence, this debate is the modern day version of what has arguably been the greatest debate humankind has ever engaged in. It is a debate that became prominent when the atheistic-orientated Epicureans argued with the theistic Stoics (from 400BC to 200AD). At its heart was the question: Does the universe exist by chance or design?

Superdeterminism really has nothing to add to this debate. Atheists claim that blind physical forces exist without reason, and that these forces determine (and perhaps predetermine) everything. On the other hand, theists claim that there is a degree of truth in superdeterminism, because God, who stands outside of time, has determined that humankind come into existence – as John Wheeler believed. 

A number of questions and observations arise from thoughts of superdeterminism. The first is that interconnectedness doesn’t necessarily mean that everything is predetermined. One needs to ask is how connectedness would cause anything to be predetermined. Crucially, superdeterminism fails to address the question of “first cause”. What starts the web of interconnectedness off? It seems that we are inevitably drawn back to John Wheeler’s cosmic consciousness, i.e. God.


[1]       John Horgan, “Does Quantum Mechanics Rule Out Free Will?” Scientific American(March 10, 2022), see: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/does-quantum-mechanics-rule-out-free-will/

[2]       Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976).

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