November Issue of The Worldview Bulletin-Pt. 1
Prevenient Grace | C. S. Lewis and Delighting in God's World | Would the Great Scientists of the Revolution Be Devout Christians if They Lived Today?
Welcome to the November issue of The Worldview Bulletin! In this edition, Paul Copan looks at five commonalities that we share with nonbelievers, which also act as bridges for sharing the gospel. Paul Gould examines the often-overlooked role of emotions as ways of perceiving truth, especially as explicated by C. S. Lewis. And, Melissa Cain Travis explores how renowned astronomer Johannes Kepler understood his scientific work in relation to his Christian faith. As usual, following these essays, you’ll find our regular columns of news, book deals, and other helpful info.
As always, we appreciate your subscription support of The Worldview Bulletin, and welcome your feedback at worldviewbulletin@gmail.com.
For those in the US, we wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving!
Christopher Reese
Managing Editor
Contents
Part One
“Thou, God, Art Present There”: How God Speaks Before We Do
by Paul Copan
Learning with C. S. Lewis to See and Delight in God’s World
by Paul M. Gould
Would the Great Scientists of the Revolution Be Devout Christians If They Lived Today?
by Melissa Cain Travis
Please see the second email for Part Two of the newsletter.
“Thou, God, Art Present There”: How God Speaks Before We Do
by Paul Copan
As one hymn writer affirmed: “And everywhere that man can be, Thou, God, art present there.” In another hymn, “This Is My Father’s World,” we read this line: “He speaks to me everywhere.”
Perhaps you’ve not thought about how God’s grace goes ahead of us in our witness—another kind of “prevenient” (preceding) grace. But hopefully this brief sketch—taken from my forthcoming revised Loving Wisdom book—might encourage and embolden us in our witness.
We may often feel we have a lot of terrain to cover as we share our faith and engage in cross-worldview conversation. But maybe we should consider a kind of “preparation for the gospel” (praeparatio evangelica) in this way: God’s Spirit is very often present and active in the unbeliever’s life in a range of ways to poke, prod, and awaken. God isn’t far from each one of them, even if they aren’t familiar with Scripture (Acts 17:27). In a range of ways, people have already had some “God experiences.” We have a shared awareness of these glimmers of divine light. God’s self-revelation can be detected through the five “Cs”—creation, cognition, conscience, commonsense experience, and various “coincidences.”
Creation: We are awed by the amazing, beautiful world around us—from mountainous landscapes to starry skies, from roaring oceans to exquisite flowers and birds that are both colorful in feather and beautiful in song. Ours is a world filled with inspiring wonders, breathtaking phenomena, and mysterious intricacies. Could it be that these wonders serve as pointers to something deeper, more profound, and more beautiful than what can be explained by mere molecules in motion and swirling forces of nature?
Cognition: Consistent naturalists assume that everything real is material in nature—including our thought-processes. Yet the mental is actually required to understand what is happening in the material realm. And why do we assume our minds are trustworthy and that the laws of logic are binding on us? In a universe of purely physical, deterministic forces, we would have strong reason to doubt the reliable workings of our minds. Why such intellectual confidence if our beliefs are products of nonrational, material forces?
Conscience: C. S. Lewis said that even at a tender age, children understand the basics of justice—that there’s something wrong with picking on kids at the playground and with cutting in front of people who have been waiting in a long line. Amazingly, duties seem to be thrust upon us. Why is that? And we all have an awareness of a moral gap that exists between our moral performance and a higher moral ideal. How then do people deal with the guilt and shame that come with moral failure? And even persons who seem morally desensitized or calloused (1 Tim. 4:2; cf. Eph. 4:19) likely weren’t always that way. We can explore what it was like for them when they first deeply violated their conscience, before they began suppressing the truth.
Commonsense Experience: Lewis took a commonsense view of reality. Why deny what seems so obvious to us in the absence of anything even remotely compelling? This is what some have called “the principle of credulity.” Without affirming this at some level, we would be lost in the miry bog of skepticism. So the claim that the physical world is an illusion (Eastern monism)—and that morality, design, consciousness, and free will are as well—flies in the face of our most fundamental experience. Atheist philosopher Daniel Dennett makes the baffling claim that consciousness is an illusion, but one must beconscious in order to experience an illusion. Agnostic philosopher Michael Ruse has said that morality is a “corporate illusion fobbed off on us by our genes to get us to cooperate,” but how has he shaken off the illusion to which the rest of us are subject? Often those who make these sweeping claims of “illusion” make themselves the exception to the rule they claim the rest of us are living under. If the universe appears designed or if morality appears real, maybe this is because they are actually so.
“Coincidences”: How frequently have we escaped death or had other close calls and near misses, even from serious injury? In large measure, many of us—through no conscious decision of our own—live a “charmed” life, which can serve as something of a wake-up call. Psychiatrist Scott Peck spoke of his own experience, including
times I just missed being hit by cars while on foot, on a bicycle or driving; times when I was driving a car and almost struck pedestrians or barely missed bike riders in the dark; times when I jammed on the brakes, coming to a stop no more than an inch or two away from another vehicle; times when I narrowly missed skiing into trees, almost fell out of windows; times when a swinging golf club brushed through my hair, and so on. What is this?
I suspect the majority will find in their own personal experiences similar patterns of narrowly averted disasters, a number of accidents that almost happened that is many times greater than the number of accidents that actually did happen. Could it be that most of us do lead “charmed lives”? Could it really be that the line in the song is true: “‘Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far”?[1]
Given these “coincidental” manifestations of grace, small and large, perhaps there is something “out there” seeking to get our attention, receive our gratitude, and remind us that our times are not in our own hands (Rom. 1:21).
These, then, are some of the commonalities we share with the unbelievers around us. These “Cs” are a ready-made bridge for us when we actually speak to those unfamiliar with the gospel. We can count on these kinds of clues and pointers to the divine eventually emerging in our cross-worldview conversations. There are plenty of those “you too?” kinds of common experiences we share with non-Christians. These commonalities should encourage us that God is not only with us, but that he has already gone ahead of us in our witness: “And everywhere that man can be, Thou, God, art present there.”
Notes
[1] M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1978), 241.
— Paul Copan is the Pledger Family Chair of Philosophy and Ethics at Palm Beach Atlantic University. Learn more about Paul and his work at paulcopan.com.
*Note: This essay is adapted from Paul Copan, Loving Wisdom: A Guide to Philosophy and Christian Faith, 2nd edition (Eerdmans, April 2020).
Learning with C. S. Lewis to See and Delight in God’s World
by Paul M. Gould
We live in a disenchanted world. I don’t mean that the world itself is disenchanted. Rather, the dominant way of perceiving the world, including the people within the world, is what can be described as disenchanted. We no longer see people and things in their proper light. We no longer see the world as gift, sacred, beautiful, mysterious, wonderful, and holy (to be sure, we perceive tragedy, fragmentation, and alienation too, but even much of that we fail to perceive rightly). In my book Cultural Apologetics, I argue that re-enchantment is possible. Crucially, this involves learning to see and delight in the world the same way Jesus does. I still think this is the way to go. But, I now realize that in my book I overlooked a crucial aspect of learning how to see and delight in the world as Jesus does: the role of the emotions.
Let me explain. This past summer, I met with my friend Adam Pelser. Adam teaches philosophy at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. He has a cool job. He did his dissertation at Baylor on the philosophy of emotions. As we were chatting on a crisp and clear summer morning, Adam was sharing with me a bit of his research. One comment, in particular, stopped me in my tracks. Adam said that he thinks we perceive value through the emotions. This intrigued me. If this is correct, then I missed something crucial in my book when it comes to seeing and delighting in a world created, sustained, and cared for by God—the role of the emotions. Thankfully, Adam pointed me to some of his research on the topic, including a wonderful essay he wrote on C. S. Lewis’s view of the emotions as discussed in The Abolition of Man called “Irrigating Deserts: Thinking with C. S. Lewis about Educating for Emotional Formation.”[1] As it turns out, Adam’s idea is not new. Rather, he is tapping into a rich tradition that views the emotions as central to human flourishing. Let’s consider the argument from C. S. Lewis to get a better grasp of the emotions.
In the first chapter of his book The Abolition of Man, Lewis argues about the dangers of subjectivism (basically the view that there are no objective moral truths). Lewis begins by discussing an episode from a book he dubs the Green Book. In the Green Book, the authors discuss a story regarding two tourists who happened upon a waterfall. The first sees the waterfall and exclaims, “It is sublime,” whereas the second sees it and calls it “pretty.” While it is tempting to praise the first tourist for a proper emotional response to something truly beautiful and awe-inspiring (i.e., the waterfall) and to scorn the second, the authors of the Green Book argue that such praise and blame would be misplaced:
“When the man said This is sublime, he appeared to be making a remark about the waterfall . . . Actually . . . he was not making a remark about the waterfall, but a remark about his own feelings. What he was saying was really I have feelings associated in my mind with the word ‘Sublime’, or shortly, I have sublime feelings . . . This confusion is continually present in language as we use it. We appear to be saying something very important about something: and actually we are only saying something about our own feelings.”[2]
The authors of the Green book are arguing for subjectivism. According to subjectivism, emotions are unimportant. Worse, they are considered irrational. Lewis rejects this view of the emotions. For Lewis, emotions are “perception-like experiences of objective value” that can be in harmony or disharmony with reason:
Until quite modern times all teachers and even all men believed the universe to be such that certain emotional reactions on our part could be either congruous or incongruous to it—believed, in fact, that objects did not merely receive, but could merit, our approval or disapproval, our reverence or our contempt.[3]
In other words (and here is Adam’s big idea) = we perceive objective value in the world through our emotions. Adam puts it this way: “emotions, like sense perceptions, can get things right or wrong and the wise and virtuous person will not only make the appropriate moral and aesthetic judgments, she will also ‘see’ the value in the world accurately through her emotions.”[4]
So, emotions are not only important, they are our primary means (but not our only means[5]) of apprehending objective value in the world. When our emotions are formed properly (through moral education), “they enable,” according to Adam, the “direct awareness, and hence, knowledge of objective value.”[6] As Lewis states, our
emotional states can be in harmony with reason (when we feel liking for what ought to be approved) or out of harmony with reason (when we perceive that liking is due but cannot feel it). . . . [emotions] can be reasonable or unreasonable as they conform to Reason or fail to conform.[7]
If we teach our children (and society in general) to distrust their emotions, we are creating a society of people “devoid of well-formed emotional sensitivities—people, as Lewis puts it, ‘without chests.’”[8]
If Adam, following Lewis, following the classic tradition, is right, emotions play a crucial role in a life well-lived. This shouldn’t be a surprise, now that I think of it. Every part of our being was lovingly fashioned by a God who wants us to know, love, and value everything in its proper order. Do you want to see and delight in the world the way Jesus does? Do you want to join with God to re-enchant your world and then invite others to do the same? Then learn to pay attention to your emotions (but not only your emotions) as you as you go through your day. As we learn to “consider the lilies of the field” (as Jesus says in Matthew 6:28), or as you look at the lost who are in need of a shepherd (as Jesus implores us to do in Matthew 9:36-38), you might see and delight in them in a new, and fresh, way.
Notes
[1] Adam C. Pelser, “Irrigating Deserts: Thinking with C. S. Lewis about Educating for Emotional Formation,” Christian Scholars Review 44.1 (2014): 27–43.
[2] C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 2–3.
[3] Lewis, The Abolition of Man, 14–15.
[4] Pelser, “Irrigating Deserts,” 31.
[5] We can also “see” value through our rational faculties. Often, we see the truth, e.g., of some moral fact, including facts about value, without inferring their truth from some other fact or facts.
[6] Pelser, “Irrigating Deserts,” 32.
[7] Lewis, The Abolition of Man, 19.
[8] Ibid., 33.
— Paul Gould is founder and president of the Two Tasks Institute and a Visiting Fellow at the Henry Center for Theological Understanding at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.
Would the Great Scientists of the Revolution Be Devout Christians if They Lived Today?
by Melissa Cain Travis
It has been my experience that materialist proponents of the natural sciences become rather irritated when someone brings up the fact that most of the great fathers of modern science were Christian theists. Typically, I will raise this point whenever someone claims that a theistic worldview is irrational or that the idea of a Maker of all things is anti-science. The response I receive is almost always something along the lines of: “Yes, those were brilliant men of science, but there was so much they did not know—that we now know—about the natural world. If they lived today, it’s likely that none of them would be religious. It’s pointless to bring them up in defense of the compatibility of science and faith.”
There are several problems with this response, but the one that I find most glaring is the unfounded presumption that scientific and mathematical thinkers such as Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Newton, and Boyle believed in a creator God based upon a lack of scientific knowledge. This betrays an ignorance about the actual writings of these great thinkers, writings which clearly show that it was their discoveries—an increase in understanding—that incited their expressions of praise and reverence for an ingenious, omnipotent Maker. During their time, it increasingly appeared that the cosmos was crafted in a manner that allowed it to operate according to a preordained set of universal laws. The pursuit of knowledge about the natural world was seen as deciphering God’s "book of nature"—both its language and its content.
The huge leaps made in natural philosophy (what we now refer to as the natural sciences) during the Scientific Revolution served to heighten wonder and scholarly appreciation for the rationality of creation and mankind’s exclusive ability to understand it. None of the reasons for faith cited by the heroes of the Revolution have in any way been undermined by subsequent scientific advancement. In fact, they have been strengthened immensely!
Case in Point: Johannes Kepler
Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) was a German mathematician and astronomer who formulated a new mathematical theory of heliocentric planetary motion that, unlike Copernicus', harmonized exceedingly well with the astronomer Tycho Brahe’s extensive, unparalleled compilation of stargazing records. Kepler, who was Brahe’s protégé for nearly a year (a professional relationship that ended with Brahe’s sudden, untimely death), found that by modeling the planetary orbits as ellipses rather than perfect circles, the observational data could be mathematically represented more simply and with greatly improved predictive accuracy. Kepler’s laws of planetary motion (published in his 1609 New Astronomy and his 1618 Harmonies of the World) transformed the field of astronomy into a sophisticated theoretical science.
Kepler was convinced that the universe operated according to laws put in place by its Maker, much like a clock is fabricated by a clockmaker. This went against an ancient Greek idea about nature having some kind of active “soul” in it that produced its motions:
My aim is to say that the machinery of the heavens is not like a divine animal but like a clock (and anyone who believes a clock has a soul give the work the honour due to its maker) and that in it almost all the variety of motions is from one very simple magnetic force acting on bodies, as in the clock all motions are from a very simple weight. [i]
Yet, the idea of a clockwork universe that ran with autonomy, according to laws of nature, only strengthened Kepler’s theistic convictions.
Both a brilliant natural philosopher and a devout Christian of the Lutheran tradition, Kepler was thoroughly convinced that God had intentionally ordered the universe in a way that could be comprehended by the human intellect. This belief is particularly evident in his private correspondence with fellow scholars and other associates. In a letter to the Baron von Herberstein dated May 15, 1596, Kepler declared that “God, like a human architect, approached the founding of the world according to order and rule and measured everything in such a manner, that one might think not art took nature for an example but God Himself, in the course of His creation, took the art of man as an example.” [ii]
There are two notable things about this statement; first, that Kepler expresses his belief that God created the cosmos according to a rational, mathematical plan, and second, that the mind of God and the mind of man must be somehow analogous. He states this idea more plainly in what are perhaps his most famous words:
To God there are, in the whole material world, material laws, figures and relations of special excellency and of the most appropriate order…Those laws are within the grasp of the human mind; God wanted us to recognize them by creating us after his own image so that we could share in his own thoughts. [iii]
Later in the same passage, he chastises those who would say it is very presumptuous to imagine that God’s mind is anything like man’s: “Only fools fear that we make man godlike in doing so; for the divine counsels are impenetrable, but not his material creation.” [iv]
We see that Kepler’s idea of God's natural revelation is centered upon the fact that the natural world is governed by rational laws that are discoverable by man, who, by investigating nature can think God’s thoughts after him. Kepler made these kinds of statements often. In a letter to his former astronomy professor, Michael Maestlin, he wrote, “God, who founded everything in the world according to the norm of quantity, also has endowed man with a mind which can comprehend these norms. For as the eye for color, the ear for musical sounds, so is the mind of man created for the perception…of quantities.” [v]
He connects this idea with the Christian doctrine of man in a passage from his work Conversations with Galileo’s Sidereal Messenger, where he says that geometry “shines in the mind of God” and that a “share of it which has been granted to man is one of the reasons why he is in the image of God.”[vi]
Kepler considered his life’s work—unlocking the mysteries of planetary motion—as an act of worship. He said, “I had the intention of becoming a theologian…but now see how God is, by my endeavors, also glorified in astronomy.” [x]
By investigating God’s natural revelation, the natural philosopher, who is made in God’s image, illuminates some of the divine wisdom made manifest in the creation: “The chief aim of all investigations of the external world should be to discover the rational order which has been imposed on it by God, and which he revealed to us in the language of mathematics.” [xi]
Kepler called the universe “our bright Temple of God” and described astronomers as “priests of the highest God in regard to the book of nature.”[xii] Even Kepler’s self-written epitaph reflects his conviction that mind, with its mathematical aptitude, bears the image of the divine:
Once I measured the skies,
Now I measure the earth’s shadow.
Of heavenly birth was the measuring mind,
In the shadow remains only the body. [xiii]
Since Kepler's time, our understanding of the deep mathematical structure of the cosmos has exploded. Moreover, based upon the intellectual rigor of fields such as theoretical physics, it is more amazing than ever that mankind possesses the higher cognitive aptitude to illuminate the fundamental nature of the universe.
Notes
[i] Letter to J. G. Herwart von Hohenburg, 16 February 1605, Johannes Kepler Gesammelte Werke, ed. M Caspar et al., Munich, 1937, vol. 15, 146.
[ii] Carola Baumgardt, Johannes Kepler: Life and Letters (New York: Philosophical Library, 1951), 33-34.
[iii] Baumgardt, 50.
[iv] Baumgardt, 50.
[v] Gerald Holton, Thematic Origins of Scientific Thought (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988), 68.
[vi] Johannes Kepler, Conversation with Galileo’s Sidereal Messenger (New York: Johnson Reprint Corp., 1965), 43.
[vii] Baumgardt, 41.
[viii] Johannes Kepler, Harmonies of the World, trans. by Charles Glenn Wallis (Annapolis: St. John’s Bookstore, 1939), Kindle loc. 259.
[ix] Alister McGrath, Re-Imagining Nature, 82.
[x] Morris Kline, Mathematics: The Loss of Certainty (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), 31.
[xi] Quoted in Morris Kline, Mathematics: The Loss of Certainty (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), 31.
[xii] Baumgardt, 44.
[xiii] James Voelkel, Johannes Kepler and the New Astronomy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 130.
— Melissa Cain Travis, PhD, serves as an Assistant Professor at Houston Baptist University. She is the author of Science and the Mind of the Maker: What the Conversation Between Faith and Science Reveals About God (2018) and a contributor to The Story of the Cosmos: How the Heavens Declare the Glory of God (2019).