Useful Things | November 25, 2019
Dear Readers,
Enjoy these complimentary articles from the November issue of The Worldview Bulletin. Paul Copan looks at five commonalities that we share with nonbelievers, which also act as bridges for sharing the gospel. You’ll also find this month’s Helpful Resources and Miscellaneous Gems column.
For those in the US, we wish you a very happy Thanksgiving!
Christopher Reese
Managing Editor
“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).
Helpful Resources and Miscellaneous Gems
- 10 best Android learning apps to increase your knowledge (most of these are available for iOS as well).
- Theology on the Web offers free access to more than 40,000 articles in theology, biblical studies, biblical archaeology, church history, and missiology.
- The Tyndale House STEP Bible lets you do keyword searches with multiple Bible translations and view the Greek and Hebrew of English words in the biblical text. Very handy for checking an original word meaning if you’ve never formally studied the biblical languages.
- The Tyndale House Greek New Testament (THGNT), edited by Tyndale House Academic Vice Principal Dr. Dirk Jongkind and Principal Dr. Peter J. Williams, is now available online at Bible Gateway and through the YouVersion Bible app.
- J.R.R. Tolkien Reading from Lord of the Rings.
- Get the audio of Darrel Bock’s Historical Jesus course FREE, from Credo Courses.
- Plantinga Videos — Short animated videos on philosopher Alvin Plantinga's most important contributions to the philosophy of religion.
- From Crossway Books: “Students: Get Free Digital Access to 7 Study Bibles, Original Language Resources, and More.”
- The Evangelical Philosophical Society has a very nice collection of papers free to download in three different categories:
Philosophy of Theological Anthropology Project
Philosophical Discussions on Marriage and Family Project
Christian Philosophers in the Secular Academy
- You can now also access the full archive of Philosophia Christi, the journal of the Evangelical Philosophical Society, through The Philosophy Documentation Center. See here for details.
- Check out biblicaltraining.org where you can listen to course lectures presented by notable evangelical scholars, free of charge. See the full list of courses here. These are great for listening to while commuting, traveling, exercising, or doing house work. Among the 130 courses are 10 on worldview issues.
- Take a look at the Library Extension, available for Firefox and Chrome. As you browse books and e-books on web pages, the Library Extension can check your library's online catalog and display the availability of that item on the same page.
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