An Argument for God’s Existence from Gardening

Over the past few years, I’ve imagined and even longed for the day when I would have time to venture into organic gardening. This year as the school where I teach moved from in-person to online instruction in mid-March, I suddenly found myself at home with more time on my hands. As a result, I decided that this year was the year I’d finally grow a garden. Since I had no idea what I was doing at first—and still have a lot to learn—I began reading numerous articles, read and re-read a book I have on organic gardening (The Vegetable Gardener’s Bible by Edward C. Smith), and watched countless YouTube videos in an effort to adequately prepare myself for growing and managing a successful garden.

Quite honestly, my initial interest in growing a garden was mainly based on my desire to provide healthy, homegrown food for myself and my family. I also thought it would be a fun experience to share with my wife and kids. However, what I’ve learned and experienced over the past few months has brought many unexpected things: incredible excitement and joy, along with an overwhelming sense of peace, and most surprisingly—a deeper relationship with God and a renewed interest in who he is as Creator.

A deeper relationship with God and a renewed interest in who he is as Creator? How is that? I mean, we are talking about a garden, a mound of dirt with some plants that require watering from time-to-time, right?

What I’d like to do now is offer four things that I’ve learned from gardening over the past few months—four things that essentially serve as an argument (of sorts) for God’s existence, in addition to revealing some important aspects of his divine character.

Purpose. First, everything in a garden has a purpose. From the worms to the ladybugs, to the soil, the sun, and rain—everything has an important role to play. Even garbage (i.e., compost) has a purpose, as it fertilizes plants by enriching the surrounding soil with important nutrients that allow for the plants to grow and thrive.[1] With many things working together, each doing its own job, a bountiful harvest becomes possible. But how is this evidence for God? Everything that belongs in the garden is there for a purpose. Anytime there is purpose, there is intent, and intent reveals a personal will. Purpose also reveals wisdom, and wisdom comes from a personal intelligence. Therefore, purpose in creation points in the direction of a divine “Purposer” or, more specifically, an all-wise personal God.

Order. Second, there is an order to the way things work in a garden. Apart from order, gardening would be impossible. I’ve learned that careful soil preparation must precede planting, that seeds and young seedlings must be planted at specific times and then watered sufficiently, and so on. To further illustrate the point, consider how gardeners and farmers typically strive to improve their yield in succeeding years based upon what they have learned in previous years—which is only possible in an environment of order. Order is a problem for naturalism, which maintains that prior to the Big Bang, the universe was in a state of chaos. Additionally, naturalism involves believing that after the Big Bang, an ensuing set of random processes somehow produced order. This is problematic because chaos does not produce order; chaos only produces further chaos. Likewise, randomness only produces more randomness. A tornado cannot rip through a landscape and lay down a perfectly organized garden, even if all of the seeds are already there. A storm is unable to produce systematic rows of evenly divided crops of various kinds. This begs the question: Why does order exist, even within something like a garden, if the universe is just the result of chaotic origin and random material processes? Anytime there is order, a conscious mind is behind it. If a God of order exists, we would expect to find exactly what we find: an orderly creation. Because an orderly creation exists, we have evidence for an orderly God who stands behind it all (1 Corinthians 14:33).

Taste. Third, the food that I’ve grown in the garden is incredibly tasty. In my opinion, there aren’t many things that taste better than fresh-picked, homegrown strawberries or blackberries. I’ve also really enjoyed the delectable flavors of squash and green beans, and I will soon delight in the pleasant palatability of tomatoes and peppers. Here’s a thought I’ve often had, especially as a lover of food: Why does food taste good? I mean, couldn’t food be just as nutritious and enable us to survive and even flourish if it had no taste at all? The wonderfully delightful tastes of various foods seem to be “add-ons,” like something extra. Perhaps all of different flavors of food are actually evidences of a wonderfully good God, who desires to not only satisfy our hunger and innate need for food, but to also allow us to enjoy the pleasurable experience of tasting and savoring the different flavors he has created (Proverbs 24:13).

Beauty. Fourth, before growing a garden of my own, I had no idea how beautiful so many fruit and vegetable plants actually are, especially the flowers they produce. Every morning when I walk out to my garden, I notice bright yellow blooms on the squash and zucchini plants, small white flowers on the pepper plants, white and red flowers on the strawberry plants, and colorful flowers on all of the tomato plants as well. I’ve learned that these flowers exist in order to attract pollinators (which goes back to our “purpose” discussion above), but it seems they also exist for something more—to point us to the beauty of their Creator. Like taste, beauty is an “add-on” to the world; it is not something that is needed for survival. Beauty exists as a mark of design and order; it is something that is to be enjoyed, of course, but it is not an end in itself—it provides us with opportunity to reflect on the ultimate source of beauty. And as we allow the beautiful things we see in creation to push our hearts and challenge our minds to search for the ultimate source of beauty, we encounter our beautiful and good Creator, the divine Artist of creation himself (Psalm 19:1; Ecclesiastes 11:7).

There’s just something about a garden. This is a thought that I didn’t expect to have, but it is one I’ve had repeatedly over the past few months. Perhaps it’s because when we are in a garden, we are at home in the place where our existence began (Genesis 1-3)—and the place where those of us who trust in Christ will one day enjoy God’s presence forevermore (Revelation 21-22). There is much more that I could say about my gardening experience (including some frustrations), and I realize that I have much more to learn—but, for now, I rejoice in the fact that through gardening I experience the same glorious Creator who made the first garden and the One who will also fashion the last garden. Now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s time for me to go outside and check on my garden again…

Stephen S. Jordan currently serves as a high school Bible teacher at Liberty Christian Academy in Lynchburg, Virginia. He is also a Bible teacher, curriculum developer, and curriculum editor at Liberty University Online Academy, as well as a PhD candidate at the Liberty University Rawlings School of Divinity. Prior to his current positions, Stephen served as youth pastor at Pleasant Ridge Baptist Church in State Road, North Carolina. He and his wife, along with their three children and German shepherd, reside in Goode, Virginia.

[1] Placing compost into the garden is basically taking dead, rotten material and using it to bring about life among the plants. Surely, there is a spiritual application here somewhere.

On to Finish the Ph.D at Pitt (Part 15)

As we got started in our new life at Pitt, Laquita decided to find a job other than teaching, so she applied to the University and was given the job of Chemistry Department Librarian.  She quickly learned the principles on which the library worked and settled in to keeping the books and journals organized and aiding users when they were not finding what they were looking for.  She had a basic knowledge of chemistry and had no trouble in familiarizing herself with the nomenclature of chemistry research.  Laquita also decided to do some graduate work herself and enrolled in the master’s degree program in English, which she was able to finish by the time I had completed my work three years later.

The center of our social life was the church we attended, the Fifth and Beechwood Church of Christ.  There we engaged not only in three worship and study meetings per week (Sunday morning and evening and Wednesday evening), we also were frequently invited to dinner by the middle-aged and elderly couples.  Several of these had Southern backgrounds and their hospitality and good cooking reflected that culture.  There was also frequent fellowship between the graduate students, some of whom we are still in touch with.  Our closest friends were Wendell and Joyce Bean.  Wendell was employed by Westinghouse Corporation as a research engineer, and Joyce was enrolled in the child development program at Pitt, where she had some contact with the famous Fred Rogers of the Mr. Rogers television show.  Another couple that both the Beans and we were close to was Bennie and Neda Riley.  Bennie was a graduate student in physics at Carnegie-Mellon University, and Neda worked with an accounting firm.  The fourth couple of this group was Gene and Susie Couch.  Gene was in the graduate program in physics at Pitt, and Susie was the consummate homemaker, staying at home and taking care of their little girl.  It was through the Couches that we met Keith and Wendy Ratliffe; Keith was also in the physics program at Pitt.  Keith was not a believer, but we were with them regularly because they were a part of our opera group.

Our best university friends were Bob and Nancy Mossman.  I have already mentioned Bob’s new-found atheism, which was a constant matter of discussion and banter between us. They both came from California and had ebullient personalities.  Bob was ambitious for success, and it was indicative of his independent personality that when he went job hunting after finishing his Ph.D., he didn’t go for a conventional academic position, but instead interviewed with business firms, persuading them that his broader liberal arts perspective and his writing skills, along with a strong personality, equipped him well to be hired into an executive training program.  He was therefore successful in landing a job with Ford Motor Company in Dearborn, MI.  Consequently, when I got my first job with the University of Michigan-Dearborn, the Mossmans introduced us to the town.

While we were in Pittsburgh, Bob and Nancy became involved in the civil rights activities of the Black church where Nancy had started attending.  That aspect of their lives didn’t spill over much into our interaction as couples until we continued our friendship when we moved to Dearborn.  There we met and socialized with several of their Black friends, but in Pittsburgh we had only their reports of these social interactions.

Apart from church gatherings, our richest social activity was our opera group.  Each year the Metropolitan Opera came to Pittsburgh on tour, and a group of four couples, some from church (the Beans and us) and some from the University (the Ratliffes and the Mossmans), bought season tickets and attended the operas together, enhanced by having dinner beforehand.  It was Laquita’s and my first exposure to opera, and we learned to love it.

As I got into my second year at Pitt and my third year of graduate work, I began to focus on what the subject of my dissertation would be.  I wrote a term paper that year on the poems of Geoffrey Chaucer which were cast in the form of a dream, and that spurred me to consider other dream poems of the same period, the last third of the 14th century.  Accordingly, the topic of my dissertation was, “The Dream as a Literary Framework in Works of Chaucer, Langland, and the Pearl Poet.”  The thesis idea was that the dreamer/narrator in each of the poems analyzed is a much more individualized personality than in most previous dream works and comes to enlightenment about some matter of importance in the process of experiencing his dream.  My dissertation topic was approved by the graduate study committee and my dissertation committee was appointed.  My dissertation director, Dr. Alan Markman, would chair the committee and comment on my drafts at various stages. 

During my second year at Pitt I was awarded a teaching fellowship, and that provided my first experience of college teaching.  Along with most graduate teaching assistants in English, I was given classes of freshman composition.  Apart from a basic syllabus for the course, I was given no guidance or instruction; it was merely assumed that I would learn by experience.  I don’t remember much about the details of my composition classes, but I was certainly much better able to grade essays at the end of my year than I had been before, and I was given at least that much practical preparation for teaching English classes when I was employed full time after I graduated with my Ph.D.  During my fourth year of graduate work—my third at Pitt—I was given only a tuition scholarship.  My faithful wife kept us eating during my Ph.D. work with her job at the Chemistry Library.  She also continued her own graduate work toward a master’s degree in English.

Some of the graduate courses I took left more of an impression on me than others.  I have already mentioned Old English, which was very difficult, but which ushered me into learning to read Middle English, the language of Chaucer and the other poets whose works were the subject of my dissertation.  I also took a course in the history of the English language and taught the course myself during my first few years as a full-time college teacher.  The subject of linguistics was burgeoning during my graduate years, so an introduction to the subject had recently become a required course in the graduate English program.  The new textbooks in the subject took a radically non-traditional view of the norms of grammar, contending that grammatical “rules” were not fixed standards, but were defined by popular usage, which changes with time.  I was not enamored by the course, but it introduced me to principles of language that I needed to understand in the pursuit of my professional career.  Another memorable course was an undergraduate course in classical literature, which I was allowed to audit.  It introduced me to Sophocles and Plato and other non-English authors of which I needed to have read at least some.

Another course that I found difficult but needed to be introduced to was in Literary Criticism and Theory.  I found (and still find) the language of this field of study often abstract and full of jargon.  But it did acquaint me with schools of criticism and the reigning ideas about literature in different historical periods.  More to my taste were the courses I took in Shakespeare and major authors of the 18th and 19th centuries.

Finally, in outlining our Pittsburgh experiences, I need to tell about the three places where we lived.  Our first was a third-floor, one-bedroom apartment with an open area for kitchen, dining table, and sitting room.  There were several other apartments with tenants on the first and second floors.  The chief advantage of this place was that it was in walking distance of the Pitt campus.  There were tensions, however, between us and the young women who had an apartment right below us on the second floor.  They were fond of parties with loud music, which kept us awake.  We inadvertently became acquainted with the singing of Johnny Mathes because these ladies played his music so loud that the whole apartment complex was able to hear it.  Our first request for them to turn down the volume was met somewhat politely, but thereafter they were not receptive to our pleas.  Another noise source was the trash truck that came around at about 5 a.m. every morning to service a restaurant across the alley from us.  I don’t remember whether we got ear plugs or just got used to it, but I do remember being irritated and frustrated by these disturbances.  It was another welcome to urban living.

Our second home arose from a proposal by our landlord, Dr. Beroes, an engineering professor at Pitt, to live in his family’s house, a couple of blocks away from our apartment, while they were away on sabbatical leave for several months.  I think we still had to pay some rent, but the purpose of the arrangement was to occupy the house so that it would not be vulnerable to theft or vandalism.  We were given an upstairs bedroom and had access to the kitchen for meal preparation.  It seemed to offer a welcome respite from sharing a house with irritating fellow-tenants, but there was a major glitch when Mrs. Beroes decided to come home after only a month or two away.  She was not easy to live with and turned out to be an inveterate liar.  We finally looked for and found an attractive flat in a working-class suburb named Wilkinsburg, where we spent the final year of our time in Pittsburgh. 

This was an interesting place to live.  Our landlady was a lively elderly Irish woman with whom we had a fair amount of conversation.  She was a bit mischievous, flirting with me and commenting on my “nice legs” and bantering with another of her tenants, an Englishman to whom she referred as “John Bull.”   We had to commute to Pitt, but there was a trolley that went close to our house, and I used that to get to the campus, whereas Laquita took our car, since she had a daily job to get to.  There was a service station across the street from us, so it was convenient to get the car serviced.

After spending a year researching and writing my doctoral dissertation, I completed it and applied for jobs, which at the time were fairly plentiful.  After interviewing with several institutions at the national meeting of the Modern Language Association, and being asked for a second interview, the best offer I received was from the University of Michigan-Dearborn (U. of M., Dearborn Campus at the time).  It had been established only six years before as an upper-division campus, oriented mainly to the professional programs in engineering and business administration.  The second interview on campus went well, and I began my 36-year career at UM-Dearborn in the summer term, 1965.

---

Dr. Elton Higgs was a faculty member in the English department of the University of Michigan-Dearborn from 1965-2001. Having retired from UM-D as Prof. of English in 2001, he now lives with his wife in Jackson, MI. He has published scholarly articles on Chaucer, Langland, the Pearl Poet, Shakespeare, and Milton.  Recently, Dr. Higgs has self-published a collection of his poetry called Probing Eyes: Poems of a Lifetime, 1959-2019, as well as a book inspired by The Screwtape Letters, called The Ichabod Letters, available as an e-book from Moral Apologetics. (Ed.: Dr. Higgs was the most important mentor during undergrad for the creator of this website, and his influence was inestimable.)

---

New Developments in Moral Apologetics: Kevin Richard

Editor’s note: Below is a summary of Dr. Kevin Richard’s doctoral dissertation work entitled: Tawḥīdic Allah, the Trinity, and the Eschaton: A Comparative Analysis of the Qualitative Nature of the Afterlife in Islam and Christianity.

The doctrine of eternal life raises certain qualitative and existential questions. Considering the unfathomable duration, one may rightly ask, what will that experience be like and will it be eternally satisfying? British moral philosopher Bernard Williams once stated that “nothing less will do for eternity than something that makes boredom unthinkable.”[1]

The prospect of eternal life creates a potential existential problem for humanity. The problem is potential because eternal existence creates a certain need, a need which can concisely be stated in this way: quality must overcome quantity. One can imagine becoming satiated with the pleasures and joys promised in religious Paradise. Consider this, at the first intimations of boredom, even if that moment took a billion trillion years to reach (if time is still measured that way), you would arrive at this moment relatively quickly given eternity as there would still be as much time in front of you as when you first stepped into this reality. One can further imagine that this boorish reality could quickly become hellish as pleasures and joy would continue to lose their appeal and boredom would increase and abound with no end.

Christianity and Islam have robust eschatologies and both teach that human beings are intended to live forever. Furthermore, this eternal life is presented as intrinsically good. I would submit that if they are in fact intrinsically good then each respective eschatological reality must overcome this problem of eternal duration if eternal life is something to be desired. My concern here is not with comparison between Paradise and Hell. Faced with the option to choose between the two, most rational people would embrace the former. But what if Paradise would eventually become hellish? What then? The notion of this paradisal life would not be a blessed reality, a divine gift, but the worst of all curses to befall mankind. Therefore, I am concerned with the goodness of Paradise as it is in itself. Does either faith tradition’s purported eternal bliss have the ability to eternally satisfy human creatures?

To answer that question, two fundamental assumptions will be made. If the answer is to be yes, that eternal life is intrinsically good, it would seem that two things must obtain in the afterlife. First, eternal pleasure would have to be found in and/or derive from the ultimate Good (i.e. God or Allah). Second, given that human creatures experience goodness in this life – love, happiness, relationality – and that for these creatures their telos is eternal bliss, then these goods in this life will be part of the life to come.

From these two assumptions emerge two “gap” problems, problems against which either religion can be critiqued: the Qualitative Gap Problem (QGP) and the Teleological Gap Problem (TGP). The QGP is perhaps the more obvious problem and is based on the previous statement “quality must overcome quantity.” This is an objective problem, either the quality of the experienced afterlife overcomes eternal duration, or it does not. Some may speculate that one simply could not know if this gap could or could not be overcome, and perhaps there is some merit to this point. In response to this, however, as was mentioned about, if God is the Ultimate Good, as both Christianity and Islam teach, then it would seem that he alone could be the source of a goodness that can overcome eternity’s demand. Here, one emerging thought becomes of ultimate concern: What is one’s relationship to God or Allah in the afterlife? One’s proximity to the divine, relational or otherwise, would weigh heavily on the gap being overcome.

The TGP is a subjective problem and considers how the ultimate good of the afterlife aligns with the human telos in this life and, consequently, human flourishing. The TGP considers three facts that highlight and emphasize the multi-dimensionality of human creatures:

1.     Human beings have a physical dimension.

2.     Human beings have a mental/spiritual dimension.

3.     Human beings have a social/relational dimension.

These are the teleological realities in need of fulfillment in the life to come. If Islamic Paradise or the Christian Heaven is to be desired over the other, it will be because these subjective dimensions, which form our fundamental longings and aspirations, are met. Furthermore, this teleological consideration has theological implications. As Jerry Walls notes, “The question of whether we believe in God is another form of the question of whether the fleeting glimpses of joy we experience in this life are intimations of a deeper wellspring of happiness, or whether they are tantalizing illusions, shadowy hints of a satisfaction that does not really exist.”[2] Although Walls writes within the Christian tradition, his words apply equally within an Islamic context. Applying Walls’s question to both visions of the afterlife, are the experiences of this life intimations of a deeper “wellspring of happiness” or a “tantalizing illusion”? Do they have their place in the life to come? Also, what is the source of this wellspring, God or Allah, or another source?

Within the Islamic tradition, broadly speaking, there are two theological traditions concerning the rewards of Paradise in the afterlife. The first is the one that people are most familiar with, namely, the sensuous and exorbitant afterlife. The second is not so familiar but it comes from the Qur’an itself. In Surah 56, when humanity is judged before Allah, there are three possible outcomes. The wicked are cast into Hell, the righteous are granted Paradise, and then there are a select few, those in the middle, those whom Allah brings near. Their end will be proximity to Allah, their reward is nearness. This station is the ultimate one and is reserved for the select few who attain to that level of nearness on Earth.

But, as I see it, there is a problem with this notion of nearness to Allah. The doctrine of Allah (or Tawhid) teaches that he is One, without distinction, beyond all language and description, utterly transcendent. What then is nearness or proximity to the One? In short, Islamic philosophy teaches that as the other (man) approaches the One (Allah), the more the other diminishes and only the One remains. In the afterlife, then, proximity to Allah amounts to a quasi-absorption into the divine. It is in this state that the self is slowly annihilated as all creaturely distinctions fade out of view and only the divine reality remains. Proximity to Allah, the highest level of Paradise, reaches its culmination in the Beatific Vision, but at what cost? In this moment, the QGP is met, but what comes of the self? Overcoming this gap problem seems to entail willing self-annihilation.

Now concerning the Teleological Gap Problem, how does it fare? As was mentioned above, the traditional readings of Paradise in Islam connect the telos of man in this life with the life to come. In the life to come, all manner of sensuous pleasures and desires are fulfilled. Those intrinsic goods experienced on Earth are now surpassed 1,000-fold. But according to Islamic doctrine, proximity is lost. Those who attain to this level of Paradise are not near to Allah in any real sense. And so, while they may be fulfilled sensually and relationally, it is apart from the Ultimate Good. This seems problematic, for, on the one hand, if they maintain that love is an intimation of love to come in the afterlife, a good worth retaining, then what is the source of the experience of the good in Paradise? The source is not Allah, for his love is self-contained.

At this point, I would submit that there is a greater inherent dilemma for Islam than for Christianity. On the one hand, if the QGP (the objective problem) is to be met it will entail proximity to Allah. But as we see, proximity to Allah entails the annihilation of the human subject, which does not solve the TGP (the subjective problem). On the other hand, if the TGP is to be met, it will entail a severed proximity to Allah. In the physical depictions of Paradise, the TGP, the multi-dimensionality of human creatures, is met. But, at the same time, the QGP is not met because any meaningful experience with the divine is removed. The two gap problems cannot be met simultaneously.

This study argues that the Islamic view of the afterlife does not have the theological and philosophical resources to meet both of these gap problems simultaneously and must compromise on one in order to meet the other. Islam’s doctrine of Allah – Tawhid –raises the following question in need of resolution: “How does the divine overcome the unlikeness that exists between God/Allah and man and yet not annihilate the individual (the other) in the process?”

It is at this point where the Christian doctrine of the Trinity helps to bridge this impasse. Trinitarian love is the fundamental fabric of God’s nature. Instead of this love remaining an abstraction, unknowable through human perception, the triune God acted in human history manifesting the quality of divine love in full display. While humanity remained enemies to God and hostile to his lordship, the Word-made-flesh descended into creation to save and redeem all things. Through Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross, the quality of God’s immense love was demonstrated. In that moment, humanity was given a glimpse of the quality of love that has existed within the Godhead from eternity past. It is this kind of love that Christians identify as part of the ultimate Good. And not only is that love freely given, it made a way for humanity to experience true relationship with God. To know and be known, to love and be loved. The triune God’s love for man is a non-mystical reality, grounded in the very nature of the Godhead. Christians love God because, in a very real and direct expression, God loved mankind first (1 John 4:19). Humanity can embrace those good aspirations of love and relationality both because it is how God created human beings to be and because the God of Christianity has demonstrated it to the world in human history.

This study submits that the Christian view of afterlife overcomes both gaps because of the God/man relationship in Heaven focused supremely on, in, and through the God-man Jesus Christ. It is our holistic relationship to the Triune God that grants eternal joy for all of redeemed humanity. The Christian view of Heaven presented here coupled with the nature of the Triune God is a more desired reality. The teleology of heaven better accounts for and meets the needs of the multi-dimensionality of human beings. Each of the components of the subjective experience in this life are fundamental aspects of the life to come. It is through the relation with the Triune God of Christianity that the problem of eternity is met, where quality does overcome the quantity.

[1] Bernard Williams, “The Makropulos Case: Reflections on the Tedium of Immortality,” in Problems of the Self, (New York, Cambridge University Press, 1973), 95.

[2] Jerry Walls, Heaven: The Logic of Eternal Joy, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 197.

The Cathedral of Learning and Lasting Friends: Pittsburgh, PA (Part 14)

In the summer of 1962, we set out once again to advance my graduate program, headed for the University of Pittsburgh (known informally as “Pitt”) and a second year of fellowship-supported graduate work.  We arrived on a sunny day and drove directly to the house of some friends we knew from A.C.C., Gene and Susie Couch.  Gene was in physics and went directly to Pitt after he graduated with me from A.C.C. in 1961.  They lived in a section of town known as Squirrel Hill, which some of you may recognize as the Jewish neighborhood where the terrible synagogue shooting took place in 2018.  We stayed a few nights with them while we looked for a place to live, and we found one in a big house that had been split up into apartments.  Parking for our car, though, had to be on the street.  This was the first time we had encountered the big city problem of cramped streets and dealing with houses built before there were many cars to be parked.  Rental spaces were at a premium, and we had an early run-in with another resident in our house who let us know indignantly when I left our car behind the house after washing it that she had paid for that spot and would thank us not to usurp it again. Happily for us, we could walk to the University and could leave our car parked on the street, although not always close to our house.

Early in our stay in Pittsburgh, we met people who were to become long-term— in some instances lifelong—friends.  Some were fellow members of the church we attended, the 5th and Beechwood Church of Christ, and others were fellow graduate students.  Among the lifelong friends were Wendell and Joyce Bean and Ben and Neda Riley at church and Bob and Nancy Mossman from the graduate school.  Others we were close to when we were in Pittsburgh and were in touch with for many years afterward were the Couches from church and Keith and Wendy Ratliffe from Pitt, whom we came to know through the Couches; Keith was in the physics program along with Gene.  Ben Riley was also in physics, but he attended another major university in Pittsburgh, Carnegie-Mellon.  Apart from church social functions, the most significant group activity we engaged in during our stay in Pittsburgh was going to the Metropolitan Opera when it came on tour to Pittsburgh.  This group consisted of the Higgses, the Beans, the Ratliffes, and the Mossmans.  It was Laquita’s and my first exposure to classical opera, and it was one of the most lasting cultural experiences of our lives.  We heard live such stars as Birgit Nillson and Richard Tucker, and we have never forgotten it.

After getting settled in, I went to the University’s main building, a 37-story skyscraper built in a Gothic style which led to its being called the Cathedral of Learning.  It was several miles from downtown Pittsburgh and a whole neighborhood had built up around it.  I went to the English Department area on one of the upper floors to meet with my advisor, Dr. Alan Markman, a medievalist.  He was a pipe-smoking U.S. Marine veteran who often referred to his military experience.  We were not temperamentally matched, and he turned out to be rather gruff in his assessment of my work.  He trashed the first major paper I turned in to him and complained that it took him over two hours to get through it and make his comments.  His note on the front of the paper said something about its being one of the worst graduate papers he had ever read, flawed as it was by infelicitous phrasing, errors in usage, poor scholarship, and pretentious frippery.  I was absolutely crushed, of course, but I went carefully over his remarks and in my next paper tried to avoid the kinds of mistakes he had pointed out.  It was a real shock treatment, but it made me a better writer.  Actually, I think it was already on his agenda before he received the paper to take me down a peg or two, because he commented at some point that my being a hot-shot undergraduate at Abilene Christian College didn’t mean that I was anything special as a graduate student.

One of the first basic classes in Pitt’s graduate English program was a two-semester course in Old English, that is, the language in which Beowulf, the earliest English classic, was written.  It was equivalent to learning a foreign language, since Old English is a linguistic cousin of modern German.  We had to learn the basic grammar and vocabulary of the language, and upon completing that we were assigned a certain section of Beowulf to translate for each class period.  Three classmates and I decided to split up the assignments between us to make the task easier.  We would meet together in a study area between classes and share with each other the translation of the section we had done.  It was not a total avoidance of responsibility for the assignments, for we had to be ready to translate in class, but it did give us something of an advantage over the rest of the class, and one of them squealed on us to Dr. Markman.  One day, he called the four of us in and gave us a busy-work assignment in bibliography in the library, so we got our come-uppance.  This joint endeavor nevertheless established a friendship between us that lasted through our graduate years.  One of the group was Bob Mossman, who remains a special friend to this day.  The other two were Joyce Measures and Tom Calhoun, both of whom were interesting personalities.  We called ourselves a comitatus, which is the Old English word for warrior group.

Bob Mossman and I struck up our friendship because our initial conversation revealed that until recently he had been intending to go into Christian ministry.  He did his undergraduate work at Whitworth College in eastern Washington, a small Christian liberal arts college.  He was from California and was very much a part of that culture, so it was a bit anomalous that he should have become a zealous convert in his youth to evangelical Christianity.  He was very active in student leadership at Whitworth, but toward the end of his work there, there was some kind of breakdown in personal relationships that embittered him and turned him away from Christian life.  When I met him at Pitt, he said that he just couldn’t see himself limited by Christian ministry, which he described pithily as, “patting little old ladies on the head.”  So he turned from divinity to English literature.  He was interested in my Christian background and commitment, and we soon were engaging in debates about matters of faith.  He had become a thoroughgoing atheist and considered my faith to be naïve and uninformed.  Nevertheless, we became fast friends, and Laquita and I soon began getting together socially with him and his wife, Nancy, who, though chagrined at Bob’s forsaking the faith, nevertheless supported him in his new career plans.  Our association continued for many years, until the two of them were divorced.  We are still in touch with Bob a few times a year and have kept up with each other’s lives.

The other two members of our comitatus were also unconcerned with religion, but they were curious enough about my Christian practice that they and Bob were persuaded to accept my invitation to attend church with Laquita and me.  I don’t remember precisely the conversation that ensued from that visit, but they were struck by our a capella singing and felt welcomed by the group.  Their curiosity satisfied, none of them were interested in returning.  Joyce and I had a little falling out because I teased her one time about smoking more because it looked fashionable than because she really liked it.  She sat me down in private and told me something of her dysfunctional background as a way of correcting what she thought was my superficial understanding of her.  I was suitably chastened, but I was never close to her.  Tom had done his undergraduate work at Princeton and was very much a man of the world and a part of urbane New York culture.  He was an enthusiastic recontour and regaled us with tales of his boozing days at Princeton.

There is much more to tell of our days in Pittsburgh, including Laquita’s job and academic work, our life with the church, our other residences, and memorable classes and professors.

---

Dr. Elton Higgs was a faculty member in the English department of the University of Michigan-Dearborn from 1965-2001. Having retired from UM-D as Prof. of English in 2001, he now lives with his wife and adult daughter in Jackson, MI.. He has published scholarly articles on Chaucer, Langland, the Pearl Poet, Shakespeare, and Milton. His self-published Collected Poems is online at Lulu.com. He also published a couple dozen short articles in religious journals. Recently, Dr. Higgs has published some of his poetry and a book inspired by The Screwtape Letters, The Icahbod Letters. (Ed.: Dr. Higgs was the most important mentor during undergrad for the creator of this website, and his influence was inestimable; it's thrilling to welcome this dear friend onboard.)

---

Right Life, Happy Life: Insights from Belgravia

Does the right life lead to the happy life?  The question arises for me in ‘Belgravia’, Julian Fellowes follow-up cable TV series to ‘Downton Abbey’.  In ‘Belgravia’, Lord Edmund Bellasis, handsome heir to the Earl and Countess of Brockenhurst, and Sophia Trenchard, daughter of a moneyed London business-man, love each other; their eyes lock as they waltz together at Lady Brockenhurst’s ball in 1815 on the eve of the Battle of Waterloo.  Sophia’s mother, Anne Trenchard, is dead set against the match; she knows that while she and her husband James travel in aristocratic circles, they are ‘trade’ not nobility

Interrupting the ball, Britain’s Duke of Wellington calls his dancing soldiers to report immediately for the march to Napoleon at Waterloo.  Sophia’s love, soldier Lord Bellasis, rides off to his death in battle, never to return; come to find out, he and Sophia had married secretly.  As Sophia carries their child, she has reason to believe Lord Bellasis tricked her into a fraudulent marriage leaving no husband and no certificate - only a child.  As Sophia dies giving birth to their son, her parents, the Trenchards, accept the baby boy is a bastard.

The immorality of a believed-to-be fraudulent marriage producing a bastard sets in motion a twisting narrative; characters counter the fallout from the evil with their own bad, moral choices one after another in an effort to secure for themselves good.  Does responding with evil after being victimized by evil only further evil?  Does one lose control of one’s life and the good one seeks by attempting to secure good by a pattern of choosing badly?  Can one control one’s destiny for good by responding to evil with a pattern of good, moral choices?

The preponderance of characters in ‘Belgravia’ makes bad, moral choices with John Bellasis leading the way.  Since Earl and Lady Brockenhurst’s only child, Lord Edmund Bellasis, was killed at Waterloo, John Bellasis, their nephew, stands to inherit the title and estate.  John Bellasis becomes alarmed when his aunt, Lady Brockenhurst, showers favor on a mysterious young cotton merchant, Charles Pope.  What John does not know but Lady Brockenhurst does is that Charles Pope is her believed-to-be illegitimate grandson, the son of her deceased son Lord Bellasis and Sophia.  Not content with ignorance, John Bellasis is determined to solve the mystery of Charles Pope and deal appropriately with this menace to his inheritance; at stake is nothing less than one of the noblest and wealthiest estates in England.

So, John Bellasis begins making a chain of bad, moral choices which tend to escalate as he goes about securing for himself the desired good of a noble fortune: he pays servants of both the Trenchards, and the Brockenhursts to betray their masters by surveilling them and prying into their affairs; he wants to unearth information about Charles Pope.  Next, he seduces the Trenchard’s daughter in law with an eye to obtaining desired information.  He insinuates himself into Charles Pope’s workers and finds a disgruntled employee who points him to a false report that maligns Pope’s character.

By the time his plot seems to crescendo to success, John Bellasis and his bad moral choices are suddenly unmasked and revealed when he attempts to murder Charles Pope. He implodes as his bad, moral choices are exposed and bring evil on the lives of those he enlisted to do his bidding: the servants’ betrayal of their masters is revealed, causing their disloyalty to jeopardize their standings and positions; the woman he seduces realizes John hates her and disowns their baby she carries; the malignant report against Charles Pope turns out to be quite the opposite; and the Earl of Brockenhurst’s inheritance will definitely not go to John - but to Charles Pope.  John Bellasis flees to Europe a wanted criminal.

Choosing moral evil, John Bellasis loses control of himself and the ultimate good he desires.  He believes each evil choice will put him in control of securing his inheritance.  Contrarily, each evil choice moves him a step further away from obtaining his desire.  By making bad moral choices he loses control of the good desired for himself and lets evil manipulate and shape him into its image.  Rather than being esteemed by others as a morally, good person who brings grace and benefit to others, his immoral actions make him into a persona non gratis who brings harm to all.  

The narrative of John Bellasis is illustrative of the moral structure of the universe: bad, moral choices inevitably lead one not to good and happiness, but to dystopia and harm.  Responding to an evil with an evil ultimately produces evil.  As Augustine said, ‘We must lead a right life to reach a happy life’.

The biblical character Joseph is the antithesis to John Bellasis.  When Joseph’s brothers victimize and sell him as a slave, he makes good, moral choices: he chooses to trust and be dutiful, conscientious, courageous, honest and trustworthy to his master Potiphar.  When Potiphar’s wife tries to seduce him, rather than entering into the evil he makes the good, moral choice to be faithful to her husband, his master Potiphar.  Though his good action seems to counter my thesis and is rewarded by another evil victimization - he is sent to prison - he responds to this evil by making the good, moral choice not to be vengeful or bitter; rather, he chooses to be a dutiful, conscientious, compassionate, trustworthy and responsible prisoner.

The successive evil injustices that come against him do not control him; he does not become evil seeking to counter evil with evil; he does not become a vengeful, bitter, selfish person but embraces virtuous, moral actions.  Like drips of mineral laden water filtering through a rock cavern form successive, mineral deposits into a conical stalactite, Joseph’s successive good, moral choices mold him into a person of good, moral character.  He is one who acts consistently with beneficent traits of compassion, moral courage, honesty, faith, responsibility and perseverance of which all persons want to be recipients. Rather than capitulating to and being controlled by the evil so that he becomes one with it, he exercises control over his ‘becoming’ through good, moral choices and faith in God.  The result is a good life discontinuous with and independent of the evil which assails him.

If you will exercise control over your life, no matter what evil is perpetrated against you, every time respond with good, moral choices which all persons recognize are a benefit to others.  Joseph controls his life parrying the evil through good, moral choices and transcends evil producing a good, virtuous character which puts him at just the right position at just the right time to act to save not only Egypt, but God’s own people.  ‘We must lead a right life to reach a happy life’.

---

Tom is currently a retired Elder in the Virginia Annual Conference.  He has pastored churches in Virginia, California and England.  Studying John Wesley’s theology, he received his Ph.D. and M.A. degrees from the University of Bristol, Bristol, England and his Master of Divinity degree from Asbury Theological Seminary. While a student, he and his wife Pam lived in John Wesley’s Chapel “The New Room”, Bristol, England, the first established Methodist preaching house.  Tom was a faculty member of Asbury Theological Seminary. He has contributed articles to Methodist History and the Wesleyan Theological Journal. He and his wife have two children, daughter Karissa, who is an attorney in Richmond, Virginia, and, John, who is a recent graduate of Regent University.  Being a part of the development of their grandson Beau is a rich reward.  Tom enjoys a good book by a crackling fire with an English cup of tea.  His life text is, ‘Jesus, confirm my heart’s desire, to work and speak and think for thee’.

Assessing Evolutionary Debunking Arguments (Crash Course Apologetics Interview with Dr. Tomas Bogardus)

From Crash Course Apologetics:

In this interview, Dr. Tomas Bogardus joins me to discuss his paper "Only All Naturalists Should Worry About Only One Evolutionary Debunking Argument." The pdf of the paper is linked below. In the paper, he presents three versions of evolutionary debunking arguments (EDA's) against moral knowledge and shows why each fails. He then presents a fourth version of an EDA that is successful, but explains why it should only concern naturalists.

https://philpapers.org/archive/BOGOAN...

PSYCHONIX: Mind Over Matter (Book Review)

Editor’s note: This review originally appeared at the site of Free Thinking Ministries

Review by Suzanne Stratton

PSYCHONIX: Mind Over Matter, by Mike Burnette, is a blend of interesting, well-developed characters, and exciting, intriguing action. It is a many layered novel, with unexpected twists and turns. If you like science fiction, espionage, psychology, war stories, philosophy, and many other topics, you will find plenty to attract and keep your attention. Readers with philosophical leanings will be drawn into the musings of the characters who wonder about the nature of reality. Anyone growing up with Star Trek, The Six Million Dollar Man, or the Twilight Zone will recognize familiar territory, along with hints of C.S. Lewis, and many other icons of our cultural heritage.

PSYCHONIX: Mind Over Matter

By Burnette, Mike

The hero is a complex man, who is ready to try a new way to explore reality. Having been wounded in battle, he is a veteran with PTSD, willing to trust scientists who have devised an unusual experimental technique. Along with the preparation for his dangerous role in the exploration of reality, other remarkable people play a part in the action that develops as the story comes to a surprising climax. 

The descriptive details make a vivid picture of the settings and people whose lives become involved with each other throughout the narrative. I found it difficult to put it down and get some rest whenever I became immersed in the tale, because I needed to find out what would happen next!

I kept returning to the book to read parts of it again, since within the context of the action, Burnette adds some thought-provoking philosophical musings of different characters interspersed throughout the telling of everything that happened. If you have ever questioned the nature of reality, but enjoy action and intrigue, this is the book for you. J.P. Moreland agrees:

“Believe me when I say the novel is very interesting reading.  I was engaged. Mike Burnette has done an outstanding job of capturing the mind-body problem arguments accurately and in an interesting, readable way.” 

You can buy the book at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple and many other sites by typing in PSYCHONIX. You can get the paperback only at Amazon (Click here: Amazon Kindle/Paperback).

For the eBook, click here: Barnes & Noble.

New Developments in Moral Apologetics, Part 5

T. J. shares a passion for the moral argument(s) and brings much to his new post. He is, in his own words, a “mere Christian with genuine fascination and awe for the breadth and depth of God’s gracious kingdom.” He became a Christian in 1978, and began pastoral ministry in 1984. He has worked as a youth pastor, senior pastor, church planter, church-based seminary professor, and as a chaplain assistant in the Army Chaplain Corps. A southern Illinois native, T. J. is a graduate of Southern Illinois University-Carbondale with a BA in Political Science; Liberty University with an MAR in Church Ministries, an MDiv in Chaplaincy, and a ThM in Theology; and Piedmont International University with a DMin in Pastoral Counseling. T. J. is currently pursuing a PhD in Theology and Apologetics at Liberty, hoping to write his dissertation on some aspect of the intersection of moral apologetics and the pastorate. He is the author of God Help Us: Encouragement for Evangelism, and Thinking of Worship: A Liturgical Miscellany, as well as the forthcoming Evangel-ogetics: Apologetics for the Sake of the Lost. T. J. has published articles on liturgics, pastoral counseling, and church-based counseling ministries. He lives in Carterville, Illinois with his wife and five children, where he pastors an independent evangelical church, directs a Christian counseling ministry, and serves as a Brigade Chaplain for the Army National Guard.

Four areas of recent work on the moral argument are of note in T. J.’s work.

First, as part of his dissertation for the PhD in Theology at North-West University in Potchefstroom, South Africa, he developed the DEUS Challenge as a model for engaging Mormons in dialogue around the following concerns. The D is for the Deity Question, and asks: Are the Christian and Mormon Gods the same?  The response: The Mormon God is not the Christian God.  Evidence is presented for the response based on discussion of the doctrine of God.  The E is for the Ethics Question, and asks: What is the Mormon account of morality?  The response: Mormon morality derives from moral standards outside God.  The evidence for this response focuses on moral realism.  The U is for the Uprightness Question, and asks: Does Mormon morality conduce to a moral argument for the Mormon God’s existence?  The response: Mormon morality does not conduce to a moral argument foe the Mormon God’s existence.  The evidence at this point investigates moral apologetics.  The S is for the Subjectivity Question, and asks: Is the “burning in the bosom” reliable evidence for Mormon claims?  The response: Mormon affective claims contradict rational claims for Mormon doctrine.  The evidence considers passional reason.  Additionally, each of the four questions includes a practical application of the gist of the relative arguments, presented in the form of an imagined dialogue between a Mormon missionary and a Christian.

Second, his forthcoming thesis for the MA in Philosophy at Holy Apostles College and Seminary in Cromwell, CT, is entitled “The Moral Way: An Enquiry into the Relationship between Aquinas’s Fourth way and the Moral Argument for God’s Existence.” As the introductory paragraph explains, “In discussion of the philosophical and apologetical nuance within the moral argument for God’s existence, there is an opportunity for a substantive consideration of Aquinas’s fourth way, the argument for God’s existence from gradation of being/perfection, as a cohort and possible expression of the moral argument. In so doing, Aquinas’s insights can be carefully examined and further developed as a means to understanding the relationship between how reason and conscience offer an innately and discursively developed segue to evidence for God’s existence and his goodness, vis-à-vis his perfections and as a maximal being. By giving Aquinas a more robust exploration of this type, the moral apologetic enterprise receives the help of the Angelic Doctor whose bellow continues to echo wherever matters of philosophy, theology, apologetics, and evangelism are discussed.”

Third, his forthcoming article for the philosophical journal Studia Gilsoniana, “Human Dignity, Self-determination, and the Gospel: An Enquiry into St. John Paul II’s Personalism and its Implications for Evangelization” develops themes of a moral apologetic nature, especially touching on philosophical anthropology and its application to evangelism. In the article, personalism is explored along the following lines of enquiry: What is personalism vis-à-vis JP II? What is the significance of human dignity and self-determination in JP II’s personalism? How might JP II’s personalism serve evangelization? Findings suggest that JP II’s philosophical personalism, especially at the nexus of its understanding of human dignity and self-determination, provides a robust and faithfully Christian anthropology that can effectively inform efforts in evangelizing all person, as all persons are image bearers of God that are necessarily self-determining and possessed of profound dignity and worth.

Fourth, T. J’s recent book published by Wipf and Stock, Pulpit Apologist: The Vital Link between Preaching and Apologetics, explores ways to integrate apologetics into preaching for both discipleship and evangelism. Focused consideration is given to the relationship between moral apologetics and preaching, specifically considering how moral apologetics aids the preacher by emphasizing the moral nature of God and humanity; helping center evangelistic preaching on sin, righteousness, and redemption; and by engaging passional reason.

Beginning the Graduate School Adventure (Part 13)

In the summer of 1961, A.C.C bachelor’s degrees in hand, Laquita and I packed our few worldly goods and launched on the trek to Seattle, Washington and the University of Washington.  We saved money by camping out in a tiny tent that we had bought back in Abilene.  Things went fairly well with our outdoor life, except that our first night was up in the Rockies at about 11,000 ft., and we had no sleeping bags and slept on cots, which insured a good circulation of frigid air above and below us.  Our blankets didn’t offer much protection, and we got up early after a miserable night and built a fire to get warm.  Another time it was raining, and we didn’t know how to prevent water from coming into the tent, so that wasn’t a very comfortable night either.  Then there was the remote campground where there were bears roaming around.  One of them came prowling at our campsite, sniffing around our tent while we were having evening prayer; that quickly added another dimension to our prayer!  He finally went over to our picnic table and knocked off our sturdy metal ice chest.  It broke open and the bear found some cheese to eat and went off.  We had a permanent dent in the ice chest, but it was still quite functional.  Oh well, it made for good stories afterward—and camping out did save us motel bills.  Good thing we were young, so we could rebound from these mishaps in roughing it.  We did some further camping afterward, but we were never fond of it.

We made immediate contact with Laquita’s brother, Lester Alexander, and his wife, Doris upon arriving in the Seattle area.  They lived in Renton, a suburb of Seattle, where they owned and operated an auction house.  They sold everything from household items to antiques, and every Saturday night drew a crowd to the auction, where my brother-in-law, assisted by Doris as manager and cashier and one or two others to transfer the items for sale to and from the stage, engaged in the traditional sing-song patter of the auctioneer, unintelligible except for the beginning “Whattamabidnow?” and “Sold! to number 44.”  He was good at it, and the auction was earning them a living at the time.  We enjoyed browsing around the auction warehouse when we visited them.  We had to be careful during the auction, however, since Lester was always quick to end the bids if he saw we were interested in an item.  One time, he thought I wanted a lawn mower and hollered “Sold!” when I scratched my ear.  He didn’t make us pay for it and it went back on auction the next week.

We found a place to live in the upstairs apartment of a widowed missionary, Mrs. Edmunds, who had spent many years in China, of which she shared many of her experiences.  She was a somewhat quirky lady, though, and we occasionally got crossways with her.  She let us keep our car in her vacant garage, which was a convenience, but next to the driveway was a bush that brushed against the car when I was driving into the garage.  I asked her if I could trim the annoying bush, to which she agreed.  But it turned out that she and I were thinking of different bushes, and I proceeded to trim a bush that she had been carefully cultivating.  She saw me out the window and opened it to yell at me to stop, accompanied by a glare that would have melted steel.  She confessed that her Christian charity was sorely tested by my blunder.  Another time, she informed me that my dropping my shoes on the floor above her when I took them off at night was very irritating, so I learned to set them down gently.  She was kind at heart, though, and it was a well-kept accommodation.

Living in a large northern city and attending a big state university were a culture shock, both in Seattle and, later, Pittsburgh.  I was not used to being regarded as something of a Southern hick, who really wasn’t much acquainted with the sophisticated setting of an urban (and urbane) academic institution.  In addition, some people smirked at my wearing my Christianity on my sleeve by sporting a big “Abilene Christian College” decal on my briefcase.  I had rather ineffective debates with one of my professors, Dr. Jacob Korg, who taught Victorian literature and the novel.  He tried to enlighten me about the deficiencies of Christian Scripture, pointing out that Jesus endorsed perpetual poverty for some people when He said, “The poor you have always with you.”  That greatly offended his socialist philosophy.

The great bright spot in that year was my friendship with Dr. David Fowler, who was my graduate advisor.  He was a respected textual scholar in medieval literature, particularly of the works of the Pearl Poet and the writer of Piers Plowman, both of which were subjects of my doctoral dissertation a few years later.  Dr. Fowler was a true Christian gentleman.  My first meeting with him was in an elevator on the way to a gathering of Woodrow Wilson scholars held before we had been introduced to any of the faculty.  I asked him if he was one of the graduate students, and he politely said, no, he was a member of the faculty.  I hope he was flattered that I misjudged his age.

I was very sorry to leave the University of Washington at the end of the year, but, although the University was given a certain amount of money for each Wilson Fellow who attended, they were not required to spend it to support those Fellows.  I was offered only minimal student aid for my second year, perhaps because I compiled only a 3.5 GPA for my first year, rather than a perfect 4.0.  However, I didn’t put all my eggs in one basket and applied for other sources of student aid.  I hit the jackpot when the University of Pittsburgh offered me one of its Mellon fellowships with about the same benefits as the Wilson Fellowship, a full ride with tuition and living stipend.  When I went in to see the director of student aid about what had happened, he told me I could have had a teaching fellowship if I had stayed, and  that my degree at Pitt would not be as prestigious as one from U. of Washington.  He might have been right, but it seemed a bit arrogant of him to tell me so, in a tone of voice that said, “If you don’t have the good sense to know how good we are, we’re better off without you.”

For our second semester at U. of Washington, we were offered a six-month tenancy house-sitting for one of Laquita’s fellow teachers at the elementary school where she was employed.  Since we weren’t on a lease arrangement with Mrs. Edmunds, we took the offer.  The house was in a very good neighborhood and had a view out its front picture window of Mt. Rainier and the Cascades range when the weather was clear; that was a magnificent sight!  That was the best housing deal we had during our whole academic experience.

Another significant experience during this year was Seattle’s being the site of the 1963 Word’s Fair, for which the still-famous Space Needle was built.  It was in the spring, and several relatives and friends availed themselves of our spacious house as a place to stay when they came up to the Fair.  We ourselves attended a few times, the only time in our lives when we were on the grounds of a World’s Fair.  As is usually the case for such events, it was huge, spectacular, and memorable.

We had two pleasant excursions that I remember from that year.  One was a boat trip up the Skagit Valley, conducted by a local utility company to view its hydroelectric generating facilities.  The setting was breathtaking, and the information on the production and transmission of electric power very educational.  The other trip was up into the mountains of Mt. Rainier National Park to camp out and do some trekking on the trails.  That, too, offered tremendous views and experiences of nature.  I think it was on this trip that a bear broke into our metal ice chest, left out on the picnic table, to find something to eat.  He put a dent into the chest, but didn’t do further damage, since the lid latch came loose and he got whatever he wanted to eat.  We used that dented old ice chest for many years after that, and it several times occasioned a good story about the source of the dent.

We had a very satisfying church experience while we were in Seattle.  We attended a Church of Christ downtown, and we made some rich friendships, although we didn’t maintain them long after we moved to Pittsburgh.  We participated in a choral group conducted by Dick Still, and we spent some social time with him and his wife, Betty.  Her middle name began with a “B,” and they liked to joke about her being “Betty B. Still.”  I taught some adult Sunday School classes.  The preacher J. C. Hartsell, was young and dynamic and delivered meaty sermons, and I had some good conversations with him when we met occasionally for lunch. Interestingly, we made acquaintance with a student from Seattle Pacific College, which was associated with the Free Methodist Church; later, in Michigan, we twice were members of a Free Methodist Church, and our daughter Liann married into a Free Methodist family.

We finished our year in Seattle, packed up our 1950 Plymouth, and headed to Pittsburgh in the summer of 1963, via a visit to relatives in Texas.  Ahead of us was an entirely different kind of city from Seattle, gritty, industrial, and still soot-stained from its days as the steel capital of the nation.  But our three years there was also rich in friendships and cultural experience, as well as being the site of my major doctoral work.

---

---

Dr. Elton Higgs was a faculty member in the English department of the University of Michigan-Dearborn from 1965-2001. Having retired from UM-D as Prof. of English in 2001, he now lives with his wife and adult daughter in Jackson, MI.. He has published scholarly articles on Chaucer, Langland, the Pearl Poet, Shakespeare, and Milton. His self-published Collected Poems is online at Lulu.com. He also published a couple dozen short articles in religious journals. (Ed.: Dr. Higgs was the most important mentor during undergrad for the creator of this website, and his influence was inestimable; it's thrilling to welcome this dear friend onboard.)

Introducing a Thomist Moral Argument

Editor’s note:

Here at MoralApologetics.com, we are really excited at younger scholars turning their attention and directing their considerable talents to variations on the moral argument. Moral apologetics can come in lots of stripes and shades, depending on the particular moral phenomena in need of explanation, the methodology involved in argumentation, the alleged tightness of the relationship between evidence and conclusion, and the operative variant of theistic ethic employed. Here Suan Sonna shares some highlights of his ongoing research project in which he proposes a moral argument predicated on natural law. We suspect that Suan’s voice will a prominent one indeed in this discussion for many years to come, and we are delighted to showcase his perspicacious work today.

---

My moral argument took form while studying Judith Jarvis Thomson’s defense of abortion. As a Thomist, I wanted to tackle her thought experiments and whatever metaethical foundations prevented her from accepting my view. I read her paper “The Right and the Good” and was positively shocked. Thomson appealed to teleology, except she used the words “design functions”, to ground her approach to ethics. Rather than embracing teleological realism, however, she settled for teleological nominalism. I was curious thereafter and wondered if other philosophers were borrowing ideas from the Aristotelian-Thomist (AT) synthesis for their theories. As I began combing through the literature, I noticed a subtle pattern emerge – when moral philosophers contemplated the metaethical commitments of their theories, they all depended upon some idea of teleology, some notion of “fulfillment” as goodness, and deployed concepts that sounded awfully familiar to me as a Thomist – consider Moore’s understanding of the simplicity and indefinability of the good which rubs right into the classical theist conception of God! Over time, I decided to develop a moral argument for God’s existence from these observations.

Here is the argument:

(1)   Moral realism is true.

(2)   Moral realism requires a foundation that yields (A) objective moral truths, (B) is comprehensive, and (C) is compelling.

(3)   Either theistic or nontheistic moral realism is true.

(4)   Nontheistic moral realism fails to meet at least one of the three requirements.

(5)   Therefore, nontheistic moral realism is necessarily false.

(6)   Therefore, theistic moral realism is true.

(7)   If theistic moral realism is true, then God exists.

(8)   Therefore, God exists.

I divide versions of moral realism into those that imply the existence of God (theistic moral realism) and those that do not (nontheistic moral realism). Nontheistic versions of moral realism simply might have nothing to say about God’s existence or perhaps depend upon foundations incompatible with His existence. And, by “foundation” here I mean the ultimate explanation or grounding of moral facts whether it be our intuitions, some evolutionary norm, reason, or God. Theistic moral realism must say that the foundation of moral facts is God, while nontheistic moral realism need not.  

I then present in (2) three overarching standards for testing which of the two moral realisms is true. I maintain that moral realism requires a source that yields objective moral truths, is itself comprehensive and compelling.

By “objectivity” I mean the nature of the foundation or explanans must itself be consistent with the explanandum. It would be strange to get an objective theory of ethics from a purely subjective, mind-dependent foundation.

“Comprehensiveness” means that the foundation in question must tackle the most relevant metaphysical and epistemological questions for a proper account of moral realism. For instance, the foundation should help us understand the nature of normativity, it should yield an account of moral knowledge, and ensure we have reliable faculties for moral comprehension. Here, I narrow the debate down to five fundamental explananda – normativity, semantics, causation, cognition, and ontology.

In other words, the foundation should explain both the nature and origin of normativity. Regarding semantics, it should avoid making the world unintelligible but render its information content accessible to our intellects. Even the causal order itself requires an explanation such that we demystify the connection between facts about the world and our actions, the behavior of objects and persons in our unfolding moral drama. The foundation should not simply take for granted that we have reliable cognitive faculties for moral reasoning but explain the origin and reliability of those faculties. Finally, this foundation should illumine us on who or what counts as a moral subject, what is the good, the bad, the right and the wrong? This is the most demanding requirement of the three. And, I propose it in order to avoid moral realisms that are simply constructed to suit our ends or attempt to avoid the ultimate question. We are seeking the version of moral realism that actually covers the relevant and required explananda.

Of course, we also need a way of discerning which foundation most compellingly explains the explananda. I propose here several standards:

1)     Intuitive Fit

2)     Empirical Adequacy - “consistency with what we know about the world, including our best scientific knowledge.”1

3)     Epistemic Access - “the theory should include some account of how we could come to know its truth.”2

4)     Metaphysical Fecundity - “the theory should shed light on a variety of metaphysical issues.”3

5)     Unification - “We should not accept a bifurcated, disjunctive account of thought and of knowledge as long as a unified account is possible.”4

6)     Simplicity - “A good metaphysical theory should not be in need of ad hoc rescues or endless epicyclic tinkering.”5

The standard of unification staves off the objection that the comprehensiveness standard is too demanding. If there is a unified explanation that can explain all of the explananda and do it well, then that unified theory is to be strongly preferred. In other words, comprehensiveness is not too demanding since it is a burden that can be carried by other approaches and perhaps not the objector’s.         

Over the course of my research, I found that the AT synthesis simply bests its competitors. It provides an objective, comprehensive, and compelling foundation of moral realism in the very existence of God.

AT moral realism is founded upon six highly plausible metaphysical theses that simultaneously yield a comprehensive moral theory and proofs of the existence of God. The theses are the principle of sufficient reason (PSR), the causal principle (CP), the principle of proportionate causality (PPC), real essentialism (RE), the convertibility principle (TCP), and the principle of finality (PF).

The PSR means that, “Everything that is the case must have a reason why it is the case. Necessarily, every true or at least every contingent true proposition has an explanation. Every event has a cause.”6 Aside from the PSR being highly intuitive, I think Alexander Pruss and Robert C. Koons have provided powerful reasons for suggesting that its denial simply costs too much, including the intelligibility of the universe itself.7

The CP is inspired by Aristotle’s response to Zeno’s denial of change. Zeno argued that true change requires non-being to produce being, since what was not there before must suddenly emerge. Aristotle unraveled the paradox by proposing the CP: change is the actualization of an object’s potential by an already actual actualizer, meaning that being can be divided into being-in-act and being-in-potency. It also appears that denying the CP eviscerates the intelligibility of the universe and the reality of change.

The PPC simply follows from the PSR and CP, since there is an explanation for why events occur and this explanation must preserve the transaction of being. St. Thomas Aquinas defines the PPC as “effects must be proportionate to their causes and principles”8 so that “whatever perfections exist in the effect must be found in the effective cause.”9 To put it more straightforwardly, “a cause cannot give what it does not first have.”10 Consider for instance how materialists argue that consciousness cannot be immaterial, since our origins are purely material and so too is the fundamental nature of the universe. Like things beget like things.

RE is “... the metaphysical position that everything in the world has an essence or nature that fixes its identity.”11 and “The essence of a thing is its nature, that whereby it is what it is. It is what we grasp intellectually when we identify a thing’s genus and specific difference.”12 Things have a real definition of what they are, which makes possible our distinguishing one kind of thing from another kind. It is not that we are inventing the difference between a mushroom and a human but there really is something different about the two, and this difference is ultimately due to the nature of human beings and other plants. To deny this point seems to place a huge hole in evolutionary theory and the project of speciation, or even the trustworthiness of our perception since it seems to really be the case that humans, horses, and fish are not absolutely the same kind of thing and one can identify their differences.

TCP states, “... goodness is the same as being itself, but considered from a particular point of view - that of fulfillment of appetite.”13 In other words, goodness is the actualization of potential, a kind of fullness. For example, we say that one thing is better than another when said thing is more as it should be. A triangle drawn with a radiograph pen is better than one etched into the seat of a shaky bus. The instantiated triangles are obviously aiming towards triangularity and are hence held to that standard. Likewise, human beings are ordered towards “humanity,” and humans are better when they are more in harmony with and fulfillment of their human nature. The fullness of triangularity is the measure of goodness for a triangle. The fullness of humanity is the measure of goodness for a human.

Finally, the PF sates that “... every nature is ordered to an end; that nature does not act in vain; that the end is the first principle of activity; and that the end is the reason for all movement.”14 and “In short, if A is by nature an efficient cause of B, then generating B must be the final cause of A.”15 Another way of framing this is that nature behaves with intentionality or directedness. For instance, the laws of nature do not describe mere accidental regularities but they reveal the natures of the objects in question and how they act under certain conditions. This activity is intrinsic to the objects themselves, meaning they are acting as they should. For instance, an electron is a negatively charged particle that orbits the nucleus. Such a description gives us the nature and activity of the entity in question – even the “negative” charge label is connected to activity. Or, consider even how horses are tetrapods but some are obviously born with more or less legs than they should have. The nature of the horse provides us the norm and allows us to identify deviations and when things are not as they should be.

Two significant consequences follow from these theses. The first is that a comprehensive moral theory known as classical natural law theory follows. Classical natural law theory states that ethics is the science of how to fulfill one’s nature. Just as scientists discover laws of nature through observing the tendencies of objects and what should happen under normal circumstances, the same sort of study is done on human activity in order to unveil the natural law.  

The second consequence is that any properly constructed argument for the existence of God dependent upon any of the theses is given a significant plausibility boost. St. Thomas Aquinas, for example, famously developed six ways to demonstrate the existence of God. The first is known as the argument from motion; the second is the argument from efficient causality; the third is a contingency argument of sorts; the fourth is an argument from the gradation of being; the fifth is a teleological argument; and the sixth is his lesser known De Ente argument.

The PSR makes the first, second, third, and sixth ways eminently plausible. For example, the first way begins with the CP and argues that there must be a purely actual actualizer in order to prevent an infinite causal regress. There must be a causal agent who is the source of all change but is not itself subject to change.

De Ente rightly observes that since beings are composites of essence and existence, meaning a real distinction exists between the two and not merely a logical or conceptual one, there must be an explanation for why they exist despite their essences not securing or entailing their existence. This can be viewed as a more precise contingency argument. St. Thomas located this ultimate explanation in a being whose very essence is existence itself lest there be another endless causal regress. In tandem with TCP, RE, and PPC, we arrive at a being who is essentially perfect and the source of all beings - of their essence and existence included! Since human beings are by nature rational animals, meaning our specific difference from the rest of the animal kingdom is our rationality, our cause must also possess something like an intellect in order for it “contain” and “impart” our intellects to us.

Furthermore, we know that this being has an intellect due to the fifth way, the teleological argument, where St. Thomas noted that even beings without minds are drawn or attracted towards their final ends just like an arrow is directed towards its target by an intellect. The PF and PPC get us a creator who must have something like an intellect or mind in order for its creation to have this feature of intentionality or directedness.

If St. Thomas’ arguments hold, then we arrive at one and in principle only one supreme being who is the essentially omnibenevolent or perfect, omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent reality.

This is my longwinded way of saying that nontheistic moral realisms have an incredible challenge to face, since theistic moral realism has a foundation that yields objective moral truths (since moral truths are fixed truths about being which emanate from God), a comprehensive explanation, and one that is indeed compelling. Robert C. Koons has demonstrated in his work Realism Regained how the AT synthesis can yield not only a moral theory but also an exact theory of causation, mind, and metaphysics. Significant work has been done in Neo-Aristotelian Perspectives on Contemporary Science to demonstrate the plausibility of the AT synthesis and its relevance to quantum mechanics, biology, physics, and psychology. Theists have the theory of everything!

My moral argument attempts to leave no stone unturned and forces everyone to examine the foundations of morality. I conclude that God is the best and most comprehensive explanation, while nontheistic moral realism fails to provide what is required for a complete and compelling account of moral realism. Of course, further research needs to be done in order to secure this conclusion, but I think the argument has plausible foundations and deserves more attention.

---

1. Koons, Robert C. Realism Regained an Exact Theory of Causation, Teleology, and the Mind. Oxford University Press, 2000, p. 3.

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid.

4. Ibid.

5. Ibid.

6. Pruss, Alexander R. The Principle of Sufficient Reason: a Reassessment. Cambridge University Press, 2011, p. 3.

7. See Pruss’ The Principle of Sufficient Reason and my dialogue with Robert C. Koons here.

8. Aquinas, Thomas. “Of the Causes of Virtue.” Summa Theologica, translated by Fathers of the English Dominican Province, Coyote Canyon Press, 2018, pg. 391. I-II. Q. 63. Art. 3.

9. Aquinas, Thomas. “The Perfection of God.” Summa Theologica, translated by Fathers of the English Dominican Province, Coyote Canyon Press, 2018, pg. 34. I. Q. 4. Art. 2.

10. Feser, Edward. Five Proofs of the Existence of God. Ignatius Press., pg. 170.

11. See the opening page of Oderberg, S. David Real Essentialism (2007).

12. Feser, Edward. Scholastic Metaphysics: a Contemporary Introduction. Editiones Scholasticae, 2014, p. 211.

13. Oderberg, David S. The Metaphysics of Good and Evil. Routledge, 2020, p. 14.

14. Ibid, p. 28.

15. Feser, Edward. Scholastic Metaphysics: a Contemporary Introduction. Editiones Scholasticae, 2014, p. 92.

Holy Fear

A Twilight Musing

In Christian Bible classes we sometimes hear people discuss the meaning of the biblical admonition, predominantly found in the Old Testament, to “fear God.”  Does not the New Testament present God as our loving Father, whom we are privileged to address familiarly as “Papa”?  But the Old Testament clearly sees fearing God in a different light.  The “Preacher” of Ecclesiastes, for example, sums up his treatise by asserting that we are to “fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.  For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil” (Eccl. 12:13-14 [ESV]).  But in the New Testament, disciples are frequently told not to fear, and in I John 4:18 we have a radical negation of fear: “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.”  How do we get from the O.T. fear based on God’s judgment to the N.T. saying that Christians (the new Israel) should have no fear of judgment?  The fear of God still has its place in the N.T., but it is a fear embedded in the fact that Jesus Christ has bridged the gap for us between the austere fear of God and the joyful trembling that comes from being in the Presence of an awesome, loving, and gentle Father who accepts us as brothers and sisters of Christ Jesus.

Those under the Old Covenant were acutely aware that to be in God’s Presence was dangerous because of His perfect holiness and His fearsome judgment on human sin.  Three passages from chapters 6 and 8 of Isaiah and chapter 33 of Exodus illustrate this reaction, even in men who were being called by God.  In Isaiah’s vision of God “high and lifted up” in all His glory and holiness; the prophet’s immediate reaction is fear that he is going to die because he has “seen the King, the Lord of Hosts” (Is. 6:5).  Even though he is a prophet of God, he is terrifyingly aware of his sinfulness, and in order for his life to be preserved and for the conversation with God to continue, Isaiah has to be purified (depicted figuratively by the application of a burning coal from the Temple altar to his lips), so that his “guilt is taken away, and [his] sin atoned for” (v.7).  Moses has a similar experience (Ex. 33:18-23) when he asks God, “Show me your glory” (v. 18); whereupon God allows him only a glimpse of His back, and even that could be granted only with God’s protective hand covering Moses, for “man shall not see me and live.”  Human beings do well to fear the Presence of God, for the fiery holiness of that Presence will consume them unless God Himself offers protection.

The transition between the O.T. fear of God’s judgment and the N.T. casting out of fear by Love is provided by the visitation upon the sinless Lamb of God of all the wrath of the Father deserved by rebellious mankind.  With God’s judgment satisfied, we can be empowered to serve and obey Him without the fear engendered by our sinfulness.   As Paul expresses it, when we accepted the liberating blood of Christ, we “did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but . . . received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, "Abba! Father!"  Thereby we have the liberty to “work out [our] own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in [us], both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Phil. 2:12-13).  As Paul points out in Gal. 3, the final deliverance of mankind from sin was not to be accomplished through obedience to the Law, as necessary as that obedience was.  As he concludes in that chapter, “the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith.  But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian, for in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith” (Gal. 3:24-26).  God’s love, fully manifested toward humankind by the sacrifice of His Son, is the instrument for transmuting human fear into effective fear of God. 

And so we come back to the statement in I John that “perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love” (I Jn. 4:18).  What a glorious privilege is granted to us who live under the New Covenant, that we may glory in standing before God without fear of punishment for our sins.  Although we no longer tremble in physical terror as Moses and the people did when they encountered the fiery Presence of God at Mt. Sinai, we are nevertheless admonished to approach Him in Mt. Zion, the Heavenly Jerusalem, “with holy fear and awe, for our God is a consuming fire” (Heb.12:28-29, NLT).  We still need the protective covering of the blood of Jesus to keep from being consumed by the Fire of God’s judgment.  Thus we are able under the New Covenant to fear God perfectly and joyfully.

---

 Dr. Elton Higgs was a faculty member in the English department of the University of Michigan-Dearborn from 1965-2001. Having retired from UM-D as Prof. of English in 2001, he now lives with his wife and adult daughter in Jackson, MI.. He has published scholarly articles on Chaucer, Langland, the Pearl Poet, Shakespeare, and Milton. His self-published Collected Poems is online at Lulu.com. He also published a couple dozen short articles in religious journals. (Ed.: Dr. Higgs was the most important mentor during undergrad for the creator of this website, and his influence was inestimable; it's thrilling to welcome this dear friend onboard.)

New Developments in Moral Apologetics, Part 4

This installment of new developments on the moral argument features two students of mine wrapping up their doctoral work on the subject. They are also dear friends and both have been very active here at MoralApologetics, and will play a big part in the site’s future and the Center for Moral Apologetics at Houston Baptist University. They are Jonathan Pruitt, long-time Managing Editor extraordinaire of MoralApologetics.com, and Stephen Jordan, who will be spearheading the development of moral apologetics curriculum as part of a new initiative of the Center in the years to come.

Jonathan Pruitt’s work seeks to extend the abductive moral argument made in Jerry Walls’s and my Good God and God and Cosmos to the Christian religion. Like the argument found in Good God, Pruitt’s argument begins by assuming moral realism. Specifically, it assumes there are a range of moral facts in need of explanation, including facts about moral goodness, moral obligations, moral knowledge, moral transformation, and moral rationality.

With respect to moral goodness, the dissertation brings to bear the rich ontology of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. It suggests that the existence of the Trinity best explains deeply held moral intuitions about “the shape of the good,” as it builds upon Robert Adams’s Platonic theistic view of God as the good. If the good is ultimately triune, this could naturally explain why morality is centered on “the other” and the foundational character of love in ethical thinking.

With respect to moral obligations, the dissertation utilizes the fundamentally social nature of the Trinity to suggest that moral obligations, best understood as a certain kind of social standing, is well explained by a Trinitarian God. The Christian worldview has tremendous resources in the domain of moral knowledge as it claims both a divinely inspired book and the ideal moral exemplar in Jesus Christ. In these, one finds both the moral law and the ever elusive concept of “the good life” reified. Additionally, these resources can help turn back some well-known objections to divine command theory.

The Christian view of sanctification and the role of the Holy Spirit explain how one can be morally transformed, while remaining within the logical boundaries required by such transformation. Though Kant had to postulate God as judge and eternal life to solve what Henry Sidgwick later called “the dualism of practical reason,” the Christian worldview comes with these features included. The public and evidential nature of the Resurrection supplies concrete evidence for moral faith and, in conjunction with Christian eschatology, solves moral problems not explicitly articulated until nearly two millennia later. Thus, Christianity handily accounts for moral rationality. Pruitt’s work, in the end, highlights how some of the most distinctively Christian ideas map closely onto well-known problems in ethical theory. He suggests that precisely where Christianity is most different, it most ably marshals explanatory resources to account for the moral facts.

Stephen Jordan’s developing work is called “Morality and the Personhood of God: A Moral Argument for the Existence of a Personal God.” The concept that God is personal is a necessary and fundamental part of religious belief.[1] If God were not personal, it would be odd to think of him as moral or loving; it would also seem inconsistent to speak of him as One with whom humans can have a personal relationship, One who can be trusted, cares for the people he created, listens to their prayers, acts on their behalf, has their best interests at heart, and so on. In short, to talk of such matters in a sensible manner and to experience them in everyday life seemingly requires that God is personal.

Is there evidence that a personal God actually exists? Enter the moral argument. The moral argument, like other classical arguments for God’s existence, is able to provide evidence for believing in God’s existence, but—unlike other arguments, or perhaps better than the other arguments—is able to shed an incredible amount of light on God’s character (i.e., what God is like). For example, in order to account for morality, God must be good, loving, and holy. Additionally, through surveying moral categories such as moral knowledge, moral values, moral obligations, and moral transformation, it becomes apparent that the source of the moral law, in order to account for the deeply personal nature of morality, must also be personal, and personal to the highest degree possible.

If the moral argument suggests that God must be personal in order to account for the personal nature of morality, the next step in the process involves considering the various explanations for God’s personal nature. There are several belief systems that set forth the notion of a personal God, with some conceptions coming nearer to adequately accounting for what is required of a personal God than others. Christianity, however, uniquely demonstrates that not only is God personal, but that he has always been personal. If the only sense in which God is personal is in his personal interactions with human persons, then one could say that God’s personality was frustrated before he created human persons or that God became personal only after he created human persons. To say these sorts of things presents all sorts of theological and philosophical problems, such as that God would be dependent on something other than himself and therefore not self-sufficient.

A Trinitarian conception of God, which is a distinctly Christian concept, solves the sorts of problems alluded to above, suggesting that God has always been personal in and through the inner personal relations of the three Persons of the Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This is the fundamental reason why the Judeo-Christian God, the God of the Bible, is such a powerful explanation for the deeply personal nature of morality: he is intrinsically personal himself.

While there is certainly more involved, there are two key tasks to this version of the moral argument: (1) demonstrate that morality points in the direction of a personal source; and (2) explain how a Trinitarian conception of God provides the best explanation for the deeply personal nature of morality.[2]

---

[1] A definition of “personal God” looks something like this: A Being who thinks, feels, and wills, and who is capable of loving and being loved by other beings.

[2] There are essentially three tasks involved in the moral apologetics enterprise: (1) provide reasons for believing in objective moral facts; (2) address secular theories; and (3) explain why theism, particularly Christian theism, is the best explanation for morality as a whole. While this project largely focuses on the third and final task, there are discussions throughout that give attention to the first two tasks as well. For instance, there is a chapter that provides fifteen reasons for believing in objective moral facts, and there are several chapters that briefly respond to opposing theories.

What Can Christians Say about the Pandemic? A Response to Rosaria Butterfield

The coronavirus pandemic has brought fresh fodder to a question many struggle with: how can a good God allow such pain and suffering? Is he really not as good as we thought? Or maybe he’s too weak to prevent it? In the face of such complexities, some abandon belief in God altogether. Others find this problem of evil a stumbling block to belief in the first place. These are pressing questions, and not only on an intellectual level. For many who have lost loved ones or are battling the virus themselves, those out of work or left lonely from social distancing, the answers to these questions mean the difference between hope and despair.

For this reason, I was discouraged to read Rosaria Butterfield’s recent post over at Desiring God, “Can the Pandemic Be an Answered Prayer?” Butterfield most likely didn’t choose the title, but even still, her article answers the question with a resounding yes. In attempting to square the existence of this physical evil with the existence of a good God, Butterfield has unfortunately flattened the distinction between God’s redemptive use of a tragedy and the nature of the tragedy itself. In so doing, she implies that an unmitigated evil is actually an unqualified good.

Many are familiar with Butterfield’s dramatic conversion story, which testifies to the role of hospitality in evangelism. She herself has been intentional to carry on such hospitality in her own ministry. About eight years ago, Butterfield’s family moved into a progressive area so her husband could pastor a church there. The family prayed for service opportunities in the community but made little headway, as no one came to the barbecues or block parties they arranged. Instead, they were met with suspicion and even found a church sign vandalized.

COVID-19 turned all that around. With the food shortages and shelter in place orders, Rosaria and her daughter began delivering food to many of her neighbors on behalf of a local community supported agriculture program. Additionally, their church made its building available as a distribution center. Folks who once turned away from them on the street now welcomed them into their homes and even asked for help and prayer.

I do not doubt Butterfield’s account. The pandemic has certainly made people experience their limited human resources and vulnerabilities in new ways. And it’s a blessing that the family and church stepped up to love and serve them as Christ commands. What troubles me is Butterfield’s suggestion that, for these reasons (and some others she mentions[1]), COVID-19 is something for which we should be thankful, a good gift to us and a means of God glory:  

“Giving thanks to God for everything, including COVID-19, humbles us — deeply. It reminds us that God’s providence is perfect and our point of view flawed. Because God is good, just, and wise, all the time and in every circumstance, then COVID-19, for the Christian, must be for our good and for God’s glory.”

There is some truth mingled in with Butterfield’s words here, which makes teasing out her missteps tricky. We are called to be thankful in all circumstances (I Thess. 5:18[2]), and we are surely limited creatures, unaware of the fullness of God’s activity in this world. As Butterfield also notes, God is all good, all knowing, and all powerful. But it does not follow that everything that occurs in this fallen world is in itself good. Moreover, it’s a small, capricious god indeed who requires the suffering of millions in order to be gloried.

Empathy with our suffering neighbors demands that Christians reckon with the problem of evil, not to mention that our own theology will be the poorer for lack of an adequate account. This is always important, but perhaps now during this pandemic more than ever. But as we think this question through, our central convictions about who God is must remain intact. He is a God of infinite love, incarnate in Christ Jesus, and wildly imaginative in his redemptive purposes and plans. God desires our flourishing and invites us to a life of shalom, what Cornelius Plantinga describes as “[t]he webbing together of God, humans, and all creation in justice, fulfillment, and delight.”[3]  

Butterfield’s account, on the other hand, offers up a god I don’t recognize in the Christian scriptures, one who inflicts suffering on the global population in answer to a family’s prayer to feel more wanted and useful in their neighborhood by unleashing a pandemic. Again, I rejoice that Butterfield’s family could serve her community and that the pandemic opened the eyes of many to their own insufficiencies and need for grace. But that redemptive twist is the blessing; the love and service in answer to these human needs is God’s good gift, not the pandemic itself.

It’s crucial to make this distinction—otherwise, despite Butterfield’s early protestation, God does get cast as the author or cause of evil. My aim here is not to offer a theodicy, an explanation for why God allows evil. I’ll leave that to others better equipped to do so. Frankly, I have no idea why God permitted the novel coronavirus to unleash such havoc on the world, and any attempt of mine to explain would ring hollow and may even add pain to those already suffering its terrible effects.

What I do know, however, is that none of these sufferings go unnoticed by God. He is el Roi, the God who sees the needy (Gen. 16:13); Jehovah Jireh, our provider (Gen. 22:14). What else is the Bible but an account of God’s attentive and intervening presence in humanity’s sufferings? He neither causes nor desires our fallen condition and its attendant afflictions. To rescue us from it, God enters into that suffering with us, but not for the sake of suffering alone. As Butterfield herself notes, referencing 1 John 5:4, Christ is our promise that all manner of evil let loose in this world—coronavirus included—has been, is being, and will be overcome. The whole of salvation history tells of God’s restorative work, to recreate what he established in Eden.

There are no pat answers in the face of evil. But there is love—a love that won’t let evil have the last word. The cosmos, no less than mankind, is being set right. This redemptive love does involve suffering, but not in the way Butterfield envisions it. It doesn’t cultivate evil to get our attention or enable our ministry. Rather, God’s holy, sacrificial love takes evil with such dreadful seriousness that it requires nothing less than the cross to rectify. Indeed, to equivocate between the evil from which God rescues us and his loving means of rescue, to take one for the other, is ultimately to understand neither.

---

Marybeth Davis Baggett lives in Lynchburg, Virginia, and teaches English at Houston Baptist University. Having earned her Ph.D. in English from Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Marybeth’s professional interests include literary theory, contemporary American literature, science fiction, and dystopian literature. She also writes and edits for Christ and Pop Culture. Her most recent publication was a chapter called “What Means Utopia to Us? Reconsidering More’s Message,” in Hope and the Longing for Utopia: Futures and Illusions in Theology and the Arts. Marybeth's most recent book is The Morals of the Story: Good News about a Good God, coauthored with her husband, David.

---

Notes:

[1] Butterfield, whose conversion story involves transitioning from a lesbian lifestyle, also points to the disruption of the annual gay pride march as another reason to be grateful for the coronavirus. This myopic view selectively ignores the manifold repercussions of the pandemic, which of course has disrupted all manner of events—from the holy to the scandalous and everything in between.

[2] Butterfield also references Ephesians 5:20 here, which admonishes Christians to “Giv[e] thanks always for all things to God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” However, in context, the phrase “for all things,” is best understood as those good gifts God provides, not “in its widest possible extent” to include evil (see the Expositor’s Greek Testament commentary here: https://biblehub.com/commentaries/ephesians/5-20.htm).  

[3] Cornelius Plantinga, Jr., Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdman’s, 1995, 10.

More Undergraduate and Early Marriage Experiences (Part 12)

After the wedding and a brief honeymoon, Laquita and I returned to the A.C.C. campus to continue our undergraduate work, the middle of her junior year and my sophomore year.  Our first residence was the “married barracks,” old military buildings divided into apartments for married people.  Its advantages were that it was cheap and right on campus, so we didn’t need transportation.  It was, as you might imagine, very Spartan accommodations, with male and female bathrooms in each hallway and rough wooden floors.  There were basic kitchen appliances so we could cook, after a fashion, but we continued to take our regular meals in the cafeteria.

Happily, we were able to move at the end of the spring term to a tiny house across the street from the campus.  It had perhaps 600 square feet, divided into a bedroom/sitting area, a kitchenette, and a bathroom.  But it was still reasonable rent, and it was private!  We have fond memories of that little house.   Even though it backed on to an alley, it had grass and flowers in the front, being the back yard of a larger house on the front of the lot.  The flowers were daylilies, and they bloomed profusely.  We had a pleasant neighbor in another little house across from us, a widow lady named Mrs. McClintock.  And down the alley a few blocks lived Laquita’s sister, Grace, and her husband Farrell Hogg.  That supplied us with a place to do our laundry and have a meal from time to time.

Laquita continued to work in the cafeteria, even working extra hours serving at banquets there.  I continued my work on the maintenance crew, graduating to operating the big mowers during the spring and summer.  She continued in the elementary education major, and I definitely settled into the English program, taking the sophomore surveys of English literature under various teachers and having more contact with Dr. James Culp, who took over as head of the English department during that year.  He became my mentor and close friend during the last two years of my baccalaureate program.  I had no more classes from the elderly Mrs. Retta Scott Garrett, but Dr. Culp recommended me to her as someone who could do gardening work for her.  Particularly when she was away during the summer, I would make sure that the house was all right and that her garden was watered, her grass cut, and her hedges trimmed.  The skill I gained in hedge trimming has been very useful in taking care of the yards of houses Laquita and I owned later.  Strangely enough, learning to trim hedges has been helpful in trimming my beard when it gets bushy; start boldly with big swaths and then fine tune the straggly spots.

I took time to engage in a few extra-curricular activities, such as assisting with a night-time talk show on the campus radio station and joining the Pickwickian Club, a group of people who liked to do creative writing.  I also participated in a group of men who sponsored talks on biblical subjects and then discussed them.  Both Laquita and I would very much have liked to sing in the Acapella Chorus, but neither of us had the time for regular rehearsals and frequent performances.

I enjoyed my class work, especially as I got into my junior year and took advanced literature courses, along with electives in philosophy of religion and second-and third-year courses in New Testament Greek.  I took several advanced courses with Dr. Culp, and in my senior year he asked me to be his office assistant.  It was the best job I had on campus, since it allowed me to study when office duties were slow and to strengthen what turned out to be a lifelong relationship with Dr. Culp and his wife.  They often had some of his students over for dinner, and we were several times on that guest list.  Such occasions also provided the opportunity for some of the English majors to get to know each other.

In Laquita’s senior year she had to do her practice teaching, and that meant we needed a car.  My uncle Lester was aware we were looking, and he gave us the best car-buying tip we ever had, resulting in our buying our first car, a black 1950 Plymouth sedan, 10 years old but with low mileage and in perfect shape.  It was the archtypical old lady who had had it in her garage and rarely used it.  That car served us through graduate school and into the first year of my job at UM-Dearborn, a period of six years with trips to Seattle and Pittsburgh.

My senior year was a very successful one.  I graduated (barely) summa cum laude and received the Dean’s Award for the person judged to have taken the best advantage of his opportunities at A. C. C.  I also won a Woodrow Wilson Graduate Fellowship to receive full tuition and living expenses at a graduate school of my choice for a year.  Back then, colleges were growing and there was a market for Ph.D.s in English.  I chose to attend the University of Washington in Seattle (which happened to be where Laquita’s brother and his family lived), and we moved up there in the summer of 1961.  Thus began my four years of graduate study, one at the University of Washington and three at the University of Pittsburgh.

---

---

 Dr. Elton Higgs was a faculty member in the English department of the University of Michigan-Dearborn from 1965-2001. Having retired from UM-D as Prof. of English in 2001, he now lives with his wife and adult daughter in Jackson, MI.. He has published scholarly articles on Chaucer, Langland, the Pearl Poet, Shakespeare, and Milton. His self-published Collected Poems is online at Lulu.com. He also published a couple dozen short articles in religious journals. (Ed.: Dr. Higgs was the most important mentor during undergrad for the creator of this website, and his influence was inestimable; it's thrilling to welcome this dear friend onboard.)

The Next Step in College and Courtship: Marriage! Twilight Musings Autobiography (Part 11)

          After the short-lived summer harvest job, I made the rash decision, driven by passionate love, to make my way to Laquita’s home in Burnet, TX, where she had returned to take up her job with the town’s downtown drugstore.  She was what was known back then as a “soda jerk,” a term that had nothing to do with the worker’s character, but rather originated from the jerking action required to operate the big handle controlling the output of carbonated water required to produce the fizz for various drinks.  This was a job that required some social grace to interact with customers and the skill to mix the elements of an ice cream soda or a cherry coke in the proper proportions.  None of the premixed drinks one gets now from the fast food places!  I hitch-hiked from Abilene to Burnet (about 180 miles), my longest trip of that sort and the last time I ever did it. 

I surprised Laquita in the drugstore while she was at work, a surprise that had a negative tinge for her because I had grown a mustache during the first part of the summer.  I had no idea what I was going to do after I got there, so I stayed a couple of nights with Laquita’s family before finding a room to rent there in town.  Laquita’s father, whom I called Mr. Alec, liked me because I got up early one morning and went with him on his rounds tending his chickens and his garden.  He was a simple, pleasant man, a hard worker who had a job with the City of Burnet on the maintenance crew.  He invited me to have meals with the family, and would even have been all right with my staying with them, but it would not have been proper (nor even wise, I think), for me to have done that, in view of my romantic interest in Laquita.  Laquita’s mom (whom I called “Mom A” liked me, too, and was gracious to me, but I think she would have been more comfortable with me being back in Abilene.

Mr. Alec was able to get me a job with the city maintenance crew, where the tasks consisted most often of cleaning the street drainage gutters (“curbs and gutters, gutters and curbs” Mr. Alec would say) and unloading sacks of lime at the water purification plant.  This last chore always left me itching at the end of the day, as the lime dust would get under my clothes and irritate the skin.  Mr. Alec liked to tell stories, so I got to know him better as we worked together.  He was not a church-going man at that point (he underwent a conversion later), and in fact (I found out later), he used his Sunday mornings to engage in illegal cock-fighting, using game-cocks that he kept apart from the other chickens at the back of the family property.  I was informed later by his grandsons, who were also living with their grandparents at the time, that he had a fairly profitable business breeding and selling game-cocks.

Our last project before the job ended was working in an open field just out of town which was going to become the town’s airport.  We were assigned the task of clearing away the biggest rocks so that the runway could be built.  It felt a little bit like being on a prison chain-gang, but I’m glad to report that there were no shackles or ball-and-chain. 

Of course, I went to church with the family at the local downtown Church of Christ, where the Alexanders (especially Mom A) were active members of the congregation.  I was welcomed there and enjoyed getting to know the people, who accepted me quickly because of my association with Laquita and her family.  Laquita’s oldest brother, Marion, was the father of the five boys living with the grandparents, and he would visit on weekends, usually going to church on Sunday also.  He was a very lively and charming fellow, but he loved to tease Laquita and me about our relationship.  He was a good salesman and he was able to pay for the boys staying at his parents’ house.  It was rather chaotic at times, since the boys ranged in age from teenagers to the little boy Paul, who was only about five or six at the time. Marion’s wife was mentally ill and was unable to care for the boys.  Marion was a very responsible father, and he spent time and money to engage in activities with the boys, like playing “rounders” with a softball and bat in the vacant lot across the street from the Burnet house and going fishing on one of the local lakes.  Laquita and I sometimes went along on these excursions.

I don’t remember many details of the time Laquita and I spent together that summer.  There certainly wasn’t much chance for private time at her home.  Our companionship was mainly going to church together and hanging around her house at meal times. Both she and I were working all day during the week. There was one occasion, however, that I remember our going for a walk along a dry creek bed that ran right by her house (it had water in it only when it rained).  We got to a sort of secluded spot with some trees around, and I made bold to initiate our first kiss--at least it’s the first one I remember, late as it came in our courtship.  It was rather tentative and shy, but a very meaningful development in our relationship.  I was not a sophisticated courtier!

One of the memorable experiences during this period was my reading for the first time C. S. Lewis’s classic work, Mere Christianity.  I don’t remember how I had gotten a copy, but, as with many other people, it changed my thinking in basic ways.  Never had I read such a cogent but simple argument for the existence of a God who is the source of all moral principles.  I had now a philosophical foundation for the faith I had so far accepted as a given.  My boss on the maintenance crew was a thoroughgoing sceptic and a rather profane man, and he rejected my faith as a mindless illusion.  He was an enthusiast for geological research and had amassed a collection of fossils that he was eager to show me to bolster his argument that the geological record and the theory of evolution explained the origins of life, leaving no room for religious fantasies.  God must have protected me from his influence, for my new perspective from C. S. Lewis overshadowed his arguments.

When I arrived back at A.C.C. in the fall of 1958, I teamed up with three other guys to live in a little bachelor apartment about a five-minute walk away from the campus.  My companions in this enterprise were my two Bible-selling buddies, Fred Selby and Carl Reed, along with a college cafeteria worker named Claude Crawford.  Our landlady was named Mrs. Pettigrew, or as she was affectionately called, “Momma Pet.”  This certainly beat living in the barracks, and it was a good healthy walk back and forth to campus.

Laquita was back in her dormitory, and since both our living places were off limits to the opposite sex, we had to hang out in the library and go to church together three times a week.  We attended, as did many students, the Graham St. Church of Christ, which sent a bus to the campus to transport the students.  The preacher was a dynamic faculty member named Carl Spain.  We learned a lot from him about deeper Christian thinking and behavior.  He paved the way for a shift by the Churches of Christ to a more Spirit-filled understanding of Christian living, and he emphasized the doctrine of grace, which to that point had not been at the forefront of Church of Christ thinking.  I was glad to have had some personal contact with Dr. Spain when I led singing for one of his Gospel Meetings at the Stamford church I attended.

I was not a happy camper that term.  I was greatly desiring to get married, now that we were committed to it.  Laquita (and her mother), however, wanted to wait until she had graduated, or was at least within a year away from it.  But in my immaturity, extended celibacy was pretty low on my list of desired disciplines.  I was selfishly impatient, so I rashly decided to use the “nuclear option”: “Marry me now or that’s it.”  She knew it was a dumb thing to say, but somehow she swallowed her pride and good judgment and gave in, so we scheduled a December wedding.  She has said many times since then, “I knew God had brought us together, even if you were being silly.”  If she have been then the more gently assertive woman she became later, she might have said, “O.K. buddy, I’ll give you a chance to forget you said that, and we’ll talk again tomorrow.”  But she gave in to my stupidity, and the Lord prevented any bad results from my blunder.  Definitely not one of my better moments, though.

Somehow we managed to arrange for the wedding and a little reception at Laquita’s home afterward.  I had to borrow money from my uncle in order to fund my part in the occasion, and I borrowed my friend Fred’s car.  The only honeymoon facility I could afford was a lakeside summer camp with a cabin available at off-season rates.  However, our happy few days there transformed it into a memorable spot, the beginning of our long and greatly blessed life together.  I’m so glad she (and the Lord) didn’t allow me to throw her away.

---

---

Dr. Elton Higgs was a faculty member in the English department of the University of Michigan-Dearborn from 1965-2001. Having retired from UM-D as Prof. of English in 2001, he now lives with his wife and adult daughter in Jackson, MI.. He has published scholarly articles on Chaucer, Langland, the Pearl Poet, Shakespeare, and Milton. His self-published Collected Poems is online at Lulu.com. He also published a couple dozen short articles in religious journals. (Ed.: Dr. Higgs was the most important mentor during undergrad for the creator of this website, and his influence was inestimable; it's thrilling to welcome this dear friend onboard.)

Mailbag: Which Books on the Moral Argument Do You Recommend?

Hello, 

I am an aspiring philosopher/theologian with a graduate degree in and passion for apologetics, and I was hoping you could help me out. I'm looking for your personal list of books that someone who wants an advanced understanding moral argument needs to read.

For context, I'm looking to develop a list containing between 20 and 30 books dedicated to the moral argument. Ideally I'd have 15-20 books that provide support for and at least 5-10 books that challenge the argument. Ideally these texts would be mostly at the advanced level, or minimally, intermediate. 

The reason I'd like to do this is so that in the future I could dedicate a year to working through the best resources related to the argument. Ultimately, I'm looking to have advanced understanding of the argument.

I appreciate any recommendations you can give. 

Sincerely, 

Lucas

Hi, Lucas! Love that you want to spend time sinking into the moral argument. I think that too often nowadays arguments like this are treated as just a tool in the arsenal, rather than the rich resource they are for reflection, enjoyment, beauty, insight, spiritual formation, etc. The moral argument has it all going on.

There are five major components to the moral argument as I think about it. One is the history of the argument; another is a critique of secular ethics; another is a defense of theistic ethics; another is a defense of the moral realism on which it is all based; and another is an extension of the argument beyond theism to Christianity.

Regarding its history, Jerry Walls and I wrote The Moral Argument: A History, which directs you to folks like Kant, Newman, Taylor, Sorley, Rashdall, and others. Some of that’s really rich reading—especially Newman’s Grammar of Assent and Taylor’s Faith of a Moralist. Classics. Anyway, lots of recommendations in that book.

In terms of a critique of secular ethics, we wrote God and Cosmos, but just a start and promissory note. Linville’s piece on the moral argument, easily accessible online, is well worth reading. The debate between Craig and Wielenberg is coming out this year; that’s quite good. Edited by Adam Johnson. In terms of defending theistic ethics, that was the main goal of our Good God. But there are lots of possibilities here, including Zagzebski’s Divine Motivation Theory, Evans’ God and Moral Obligations, Hare’s Moral Gap, Adams’ Finite and Infinite Goods, Ritchie’s From Morality to Metaphysics. Most of these cover more than just one aspect of the moral argument—both defending theistic ethics and critiquing alternatives, for example. Wielenberg’s Robust Ethics offers criticisms of theistic ethics and an effort at a more secular account of ethics. Wielenberg and I have a written debate on Lewis’s moral argument in a book edited by Greg Bassham.

In terms of defending moral realism, see Cuneo’s The Normative Web, Shafer-Landau’s Moral Realism, and Enoch’s Taking Morality Seriously; all are important. Jerry and I aim to write our fourth book on the moral argument on this topic, finishing our planned tetralogy.

For extending the moral argument to Christianity, that is cutting-edge stuff. We need to see more books on this—especially using, say, Trinitarian resources. Adam Johnson wrote his dissertation on this recently at Southeastern, and Brian Trapp did about a decade ago at Southern. There may be more resources along such lines but I’m not as familiar with this literature. I have some doctoral students working on such topics in their dissertations. My guess is great work is coming here as the community of moral apologists builds and the momentum of the movement grows.

Incidentally, several of the folks mentioned—Hare, Adams, Evans, etc.—have done more than one book that’s important for the moral argument.

Important folks who are more secular to consider can be found when you look at rival ethical accounts. I mentioned Wielenberg, Enoch, and Shafer-Landau (though he aims for more neutrality on the God question than most), but as you get into error theory, expressivism, constructivism, sensibility, theory, and nontheistic moral realism (either natural or non-natural), you run into a host of thinkers: McDowell, Blackburn, Wiggins, Mackie, R. M. Hare (John’s father), Joyce, Korsgaard, Brink, Harman, Boyd, Foot, Parfit, etc.

There’s a four views book on God and morality edited by Loftin, and a nice anthology on God and ethics edited by Garcia and King called Is Goodness without God Good Enough? that’s eminently worth reading.

Of course avail yourself of this website, MoralApologetics.com, for a host of resources related to the moral argument from a wide array of disciplines. (The site will soon come under the auspices of the Center for Moral Apologetics we get to start at Houston Baptist this fall, as we are joining all the exciting things already happening there.) Recently the site’s begun a new series about recent developments in the moral argument—which reminds me, I have hardly mentioned contemporaries working on the moral argument; we’ve seen a real resurgence of work and interest on the topic over the last several decades.

Mark Murphy is an important thinker who has written some serious books on ethics from a theistic perspective although he is more reticent than many to make it into an apologetic matter. Still, though, quite worth reading, rife with trenchant insight and philosophical rigor. Kevin Kinghorn is a friend and good philosopher who studied with Swinburne and has written some important and germane books: A Framework of the Good, & (with Travis) But What About God’s Wrath? Much recommended.

In taking on alternative moral theories, of which there are a plethora, one might also be interested in taking on not just nonreligious alternatives, but non-Christian religious perspectives. Brian Scalise has done nice work using the Trinity to contrast an Islamic conception of love with that of Christianity’s; Ronnie Campbell has contrasted a Christian perspective on the problem of evil with those of several worldviews (pantheism, panentheism, etc.); TJ Gentry is finishing up a dissertation at North-Western using resources from moral apologetics to critique Mormonism; etc.

Paul Copan has penned a widely anthologized piece on the moral argument, and my wife and I have done a more popular level book that incorporated elements of Good God, God and Cosmos, and the history of the moral argument called Morals of the Story.

Sorry I can’t give you a more exhaustive list for now, but this is at least suggestive. You can find more resources in the notes and bibliographies of these books. I encourage you in your study! I am excited you have the interest; please keep in touch and let me know how it goes.

Blessings,

djb

Mailbag: How do you define the good?

Hi. I had a quick morality question for you. I hope that’s okay. I’ve been working with students at the local college campus, discussing morality. I’m wondering how do you define “the Good”? I’ll usually say something like “the Good is that which conforms to the nature and will of God.” What do you think?

Dave

Hi Dave! Thanks for the note. Your question is of course such a great one, and it is one of the hardest ones. Let me say a bit why I find it so devilishly difficult. Of course folks use “good” in nonmoral evaluative ways all the time—like "my computer is good." Thomists though want to put this sort of teleological consideration into the center of their ethical theory. Something is good to the extent it fulfills its function, or something like that, they will say.

Likewise with human beings, though morality enters the picture more explicitly with us, and if we are made by God and for intimacy with Him and others, then loving God and neighbor is what our purpose is. Thus, to the extent we do such things, we are (morally) good.

I don’t think that’s terrible. It probably has a lot going for it. But there has to be more, it seems to me, because of an example I think Wolterstorff comes up with: a serial killer’s “purpose” is to kill lots of people. So he’s a good serial killer if he does. But there is nothing moral about such goodness. So we have to ask not just whether someone or something performs his or her or its function or purpose, but whether the function or purpose is itself good. At that point a purely teleological account of the good seems to require something more deontological.

So regarding moral goodness in particular, what constitutes the standard or ground of moral value? To me the best account we have is the Christian God, owing to his nature. Of course our naturalist friends who are objectivists on such matters usually point to something like human flourishing. And there is some truth in that, it seems to me. This is what makes disambiguating these partially divergent/overlapping views onerous. As a Christian I’m convinced we were meant for flourishing, eudaimonia, shalom, joy, etc. But the question then becomes, what does that look like for us as humans? And the answer to that query invariably rides on what is ultimately real. If we are mere collocations of atoms and nothing else, our highest fulfillments are likely reducible to naturalistic items. But moral langauge and logic and phenomenology, to my thinking, all point beyond categories that naturalism alone can manage.

So I’m inclined to think the joy and telos for which we were designed requires more than that. So even if I were to agree that what's “good” for us is our flourishing (or something in that vicinity), it still points to something likely transcendent—something, I suspect, like the beatific vision. It seems to me the point is this: we cannot simply speak of what’s good for us and think we’re done; that very question drives us to ask what is good in and of itself.

Now, certain of our experiences are good intrinsically—like our friendships. But what is the ground of such intrinsic goods? Again, I don’t see how we avoid metaphysics if we really want to be thoughtful about it, and to me the best explanation seems likely to be classical theism. The nature of such a God seems to be at the front and center of what “the Good” is. This puts me in the theistic Platonist camp, but of course one can be a Christian without buying that. But it’s where I tend to go. Like you, I’m inclined to say that things are good to the extent they partake in or resemble the ultimate good. That is what makes sense of the value of friendship—it resembles God’s loving nature. At least that’s how I see it.

Christian theology makes even more fine-grained the analysis, since we know God’s nature to be Trinitarian—an eternal dance of other-regarding love. So this makes great sense of love being at the center of things, and of loving God and neighbor capturing all the laws and prophets. We are invited to participate in the love that functions at the foundation of reality and always has.

Ultimately I suspect we can effect a sort of rapprochement between Platonic and Thomistic accounts of the good, since we have been made in God’s image. What is best for us (loving relationships with God and others) and most conduces to our joy depends on what is most ultimately real and good in and of itself (God himself, indeed Trinitarian love).

Note, though, that this isn’t so much a “definition” of goodness as something else. I agree with Moore that we can’t define it. I still suspect, and think there’s good reason to believe, God is in some sense constitutive of it. That is more analysis than definition. And since God’s ineffable, this account has the advantage of rendering ultimate goodness, too, beyond our ken in ineliminable respects, necessitating what Adams calls a “critical stance” toward any other (likely deflationary) rival account of the good.

So, yes, hard question!! But in a nutshell that’s what I’m inclined to say. Thanks for the question.

djb

Recent Work on the Moral Argument, Part 3

In this third installment in the series, we look at the work of two very bright younger scholars who are doing exciting work in moral apologetics. We relish the prospect of seeing the work they will produce for a long time to come. Suan Sonna is building a Thomistic moral argument, and Adam Johnson just successfully defended his dissertation on a Trinitarian metaethical theory; both of their projects are succinctly described and detailed below.

Here at MoralApologetics.com we have been saying for years that there is enough work to be done on the moral argument to require a thriving community working on it together. We hope that this week’s installment can help you see that just such a community is coming together to do exciting and cutting-edge work.

---

Suan Sonna is currently working on a Thomistic moral argument. His argument aims to do the following: (1) it proposes 10 standards any adequate moral theory must satisfy in terms of metaphysics, epistemology, and normativity; (2) Sonna argues that the best metaethical theory with respect to those 10 standards is Thomistic or Neo-Aristotelian; (3) And, he unpacks the implications of this Thomistic synthesis for divine command theory, the ethics of a perfect being, and clarifies the relationship between God and morality.

The basic structure of Suan’s argument is like so: If the Thomistic metaphysical synthesis is correct, then the existence of the God of classical theism inevitably follows. And one way in which the superiority of this synthesis can be demonstrated is in the domain of moral theory. In turn, Sonna argues that the best model of moral realism is by nature theistic, and unavoidably so. As Alasdair MacIntyre's did in After Virtue, Sonna more pointedly poses the following dilemma to skeptics who wish to be moral realists - Aristotle (God) or Nietzsche (Nihilism)?

To give you a sense of Adam Johnson’s work, here is a proposal he recently put together that captures much of its essence, entitled “Proposing a Trinitarian Metaethical Theory”:

Many different types of theists can affirm the following moral argument for God:

1. There are objective moral truths.

2. God is the best explanation for objective moral truths.

3. Therefore, God exists.

However, which understanding of God is a better explanation for objective morality? I argue that the trinitarian God of Christianity is the best explanation for objective morality. To develop this argument I propose a Trinitarian Metaethical Theory (TMT) which maintains that the ultimate ground of morality is God’s trinitarian nature. I begin with Robert Adams’s metaethical model and then expand it in significant ways by incorporating God’s trinitarian nature.

The TMT affirms, along with Adams, that God is the ultimate moral good and other beings are good when they resemble Him. But the TMT further proposes that a being is good when it specifically resembles God’s trinitarian nature as found in, and expressed among, the loving relationships between the persons of the Trinity. There are two ways this trinitarian addition to Adams’s model is helpful in understanding how God serves as the foundation of moral goodness.

First, to say morality is based merely on God’s nature ignores the relational aspects of God that are helpful in plumbing the depths of morality. Because morality is inextricably tied to personal relationships, it is easier to conceptualize and understand moral virtues in the context of eternal personal relationships as opposed to a single divine person existing in eternal isolation. God did not need to create other persons in order to be loving, moral, and relational because, being three persons in fellowship, He has always been these things.

Second, without the inner-trinitarian relationships, it is not clear that love, the cornerstone of morality, is a necessary aspect of ultimate reality. However, if the inner-trinitarian relationships are included, then it is more clearly the case that love is part of the bedrock of reality. Because loving relationships are a primordial aspect of God, we can more easily affirm that love is necessarily good. Since God is triune, love is not something new and contingent that came about through creation but is eternally necessary. In this way God’s inner-trinitarian relationships allow us to affirm that loving God and loving others, the bedrock of morality, is necessarily good.

The TMT also affirms, along with Adams, that our moral obligations are generated by God’s commands. An important aspect of this part of Adams’s model is that obligation arises from social relationships. He explained this aspect by affirming a social theory of the nature of obligation and then argued our relationship with God is simply an idealized version of this theory. The TMT expands Adams’s theory of obligation by adding important truths concerning God’s triune nature. There are two ways this addition is helpful in understanding how God serves as the foundation of moral obligation.

First, understanding the social trinitarian context of ultimate reality helps us understand why obligations arise from social relationships. Since God exists as divine persons in loving relationships with each other, there is a profound sense in which ultimate reality itself is social and thus all of reality takes place in a social context. Social relationships were not something new that came about when God created other beings, but are a necessary part of ultimate reality. This tells us that social relationships are part of the fabric of being itself and thus we should not be surprised that personal relationships play such a large role in moral obligation.

Second, God’s commands are instructions for the life-path by which we can best achieve His ultimate purpose for us—to become a co-lover with the members of Trinity. While God has authority over us, His commands flow not from a despotic desire to control us but from a desire that we would enjoy the greatest thing possible—loving relationships with Him and others. This illumines Jesus’ explanation that the greatest commandments are to love God and to love others, and how the rest of the commandments rest upon this foundation (Matt 22:36–40). This is so because these two commands instruct us to be like the members of the Trinity who both love God (the other members of the Trinity) and love others (the other members of the Trinity). Love, the basis of morality, originates from within God’s inner life of three divine persons in perfect loving communion.

---

Kudos to Suan and Adam! MoralApologetics.com celebrates the work of these gentlemen, stands with their wonderful efforts, and is excited to see such exciting developments that showcase the power of the moral argument(s) and the splendor of God’s unfailing love.

Recent Work on the Moral Argument, Part II

In this second installment of exciting recent work in moral apologetics, we asked Dr. Mark Linville to offer a quick summary of what he’s been up to. He does really excellent work, and MoralApologetics.com is always happy to direct people to his substantive contributions. In his own words here is that summary:

---

Essay in Craig-Wielenberg Book

I titled my essay, “Darwin, Duties, and the Demiurge.”  I begin by comparing the “evolutionary debunking arguments” of C. S. Lewis and Alex Rosenberg.  No two thinkers could be further apart in their views of the nature of the universe, but they agree on two fundamental points: A consistent naturalism entails either moral subjectivism or nihilism, and most naturalists are not consistent, as they seek ways of avoiding the full--and repugnant--implications of their worldview.  Rosenberg embraces both naturalism and its repugnant implications. Lewis rejects both.

In contrast to both Lewis and Rosenberg, I argue not that naturalism entails or requires some variety of moral non-realism, but that moral realism--the idea that some acts really are right or wrong--does not find a good “fit” on that worldview.  And where they argue that the consistent naturalist would embrace some variety of moral non-realism, I instead advance an epistemological argument to the effect that the consistent naturalist is a moral skeptic. Where a naturalist of Rosenberg’s stripe will reject any teleological explanation for what Rosenberg calls “core morality”--basically, the common sense moral beliefs that are widely distributed--the theist thinks that human moral faculties are designed for the purpose of discerning moral truth.  “Theism thus provides underpinnings for the expectation that the human moral sense is capable of discerning moral truth.”

After recounting a general Darwinian “genealogy of morals,” I consider some objections to the sort of argument that I advance.  I assess Louise Antony’s direct replies to my earlier work. Perhaps the heart of her critique is that despite the origins of our moral faculties, we are still in a position to evaluate moral claims and beliefs by appeal to “reason and evidence.”  And she cites an important recent article by Roger White (“You Just Believe That Because….”) in support of her argument. The heart of my reply is that certain of our most basic moral convictions, such as Chesterton’s example that “Babies should not be strangled,” is not had by any inference of reason.  We do not reason to this as a conclusion, but we reason with it as we evaluate other moral claims.  And it is not as though babies have the empirically discernible property of not-to-be-strangledness stamped under their bonnets, giving us empirical evidence for the belief.  Rather, the best evidence for that conviction is it seeming to us to be true, and self-evidently so.  And it is this very seeming that is undercut on Antony’s naturalism.

I then turn to Erik Wielenberg’s interesting and ingenious attempt at avoiding evolutionary debunking arguments by appeal to a “third factor” involved in the explanation of human moral beliefs.  His aim is to challenge the debunker’s claim that even if there were objective values the naturalist would not be in a position to know them.  The core of his argument, I think, is that if there are rights, and if such rights supervene upon the possession of reason, and if believing that there are rights requires the possession of reason, then it would appear that our evolution, aiming only at fitness, has also guided us to truth.  My main reply to Wielenberg invokes George Santayana’s critique of the young Bertrand Russell’s early embrace of both moral realism--a Moral Platonism similar to Wielenberg’s--and naturalism.  The heart of Santayana’s argument--what one commentator on Santayana calls his “most telling criticism”--is what might be dubbed the demiurge argument.  Santayana argued that, unlike Plato’s scheme, Russell’s Platonic Good “is not a power,” and so cannot be thought to influence the course of nature. And so there is a great gulf fixed between those Platonic precepts and whatever shape the world takes, with the result of a Platonism “stultified and eviscerated.”  In a world in which “man is a product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving,” there is no reason to expect that the moral convictions of evolved rational creatures would be informed in any way by the moral declarations in the Platonic Empyrean.  What is missing, then, is someone or something that can fill the role of Plato’s demiurge, and the theist has the perfect candidate.

Other Relevant Recent Work

“God is Necessary for Morality” is my main essay in my printed “debate” with Louise Antony in Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Religion, 2nd edition, eds., Michael Peterson and Raymond VanArragon (Blackwell, 2019).  Antony and I also exchange brief replies to each other’s main essays.

Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Religion

Wiley-Blackwell

“Moral Argument” in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Religion eds., Stewart Goetz and Charles Taliaferro (Wiley-Blackwell).  I believe this comes out this year.

“Respect for Persons Makes Right Acts Right” is my main essay in my printed “debate” with Alastair Norcross (who defends Act Utilitarianism) in Steven B. Cowan, Problems in Value Theory (Bloomsbury, 2020).  I offer a brief critique of Divine Command Theory here along the same lines as my critiques of several other ethical theories (along the way to defending a Kantian respect for persons principle). Perhaps of at least indirect relevance is my fairly extensive ("Chestertonian") critique of Alex Rosenberg's Scientism in "A Defence of Armchair Philosophy: G. K. Chesterton and the Pretensions of Scientism" in An Unexpected Journal (December, 2019)--online and Amazon hard copy.  (This journal is put together by several graduates of the HBU apologetics program.)

Problems in Value Theory: An Introduction to Contemporary Debates

Bloomsbury Academic

---

We appreciate Dr. Linville doing that for us! Be on the lookout for all those exciting essays to come. In our next installment we’ll take a look at two younger scholars doing exciting work on aspects of moral apologetics, namely, Suan Sonna and Adam Johnson.

Matriculation at Abilene Christian College (1957): Twilight Musings Autobiography (Part 10)

As a teenager growing up in a premillennial Church of Christ, I had assumed that I would go to the college associated with that group of churches, Kentucky Bible College in Winchester, KY.  But by the time I had been away from that milieu for over two years, there seemed no reason to go so far away, and I enrolled in the fall of 1957 at Abilene Christian College, which was affiliated with the mainline Churches of Christ that rejected premillennialism.  That doctrinal issue no longer seemed central to my faith, and though I couldn’t subscribe to the hardline rejection of it by mainline Churches of Christ, I felt that A.C.C. would meet my educational needs.  Over the four years that I spent there, my vocational plans evolved from thinking I would be a Bible or Religious Education major, to preparing to be a high school English teacher, and finally to plans to attend graduate school and become a college teacher of English.

          As I mentioned in the preceding installment of this autobiography, I went a few weeks early to Abilene to find a job.  Actually, I had two jobs for a while, my truck-driving job with the College maintenance department and work at a drugstore soda fountain across the street from the College.  Although the drugstore job lasted only a few weeks, until I was fully involved in classes, it had one very memorable moment.  My boss on the job was a young man who had worked there a while.  I was mostly a cleanup employee, so it was predictable that in my first week I was called on to do the dirtiest job associated with the fountain: cleaning out the grease trap.  A lot of goop-filled water went through the clean-up sink, where we washed the glasses and other utensils used to operate the fountain.  Every week or two the grease trap had to be cleaned to avoid a blocked drain.  The cleaning involved taking the trap apart, scooping out the accumulated goop, wiping it clean, and putting it back together—a thoroughly nasty job.  I did it the best I could the first time I was asked, and my boss seemed satisfied.  A week or ten days later, he asked me to do it again, but this time he gave me a bit of worldly wisdom before I got started: “You know,” he said confidentially, “If you’re asked to do a dirty job and do it well, you’ll probably get asked to do it again.”  That stuck with me and I have several times been reminded of it when I was confronted with the call to deal with messes much more consequential, if less literally dirty.  There is some ambiguity in the recognition one receives for doing a good job; performing well will often get you into even dirtier jobs.

          Back in 1957, the campus housing at A.C.C. still included some WWII era barracks which were as spartan for the students as they were for the soldiers.  My friend Fred Selby and I had our first-year lodgings there, along with Fred’s brother, David, who was coming back to school in spite of suffering from a form of leukemia that had made his life difficult.  I remember seeing him experiencing a cold sweat one time in his room.  He was unable to finish the term and had to go into a cancer hospital.  Unfortunately, he died before the academic year was over.  Fred and I were best buddies, and I went home with him several times during that year, which enabled me more easily to visit my folks in Rule, which was only ten miles away from Fred’s home.  That was fine with Fred, because he was sweet for a while on my niece, Linda, even though she was still in high school and her mother did not encourage the romance. 

          My campus job with the maintenance department had me often driving their old dump truck to take loads of refuse to the land fill a few miles away.  There I first encountered the smell of perpetually burning garbage, an unforgettable stench both acrid and heavy.  The truck was a challenge to drive, and there was much grinding of gears before I mastered the coordination of stick shift and clutch.  When I was not driving, there was plenty of grounds grooming and weed hoeing to do.  There was an outside maintenance crew of about four or five guys, and an inside crew rather larger who tended the dormitories and other buildings.  When it was raining or there was insufficient outside work to be done, the outside guys would be drafted into painting, or changing mattresses, or sweeping halls.  I preferred the outside work and the chatting time it supplied between the guys as we plied our hoes and rakes.  We were paid 60 cents an hour for our work, and I worked about 20 hours a week, in addition to carrying a full-time academic load.

          I received two pieces of special news during my first weeks of class.  As I was going through orientation and registration, I was called over to the table of the English Department head and told that my placement exam entitled me to be enrolled in the honors composition class taught by a venerable elderly lady called Mrs. Garrett.  Later on, I came to have very close relationships with both Mrs. Garrett and the Department Head, Dr. James Culp.  I received the second news a bit later when I was called out of class to hear that my father had died.  The funeral was held in Rule, but his body was brought to an Abilene cemetery for interment.  After attending these events, I returned to campus and took up classes again.

 Mrs. Garrett’s special class allowed and encouraged creativity in writing and featured a great deal of her reading aloud.  It was there that I first encountered the pleasure of listening to an expressive reader.  Freshman English elicited some memorable writing assignments, including a research paper on the circumpolar constellations, which fostered a lifelong interest in astronomy, even though I never took a class in the subject.  Mrs. Garrett’s class undergirded my decision in my sophomore year to major in English, rather than Bible or religious education.

          Much as I enjoyed my classes in my freshman year, my academic program was not the most significant part of my experience that year.  I had a few short infatuations with female classmates in the fall term, but they all faded away when, toward the end of November or the first part of December, I met the girl who within a year or so had become my wife.  Laquita Alexander was a cutie who smiled at everybody across her cafeteria line, but I thought she had special eyes for me; I certainly had special eyes for her, so it was natural that one day when we met on the stairs as we changed classes, we introduced ourselves to one another.  Shortly after that, one day after I had finished my meal, I strolled back to the line to see if she was free, and she was, and I asked her for our first date, going to the Tuesday Night Devotional on the steps of the Administration Building.  We both liked to sing, and that mutual interest was made evident as we sang the hymns that formed the major part of the devotional time.  After that, we spent most of our free hours together, going to church mostly and studying together in the library.  However, she had (and still has) more common sense than I did and thought that hand-holding interfered with study.  I was so amazed that she wanted to be with me that I was willing to concede to her priorities.

          By Christmas time, we were “going steady,” and I gave her my high school class ring to wear around her neck.  We saw each other as frequently as we could, but her time was more limited than mine, since she worked as much as her boss in the cafeteria would let her, usually 40-50 hours per week in addition to her classes.  She got up at 5:30 a.m. in order to work at breakfast time.  She was not happy that I made 60 cents an hour on the maintenance crew, while she made only 50 cents an hour in the cafeteria.  She had accumulated some savings from her work during her high school years, but she lived in continual fear that she would not make enough to pay her school costs each term.  She managed to pay her bills and not to incur any debt during her bachelor’s work.  In fact, her love for me was abundantly manifest when she agreed to use her hard-earned savings to pay part of my bill one semester.  She has taught me over the years how to be more thrifty, and she says that I have moved her toward being a more generous giver.

          However, I did get some breaks through scholarships.  I was amazed when one day I was called to the ACC vice-president’s office and he told me that I had been selected to receive a $500 award from the Texas Club of  New York.  That was as big to me as receiving a full fellowship during the years of my graduate work.

          Although I had laid aside my plans for a Bible major, I was still interested in biblical studies, so I eagerly engaged in the required general courses such as Survey of the Old and New Testaments.  One of my Bible teachers that year was a man named J. P. Lewis.  His approach to teaching the Bible was to encourage close attention to the text, reinforced by tests that offered multiple choice and fill in the blanks.  This kind of feedback was right up my alley, and I aced most of the tests he gave.  As I remember, he didn’t have much by way of deeper interpretation or application, but I didn’t fault him for that, letting my success in mechanically mastering the text outweigh any shortcomings he had.  I took two terms from him, and one day I encountered him in the barber shop (back in the days when I still had hair to be cut) and mentioned that I would like to sign up with him for still another course in my sophomore year.  He rather dryly responded that it would perhaps be better for me to go on another teacher who would have a different perspective to offer.  Maybe he was tired of having a smug know-it-all in his class, but his put-off was heeded, and I had other Bible teachers my sophomore year. 

          During the second semester of my freshman year, I was preoccupied with hanging out with Laquita, and Fred, my roommate, was sadly absorbed with the final hospitalization and death of his brother David.  So we didn’t see much of each other. that term.  That summer (1958), Fred and I were closely associated once again when he obtained a job for me working with him harvesting wheat and other grains, moving north as the grain ripened.  Our boss was a man named Joe Vosek, with whom Fred had worked before.  That was quite a different experience from anything I had done before.  My job was driving the truck that collected the harvested grain, driving alongside the harvester as it deposited the grain down a chute into the truck.  I then took the load to a grain elevator and came back for more.  It was a hot, dusty job, and everybody was filthy at the end of the day.  Joe rented motel rooms for the crew when we got away from his home territory, and we conked out there after we had eaten. 

I’m afraid that my driving was not always satisfactory to Joe.  One time in particular I turned back into the field from the highway and made a wide swing for the turn.  Unfortunately, someone was behind me who was already passing me because I had signaled the turn, and he almost ran into me.  Evidently he knew Joe and complained to him about my driving.  Later I heard an irate Joe yelling to someone, “He’d better learn to drive that truck, or I’ll take him off of it!”  I don’t remember whether he spoke to me about the incident, but I knew I was on probation.  As it turned out, we were engaged in harvesting for only a few weeks, having to stop because of weather, whether rain or drought I don’t remember.   That precipitated my significant decision to hitchhike down to the town where Laquita lived, Burnet, TX.  More about the results of that move in the next installment.

---

Dr. Elton Higgs was a faculty member in the English department of the University of Michigan-Dearborn from 1965-2001. Having retired from UM-D as Prof. of English in 2001, he now lives with his wife and adult daughter in Jackson, MI.. He has published scholarly articles on Chaucer, Langland, the Pearl Poet, Shakespeare, and Milton. His self-published Collected Poems is online at Lulu.com. He also published a couple dozen short articles in religious journals. (Ed.: Dr. Higgs was the most important mentor during undergrad for the creator of this website, and his influence was inestimable; it's thrilling to welcome this dear friend onboard.)

---