Despite the encouraging success of the Christian Worldview Conference held at Princeton on the weekend of November 9th, such a gathering of secular academicians, theologians, and clergymen joined around the cause of Christendom in the ivory tower is notable primarily because it is exceptional. In a nation in which our oldest and most esteemed universities were founded as seminaries, it is sobering to realize just how far outside of the academic mainstream Christian faith has been forced.
I am not here bemoaning the secularization of American society, but rather the confused stare that greets an admission of actual adherence to the Christian worldview on Ivy League campuses; one we would expect to be reserved for students with three eyes or a bone through their noses (whom we are reminded to treat rather as normal). Admitting you are an actual Christian will elicit chuckles where the true believer of any absurd animist superstition, or non-Christian mainstream faith would receive a deferent nod. So why do our classmates and professors save their sneers for us?
While it might be convenient to subscribe to a populist view à la Bill O’Reilly that the tree huggers, or the gays, or the Islamists, or the commies are waging an unprovoked culture war against decent Christians, I am inclined to believe that, for instance, the fact that the “Christian” President of the United States thinks the earth is 6,000 years old and believes that Jesus Christ told him to invade Iraq might be part of the reason my classmates think that I am a kook.
Cultural criticism aside, my aim here is to tender an apology of (reasonable) Christian faith to the academic mind. While the curricula vitae of Justin Martyr, John Chrysostom, and even C.S. Lewis leave little to be desired, I hope a fresh approach to introducing Christianity to the (hopefully) rigorous and open minds on our campus might serve successfully as, if not a recruitment tool, a means of alleviating the sweltering pressure on campus Christians to embrace the social position of the lunatic clutching filthy pamphlets at the subway entrance, or else to apostatize.
The academic challenge to Christian faith I will attempt to answer is this: “prove to me that the Christian God exists and that I should be a Christian.” The first part of this challenge carries particular weight in an academic setting, probably due to the accession of what Christine Korsgaard dubs the “Modern Scientific Worldview” since the Enlightenment. There is a twofold problem with this aspect of the challenge, however. First, it is quite clear that I can provide no analytic, a priori proof of the existence of the Christian God, in the same way that I cannot argue on a priori grounds that the color purple exists. In both cases, all convincing evidence must be empirical: simply, we have to see it to believe it. Second, in assessing Christianity, which is not only a theory about our world, but in fact a life to be lived, what matters ultimately is not the truth of the metaphysical claims of the religion, per se, but rather what I will call its moral-philosophical and its personal-psychological stipulations – i.e., that the Christian notion of the human person and the life he ought to lead is morally appealing and worthy of adoption, and that the beatitude promised to faithful Christians in this life (“Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Kingdom of God come with power” (Mark 9:1)) is actual.
Strictly speaking, proof of an all-powerful being is not proof of an all-good being. Were the Christian God to descend before you and raise the dead, walk on water, or (something He did not already do) destroy Mars, you might be more convinced to give Christian claims a chance, but you would have no more immediate knowledge of the truth of the faith’s important practical assertions: e.g., “if you act in accordance with these moral principles, you will reach beatitude and attain relationship with the good and loving God who created you.”
There is a catch here. Omnipotence is objectively demonstrable, and is in fact borne out by centuries of Christian history. Unlike Islam or Mormonism, which base their truth upon a supposed secret rendezvous between a single individual and a representative of God, the origins of Christianity were wholly public; for instance, tens of thousands of the earliest Christian believers witnessed the miracles of Christ and His Holy Apostles firsthand, and many died as martyrs maintaining the truth of what they beheld with their own eyes. Simply put, to thoughtfully examine this historical evidence with an open mind can yield, I would argue, but one result: a deep respect for the Christian faith, and the impetus to pursue further investigation.
Similarly, we may test the moral-philosophical stipulations of Christian faith using the standard of our own individual conscience. But its personal-psychological claims can only be evaluated by very specific means – namely, living the Christian life and acceding to relationship with the Almighty. In other words, if beatitude is the gift only of a life lived in Christ, we must live such a life in order to receive it (and thereby to confirm its truth). As with any other experiential claim – for instance, the promise of a feeling of “warmth” upon entering a bubbling hot tub – our only conceivable method of evaluation (i.e., to ascertain that the tub is warm qua warm – that it provides that particular feeling) is to “dive in.”
I would like to turn the tables on the “scientists” of the academy at this point, and approach this question through the hermeneutic of scientific inquiry. First, it is clear that Christian claims cannot be analytically disproven, just as they cannot be so proven. Additionally, it seems we cannot look toward empirical evidence to cast doubt upon the faith, just as there is no conceivable set of experiential data that could lead us to know for sure there is no such thing as the color purple (all we could know is that we had never yet seen it). At this point, we seem to have arrived at détente – both secular atheism and Christianity seem, on face, to be cosmic theories mutually consistent with reason and empirical data. Now I have never had an experience that proves inexorably that I am not a brain in a vat (just think of The Matrix), nor one that proves the existence of God. But I do not believe that I am a brain in a vat, and I do not believe that there is no God, even though all of my experience is equally consistent with these views as well as their opposites. Our decision between atheism and Christianity must thus be determined on grounds other than plausibility, since both are certainly plausible.
When viewed through the lens of science, both of these “theories” are also falsifiable – that is, there exists a conceivable set of experimental data that would cast doubt upon or disprove both theories – and consequently, both are acceptable scientific theories according to the confirmed principles of twentieth century philosophy of science. For instance, a supernatural descent by a divine thaumaturge would certainly serve to discredit atheism (and this well-documented historical occurrence ought to do just that!), while disproving Christian claims seems a bit more difficult. As mentioned before, the metaphysical and moral-philosophical claims of the faith simply cannot be disproven: but what about the all-important personal-psychological ones?
The famous philosopher of science Karl Popper argued that Einstein’s General Relativity was a prime example of an ideal scientific theory because it “stuck its neck out” – that is, it made claims that explained phenomena unexplained by conventional science and exposed itself consequently to the possibility of experimental falsification. Does Christianity “stick its neck out” thus?
Quite so! The faith makes all sorts of novel claims about the human condition and man’s relationship with God above and beyond the ken of atheism. Like Einstein’s Relativity, the Christian worldview also more elegantly explains our universe – e .g., by alleviating the cosmological regress left unexplained by the big bang theory (i.e., the need for an uncaused cause). Furthermore, and most critical for the credibility of Christianity as a scientifically valid worldview, the personal-psychological claims of Christianity are indeed falsifiable: but, as with all other scientific theories, only by suitable experiment.
In evaluating Christianity for ourselves, we must thus follow the enshrined scientific method: hypothesize, experiment, and repeat. We have been presented with a set of experimental data from a group of largely trustworthy fellow “scientists” – i.e., the testimony of saints who are said to have attained the beatitude promised to us by Christ while still living. We have similarly been presented with a method of experiment – a Christian life – and a proposed conclusion – beatitude. In the spirit of scientific inquiry, what is left for us is to put our money where our mouths are, and to experiment the only way we can: by leading a life in Christ…or else to shut up and stop hiding from Truth behind a baseless reverence for “science.”
