Same Sex Marriage

  

400 words 2 scholary sources APA format 

1. Christians      are called to show compassion and understanding; if it will bring      happiness to homosexuals, why should we oppose same-sex marriage?
2. If you      believe same-sex marriage should not be opposed, then explain why not? Use      biblical and empirical support for your answer.
3. How      may one stand for something like same-sex marriage without being      judgmental? Support your view on the difference between confronting sin      and being judgmental using scripture.    

Audio Transcript: God’s Great Idea: Toward a Theology of Sexuality

As we think

about sexuality, it’s God’s great idea. But I’m sure that there are some who are saying, really, is it really

God’s great idea? There’s a dissenting view. There are those who see sex as evil and see

it very much as a part of our living

in a broken world. I remember one

time listening to a secretary who had been married for a good

number of years. She was talking to a

group of secretaries who were just beginning to think about

getting married. And she said, you know, male and female

relationships would be great if it

just were not for sex. Wow, she’s not alone. There have always been in the history

of the church, Those who have

looked upon sex, particularly Sex and

our fallen world, as something evil,

something bad. Augustine commented that all sexual

pleasure is evil. Rc sprawl reminds us that throughout the

history of the church, some have expounded on the notion that sex

within marriage even is merely tolerated by God for the sake of

procreation. Think about the area of sexuality and as

we look at what does the Bible

had to say and how will we develop a

theology of sexuality? Were aware of the

fact that there are many who feel that sex in our fallen world

is actually evil. So one of the things

that we want to do as we seek to help people recover and

develop a theologically, Biblically informed

view of human sexuality is we want to help people recover God’s great idea. And as we do that, there are some requirements that we must meet. We must begin to

think theologically. Now I know the

word theological. The concept of

theology is one that can be very threatening or

intimidating for some. So I thought we might

talk for a moment about what we mean exactly by thinking

theologically about this great idea or all

of God’s great ideas. I thought it might be

helpful to think about theology as God’s logic. Really the words theology can be broken apart into two different words

that OSCE or theo, which often stands for God, and is the Greek

word for God. And logos or logic, which might then just simply transliterate

God’s logic. When we talk about thinking theologically

about an issue, we’re talking

about finding out what God’s logic

on the issue is, or perhaps even

more to the point, what is God’s work? What does God say

about this subject? I, I’m reminded of the call of God to his people in, in the book of Isaiah

where God says come now and let us

reason together. Our God is a

reasonable God. He speaks and he wants to reason around the words

which he has spoken. He reveals to us patterns. He speaks to us of His purposes within the

context of His Word. And as we think

about sex and as we think

about sexuality, I think it’s good

to distinguish these two terms

when I think about sex and as we

talk about sex within the context

of this lecture, we’re talking about

that appetite that is in the human body that has been placed

there by God. We’ll see in a few moments that it is a good appetite. But it is primarily tied to procreation and to pleasure and to the purpose of God. God said to the

male and female, I want you to multiply, replenish, subdue

the earth, and have dominion over it for the glory of God. God wanted there

to be procreation. And so he did

not leave it to accident just as he placed within

the human body. The desire for Thursday because the body

needs refreshment and liquid in order to survive the desire for food because the body

needs food. So he placed within

the sexual appetite. And this is related

then to procreation, but also to pleasure and in a broader sense to

the purpose of God. Sexuality I think is to be differentiated from sex. Sexuality has to do

with the aesthetics that surround the fact that we are sexual beings. The appreciation for

the differences, the ability to celebrate

those differences, and the kinds

of feelings and pleasure that

we derive from. Noting that in fact males and females

are different, different voices,

different shapes, different thoughts,

different perceptions. And I think many times in the Christian community, we confuse

sexuality with sex. We think that any

sexual feeling can perhaps represents something that is sinful. When an effect, it is given to us to experience our sexuality as

something that is good and something

that is pleasurable. As we think then

about the issue of God’s logic or theology, we are thinking then

about God’s Word. And God’s word is

contained in the Bible. God speaks to us within the context of scripture. Paul said to Timothy

from a child, you have known the Holy

Scriptures which are able to make you

wise unto salvation. All Scripture is given

by inspiration of God and is profitable

for doctrine, for approved

for correction, for instruction

in righteousness, that God’s person

might be mature, thoroughly furnished

unto all good works. Now I know that when we

think of good works, we tend to think

of evangelism. We tend to think

of preaching. We tend to think of some of the good things that we do. But I want for

the purpose of our lecture to understand that sexuality

and sex within the context and purposes that God has outlined four, it is one of those

good works and God has given to us

then within his work, the logic and the

governing principles that are to guide us as we enjoy his good gift

of sex and sexuality. We help people discover the greatness of human

sexuality when we help them experience their sexuality

within the structures required by his

logic, by his word. Let’s examine 12 biblical theological

principles. When understood, applied,

and experienced, heighten our ability to enrich our own personal experiences

with sexuality. And heighten our ability

to help other people who perhaps are struggling with the issue

of sexuality, to enrich their

personal experiences with sexuality as well. First of all,

then God’s Word and principle number one, when we want to

find out where to begin on the subject

of sexuality, it is always good to go back to the beginning. And as we move back

to the beginning and look at the early

chapters of Genesis, we find God’s word, God’s principles governing

human sexuality. First of all, it’s

very clear within the biblical texts that God made man and woman. He made them in

the beginning, male and female

created he them. We also know, as

we’ve said already, the sexuality is a

necessary element in humanity’s ability

to fulfill the

creation mandate. God says, I want

you to multiply, wants you to replenish, wants you to subdue

the earth and have dominion over it. The team was created

to have dominion, but that Dominion

was to be in part, managed by a godly seed. And Malika, chapter two, verse 15, the Prophet says this to the

leaders of Israel. Did not God make both

one in order that he might have or

seek a godly see. Adam and Eve within

the intention of God, were created as

sexual beings, as a part of their

sexuality and their experience of sex between the two of them. There was to be

the birthing of a Godly C that

would be used of God to have dominion over the planet for His glory. So sexuality then is a

necessary element in humanity’s ability

to fulfill the creation mandate

and the divine purpose. God pronounced his

entire creation good. Read the early chapters of Genesis, and

it was good. And it was good,

and it was good. And sexuality falls within the purview of

that statement. God is saying of the team and the sexuality that

they experience. That it was in

fact a good thing. He sanctified His purposes. It would be a mistake

to think that sex or sexual feelings were bad as those who seek to

help other persons. We realize that within the context of

the Word of God, sexual feelings and

sexuality is one of those good gifts of God that is to

be celebrated. Look at the Song

of Solomon, read it and you find there a celebration of

human sexuality. The physical form

is celebrated. The very act of sexual intimacy

is celebrated. The relationship and the differences

between males and females are

celebrated within the context of the

Song of Solomon. And oftentimes

there has been an embarrassment or an attempt to say,

well, you know, really what you

have in the Song of Solomon is simply a kind of a poem that celebrates the relationship between Christ and his Church. Well, it may be that that’s behind some

of what is there. But in reality,

this is God’s manual on human sexuality. The Song of Solomon

is the manual that one book

in the Word of God that focuses directly on the issue of

human sexuality. God’s Word in

principle number two, it is not God’s will

that we consign the sexual dimension of our personhood

to extinction. As with other appetites, we must assume personal responsibility for control. Control, not extinction is God’s logic and God’s plan. In Proverbs chapter 23, we have some really

interesting instruction on the issue of appetites. I’ve said that

theologically, I think it helps

to think about sex as one of those good

appetites that God has placed within

humanity for the preservation and for the extension of humanity. In Proverbs 23, we read this when you set to

dine with a ruler. Note, well, what is

before you and put a knife to your

throat if you are given to gluttony, do not crave has delicacies for that

food is deceptive. Proverbs 23 is dealing with the subject

of appetite. And there are several

words that are very, very critical to

understanding what is being taught

in this text. There’s the word

given if you, if you desire or if you, if you are given

two delicacies, recognize the

deceptive quality of those those, those things that you use to indulge your appetite. And when you sit down, if necessary, put a

knife to her throat. If you are a person who has given to gluttony, if you’re given to

eating too much, if you like the

delicacy is too much, then take dramatic

and drastic action. Take control of that

area of your life. And so as we look then

at appetites, the, the idea is not to stop eating forever because that would mean certain death. But the idea is, recognize that appetites

can overflow there. God ordained banks. They can become

destructive elements in your life and give yourself to a

careful management or control of

that appetite. In Proverbs, chapter five, verses one through 23, we find the same

kind of attention given to the need

for control. We read this Drink

waters out of your own cistern and then let them be only thine own and

not strangers. This powerful passage

on sexuality admonishes for monogamy at

admonishes for control in the Song of Solomon again and again, particularly in

chapter two, verse seven, Chapter three, Verse Five, and chapter

eight verse four. We read this young woman

saying stern out up nor awaken love

until it is time. This is dramatically

tied to the concluding chapter of The Song of Solomon. And chapter eight, verses

eight through ten. Where we have again, poetic language describing a young woman’s journey

into adulthood. And there are some brothers who are raising

her and the, the words are spoken. We have a little sister and that what

are we going to do with her in the

day that she will be spoken for in the day

when she matures. And the, the

brothers say, well, if she’s a wall, then we will honor her. But if she’s a

revolving door than we will have to

take other action. And in the eighth chapter, verses eight through ten, we find this young

woman saying, I am a wall. I have reached maturity and I have maintained

my integrity. The way she has maintained integrity in the

sexual area of her life is by practicing this

careful control, stern out up nor awaken

until it is time. And so within the context

of the word of God, as we read God’s logic on human sexuality and

listen to his word. Sexuality is not

to be stirred up nor awakened until it is time control then

is a central issue as we think about

God’s logic with reference to

human sexuality. Now it’s also important to recognize that control is an element in the fruit of the

Holy Spirit. It is a component of His gracious work in the life of the

child of God. Paul tells the Roman

believers you are not controlled by the flesh,

but by the Spirit. If so, be that The Spirit of God dwells in you. And then he says, if you don’t have

the spirit of God, you don’t belong

to God because everyone who belongs to God has the spirit of God

living inside of him. Paul will say,

Don’t you know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit and the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 522 through 26 is love and peace

and gentleness. But one element

in the fruit of the Spirit is the

element of self-control. As we think then about what the Shulamith

maiden was saying, what we are taught

in Proverbs, what we’re taught in

the Song of Solomon. We realized then

that the spirit of God has come in

order that we might be able to exercise careful self-control

within all of the areas of our lives. Rather it’s the

words we speak. Rather it’s the

indulging of our desire for something to satisfy our thirst or

rather in fact, it is related to

our sexuality, self-control, and our refusal to

apply it to ourselves. And our relationships

introduces us to biblical theological

issues like sin, repentance, confession, forgiveness, and

restoration. The Garden of Eden

as a tragic story of two people created for intimate

connection with God and intimate connection

with one another. We are now living in

the post fallen world. The reality is

that rather than obeying the words of God. The instruction of God, Adam and Eve

rebelled, they sin. And because of that, self-control becomes

a critical issue. They were out of control. And God had to initiate a whole plan of

redemption to bring them back to the

place where they could be once again and fellowship and

intimately connected with him and with

one another. And so God’s work of redemption

and the shedding of the animal blood in the provision

of skins for them. And then ultimately

the coming of the Messiah and the death, the burial and the

resurrection of Jesus Christ so

that He becomes the propitiate ocean

or the covering for our sins and

not for ours only, but for the sins of

the whole world. Introduces all of us

to the reality that post Eden living

east of Eden, as we sometimes say, introduces us to

the consequences of sin and rebellion having entered every arena

of our lives. And sexuality is one

of those arenas. The exercise of appetite is another of those arenas. And so self-control and our refusal as individuals

to apply it to ourselves and our

relationships introduces us to

themes like sin. And we read, For instance,

in first John 19, If we confess our sin, z is faithful and

just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all on righteousness. And second Corinthians

chapter 67, Paul talks about

the necessity of repentance when relationships

are broken and wounded because of

the presence of sin. He talks about the issue of confession in first John

19 and forgiveness. And then in

Galatians chapter five, verse one, we are admonished

to consider the need for restoration. And those of us

who are spiritual are admonished to move alongside of others and participate in ministries

of restoration. And so as we think then of this whole issue

of self-control, we are mindful that

self-control is set against the backdrop of rebellion and human sin. And that Jesus

Christ has sent the Holy Spirit in order that we might not

be drunk with wine, but be filled with

the Spirit and be controlled by the

spirit of God. Therefore,

self-control, as we think of the issue

of sexuality, is the biblical model, rather than extinction or some other aesthetic model, then God’s word in

principle number three, the only legitimate

satisfaction on the sexual appetite, according to the

Word of God, is inside of

covenantal commitment. The seal of covenantal

commitment, as at the heart of God’s logic regarding

marriage, if we read, For instance,

in the book of Genesis, for this cause, a man shall leave

his father and mother and shall

cleave unto his wife. And the two shall become one flesh within

the context of the Song of Solomon. As we read regarding marriage and the

marital relationship, we come to the

eighth chapter. And this young

woman asking for the one thing

that she feels is absolutely necessary

to have and to achieve the marriage that is the Merit marriage union

envisioned by God. Asked for this, set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm for love is

as strong as death. And jealousy is his

unyielding as the grave. It burns like blazing fire, like a mighty flame. Many waters cannot

quench love, rivers cannot wash it away. If one were to give

all the wealth of his house for Love, it would not be enough

to purchase it. And so as we look then

at the Word of God and God’s logic regarding

human sexuality, we realize that,

that God is saying there must

be covenant. There has to be in place a strong covenantal

commitment. A commitment to monogamy, a commitment to

celebrating a relationship with one other person

till death, do part. And the seal then becomes

the symbol of this. I was reminded, I was thinking of

this of the, of the way in which

the whole bottling of things like aspirin and across the counter

medication changed when the Tylenol kinda

thing happened years ago where someone put a poison inside

of a capsule, a pilot of Tylenol. And every sense

then the tops, getting tops off

containers has been more difficult than every

top has a seal on it. And if you go to

the store and you, you want to buy one

of these bottles very often what you’ll do

is you’ll look and you’ll see as the

seal and tag. And if it’s not, you put it back because you want one of those bottles where the seal is intact, because the seal speaks of purity, speaks of safety. It speaks to the fact that this has not been

tampered with and that it’s safe to

take and that when you take it out of the bottle, there was a

therapeutic power for healing that will be there and not for harm because of the seal. God tells us any

fees in chapter one, verse 1314, When you

believed you were sealed with the Holy

Spirit of promise. And so as we

think then about marriage and

sexuality within the context of Scripture, we realize that

sex is meant to be a part of a covenantal

relationship. That it can only be all that God

intended it for B to B when it takes place within the context

of covenant. When there is the seal of a covenantal pledge that is at the heart of

the relationship, that safety, that

sense of protection, that sense of purity, that sense of exclusivity

is what enriches the biblical

theological view of sexuality and what makes sex for couples

who honor this much, much more gratifying and fulfilling than anyone

else can enjoy. It must be said

that when Jesus was teaching the

disciples about this in Matthew chapter 19, verses three through 11. And saying this is

one of the reasons why monogamy is

so important. It bring something

wonderful to a marital, into a sexual

relationship that, that what happened was

his disciples said, if that’s the

case, if you’re, if you’re hooked a one

woman for one life, it would be better

never to be married. Again, we are reminded of how sin has interrupted the divine vision

and has caused problems with what

God envisions. Nevertheless, as we think

about sexuality and sex within the context of the biblical

theological worldview, it takes place under

the seal of covenant. Principle number

four, God’s Word. And principle number four, some sex relationships, according to God’s logic. And the word of God, represent a form of idolatry fashion

than the myths, the personal fear. Addiction, and rebellion. Victimisation abounds

when sexuality is divorced from the

directives of God’s logic and God’s word. And Hebrews. Chapter

13, verse four, we are told that

marriage is honorable in all and the marital bed is pure and undefined. But we are reminded that

those who committed adultery and engage

and adulterous LH, sexual relationships,

GOD will judge. These were told in

Romans chapter one, verse 25, that human beings change the truth

of God into ally. They worshiped the creature more than the creator. And because of

this, God gave them up to vile affections. And men left the natural

use of the woman in and became filled with On righteousness

and fornication. And in the midst

of all of that and in the

victimization that abounds when

sexuality is divorced from the directives of God’s logic and God’s word, we encounter the

strong teaching of scripture that tells

us to walk in wisdom. Not as fools in the

arena of sexuality, awake from sleep, arise from death,

redeem the time. Sometimes you

were in darkness, Paul tells the

effusion believers, but you are now in light and you are to walk

as children of light. Sexual sin doesn’t fit your new lifestyle

and let it never be named among you. And so we must remind people and we

must be reminded ourselves that some

sexual relationships represent a tragic

form of idolatry, where sexuality is deified and become something

that Lords, that has a position

of Lord ship in our lives and commit and creates addictions

and all matter of rebellion and victimization follows in its train. Principle number five and God’s word, Hebrews 134, reminds us that sex again, under the seal

of the covenant, is not just good, but it is pure. It is honorable,

and it is wholly. You remember the passage

says marriage is honorable in all and

the bed on defiled, honorable could be

translated pure, holy. So some have spoken

of holy sex, and I think that is a wonderful metaphor

to describe God’s vision for sexuality within the contracts

const, text of marriage. Sex under the seal

of the Covenant is, is honorable, it is holy. It’s very difficult

in our broken, fallen world for a

couple to realize that when they are

actually having sex, when they are enjoying

sexual union, that God is actually

pleased with this and sees it

as something holy, something honorable,

something that is connected to his plan

and to his purpose, and yet that is

in fact the case. And that is what

the author of Hebrews is teaching

us that marriage. Under the covenantal seal, is in fact a

sanctified place. And the practice of

sexuality within marriage and sex within marriage is a sanctified, honorable, and

pure practice. God’s Word in

principle number six. The sexual appetite

is not placed in humans only to

assure procreation, but rather it is

God’s intention that our sexuality be a source of intense pleasure for us. Some would say, well

then sexes, alright, but it’s only within the context of marriage and it’s only for procreation. This doesn’t square, I think with what the Bible teaches about

sexuality and sex, It’s not just

about procreation. There are too

many passages in scripture that

indicate that God’s intentions

for sexuality are broader than simply

procreation. It is God’s will

that sexuality, and that’s the

sexual act itself be a source of immense and intense pleasure for human beings, God is not anti pleasure. God is not anti

enjoyment in Proverbs five versus

18 through 19, we read this rejoice with the wife

of your youth. Let her breasts

satisfy you at all times and be

ravaged with her love. And Ecclesiastes

chapter nine, verses seven through ten, your garments be

always white. Give attention

the holiness. Let your head lack

know ointment. Give attention to

spiritual anointing, but live joyfully with

the wife whom thou love us all the

days of your life. Take time to read

the Song of Solomon. Look at the number

of times that the, that the term

ravaged appears. Look at the way

in which the two describe one another. And you began to

realize then that God’s plan is that under the seal

of the covenant, that there be a

kind of knowing and a kind of pleasure derived from the

experience of sex. That really is

unlike probably any other thing life

has to offer us. God’s Word and

principle number seven, sexual intercourse is more than a physical act. It involves two persons in a very special

kind of knowing. That implies

deep connection, communion, sharing,

and total self giving. I would say that

if we think about the major

metaphors that, that inform a biblical theological view of human sexuality. We would have to

talk about covenant and covenantal

relationships and, and having sex under the seal of the Covenant. But we would also

then have to talk about a kind of intimacy, a kind of knowing

that is unique. The Scriptures, we

read that Joseph knew not marry until she had brought forth

her firstborn child. We read that Adam

knew Eve, his wife. And and that in

that knowing it’s more than knowing about its more than facts, it’s a deep, deep knowing that is taking place

under the seal. It is a kind of intimacy

that is related to two giving and to serving and to sharing

with the other. There’s a, there’s a

kind of safety that surrounds this knowing and this very special

relationship. And what’s the two

persons have a kind of special kind of

knowledge of one another. That results in a

deep connection, a deep sharing and a

total self giving. In a sense, this

parallels what Paul teaches any fees in chapter four, verse 29. When he talks about

this idea of making certain that no cutting communication comes

out of your mouth. But only what is good for edifying that

it may minister grace to the here and grieve not the Holy Spirit. This covenant and this seal that surrounds the

sexual relationship. And a biblical theological worldview results

in a focus on the other person that flows toward the needs

of the other person. It is a grace focus. And so Covenant within the biblical theological

worldview is, is flowing and the direction of

meeting needs. It is gracing. It is, it is

ministering grace. It is ministering to another person, serving

another person, being with another

person in a way that MFIs and ministers

grace to that person. So within the context of the biblical world view

on human sexuality, sex brings two

people together with the idea of giving in a

way that meets needs. And both of them

are focused on meeting the needs and

the life of the other. And we’ll see in a few moments

because of that, there is a deepening

sense in which they meet the needs

of themselves. The whole metaphor

that Paul is using any fusions for as a

metaphor of a body. Talks about the church as a body so that when

one part rises, the other part rises. And as we think

about the act of human sexuality, it’s not just about taking, it’s about being

involved in a very special

kind of knowing a very deep connection and communion and sharing. That because of the one

flesh relationship. That knowing and that giving not only elevates

the other person, but takes you up

at the same time. So that is one part rises, all rise as one part finds enjoyment,

all find enjoyment. And so as we think then

about the issue of the biblical,

theological worldview and human sexuality. It’s about Covenant thing. It’s about sex under the protection and

purity of the seal. It’s about gracing. It’s about having

a mind that is that is committed

to using all of the resources

that are at my at my available ability to minister to the needs

of this other person. God’s Word in principle

number eight. Sex, because of its

intense nature, cannot bring ultimate joy to the participants without a complete commitment

from both partners to the exclusiveness

that monogamy guarantees the seal again, the absence of fidelity

to one’s partner till death parts

is a violation of the divine

law and produces internal rage

and the person being victimized

by the infidelity. Even sexual

fantasy divorced from the covenantal mate can diminish the Joy of Sex derived from

monogamous coupling. Solemn, and we’ll say

better is the site of the eyes than the

wandering of the desire. Wandering itis

can compromise the integrity of the seal and the purity of

the relationship. And so sexual fantasy

has to be very, very carefully guarded and focused on one’s mate. But as we look at the

seal and the Covenant, you remember back in and salt Song of Solomon, Chapter eight, verses 67. Jealousy as cruel

as the gray when there is a violation of the purity of the seal, when there is a violation

of the covenant. Jealousy is the byproduct

and it can work. It’s destructive power on a relationship and destroy the sexual

relationship. For sexuality

functions best in a relationship

where there is this commitment to

the preservation of the seal and where

there is this idea of gracing the other person where there is

an exclusivity and a focus on

the other person that sees her rising. While he rises,

seat him rising. Well, she rises

because we are connected to one another.

We are one flesh. So there’s special kind of knowing and the

special commitment to to Covenant thing and the special

commitment to the seal. Special commitment

to gracing is at the heart of the biblical

theological worldview on human sexuality. God’s Word and

principle number nine. Sexual intercourse

is a part of the marital

relationship that is necessary to the

experience of genuine and full

unity and marriage. Only in cases

where it is made impossible by other

compelling reasons, should its absence from the marriage relationship

be acceptable? In these cases, both partners

should understand the reasons for its absence and give willing consent. First, Corinthians

chapter seven, verses one through five, governs several

of the principles that we’re going

to share now. Let the husband

render under the wife her do affection. And also the wife.

Under the husband. The wife does

not have power over her own body. And the husband

does not have power over his own body, but the wife does don’t defraud one another

except it be with consent for a time that she may give

yourselves to fasting and prayer and come

together again in order that Satan not tempt you for

your abstinence. Let’s move on and, and summarize this particular

portion of Scripture, God’s Word and

principle number ten. Sex in this passage is

a reciprocal right? It’s not just

a mail, right? Or a female, Right? It’s a reciprocal right. She has power

over his body. He has power over her body. It is based on

the reality that our bodies belong

to our mates. This scriptural

teaching is never intended to be a license

for spousal abuse, but rather to emphasize the responsibilities that accompany the

marital commitment. Spouses are

responsible under God for serving

one another, for gracing one another to flowing to the needs

of the other person. And in a satisfying and healthy sexual manner. This really helps us to understand sometimes what happens in a relationship where he wants to do this, but she doesn’t or she wants to do this

but he doesn’t. And that’s that the gracing principle

immediately deals that out because unless there is this

sense of consent, unless there is this sense that this is

something that we’re both happy with

and content with, then you don’t do

that kind of stuff. But it’s, but the biblical theological

paradigm says, We do, we grace

one another, we floated the

direction of need. And we do that in a

reciprocal fashion. So it isn’t just one

meeting the needs of another and as healthy

and it’s satisfying. Such a set setting, sex is personal and holding a complex

Meeting of both mates, feelings, thoughts,

and sensation. And again, grace then

flows to the need, the body concept that Paul gives to us any

fusions for that relates to the

church develops around the one flesh

concept that is part of the institution

of marriage only in marriage and the church

and in the Trinity. Do you have this

kind of unity, this oneness with

particularity. And, and the particularity is always in a sense subsumed to the oneness so that we are one

flesh, we are one body. And as want members

of one body, we differ and we celebrate

those differences. And we use those

differences to meet the needs of the other. And as that other person’s

needs are met and they rise and they feel a sense of

edification. So we rise with

them because we are vitally connected

to one another. And so as we think than a principle number ten, and as we think of

this teaching in First Corinthians

chapter seven, verses one through five, we realize that there is this vital connection. There is this sense

in which marriage is holy and the

bed is undefined. And there is this

sense in which we are connected to one another and that

we don’t have power over our bodies. So this idea of gracing

one another then becomes absolutely

critical to the advancement

of the intimacy. That was to be a part of that special

kind of knowing. That is at the

very heart of the biblical

theological paradigm for human sexuality. God’s Word and principle

number 11 again, First Corinthians

71 through five, sex should be viewed not only as a way of getting

one’s needs met, but also as a way of

serving one’s mate. Refusal to meet a

mate sexual needs in a wholesome and healthy

manner may place the spouse in a position

of vulnerability to sin within the

marital relationship. This responsibility

to respond in a affectionate

covenantal gracing way is so vital and

if it’s absent, if we differ from it, there is the exposure that resolves in the

life of our other, of the other partner to the potential

for temptation. And so as Paul is teaching on marital sexuality,

saying, you know, when marital sexuality

is not in place as it should be according to the

teachings of this text, what happens is

the other person them because they are not achieving levels of satisfaction in the

sexual area there live, become an object for

say, tannic attack. And that’s why then no

husband or no wife has the permission

biblically to withhold from their

husband or their wife. Because in a sense, when they do that

without consent, without prayer and fasting, without following

a set line of structure that is

outlined and God’s word. What happens is they expose or they open

up their partner to being vulnerable to

say, tannic attack. Well, God’s Word in

principle number 12. Sex is fully satisfying

then only when two persons possessed of expanding individual

identities. Come to the experience. There is a celebration

of differences. Each one comes to

give and demand. Each one remains intermittently independent

and dependent. Both are committed

to filling the void in the other and discovering in the filling a developing fullness

in themselves. Sexual intimacy requires oneness with healthy

separateness. This brings us, I think, to the last metaphor

that I want to use. As we think of the biblical

theological worldview, paradigm, and

human sexuality. We’ve talked about the

absolute prerequisite for the metaphor

of covenant. We looked at the Song

of Solomon and saw that that biblical

sexuality is meant to function under the

seal of the covenant. And that the seal is a wonderful metaphor

that speaks of of, of ensuring that purity and therapeutic power resides

in this medication. And if we, if we think of sexuality than if sexuality is to be powerful and our marital

relationships, and if it has to

be a powerful force for enjoyment and pleasure within our own personal lives in

our marriages. Then it has got to function under the seal of

covenantal protection. And when it doesn’t,

the potential for jealousy and

the potential for the damaging, corrupting work

of jealousy. And our relationship

is overwhelming. And a relationship

is transformed from a relationship

that was intended to bring life and enrichment to one that is bringing death and imprisonment and bondage. The second metaphors,

the metaphor of grace. Notice that that you really only have this kind of, of experience of sexuality

that is envisioned within the Song of Solomon and within other

portions of Scripture. If each of the people come to it and

know how to give and domain if each

of them common and, and know how to, to, to understand that they are

empowered persons. That they have meaning and, and that they have

identities that in fact are, are powerful. David said I am fearfully

and wonderfully made and that my

soul no ath, Right? Well, and I’ve defined intimacy and some of the writings that

I’ve done as, as oneness with

healthy separateness. I think sometimes

when we think of the Biblical paradigm

for marriage, we think of a oneness where one of the persons or both of them are lost in this sort of murky

mystical union. But that’s not the

biblical picture at all. I don’t think. For instance, in the

Song of Solomon, in the last chapter, the last few verses

of the chapter. The, the woman

comes to the man who is with his friends

and she says to him, cause me to hear

your voice. You bend with your

companions long enough cause me to

hear your voice. I want some communication. And so this woman

comes and says, my needs are not being met. You are with

your companions, you’re having a good

time talking to them. But I have needs I need

to hear your voice, cause me to hear

your voice. And so she has possessed

of an identity. That that allows her

to come and say, I need for you to Grace me. You’re not gracing me. I don’t hear your voice. I want you to come

and speak with me. I want you to come

and talk with me. And so in a, in a marriage where sexuality

is experienced, within the biblical

theological worldview, there was a commitment

of resources within that

marriage to empower the other person to become a full person so that every wife and

every husband can say what David said. I am fearfully

and wonderfully made and that my soul

north, right, well, and there is a

commitment of resources within

that marriage to the empowering of

the other person. Because we recognized that when one is edified, the hole is edified. When she is edified and empowered and she

can give-and-take. She can receive

and CER she can demand and give when she

can do those things. And he can do those things when there is that sense of full empowerment that comes from knowing who

I am and Christ. And then that

commitment to gracing. Not an empowerment

that says, give me I demand, but an empowerment that

results in gracing, flowing to the needs

of the other person. While at the same

time recognizing that I need for you to flow

toward my needs two. So this covenant thing, this gracing, the sense of, of empowerment that is at the very heart

of the Biblical paradigm for the body and for the one flesh

relationship and marriage results in the experience

of intimacy. That is at the heart of the Biblical paradigm. For human sexuality, God envisions a

marriage that in effect is every bit as powerful in terms

of the level of intimacy experienced as that which is

experienced within the triune Godhead itself. Everything flows out of the intimacy and

the oneness and the vital personhood

that is embodied in the Trinity and in a marriage there is

a level of intimacy. In the Song of Solomon

knew we read If a man would give all

the substance of his house for Love, it would be for,

for, for Love. It would be worthless because you can’t buy it. Well, you see when we honor the Biblical paradigm

and when we function within the covenantal

purity of the seal. When we have a deep

abiding conviction that we are in

this relationship to grace the other. And when we see and

understand how gracing another flowing to the needs of

another results, in a sense and an

empowerment of the self that elevates

the whole body, that elevates the

whole marriage, that elevates

both partners and opens them up to

the experience of a safety and security that resolves and levels of intimacy that can only be compared really

to the levels of intimacy that are enjoyed with the try unity of God. And so we began

to realize that God really does know

what he’s talking about. When he lays out his logic, when he speaks his word to the subject of

human sexuality. And we realize and affirm that God really did have a great player. That God’s great plan

for us included are joyful experience of the good gift

of sexuality. And that, that’s all a

part of his grand plan for us as His creatures

and for his purpose, for us as we fit within his pattern to do the

work of his kingdom.

Redeeming Sexuality: Recovering God’s Plan for Our Lives

Before we can begin to look at

the various aspects of sexuality with many many great experts

to participate in the series. I want us to reflect about what’s

happening in our culture and more specifically in our Christian subculture

around the whole topic of sexuality. I believe with all my heart that the

greatest challenge facing the church for this next century for at least four or

five decades to come. Is the topic of sexuality

we are fighting a war. A new war it’s not a war

just against terrorism but against an enemy as dangerous to the well

being of our culture to the future of our children as any war can

be against terrorism. It is a war against

unsanctified secure while the. At a recent conference I dubbed

this war Operation redemption and I want to call us to

a very careful examination. Of where we are in

the area of our sexuality operation Redemption is a call

to pressure protect and restore a healthy sexuality in ourselves in our families and in the church to begin I want to read a few verses of Scripture

from First Thessalonians chapter four. Starting at verse three the Apostle

writes is it is God’s will that you should be sanctified that

you should avoid sexual immorality that each of you should learn to control

his own body in a way that he is holy and all memorable not in Passion Of The Lost

like the heathen who do not know God and that in this matter no one should wrong

his brother or take advantage of him the Lord will punish men for all such sins now we will cover many many interesting

topics throughout the series. There will be some that we will

not be able to cut the cover will barely be able to scratch

the surface of them. So I would like to give

an overview of what I think are the most significant challenges

facing us in a Christian church in a Christian subculture

in the area of sexuality. Recent events have a really

raise the ante on human sexuality children and six. The recent crisis in

the Catholic Church has brought to the foreground just how serious

the problem of pedophilia is. But I don’t think we’ve begun to

scratch the surface of that very very serious problem. The Catholic crisis has

also raised the ante on the whole issue of pastoral sexuality. Now while at the moment it appears that

the Catholic Church is taking the full brunt of the public’s reaction

I think it would be rather ridiculous of us to think that we do not

have a problem in a Protestant church. The whole issue of homosexuality

is a serious problem. Particularly since recent

developments in the whole homo sexual Reno has moved homosexuality

as a problem outside of just those who by sexual orientation or

homosexuals. As I will show in a little while

there is a very very significant movement in the homosexual

community towards trying to get normal heterosexual

men to participate in their activities try it out you

might like it is the sort of idea that is driving a lot

of homo sexual activity. Then we have the whole

domain of pornography. The recent Supreme Court ruling

that virtual pornography that is pornography that is created in a computer

using digital images is acceptable. We are going to see a very very

significant change in that whole area in terms of its challenge to us to

build a sanctified sexual sexuality then there are also a whole new host of sexually transmitted diseases

coming down the road toward us. These new sexually transmitted diseases are significantly more difficult

to treat they are resistant to any forms of treatment that we have

these forms of sexually transmitted diseases are communicated orally

In other words through the mouth. They can cause still realty. They can they are causing harm

a whole new host of viral diseases and infections that can

devastate a woman’s life and potential as a mother so

they are a many many challenges facing us as we seek to build

a sanctified secure while A-T.. Just looking at those verses from

first this alone Ian’s it’s very clear what the Apostle Paul is saying

he begins with the emphasis that it is God’s will that we should be

sanctified and almost immediately addresses him self to the topic of

sexuality now I think there’s a reason for this because there is no

IF of human existence more significantly tied to the need for

sanctification than secure well if. It is our sexuality that defines the

quality of person we are particularly for men it is our sexuality that

needs to be guarded and more importantly in my

opinion needs to be redeemed. Now why am I making this

emphasis on redeeming sexuality. It is because I believe

that we have lost our way I’m a great fan of space travel

I’ve watched the emerging space program that the privilege of

knowing a few astronauts personally and there’s a phrase that comes to us from one

of the Apollo missions where the message back from the spacecraft was

Histon we have a problem. I’m fascinated with

that expression because this was more than a problem it

was a catastrophe in the making. And I sometimes feel like we’ve

got to get up on the rooftops and shouted out to the church

people Christians everywhere we have a problem we have

a put ten show catastrophe looming on the horizon in

the area of sexuality and never before perhaps other

than in the Times of Sodom and Gomorrah have we faced a need a challenge to get back to a godly sanctified sexuality now some of your

my priest surprised to see hear me linking sexuality

sex with santification that you see they can

be a holy sexuality and this is God’s will for

us that our sexuality be pure. That it be holy that it be

the wonderful gift that it is supposed to be this gift

from God to all of us but as I look at the contemporary scene

including our Christian subculture I must confess that I am a little

horrified it was is happening. So why does sexuality need in redeeming

let me suggest to you some reasons why. First of all sexuality has lost its way. Martin sexuality including

the sexuality of many of us Christians. Has become grossly distorted by media. Influences by modern day values and of course the bottom line

it’s been distorted by sin male sexuality has become X. particularly distorted. One of my areas of research and

study is the whole area of male sexuality I think for the past thirty years it has

been a significant focus of my interest. I have worked through Dr of ministry

program at the seminary I teach with many many pastors and it the numbers

go into the thousands of pastors who have come through my courses as we

have talked about building a healthy personal life and we have examined

the sexuality of past his particularly. And the men that have been

a part of my focus again and again it has become very obvious

to me that this sexuality is distorted in fact I don’t have to look

much further than myself to find evidence in how the media cultural values and

influences have impacted me how I tend even in my quest for

godliness to be so easily distracted by the distorted

secular ality of our day and age. Modern sexuality is dangerous to women and

children it’s very clear when we look at the abuses

of those in power and how children particularly in recent times

have been the target of sexual expression. A distorted sexuality is I

think the most significant cause of what we call the gender

gap men and women are far far away from each other in

the area of their sexuality and I don’t think that was God’s

intention in his intelligent creation I think this gap is

enormously wide because at least one of us namely men

have been influenced by a the distortions of modern

day sexual influences. The sexual revolution back in the sixty’s

first took six out of marriage but it is very obvious that we have

now taken six out of the relationship. And that doesn’t auger well for

the future of our children and for the future of our

Christian the subculture. So sexuality needs redeeming of

that I am absolutely certain God’s greatest gift to humankind. Has been which was intended

to be a beautiful thing. Has become a distorted. Thing. And I hope that through the medium

of these this video series we will see some in some way be able

to contribute to getting ourselves and especially our Christian

subculture back onto the track of a sanctified sexuality. I would like to discuss some of

the distorting influences what what are the sources of this

distortion going on in our culture. Let me challenge you with

a few questions first of all. Have you paid attention to your

supermarkets magazine rack lately. Maybe it’s just because I have teenage

grandchildren that I can’t help paying attention to art I see in these magazine

racks as you trying to leave a supermarket or if you go into a bookstore as you

leave the bookstore these racks off of magazines with messages

that clearly are designed to include a type of sexuality and

what I see appalls me every magazine targeting

young people teenagers. Has as its headlines

something about sexuality. Sending the message that sex

is OK The city has started the better have you watched

the primetime television. Focused towards teenagers lately. I must confess that I I don’t

have the guts to sit and watch some of that stuff but every now and

again I accidentally come across it and I am a poor This seems to be

hardly ever an episode of any teenage oriented television

program that doesn’t include a scene in which these

young people are having sex. The assumption for all our teenagers

growing up if they ever watch any television is that all teenagers

are having sex the invitation for them to do the same is obvious. Let me explore with you some of

the more serious distorting influences that typically we’re not

thinking about these days. The age of puberty is continuing to drop. Now this may not seem to be a very

serious matter but I think it is if we go back one hundred fifty or two hundred

years the age of puberty was around seventeen eighteen within months or

certainly a year or so the person was ready for

marriage and was able to get married. But through the years the age has

begun to drop my mother when she was a teenager went through puberty

at around age fourteen fifteen. My daughters when they went through

puberty they were about thirteen. My grandchildren going through

puberty at about age eleven or twelve. By one daughter has

a neighbor whose daughter has started to menstruate and

she’s only nine years of age this has some very serious

implications and I don’t hear it. Researching it or talking about it very

much what it means is that increasingly younger children are now becoming

capable of childbearing and having sex. At the other end of the scale

sociologists are telling us that adolescence doesn’t end

at age seventeen or eighteen anymore but is now up to

about age twenty eight or thirty. This is partly due to the extended

educational system that we have where by young people are not

able to set up a home. To earn enough money yet to be able to. Start a family or even get married. What this means then is

that there is a very long waiting period between when one is rich. Before six and when one is capable

of legitimately having sex at least in terms of the standards

that we as Christians hold to and this long waiting period is the time when distorting influences can

begin to operate imagine that the average person today has to

wait somewhere between fifteen and twenty years from the time

when they are ready and capable of sex to when they can

legitimately fulfill that desire. This long waiting period gives rise to

all sorts of opportunities for distortion because the sexuality of boys and

men is so very easily arre anted. The most distorting

influence on the sexuality of men during the long waiting

period is that of pornography. On the screen you will see first of all

a chart depicting the age of puberty. And then also a chart that shows the age

of first exposure to pornography and you will see that very soon after

reaching the age of puberty a lot of boys if not the majority

get exposed to pornography and this starts as a powerful

distorting influence later in this series I am sure

you will be hearing a lot about the influence of pornography but

allow me to make just these few comments. Who suffers from pornography. While the pornographic industry primarily

targets men it is rude women who suffer. From its effects ask any wife. Of a husband who is addicted

to pornography ask her how painful it is ask her how she

suffers because of that influence. Pornography. Presents a reality that is

greater than the reality with which most men have to live it creates

an idealized image of the female body of sexuality and

in a sense sets one up for disappointment because the real life

is no where going to match that. Of the sexuality presented in

the pornographic movies or magazines. Thirdly pornography is

damaging because men who become exposed to it and

then become dependent on it or even addicted to it over the many years

to follow during this waiting period. Find it very difficult to transition from

that exceptional experience to that of. The experience with a real person. In fact I’d go so far as to say

based on my therapeutic experience for some in it is almost

impossible after the for twenty years of dependency

on pornographic movies and magazines it is impossible for

them to transition their sexuality to that of a real person and

now we have computers. And with computers has become perhaps

the greatest threat of all in the area of pornography and

that it is the the threat of cyber sex. I and certainly know that in my

variance of working with the past is that this has become a very very

significant challenge for many of them cyber sex where you use computers

to access sexual images. Can easily be concealed it’s a totally

private thing no one else can know. That you are engaging in that sort of

activity so it has become a very special temptation for

Christian men in this day and age it’s devastating because it creates

a virtual sexuality not a real sexuality it takes sex

out of relationship. And when ever you take sex out of

relationship the it becomes distorted in a way that that is not

the certainly not sanctified but in the long room road is

not very satisfying either. These forms of these forms of sexuality using artificial images

indulges the male fantasy life. Feeds the needs for for fantasy and in coal Kates and this really

is the most dangerous aspect for all of pornography it in

cook a certain tolerance for violence as it relates to sex but

what is pornography is real damage. It portrays women as sex objects. Secondly it sets very unrealistic

standards for the ideal female body. There is no way that the average women

to today can match those ideal images. I have personally seen the impact

of this on my wife on my own daughters and now in my granddaughters

they are as they are coming up because the media presents

this ideal female body and image that is almost impossible for

the average person to match up to sexual fantasies are often forceful and

violent. Pornography depicts the unrealistic idea that if a woman doesn’t want sex

then something is wrong with her and this distortion in to male sexuality

by the pornographic industry has had a carry over to women

good women Christian women. Who have bought into the lie that

because they don’t match their husbands level of sexual interest that they must

be something wrong with themselves and that is a lie. That every priest young woman

needs to to to face up to. Now I’ve said a lot about the distortion

of sexuality as it affects men but there’s one more very important distortion

that I think is worthy of your attention. For boys the early exposure to

pornography adds a certain additional excitement because for them at that

very early age they experience this exposure as something taboo something

they shouldn’t be doing it’s Norty and that causes a rise in the level

of a circulating adrenaline which is as you probably know

the hormone that excites us in times of stress or when we’re doing

something thrilling and exciting. Now this pairing together this

connecting between sexual arousal which is caused by the normal

hormones of our God given bodies and the adrenaline excitement when you’re

doing something you shouldn’t be doing it combines to form a certain level

of excitement that if perpetuated. Makes it very difficult to connect

just with sexual arousal and it is this pairing of adrenaline

excitement with sexual arousal that is a very very significant problem

for men today including Christian men. This pairing of adrenaline excitement

means that one is constantly seeking for a higher level of excitement a higher

level of a rouse will looking for the purrfect orgasm for example. It’s the basis for all dictions and. Perversions. So on your screen you will see a chart

in which I have tried to depict the sexual continuum. Of a rouse will starting at

the normal range on the one side going to what I call a distorted

normal Yes it it may not be very very extraordinary to be

engaging in that activity or to be doing that particular thing but

it is a distortion of normality and when you continue on that continuum of

excitement the more adrenaline excitement that you become dependent

on in your sexual response the more then it moves into the realm

of addiction one becomes that dictated to pornography addicted to certain

forms of sexual expression and then it moves to perversion and

then finally to pathology. And what I’m suggesting

about that continuum is that even a slight distortion

of normal sexual arousal is on a trajectory towards addictions

perversions and even to pathology. This is perhaps one of

the most significant areas for men that needs to be sanctified

that needs to be redeemed because the more we pursue pleasure

the more we try to achieve a greater level of pleasure the more we go

down this adrenaline excitement road personally it’s been one of my most

significant challenges as I have tried to sente find myself

sexuality is to realize that the more I pursue pleasure in

sex the further away I get from the real deep

satisfaction that comes from a union with my wonderful and

beautiful wife or to put it in other way. Real satisfying sexuality lies

in the realm of relationship. It is the relationship. That is key to a sanctified sexuality. To summarise then therefore what I’ve

said thus far since the age of puberty continues to drop and

the upper end of adolescence goes up. We are increasingly seeing a longer

period of waiting between when our children reach an age at which they

can experience the sexual feelings and when they can satisfy those feelings

illegitimately and it’s during this long waiting period that we have

to do something to help our children our young people our

teenagers our young adults avoid the distorting influences of

the culture in which we we live and have a little bit more to say later

about what we can do to help them. But before I move into some practical

suggestions on how to redeem sexuality there are three brief areas that I would

like to comment on again in order to set the stage for whatever might follow

in this video series I want to comment first of all on the topic of pedophilia or

to say something about pastoral sexuality because we have

many pastors watching these videos and many of themselves I know who

are struggling with their own security and then lastly just a few thoughts

about homosexuality and its challenges in this day and age and

then I want to talk about some practical ways in which we can redeem and

sanctify our sexuality. If we are going to undertake operation

redemption which is my call to all of you. We need to understand three

significant challenges in our day and age the first one is children and

six the pedophilia problem this is not just a problem with Roman Catholic

priests it is a problem facing us in every church in every neighborhood we

have a serious problem with this whole desire on the part of some who

sexuality is not just distorted but which is perverted in their desire to seek

out a secure experience with children. There is a move afoot. To try and legitimize sex with children there is an organization called the

North American men Boy Love Association. That has tried to push for a way of legitimizing

this type of sexuality. A recent experience in the American

Psychological Association called the rind crisis named off to

the person who provoked it followed as a research study

that was published in the one of the American Psychological Association

journals in this study it wasn’t really a study from scratch it was

what is known as a metal analysis where you pull together some findings from

various other studies made the argument or try to prove the point that

there was no evidence that when adults engage in sex with children and

they were talking mainly about males with boys that there is

evidence of any harm to the boy. This was published in a prestigious

psychological journal but all hell broke loose it went as far

as the House of Representatives and they voted unanimously without

one dissenting vote to chastise the American Psychological Association for

publishing the study the point was that we provide a lot of government money for the

sort of research and if this is the sort of research that is being published by

the American Psychological Association then we must reconsider how much funding

we want to give to the sort of research. As a result the American Psychological

Association set up an independent panel. To look into this matter and

to set up new standards for research but no sooner had the the A.P.A. taken that action then another crisis

developed because of academic freedom and our rising to two situation developed

it’s now into Ryan three because it seems as if it’s something you can’t win a

battle that you’re not going to win very. Easily. Now the point I want to make these this. Even if such a study were to show and

in fact they would it was that the majority of children were not

harmed by this activity but even if it were to show that no children were harmed

what has happened to our common sense. Children no matter what age no matter

whether a behavior is damaging or not children just cannot

make consensual decisions. I draw your attention to

this because it is I think a problem that is going to become

increasingly a challenge to us. The second area that I think needs

some comment is that of POS troll sexuality many pastas will be

watching this series many pastas have become challenged by wot has

happened in the Catholic Church. Why our past is at risk here. Clearly we have our share of

sexual predators in the ministry. They need to be weeded out

I don’t doubt that one bit. But there has been a tendency

in recent times for some groups to point the finger at all pastors and

I think that he’s unfair. The truth of the matter is that

the majority of pastors out there who fail moderately are good ordinary past is. But they failed because of two. Weaknesses. Bust of them could be corrected in our

seminaries and I think part of Operation redemption that I would like to call

is to is to encourage our seminaries to do a better job of preparing

our pastors for the ministry. The first area that they need

to be better taught in is to understand the phenomenon of

transference and counter-transference those of you who are watching this video

who are in the counseling business understand perfectly well what I am

talking about we are trained as counsel is to understand and

deal with problems of transference and counter-transference it is clear from my

research into the sexuality of past is that when pastors are trained

to deal with transference and counter-transference problems

the incidence of moral failure drops by as much as seventy five percent. Passes Mrs Reed the affectionate bonds

that occurs between a people helper and the help he in the counseling relationship

between the one who is counseling and the one who is being counseled and

when pastors realize that this trial. Currents thing where the person you’re

trying to help is transferring back on you the expectation that you can meet all

their needs when they understand that phenomenon and can they are able to

separate their role from those affections they can be significantly protected

from sexual moral failure the other reason past is need help

is because sexual moral failure for past is a cause under one of two

extreme conditions first of all moral failure occurs when a pastor

is failing excessively. When a failure is dominant

in a pastor’s life. The depression that follows

from that has a numbing effect on the pleasure center in the brain called

the locus accumbens the pleasure that center in the brain can no longer

derive pleasure from ordinary things. And at that point because of the numbing

of the pleasure center passed as a vulnerable that is when they

are likely to turn to some sexual form of acting out because

that is possibly the only type of pleasure that can overcome the numbing

of their own pleasure center so pastors become very very

vulnerable when they are failing significantly but there is another time

when they are vulnerable as well and that is when they

are extremely successful. Pastors who are very successful

also numb their pleasure center but now you have an addictive process

an addiction to success and the addiction to exciting new things and

addiction to always starting new things that also numbs the pleasure center and

makes them highly vulnerable in the area of

sick show a moral failure. Then a few comments please about. Homosexuality. There’s no way I can in this brief

moment solve that whole problem but I do want to draw attention to a recent

development within the homosexual community there’s a new

wants presentation coming out of the gay movement cold

men having sex with men. Not men having sex with gay men but

men having sex with men it’s an invitation a broadening of

their interest and influence by trying to align themselves

with men who are looking for some extraordinary new

form of sexual pleasure. The motive is clear it’s so we’re here for

opening up new sexual partners. They offer example encouraging

teenagers to experiment with same sex partners

even if they are not gay. Even if they don’t feel those

tendencies there is a subtle nuanced pressure now on

the young people to explore that as an alternative outlet for

their sexuality. I think this can be damaging. Clearly there’s no doubt in my mind at all

from what I know about neuropsychology the brain is plastic enough and

flexible enough that when I teenage boy is encouraged to engage in

activity with other boys or men knew that it can begin to shape and permanently affect their sexuality and we

should do everything we possibly can and to help our Christian boys and all boys

for that matter not to buy into the lie. How can we re deem the sexuality. How can we achieve a truly

Holy Sanctified sexuality. Well obviously I don’t believe we can do

that outside of God I don’t believe that that we have the power or to do it in our

own human strength so we need God’s help. But to move us towards a redeemed

sexuality a sanctified sexuality allow me to make some

suggestions on what we can do. First of all and perhaps perhaps the top

of my lists is that we have to D. emphasize the pleasure aspect of sex. If we have lost our way I think it is

down the road of pursuing pleasure. We are a pleasure hungry society

we seek pleasure in everything we seek pleasure in our food in our

vocations we want pleasure in our sporting activities in our recreational activities

we are a pleasure hungry society. But God has created our pleasure center. With certain limitations. If you push that pleasure

center excessively. Something happens. You begin to blockade that center in

such a way that the threshold for pleasure goes up it’s like you’re

raising the bar it’s like a one of those jumpers has to jump one of those

high those high things whatever their goal you’re raising the bar on pleasure so that

you increasingly need a higher level of excitement in order to get that

pleasure it’s a bottomless barrel and this is the addictive process and

you will no doubt be hearing a lot about addictions through

the videos that that are to follow. We have to deemphasize the pleasure of

six we have to get off that road and move back to a an understanding that deep satisfying sexual satisfaction and I mean at the deepest

possible level comes about through relationship it’s all

about the union of the cup. And I know where I have

I speak been married for forty eat seven years forty

seven wonderful years and I can honestly say that

even at my stage in life my relationship to my wife is

far more satisfying in my sexual experience than anything I have

ever sort in the realm of pleasure. Secondly I would say that in order

to develop a redeemed sanctified sexuality we have got to begin to emphasize a non genital

side to our sexuality. The problem with al day and age is that

all sexuality is to genitally focused. If we can understand

that human sexuality goes beyond the genitals goes

beyond satisfying the genital if we can only do that at an earlier stage

in our young people in our young married couples we could go a long way to

sanctifying a secure while or to. Look at what happens to men when they

find that they have prostate cancer I have a dear friend A D. A dear friend and yesterday received news

that he has advanced prostate cancer. I hope they’ll be able to take care of it

surgically but I know this that now for the first time in his life he will be

challenge to refocus his sexuality away from his genitals and I also know

from many men I’ve counseled with who have been through this process that

it can be as satisfying if not more so even though one is forced to do it

through having lost your sexual powers. I would Thirdly say that if we are going

to develop a sanctified sexuality we have to help couples

particularly men because they are the ones who tend to do this

more than women we need to help them deal with their beliefs and

habits of fantasy. In my study for

the sexual man book I discovered that men use fantasy I’m talking about

married Christian men now you Santa see excessively in order to achieve

some measure of sexual arousal. They become dependent on that fantasy but

the more they use fantasy for that purpose the thorough that down

the road of addiction they are moving and the more difficult it is going to

be to achieve a healthy sexuality. To become healthy in one’s sexuality. I would add that one

has to be open to work. And be open to talk about

your own sexual distortions I encourage every man especially

that this is true for women also to have an accountability

group a group that you can trust that you can be open with that you can

talk with about your sexuality. Our silence as a Christian church in

this area is what is going to kill us. Yes we have a problem but as long as we continue to be silent about

it as long it is they did a dog secret that we keep hidden in the the back rooms

of our churches never allowing it to come out in the open where we can talk

about issues of sexuality freely and openly as long as we keep it silent

it is going to be a serious problem. We need to help provide opportunities for

couples to talk about their sexuality it’s not a matter of always of going to

a sex therapist or trying to find a for a wife to try to find a better way to

satisfy her husband we have to help couples get back to basics to get get

to get back to God’s design to what God intended for their sexuality

we have to remind them that when we live rich fulfilling

lives when we are absorbed by meaningful purpose in our lives we

supplement a lot of our sexuality. And some of the motion is not a bad thing. It can be a good thing it’s part of

Poles admonition to us in that one Thessalonians four verse four portion of

Scripture I read to you that every one of us has to learn how to

control his sexuality. How to control his body. I would say also that if we go

to help our Christian people. To develop a sanctified

sexuality we go to have them have to have them own up to their

vulnerabilities in this area many spiritual giants walk on a virtual edge of a precipice just one step wrong. And they fall many of them have been

destroyed by sexual indiscretion. I encourage my past is to adopt

as a motto that every man has his price every woman has a price

this is Biblical take heed lest you fall we need to understand the vulnerability

and the more we can own up to it the more we can claim God’s power or

and protection over us.

Growing Up with Values (Dr.James Dobson Family Talk)

Here’s Dr. change toxin

with family talk. It’s been said that values are not taught

to children. Their children absorb

what their mothers and fathers believed

by watching them in everyday

situations. Dr. Kevin Lehman relates the story of manual Chico, Who was the first Hispanic be appointed president

of the university. One of 12 children

that she called up an extreme small farm in New Mexico that his

father had managed. According to

Chico, we didn’t even get electricity

to light. But what was lacking

was made up for it. Later. He really likes my mother and

I ran it Derek ourselves from the time I was seven years old, get up at four o’clock

in the morning to get the cows, get ready for. The expectation was

that it didn’t matter. What we do is we’re

going to do it. Well. Chico then

went on to finance its own college

education or jobs. We can all learn

something about teaching baggage

from Chico. Most importantly,

they have to be modeled every day. Yes, sir. Influence

and voice. Just by the way, lungs. Those little lines

are actually change. Dobson with family talk.

Moms and Sons (Dr.James Dobson Family talk)

Dr James Dobson for family talk you know

many women these days report feeling anxious and insecure about the task

of raising their sons whether they’re single or married there’s just a sense of

not being equipped to meet the special challenges of teaching and

training young boys. A wonderful book on this subject

appropriately called mothers and sons many women will be encouraged by the advice

that she offered first she said that mothers should recognize that it’s very

normal for little boys to be difficult even extremely difficult at times emerging

masculinity can be a boisterous and destructive force mother should also learn

to anticipate their son’s energy level and look for ways to channel that force in the

competition football basketball soccer or other physical activity because

boys need this outlet for the testosterone that surges with

that also mothers should keep in mind that their little boys are still under

construction someone referred to them as wet cement which I think says it very

well history shows that many great many began as baffling headstrong boys

who gave their mothers headaches so don’t get discouraged by those

irresponsible noisy sometimes bratty boys in your home you may

be amazed by what those lads may have been surely a compass for

Team stocks and family talk.

Sire: Chapter 9

Sire, J. W. (2020). 
The Universe Next Door. InterVarsity Press. 

https://mbsdirect.vitalsource.com/books/9780830849390

The vanished Horizon: Postmodernism

“Whither is God,” he [the madman] cried. “I shall tell you. We have killed him—you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how have we done this? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? . . . Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? .  .  . Do we not smell anything yet of God’s decomposition? Gods too decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we, the murderers of all murderers, comfort ourselves? . . . I come too early,” he said then; “my time has not come yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering—it has not yet reached the ears of man.”

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, “THE MADMAN”

IN A BRILLIANT PARABLE written over a hundred years ago, Friedrich Nietzsche saw it all.1 A culture cannot lose its philosophic center without the most serious of consequences, not just to the philosophy on which it was based but to the whole superstructure of culture and even each person’s notion of who he or she is. Everything changes. When God dies, both the substance and the value of everything else die too.

The acknowledgment of the death of God is the beginning of postmodern wisdom. It is also the end of postmodern wisdom. For, in the final analysis, postmodernism is not “post” anything; it is the last move of the modern, the result of the modern taking its own commitments seriously and seeing that they fail to stand the test of analysis.2

As I commented earlier, Socrates said that the unexamined life is not worth living, but for a naturalist he is wrong.3 For a naturalist it is the examined life that is not worth living. Now, over a hundred years after Nietzsche, the news of God’s death has finally reached “the ears of man.” The horizon defining the limits of our world has been wiped away. The center holding us in place has vanished. Our age, which more and more is coming to be called postmodern, finds itself afloat in a pluralism of perspectives, a plethora of philosophical possibilities, but with no dominant notion of where to go or how to get there. A near future of cultural anarchy seems inevitable.

Enough gloomy talk. This book is supposed to be a catalog of worldviews. Catalogs should be dispassionate. Get a grip!

THE PROBLEM OF DEFINITION

Getting a grip is hard. How does one define the indefinite? Certainly the term that now fits is postmodernism.4 But what does it mean? It is used by so many people to focus on so many different facets of cultural and intellectual life that its meaning is often fuzzy, not just around the edges but at the center as well (as if a term defining a worldview without a center could have a center).

Though literature professor Ihab Hassan was one of the first scholars to write about postmodernism, he confesses, “I know less about postmodernism today than I did thirty years ago [1971], when I began to write about it. . . . [Still today] no consensus obtains on what postmodernism really means.” After being locked in a room for a week of discussion, he says, the major scholars writing about it would reach no agreement, “but a trickle of blood might appear beneath the sill.” Still he notes some common elements: “fragments, hybridity, relativism, play, parody, pastiche, an ironic anti-ideological stance, an ethos bordering on kitsch and camp.”5 Mark Lilla makes a similar claim about “academic postmodernism,” describing it as “a loosely structured constellation of ephemeral disciplines like cultural studies, gay and lesbian studies, science studies, and postcolonial theory.” It “borrows freely,” he says, “from a host of works (in translation) by such scholars as Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault and Jean-François Lyotard.” Then he adds, “Given the impossibility of imposing logical order on ideas as dissimilar as these, postmodernism is long on attitude and short on argument.”6

The term postmodernism is usually thought to have arisen first in reference to architecture, as architects moved away from unadorned, impersonal boxes of concrete, glass, and steel to complex shapes and forms, drawing motifs from the past without regard to their original purpose or function.7 But when French sociologist Jean-François Lyotard used the term postmodern to signal a shift in cultural legitimation, the term became a key word in cultural analysis.

In short, Lyotard defined postmodern as “incredulity toward metanarratives.”8 No longer is there a single story, a metanarrative (in our terms a worldview), that holds Western culture together. It is not just that there have long been many stories, each of which gives its binding power to the social group that takes it as its own. The naturalists have their story, the pantheists theirs, the Christians theirs, ad infinitum. With postmodernism no story can have any more credibility than any other. All stories are equally valid, being so validated by the community that lives by them.

I cannot catalog postmodernism as I have earlier worldviews. Even more than existentialism, postmodernism is both more than and less than a worldview. In major part this is due to the origin of the term within the discipline of sociology rather than philosophy. Sociologists are concerned with how people behave as part of society. They do not use categories of being (metaphysics) or knowing (epistemology) or ethics; that is, they do not ask what is true about reality, but how notions of being and knowing and ethics arise and function in society. To understand postmodernism, therefore, we will have to ask and answer not simply the eight worldview questions posed in chapter one but a question about the questions themselves.

But first let us get one thing clear. Postmodernism has influenced religious understanding, including that characteristic of Christian theism, but it accepts the foundation at the heart of naturalism: Matter exists eternally; God does not exist.

THE FIRST THING: BEING TO KNOWING

I have apologized before for approaching an explanation by first making a summary statement that seems opaque. I will do so again in hope that the ensuing explanation will clarify the vision.

Two major shifts in perspective have occurred over the past centuries: one is the move from the “premodern” (characteristic of the Western world prior to the seventeenth century) to the “modern” (beginning with Descartes); the second is the move from the “modern” to the “postmodern” (whose first major exponent was Friedrich Nietzsche in the last quarter of the nineteenth century). Take the following as an example of these shifts, others of which we will see below. There has been a movement from (1) a “premodern” concern for a just society based on revelation from a just God to (2) a “modern” attempt to use universal reason as the guide to justice to (3) a “postmodern” despair of any universal standard for justice. Society then moves from medieval hierarchy to Enlightenment, universal democracy to postmodern privileging of the self-defining values of individuals and communities. This is a formula for anarchy. It is hard to think of this as progress, but then progress is a “modern” notion. The “premodern” Christian had too clear a view of human depravity, and the “postmodern” mind has too dim a view of any universal truth.

One of the ways to understand these shifts is to reflect on our reflecting.9 For us that means to identify the preconceptions on which this book’s analysis so far has been based.

Some readers of earlier editions of this book have challenged the way I posed the worldview questions of chapter one. Their concern is whether a set of seven questions (now eight) commits this particular worldview analysis to the confines of one worldview.10 This is an astute observation.

The heart of the issue is the order of the questions. I placed question 1 (What is prime reality—the really real?) first for a good reason. I take metaphysics (or ontology) to be the foundation of all worldviews. Being is prior to knowing. If nothing is there, then nothing can be known. So, in defining theism, I began with God, defined as infinite and personal (triune), transcendent and immanent, omniscient, sovereign, and good.11 All else in theism stems from this commitment to a specific notion of what is fundamentally there. Question 2 asked about the nature of the external universe, and questions 3 and 4 about the nature of human beings and their destiny. It was not till question 5 that “how we know” was dealt with. Then came ethics—how we should behave—in question 6, and finally an overall question about our human historical significance in question 7. Now question 8 focuses on the end toward which we live our lives.

The fact is that this order of questions is premodern in general and theistic in particular. Theism puts being before knowing. Enlightenment naturalism puts knowing before being.12 The shift came early in the seventeenth century with Descartes. Descartes is seen as the first modern philosopher, not least because he was more interested in how one knows than in what one knows. For his philosophic approach—and the approach of almost every major philosopher from his time on—knowing is prior to being.13 Descartes was not rejecting the theistic notion of God. Quite the contrary, he held a notion of God essentially the same as that of Thomas Aquinas.14 But his interest in being certain about this notion had major consequences.

Descartes’s approach to knowing is legendary. He wanted to be completely certain that what he thought he knew was actually true. So he took the method of doubt almost (but not quite) to the limit. What can I doubt? he asked himself in the quietness of his study. He concluded that he could doubt everything except that he was doubting (doubting is thinking). So he concluded, “I think, therefore I am.” He then further considered whether there was anything other than his own existence that he could be sure of. After a series of arguments he eventually wrote,

I do not now admit anything which is not necessarily true: to speak accurately, I am not more than a thing which thinks, that is to say a mind or a soul, or an understanding, or a reason, which are terms whose significance was formerly unknown to me. I am, however, a real thing and really exist; what thing? I have answered: a thing which thinks.15

Here is the essence of the modern: the autonomy of human reason. One individual, Descartes, declares on the foundation of his own judgment that he knows with philosophic certainty that he is a thinking thing. From this foundation Descartes goes on to argue that God necessarily exists and that reality is dual—matter and mind.

The notion of the autonomy of human reason liberated the human mind from the authority of the ancients. Scientific and technical progress came not from notions revealed in Scripture but from the assumption that human reason could indeed find its way toward the truth. Such knowledge was power, instrumental power, power over nature, power to get us what we want. In science, the results were stellar. In philosophy, however, the move from being to knowing, from the primacy of God who creates and reveals to the primacy of the self that knows on its own, was fatal. It both set the agenda for modern philosophy from Locke to Kant and sparked as well the recoil of postmodern philosophy from Nietzsche to Derrida as humanistic optimism flirted with despair.

THE FIRST THING: KNOWING TO MEANING

As knowing became the focus, knowing how one knew became a major issue. David Hume (1711–1776) cast into doubt the existence of cause and effect as objective reality. Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) tried to answer Hume but ended by both exalting the knowing self to the position of “creating” reality and removing from it the ability to know things in themselves.16 Georg W. F. Hegel (1770–1831) and, for a brief period of optimism, the German Idealists exalted the human self to almost divine dimensions. Finally Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) delivered the coup de grâce to the modern self-confidence that what we think we know we really do know. Apart from New Age enthusiasts, today there is little hope that any optimism about the human condition can be sustained.

The larger story of modern philosophy can be read in many places.17 We are concerned with a single but central theme: the shift from knowing to meaning. It is in Nietzsche that this is first most evident. Nietzsche completed what Descartes started; he took doubt beyond Descartes, rejecting his argument for certitude about the existence of the self.

Look again at Descartes’s “I think, therefore I am.” What if it is the thinking that creates or causes the I rather than the I that creates or causes the thinking? What if the activity of thinking does not require an agent but produces only the illusion of an agent?18 What if there is only thinking—a fluid flow of language without discernible origin, determinate meaning, or direction?

Regardless of whether Nietzsche’s specific critique is a fair analysis of Descartes’s search for certitude, Nietzsche’s more radical doubt does radical damage to human certitude. After Nietzsche, no thoughtful person should have been able to secure easy confidence in the objectivity of human reason. But as Nietzsche pointed out in the parable of the madman, it takes a long time for ideas to sink into culture. The madman says he came too soon. The deed had been done, but in the 1880s the news was still on the way. By the 1950s and 1960s it was beginning to be heard in the voices of Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. By the 1990s everyone in the Western world and much of the East came to see that confidence in human reason is almost dead. True, most philosophers have not capitulated, not perhaps because they have the most to lose but because they have everything to lose.19 Many scientists and technologists continue in their confidence that science gives sure knowledge, but they seem to be the last part of the intellectual world to do so.

THE DEATH OF TRUTH

Knowing itself comes under fire, especially the notion that there are any truths of correspondence. Conceptual relativism, discussed in the previous chapter, now serves not just religious experience but all aspects of reality.20

If we begin with the seemingly knowing self and follow the implications, we are left first with a solitary self (solipsism) and then not even that. Literary theorist Edward Said put it this way:

No longer a coherent cogito [thinking thing], man now inhabits the interstices, “the vacant interstellar spaces,” not as an object, still less as a subject; rather man is the structure, the generality of relationships among those words and ideas that we call the humanistic, as opposed to the pure, or natural sciences.21

Of course, we still tell personal stories about our lives, where we have been and where we intend to go. And we tell larger stories too. Some of us—say, Christians, optimistic naturalists, secular humanists, chemists, for example—may cling to our metanarratives, but they are just wishful thinking. The language we use to tell our stories, as Nietzsche put it, is “a mobile army of metaphors.”

What, then, is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms—in short, a sum of human relations, which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which after long use seem firm, canonical, and obligatory to a people: truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are; metaphors which are worn out and without sensuous power; coins which have lost their pictures and now matter only as metal, no longer as coins.

Friedrich Nietzsche, “On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense”

We have a continued “urge for truth,” but now “to be truthful means using the customary metaphors—in moral terms: the obligation to lie according to fixed convention, to lie herd-like in a style obligatory for all.”22

Those who hang on to their metanarrative as if it really were the master story, encompassing or explaining all other stories, are under an illusion. We can have meaning, for all these stories are more or less meaningful, but we cannot have truth.

According to postmodernism, nothing we think we know can be checked against reality as such. Now we must not think that postmodernists believe that there is no reality outside our language. We are not to abandon our ordinary perception that a bus is coming down the street and we’d better get out of the way. Our language about there being a “bus” that is “coming down” a “street” is useful. It has survival value! But apart from our linguistic systems we can know nothing. All language is a human construct. We can’t determine the “truthfulness” of the language, only the usefulness.

This basic notion has many varied expressions, depending on the postmodern theorist. Richard Rorty will serve as an illustration.

The world does not speak. Only we do. The world can, once we have programmed ourselves with a language, cause us to hold beliefs. But it cannot propose a language for us to speak. Only other human beings can do that. . . . Languages are made rather than found, and . . . truth is a property of linguistic entities, of sentences.23

Truth is whatever we can get our colleagues (our community) to agree to. If we can get them to use our language, then—like the “strong poets” Moses, Jesus, Plato, Freud—our story is as true as any story will ever get.

Of course if our story doesn’t “work,” if we fail to have a language that allows us safely to “cross a street when a bus is coming,” few of us will be around long in a modern city. Some languages will pass out of existence because the language framers did not survive long enough to have children to whom they taught it. But since many languages—from Hindi to Mandarin to Swahili—keep us alive in the cities, they have all the truth value needed to keep us from being hit by a bus.

Philosopher Willard Quine compares the language of modern science to Homer’s stories of the gods:

For my part I do, qua lay physicist, believe in physical objects and not in Homer’s gods; and I consider it a scientific error to believe otherwise. But in point of epistemological footing the physical objects and the gods differ only in degree and not in kind. Both sorts of entities enter our conception only as cultural deposits. The myth of physical objects is epistemologically superior to most in that it has proved more efficacious than other myths as a device for working a manageable structure into the flux of experience.24

In short, the only kind of truth there is is pragmatic truth. There is no truth of correspondence.

It is easy to see how this notion, when applied to religious claims, triggers a radical relativism.25 No one’s story is truer than anyone else’s story. Does the story work? That is, does it satisfy the teller? Does it get you what you want—say, a sense of belonging, a peace with yourself, a hope for the future, a way to order your life? It’s all one can ask.

There is as well a problem with the stories themselves. How is the language in which they are expressed to be interpreted? Within the deconstructionist segment of postmodernism, the stories we tell ourselves and others do not have a determinate meaning. They are subject to normal misreading through lack of intelligence or basic background, or difference between the writer’s or speaker’s background or context and that of the reader or listener. There is an inherent indeterminacy to language itself. Stories all contain the seeds of self-contradiction.26 Texts and statements mean only what readers take them to mean.27

So in postmodernism there is a movement from (1) the Christian “premodern” notion of a revealed determinate metanarrative to (2) the “modern” notion of the autonomy of human reason with access to truth of correspondence to (3) the “postmodern” notion that we create truth as we construct languages that serve our purposes, though these very languages deconstruct upon analysis.

If, then, claims to truth are not seen as the way things really are, if all we have are humanly constructed stories that we believe and tell, total anarchy is not necessarily the result. This is true for two reasons. First, people believe these stories to be true, so they function in society as if they were true. Second, groups of people believe the same basic story, and the result is more or less stable communities. Communities begin to fall apart when different people within them believe substantially different stories.

Christians, for example, believe that God is triune. The postmodernist may say that this story cannot be known to accord with reality, but a Christian thinks it does anyway. A naturalist really believes that “the cosmos is all there is,” regardless of how the postmodernist may explain that this belief cannot in principle or practice be substantiated. One might say, too, that a postmodernist really believes that this explanation is true, though if it is, then it can’t really be true (but this anticipates the critique of postmodernism that follows below). In any case, stories have great social binding power; they make communities out of otherwise disparate bunches of people.28 The result is that though in postmodernism there is an “incredulity toward metanarratives” (Lyotard), in every culture there is a sufficiently agreed upon story that acts as a metanarrative. So much is this so that these stories, acting as metanarratives, mask a play for power by those in any society who control the details and the propagation of the story.

LANGUAGE AS POWER

The shift is now complete: from being to knowing to meaning. But the implications keep piling up.

“Knowledge is power,” Francis Bacon said in a peculiarly prophetic moment. He was right; “modern” scientific knowledge has demonstrated its power for three centuries. With postmodernism, however, the situation is reversed. There is no purely objective knowledge, no truth of correspondence. Instead there are only stories, stories that, when they are believed, give the storyteller power over others.

Several major postmodern theorists, notably Michel Foucault, emphasize this relationship. Any story but one’s own is oppressive. Every modern society, for example, defines “madness” such that those who fall into that category are put out of the way of the rest of society. Since there is no way to know what madness as such really is, all we have are our definitions.29 To reject oppression is to reject all the stories society tells us. This, of course, is anarchy, and this, as we will see, Foucault accepts.

Here then we can trace a movement from (1) a “premodern” acceptance of a metanarrative written by God and revealed in Scripture to (2) a “modern” metanarrative of universal reason yielding truth about reality to (3) a “postmodern” reduction of all metanarratives to power plays.

THE DEATH OF THE SUBSTANTIAL SELF

The question of human identity is thousands of years old. “What is mankind?” the psalmist asked. Created “a little lower than the angels and crowned . . . with glory and honor,” came the answer (Psalm 8:4-5).30 But not in postmodernism.

5. Worldview Question 3 (human beings): There is no substantial self. Human beings make themselves who they are by the languages they construct about themselves.

If this sounds like existentialism, that’s because existentialism is a step in the postmodern direction. Sartre said, “Existence precedes essence.”31 We make ourselves by what we choose to do. The I is an activity. The postmodern pundit says, “We are only what we describe ourselves to be.” The I is not a substance, not even an activity, but a floating construct dependent on the language it uses. If we are “strong poets,” we create new ways of speaking or modify the language of our society. Freud, for example, was a strong poet. He got a whole society to talk about human reality in terms like “the Oedipus complex” or the “id, the ego and the superego.”32 Jung created the “collective unconscious.” There is no way to know whether any of these “things” exist. But we use the language to describe ourselves, and that becomes the truth.

Foucault claims that we are now realizing that “humanity” is nothing more than a fiction composed by the modern human sciences. . . . The self is no longer viewed as the ultimate source and ground for language; to the contrary, we are now coming to see that the self is constituted in and through language.33

In postmodernism the self is indeed a slippery concept. For Nietzsche the only self worth living was the self of the Übermensch, the Overman (sometimes misleadingly translated “Superman”), the one who has risen above the conventional herd and has fashioned himself. Thus Spake Zarathustra is the voice of such a “man beyond man.” But few can do this. Most of us have our selves constructed by the conventional language of our age and society.

So again there is a shift from (1) the “premodern” theistic notion that human beings are dignified by being created in the image of God to (2) the “modern” notion that human beings are the product of their DNA template, which itself is the result of unplanned evolution based on chance mutations and the survival of the fittest, to (3) the “postmodern” notion of an insubstantial self constructed by the language it uses to describe itself.

BEING GOOD WITHOUT GOD

Postmodernism follows the route taken by naturalism and existentialism, but with a linguistic twist.

6. Worldview Question 6 (morality): Morality, like knowledge, is a linguistic construct. Social good is whatever society takes it to be.

There is little reason to elaborate on this notion. On the one hand, it is a postmodern version of a much older cultural relativism.34 On the other hand, it is the ethical extension of the notion that truth is what we decide it is. Rorty’s comment will serve to show that this position is not necessarily a happy one for people of what we normally call goodwill:

There is nothing deep down inside us except what we have put there ourselves, no criterion that we have not created in the course of creating a practice, no standard of rationality that is not an appeal to such a criterion, no rigorous argumentation that is not obedience to our own conventions.35

This means, he admits, that if some future society decides that fascism is what it wants, a liberal democrat or anyone else is without appeal. So there is no appeal to a higher good outside the human family. One is left with a radical ethical relativism. The good is whatever those who wield the power in society choose to make it. If a person is happy with how society draws its ethical lines, then individual freedom remains. But what if an individual refuses to speak the ethical language of their community?

Take Foucault, in many ways the most radical anarchist of all the major postmodern theorists. For him the greatest good is an individual’s freedom to maximize pleasure.36 Foucault is so fearful that “society constitutes a conspiracy to stifle one’s own longings for self-expression” that “he agonizes profoundly over the question of whether rape should be regulated by penal justice.” For him, writes Ronald Beiner, “law = repression; decriminalization = freedom.”37 Postmodernism can make no normative judgment about such a view. It can only observe and comment: so much the worse for those who find themselves oppressed by the majority.

Even value in literature is seen as the creation of the reader. It is now a common belief, writes Kevin J. H. Dettmar, “that artistic value is not transcendent but contingent: that value resides not strictly within a text, but in a complex interaction between what a text says and does, and what the reader wants and needs.”38

Again we see the shift from (1) the “premodern” theistic ethics based on the character of a transcendent God who is good and has revealed that goodness to us to (2) the “modern” ethics based on a notion of universal human reason and experience and the human ability to discern objective right from wrong to (3) the “postmodern” notion that morality is the multiplicity of languages used to distinguish right from wrong. Table 9.1 summarizes the historical shifts from premodern to postmodern.

POSTMODERNISM’S CUTTING EDGE

Given the six previous characteristics of postmodernism, it is easy to see why it is always in flux. As Lyotard says, “All that has been received, if only yesterday . . . must be suspected. . . . A work can become modern only if it is first postmodern. Postmodernism thus understood is not modernism at its end but in the nascent state, and this state is constant.”39 The story of postmodernism’s development is too long to be told here. I can only offer a few short episodes, told, as any postmodern would point out, from one perspective—my own.

In the Middle Ages, theology was the queen of the sciences. In the Enlightenment, philosophy, and especially science, became the leading edge of intellectual cultural change. In the postmodern age, literary theory once led the way.

To anyone who did graduate work in English in the early 1960s this move seems both sudden and surprising. But in the 1960s literary theory began to become both sophisticated and culturally relevant.40 While scientists continued to do what they had done for over a hundred years and philosophers trained their focus on smaller and smaller matters of analytic philosophy, a new mode of thinking about thinking emerged and quickly evolved. A kind of Precambrian burst of new ideas fired the imagination of backwater English departments, whose younger scholars did not just move into the mainstream but became the mainstream.

The babbling brooks of Marx and Freud fed into the sedate pools of Southern gentlemanly New Criticism and historical criticism, stirring the waters. Then fresh springs from anthropology (Claude Lévi-Strauss), sociology (Foucault, Lyotard), feminism (Kate Millet, Elaine Showalter), and linguistics (Ferdinand de Saussure) came with such force that the eddies of literary study became the mainstream of intellectual life. Scholars like Jacques Derrida (deconstruction) and Stanley Fish (reader response) became hot on campus. Literary critics became intellectual celebrities. “The hunger for social status has always seemed to me more pronounced in English professors than in other academics,” charges literature professor Mark Krupnick. The postmodernist baby boomers have won, he says. “Now there are fewer clashes in the English departments because nearly everyone is a theorist or cultural-studies specialist.”41

Nonetheless, some backlash has ensued. The Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers (ALSCW), what some would call a retrograde movement founded and dominated by older scholars, began forming in 1991, led by John M. Ellis, whose own Against Deconstruction is a sharp critique of Derrida’s work, among others.42 This organization is still active in its emphasis on the traditional study of literature as “literature,” not as linguistics, politics, or an instrument of social change. Ilan Stavans even harks back to Matthew Arnold, who defined literary criticism as “a disinterested endeavor to learn and propagate the best that is known and thought in the world.”43 Perhaps of even more interest is the automatic backlash that comes when postmodern scholars themselves are subjected to postmodern critique. Gender, political, and psychological causes are now being found or speculated to account for their theories. The snake appears to be swallowing its own tail.44

Finally I note one rather bizarre twist. Daniel Barash and Nanelle Barash suggest a literary approach that is at once postmodern in that it is new (as far as I know) and retrograde—a return to scientific modernity. They suggest that the theory of biological evolution be the “organizing principle” of literary criticism. “Literature does not so much construct an arbitrary array of disconnected imaginings as it reflects the interaction (whether actual or imagined) of living organisms with the world in which they evolved and to which they are adapted.”45 Four years later, D. T. Max outlines the work of a small cadre of scholars devoted to literary Darwinism. Heartily promoted by sociobiologist E. O. Wilson, they are developing a variety of mostly speculative hypotheses they hope may be confirmed by what they describe as a scientifically conducted analysis of literary texts.46 Both traditional and postmodern scholars are highly dubious. But proponents such as Jonathan Gottschall are euphoric with expectation:

If we literary scholars can summon the courage and humility to do so, the potential benefits will reverberate far beyond our field. We can generate more reliable and durable knowledge about art and culture. We can reawaken a long-dormant spirit of intellectual adventure. We can help spur a process whereby not just literature, but the larger field of the humanities recover some of the intellectual momentum and “market share” they have lost to the sciences. And we can rejoin the oldest, and still the premier, quest of all the disciplines: to better understand human nature.47

In any case, as literary study has in general backed off from some of its wilder irrational theorizing, there are hundreds of graduate students of English literature who have been schooled in these once cutting-edge the ories and have brought them into the undergraduate classroom. Even if fifteen years ago there was a discernible backlash, these approaches will have a long-term effect.48 Moreover, Jeffrey J. Williams has recently detected a return to interest in postmodern literary theory of thirty years ago. Today’s literary theory, he says, is in a “holding pattern”; it is an “eclectic mix” that is “memorializing the past.”49

The cutting edge is of course always moving. Postmodern core commitments are ephemeral. Today’s hot intellectual ploy is tomorrow’s forgotten foolishness. And what’s next is up for grabs. For one thing the whole postmodern movement may be in trouble. As we shall see, its internal contradictions are almost as rife as those in New Age thought. But then, if history proceeded from one good reason to the next better reason, the story told in this book, let alone this chapter, would be different. We can, however, see why much of postmodernism may not be with us for the long haul.

THE PANORAMIC SWEEP OF POSTMODERNISM

The effects of postmodern perspectives can be seen almost everywhere in Western culture. I have already mentioned literary study. We will look briefly now at history, science, and theology.50

In the discipline of history, for example, the pastness of the past disappears in the mists of the present moment. Historians are moving from a modern historicism (the notion that the meaning of events is to be found in their historical context) to a postmodern “denial of the fixity of the past, of the reality of the past apart from what the historian chooses to make of it, and thus any objective truth about the past.”51 The postmodern historian does not use imagination to re-create for readers a sense of the past itself but creates “a past in the image of the present and in accord with the judgment of the historian.”52 The move away from using footnotes in scholarly writing only exacerbates the situation.53 Who can check the historian’s judgment?

With postmodern historian Keith Jenkins, history becomes a hall of mirrors: “In the post-modern world, then, arguably the content and context of history should be a generous series of methodologically reflexive studies of the makings of the histories of post-modernity itself.”54 History becomes reflection on histories of reflection.

Postmodernism has made little impact on science itself—either on how it is conducted or on how it is understood by most scientists. Nonetheless, postmodernism has begun to rewrite our understanding of what science is despite what scientists do or say. Most scientists, whether naturalists or Christian theists, are critical realists. They believe that there is a world external to themselves and that the findings of science describe what the world is like more or less accurately. Accuracy increases as scientific study progresses or it discovers a better paradigm to organize and interpret the data. Postmodernists are antirealists; they deny that there is any known or knowable connection between what we think and say with what is actually there.55

History is a shifting problematic discourse, ostensibly about an aspect of the world, the past, that is produced by a group of present-minded workers (overwhelmingly in our culture salaried historians) who go about their work in mutually recognizable ways that are epistemologically, methodologically, ideologically and practically positioned and whose products once in circulation, are subject to a series of uses and abuses that are logically infinite but which in actuality generally correspond to a range of power bases that exist at any given moment and which structure and distribute the meanings of histories along a dominant-marginal spectrum.

Keith Jenkins, Re-thinking History

Scientific truth is the language we use to get us what we want. “There is no other proof that the rules [of scientific practice] are good than the consensus extended to them by the experts,” wrote Lyotard.56 Science is what the scientists say it is.57 To which one scientist wag has replied, “Just step outside that ten-story window and say that again.” But this is to misunderstand the postmodern theorists. They are not saying that no physical world exists; they are rather giving a “report” on the status and nature of scientific claims to knowledge in light of the impossibility of directly accessing reality with our epistemic equipment. The world does not speak to us. Our minds do not access the essences that make reality determinate, the essences that make wood wood and metal metal. We speak to the world. We say “wood” or “metal” and put these words in sentences that often get us what we want. When they don’t, we say that these sentences are false. We should rather say that they don’t work.

Over against both of these positions [positivism and naive realism], I propose a form of critical realism. This is a way of describing the process of “knowing” that acknowledges the reality of the thing known, as something other than the knower (hence “realism”), while also fully acknowledging that the only access we have to this reality lies along the spiralling path of appropriate dialogue or conversation between the knower and the thing known (hence “critical”). This path leads to critical reflection on the products of our enquiry into “reality,” so that our assertions about “reality” acknowledge their own provisionality. Knowledge, in other words, although in principle concerning realities independent of the knower, is never itself independent of the knower.

N. T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God

Much postmodern writing about science has been couched in highly obscure language. This has both frustrated practicing scientists and bamboozled the editors of at least one postmodern journal. Alan Sokal, a physicist at New York University, submitted an article titled “Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity” to the journal Social Text.58 The editors, not noticing that the article was riddled with inanities from the standpoints of both physics and sociology, accepted it for publication. Sokal then announced in Lingua Franca that the article was a hoax, written to expose the absurdity of much postmodern cultural analysis in general and science in particular. Claiming himself to be on the “left” socially, he said that he was only trying to keep cultural studies from obscurantism and overweening ambition. The joy the hoax incited among modern-minded scientists and the furor it caused among the editors and their intellectual friends points up the personal stake today’s social critics and their subjects have in postmodern approaches to science. The whole affair merited a further comment in Sokal and Bricmont’s Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals’ Abuse of Science and The Sokal Hoax, a collection of comments by both American and foreign scholars and pundits, edited by the editors of Lingua Franca.

The postmodern sociologists might, however, get at least an echoing giggle. Two French scientists without PhD credentials slipped a pseudoscientific, jargon-laden paper past the professional referees of a scientific journal. Whether their discussion of the singularity at the heart of the Big Bang was intended as a hoax or just bad, presumptuous science is not clear. But it did show that nonsense can get past the intellectual guards posted at the gates of journals of both the natural and the human sciences.59

The reactions of theologians to postmodernism have run the gamut. Some accept its central claims and write not theologies but a/theologies (neither theologies nor nontheologies but theologies that stem from the interstice between the two). Don’t try to understand that without reading Mark C. Taylor.60 Other theologians accept the postmodern critique of modernism, see much contemporary Christian theology as being too “modern,” and attempt to recast theology. Among these are postliberals who revise the notion of what theology is and can do (George Lindbeck), those who see in the postmodern emphasis on story a chance for the Christian story to get a hearing (Diogenes Allen), and evangelicals who revision evangelical theology (Stanley Grenz, John Franke, Merold Westphal, and James K. A. Smith), or who emphasize the narrative nature of theology (Richard Middleton and Brian Walsh).61 Still others reject the entire postmodern program and call for a return to Scripture and the early church (Thomas Oden) or to a Reformation program that continues to value human reason (Carl F. H. Henry, David F. Wells, and Gene Edward Veith Jr.).62

In evangelical circles postmodernism continues to prove controversial.63 Some younger scholars such as Robert Greer have surveyed the Christian options and call for a recognition of the true insights of postmodernism and a fresh approach he calls “post-postmodernism.”64 Older scholars such as Merold Westphal and Douglas Groothuis disagree over what postmodernists like Lyotard are saying, sometimes, so it seems, talking past one another in their dialogue. While both affirm the central teachings of the Christian faith, they take remarkably different views on how much the mind is able to accurately know what is true about God, humans, and the universe.65 It is clear that the last word on postmodernism and theology has yet to be written.

POSTMODERNISM: A CRITIQUE

I will start my critique by pointing out some aspects of the postmodern perspective that seem true, not just useful, and continue with more critical remarks.

First, postmodernism’s critique of optimistic naturalism is often on target. Too much confidence has been placed in human reason and the scientific method. Descartes’s attempt to find complete intellectual certitude was fatal. As a Christian he might well have been satisfied with a confidence based on the existence of a good God who made us in his image and wants us to know. He should not have expected to be certain apart from the givenness of God. Subsequent intellectual history should be a lesson to all who wish to replace the God who declares “I AM THAT I AM” with individual self-certitude. There is a mystery to both being and knowing that the human mind cannot penetrate.

Second, the postmodern recognition that language is closely associated with power is also apt. We do tell “stories,” believe “doctrines,” hold “philosophies” because they give us or our community power over others. The public application of our definitions of madness does put people in mental health wards. Indeed, we should suspect our own motives for believing what we do, using the language that we do, telling the stories that inform our lives. We may just as well suspect the motives of others.

If, however, we adopt the radical form this suspicion takes in Foucault, we will end up in a contradiction or, at least, an anomaly. If we hold that all linguistic utterances are power plays, then that utterance itself is a power play and no more likely to be proper than any other. It prejudices all discourse. If all discourse is equally prejudiced, there is no reason to use one rather than another. This makes for moral and intellectual anarchy. Moreover, Foucault’s prime value—personal freedom to intensify pleasure—is belied by his reduction of all values to power itself. The truth question cannot be avoided. Is it true, for example, that all discourse is a masked power play? If we say no, then we can examine with care where power is an undue factor. If we say yes, then there is one sentence that makes sense only if it is seen not as a power play. A radical postmodernism that says yes is self-refuting.66

Third, attention to the social conditions under which we understand the world can alert us to our limited perspective as finite human beings. Society does mold us in many ways. But if we are only the product of the blind forces of nature and society, then so is our view that we are only the product of the blind forces of nature and society. A radical sociology of knowledge is also self-refuting.

Nonetheless, though often flawed in its approach, postmodernism does make several positive contributions to our understanding of reality. I turn now to more critical comments.

First, the rejection of all metanarratives is itself a metanarrative. The idea that there are no metanarratives is taken as a first principle, and there is no way to get around this except to ignore the self-contradiction and get on with the show, which is what postmodernism does.

Second, the idea that we have no access to reality (that there are no facts, no truths-of-the-matter) and that we can only tell stories about it is self-referentially incoherent. Put crudely, this idea cannot account for itself, for it tells us something that, on its own account, we can’t know. Charles Taylor puts the matter more carefully in his analysis of Richard Rorty:

Truth isn’t outside power . . . it’s produced by virtue of multiple forms of constraint. . . . Each society has . . . its “general politics” of truth: that is, the types of discourse which it accepts and makes function as true; the mechanisms and instances which enable one to distinguish true and false statements, the means by which it is sanctioned; the techniques and procedures accorded value in the acquisition of truth; the status of those who are charged with saying what counts as true.

. . . By truth I do not mean “the ensemble of truths which are to be discovered and accepted” but rather “the ensemble of rules according to which the true and the false are separated and specific effects of power attached to the true,” it being understood also that it is not a matter . . . “on behalf” of the truth, but of a battle about the status of truth and the economic and political role it plays.

“Truth” is to be understood as a system of ordered procedures for the production, regulation, distribution, circulation and operations of statements. . . . A “regime” of truth.

Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge*

*The passage is abridged and quoted in Keith Jenkins, Re-thinking History (London: Routledge, 1991), 31-32.

Rorty offers a great leap into non-realism: where there have hitherto been thought to be facts or truths-of-the-matter, there turn out to be only rival languages between which we end up plumping, if we do, because in some way one works better for us than the others. . . .

But to believe something is to hold it true; and, indeed, one cannot consciously manipulate one’s beliefs for motives other than their seeming to be true to us.67

Likewise, when Nietzsche says “truth is a mobile army of metaphors” or conventional “lies,” he is making a charge that implicitly claims to be true but on its own account cannot be.68

Third, as Lilla points out, deconstructive postmodernism’s view of the indeterminacy of language (a text can be read in a variety of ways, some contradictory) raises a question: “How then are we to understand the deconstructionist’s own propositions? As more than one critic has pointed out, there is an unresolvable paradox in using language to claim that language cannot make unambiguous claims.”69

Fourth, postmodernism’s critique of the autonomy and sufficiency of human reason rests on the autonomy and sufficiency of human reason. What is it that leads Nietzsche to doubt the validity of Descartes’s “I think, therefore I am”? That is, what leads him to doubt that the I is an agent that causes thought? Answer: Nietzsche’s thought. What if Nietzsche’s thinking is not produced by Nietzsche, if it is merely the activity of thought? Then Nietzsche’s I is being constructed by language. There isn’t any Nietzsche accessible to Nietzsche or us. In fact, there is no substantial us. There is only the flow of linguistic constructs that construct us. But if there are only linguistic constructs, then there is no reason we should be constructed one way rather than another and no reason to think that the current flow of language that constructs us has any relationship to what is so. The upshot is that we are boxed into subjective awareness consisting of an ongoing set of language games.

SPIRITUALITY IN A POSTMODERN WORLD

It is true, as we have seen, that some people seem to get along well with the notion that there is no God. Bertrand Russell, Carl Sagan, and Kai Nielsen are cases in point.70 Others have more difficulty. Nietzsche replaces God with himself. Václav Havel attributes to Being a character that presents itself in theistic terms but is not really a personal God.71 Postmodern scholar Ihab Hassan briefly encourages a vague spirituality. “This I know,” he pleads, “without spirit the sense of cosmic wonder, of being and morality at the widest edge, which we all share, existence quickly reduces to mere survival.”72 Science writer John Horgan surveys the possible connection between science and spirituality, concluding rather vaguely that mystical experience bestows on us a great gift:

To see—really see—all that is right with the world. Just as believers in a beneficent deity should be haunted by the problem of natural evil, so Gnostics, atheists, pessimists, and nihilists should be haunted by the problem of friendship, love, beauty, truth, humor, compassion, fun.73

How atheists and nihilists are to be so haunted, he does not say.

Still, the predominant stance of recent naturalists is humanistic to the core. Somehow after the death of God we will muddle through. At the end of his massive book The Modern Mind, Peter Watson looks to a chastened postmodernism, a chastened science, and a chastened Western humanism to provide a way from cultural anarchy to societies in which all can find meaning and significance.74 He cites both philosopher Bryan Magee and sociobiologist E. O. Wilson. For Magee no justification by God or reason is required for a moral stance or belief in human decency. We can just act as we intuitively know we should.75 For Wilson, future science pursuing its current course will blend with humanistic studies and the arts in a “consilience” that will support human values and aspirations. Wilson believes that discovering the material causes for our sense of morality will provide a sufficient justification for acting as we should. Actually, despite his disclaimer, he has committed the naturalistic fallacy of deriving ought from is. Few have found his materialistic reductionism convincing.76

Finally, Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont consider three possible outcomes to the challenge to postmodernism. First is “a backlash leading to some form of dogmatism, mysticism (e.g., New Age), or religious fundamentalism.” Second is “that intellectuals will become reluctant (at least for a decade or two) to attempt any thoroughgoing critique of the existing societal order.” Third is “the emergence of a culture that would be rationalistic but not dogmatic, open-minded but not frivolous, and politically progressive but not sectarian.” But Sokal and Bricmont are realistic. They add that “this is only a hope, and perhaps only a dream.”77 And a dream it most probably is. Where in scientific rationalism is there a foundation for such hope?

In any case, the challenge of the death of God, the death of reason, the death of truth, and the death of the self—all dominant in current postmodernism—is likely to be with us for a very long time. Thinking people of every age refuse to stop wondering about what is really real and how we can know. If we are only material beings, a product of unintentional, uncaring sources, why do we think we can know anything at all? And why do we think we should be good?

If postmodernism has not taken us beyond naturalism but rather has enmeshed us in a web of utter uncertainty, why should we think it describes us as we really are? Is there a way beyond postmodernism?

BEYOND POSTMODERNISM

Postmodernism is, of course, not a full-blown worldview. But it is such a pervasive perspective that it has modified several worldviews, most notably naturalism. In fact, the best way to think about most of postmodernism is to see it as the most recent phase of the “modern,” the most recent form of naturalism. In postmodernism the essence of modernism has not been left behind. Both rest on two key notions: (1) that the cosmos is all there is—no God of any kind exists—and (2) the autonomy of human reason. Of course, 2 follows from 1. If there is no God, then human beings, whatever else they are, are the only “persons” in the cosmos; they have the only rational minds for which there is any evidence. We are therefore on our own. The first moderns were optimistic; the most recent ones are not. The distinctions between the early and late moderns are certainly important enough not just to note but to signal the latter with a term like postmodern.

Postmodernism pulls the smiling mask of arrogance from the face of naturalism. The face behind the mask displays an ever-shifting countenance: there is the anguish of Nietzsche railing against the herd mentality of the mass of humanity, the ecstatic joy of Nietzsche willing into being the Overman, the leering visage of Foucault seeking the intensification of sexual experience, the comic grin of Derrida as he deconstructs all discourse, including his own, and the play of irony around the lips of Rorty as he plumps for a foundationless solidarity. But no face displays a confidence in truth, a trust in reality, or a credible hope for the future.

If our culture is to move toward a hopeful future, it will first have to move back to a more realistic past, pick up from where we began to go wrong, take into account the valuable insights derived from what has happened since, and forge a more adequate worldview.78

One worldview has been on center stage in the Middle East, North Africa, and Southeast Asia for centuries. But its presence as an intellectual and social challenge to the modern Western world has been minimal—until recently. But the event called 9/11, the date in 2001 when terrorists flew commercial airline planes into the World Trade Center in New York, has changed all that. Islam has now come to front and center stage in the West as well. Its worldview can no longer be ignored.

20

PHILOSOPHY OF TIME AND SPACE

And thus much concerning God, to discourse of whom from the appearances of things does certainly
belong to Natural Philosophy.

ISAAC NEWTON, MATHEMATICAL PRINCIPLES OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY

1—INTRODUCTION
The philosophy of time and space has traditionally been a branch of
metaphysics, but since the early twentieth century it has been subsumed as
one of the subdisciplines of philosophy of science. Today mainstream
philosophy of time and space is predominantly reflection on time and space
as they are described in physics, particularly relativity theory (both special
and general) and quantum theory.

Why this dramatic change occurred is itself a matter of considerable
philosophical interest. Albert Einstein, in explaining the importance of
Ernst Mach’s radical empiricism for the development of the special theory
of relativity (STR), once remarked that not even Mach’s opponents realized
how much of his philosophy they had imbibed, as it were, with their
mother’s milk.1 Much the same could be said of contemporary philosophers
of time and space with respect to the philosophy of positivism—a school of
thought that was scientistic and deeply antimetaphysical—and its partner,
verificationism, according to which an informative sentence, in order to be
meaningful, must be capable in principle of being empirically verified.
Though these radically empirical perspectives are today almost universally
rejected, their legacy lives on in the physical theories predicated on them.

The edifice of twentieth-century physics rests on the twin pillars of
relativity theory and quantum theory, and both of these mighty pillars stand

Moreland, J. P., & Craig, W. L. (2017). Philosophical foundations for a christian worldview. InterVarsity Press.
Created from liberty on 2025-02-11 16:36:55.

C
op

yr
ig

ht
©

2
01

7.
In

te
rV

ar
si

ty
P

re
ss

. A
ll

rig
ht

s
re

se
rv

ed
.

on the decayed bases of a verificationist epistemology. Not that the
mathematical cores of these theories are incorrect (though they are
inconsistent with one another and will require some higher-level theory to
reconcile them); rather, it is the received physical interpretations of the
mathematical equations that are verificationist in essence. This fact ought to
arouse a good deal of sympathy for antirealist or instrumentalist construals
of these theories. But neither philosophers nor physicists have by and large
given up realist construals of these theories for that reason (though realist
claims with respect to quantum theory do elicit a good deal of skepticism).

Moreover, philosophical discussion of time and space proceeds almost
as if the epistemological revolution that brought about positivism’s demise
in the second half of the twentieth century had not occurred. In a survey
article titled “Philosophy of Space and Time” in Introduction to the
Philosophy of Science, John Norton observes that this discipline exhibits
some of the “clearest applications” of the ideas of logical positivism, such
as (1) an application of the verification principle of meaning in Einstein’s
special theory of relativity in order to eliminate the state of absolute rest
posited in Newton’s classical theory of time and space, (2) conventionality
claims concerning the metric of space and of time, as well as relations of
simultaneity within a single reference frame, and (3) reductionistic analyses
of spatiotemporal relations to causal relations in the causal theory of time.2

It is remarkable that while (2) and (3) have largely succumbed to criticism,
(1) remains an almost unchallenged dogma. It is frequently said that the
advent of relativity theory destroyed the classical conceptions of time and
space, forcing us to abandon absolute rest, absolute simultaneity, and even
the separability of time and space.

2—RELATIVITY AND THE CLASSICAL CONCEPT OF
TIME
In order to assess these claims, we must recur to the fount of the classical
concept of time, Isaac Newton’s epochal Mathematical Principles of
Natural Philosophy (Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica, 1687).
In the scholium (annotation) to his set of definitions leading off the

Moreland, J. P., & Craig, W. L. (2017). Philosophical foundations for a christian worldview. InterVarsity Press.
Created from liberty on 2025-02-11 16:36:55.

C
op

yr
ig

ht
©

2
01

7.
In

te
rV

ar
si

ty
P

re
ss

. A
ll

rig
ht

s
re

se
rv

ed
.

Principia, Newton explains his concepts of time and space. In order to
clarify these concepts, Newton draws a distinction between

absolute time

and space and relative time and space:

I. Absolute . . . time, of itself, and from its own nature, flows
equably without relation to anything external, and by another name
is called duration: relative . . . time, is some sensible and external
(whether accurate or unequable) measure of duration by the means
of motion, which is commonly used instead of true time; such as an
hour, a day, a month, a year.

II. Absolute space, in its own nature, without relation to anything
external, remains always similar and immovable. Relative space is
some movable dimension or measure of the absolute spaces; which
our senses determine by its position to bodies; and which is
commonly taken for immovable space; such is the dimension of a
subterraneous, an aerial, or celestial space, determined by its
position in respect of the earth.3

First and foremost, Newton is here distinguishing between time and
space themselves and our measures of time and space. Relative time is the
time determined or recorded by clocks and calendars of various sorts;
relative space is the length or area or volume determined by instruments
like rulers or measuring cups. As Newton says, these relative quantities may
be more or less accurate measures of time and space themselves. Time and
space themselves are absolute in the sense that they just are the quantities
themselves, which we are trying to measure with our physical instruments.

There is a second sense in which Newton held time and space to be
absolute, however. They are absolute in the sense that they are unique.
There is one, universal time in which all events come to pass with
determinate duration and in a determinate sequence and one, universal
space in which all physical objects exist with determinate shapes and in a
determinate arrangement. Thus Newton says that absolute time “of itself,
and from its own nature, flows equably without relation to anything
external,” and absolute space “in its own nature, without relation to

Moreland, J. P., & Craig, W. L. (2017). Philosophical foundations for a christian worldview. InterVarsity Press.
Created from liberty on 2025-02-11 16:36:55.

C
op

yr
ig

ht
©

2
01

7.
In

te
rV

ar
si

ty
P

re
ss

. A
ll

rig
ht

s
re

se
rv

ed
.

anything external, remains always similar and immovable.” Relative times
and spaces are many and variable, but not time and space themselves.

On the basis of his definitions of time and space, Newton went on to
define absolute versus relative place and motion:

III. Place is a part of space which a body takes up, and is according
to the space, either absolute or relative. . . .

IV. Absolute motion is the translation of a body from one absolute
place into another; and relative motion, the translation from one
relative place into another.4

By “translation” Newton means transporting or displacement. Absolute
place is the volume of absolute space occupied by an object, and absolute
motion is the displacement of a body from one absolute place to another.
An object can be at relative rest and yet in absolute motion. Newton gives
the example of a piece of a ship, say, the mast. If the mast is firmly fixed,
then it is at rest relative to the ship; but the mast is in absolute motion if the
ship is moving in absolute space as it sails along. Thus two objects can be at
rest relative to each other, but both moving in tandem through absolute
space (and thus moving absolutely).

In Newtonian physics there is already a sort of relativity. A body that is
in uniform motion (that is, no accelerations or decelerations occur) serves
to define an inertial frame, which is just a relative space in which a body at
rest remains at rest and a body in motion remains in motion with the same
speed and direction. Newton’s ideal ship sailing uniformly along would thus
define an inertial frame. Although Newton postulated the existence of an
absolute inertial frame, namely, the reference frame of absolute space,
nevertheless it is impossible for observers in inertial frames that are moving
in absolute space to determine experimentally that they are in fact moving.
If someone’s relative space were moving uniformly through absolute space,
that person could not tell whether he was at absolute rest or in absolute
motion. By the same token, if his relative space were at rest in absolute
space, he could not know that he was at absolute rest rather than in absolute
motion. He could know that his inertial frame was in motion relative to
some other observer’s inertial frame (say, another passing ship), but he
could not know if either of them were at absolute rest or in absolute motion.

Moreland, J. P., & Craig, W. L. (2017). Philosophical foundations for a christian worldview. InterVarsity Press.
Created from liberty on 2025-02-11 16:36:55.

C
op

yr
ig

ht
©

2
01

7.
In

te
rV

ar
si

ty
P

re
ss

. A
ll

rig
ht

s
re

se
rv

ed
.

Thus within Newtonian physics an observer could measure only the relative
uniform motion of his inertial system, not its absolute uniform motion.

Newtonian physics prevailed all the way up through the end of the
nineteenth century. The two great domains of nineteenth-century classical
physics were Newton’s mechanics (the study of the motion of bodies) and
Maxwell’s electrodynamics (the study of electromagnetic radiation,
including light). The quest of physics at the end of the nineteenth century
was to formulate mutually consistent theories of these two domains. The
problem was that although Newton’s mechanics was characterized, as we
have mentioned, by relativity, Maxwell’s electrodynamics was not. It was
widely held that light consisted of waves, and, since waves had to be waves
of something (e.g., sound waves are waves of the air, ocean waves are
waves of the water), light waves had to be waves of an invisible, all-
permeating substance dubbed the aether. As the nineteenth century wore
on, the aether was divested of more and more of its properties until it
became virtually characterless, serving only as the medium for the
propagation of light. Since the speed of light had been measured and since
light consisted of waves in the aether, the speed of light was absolute; that
is to say, unlike moving bodies, light’s velocity was determinable relative to
an absolute frame of reference, the aether frame. To be sure, in the
Newtonian scheme of things, moving bodies possessed absolute velocities
relative to this frame, but within an inertial frame there was no way to
measure what they were. By contrast, since waves move through their
medium at a constant speed regardless of how fast the object that caused
them is moving, light had a determinable, fixed velocity. So
electrodynamics, unlike mechanics, was not characterized by relativity.

But now it seemed that one could use electrodynamics to eliminate
relativity. Since light moved at a fixed rate through the aether, one could, by
measuring the speed of light from different directions, figure out one’s own
velocity relative to the aether. For if one were moving through the

aether

toward the light source, the speed of light should be measured as being
faster than if one were at rest (just as water waves would pass you more
rapidly if you were swimming toward the source of the waves than if you
were floating motionless in the water); whereas if one were moving through
the aether away from the light source, the speed of light would be measured
as being slower than if one were at rest (just as the water waves would pass

Moreland, J. P., & Craig, W. L. (2017). Philosophical foundations for a christian worldview. InterVarsity Press.
Created from liberty on 2025-02-11 16:36:55.

C
op

yr
ig

ht
©

2
01

7.
In

te
rV

ar
si

ty
P

re
ss

. A
ll

rig
ht

s
re

se
rv

ed
.

you less rapidly if you were swimming away from the source of the waves
than if you were floating). Thus it would be possible to determine
experimentally within an inertial frame whether one is at rest in the aether
or how fast one is moving through it.

Imagine, then, the consternation when experiments, such as the
Michelson-Morley experiment in 1887, failed to detect any motion of the
earth through the aether! Despite the fact that the earth is orbiting the sun,
the measured speed of light was identical no matter what direction their
measuring device was pointed. It needs to be underlined how weird the
situation was. Waves travel at a constant speed regardless of the motion of
their source and in this sense are unlike projectiles, which travel at a
velocity that is a combination of the speed of their source plus their speed
relative to the source. For example, a bullet fired ahead from a speeding
police car travels at a combined speed of the car’s speed plus the bullet’s
normal speed, in contrast to sound waves emitted from the car’s siren,
which travel through the air at the same velocity whether the car is
stationary or in motion. Consequently, an observer who is moving in the
same direction as a sound wave will observe it passing him at a slower
speed than if he were at rest. If he goes fast enough, he can catch the wave
and break the sound barrier. But light waves are different. Light’s measured
velocity is the same in all inertial frames, for all observers. This implies, for
example, that if an observer in a rocket going 90 percent the

speed of light

sent a light beam ahead of him, both he and the recipient of the beam would
measure the speed of the beam to be the same, and this whether the
recipient were standing still or himself moving toward or away from the
light source at 90 percent the speed of light.

Desperate for a solution, the Irish physicist George Francis FitzGerald
and the great Dutch physicist Hendrik Lorentz proposed the remarkable
hypothesis that one’s measuring devices shrink or contract in the direction
of motion through the aether, so that light appears to traverse identical
distances in identical times, when in fact the distances vary with one’s
speed. The faster one moves, the more his devices contract, so that the
measured speed of light remains constant. Hence, in all inertial frames the
speed of light appears the same. With the help of the British scientist Joseph
Larmor, Lorentz also came to hypothesize that one’s clocks slow down
when in motion relative to the aether frame. One thus winds up with

Moreland, J. P., & Craig, W. L. (2017). Philosophical foundations for a christian worldview. InterVarsity Press.
Created from liberty on 2025-02-11 16:36:55.

C
op

yr
ig

ht
©

2
01

7.
In

te
rV

ar
si

ty
P

re
ss

. A
ll

rig
ht

s
re

se
rv

ed
.

Lorentzian relativity: there exists absolute motion, absolute length, and
absolute time, but there is no way to discern these experimentally, since
motion through the aether affects one’s measuring instruments. Lorentz
developed a series of equations called the Lorentz transformations, which
show how to transform one’s own measurements of the spatial and temporal
coordinates of an event into the measurements that would be made by
someone in another inertial frame. These transformation equations remain
today the mathematical core of STR (special theory of relativity), even
though Lorentz’s physical interpretation of STR was different from
Einstein’s interpretation.

In 1905 Albert Einstein, then an obscure clerk in a patent office in Bern,
Switzerland, published his own version of relativity. At this time in his
young career, Einstein was still a disciple of the German physicist Ernst
Mach. An ardent empiricist, Mach detested anything that smacked of
metaphysics and thus sought to reduce statements about time and space to
statements about sense perceptions and the connections between them. The
young Einstein took what he called his “epistemological credo” from Mach,
holding that knowledge is made up of the totality of sense experiences and
the totality of concepts and propositions, which are related in the following
way: “The concepts and propositions get ‘meaning,’ viz., ‘content,’ only
through their connection with sense experience.”5 Any proposition not so
connected was literally without content, meaningless. Given such a
verificationist criterion of meaning, Lorentz’s absolute time, space, and
motion were “metaphysical” notions and therefore meaningless.

Einstein began his 1905 article by jettisoning the aether as superfluous,
since, he says, it will not be necessary for the purposes of his paper. Now in
order to talk about motion in a physically meaningful way, Einstein claims,
we must be clear what we mean by time. Since all judgments about time
concern simultaneous events, what we need is a way to determine
empirically the simultaneity of distant events. Einstein then proceeds to
offer a method of determining, or rather defining, simultaneity for two
spatially separated but relatively stationary clocks, that is, two distant
clocks sharing the same inertial frame. This procedure will in turn serve as
the basis for a definition of the time of an event. He asks us to assume that
the time required for light to travel from point A to point B is the same as

Moreland, J. P., & Craig, W. L. (2017). Philosophical foundations for a christian worldview. InterVarsity Press.
Created from liberty on 2025-02-11 16:36:55.

C
op

yr
ig

ht
©

2
01

7.
In

te
rV

ar
si

ty
P

re
ss

. A
ll

rig
ht

s
re

se
rv

ed
.

the time required for light to travel from B to A. Theoretically, light could
travel more slowly from A to B and more quickly from B to A, even though
the round-trip velocity would always be constant. But Einstein says that we
must assume that the one-way velocity of light is constant. Having made
this assumption, he proposes to synchronize clocks at A and B by means of
light signals from one to the other. Suppose A sends a signal to B, which is
in turn reflected back from B to A. If A knows what time it was when he
sent the signal to B and what time it was when he received the signal back
from B, then he knows that the reading of B’s clock when the signal from A
arrived was exactly halfway between the time A sent the signal and the time
A got the return signal. In this way A and B can arrange to synchronize their
clocks. Events are declared to be simultaneous if they occur at the same
clock times on synchronized clocks. Using clocks thus synchronized,
Einstein defines the time of an event as “the reading simultaneous with the
event of a clock at rest and located at the position of the event, this clock
being synchronous . . . with a specified clock at rest.”6

By means of these definitions Einstein laid the groundwork for a
radically new understanding of time and space. For under the euphemism of
disregarding the aether as unnecessary, Einstein abandoned not merely the
aether, but, more fundamentally, the reference frame of the aether, or
absolute space. Without absolute space there can be no absolute motion or
absolute rest. Bodies are moving or at rest only relative to each other, and it
would be meaningless to ask whether an isolated body was stationary or
uniformly moving per se. Given the constancy of the speed of light in all
inertial frames, bodies in motion will be related to each other
electrodynamically in such a way that the use of electromagnetic signals to
establish synchrony relations between them will play havoc with what we
normally mean by simultaneity. What happens is that simultaneity becomes
relative. Einstein writes, “Thus we see that we can attribute no absolute
meaning to the concept of simultaneity, but that two events which,
examined from a co-ordinate system, are simultaneous, can no longer be
interpreted as simultaneous events when examined from a system which is
in motion relatively to that system.”7 What this means is that events that are
simultaneous as calculated from one inertial frame will not be simultaneous
as calculated from another. An event that lies in A’s future may be already

Moreland, J. P., & Craig, W. L. (2017). Philosophical foundations for a christian worldview. InterVarsity Press.
Created from liberty on 2025-02-11 16:36:55.

C
op

yr
ig

ht
©

2
01

7.
In

te
rV

ar
si

ty
P

re
ss

. A
ll

rig
ht

s
re

se
rv

ed
.

present or past for B! In fact, events that are not causally connected can
even be measured to occur in a different temporal order in different inertial
frames!

What Einstein did, in effect, was to shave away Newton’s absolute time
and space, and along with them the aether, thus leaving behind only their
empirical measures. Since these are relativized to inertial frames, one ends
up with the relativity of simultaneity and of length. What justification did
Einstein have for so radical a move? How did he know that absolute time
and space do not exist? The answer, in a word, is verificationism. The
introductory sections of the 1905 paper are predicated squarely on
verificationist assumptions. These come through most clearly in Einstein’s
operationalist redefinition of key concepts.8 The meaning of time is made
to depend on the meaning of simultaneity, which is defined locally in terms
of occurrence at the same local clock reading. In order to define a common
time for spatially separated clocks, we adopt the convention that the time it
takes light to travel from A to B equals the time it takes light to travel from
B to A—a definition that presupposes that absolute space does not exist. For
if A and B are at relative rest but moving in tandem through absolute space,
then it is not the case that a light beam will travel from A to B in the same
amount of time it takes to travel from B to A, since the distances traversed
will not be the same (figure 20.1).

That is why Einstein’s theory, far from disproving the existence of
absolute space, actually presupposes its nonexistence. All of this is done by
mere stipulation. Reality is reduced to what our measurements read;
Newton’s metaphysical time and space, which transcend operational
definitions, are implied to be mere figments of our imagination.

It was only by virtue of his verificationism that Einstein could ignore
the metaphysical foundations of Newton’s doctrine of absolute time and
space. We have already seen that Newtonian time and space are absolute
both in the sense that time and space are distinct from our measures of them
and in the sense that there is a unique, all-embracing time and a unique, all-
embracing space. But Newton also conceived of time and space as absolute
in yet a third, more profound sense; namely, he held that time and space
exist independent of any physical objects whatsoever. Usually, this is
interpreted to mean that time and space would exist even if nothing else

Moreland, J. P., & Craig, W. L. (2017). Philosophical foundations for a christian worldview. InterVarsity Press.
Created from liberty on 2025-02-11 16:36:55.

C
op

yr
ig

ht
©

2
01

7.
In

te
rV

ar
si

ty
P

re
ss

. A
ll

rig
ht

s
re

se
rv

ed
.

existed, that we can conceive of a logically possible world that is
completely empty except for the container of absolute space and the flow of
absolute time.

Figure 20.1. Clock synchronization of relatively stationary clocks in absolute motion. A
light signal is first sent A toward B. By the time the signal reaches B, both A and B will have
moved together some distance from the point where A first released the signal. Finally, by
the time the reflected signal from B reaches A again, both A and B will have moved still
farther from the release point. Since the signal traveled farther from A to B than from B back
to A, the time it took to travel from A to B is greater than the time it took to travel from B to
A.

But here we must be very careful. Modern secular scholars tend
frequently to forget how ardent a theist Newton was and how central a role
this theism played in his metaphysical outlook. In fact, Newton makes quite
clear in the General Scholium to the Principia, which he added in 1713, that
absolute time and space are constituted by the divine attributes of

eternity

and omnipresence. He writes,

He [God] is eternal and infinite; . . . that is, his duration reaches
from eternity to eternity; his presence from infinity to infinity. . . .
He is not eternity and infinity, but eternal and infinite; he is not

Moreland, J. P., & Craig, W. L. (2017). Philosophical foundations for a christian worldview. InterVarsity Press.
Created from liberty on 2025-02-11 16:36:55.

C
op

yr
ig

ht
©

2
01

7.
In

te
rV

ar
si

ty
P

re
ss

. A
ll

rig
ht

s
re

se
rv

ed
.

duration or space, but he endures and is present. He endures forever,
and is everywhere present; and, by existing always and everywhere,
he constitutes duration and space. Since every particle of space is
always, and every indivisible moment of duration is everywhere,
certainly the Maker and Lord of all things cannot be never and
nowhere.9

Because God is eternal, there exists an everlasting duration, and because he
is omnipresent, there exists an infinite space. Absolute time and space are
therefore relational in that they are contingent on the existence of God.

In his earlier treatise “On the Gravity and Equilibrium of Fluids,”
Newton argued that space (and by implication time) is neither a substance,
nor a property, nor nothing at all. It cannot be nothing because it has
properties, such as infinity and uniformity in all directions. It cannot be a
property because it can exist without bodies. Neither is it a substance: “It is
not substance . . . because it is not absolute in itself, but is as it were an
emanent effect of God, or a disposition of all being.”10 Contrary to the
conventional understanding, Newton here declares explicitly that space is
not in itself absolute and therefore not a substance. Rather, it is an emanent
—or emanative—effect of God. By this notion Newton meant to say that
time and space were the immediate consequence of God’s very being.
God’s infinite being has as its consequence infinite time and space, which
represent the quantity of his duration and presence. Newton does not
conceive of space or time as in any way attributes of God himself, but
rather, as he says, concomitant effects of God.

In Newton’s view God’s “now” is thus the present moment of absolute
time. Since God is not “a dwarf-god” located at a particular place in
space,11 but is omnipresent, there is a worldwide moment that is absolutely
present. Newton’s temporal theism thus provides the foundation for
absolute simultaneity. The absolute present and absolute simultaneity are
features first and foremost of God’s time, absolute time, and derivatively, of
measured or relative time.

Thus the classical Newtonian concept of time is firmly rooted in a
theistic worldview. What Newton did not realize, nor could he have
suspected, is that physical time is not only relative but also relativistic, that

Moreland, J. P., & Craig, W. L. (2017). Philosophical foundations for a christian worldview. InterVarsity Press.
Created from liberty on 2025-02-11 16:36:55.

C
op

yr
ig

ht
©

2
01

7.
In

te
rV

ar
si

ty
P

re
ss

. A
ll

rig
ht

s
re

se
rv

ed
.

the approximation of physical time to absolute time depends not merely on
the regularity of one’s clock but also on its motion. Unless a clock were at
absolute rest, it would not accurately register the passage of absolute time.
Moving clocks run slowly. This truth, unknown to Newton, was finally
grasped by scientists only with the advent of relativity theory.

Where Newton fell short, then, was not in his analysis of absolute or
metaphysical time—he had theological grounds for positing such a time—
but in his incomplete understanding of relative or physical time. He
assumed too readily that an ideal clock would give an accurate measure of
time independent of its motion. If confronted with relativistic evidence,
Newton would no doubt have welcomed this correction and seen therein no
threat at all to his doctrine of absolute time. In short, relativity corrects
Newton’s concept of relative time, not his concept of absolute time.

As a lingering effect of positivism, there is a great deal of antipathy in
modern physics and philosophy of science toward such metaphysical
realities as Newtonian space and time, primarily because they are not
physically detectable. But Newton would have been singularly unimpressed
with this verificationist equation between physical undetectability and
nonexistence. The grounds for metaphysical space and time were not
physical, but philosophical, or more precisely, theological. Epistemological
objections fail to worry Newton because, as Oxford philosopher John Lucas
nicely puts it, “he is thinking of an omniscient, omnipresent Deity whose
characteristic relation with things and with space is expressed in the
imperative mood.”12 Modern physical theories say nothing against the
existence of such a God or the metaphysical time constituted, in Newton’s
thinking, by his eternity. What relativity theory did, in effect, was simply to
remove God from the picture and to substitute in his place a finite observer.
The theory thus represents, in the words of science historian Gerald Holton,
“the final secularization of physics.”13 But to a theist like Newton, such a
secular outlook impedes rather than advances our understanding of the
nature of reality.

How, then, shall we assess the claim that STR has eliminated absolute
time and space? The first thing to be said is that the verificationism that
characterized Einstein’s original formulation of STR belongs essentially to
the philosophical foundations of the theory. The whole theory rests on

Moreland, J. P., & Craig, W. L. (2017). Philosophical foundations for a christian worldview. InterVarsity Press.
Created from liberty on 2025-02-11 16:36:55.

C
op

yr
ig

ht
©

2
01

7.
In

te
rV

ar
si

ty
P

re
ss

. A
ll

rig
ht

s
re

se
rv

ed
.

Einstein’s redefinition of simultaneity in terms of clock synchronization by
light signals. But that redefinition assumes necessarily that the time it takes
light to travel between two relatively stationary observers A and B is the
same from A to B as from B to A in a round-trip journey. That assumption
presupposes that A and B are not both in absolute motion, or in other words
that neither absolute space nor a privileged inertial frame exists. The only
justification for that assumption is that it is empirically impossible to
distinguish uniform motion from rest relative to such a frame, and if
absolute space and absolute motion or rest are undetectable empirically,
therefore they do not exist (and may even be said to be meaningless).

But if verificationism belongs essentially to the foundations of STR, the
next thing to be said is that verificationism has proved to be completely
untenable and is now outmoded. Verificationism provides no justification
for thinking that Newton erred, for example, in holding that God exists in a
time that exists independent of our physical measures of it and that may or
may not be accurately registered by them. It matters not a whit whether we
finite creatures know what time it is in God’s absolute time; God knows,
and that is enough.

We are not here endorsing Newton’s views on divine eternity and
omnipresence (see chap. 27), but we are contending that such metaphysical
considerations as Newton adduced are crucial to a correct understanding of
time and space. If we do suppose that God is in time, how then should we
understand STR? In a fascinating passage in his essay “The Measure of
Time,” Henri Poincaré, the great French mathematician and precursor of
relativity, briefly entertains the hypothesis of “an infinite intelligence” and
considers the implications of such a hypothesis. Poincaré is reflecting on
the problem of how we can apply one and the same measure of time to
spatially distant events. What does it mean, for example, to say that two
thoughts in two people’s minds occur simultaneously? Or what does it mean
to say that a supernova occurred before Columbus saw the New World?
Like a good verificationist, Poincaré says, “All these affirmations have by
themselves no meaning.”14 Then he remarks,

We should first ask ourselves how one could have had the idea of
putting into the same frame so many worlds impenetrable to one
another. We should like to represent to ourselves the external

Moreland, J. P., & Craig, W. L. (2017). Philosophical foundations for a christian worldview. InterVarsity Press.
Created from liberty on 2025-02-11 16:36:55.

C
op

yr
ig

ht
©

2
01

7.
In

te
rV

ar
si

ty
P

re
ss

. A
ll

rig
ht

s
re

se
rv

ed
.

universe, and only by so doing could we feel that we understood it.
We know we can never attain this representation: our weakness is
too great. But at least we desire the ability to conceive an infinite
intelligence for which this representation could be possible, a sort of
great consciousness which should see all, and which should classify
all in its time, as we classify, in our time, the little we see.

This hypothesis is indeed crude and incomplete, because this
supreme intelligence would be only a demigod; infinite in one sense,
it would be limited in another, since it would have only an imperfect
recollection of the past; it could have no other, since otherwise all
recollections would be equally present to it and for it there would be
no time. And yet when we speak of time, for all which happens
outside of us, do we not unconsciously adopt this hypothesis; do we
not put ourselves in the place of this imperfect God; and do not even
the atheists put themselves in the place where God would be if he
existed?

What I have just said shows us, perhaps, why we have tried to
put all physical phenomena into the same frame. But that cannot
pass for a definition of simultaneity, since this hypothetical
intelligence, even if it existed, would be for us impenetrable. It is
therefore necessary to seek something else.15

Poincaré here suggests that, in considering the notion of simultaneity,
we instinctively put ourselves in the place of God and classify events as
past, present, or future according to his time. Poincaré does not deny that
from God’s perspective there would exist relations of absolute simultaneity.
But he rejects the hypothesis as yielding a definition of

simultaneity

because we could not know such relations; such knowledge would remain
the exclusive possession of God himself.

Clearly, Poincaré’s misgivings are relevant to a definition of
simultaneity only if one is presupposing some sort of verificationist theory
of meaning, as he undoubtedly was. The fact remains that God knows the
absolute simultaneity of events even if we grope in total darkness. Nor need
we be concerned with Poincaré’s argument that such an infinite intelligence
would be a mere demigod, since there is no reason to think that a temporal

Moreland, J. P., & Craig, W. L. (2017). Philosophical foundations for a christian worldview. InterVarsity Press.
Created from liberty on 2025-02-11 16:36:55.

C
op

yr
ig

ht
©

2
01

7.
In

te
rV

ar
si

ty
P

re
ss

. A
ll

rig
ht

s
re

se
rv

ed
.

being cannot have a perfect recollection of the past. There is no conceptual
difficulty in the idea of a being that knows all past-tense truths. His
knowledge would be constantly changing, as more and more events become
past. But at each successive moment he could know every past-tense truth
that there is at that moment. Hence, it does not follow that if God is
temporal, he cannot have perfect recollection of the past.

Poincaré’s hypothesis suggests, therefore, that if God is temporal, his
present is constitutive of relations of absolute simultaneity. On this view the
philosopher J. M. Findlay was wrong when he said, “The influence which
harmonizes and connects all the world-lines is not God, not any featureless,
inert, medium, but that living, active interchange called . . . Light, offspring
of Heaven firstborn.”16 On the contrary, the use of light signals to establish
clock synchrony would be a convention that finite and ignorant creatures
have been obliged to adopt, but the living and active God, who knows all,
would not be so dependent. In God’s temporal experience, there would be a
moment that would be present in absolute time, whether or not it were
registered by any clock time. He would know, without any dependence on
clock synchronization procedures or any physical operations at all, which
events were simultaneously present in absolute time. He would know this
simply in virtue of his knowing at every such moment the unique set of
present-tense truths at that moment, without any need of physical
observation of the universe.

So what would become of STR if God is in time? From what has been
said, God’s existence in time would imply that Lorentz, rather than
Einstein, had the correct interpretation of relativity theory. That is to say,
Einstein’s clock synchronization procedure would be valid only in the
preferred (absolute) reference frame, and measuring rods would contract
and clocks slow down in the customary special relativistic way when in
motion with respect to the preferred frame. Lorentzian relativity is admitted
on all sides to be empirically equivalent to Einsteinian relativity, and there
are even indications on the cutting edge of science today that a Lorentzian
view may be preferable in light of recent discoveries. Such an interpretation
would be implied by divine temporality, for God in the “now” of absolute
time would know which events in the universe are now being created by
him and are therefore absolutely simultaneous with each other and with his

Moreland, J. P., & Craig, W. L. (2017). Philosophical foundations for a christian worldview. InterVarsity Press.
Created from liberty on 2025-02-11 16:36:55.

C
op

yr
ig

ht
©

2
01

7.
In

te
rV

ar
si

ty
P

re
ss

. A
ll

rig
ht

s
re

se
rv

ed
.

“now.” This startling conclusion shows that Newton’s theistic hypothesis is
not some idle speculation, but has important implications for our
understanding of how the world is and for the assessment of rival scientific
theories.

3—THE REALITY OF TENSE AND TEMPORAL
BECOMING
We have seen that for Newton, “time, of itself, and from its own nature,
flows equably without relation to anything external.” By the metaphor of
time’s flow, Newton expresses his commitment to the objective reality of
tense—that is, the moments of time are past, present or future in a mind-
independent way—and likewise to the objective reality of temporal
becoming, that things come into being and go out of existence as time
elapses. Such a view of reality has been called a dynamic or tensed or (in J.
M. E. McTaggart’s influential terminology) A-theory of time. By contrast,
many philosophers of science hold that tense and temporal becoming are
subjective in character. All moments of time are equally existent and are
related by the tenseless relations of earlier than, simultaneous with, and
later than. The distinction between past, present, and future is not an
objective distinction, being merely a subjective feature of consciousness.
For the people located in 1868, for example, the events of 1868 are present,
and we are future; by the same token, for the people living in 2050 it is the
events of 2050 that are present, and we are past. If there were no minds,
there would be no past, present, or future. There would be just the four-
dimensional space-time universe existing as a block. Such a view of time
has been called a static or tenseless or B-theory of time. The question of
whether an A- or a B-theory of time is correct has been called “the most
fundamental question in the philosophy of time.”17

It is admitted on both sides of the debate that the ordinary,
commonsense view is that there is an objective distinction between past,
present, and future. We experience the reality of tense in a variety of ways
that are so evident and so pervasive that the belief in the objective reality of
tense is a universal feature of human experience. Psychologist William

Moreland, J. P., & Craig, W. L. (2017). Philosophical foundations for a christian worldview. InterVarsity Press.
Created from liberty on 2025-02-11 16:36:55.

C
op

yr
ig

ht
©

2
01

7.
In

te
rV

ar
si

ty
P

re
ss

. A
ll

rig
ht

s
re

se
rv

ed
.

Friedman, who has made a career of the study of our consciousness of time,
reports that “the division between past, present, and future so deeply
permeates our experience that it is hard to imagine its absence.”18 He says
that we have “an irresistible tendency to believe in a present. Most of us
find quite startling the claim of some physicists and philosophers that the
present has no special status in the physical world, that there is only a
sequence of times, that the past, present, and future are only distinguishable
in human consciousness.”19

Consequently, virtually all philosophers of time and space, even those
who hold to a B-theory of time, admit that the view of the common man is
that time involves a real distinction between past, present, and future. One
advocate of the static view grumps that the dynamic understanding of time
is so deeply ingrained in us that it seems “programmed by original sin”!20

The advocate of the A-theory of time may plausibly contend that our
experience of tense ought to be accepted as veridical, or trustworthy, unless
we are given some more powerful reason for denying it.

The A-theorist might formulate an argument to the effect that the
objective reality of tense is the best explanation of our experience of tense.
But our belief in the reality of tense is much more fundamental than such an
argument suggests. We do not adopt the belief in an objective difference
between the past, present, and future in an attempt to explain our experience
of the temporal world. Rather, our belief in this case is what epistemologists
call “a properly basic belief” (recall discussion in chap. 7).

A belief’s being properly basic implies that one is justified in holding to
that belief unless and until it is defeated. We may say that such a belief is
justified at face value (prima facie). For example, take the belief “The
external world is real.” It is possible that you are really a brain in a vat of
chemicals, being stimulated with electrodes by some mad scientist to
believe that you are reading this book. Indeed, there is no way to prove this
hypothesis wrong. But that does not imply that your belief in the reality of
the external world is unjustified. On the contrary, it is a properly basic
belief grounded in your experience and as such is justified until some
defeater comes along. This belief is not defeated by the mere possibility that
you are a brain in a vat. For there is no warrant for thinking that one is, in
fact, a brain in a vat. Indeed, our belief in the reality of the external world is

Moreland, J. P., & Craig, W. L. (2017). Philosophical foundations for a christian worldview. InterVarsity Press.
Created from liberty on 2025-02-11 16:36:55.

C
op

yr
ig

ht
©

2
01

7.
In

te
rV

ar
si

ty
P

re
ss

. A
ll

rig
ht

s
re

se
rv

ed
.

so deeply ingrained and strongly held that any successful defeater of this
belief would have to possess enormous warrant. In the absence of any
successful defeater, we are perfectly justified in taking our experience of the
external world to be veridical.

Now the advocate of an A-theory of time may argue similarly
concerning our belief in the past, present, and future. Belief in the objective
reality of tense is a properly basic belief that is universal among
humankind. It therefore follows that anyone who denies this belief (and
who is aware that he has no good defeaters of that belief) is irrational. For
such a person fails to hold to a belief that is for him properly basic.

Sometimes advocates of a B-theory of time assert that our experience of
past, present, and future need not be taken as veridical, since we can
imagine a universe exactly like this one that is a four-dimensional block
universe containing individuals whose mental states correspond exactly to
our mental states in this world. “But then surely our copies in the block
universe would have the same experiences that we do—in which case they
are not distinctive of a dynamic universe after all. Things would seem this
way, even if we ourselves were elements of a block universe.”21 But this is
like arguing that because a brain in a vat would have the same experiences
of the external world that we do, therefore we no longer have any grounds
for regarding our experiences as veridical! In the absence of some sort of
defeater of beliefs grounded by such experiences, these experiences do
provide warrant for those beliefs.

Is, then, belief in the objective reality of tense properly basic? To begin
with the most obvious, we experience events as present. Our belief that
events are happening presently is really no different from our belief that
they are happening—and this latter belief is a basic belief grounded in our
perceptual experience.

D. H. Mellor, as a proponent of the static view of time, does not believe
that there really is a present. Therefore, we cannot, despite appearances, be
experiencing it. Mellor thus goes to great lengths to explain away our
experience of the present. First, he argues that we do not really observe the
tense of events. He gives an illustration of observing astronomical events
through a telescope. When we look at the stars, we seem to be observing the
events as presently happening; but we know that they actually occurred

Moreland, J. P., & Craig, W. L. (2017). Philosophical foundations for a christian worldview. InterVarsity Press.
Created from liberty on 2025-02-11 16:36:55.

C
op

yr
ig

ht
©

2
01

7.
In

te
rV

ar
si

ty
P

re
ss

. A
ll

rig
ht

s
re

se
rv

ed
.

millions of years ago. Thus what we see is the order in which events
occurred, but our observations do not tell us the tense of the events.
Therefore, when we think that we are observing any event to be present, we
are simply confused. We do not observe the event itself to be present;
rather, we observe our experience of the event to be present.

However, it seems that Mellor’s objection is ineffective against the
argument as we have framed it. For clearly one does not form a belief like
“The phone is ringing” by inferring it from a more foundational belief like
“My experience of the phone’s ringing is present.” Typically, one does not
form any belief like the latter at all. One’s beliefs about the tense of events
is not inferred, but basic. As for the illustration of events viewed through a
telescope, all that proves is that our beliefs about the tense of events is
defeasible and sometimes wrong. One might as well argue that perceptual
beliefs are not properly basic because things viewed through a microscope
are observed to be larger than they are! Just because our sense perceptions
are sometimes mistaken is no reason to think that we do not perceive things.
In the same way, mistaken observations of the presentness of certain events
do not prove that we make no such observations. In most cases, the events
we observe fall within the limits of the psychological present, so that our
observations of events as present are veridical and our judgments to that
effect properly basic.

In any case, Mellor admits that we do observe our experiences to be
present. This is the so-called presentness of experience. Even if we can be
mistaken about the presentness of a supernova observed through a
telescope, we cannot be mistaken about the presentness of our experience of
observing the supernova. If we observe our experiences to be present, aren’t
we observing the tense of these mental events?

No, replies Mellor, for “although we observe our experience to be
present, it really isn’t.”22 This is a paradoxical statement. Mellor admits
that when we make the judgment that our experience is present, we cannot
be mistaken. He writes,

So judging my experience to be present is much like my judging it
to be painless. On the one hand, the judgment is not one I have to
make. . . . But on the other hand, if I do make it, I am bound to be
right, just as when I judge my experience to be painless. The

Moreland, J. P., & Craig, W. L. (2017). Philosophical foundations for a christian worldview. InterVarsity Press.
Created from liberty on 2025-02-11 16:36:55.

C
op

yr
ig

ht
©

2
01

7.
In

te
rV

ar
si

ty
P

re
ss

. A
ll

rig
ht

s
re

se
rv

ed
.

presence of experience . . . is something of which one’s awareness is
infallible.

. . . No matter who I am or whenever I judge my experience to
be present, that judgment will be true.23

But if our observation of the presentness of our experience is analogous
to our observation of whether our experiences are painful, if we are bound
to be right in judging our experience to be present, if our awareness of the
presentness of our experience is infallible, if our judgment that our
experience is present will be true every time, then how can it be the case
that, as Mellor says, “it really isn’t”? If one’s belief that “my experience of
observing the supernova is present” is indefeasible, as Mellor admits, then
how can that experience not be present, even if the supernova itself is not?

Mellor’s answer is that while the belief that one’s experience is present
may have important cognitive significance, nonetheless the factual content
of that belief is a tautology and therefore trivial. Mellor maintains that the
following belief (A) is just true by definition:

A. The experiences that I am now having possess the property of
being present.

He makes this claim because (A) is true if and only if (B):

B. The experiences that I have at the time of the utterance of (A)
possess the property of existing at the time of the utterance of (A).

But (B) is trivially true, a mere tautology. Therefore, although (A) is true,
its factual content, as disclosed by (B), does not imply the objective reality
of presentness.

This response by Mellor is multiply flawed. First, Mellor’s tautology is
self-constructed, for he stipulates that it is “the experiences that I am now
having” that are judged to be present. But there is no reason to describe
one’s experiences as those one is now having. The beliefs in question are
not like (A); rather, they are like (A’):

A’. My experience of seeing the supernova is present.

Moreland, J. P., & Craig, W. L. (2017). Philosophical foundations for a christian worldview. InterVarsity Press.
Created from liberty on 2025-02-11 16:36:55.

C
op

yr
ig

ht
©

2
01

7.
In

te
rV

ar
si

ty
P

re
ss

. A
ll

rig
ht

s
re

se
rv

ed
.

And (A’) is not tautologous.
Second, even (A) can be read in a way that is not tautologous. Let the

phrase “the experience that I am now having” pick out a specific, unique
experience like observing the supernova. In that case, the ascription of
presentness to that particular experience out of all the experiences one ever
has is not trivial or true by definition.

Third, even if (A) is trivial, that does not imply that the presentness of
the experience is trivial. It may be trivial to assert that “my present
experiences are present” or that “my present experiences are experiences.”
But that does nothing to explain away the fact that one does have present
experiences or to defeat the belief in the presentness of one’s experiences.

Fourth, stating tenseless truth conditions for one’s belief in the
presentness of his experience does not constitute even a prima facie defeater
of that belief. Such truth conditions are just irrelevant to the proper
basicality of that belief. For the object of one’s belief is not the fact that is
stated as the tenseless truth conditions of what one believes. In order for
that to be the case, (B), the statement of the truth conditions, would have to
have the same meaning as (A), the statement of the tensed belief—which
Mellor himself denies. Since they are not synonymous, the triviality of the
statement of the truth conditions does not imply the triviality of the tensed
belief. Nor is there any reason to think that the factual content of the tensed
belief is given exhaustively in the tenseless truth conditions.

It therefore seems that Mellor has not provided a successful defeater of
our belief that our experiences are present. Not only does such a belief seem
to be properly basic, but it even seems to be indefeasibly true.

A second way in which we experience the reality of tense is exhibited
by our attitudes toward the past and future. We recall past events with
nostalgia or regret, whereas we look forward to future events with either
dread or anticipation. The beliefs that these attitudes express are tensed
beliefs. As the late Oxford tense logician A. N. Prior once remarked, when
we say, “Thank goodness that’s over!” we certainly do not mean “Thank
goodness the date of that thing’s conclusion is June 15, 1954!” or “Thank
goodness that thing’s conclusion is simultaneous with this utterance!”—for
why should anyone thank goodness for that?24 Prior’s point is that such
attitudes cannot concern tenseless facts but are about tensed facts. The

Moreland, J. P., & Craig, W. L. (2017). Philosophical foundations for a christian worldview. InterVarsity Press.
Created from liberty on 2025-02-11 16:36:55.

C
op

yr
ig

ht
©

2
01

7.
In

te
rV

ar
si

ty
P

re
ss

. A
ll

rig
ht

s
re

se
rv

ed
.

further point is that it is entirely rational to have such attitudes. Therefore,
the tensed beliefs evinced by these attitudes must be rational as well. If it is
rational for a person to be relieved that his visit to the dentist is past, then
his belief that his visit is past is also rational.

On the B-theory of time, feelings of relief and anticipation must be
ultimately regarded as irrational, since events really are not past or future.
Yet one can safely say that no B-theorist has ever succeeded in divesting
himself of such feelings. Indeed, anyone who did succeed in ridding himself
of such feelings and the tensed beliefs they express would cease to be
human.

In response B-theorists concede that such attitudes do express tensed
beliefs; but they again try to strip those beliefs of any tensed factual
content. They say that we thank goodness that our headache is over not
because it is over but because we believe it to be over; and the content of
this belief is fixed by its tenseless truth conditions, such as the headache’s
being earlier than the time of one’s belief. Thus one’s truly believing that
his headache is over does not imply that one’s headache is objectively past.

Now certainly B-theorists are correct that what our attitudes
immediately express are tensed beliefs, not tensed facts. For an anticipated
event may be avoided and so never come to pass at all. But all that proves is
that one’s tensed beliefs are defeasible. Many times, however, our tensed
beliefs are correct. Indeed, sometimes they are indefeasibly correct, as when
one believes that the pain he felt is over. In other words, the question comes
down once more to the presentness of experience. When one feels relief,
what one is relieved about can be analyzed as a complex fact involving the
beliefs that (1) one’s experience is present and (2) some event is earlier than
the present. One can be mistaken about (2), but one cannot be mistaken
about (1), and thus the objectivity of tense remains.

There is a further feature of our attitudes toward the past and future
which deserves to be highlighted, namely, the difference in how we regard
an event depending on its pastness or futurity. An unpleasant experience
that lies in the future occasions feelings of dread; but that very same
experience, once past, evokes feelings of relief. On an A-theory of time
these different attitudes are grounded in the reality of temporal becoming. A
future event has yet to exist and will be present; but a past event no longer
exists and was present. Therefore, it is rational to have different feelings

Moreland, J. P., & Craig, W. L. (2017). Philosophical foundations for a christian worldview. InterVarsity Press.
Created from liberty on 2025-02-11 16:36:55.

C
op

yr
ig

ht
©

2
01

7.
In

te
rV

ar
si

ty
P

re
ss

. A
ll

rig
ht

s
re

se
rv

ed
.

about these events. But on a B-theory of time, this difference in attitude
toward the past and future is groundless and, hence, irrational. As
philosopher of time George Schlesinger points out, on the B-theory of time
there is no more difference between an event’s being located one hour later
versus one hour earlier than now than there is in an event’s being located
one mile to the right versus one mile to the left of here, for neither “now”
nor “here” is objective. Whether past or future, both events are equally real,
there is no temporal becoming, nor are we moving toward one event and
away from the other, and the distinction between past and future is purely
subjective. Therefore, it just makes no sense to look on these events
differently. And yet, as Schlesinger observes, such a differential concern is
a universal human experience.

Think, for example, of the difference in our attitude toward one’s birth
and one’s death. On the B-theory of time the period of personal
nonexistence that lies after one’s death is of no more significance than the
period of personal nonexistence that lies before one’s birth. And yet we
celebrate birthdays, whereas we typically dread dying, a dread that runs so
deep that one’s death, wholly in contrast to one’s birth, seems to put a
question mark behind the value of life itself. Many existentialist
philosophers have said that life becomes absurd in light of “my death”; but
no one has said this as a result of “my birth.”

B-theorists have naturally been reluctant to dismiss as irrational our
differential attitudes toward past and future events and so have instead tried
to find some basis for this difference in the static theory. For example,
Nathan Oaklander, an ardent defender of static time, insists that such a
difference is rational because on the B-theory time is asymmetric; that is to
say, there is a direction of time as determined by the ordering of events
according to the relations earlier than/later than. Oaklander thinks that it
makes all the difference in the world whether an event is later than one’s
location in time or earlier than one’s location.

But it is evident that on a B-theory of time the mere

asymmetry of time

—its having direction according to the relations earlier than/later than—is
not an adequate substitute for temporal becoming. Stripped of all tense, the
relations of earlier than/later than with respect to some event no more
justify differing attitudes on our part than would the relations to the right
of/to the left of. Indeed, on the B-theory of time, there are really two

Moreland, J. P., & Craig, W. L. (2017). Philosophical foundations for a christian worldview. InterVarsity Press.
Created from liberty on 2025-02-11 16:36:55.

C
op

yr
ig

ht
©

2
01

7.
In

te
rV

ar
si

ty
P

re
ss

. A
ll

rig
ht

s
re

se
rv

ed
.

directions to time: one the “earlier than” direction and the other the “later
than” direction. In the absence of temporal becoming it is wholly arbitrary
how these directions are laid on the series of events. The two arrows of time
could be turned 180 degrees without any inconsistency with the facts.
Although some scientists try to appeal to the laws of thermodynamics or
other physical processes to establish the single arrow of time, all such
attempts presuppose a prior choice of direction—for example, that the
direction of entropy increase is the later than direction. In the absence of
temporal becoming, such a choice is wholly arbitrary. We could have called
the direction of entropy increase earlier than if we had wanted to. Thus
earlier and later simply do not have the significance on a B-theory of time
that they do on a dynamic theory.

Our differing attitudes toward past and future events serve to underline
how deeply ingrained and how strongly held our tensed beliefs are. If the B-
theory of time is correct, feelings of relief, nostalgia, dread, and anticipation
are all irrational. Since such feelings are ineradicable, the B-theory would
condemn us all to irrationality. In the absence of any defeater for our belief
in the objective distinction between past, present, and future, such a belief
remains properly basic and the feelings they evoke entirely appropriate.

There are many other ways in which we experience the objective reality
of tense and temporal becoming. Unless B-theorists are able to come up
with some more powerful warrant for adopting a B-theory of time, we
ought to stick with the A-theory. So what reasons are there for thinking that
a B-theory of time is true?

Undoubtedly, the major motivation for the adoption of a B-theory of
time by philosophers of science is the conviction that relativity theory
demands it. As Einstein himself came to realize, his special theory makes
the most sense if it is formulated in a geometry of four dimensions, and his
general theory of relativity characterizes gravity, not as a force, but as the
curvature of four-dimensional space-time (the union of space and time into
a single reality, which is presupposed by a geometrical approach to
gravitation). But from what has already been said above, it is clear that
such an argument is not at all compelling. First, there is an interpretation of
the mathematical core of special relativity that is empirically equivalent to
the Einsteinian interpretation and is fully compatible with an A-theory of

Moreland, J. P., & Craig, W. L. (2017). Philosophical foundations for a christian worldview. InterVarsity Press.
Created from liberty on 2025-02-11 16:36:55.

C
op

yr
ig

ht
©

2
01

7.
In

te
rV

ar
si

ty
P

re
ss

. A
ll

rig
ht

s
re

se
rv

ed
.

time, namely, Lorentzian relativity. So what is wrong with a Lorentzian
interpretation?

Verificationism aside, at the root of many physicists’ aversion to
Lorentzian relativity is the conviction that comes to expression in Einstein’s
aphorism: “Subtle is the Lord, but malicious He is not.” That is to say, if
there exists in nature a fundamental asymmetry, then nature will not
conspire to conceal it from us. But Lorentzian relativity requires us to
believe that although absolute simultaneity and length exist in the world,
nature conceals these from us by slowing down our clocks (clock
retardation) and shrinking our measuring rods (length contraction) when
we try to detect them. D’Abro voices his objection to such a conspiracy of
nature:

If Nature was blind, by what marvelous coincidence had all things
been so adjusted as to conceal a velocity through the ether? And if
Nature was wise, she had surely other things to attend to, more
worthy of her consideration, and would scarcely be interested in
hampering our feeble attempts to philosophize. In Lorentz’s theory,
Nature, when we read into her system all these extra-ordinary
adjustments ad hoc, is made to appear mischievous; it was
exceedingly difficult to reconcile one’s self to finding such human
traits in the universal plan.25

It must first be said that d’Abro greatly exaggerates the extent of the
alleged conspiracy. After all, special relativity is a restricted theory: it is
only uniform motion relative to the privileged reference frame that is
concealed from us. But acceleration and rotation are absolute motions that
nature does nothing to conceal. Furthermore, one must surely question the
presupposition that if fundamental asymmetries exist, nature must disclose
these to us. The empirical manifestation of an underlying state of nature
may often appear altered as a result of distortions that intervene between
theory and evidence, so that it is a nontrivial task to excavate the state of
nature from its distorted manifestation. Tim Maudlin, a philosopher of
science who has specialized in the implications of so-called quantum
nonlocality for relativity theory, concludes after surveying all the attempts
to integrate the results of Bell’s theorem with relativity theory, “One way or

Moreland, J. P., & Craig, W. L. (2017). Philosophical foundations for a christian worldview. InterVarsity Press.
Created from liberty on 2025-02-11 16:36:55.

C
op

yr
ig

ht
©

2
01

7.
In

te
rV

ar
si

ty
P

re
ss

. A
ll

rig
ht

s
re

se
rv

ed
.

another God has played us a nasty trick.”26 He maintains that the solution
of Lorentzian relativity cannot be rejected on the grounds that it would be
deceptive of nature, for the partisans of all the solutions say the same thing
about all the others. In the end, he muses, “The real challenge falls to the
theologians of physics, who must justify the ways of a Deity who is, if not
evil, at least extremely mischievous.”27

As for d’Abro’s complaint about finding “human traits in the universal
plan,” the Lorentzian might in response appeal to the so-called anthropic
principle. According to that principle, features of the universe can be seen
in the correct perspective only if we keep in mind that certain features of
the universe are necessary if observers like us are to exist. If the universe
were not to have those features, then we would not be here to observe the
ones it has. Now our very existence depends on the maintenance of certain
states of equilibrium within us. But length contraction and

clock retardation

are, on the Lorentzian view, the result precisely of material systems’
maintaining their equilibrium states while being in motion. Thus, if nature
lacked this compensating behavior, we would not be here to observe the
fact! Given that we could not exist without it, why should we be surprised
at observing nature’s “conspiracy”?

But why is nature structured in such a way? Given the theistic
perspective from which we approach these questions, we should hardly be
surprised at discovering that the universe is designed in such a way as to
support our existence. We should expect that God will have chosen laws of
nature that will maintain the equilibrium states essential to our existence.
Even if, as d’Abro puts it, Nature is blind, God is not; and if Nature is not
wise, God is. It is not Nature, then, who is concerned with our feeble selves,
who deems us worthy subjects to attend to, but the Creator and Sustainer of
the universe who is mindful of man (Ps 8:3-8). Subtle is the Lord, merciful
he is also.

As for the general theory of relativity, the question raised by Einstein’s
geometrical approach to gravitation is whether it is to be understood
realistically or merely instrumentally. According to the noted philosopher of
science Arthur Fine, few working, knowledgeable scientists give credence
to the realist construal of general relativity. Rather, the theory is seen as “a
magnificent organizing tool” for dealing with gravitational problems: “Most

Moreland, J. P., & Craig, W. L. (2017). Philosophical foundations for a christian worldview. InterVarsity Press.
Created from liberty on 2025-02-11 16:36:55.

C
op

yr
ig

ht
©

2
01

7.
In

te
rV

ar
si

ty
P

re
ss

. A
ll

rig
ht

s
re

se
rv

ed
.

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ps+8%3A3-8&version=NRSV

who actually use it think of the theory as a powerful instrument, rather than
as expressing a ‘big truth.’”28 It can be safely said that no scientific
disadvantage arises from treating the geometrical approach to gravity as
merely instrumental. Indeed, on the contrary, it can be argued that a realist
understanding of space-time actually obscures our understanding of nature
by substituting geometry for a physical gravitational force, thus impeding
progress in connecting the theory of gravity to the theory of particles. In his
Gravitation and Cosmology, the Nobel Prize–winning physicist Steven
Weinberg contends that taking gravity to be a real force is “a crucial link”
between general relativity and particle physics, since there must then be a
particle of gravitational radiation, the so-called graviton.29 The geometrical
approach of space-time realism is thus a positive impediment to our gaining
a more integrated understanding of physics. Geometrical space-time, in
Weinberg’s view, should be understood “only as a mathematical tool” and
“not as a fundamental basis for the theory of gravitation.”30

What other reasons might be offered for adopting a B-theory of time?
One of the most celebrated arguments is McTaggart’s paradox. In 1908
the Cambridge idealist John Ellis McTaggart published a remarkable article
in the journal Mind titled “The Unreality of Time.”31 His argument consists
of two parts. In the first part McTaggart argues that time is essentially
tensed. In the second part he argues that tensed time is self-contradictory. It
therefore follows that time is unreal.

Since our concern is with arguments for the B-theory of time, we shall
focus on the second half of McTaggart’s proof. His argument here is apt to
appear bewildering unless we first understand its metaphysical
presuppositions. The key to understanding the contradiction McTaggart sees
in a tensed view of time is his presupposition that past, present, and future
events are all equally real or existent and that temporal becoming consists
in the movement of the present along this series. McTaggart thinks of the
series of temporal events as stretched out like a string of light bulbs that are
each momentarily illuminated in succession, so that the light is seen to
move across the series of bulbs. In the same way presentness moves across
the series of events. Since all events are equally existent, the only respect in
which they change is the change in tense that they undergo. First they are
future, then they are present, then they are past. In every other respect they

Moreland, J. P., & Craig, W. L. (2017). Philosophical foundations for a christian worldview. InterVarsity Press.
Created from liberty on 2025-02-11 16:36:55.

C
op

yr
ig

ht
©

2
01

7.
In

te
rV

ar
si

ty
P

re
ss

. A
ll

rig
ht

s
re

se
rv

ed
.

just are. Obviously, then, for McTaggart becoming present does not imply
becoming existent.

McTaggart observes that pastness, presentness, and futurity are mutually
incompatible: no event can have all three. But given McTaggart’s
tenselessly existing series of temporal events, every event does have all
three! Take an event tenselessly located at t1. At t1 that event is obviously
present. But because all events are equally real, that same event also has
pastness and futurity because at t2 it is past and at t0 it is future. The
moment t1 is not any more real or privileged than t0 or t2, and so the event
in question must be characterized by the tenses it has at all these times,
which is impossible. We can visualize the problem by imagining the people
existing at each of these three moments. For the people at t1, t1 is present.
Since neither t1 nor these people pass away, it is still the case when it is t2
that for the people at t1 the moment t1 is present. But for the people at t2 the
moment t1 is past. The moment t1 never sheds presentness and takes on
pastness—just ask the people at t1! But t1 never exchanges its pastness for
any other tense either, as the people at t2 will tell you. Thus t1 is
changelessly both present and past, which is impossible. If someone should
say, “But t1 is present relative to t1 and past relative to t2, which is not
contradictory,” the advocate of tenseless time will say that such relational
properties reduce to the tenseless relations is simultaneous with and is
earlier than, which vindicates the tenseless theory.

After decades of discussion, a consensus seems to be emerging that
McTaggart’s paradox is based on a misguided attempt to marry a dynamic
theory of temporal becoming to a static series of events. It is then no
wonder that the dynamic-static theory of time he winds up with proves to be
self-contradictory! Sharp-sighted critics of McTaggart such as C. D. Broad
and A. N. Prior have insisted almost from the beginning that a tensed or A-
theory of time implies a commitment to presentism, the doctrine that the
only temporal entities that exist are present entities. According to
presentism, past and future entities do not exist. Thus there really are no
past or future events, except in the sense that there have been certain events
and there will be certain others; the only real events are present events.
Thus there can be no question of an event’s swapping futurity for

Moreland, J. P., & Craig, W. L. (2017). Philosophical foundations for a christian worldview. InterVarsity Press.
Created from liberty on 2025-02-11 16:36:55.

C
op

yr
ig

ht
©

2
01

7.
In

te
rV

ar
si

ty
P

re
ss

. A
ll

rig
ht

s
re

se
rv

ed
.

presentness or cashing in presentness for pastness. Temporal becoming is
not the exchange of tense on the part of tenselessly existing events, but the
coming into and going out of existence of the entities themselves. Events no
more change tenses than they exchange properties of nonexistence and
existence! An event possesses only the tense it has when it is present,
namely, presentness. No event ever possesses pastness or futurity, for
nonpresent events do not exist. Thus there can be no question of any event’s
possessing incompatible tense determinations. Thus McTaggart’s paradox is
ineffectual against the presentist. The paradox arises, not from a
contradiction within a tensed theory of time, but from a misconceived union
of the A- and B-theories of time.

Presentism is not infrequently rejected because it is thought to imply, in
conjunction with STR, a sort of solipsism (the view that I alone exist),
which no sane person can believe. This unwelcome consequence is due to
the absence of absolute time and space within the context of STR, which
makes it impossible to define any plausible coexistence relation between
oneself and other things. Anyone who has followed our argument thus far,
however, will realize that this objection to presentism is not difficult to
answer. It is predicated on an Einsteinian interpretation of relativity theory,
which one may reject on wholly independent grounds in favor of a
Lorentzian interpretation. A Lorentzian understanding of relativity
preserves relations of absolute simultaneity and so confronts no challenge
concerning coexistence relations among temporal beings. The presentist
who accepts Lorentzian relativity is thus not threatened by the specter of
solipsism.

In conclusion, we have good grounds for accepting an A-theory of time
in view of the proper basicality of our belief in the objective reality of

tense

and temporal becoming. By contrast, arguments for a B-theory of time tend
to rely on a physical interpretation of relativity theory that is founded on an
untenable verificationist epistemology. In general, contemporary
philosophy of time and space has, as a result of the positivist era, been
thoroughly infected by an unhealthy scientism. It is high time for
philosophy of time and space to be restored to the domain of philosophy
where it properly belongs: metaphysics, where theistic considerations, such
as Newton adduced, cannot be ignored.

Moreland, J. P., & Craig, W. L. (2017). Philosophical foundations for a christian worldview. InterVarsity Press.
Created from liberty on 2025-02-11 16:36:55.

C
op

yr
ig

ht
©

2
01

7.
In

te
rV

ar
si

ty
P

re
ss

. A
ll

rig
ht

s
re

se
rv

ed
.

CHAPTER SUMMARY
Traditionally a topic handled in metaphysics, philosophy of time and space
as practiced today has been absorbed into philosophy of science. This is the
lingering effect of the acid bath of verificationism and positivism, which
dominated philosophy during the first half of the twentieth century. In
particular, verificationist analyses of key concepts like time and
simultaneity lie essentially at the epistemological foundations of relativity
theory, the principal domain of physics addressing problems of time and
space. The demise of positivism reopens the traditional metaphysical
problems of time and space. In dealing with such questions one cannot
ignore the philosophical impact of the existence of God, which lies at the
metaphysical foundations of the classical concept of time and space.

One of the most important metaphysical questions about the nature of
time concerns the status of tense and temporal becoming. Partisans of a
tensed or A-theory of time can plausibly argue that in light of our temporal
experience our belief in the objective difference between past, present, and
future is a properly basic belief. Advocates of a tenseless or B-theory of
time appeal in vain to relativity theory to defeat this conclusion, since there
are plausible interpretations of that theory that are consistent with an A-
theory. Moreover, objections based on McTaggart’s paradox may be turned
back by adoption of a metaphysic of presentism.

CHECKLIST OF BASIC TERMS AND CONCEPTS
A-theory of time (dynamic or tensed theory of time)

absolute motion

absolute place

absolute space

absolute time

aether

Moreland, J. P., & Craig, W. L. (2017). Philosophical foundations for a christian worldview. InterVarsity Press.
Created from liberty on 2025-02-11 16:36:55.

C
op

yr
ig

ht
©

2
01

7.
In

te
rV

ar
si

ty
P

re
ss

. A
ll

rig
ht

s
re

se
rv

ed
.

anthropic principle

arrow of time

asymmetry of time

B-theory of time (static or tenseless theory of time)

clock retardation

clock synchronization

constancy of the speed of light

direction of time

eternity

general theory of relativity

geometrical approach to gravitation

inertial frame

length contraction

Lorentz transformations

Lorentzian relativity

Maxwell’s electrodynamics

McTaggart’s paradox

Michelson-Morley experiment

Newton’s mechanics

omnipresence

one-way velocity of light

operationalist definition

particle physics

positivism

Moreland, J. P., & Craig, W. L. (2017). Philosophical foundations for a christian worldview. InterVarsity Press.
Created from liberty on 2025-02-11 16:36:55.

C
op

yr
ig

ht
©

2
01

7.
In

te
rV

ar
si

ty
P

re
ss

. A
ll

rig
ht

s
re

se
rv

ed
.

presentism

presentness of experience

relative space

relative time

relativity of length

relativity of simultaneity

simultaneity

solipsism

space-time

special theory of relativity

speed of light

temporal becoming

tense

time’s flow

uniform motion

verificationism

Moreland, J. P., & Craig, W. L. (2017). Philosophical foundations for a christian worldview. InterVarsity Press.
Created from liberty on 2025-02-11 16:36:55.

C
op

yr
ig

ht
©

2
01

7.
In

te
rV

ar
si

ty
P

re
ss

. A
ll

rig
ht

s
re

se
rv

ed
.

 Bennett: Chapter 4

Bennett, W. J. (2002). 
The Broken Hearth. Random House Digital Inc.. 

https://mbsdirect.vitalsource.com/books/9780385504867

image3

image4

image5

image6

image7

image8

image9

image10

image11

image1

image2

Moreland, J. P., & Craig, W. L. (2017). Philosophical foundations for a christian worldview. InterVarsity Press.
Created from liberty on 2025-02-11 16:35:58.

C
op

yr
ig

ht
©

2
01

7.
In

te
rV

ar
si

ty
P

re
ss

. A
ll

rig
ht

s
re

se
rv

ed
.