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Non-Christian PerspectivesIn Friedrich Nietzsche’s novel, Thus Spake Zarathustra, a madman interrupts a group celebrating the fact that “God is dead.” He sees what they do not see. A world in which there is no God is a world where there is no inherent right and wrong. The implication is that human life is ultimately no more significant than any other life. We may have more power, but we are no more valuable.
When I was doing my doctorate in England, I chanced upon a discussion prompt on a student’s door. The student wrote, “If humans evolved, then other forms of life are just as significant as we are.” The thought that came to me was that “if humans are merely evolved animals, then our lives are just as insignificant as those of other animals.”
It is fair enough to say that the last five hundred years have seen a general deterioration of “theism” in the European-influenced world. [1] Theism is the position that God not only exists but is involved in the world. This is the only truly Christian and indeed Wesleyan position, for if God were not involved in the world, then Christ could not be the Son of God as we believe.
Deism then became a position of many thinkers in the 1600s and 1700s. With the rise of a scientific worldview, the world was increasingly seen as a machine that ran on its own once it was initiated. God created the world, made the clock and wound it up, but now is no longer involved. A deterministic view gained prominence as the world seemed to become predictable according to strict laws of cause and effect. Interestingly, it is about this time also that Calvinism rose to prominence, in keeping with the deterministic Zeitgeist of the age.
The distinction between natural and supernatural was born. Previously, the beings of the cosmos were understood to be on a continuum of being. Heaven might be thinner material but still a type of material, an “etherial” type. Rene Descartes subtly changes the paradigm. The soul is now immaterial, part of a different realm that is supernatural, above the natural. Nature proceeds by cause and effect. The angels belong to a different realm.
Evolution made it possible for Deists to become full-blown naturalists. A naturalist, as the name suggests, rejects the supernatural. Natural, cause-effect explanations of the world become adequate. This path easily leads then to Nietzsche’s “nihilism,” a sense that everything is ultimately meaningless.
This nihilist bottom point, at its most pessimistic, concludes that human beings are little more than roadkill waiting to happen. When you look at the experimentation the Nazis did on Jews and others, you are seeing the endgame of naturalism in nihilism. Why not dehumanize other people or other races? Why not only live for yourself and what is in your own selfish interests?
In psychology, the behaviorist B. F. Skinner more or less reduced humans to animals that can be manipulated. He was not wrong about our capacity for manipulation, but he was wrong to think that we are only animals. The Christian does not see any human being as a mere animal. Yes, we are highly sophisticated animals from one point of view. But that is not the most important definer of who we are.
As a final note, the 1950s saw an attempt to look at nihilism from a “glass is half full” perspective. Sure, viewed negatively, nihilism says there is no real meaning to life or the world. But you could also look at it this way: we can make up any meaning we want.
Atheistic existentialism was a sense that we choose the meaning of life. Jean Paul Sartre famously said that, having been thrown into the world, we are responsible for everything we do. We choose our path. We define who we are. Albert Camus similarly said that the primary question of philosophy was, “Why not suicide?” If you have chosen to live, you have an implicit choice hiding somewhere for your existence. Find out what it is and go with it.
But let me show you a better way…
A Core Christian PerspectiveFrom a Christian perspective, all human beings are created in the image of God. That makes all human beings inherently valuable. Genesis 1:27 presents humanity as the pinnacle of God’s creation. The image of God there primarily has to do with “ruling” over the rest of the creation, analogous to the dominion that God has. This of course is not a rule to destroy but is best taken as a charge to steward God’s creation. With great power comes great responsibility.
Over the years, Christians have expanded their sense of the image of God beyond this ”political image.” John Wesley also spoke of a natural image and a moral image. The natural image involved our rational faculties in that we can think, similar to the fact that God thinks. The moral image is our capacity to do good, a capacity marred by the sin of Adam and our sinful natures.
While these other possible dimensions to the image of God make sense, they largely come from later Christian theology rather than from the Bible. The idea of a moral image has some basis in Ephesians 4:24 which speaks of our new selves in Christ as created after the image of God in true righteousness and holiness. However, Wesley’s theology built a theological scaffolding around this concept that had as much to do with Augustine in the 400s as with Paul.
I doubt that the most beneficial use of image-of-God language is to boast about humanity’s place in the cosmos. Yes, we are stewards of God’s creation. Yes, we are called to be holy. Yes, we were made “a little lower than God” in one sense (Ps. 8:5). But our takeaway should not be to build ourselves up but to value the lives of others because they are image-bearers. We should not curse other humans because they were made in God’s likeness (Jas. 3:9). Because humans are the image of God, all human life must be respected.
What is a human being? A human being is the only of God’s creations, at least on earth, that is created in God’s image. All human beings are inherently valuable because all human beings are created in God’s likeness. I did not put “intrinsically” because our value is based ultimately on the value that God gives to us. In a sense, our value is derivative, dependent on God. However, God is going nowhere. God loves us eternally; therefore, all human beings are eternally valuable.
What is the meaning of life? Victor Frankl (following Nietzsche) suggested that our purpose in life is to find a “why” of our own, in good existentialist fashion: "A person with a 'why' can live with any 'how.'" However, he was not correct in the ultimate sense. God is the ground of all meaning to the universe. As the Westminster Confession put it, “What is the chief end of man?” Answer: “To glorify God and enjoy him forever.”
Amid all the other meanings to our lives–our relationships, our families, our impact on the world and others–the ultimate meaning of life is our relationship with God. Life finds its ultimate meaning in our faith and love of God, and the love of others then naturally issues therefrom. “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless till it finds its rest in you” (Augustine’s Confessions). Not all may perceive such restlessness, but Christians believe that humanity finds its truest self in God.
It goes without saying, then, that no truly Christian perspective will tolerate a view of any “other” that dehumanizes them or denies them their full identity as image-bearers. The original US Constitution, which treated slaves as three-fifths of a person, was not Christian in that reckoning. Any devaluing of the immigrant or the other ethnicity or the other gender is not Christian.
Any devaluing of another race violates a Christian understanding of humanity. Even the violent criminal deserves a certain dignity as created in the image of God, even though they have denied that dignity to others. No dead human body should be left outside to rot like roadkill, no matter how immoral the person may have been in life because he or she is someone who was created in the image of God.
Wesleyans and Gender
Christians disagree on questions of egalitarianism and complementarianism The first allows virtually all roles equally to men and women, while the second specifies certain roles for the one and the other. Complementarianism can only be truly Christian if it affirms the equal value of women despite specifying differing roles for them in society and the church. I would argue that the trajectory of Wesleyanism tends toward egalitarianism, although there are many Wesleyans who are complementarians.
The last two decades have seen a significant emphasis in Wesleyan and other circles on the essential role of the body in our human identity. In the 2000s, there was an emphasis on bodily resurrection in books like N.T. Wright’s Surprised by Hope and Joel Green’s, Body, Soul, and Human Life: The Nature of Humanity in the Bible. Wright emphasizes that the notion of the immortality of the soul is not particularly biblical. Green similarly does his best to explain away dualistic imagery in the Bible.
This movement took a different turn in the wake of Obergefell and the legalization of gay marriage in the US. Books like Timothy Tennant’s For the Sake of the Body virtually call any dualistic conceptualization of humanity as Gnostic. In addition to biblical arguments for traditional sexuality, physical embodiment is emphasized as a kind of natural revelation of distinct human identities that are different but equal.
While I would argue that the Bible is pretty clear on what forms of sex are appropriate and inappropriate, I suspect that the anti-dualism movement has gone well beyond what might be biblically justified. Dualism in itself is not Gnostic. [2] It seems to me that while more holistic approaches to human identity are perfectly acceptable, we cannot honestly deny that the New Testament operates extensively with dualistic imagery in relation to human identity. [3]
So even if the language is ultimately metaphorical, it is perfectly biblical to conceptualize a human being as a soul or spirit in a body. “Though our outward person is wasting away, our inward person is being renewed day by day” (2 Cor. 4:16). And we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ to give an account for the things we did in the body. (2 Cor. 5:10). Wright is not wrong, but he arguably goes too far, as does Green.
While there is thus currently a trend of Wesleyans toward a more complementarian approach, this is largely due to social reaction. Many in the Wesleyan Church still see the Day of Pentecost as the great equalizer that made the nature of our bodies irrelevant when it comes to spiritual things and matters relating to leadership in the church and the home. We should not "essentialize" gender except where our bodies are overwhelmingly clear (e.g., who gets to be pregnant). [4]
This is not a Gnostic position. Sometimes it is argued that it is the egalitarians who are being assimilated into secular culture. However, where did secular culture get this equal valuing of all human beings regardless of race or gender? It is arguably the continued fumes of a Judeo-Christian worldview! Ironically, then, I would claim, some in the church are proving to be less Christian on this issue than the surrounding culture when it comes to the equal valuing of all human beings. A push away from equal status and value would be a true corruption of the church by culture away from Pentecost.
Wesleyans and DeterminismStrictly speaking, Wesleyans do not believe in free will. I might add that Augustine’s understanding of the Fall, the sinful nature, and so forth involved development from Paul’s own categories. Paul did not think of Sin as a nature but as a power over our flesh. The “I” of Paul in Romans 7 is not corrupted–-it wants to do the good (Rom. 7:18). The spirit is just overcome by the flesh (note the dualism).
Total depravity, understood in an absolute sense, is thus an Augustinian category more than a Pauline one. We might call Paul's view something more like "thoroughgoing depravity." However we parse the details, Wesleyan and Christian orthodoxy holds that we cannot do good in our own power. We cannot come to God on our own. Our moral image is marred and corrupted. Without help from the Spirit, we are powerless in the face of the power of Sin.
For John Calvin, then, the only solution was irresistible grace. God chose to save some. He predestined them for salvation. They were unconditionally elected. They were empowered to do limited righteousness. The switch was flipped on for them entirely by God. They would be saved. The rest remained in their default state of corruption and damnation.
Jakob Arminius in the late 1500s disagreed. He found in Scripture a sense that God gave a choice to far more than just certain elect. Even though it was all by God’s power, election was conditional upon our choice. Wesley used the phrase “preventing grace” to refer to empowerment from God for us to be able to choose one way or the other, despite our underlying depravity.
Wesleyans thus do not believe that our eternal destiny is predetermined. Along with the Quakers, many Wesleyans have historically believed that God “lightens everyone coming into the world” at some point (John 1:9). Instead of an on-off switch, it is more like a dimmer switch. God turns the light up enough for us to choose.
At the same time, we should not assume that the dimmer switch will always be on. God is under no obligation to leave that "prevenient grace" for our whole life, for us to choose when we get around to it. It seems enough to satisfy justice that God simply give everyone a chance at some point.
Over the years, Wesleyans have had varying senses of human freedom within this overall sense of freedom to choose for or against salvation. Wesleyans have often seen God as having a detailed, perfect, individual will for our lives, often without realizing the tension of this concept with our sense of free will. But as we saw with the free will theodicy, it is important for us to recognize a God-given human freedom to mess up any plan. This freedom suggests that what actually happens in the world is often not God’s ideal but God’s concession.
There are also what I consider to be silly objections to free will. “It would violate God’s sovereignty.” Really? What if a sovereign God wanted to give us some freedom? Would God thereby make himself unsovereign? That’s just silly. If a sovereign God wants to give his creation some freedom, that’s his right and his business. “Who are you O clay to question the potter, ‘Why have you made me thus?’”
Similarly, the idea that we cannot have free will if God knows the future seems pretty silly as well. If God in some way is outside of time, then we can simply say he has seen what will happen without causing it to happen. I use the illustration of someone watching the recording of a football game that they were actually present at. God, having already watched the game, knows what is going to happen as he watches it with us in time.
In the end, God is both immanent and transcendent. He is both in the universe going through time with us and outside the universe looking in on all time. As transcendent, he knows the future. As immanent, the Spirit goes through time with us. This is the traditional Christian perspective, and Calvinism in this regard is the outlier.
Debated IssuesThe Soul
Most Christians throughout history, including Wesleyans, have believed that we have a detachable soul as part of our human identity. However, there is at least the possibility that biblical imagery of the soul is a picture, an expression of an eternal truth in the categories of a particular Greek worldview. The core belief is that we will continue to exist as personal, conscious individuals for all eternity. More than one metaphor might express that truth.
Here we note that the concept of a detachable soul is not as thoroughgoing in Scripture as we might think. In the Old Testament, the nephesh is not a detachable part of a person but the whole living person. “God molded the man from the dust [body] and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life [spirit], and the man became a living soul [a whole, living being]” (Gen. 2:7) The word sometimes translated “soul” in the King James Old Testament is thus never a reference to a detachable part of a person. In fact, even the living beings in the sea in Genesis 1 are also called nephesh chayyah (e.g., 1:20), “living soul.”
The New Testament often continues this concept of a soul. “Whoever loses his life [psyche] for my sake will find it” (Matt. 10:39). Obviously we don’t lose our spiritual soul to find it. Nevertheless, other passages do use the Greek sense of a detachable soul. “Do not be afraid of those who can kill the body but not the soul. Fear the one who can destroy both body and soul in Gehenna” (Matt. 10:28).
Most Wesleyans continue to understand the concept of the soul literally. A human being is thus a soul in a body. However, there are also what we might call “non-reductive physicalists” in the broader Wesleyan camp. These are individuals who believe that we are holistic embodied beings (physicalists) even though our bodies do not fully define us. Although we are unitary beings, we cannot be reduced to our bodies as the naturalist does. We are destined for eternity and glorified bodies.
Evolution
I have heard broader Wesleyans who believe in evolutionary creation speak of Adam as the first human with a soul. The notion that the genetic population of early humanity was never less than 10,000 complicates but would not necessarily make this scenario obsolete. God could at a certain point in time create souls for all the offspring of a certain pair. Such hypotheses are of course wildly speculative.
The non-reductive physicalist who believes in evolution might have a harder time demarcating when humanity truly began. Perhaps they could see the beginning of humanity in how God related to hominins rather than in some clear alteration or demarcation in human biology or anthropology. God would simply decide when humanity came to be in his image, and we would be so from then on.
Certainly, none of these questions are necessary if we go with the traditional view that humanity started full stop with the special creation of Adam. This is certainly the view Wesley had a century before the theory of evolution and the view of the vast majority of Wesleyans today.
Beginning of Personhood
The Wesleyan Church affirms that “life begins at conception.” On the one hand, I am not sure that this phrase is the best expression of what we are saying. The sperm was alive. The egg was alive. I believe it would be more precise to say something along the lines of “Human personhood begins at conception” or “The moral responsibility for preserving human life begins at conception.”
This belief emerges especially from our broader theology of life inasmuch as abortion does not seem to be explicitly addressed in Scripture. God certainly knits us in our mother's womb, as the psalmist says in Psalm 139:13 (also Jeremiah and Paul). We see this verse as an indication of God's care and concern for children developing in the womb. It is a beautiful expression of what we believe about all babies in the womb.
However, it is not a proof of that belief. We see that implication because we bring a broader belief to that text. The text itself is the reflection of one grown, sentient individual looking back on a future that God had already activated and preserved. It makes no explicit statement about all children in the womb. We see this passage as an affirmation of all life in the womb because we bring this premise with us to the psalm. We affirm the premise so it is not wrong to read the psalm with such overtones.
Exodus 21:22 is also a passage sometimes mentioned in this discussion. It relates to a situation where a pregnant woman has “children come forth” in a fight between two men. However, similar statements in the other law codes of the Ancient Near East seem to have a miscarriage in mind. The historical context thus inclines us toward interpreting the verse as it was generally interpreted prior to the debates of recent decades. The mention of “children” coming forth is also curious since having multiple children in the womb was surely not the majority phenomenon. Perhaps it implies an unpleasant picture with not only child but various other tissues emerging in a miscarriage.
At the same time, the possibility that this Exodus passage does not treat the consequence of bringing about the child's death on the same level as harming the mother would not make the opposite case either. The Old Testament world was a brutal, vicious world. We do not stone rebellious sons or people caught in adultery. That is to say, most Christians believe that the civil law of the Old Testament was specifically directed at Israel in its ancient Near Eastern setting. The spirit of the New Testament would seem to support a less harsh, more compassionate civil code than that which Israel had in the context of the ancient world.
Here again, a belief that God creates a unique soul at conception is one way to theologically explain our sense that moral obligation for the life of the child begins at conception. Certainly, the bias of Scripture is toward the preservation of life. “Be fruitful and multiply.” It would go against the spirit of Scripture for abortion to provide a license for a promiscuous life. Any focus on “my freedom” that is selfish or trivializes life would go against the grain of Scripture.
Capital Punishment
What of war? What of capital punishment? There are Wesleyans who see a thoroughgoing “pro-life” stance as one that extends from conception to capital punishment and a pacifist stance. I deeply respect them.
However, there does not seem to be a biblical mandate for these positions. They are also theological extensions that go beyond the biblical text. For example, when the sixth commandment says not to murder, it does so in the midst of a law that frequently prescribes capital punishment and is established by way of the conquest of Canaan. In context, the sixth commandment not to murder clearly does not include these other ways of killing that are endorsed elsewhere under certain situations. It has in mind someone intentionally murdering another man or woman.
In Romans 13:4, Paul indicates that the Roman government does not “wield the sword” for no reason. This would seem to be an implicit acceptance by Paul of capital punishment by the empire. Similarly, soldiers are nowhere told in the New Testament that they must abandon their way of life, even though a number of centurions appear in the biblical pages.
That is not to say that capital punishment is something that Christians should be excited about. Arguments can be made that our current system of criminal justice often puts the wrong people to death. There is nothing wrong with believing as much time as possible should be given to a person in hope that they would repent. So there is no biblical mandate or prohibition on the topic of capital punishment. We must “work out our salvation with fear and trembling.”
War
War is also present throughout the Bible. In the New Testament, the church is not in a position to decide whether to go to war. On the one hand, Mark 13 seems to assume that Christians were generally not involved in the Jewish War of 66-72. However, the epithet Simon the Zealot remains curious, especially since the Zealots probably did not form as a distinct group until around the time of the Jewish War.
“Just war theory” has generally been accepted throughout church history by most Christians. War should not be pre-emptive but a last resort. It should be waged by a legitimate authority for a just cause for the right reasons with a probability of success. Generally, those who go to war would claim these things even when it is certainly not the case. In the end, those who are pacifists are usually closer to the spirit of Christ than those who are quick to justify violence of any sort.
In the end, we have to work out our salvation together with fear and trembling. We often act like our positions are obvious in Scripture and reason, but our arguments are sometimes weaker than we think. They are sometimes influenced by traditions and culture in ways in which we are not aware. On such serious matters, we should be humble seekers rather than presumptuous assumers.
Conclusion
What is a human being? A human being, more than anything else, is an image of God, created in his likeness, beloved by him. All human beings, from the most virtuous to the evilest, are therefore inherently valuable. No human being could ever be roadkill.
The Bible is thoroughly in favor of life. "Thou shalt not murder" is a clear commandment that is affirmed in both the Old and New Testaments, where murder is the intentional killing of an innocent man, woman, or child. However, the Bible does not equate murder with all killing. The Bible assumes that death in war and capital punishment can be appropriate actions.
[1] I am drawing heavily here on the work of James Sire, The Universe Next Door.
[2] Gnosticism considered the physical realm to be evil. Biblical dualism (and Plato for that matter) only considered the physical realm to be inferior. "The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak" (e.g., Matt. 26:41). "The phrase 'yet once more' makes clear the removal of what is being shaken, as that which has been created, so that what is unshakeable may remain" (Heb. 12:27).
[3] As someone who loves physics and cosmology, let me also suggest that there is a certain “earthism” to these arguments. Who knows how God might have created sentient creatures in other parts of the universe? I have a feeling we are going to feel pretty silly when we meet some creatures from other galaxies in heaven.
[4] To essentialize gender, as I define the phrase, is to stereotype men and women in ways that go beyond explicit physical characteristics.
1 comment:
Heavy topics! Thanks.
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