Jeff Cook, "Could Believing in God Harm Your Soul?

Cook:

Could Believing in God Harm Your Soul?

Throughout Christian history it has been common to judge those who do not believe in God as not simply unwise, but morally suspect. That if a person did not believe in God, this was not simply a cognitive conclusion; it was a mark against that person’s character. Yet I know many men and women who want God to exist, know far more about the philosophical arguments for God-belief than I do, yet fail to embrace theism. Such folks are by all accounts honest and often doing the best with what they have—and this is a puzzle.

Perhaps those of us who wrestle with God belief are actually in the precise place God desires us to be. Perhaps times of non-belief and the experience of God’s absence can have real value. That was my experience (which I chronicle here), it’s the experience of many I care about, and it is common experience in the Bible.

Do you think “believing in God” can be detrimental to faith, God-belief, the soul — as Jeff Cook explains this in the post? Can God-belief diminish desire for God?
 
God’s hiddenness points to the fact that God values our desires more than our beliefs. I have argued over the past month that wanting God to exist is more important than believing in God (here and here), because I hold that pursuits of the heart are more important than rational deductions and one’s ontology. Both are important of course, but I think there are good reasons for seeing reason as secondary. In my own experience, the material that moved me most in reconsidering God belief was all about desire and it came form a French mathematician named Blaise Pascal.

I can hear it now, “What, the wager guy?” If all you know of Pascal is the Wager Argument prepare to have your heart explode. I have placed some of the Pensees below in an order that I find compelling, and because Pascal’s quotes are so good I couldn’t help adding my reflections in brackets to push the argument. I would love to hear your thoughts, particularly from those of you who have trouble believing in God.

I love Jeff's writings and have followed him for the past few months. It is his honesty and passionate search for truth that I value most. I'm looking forward to reviewing his new book. You can finish the rest of this post HERE.

--Nick

"They Don't Believe Because Your God Isn't Desirable"

Jeff Cook:

They Don’t Believe Because Your God Isn’t Desirable

I watched the recent debate between William Lane Craig, a Christian, and Sam Harris an Atheist. The debate (seen Here) was over the foundations of morality. The Christian addressed the philosophical question at hand with skill and insight. By the midway point the atheist struck me as seriously outmatched and overpowered.

Yet then things changed. Sam Harris began putting forth a set of arguments that had nothing to do with the topic at hand: the problem of religious diversity, the problem of pain, reflections on the character of God in the Bible. By the end I thought the Atheist won—not because he actually addressed the question at hand—on that front I thought he failed. But because I don’t recall anything the Christian said that made me want to believe in his God, yet I had a worthy list of things the Atheist said that made me think the Christian God distasteful.

Is the debate about what is rational or about desire? What do you think of Jeff Cook’s notion that desire needs to be addressed more in apologetics?

Such experiences are not uncommon. Despite solid, rational rebuttals from philosophers across the board, despite the fact that the “new atheist” clan seems hopelessly naïve about ethics and epistemology—their arguments continue to gain ground because they know something Christian apologist apparently don’t.


The debate about God in our culture is not about what’s rational.

 I think Jeff has written a challenging post. My thanks to Scot for posting it. I do remember watching the debate between Craig and Harris, and though I did think Craig technically won the debate, I was left with an odd taste in my mouth.

What Harris said didn't strike me as true, nor did it strike me as a proper debate tactic. But it worked in making this very difficult to brush off.

For the rest of the post, click HERE.

--Nick

Jeff Cook, "C.S. Lewis, Rob Bell & 'Love Wins'"

Nick:

This is something I've been mulling over for a few weeks. I think I agree with most of what Cook says about Bell. I don't see much difference between Bell and Lewis, though there are nuances. Bell seems for more hopeful about God potentially saving all, whereas Lewis had a more pessimistic streak about such things.

McKnight:

This post is by a friend of the Jesus Creed blog; Jeff’s got a strong point to make about Rob Bell’s new book and the seeming culture war at work in the responses. He isn’t suggesting that such a battle is all that is in play, and I’m asking us to give his post a very careful hearing and reading. I’m not enough of a CS Lewis expert to give a definitive answer, though I always have thought the end of The Last Battle went in a universalistic direction. Perhaps we can have some CS Lewis experts speak up today.

 Cook:

Rob Bell, CS Lewis, and the Real Argument at Hand

After a couple of weeks of dialogue it is clear to me that the primary issue in the debate over Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived is not about what Bell is saying, but how he says it.

I suspect many felt poked in the eye by the way Harper and Rob decided to market Love Wins. I suspect Bell intimidates some because he is part of a culture they do not understand and cannot control (that culture is urban, postmodern, and discovers the truth more naturally through questions, sarcasm, and intuition than through the systematic presentations of the top Christian publishing house).

And let’s not kid ourselves, I suspect the fire behind the debate is often about envy and resentment of a very talented man, about our own inability to get a hearing in the public square, and about the fear that new ways of talking about Jesus might trump what some have preached for decades.

These issues are big, but they are not only about doctrine. The issues at hand are about culture and control, about how the theology of emerging Christians will be defined, and about the continuing fight between postmodern and modern expressions of Christianity. This seems clear to me now, for I would like to defend the following claim:

There’s not one controversial idea in Love Wins that is not clearly voiced as a real possibility by the most popular evangelical writer of the last century, CS Lewis. 



Lewis and Bell hint at a number of theological possibilities in their writings that cut against what we might call the majority opinion, including: the possibility that those in hell might journey toward the grace of God after death, the possibility that those who have not heard the name of Jesus might find salvation in and through the image of Christ in their own pagan stories and myths, the possibility that some will eventually receive God’s grace freely after death, the possibility that hell is about bigger things than God’s wrath, the insistence that the metaphors describing what Jesus’ cross accomplishes and how his work is applied to us are culturally subjective, and that some ancient pictures of the atonement may be too confusing to help us right here, right now. All of these lines of thought were in Lewis’s writings before they were in Love Wins.

Let’s look at one example. Though I [Jeff Cook] do not hold the following position (I’m an annihilationist regarding hell), consider how Lewis, like Bell, advances the possibility that those in hell might one day journey toward the grace of God after death. Lewis writes, “I would pay any price to be able to say ‘All will be saved’ but my reason retorts, ‘Without their will, or with it?’” Notice in this and other quotes like it, the salvation of a soul is not dependent on God’s will, but the will of the damned. In the same vein, he wrote, “I believe that if a million chances were likely to do good, they would be given” (The Problem of Pain, 110). This is a confession that God wants to save all and would provide such roads if God thought they’d work.

For the rest, click HERE.

--Nick

Jeff Cook, "Everything New"

This looks quite interesting. I love the pitch video.

--Nick