Apologetics

Believe it or not, being labeled as false is not the worst thing that can be said about a religion. Instead, the worst thing that one can say about a religion is that its central claims have no epistemic merit whatever, and therefore that it is neither true or false, just irrelevant. Such a religion would be literally meaningless, along the order of a UFO cult, or worse. A meaningless declaration like Noam Chomsky’s “colorless green ideas sleep furiously” is neither true nor false because it does not advance any statement about anything. Such a statement is simply hollow. In contrast, even though it may be false to say “it is raining” on a perfectly cloudless day, it is not meaningless to say so for the simple reason that “it is raining” is a proposition that has content which can be affirmed as either true or false. 

We can see, therefore, that there are three kinds of statements in view here: true, false, and meaningless. For a statement to be true or false,one must be able to measure such a statement against that which obtains in reality itself. The statement, “For the first time in history, the Houston Texans own a .500 record ten games into a season,” is a true statement (Note: I originally wrote this essay in 2007). It corresponds with reality, which is what it means for something to be true. The statement, “the New England Patriots have the worst won-loss percentage in the NFL this year,” is a false statement. It fails to correspond with reality. One is true and the other false, but neither the statement about the Texans nor the one about the Patriots is meaningless. Each has content that can be judged to either correspond with reality (true) or not (false). 

Can your theology survive a tragedy? Should terrible difficulties and irreversible losses come into your life, will your theology – your understanding of God – be able to withstand the existential reality of suffering and pain? Even grow stronger and fuller? Or will you abandon God, or perhaps be forced to “reinvent” God because the theology you held to previously could not now withstand the present adversity. 

Rabbi Harold Kushner is an example of the latter, one who reinvented God because of tragic suffering.  The author of the popular book Why Bad Things Happen to Good People, Rabbi Kushner had a son who suffered a rare disease which caused him to rapidly age, dying in his teenage years with the body of an old man. Kushner surmised that while God was indeed good, he lacked the power to prevent bad things. He wants to help us but can’t. He thus concluded: “There are some things God does not control…Are you capable of forgiving and loving God even when you have found out that He is not perfect?… Can you learn to love and forgive him despite His limitations?” In another place, Kushner writes, “faced with evil, God has his powerlessness as his excuse. He aims, intends, seeks, works and ‘tries his best’ to overcome evil: rather than blame, he deserves sympathy, even pity.” Quite obviously, Kushner’s theology could not survive a tragedy.

Another leading Jewish theologian, Richard Rubenstein, has argued that in a post-Holocaust era, Jews can no longer believe in an omnipotent, omni-benevolent Creator. Rubenstein’s theology could not survive the unforgettable tragedy of the Holocaust. And while his view does not represent the views all post-Holocaust Jewish theologians, his reinvention of God as less than all-powerful and all-good certainly fits well with the majority viewpoint.  Similar examples could be provided from Christian theologians, many of whom, on the basis of the so-called “problem of evil,” have likewise abandoned resolute belief in the classical divine attributes, such as God’s omnipotence and/or omnibenevolence. 

The Pre-existence view, held by Justin Martyr and Origen, states that the souls of men were created by God before the creation of the world, but this contradicts Genesis 1:27 which explicitly teaches that Adam’s soul was created after the creation of the world.

The Creationist view, held by Thomas Aquinas and Charles Hodge, holds that God individually creates each soul at some point between conception and birth. This view has great difficulty explaining inherited sin and also fails to take into account that creation was completed on the sixth day (Gen. 2:2; Deut. 4:32; Mt. 13:35) and that God is resting since (Heb. 4:4-6).

Finally, the Traducian view, held by St. Augustine, William G. T. Shedd, and Lewis Sperry Chafer, maintains that both the body and the soul are generated by the human parents. This view is preferable for several reasons. First, while the soul of Adam was created directly by God (Genesis 2:7), the soul of Eve was produced through Adam (2:21-22). Second, Adam had children in his own image (5:3), suggesting strongly that the soul, and not just the body, is produced by human procreation. Third, the Traducian view better accounts for imputation of sin from Adam to the rest of the human race (Rom. 5:12; 1 Cor. 15:22). It is difficult, if not impossible, to account for the biblical teaching of man’s universal inclination to sin (Rom. 3:23) with any other view other than Traducianism. Finally, the psycho-somatic unity of man is best explained by the Traducian view. Man is a soul/body unity, not merely a soul who has a body. Neither the Pre-existence nor the Creationist view can adequately account for this truth because both view the soul as a separate creation that is simply implanted in the body at some point.