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My friend Andrew Killick wrote a blog article on the nature of man recently, which I’ve been meaning to reply to for a while. He draws together a quote from Pascal’s Pensees, and a quote from Psalm 8.

However, it seems to me that Pascal and the Psalmist are talking about two different aspects of human nature. Pascal is comparing mankind’s innate desire for truth, and innate sense that truth must exist and be discoverable, with our inability to perceive truth on our own or to find certainty in the truth we do uncover through our own investigations of the natural world. He argues that mankind is both great, in our capacity and hunger for truth, and wretched in our inability to find it ourselves. Here’s the quote in context:

What, then, shall man do in this state? Shall he doubt everything? Shall he doubt whether he is awake, whether he is being pinched, or whether he is being burned? Shall he doubt whether he doubts? Shall he doubt whether he exists? We cannot go so far as that; and I lay it down as a fact that there never has been a real complete sceptic. Nature sustains our feeble reason and prevents it raving to this extent.

Shall he, then, say, on the contrary, that he certainly possesses truth–he who, when pressed ever so little, can show no title to it and is forced to let go his hold?

What a chimera, then, is man! What a novelty! What a monster, what a chaos, what a contradiction, what a prodigy! Judge of all things, imbecile worm of the earth; depositary of truth, a sink of uncertainty and error; the pride and refuse of the universe!

Who will unravel this tangle? Nature confutes the sceptics, and reason confutes the dogmatists. What, then, will you become, O men! who try to find out by your natural reason what is your true condition? You cannot avoid one of these sects, nor adhere to one of them.

Know then, proud man, what a paradox you are to yourself. Humble yourself, weak reason; be silent, foolish nature; learn that man infinitely transcends man, and learn from your Master your true condition, of which you are ignorant. Hear God.

For in fact, if man had never been corrupt, he would enjoy in his innocence both truth and happiness with assurance; and if man had always been corrupt, he would have no idea of truth or bliss. But, wretched as we are, and more so than if there were no greatness in our condition, we have an idea of happiness and can not reach it. We perceive an image of truth and possess only a lie. Incapable of absolute ignorance and of certain knowledge, we have thus been manifestly in a degree of perfection from which we have unhappily fallen.

Pascal goes on to point out that only by God speaking directly, by God revealing truth to us, can we ever find truth or have certainty.

The Psalmist is I think talking about something quite different. Psalm 8 is a song of praise to God because, despite mankind’s physical insignificance in the universe, he cares for us and has given us a position of great honour in the world. Here’s the Psalm with a few more verses:

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established;
what are human beings that you are mindful of them,
mortals that you care for them? Yet you have made them a little lower than God,
and crowned them with glory and honor.
You have given them dominion over the works of your hands;
you have put all things under their feet…

The Psalmist recognises a different tension, between the physical insignificance of our existence in the universe, and the place and role God has given us in the universe. In the Psalmist’s eyes we have significance as human beings because of how God views us, not how we see ourselves.

In the Guardian this Saturday, the regular Face to Faith column was written by Joanna McGrath, with the tag line, “‘Liberal evangelicals’ are now seen as a threat in the way Jesus once was.” In it, she responds to Richard Turnbull’s widely reported speech on theological education, in which he attempted to define evangelicalism, and to warn of the dangers facing evangelical theological colleges.

She argues that his speech, rather than being a reasoned argument based on revealed truths, is simply an expression of a psychological failing - an unreasoning, emotive desire by groups to define unnecessary boundaries. Jesus, according to her view, was opposed to boundaries (in her words, a “category violator”), and his crucifixion was the combined response of the unbelieving world and the religious purists of Jesus’ own day to his openness and abandonment of boundaries. The thrust of McGrath’s article is that evangelicals today are misguided. Jesus, according to McGrath, would oppose the modern-day boundary making by evangelicals.

As an evangelical myself, I found McGrath’s argument utterly unconvincing. In her eagerness to impose modern-day social theories on the accounts of Jesus life, McGrath seems to have abandoned objectivity in her assessments of Jesus’ life and the position taken by modern evangelicals such as Richard Turnbull. Jesus opposed the Pharisees because the boundaries they had established were objectively wrong, and established boundaries of his own that he expects his followers to keep. I would also suggest that she fails to engage with the rest of Scripture, which establishes doctrinal boundaries and has harsh words for “category violators” of those boundaries. Read more »

I’ve been working on a web site for the last couple of weeks for a book that will shortly be published by IVP called Pierced for our transgressions. One of the authors is a friend of mine called Andrew Sach, and it’s on the subject of penal substitution.

As the release of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe approaches, various people have been publishing reviews of CS Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia. One of the more insightful comments I’ve seen is by Alison Lurie, “writing in this Saturday’s Guardian“:http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/features/story/0,,1656607,00.html:

It seems deeply unfair that Edmund, Susan’s younger brother, who has betrayed the others to the Witch, is allowed to repent and remain King Edmund, while Susan, whose faults are much less serious, is not given the opportunity.

The contrast here is between the forgiveness that Edmund finds after repenting of his treachery in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and the permanence of Susan’s rejection of Narnia near the end of The Last Battle, which Lurie suggests may be the result of Lewis failing to think through the structure of his story carefully enough. Rather than being confused, however, Lewis is at this point deliberately illustrating a very Christian contrast, between the forgiveness Jesus holds out to even the very worst person who turns away from their sin, and the rejection Jesus promises for those who finally reject him:

I tell you that any sinful thing you do or say can be forgiven. Matthew 12:31 (CEV)

The master will surely come on a day and at a time when the servant least expects him. That servant will then be punished and thrown out with the ones who only pretended to serve their master. Matthew 24:50-51 (CEV)

Jesus himself told a story about the jealousy that this free offer of forgiveness arouses in some people, in Matthew 20:1-16. The idea of unmerited forgiveness does seem “unfair” to us, but it is also unfair to accuse Lewis of carelessness in this instance, where he is in fact being careful to follow what Jesus taught.

Today I sat the second of my regulatory exams, on securities and financial derivatives. The results will come through on Thursday, but I’m being cautious about whether I passed or not at the moment as having a cold over the weekend didn’t exactly help me study effectively. Tomorrow might be a bit of a shock to the system as I switch back to getting up at 6am.

Interesting to see that The Register’s ad hosting company was serving up ads containing a virus that could infect Internet Explorer — just browsing a popular news website could, through no fault of theirs, result in your PC being infected! Sounds like yet another reason to follow CERT’s advice and switch to Firefox.

People following the Steve Chalke debate might be interested in reading the statement recently released by the Evangelical Alliance. The statement concludes:

For these reasons, we do not believe that penal substitutionary atonement can be rejected as it is rejected in The Lost Message of Jesus, and as Steve has persisted in rejecting it since. While affirming the many gifts which Steve has to offer, we urge him, as a much-loved brother in Christ, to reconsider both the substance and style of his recently expressed views on this matter.