Andy Bannister hosts David Bennett and Anne Witton as they discuss sexuality and the gospel. Is the message of Jesus really good news for gay people?
Anne Witton works with Living Out and is on the mission team at Gateshead Central Baptist Church. David Bennett works with the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics and is the author of A War of Loves.
In our Christian churches today we often extol the virtues of “friendship evangelism”. But does the low-key, latte-sipping, long-term approach really do justice to the gospel? Aaron Edwards joins Andy and Kristi to help us navigate between awkwardness, courage, sincerity, fear, and initiative in our relationships with others.
Aaron Edwards is the MA Programme Lead and lectures in Mission, Theology and Preaching at Cliff College. He has specific interests in the theological work of Kierkegaard, Barth, Bonhoeffer, the Reformers, and the Great Awakeners. Additionally, having studied English Literature at both undergraduate and postgraduate level, and has been an editorial and administrative assistant for the acclaimed Irish poet, Micheal O’Siadhail. He has an enthusiasm for literary, philosophical, and popular culture, and is keen to find ways of maintaining rigorous faithfulness to the Gospel in the midst of the present moment. He has been a guest on various religious radio programmes and alongside his academic work he writes regularly for a number of church/mission-focused publications.
The Persuasive Evangelism Podcast aims to equip listeners to share their faith more effectively in a sceptical world. Each episode, Andy Bannister (Solas) and Kristi Mair (Oak Hill College) chat to a guest who has a great story, a useful resource, or some other expertise that helps equip you to talk persuasively, winsomely, and engagingly with your friends, colleagues and neighbours about Jesus.
A few years ago I was trekking in the Himalayas and had the privilege of watching the sunset at Mount Everest. All day, the mountain had been hidden, but as dusk approached, the clouds rolled back, revealing the great north face. At the very same moment, the westering sun dipped and the clouds lit up as if on fire, a maelstrom of red, orange and ochre, causing the whole mountain to shine with alpenglow. It was one of the most breath-taking scenes of natural beauty I have ever experienced.
Two Approaches to Nature
I had gone to the Himalayas because of my fascination with the pioneering British Everest expeditions in the 1920s which were funded by two organisations, the Royal Geographical Society and the Alpine Club and right from the start, there was a clash of cultures. The RGS were interested in science—they wanted to bring back samples, perform experiments, to map the region. In contrast, the Alpine Club’s interests were primarily aesthetic—they wanted to conquer the summit, capture beautiful photographs, and advance the art of climbing.
Science and the pursuit of beauty are two very different approaches to life. Most of us are fascinated by and drawn to both of them, but how do they fit together? Aren’t they even in tension with each other at times? How you deal with this tension largely depends on your worldview, your philosophy of life.
The Failure of Naturalism
Naturalism is the worldview that says that only material things exist: atoms, particles, stuff. The only thing that matters is matter. There is no transcendent realm of any kind, everything can be explained by the blind, impersonal forces of nature.
For those of us who truly love the outdoors, especially the wild places, the problem with this is that naturalism so obviously and patently fails. You liked the sunset on Everest? Well, that’s only atoms and photons, there was nothing sublime there. You were moved with wonder? Ah, that’s only the motion of chemicals in your brain. Anthony Esolen playfully parodies this philosophy:
[For the philosophical naturalist] it is best to keep the word “only” ready in the arsenal at all times. The flame of the sky at sunset is “only” the part of spectrum that penetrates the atmosphere at that angle … it is “only” something or other material that scientists know about … or at least somebody knows all them in some Important Places. Beauty is “only” a neurological tic, or a personal opinion.[1]
Yet trying to explain away a sunset as only photons, a mountain view as only the result of tectonic activity and erosion, or our sense of wonder as “misfirings, Darwinian mistakes” in the words of atheist, Richard Dawkins[2]—fail, because none of those purely naturalistic explanations come even remotely close, to our actual experience of natural beauty. Naturalism is a half-hearted attempt to simplify and reduce an experience that is rich, deep and three-dimensional to a two-dimensional caricature. Naturalistic explanations fall woefully short: sure, at a basic level Paradise Lost is “made of letters”, or Chartres Cathedral is “some bricks”; but neither description does justice to their entire reality.
Beauty is one of many such experiences that strips away our pretensions and points us beyond ourselves. For most of us, natural beauty causes us to yearn for something that molecules, atoms and particles alone can never ultimately satisfy.
What is Beauty?
Beauty clearly isn’t just a personal preference—you like the music of Beethoven, I like Justin Bieber. If beauty were simply our personal opinion, then we render the word meaningless. If this were true, when I say “I find this picture beautiful”, I wouldn’t have told you anything about the picture, merely described my interior psychology. Furthermore, if you say that beauty is subjective, you instantly demolish all of the humanities—why bother studying art, music, literature, or photography if ultimately aesthetics is nothing more than personal preferences?
Beauty and Emotion
Another fascinating thing about beauty is the emotions that it can produce. When I stand on a mountain, I find three emotions rise up. Wonder, gratitude, and something akin to homesickness. I noticed this when I gazed at that sunset on Everest—a desire for something more beautiful, more radiant, more real, and a sense that beauty gave us a glimpse of it.
Naturalism struggles to begin to even describe such emotions, the experience of seeing real beauty, and thus it’s here I wonder if a second philosophy, a different worldview, may offer us a more compelling explanation. Consider these ancient words of poetry from the Hebrew Bible:
The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.[3]
Now at this point, maybe some people are thinking: “What’s with the whole God stuff, for Darwin’s sake, all we need is science, right?!” When I interviewed the atheist Oxford Professor of Chemistry, Peter Atkins he said: “Some people think science answers how questions and religion answers why questions. But that’s utter rubbish. There are no such thing as ‘why questions’. ‘Why questions’ are just little packets of ‘how’ questions—and science can answer them all.” I was tempted to ask “Why do you think that?” but resisted.
The deeper problem here is that it’s a misuse of science. Science is an incredible tool, but like all tools, it does some things well and some things badly—a hammer is great for putting up shelves, but don’t use it for brain surgery.
This kind of approach also leaves no room for the things that really move us. Are we then condemned to live disconnected lives, being rationalists in our work, but romantics in our personal lives; Darwinians in our science but anti-Darwinians in love of beauty, art, and aesthetics?
Signposts
According to the philosophers, truth is one of three ultimate values—alongside beauty and goodness. Why should you believe something? Because it’s true. Why should you desire something? Because it’s good. Why should you look at something? Because it’s beautiful. But of course, if naturalism holds true, none of that works. If we are just random collocations of atoms, why does it matter what you believe? Why does it matter what you desire? And what does good even mean—surely all you have are personal preferences?
Only if human beings are designed to be truth-seeking, beauty-pursuing, good-desiring creatures can any sense be made of this. Why do we yearn for more? Why do we ask ‘why’? Why do we desire not just food and sex; but value, purpose, meaning, significance, truth, justice, goodness, and beauty? What if our desires for things like beauty and meaning and purpose and significance point somewhere? Imagine you were lost in the trackless expanse of a desert, dying of thirst and craving a drink. That wouldn’t mean that every glimmer on the horizon was an oasis—but your burning thirst would surely tell you that water exists. What, then, does our desire for beauty and such transcendent things tell us? Where does that sign point?
Three Ways of Looking
There are three ways of looking at beauty. Take a beautiful painting. You can look through it, and see just blobs of paint on canvas. Or you can look at it—and admire its beauty. Or you can look along it—ask yourself, what does the fact that this is really, truly, objectively beautiful, really mean? Is that a clue about something bigger about the universe and if so, what?
What worldview, what philosophy of life can hold all these things together? I come at these questions as a Christian philosopher and in the fourth book of the New Testament, we read:
In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made … The Logos took on flesh and dwelt amongst us.
Among other things, the Greek word “Logos” meant “The Meaning of Life”. By the time of Jesus, classical Greek philosophy had divided into two camps. The Stoics thought there was a meaning of life, but we can never know it (so grin and bear it). The Epicureans thought life had no meaning, so eat, drink and party—for tomorrow we all die and nothing matters.
Into this raging debate, the Bible says something different and deeply radical. Yes, there is a Meaning to Life. There is a Logos, you’re not a random accident. But that meaning is not an idea, nor a concept, nor a philosophy. The meaning of life is not a thing, but a who. The Meaning of Life, says the Bible, is a person, Jesus Christ. And the purpose of life is to know him; and all beauty, truth and goodness point to him.
This means that scientific truth and natural beauty can join up—that we can integrate our lives—because truth and beauty and justice are grounded somewhere. And it also explains why we humans are wired to pursue both truth and beauty, science and aesthetics.
What worldview can hold together science and beauty, truth and justice and goodness? Only one that I know of. And thus I believe in Christianity in the same way as I believe that the sun has risen: not because I see it, but because by it, I see everything else.
Dr Andy Bannister is Director of the Solas Centre for Public Christianity
Further Reading:
Rick Stadman, 31 Surprising Reasons to Believe in God.
[1] Anthony Esolen, Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books) 236.
[2] Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (London: Transworld, 2006) 221.
[3] Psalm 19:1-2.
International mission agency “Echoes International” held their annual conference in Glasgow this year. They invited Solas’s Andy Bannister to speak on a subject close to his heart – the value of a human being, and the foundations of ethics. The talk, entitled, “Are we matter – or do we matter?” was livestreamed and recorded, and is available to see below. As this is a recording of a livestream, it hasn’t been edited. As such the intro-reel, and the coffee breaks are all included.
Echoes International
There is not a neat formula to answering all your questions which leads directly to trust in Jesus. Some people have all their questions satisfied but still choose not to follow Christ; others aren’t sure if they can follow Jesus while they still have questions. In this video, Solas speaker Gareth Black answers the question of whether we can, with integrity, become a Christian even if we still have some important questions to explore.
Please share this video widely with friends or family and for more Short Answers videos, visit solas-cpc.org/shortanswers/, subscribe to our YouTube channel or visit us on Twitter Instagram or Facebook.
Short Answers is a viewer-supported video series: if you enjoy them, please help us continue to make them by donating to Solas. Visit our Donate page and choose “Digital Media Fund” under the Campaign/Appeal button.
Gavin Matthews hosts Gareth Black as he explores the very personal yet universal issue of pain and suffering. How are we to reconcile the real evil in our world with the idea of a good and loving God?
Unfortunately our guest speaker Kristi Mair was unable to join this webinar.
“Critical Witness” is a great new podcast-style programme, presented by Dan and Phil – two mates who like talking about apologetics, philosophy, ethics and theology. Solas’s Andy Bannister joined them for this episode and talked at length about Islam, evangelism, the questions our culture generates, helpful apologetics and more! Further episodes of Critical Witness can be found here.
This time on PEP Talk, Andy and Kristi speak with Andy Steiger from Apologetics Canada. Drawing especially from Paul’s letter to the Colossians, Andy unpacks the importance of how we see God and how we see ourselves as human beings. From this flows our view of human purpose, relationships and community – which can be so attractive when we share them with others.
Andy Steiger is the founder and president of Apologetics Canada, an organisation dedicated to helping churches across Canada better understand and engage today’s culture. Most recently, he wrote the book Reclaimed: How Jesus Restores Our Humanity in a Dehumanized World. This book was preceded by The Human Project video series. In 2018, The Human Project debuted at film festivals around the world and won a number of awards including Best Short Film and People’s Choice. He also created and hosted The Thinking Series and is the author of Thinking? Answering Life’s Five Biggest Questions. Andy speaks on these topics internationally at universities, conferences, churches, prisons and coffee shops. He is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland. Andy is originally from Portland, Oregon and currently lives in Abbotsford, British Columbia with his wife, Nancy, and their boys. See more at andysteiger.com
The Persuasive Evangelism Podcast aims to equip listeners to share their faith more effectively in a sceptical world. Each episode, Andy Bannister (Solas) and Kristi Mair (Oak Hill College) chat to a guest who has a great story, a useful resource, or some other expertise that helps equip you to talk persuasively, winsomely, and engagingly with your friends, colleagues and neighbours about Jesus.
The theistic “argument from desire” (AFD) is a family of arguments that move from an analysis of human desire to the conclusion that God exists (or that something like “eternal life in relationship with God” is the true human telos, goal or purpose). This argument was popularised in the twentieth century by C.S. Lewis, who sought to understand an “unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction,” a mystical experience to which he gave the technical label “Joy”[1] (and which writers in the German Romantic tradition called Sehnsucht): the bitter-sweet experience of feeling draw to a transcendent and innately desirable “something more” beyond one’s worldly grasp. This experience is occasioned but not satisfied by various worldly “triggers” that are somewhat person-relative, but often have to do with beauty and/or natural grandeur (i.e. what the Romantics called “the sublime”).
Lewis produced the pre-eminent literary engagement with Sehnsucht in English, contemplating “Joy” in works of allegory, apologetics, autobiography and theology, and evoking “Joy” in his fiction. He wasn’t the first to explore this theme, which can be found in the Jewish scriptures (Psalm 42 opens with the declaration that: “As the deer pants for pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God.” Ecclesiastes can be read as a meditation upon this theme[2]). Nor was he the first to make a theistic AFD – something done by Boëthius, Pascal, Thomas Chalmers and G.K. Chesterton before him. Nor was he the only scholar of his era to do so (contemporaries who defended the AFD included C.E.M. Joad, Jacques Maritain and Leslie D. Weatherhead). However, it’s primarily due to Lewis’ wide-ranging discussion of the AFD that many contemporary scholars have become interested in exploring, critiquing and/or defending a variety of arguments from desire, with attention paid to the argument by Gregory Bassham, Todd Buras, Michael Cantrell, Winfried Corduan, C. Stephen Evans, Norman L. Geisler, John Haldane, Robert Hoyler, Peter Kreeft, Alister McGrath, Thomas V. Morris, Alvin Plantinga, Joe Puckett Jr., Richard Purtill, Victor Reppert, Erik Wielenberg, etc.
A Cumulative AFD
The AFD is best thought of as a cumulative argument composed of a variety of sub-arguments with different logical formulations.[3] I only have space to sketch some of these arguments here:
Prima Facie AFD
Samuel Alexander’s Space, Time and Deity (1916-1918) introduced C.S. Lewis to the distinction between “Enjoyment” and “Contemplation,” a distinction Lewis would later illustrate in terms of looking at or looking along a beam of light. To take the experience of “Joy” at face value means looking along it towards an innately desirable “transcendent other.” Now, as Lewis points out: “As soon as you have grasped this simple distinction [between looking at and looking along], it raises a question. You get one experience of a thing when you look along it and another when you look at it. Which is the ‘true’ or ‘valid’ experience”?[4] Lewis observes:
It has . . . come to be taken for granted that the external account of a thing somehow refutes or “debunks” the account given from inside. “All these moral ideas which look so transcendental and beautiful from inside,” says the wiseacre, “are really only a mass of biological instincts and inherited taboos.” And no one plays the game the other way round by replying, “If you will only step inside, the things that look to you like instincts and taboos will suddenly reveal their real and transcendental nature”.[5]
Lewis argues that this reductive impulse must be resisted on at least some occasions because its generalization is incoherent: “you can step outside one experience only by stepping inside another. Therefore, if all inside experiences are misleading, we are always misled”.[6] Moreover, Lewis’ example of discovering that “the inside vision of the savage’s dance to Nyonga may be found deceptive because we find reason to believe that crops and babies are not really affected by it”[7] illustrates the presumption of innocence conferred in the absence of sufficient reason for doubt upon enjoyed (i.e. looked along) experiences. Lewis concludes “we must take each case on its merits.”[8]
Contemporary epistemology is well disposed to playing the game “the other way round”. For example, consider the “reformed epistemology” of Alvin Plantinga, who argues for the properly basic status of theistic belief evoked by desire.[9]
To further motivate taking “Joy” at face value, one can appeal to the epistemic principle “that we ought to believe that things are as they seem to be (in the epistemic sense) unless and until we have evidence that we are mistaken”.[10] This basic principle of rationality puts the burden of proof upon the shoulders of the sceptic who claims that, despite appearances, to look along a Joy is to experience a delusion rather than the insight into the nature of reality it seems to be from the inside.
Abductive AFD
Alister McGrath notes that “Lewis’s reflections on desire focus on two themes . . . a general sense of longing for something . . . and a Christian affirmation that God alone is the heart’s true desire . . .”[11] For McGrath, these themes form the two prongs of an abductive argument for the Judeo-Christian explanation of “Joy”:
Lewis saw this line of thought as demonstrating the correlation of faith with experience, exploring the “empirical adequacy” of the Christian way of seeing reality with what we experience within ourselves . . . Christianity . . . tells us that this sense of longing for God is exactly what we should expect, since we are created to relate to God. It fits in with a Christian way of thinking, thus providing indirect confirmation of its reliability.[12]
Victor Reppert likewise formulates the AFD as an abductive argument:
On Christian theism God’s intention in creating humans is to fit them for eternity in God’s presence. As such, it stands to reason that we should find ourselves dissatisfied with worldly satisfactions. Let’s put the likelihood that we should long for the infinite given theism at 0.9 . . . I wouldn’t say that such desires couldn’t possibly arise in an atheistic world . . . But how likely would they arise in such a world? So long as the answer is “less likely than in a theistic world,” the presence of these desires confirms theism. Let’s say that, if we don’t know whether theism is true or not, the likelihood that these desires should arise is 0.7. Plugging these values into Bayes” theorem, we go from 0.5 likelihood that theism is true to a 0.643 likelihood that theism is true. Thus . . . the argument from desire confirms theism.[13]
Atheist Erik Wielenberg tries to explain away “Joy” in terms of naturalistic evolutionary psychology (NEP).[14] Wielenberg’s NEP hypothesis, which only engages with “two features of Joy—the restlessness it induces and the nebulousness of its object,”[15] and thereby lacks explanatory scope, suggests that the former feature “might” be advantageous if Joy arose: “Early humans favored with a chronic, ill-defined restlessness of heart might have outcompeted other humans who were naturally more sedentary and complacent.” However, we might think that early humans afflicted with “a chronic, ill-defined restlessness of heart” would be out-competed by humans free from such existential ennui! Again, Wielenberg suggests the somewhat nebulous nature of Joy “might” be advantageous if Joy arose: “Joy’s . . . lack of a clear intentional object, might have led early humans down Lewisian ‘false paths,’ such as the pursuit of sex, power, and adventure, that did have direct fitness advantages”.[16] Wielenberg’s use of “might” doesn’t inspire confidence in either case, indicating that his hypothesis has a low degree of explanatory power.
Finally, Wielenberg offers no explanation for the appearance of “Joy” in our gene-pool, only for its selection should it appear. As Reppert argues:
natural desires that are unfulfillable on earth is precisely what you should expect . . . from the point of view of theism. I seriously doubt that we can do this from the point of view of naturalism, even if a half-way-decent-looking evolutionary explanation of how such desires could arise were forthcoming . . .[17]
Inductive AFD
In Mere Christianity Lewis frames the AFD inferentially:
Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water . . . If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.[18]
Trent Dougherty likewise presents the AFD as “a defeasible inference [wherein] the premises could be true and the conclusion yet false, but they bear prima facie support for the conclusion”[19]:
Aristotelian AFD
In the preface to the third edition of The Pilgrim’s Regress, Lewis offered a deductive AFD:
if a man diligently followed this desire, pursuing the false objects until their falsity appeared and then resolutely abandoning them, he must come at last to the clear knowledge that the human soul was made to enjoy some object that is never fully given . . . in our present mode of subjective and spatio-temporal experience. This Desire was, in the soul, as the Siege Perilous in Arthur’s castle–the chair in which only one could sit. And if nature makes nothing in vain, the One who can sit in this chair must exist.[20]
Here Lewis assumes Aristotle’s (controversial) dictum that “nature makes nothing in vain”[21]:
One can set to one side the universality of Aristotle’s dictum whilst still giving a deductive argument based upon a restricted application of Aristotle’s dictum to innate human desires:
Inductive Aristotelian arguments from desire can be mounted upon the premises that “most types of things in nature are not made in vain” or that “the majority of innate human desires are not made in vain”.
We could interpret Aristotle’s dictum as a heuristic principle.[22] A principle such as “We should assume that no [type of] natural thing exists in vain until and unless we are shown otherwise” could serve as a premise in a deductive heuristic AFD:
Reductio AFD
In Mere Christianity (1952), Lewis framed the AFD as a reductio:
If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing.[23]
Various reductio arguments from existentially relevant human desires and the denial of the existential claim that human life is “absurd” can be made. For example:
I contend that premise 4 is an intuitively plausible belief that should be treated as innocent until proven guilty.
Conclusion
The argument from desire points to various existentially relevant desires the fulfilment of which plausibly require God’s existence. The arguments from these desires are mutually consistent, are more powerful when taken together, and most powerful when considered as part of the overall case for Christian theism.
UK based philosopher and apologist Peter S. Williams (MA, MPhil) is Assistant Professor in Communication and Worldviews at Gimlekollen School of Journalism and Communication, NLA University College, Norway. His publications include: Getting at Jesus: A Comprehensive Critique of Neo-Atheist Nonsense about the Jesus of History (Wipf & Stock, 2019) & A Faithful Guide to Philosophy: A Christian Introduction to the Love of Wisdom, reprint edition (Wipf & Stock, 2019). See www.peterswilliams.com
Recommended Resources
Introductory-Intermediate: YouTube Playlist, “The Argument from
Desire” www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQhh3qcwVEWj3nK3TBydEVAFRtdqfrpW2
Introductory: Kreeft, Peter. “The argument from desire”
www.peterkreeft.com/topics/desire.htm
Intermediate: Puckett Jr., Joe. The Apologetics of Joy: A Case for the
Existence of God from C. S. Lewis S Argument from Desire (James Clarke
and Co Ltd., 2013)
Advanced: Buras, Todd and Michael Cantrell. “C.S. Lewis’s Argument
from Nostalgia: A New Argument from Desire.” Ed. Jerry L. Walls and
Trent Dougherty. Two Dozen (Or so) Arguments For God (Oxford
University Press), 356-321.
Advanced: Williams, Peter S. “In Defence of Arguments from Desire”
www.peterswilliams.com/2016/11/02/in-defence-of-arguments-from-desire/
[1] C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy (London: Fount, 1998), 12.
[2] See: John Walton, “Who Wrote Ecclesiastes and What Does It Mean?” https://zondervanacademic.com/blog/who-wrote-ecclesiastes-and-what-does-it-mean/; Peter Kreeft, Three Philosophies of Life (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1990).
[3] See: Gregory Bassham, ed. C.S. Lewis’ Apologetics: Pro and Con (Rodolpi-Brill, 2015) and Peter S. Williams, “In Defence of Arguments from Desire” www.peterswilliams.com/2016/11/02/in-defence-of-arguments-from-desire/
[4] C.S. Lewis. “Meditation in a Toolshed” in First and Second Things (London: Fount, 1985), 51.
[5] ibid, 52.
[6] ibid, 54.
[7] ibid, 52.
[8] ibid.
[9] Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief (Oxford, 2000), 307.
[10] Richard Swinburne, Is There A God? rev. ed. (Oxford University Press, 2010), 115.
[11] Alister McGrath, The Intellectual World of C. S. Lewis (Wiley-Blackwell, 2014), 106.
[12] Alister McGrath, Mere Apologetics (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker, 2012), 110-111.
[13] Victor Reppert, “The Bayesian Argument from Desire” http://dangerousidea.blogspot.com/2006/09/bayesian-argument-from-desire.html#comments
[14] See: Gregory Bassham ed., C.S. Lewis’ Apologetics: Pro and Con (Rodolpi-Brill, 2015).
[15] Wielenberg, qtd. in Bassham ed., ibid.
[16] Bassham summarizing Wielenberg, ibid, 116-117.
[17] Reppert, op cit.
[18] C.S. Lewis. Mere Christianity (London: Fount, 1997), 113.
[19] Trent Dougherty, “Argument from Desire” http://prosblogion.ektopos.com/archives/2005/11/argument_from_d.html
[20] C.S. Lewis, Pilgrim’s Regress, third edition (Fount, 1977), 15, my italics.
[21] Aristotle, The Generation of Animals, qtd. in Brodie, Sarah. “Aristotle’s Elusive Summum Bonum”. https://lucian.uchicago.edu/blogs/objects/files/2014/05/Broadie.pdf
[22] See Mariska Leunissen’s reading of Aristotle in Explanation and Teleology in Aristotle’s Science of Nature (2012).
[23] Lewis, Mere Christianity, op cit, 113, my italics.
Andy Bannister had a great weekend in Dumfries, delivering a shorter version of our Confident Christianity conference. Here he talks about the weekend, and Dumfries Baptist Church.
Imagine if there was no religion. Would it really be as blissful and breezy as a chart-topping pop song? Despite the blame religion often gets for the world’s ills, some atheist writers today are realising the incredible benefits which Christian values and ethics bring to our society. As Dr Andy Bannister explains in this Short Answers video, these thinkers are facing a conundrum. If they don’t want to undermine these foundations for our society, they are facing an uncomfortable question: Is Christianity actually true?
Please share this video widely with friends or family and for more Short Answers videos, visit solas-cpc.org/shortanswers/, subscribe to our YouTube channel or visit us on Twitter Instagram or Facebook.
Short Answers is a viewer-supported video series: if you enjoy them, please help us continue to make them by donating to Solas. Visit our Donate page and choose “Digital Media Fund” under the Campaign/Appeal button.
Gavin: Hi Richard, it’s great to speak to you, thanks for joining me.
Richard: Great to see you in person, at last!
Gavin: Most Christians probably know that their Muslim friends have a respect for Jesus – but they don’t know where Muslims draw their ideas from.
Richard: Fundamentally the ultimate source of authority and religious knowledge for Muslims is The Qur’an. The Qur’an is for Muslims the word of God, revelation from heaven, and that’s their starting place for understanding Jesus. Jesus is mentioned 25 times in the Qur’an, that’s not 25 individual places – there are a couple of chunks which are significant, as well as a few other mentions in the text. So that’s the most significant source.
Then there was a scholar named al-Tabari, the first major Muslim historian who put together a history which contains a range of traditions about Jesus. Then you have the Hadith, the sayings and oral traditions around what happened in Muhammad’s life, and things he said – and we find Jesus referenced there as well. Then the Sira, the biography of Muhammad is another early source for Muslims, which again contains references around Jesus, and interestingly the stories of the Apostles heading out as well. The other major source is the Qisas Al-Anbiya the stories of the prophets and that is much later, mystical writing. It contains stories, parables and narrative teaching about what a whole range of prophets did and said, and Jesus has a very major place in that writing. Now that source is much later, and sits in the mystical traditions (which wouldn’t be highly regarded by conservative Muslims); but all of these things are what informs the Muslim imagination about Jesus.
Gavin: Could you then give us an overview of the picture of Jesus which emerges from these sources – a picture which is very important for Muslims..
Richard: Well, the Muslim tradition starts with the Qur’an, but the picture you get of Jesus there is a bit “thin”, I suppose you could say. Muhammad, when he was reciting the Qur’an and mentions Jesus, had this expectation that his listeners would know who he was talking about. So they knew who Jesus was, they knew he was a prophet at least. He was even aware that his audience had encountered Trinitarian Christianity, so he was clear in his message that some people believe that Jesus is the Son of God – but he decisively rejected that idea.
So Muhammad didn’t give a huge amount of details about Jesus, but he drew on their shared knowledge; and insisted that Jesus didn’t do many of the things Christians claim. Rather Muhammad wants to say that Jesus affirmed the same message as him. So Muhammad insists that he stands in the same prophetic line as Jesus, but offers a correction to the Christian understanding of him.
Yet in the middle of that there are some affirmations that Jesus was born of a virgin, that he did miracles, that he was called the ‘Word of God’ and ‘the Spirit of God’, that he ascended into heaven and that he will return on judgement day and judge the world – dividing between those going to heaven and those being punished. That much is completely in line with Christian teaching, but then he says that Jesus is not divine, and that Jesus did not die on the cross. And that’s about all the Qur’an says about Jesus. There is strong focus on Jesus’ birth and the end of his life; but nothing of his teaching, or his apostles. Actually there is more about his Mother and his Grandfather than about him.
Now that pattern continues into the traditions. Al-Tabari for example, includes lots of stories about Mary and the birth of Jesus, and lots more about the judgement day when Jesus will return. But again, there is very little about his life or teaching. When you get to the Stories of the Prophets – only then do you start to get a bit of flesh put onto the story of Jesus’ life. However even there, there are no names, no places, – but there is a bit more about his miracles. Jesus is presented here as being a good believer who was ascetic, didn’t cling onto the world, lived simply, prayed a lot. He was portrayed there as never settling down, but constantly moving from place to place; but with no sense of where he was going.
Gavin: So the Muslims and Christian have some overlap in their views of Jesus’ biography, but key differences in terms of his identity?
Richard: Yes, I think that’s right. Although I think it’s worth emphasising that the Muslim traditions don’t bring anything new to the table. There are one or two flourishes around the start and end of his life, but they are not theologically significant. However, the main focus in Muslim sources is on correcting Christians and saying, ‘We honour Jesus, but no divinity and no death on the cross.’
Gavin: I’m fascinated by the titles ascribed to Jesus in the Qur’an, “Word” “Spirit” “Judge”. It seems extraordinary that they are used. In the book you suggest that those terms are used for Jesus in the Islamic tradition but then not explained or given any theological weight…
Richard: Yes, and “The Messiah” is even more significant. The two most common titles for Jesus there are “Son of Mary” and then he is very strongly identified as “Messiah”. So yes, in the Christian tradition all of those titles “Messiah”, “Word of God”, “Spirit of God” have a lot of theological substance – especially in terms of fulfilling Old Testament prophecy. So when Jesus turns up in the Gospels, so much of what he does is pregnant with the expectations of what the Jewish people expected of a Messiah. Now the terms have come across into Islam, but they don’t seem to be theologically significant in there. So for instance, while they call him “Messiah”, Islam doesn’t seem to have any need or space for a Messiah. There is no expectation within Islam that a Messiah will be required. We know what a prophet does – he brings messages, but if you ask someone in Islam, “Well, what is a Messiah, and why do we need one?” there is very little that they say. And that’s not just ‘in the street’, even within the Islamic scholarly tradition there are huge debates about what a Messiah is, and many, many definitions. But no one seems to agree, and of course the Qur’an itself is silent on it – and Islamic theology doesn’t seem to require one.
Gavin: So, in the book you’ve described this “thin” picture of Jesus in Islam, with these remarkable titles with undeveloped content to them. You also suggest that many Muslims are absolutely fascinated by Jesus, this character who lurks in their tradition. Why is that?
Richard: Well the first thing is that in Islam you are supposed to honour the prophets. So the fact that he has been granted prophetic status means that they are obliged to honour him in that sense – and that’s a theological reason. And a practical reason is that while there is very little about what he taught, the stories of Jesus are fascinating to Muslims. They are aware that he is a prophet, but they often don’t know what he taught, so that creates an interest. They are also told that the gospels, the Injil, are “scripture”. Now most Muslims would believe that these documents have been corrupted, but yet still contain a kernel of truth and are worth taking a look at.
So when you put these things together: Jesus is a prophet, the gospels contain at least a remnant of what he said; then add to that the fact that most Muslims are from traditional cultures that love stories, (and there are great stories about and by Jesus) that adds to the fascination.
There have been times when I’ve sat and told stories about Jesus, and recounted the stories Jesus told, to Muslims, and they’ve been in tears – at the power of the story, the power of his words and the beauty of his life. Jesus himself is an incredibly attractive figure, and Islam insists that he is someone worth honouring and listening to and that opens conversations.
Gavin: So you’ve sketched a picture of a Jesus who emerges from the Islamic tradition which many Muslims find absolutely fascinating, Which aspects of this Muslim view of Jesus do you find compelling and which do you find problematic? Because you tease a lot of that out in the book…
Richard: I find the later traditions completely fascinating and really appealing. So, I mentioned the Qiṣas al-‘Anbiyā’, the Stories of the Prophets, which were actually a form of devotional literature (which is why it’s hard to classify them, they are not scripture, more like poetry). And some of those draw quite directly from biblical material, and they present a very appealing ascetic view of Jesus. Not like he’s a monk sitting on a pole in the desert (!), he’s very engaged with his communities. I find that figure really very interesting. There’s a quest for personal intimacy, not a legalistic approach found there in some forms of Sufism which is fascinating.
I think the most problematic thing though is the cross, a point I make in my book. In the more orthodox Muslim conception of Jesus, he definitely did not die on a cross – and I think that’s problematic historically. Even if you ignore the Jesus of Christian faith, the death of Jesus is one of the few uncontested historical facts of his life. A major historical problem that Islam can’t seem to wrestle with is why all the eyewitnesses and non-Christian sources say that Jesus died on the cross. So while you might have an appealing ‘Jesus of Faith’ in Islam, he doesn’t seem to be strongly connected to the ‘Jesus of History’.
Gavin: It struck me while I was reading your book, while Christians engage with first-century eye-witness reports, the Apostles, document history (you cite Richard Bauckham on this), Islam makes very clear statements about Jesus, that don’t seem to be connected to historical sources – but that this gap doesn’t matter to Muslims…?
Richard: That’s right. And this really moves away from my book and into my research area! But very roughly, traditional Muslim thinking (and some fundamentalist Christian thinking too) says that (i) some knowledge is from God, and (ii) some knowledge is human, that we work out ourselves. Knowledge from God is direct, infallible and you can’t question it. Whereas human knowledge is questionable, so divine knowledge trumps human knowledge every time, and there is an impermeable barrier between those two things. So for a Muslim the Qur’an is ‘divine knowledge’. It is not even seen as a human document but is entirely divine. So whatever that says about Jesus just is true and if history doesn’t marry up with that, then the problem is with history, because that’s human knowledge which is fallible. That’s de facto, you can’t critique that, because that’s just the way it is. You can neither critique God’s knowledge, nor put human knowledge above it. That’s the mindset, the Qur’an trumps everything. Which if the Qur’an is the word of God, is fair enough, that’s a sensible thing to think. The question is whether the Qur’an really is the word of God.
Gavin: And one of the things you raise is that the Muslim view of Jesus, even the Qur’anic view of Jesus, raises more questions than it answers. What are some of the questions that get generated by the Islamic view of Jesus which are not adequately answered from within Islam?
Richard: There are things like, “Why have a Messiah?”, then why should Jesus be called “The Word of God?”, and “The Spirit of God”. That doesn’t seem to be a requirement for any other prophet- why then this one? And there is no explanation given. Another one is the virgin birth. God can do anything of course, but why was Jesus virgin-born, when no other person since Adam was born without a human father. In Christianity, we need a “new Adam” (it’s part of the theology, we were expecting a ‘new Adam’), but Islam has no space for that, so why a virgin birth? Mohammad wasn’t born of a virgin. Then why is it Jesus who comes back to judge on the ‘last day’? Why not Muhammad? And it is really hard to overestimate just how significant ‘the last day’ is in the Qur’an. Muslims literally live their life under the awe or fear of the coming judgement. It’s one of the three main things in the Qur’an, and it is just so striking that Jesus is the one we meet there, not Muhammad. Now God can do what He wants, but for me that raises questions. Why Jesus? I would have expected Muhammad to have had the higher honour.
Gavin: Then you suggest that some people want to develop a kind of blended view of Jesus, drawing on the Christian and Muslim traditions – and mushing them together – something that you resist quite firmly. One of the striking things at the very end of the book is that you say that we need to hold onto, and respect the differences. So why is that? You even push back on the idea that this might be a route to more peaceful relations between Christians and Muslims…
Richard: The first thing I want to say – and say this really strongly is that I am all on board with the longing behind that. The idea that there has been too much conflict between Muslims and Christians over the years is true. There has been too much antagonism, at times even fighting – and we need to do whatever it takes to be able to at the very, very least co-exist. Then we need to learn how to not just coexist, but far more than that, actually flourish and have meaningful, close friendships and be able to live together, So I love that longing.
What I question is the need for us to have a common understanding of Jesus to make that happen. It seems to me that it is a poorer model for harmony that says ’I’m only going to tolerate you – or be friends with you, if we can agree on all these things together.’ Or, ‘I can only be friends with you if I agree with you’ which sounds almost totalitarian! Only accepting people who agree with you doesn’t seem to me to be genuine tolerance or genuine friendship. The real challenge, (and what is really fruitful) is learning to live well with people you disagree with! That’s what we all need to do.
Also, Islam accepts nearly everything about the ‘Christian Jesus’, except what Christians would say are the two most important things, which are his divinity and his redeeming death on the cross for us. So for Muslims to say ‘let’s just agree on the things we have in common’, Muslims don’t have to compromise anything – we’re just getting the ‘Muslim Jesus’. So the Muslim saying to the Christian, ‘we can only be friends if you let go of the most important things you hold about Jesus’, is not a good recipe for friendship. If I were to say to you, ‘We can be friends – but only if you let go of your most cherished beliefs’, that doesn’t seem to work.
What we really here need is a commitment to love each other through disagreement.
Gavin: And that’s not just around Christian-Muslim relations, that’s a problem across society in today’s world – this idea that you can love people if they agree with you, and if they don’t agree with you they hate you… actually learning to love people you disagree with is a different language than people often speak today
Richard: Absolutely, which means that what we end up with is that whoever shouts the loudest wins, and you have to agree with them. And that is totalitarian, it’s not tolerant, or loving or capable of building society.
Gavin: So learning to love people, engage with them and have genuine community not predicated on the basis of mashing up what you actually believe…
Richard: Yes – and here’s a good example. In my family, we have Communists, Catholics, Protestants, Atheists. Does that mean I can’t get on with them? Of course not! We have a familial bond which holds us. So we need to find a bond in society, which doesn’t depend on us believing the same things about God. It comes down to a commitment to build society, and to care for each other though disagreement.
By the way in the book, the book was written in response to a particular Muslim journalist called Mustafa Akyol, who suggested that devotion to Jesus is a good thing for Muslims and Christians – which will lead to that heart of wanting to be generous to one another. So I at least agree with that. So I am happy for a Muslim to follow the Muslim Jesus because he was peaceful, loving, God-focused, humble, non-materialistic, a servant… and if that helps Muslims to embrace peace that’s brilliant. But I also think that if Christians properly follow ‘their Jesus’, the Jesus who came to bring peace, who was the Prince of Peace, then Muslims shouldn’t say to Christians, ‘stop believing in your Jesus, because that will lead to conflict’. if Christians believe in ‘their Jesus’ and that Jesus fills them with the Holy Spirit who can empower them to be a peacemaker, then surely that’s a way to build society as well.
Gavin: So you wrote in response to Akyol. But tell us why you wrote it, who you wrote it for, what you hope to achieve through?
Richard: Well, this might not sound very romantic, but I wrote it for SPCK (the publisher) who asked me to! But there were a couple of reasons why I said ‘yes’ to them!
I can’t think of another book about Jesus, written for Muslims. There may be some in Arabic that I’m not aware of, but certainly not in English – so there is a real gap here. I thought that was a problem, and one I could address. The other thing is that if there is one thing I want Muslims and Christians to talk about well, to understand each other about, to listen well and have a productive conversation about: it’s Jesus! Christians and Muslims have apologetic arguments about all sorts of things, and there’s a place for all that; but if Muslims want to talk about Jesus – that’s great, because that’s who I want to talk about. If I can create a book which facilitates that kind of conversation, and does it in a way that “gets” the Muslim mindset, as well as the Christian one, then that’s the goal. I just want to Christians and Muslims to talk profitably about Jesus.
Gavin: That’s fascinating, I enjoyed the book – and learnt so much. So it’s been great to speak to you in person. Thankyou!
Richard: Great to speak to you!
Dr. Richard Shumack is a philosopher of religion specialising in Muslim and Christian belief. He is the Director of the Arthur Jeffery Centre for the Study of Islam at Melbourne School of Theology and a Research Fellow at the Centre for Public Christianity (CPX) in Sydney, Australia.
Jesus Through Muslim Eyes by Richard Shumack is available here.
Gavin Matthews hosts guest speaker Gilbert Lennox along with Gareth Black as they explore the many ways the Bible can be used in evangelism.
