The Natural Theologian

In A Natural History of Natural Theology, my late professor Helen De Cruz (1978-2025) and husband Johan De Smedt write that “most modern versions of the design argument do not take natural selection and its principle of cumulative selective retention into account as a viable explanation” (75).Advocates of the design argument have not proven that the argument remains valid after Darwin; they—we—have simply ignored natural selection.Dr. De Cruz, who served on the committee for my dissertation prospectus, died this June at the age of 46 of an aggressive illness. She left behind two children and a husband. Her work in philosophy was truly remarkable, not to mention her prior Ph.D. in art history, her fiction-writing, and lute-playing(!). While this article engages in criticism, it arises from deep respect for her amazing, cross-disciplinary scholarship.However, while De Cruz and De Smedt argue that contemporary natural theologians ignore natural selection, their own description of natural selection is simplistic.They illustrate the process with an example of Richard Dawkins’. And they begin with an important admission:The likelihood that a computer program that generates random combinations of letters will produce by pure chance a phrase from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, such as METHINKSITISLIKEAWEASEL, is vanishingly small.(I did the math; that’s less than 1 in 1032!)But here’s how natural selection can overcome this probability threshold:However, allowing the computer to retain the correct letters at each attempt will produce the sentence in no more than 23 × 26 = 598 runs.Allowing the computer to retain the correct letters at each attempt?That’s not natural selection. That’s cheating.What I greatly respect about Dr. De Cruz’s work is its careful integration of science with philosophy and theology. For example:But on this point, I find myself disappointed.I had hoped for a robust analysis of wherein modern evolutionary science conflicts with the design argument. Instead, I find an inaccurate overestimate of the power of natural selection, with the assumption that natural selection is the sole causal source of biological evolution.De Cruz and De Smedt are also dismissive toward Bill Dembski and the theory of Intelligent Design. (At least they are willing to cite Dembski!) As a result, I find myself craving more accurate analysis of the power and limits of modern evolutionary theory and the remaining viability of teleological thinking in science and philosophy.In this article, I’ll argue that De Cruz and De Smedt’s analysis of natural selection assumes the presence of design and, citing Bill Dembski’s recent article on “the conservation of information,” argue that natural selection explains only a fraction of biological diversity.While structural biologists, admitting the problem, propose additional mechanisms of evolution, I conclude that no naturalistic explanation of the origin of biological diversity yet exists. The design argument, therefore, remains as viable as ever.To support research exploring academic heterodoxy on evolution, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription to The Natural Theologian. You’ll also get exclusive access to paid posts.1. Natural Selection…Plus Additional ProgrammingIn his analysis of the origin of biological forms, Aristotle discussed three kinds of cause: Chance, Necessity, and Purpose.(This is distinct from his “four causes” idea.) In his contemporary defense of the design inference, Dembski discusses the same three, calling them “chance, regularity, and design.”But De Cruz and De Smedt argue that this is to ignore a fourth causal option that modern science has turned up: Natural selection.Admittedly, natural selection is not independent of the other three causes. It is a combination of chance and regularity, and purportedly, it mimics or creates the appearance of design.On this analysis, Aristotle’s trichotomy has been superseded by Darwin’s tetrachotomy. Hence, contemporary teleologists, including intelligent design theorists, are working with an outdated palette of options.For pre-Darwinians like Aristotle and Cicero, and even William Paley, “natural selection was not in the pool of possible explanations,” De Cruz and De Smedt admit. But for modern advocates “of the design argument,” De Cruz and De Smedt allege that they “do not take natural selection and its principle of cumulative selective retention into account as a viable explanation” (75). Modern advocates of design are simply ignoring the advance made by Darwin’s discovery of natural selection.But as revealed in the above example, De Cruz and De Smedt confuse natural selection’s combination of chance and regularity with the workings of a pre-programmed filter.While the chance of producing METHINKSITISLIKEAWEASEL by chance is prohibitively low, they argue that, by the “principle of cumulative selective retention,” a computer could reduce the odds from <1 in 1032 to something that could be produced in less than 600 attempts:Allowing the computer to retain the correct letters at each attempt will produce the sentence in no more than 23 × 26 = 598 runs.But a computer program that “retained the correct letters at each attempt” would not be a combination only of chance and regularity, but of chance, regularity, and design.Chance is involved in the mechanism of random-letter-generation.Regularity governs the mechanical working of the computer’s selection mechanism.But allowing, i.e., programming, a “computer to retain the correct letters at each attempt” would require design.While De Cruz and De Smedt are confident that “Darwin…came up with natural selection as a naturalistic explanation of design,” their own description of its workings—even as highly-educated, scientifically-informed philosophers over a century and a half after the publication of On the Origin of Species—tacitly invokes design.2. Information In, Information Out This week, mathematician and philosopher Bill Dembski shared on his Substack an academic article he published earlier this month: “The Law of Conservation of Information: Search Processes Only Redistribute Existing Information.”In that article, Dembski argues the following: Conservation of information sparked scientific interest once a recurring pattern was noticed in the evolutionary computing literature. In grappling with the creation of information through evolutionary algorithms, this literature consistently revealed that the information outputted by such algorithms always needed first to be programmed into them.Thus, the primary goal of this literature—to uncover how information could be created from scratch or de novo—was shown to be misconceived: the information was not created but instead shuffled around or smuggled in, implying that it already existed in some form or other.Information output in these situations therefore always presupposed a counterbalancing input of prior information.In other words, mechanistic processes are incapable of producing new information. The most a mechanistic process can do is shuffle it around or destroy it.Accordingly, while natural selection was an important scientific discovery, it does not have the power to produce new biological information (or lines of Shakespeare). It can only reshuffle or destroy existing information.Consider an example of biological evolution for which the mechanism of natural selection is adequate: The evolution of the polar bear.Scientists believe that the polar bear shares a common ancestor with the brown bear and the North American black bear. The evidence of this is their shared genetic material, less two notable mutations.One mutation is to a geneinvolved in fat metabolism, which allows the polar bear to have a diet that ‘contains a very large proportion of fat (much higher than in the diet of brown bears)’ (Behe, Darwin Devolves, 16). The second gene “is associated with pigmentation, and changes in it are probably responsible for the blanching of the [polar bear] ancestors’ brown fur” (17).(I wrote about this here.)Yet both mutations, when they occur in other mammals, are damaging.“When the same gene is mutated in humans or mice, studies show it frequently leads to high levels of cholesterol and heart disease” (Behe, 17).Likewise, the loss of pigmentation in the fur was a loss of functional genetic material, not the creation of a new gene for white fur.As I once summarized it,“Scientists have reason to believe that both variations that occurred in polar bears [involved] a loss of genetic information that, as we saw, is shared by mammals, up to and including humans.”In other words, in a scientifically demonstrable instance where biological evolution was caused by natural selection, no new information was created. Biological information was lost. And this loss of biological information was, by accident, beneficial. It was selectively retained without any pre-programming—without any design.Importantly, however, while natural selection can explain how the polar bear evolved from the biological kind of bear that was the common ancestral population of the brown bear and the North American black bear, it cannot explain the origin of the biological information that gave rise to that ancestral kind of bear in the first place.Natural selection explains the survival, but not the arrival of the fittest.Natural selection explains the speciation of an off-shoot, whose differentiating mutations are damaging to existing functional genes.But what natural selection cannot explain is the origin of biological kinds.3. Evolutionists, Don’t Give Up!In What Darwin Got Wrong, philosopher Jerry Fodor and cognitive scientist Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini report that, among structural biologists, no one believes that natural selection is sufficient to explain biological diversity: “None of them is ‘that kind’ of Darwinist any more” (xiv).However, Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini report that this admission from structural biologists has yet to influence “informed

This afternoon, I hosted a livestream about the following note:My contention that a theistic worldview is shared by the major monotheistic faiths provoked debate and discussion. I decided to go to the airwaves to dig into the matter more deeply.If you missed the stream, watch the video here.Thank you to everyone who tuned into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app.The Natural Theologian is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit joelcarini.substack.com/subscribe

In response to my recent post on J. Gresham Machen, readers offered thoughtful pushback on several fronts.Some questioned whether Machen’s later turn away from “objective” methods wasn’t the right move after all.Others raised concerns about the dangers of free inquiry, especially when it risks undermining Christian convictions.Still others debated the wisdom of staying and reforming corrupt institutions rather than leaving them to act authentically.Here are a few reflections in response to those critiques.1. Should Christians Strive for Objectivity? A common objection was:“The theological modernists claimed objectivity, but they were, in fact, biased. Doesn’t that vindicate Machen’s later turn toward Christian perspectivalism?”This strikes me as a category confusion.The problem with theological modernists wasn’t that they tried to be objective. The problem was that they weren’t. They imported philosophical and theological assumptions while presenting their conclusions as neutral scholarship. Their failure wasn’t in aspiring to objectivity, but in failing to live up to it.The right response isn’t to embrace perspectivalism as if all truth is merely a projection of our ideological priors. It’s to strive for greater objectivity, not less.I’ve described this elsewhere as civilized empiricism—a pursuit of truth grounded in a recognition of one’s biases, tested through dialogue with dissenting voices and institutions designed to expose blind spots. This is distinct from a kind of naïve or “brute empiricism,” where a lone thinker imagines they can arrive at truth without community, history, or correction.If our institutions are prone to dogma, the answer isn’t to surrender to subjectivity. It’s to lean more fully into practices that counterbalance our partiality.That means that students of faith should study with secular professors and peers, and secular scholars should welcome religious students into their classrooms.We need shared spaces of inquiry across disagreement, not echo chambers of our own convictions.2. Should We Pursue Truth Before Christ?Another objection was more spiritual in nature:Is there not danger in pursuing truth wherever it leads, especially if that pursuit might lead us away from Christ?I take this concern seriously. The fear isn’t just about what we might find out if we looked deeper. It’s about our own susceptibility to pride, to the allure of intellectual respectability, or to temptation masquerading as insight.There is wisdom in spiritual caution. Not everyone is ready for every branch of philosophy or science.But while maturity matters, I don’t believe the answer is to foreclose hard questions for fear of where they might lead. Christians often speak of the need for moral commitment to Christ prior to intellectual inquiry. But the New Testament seems to assume the reverse: “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is in vain” (1 Corinthians 15:14). Our faith depends on something being true, and that truth is, in principle, open to examination.Faith seeks understanding, yes, but it also rests on good reasons. We are not asked to believe blindly, but to weigh, inquire, and discern.To do that well requires what I might call a “philosophic temper”—a posture of non-anxious, open-minded interest in truth. Some secular scholars model this better than many Christians.(This is very different from the kind of student who learns a bit of textual criticism and suddenly becomes pro-abortion. That’s not inquiry; that’s reaction.)One helpful way to cultivate a philosophic temper: Ask yourself what kind of worldview you’d hold if you lost your faith. Don’t just assume you’d become a Nietzschean or a nihilist. Perhaps you would continue to “act as though God exists,” like Jordan Peterson, or maintain the best insights of “religion for atheists,” like Alain de Botton. Thinking through those scenarios helps clarify what’s at stake, and what’s not, in our beliefs.3. Should We Stay or Leave Broken Institutions?Finally, some readers defended Machen’s own institutional departures, asking:Wasn’t Machen right to leave the mainline Presbyterian church and Princeton Seminary? Aren’t some institutions working at cross-purposes with their founding principles?In my earlier post, I only revealed my views on Machen’s decision to paid subscribers, but I will say this here: Burnett’s biography has me reconsider my Protestant impulse to take doctrinal purity as the deciding factor in favor of leaving corrupt institutions.The question applies far beyond Machen’s choice to leave his denomination and academic home. Many of us wrestle with similar choices in our relationship to academia, to the church, or to legacy institutions in general. Should we remain, or break away and start afresh?Often our conclusions reflect our own sociological positioning. Those outside academia often see only its ideological flaws and institutional failures. Those within it, especially those embedded in its better corners, see the benefits it still offers: peer review and intellectual collaboration and camaraderie.I’m part of academia, though not at its center. I see both its value and its limitations. (See my “Don’t Let Academia Stop You Being an Intellectual.”) I envy the acknowledgements pages in academic books, in which top scholars credit tens, if not hundreds of other academics for conversations, criticisms, and challenges that shaped the final work. That kind of collaborative refinement can’t easily be replicated on Substack. Substack has its strengths, but it doesn’t yet foster the same kind of rigorous back-and-forth.The same dynamic plays out in the church. Many evangelicals ask, “Why stay in a theologically liberal denomination?” But consider what was lost when evangelicals abandoned the mainline: beautiful buildings, central properties in every city, and a visible presence in the cultural square. By leaving, we may have preserved our theology, but at the cost of place, heritage, and public witness. There’s a kind of escapism in that.Doctrinal purity matters, but it’s not the only thing that matters. Institutions do more than just preserve doctrine: they order life, preserve memory, and embody truth in social form. When they lose their way, leaving is tempting, but rebuilding outside the institution is costly. You lose the infrastructure, financial, intellectual, and even architectural, that once supported your mission.Those supports aren’t ultimate, but they’re not irrelevant either. There’s a kind of radical Protestant, or Donatist, impulse in assuming we can do without them.“Donatism was a schism from the Catholic Church from the fourth to the sixth centuries. Donatists argued that Christian clergy must be faultless for their ministry to be effective and their prayers and sacraments to be valid.” from “Donatism,” WikipediaWhat Comes Next?As I continue reflecting on Machen’s biography, I find myself drawn to an earlier generation of Christian leaders—those turn-of-the-century college presidents who pursued academic excellence while holding firm to the faith. There was a window of time when Christian intellectuals helped shape the modern university—before ideological conformity closed that door.In one sense, you could see what I’m doing as reconsidering the idea that the seminary theologian is the ideal of the Christian intellectual. Perhaps the ideal of the Christian intellectual is somewhere closer to the interface of the modern research university, the Christian faced with the objective pursuit of truth in a whole variety of areas, with empirical research, with philosophy, and so on. It’s for such an individual that the conflicts between faith and reason are raised in an institutional calling.I’ll be drawing attention to some of these figures in the near future.This post was written with the editing help of ChatGPT.The Natural Theologian is a reader-supported publication. To receive free posts like this one, become a free subscriber. To get access to premium paid essays and support my work, consider becoming a paid subscriber to The Natural Theologian. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit joelcarini.substack.com/subscribe

My theological education took place at Westminster Seminary, the bastion of presuppositionalism.Presuppositionalism: Christian thinking must begin from all and only Christian presuppositions.And this thesis had a noticeable effect on our studies.95% of the time we would read people who already agreed with us in order to believe what they said.5% of the time, we would go find somebody we disagreed with and be assigned to go figure out what was wrong with them.But after Westminster, I did a program in philosophy at the University of Chicago. In this beautiful, gothic reading room, etched in stone over one of the doorways was this quotation:“Read, neither to believe nor to contradict, but to understand.”And those words summed up what had been wrong with my experience at a presuppositional seminary, and what was so right about my experience at the University of Chicago.Now, my Christian perspective is not just based on Christian presuppositions.Now, my Christian perspective suggests that even if I’m not looking at the Bible, I see indications of the Divine.Readers, last week, I argued that the theology nerd mindset is that of a closed system, a self-reinforcing circle of Bible and theology, with no outside inputs.While much evangelical theology makes this error implicitly, presuppositionalism endorses and radicalizes this error explicitly.The presuppositionalist avows that theology should utilize circular arguments, beginning all and only from Christian presuppositions.And even if you haven’t encountered presuppositionalism, I think you’ll recognize the tendency to ideological thinking that refuses to be challenged and protects its ideas from outside interference.Not so the Christian humanist. Outside interference, from reality, is what the humanist desires.That’s why the story of how I stopped being a presuppositionalist is also the story of how I became a Christian humanist.In the rest of this post (originally a YouTube video I made in February), I tell the story of how I stopped being a presuppositionalist. Thank you for reading.If you want to learn more about transcending the theology nerd mindset, sign up for my upcoming (July-August) course, From Theology Nerd to Christian Humanist.I. What Is a Presuppositionalist? The story of how I stopped being a presuppositionalist begins back when I was one.A presuppositionalist is someone who believes that, to have a consistently Christian worldview, you need to start from all and only Christian presuppositions.The underlying theory is that people of different worldviews all start from their own presuppositions. If you’re a materialist atheist, you start from those presuppositions. If you’re a Christian, you start from a Christian set of presuppositions, and never the twain shall meet.Nobody really bases their beliefs on just an objective look at the evidence. We all bring a set of lenses, interpretive schemes to the world, and a Christian ought to make the Bible their interpretive scheme.Now for me, this was compelling as I was first taking my faith seriously. I’d had a lot of time where I just was a Christian on Sunday, and I didn’t know how to apply my faith to the other days of the week. That’s a lot of people.But as I was trying to take that faith more seriously, reading the Bible more, studying theology—the idea of having Christian presuppositions for all that you do sounds really compelling.I was also getting into the Reformed theology space where there’s an argument put forward that presuppositionalism is the consistent Calvinist or Reformed approach to apologetics, instead of classical or evidential apologetics, where you start from common ground and evidence to argue to a Christian worldview.Now I remember going off to college, at a Christian college. I thought, “Hey, I can get a Christian perspective on things!”And my now wife showed me her homework from a philosophy class, and it was about Thomas Aquinas, who is the opposite of a presuppositionalist. He’s a natural theologian. And he was arguing that there’s a distinction between the preambles of faith, the things you can know apart from faith or revelation, and the articles of faith, the things that are taught by faith.Aquinas would say that the Trinity, the Incarnation, and redemption you can only get from the Bible. But that God exists, that there is a moral law, and that we’ve sinned, these things can be known apart from Scripture. They might be even what gets you interested in Scripture. If you start to think, “I think there’s a God out there. Maybe I should read this Bible people keep talking about.” That’s the preambles versus the articles.But I denied that. I remember at the time thinking: “No, everything’s got to start from the Bible. That’s how you’re going to have a consistently Christian perspective on things in the world.”II. The Turning Point: Moral Attitudes in P. F. StrawsonBut there was a time in a final philosophy class I took at that college, we were reading about free will and moral responsibility.And there’s an important essay by Peter Strawson, British philosopher from the mid-20th century—“Freedom and Resentment.”In it, Strawson was arguing against the hard determinists. These are philosophers who think that free will and determinism are incompatible, that determinism is true and that therefore free will is false.And the hard determinists thought that therefore, we should rid ourselves of all emotions that assume that other people are moral response morally responsible. Think, e.g., resentment, from the title, that assumes that the other person has free will and purposefully did something to you. Or gratitude on the positive side: to be grateful towards somebody assumes that they were free, deserving of praise for what they did, and not just, “Well, they were pre-programmed to do it.”And Strawson’s argument took an interesting form, because Strawson was not a Christian. He was not somebody who argued that we have a soul or a metaphysical basis for free will, that we're not physically determined by our psychology or something.No, he just said, “There’s no way that we’re going to rid ourselves of these emotions of resentment and gratitude, blame and praise. These are part of being human, that we are equipped with the ability to make these evaluations.”And so from there, he said, no metaphysical thesis that pointy-headed philosophers or physicists come up with in the lab is going to affect this practice and its validity. If you bump into me, what decides whether I should be mad or forgiving is whether you intended to do so, not whether physicists have figured out whether quantum mechanics is true.So that idea, I didn’t realize it, but that was already incompatible with presuppositionalism.Hey, if you enjoy content like this, hit like and subscribe to The Natural Theologian. If you want to support my work further, consider becoming a paid subscriber.How? you say. How was Strawson’s idea incompatible with presuppositionalism?Well, let’s take an example of a presuppositionalist argument. A prominent one was the way Doug Wilson debated Christopher Hitchens in their recorded debates.Wilson is officially a presuppositionalist. (He’s got some other C. S. Lewis, natural law influences that we’ll leave aside for the moment.)But Wilson kept pressing Hitchens on Hitchens’ morally fervent critiques of the God of the Old Testament and the New. He would say, “Where do you get this morality by which you can judge—by what standard can you judge that God is evil, for having the Israelites go and kill the Canaanites? By what standard can you judge that penal substitutionary atonement is morally repugnant? You must be assuming a moral standard that has no place in an atheistic, materialist universe.”Now there are two ways you can go with an argument like that. The presuppositionalist essentially says:“You, atheist, have no basis for morality. Stop it. You need to be consistent. Go become a nihilist and go kill other people or yourself.”That’s the extreme version, but that’s essentially, “Go take your presuppositions to their logical conclusion.”But that’s not the direction that Strawson goes.Strawson is not a Christian, but he’s saying there’s something else beyond metaphysical inklings (i.e., do you believe in God or materialism).There’s our ingrained human ability to evaluate things on a moral level and to feel the emotions that are part and parcel of that.And that’s not going away.To read and understand Peter Strawson’s article, sign up for From Theology Nerd to Christian Humanist. I’m adding it to the syllabus for “philosophy week.” Grab a copy of the syllabus by clicking this link.III. C. S. Lewis and my Agnostic ProfessorAnd that’s actually where C. S. Lewis starts his argument for Christianity, in the very opening pages of Mere Christianity.C. S. Lewis says people are doing this all the time. They’re saying, “That’s mine!” “Don’t take that.” “You pushed me.” “I didn’t mean to!” They’re arguing in these moral terms based on these practices of praise and blame that we all already participate in.And C. S. Lewis says, “We all already know about that, but that thing is a clue to the meaning of the universe.”So both the presuppositionalist and the natural theologian hold that you can’t make sense of morality without God, but they do different things with this claim.The presuppositionalist says, “You need to be consistent and give up on morality.”The natural theologian says, “You need to be consistent with what you already know—that morality exists—and adopt a worldview that explains why the world is more than just material.”The presuppositionalist says, “There’s no common ground between believer and unbeliever; there’s nothing we have in common. All that morality you’ve got is, at best, stolen capital. You don’t have a right to it.The natural theologian says, “Of course, you have a right to that. That is your birthright as a human being.”And now we’ve got common ground together, and we can look at the w

In this video, Nathan Shaver cohosts a discussion with me about the Zwingli option. We discussed the tension between depravity and dignity, the distinction between humanism and scholasticism, and much more!Thank you Inst.of.Christian.Spirituality, Noah Jones, Jacob Brogdon, and many others for tuning into my live video with Nathan Shaver. Join me for my next live video in the Substack app.The Natural Theologian is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit joelcarini.substack.com/subscribe

I used to think that Calvinism was simply a system of soteriology.But I’ve come to see that there’s something more, a Calvinist vibe: to exaggerate human sinfulness in order to exaggerate the role of the grace of God.Before Calvin’s time, Zwingli articulated a Reformed theology that was deeply humane, sympathetic to the foibles and weakness of sinful human nature.If we take “the Zwingli option,” the fact that our nature is already predetermined in various ways does not make us the more evil and wicked and guilty. Rather, it provides a reason to sympathize with our condition, to treat others with greater mercy, not greater condemnation.Welcome, reader. In this post, I’ll explain why it’s time to forget Calvinism and become a Zwinglian.By the way, I’m Joel Carini, “The Natural Theologian.” I write essays on Substack to help Christians learn from secular sources.And I make videos on YouTube about God for people whether you believe what I believe, something different, or nothing at all. (This post was originally a video. Please subscribe to my YouTube channel as well.)The Calvinist VibeCalvinism.I came to these set of views when I was a young man, as many do.When I first arrived at Calvinism, it was out of a sense that my own conversion to Christ and the moral renovation that began to occur in my heart weren’t really down to me making a decision, i.e., finally deciding to get my life together, but that the initiative had come from God.When you start from that point, you get the idea that we can’t just decide for Christ on our own, sin holds us back: total depravity and unconditional election, from which follow limited atonement, irresistible grace, and the perseverance of the saints. (TULIP!)While I thought that Calvinism was simply this system of soteriology, since then, over the course of 15 years as a Calvinist and three years intensively studying at a premier Calvinist seminary, I’ve come to see that there’s something more. If you will, a Calvinist vibe.This vibe is to exaggerate human sinfulness in order to then expound upon and exaggerate the role of the grace of God. By increasing the severity of our description of human sinfulness, we make theology and Reformed theology all that more important. (“Let us describe things as sin that grace may abound!”)In the process, I fear we’ve begun to denigrate human nature. We say that human beings can’t know anything apart from scripture or apart from the Holy Spirit intervening in our minds. We say that nothing people do outside of Christ has any value apart from maybe God’s intervention as common grace. We say that everything we do, even as Christians, is wicked and evil and is ultimately filthy rags, even when the Holy Spirit is working in us.All this we say, purporting to glorify the grace of God, forgetting that God is also the creator of our nature.We should not exaggerate the effect of the fall upon that creation as if it obliterated the image of God in man.For a while I’ve sought to argue that this isn’t real Calvinism. These are some extra add-ons, this exaggeration of sinfulness. And if we could get back to true Calvinism, we could avoid these problems. I’ve thought that the extra errors came from going the radical side of the Reformation, the Anabaptist tradition, which denigrated the world and focused on staying pure from it within the church.But once an error is made a certain number of times, you have to question whether there isn’t something wrong towards the root. And then you start to wonder whether Reformed theology couldn’t have gone a different direction. Was there some fork in the road and we took the wrong route?That is indeed possible. Martin Luther nailed his theses to the Wittenberg church door in 1517. And John Calvin, who we know as the first reformed pastor and theologian, did not experience his conversion until 1533. What was going on in the intervening years?The ministry of Ulrich Zwingli. Zwingli’s entire career ended in 1531 with his death in a battle — before Calvin’s conversion even occurred.Before Calvin’s time, Zwingli articulated a Reformed theology that was deeply humane, sympathetic to the foibles and weakness of sinful human nature, and appreciative of the work of God in creation and beyond the bounds of the Church.The Zwingli Option is the one we never took.In this post, I’m going to describe five points of Zwinglianism and articulate why I think this is the direction Reformed theology ought to go.For further reading on Zwingli, I recommend Bruce Gordon’s biography of Zwingli, Zwingli: God’s Armed Prophet, which I am currently reading. Also, Zwingli’s On Providence and Other Essays, which includes his discourse on original sin. I recommend this interview of Dr. Gordon by Austin Suggs for an intro to Zwingli’s life.1. Original Sin Is Not Sin, But DefectZwingli held that original sin — our innate disposition away from God and towards sin — is not something for which we are to blame, but rather a defect in human nature that is a punishment of the fall.In contrast to the later Reformed tradition, Zwingli did not think we were guilty on account of original sin. He did not think we were guilty on account of sinful desires and temptations, but only for sinful action.This position came out of a whole debate about whether babies were damned to destruction, and Zwingli thought that that was a horrible position to hold. Before they have done any good or evil, simply because they were born with original sin as a result of Adam’s fall, infants were to be condemned to destruction. Zwingli held that, no, these children have done no wrong, even though as a reformed theologian he held that they were subject to original sin.But original sin, Zwingli wrote, even though we call it “original sin,” is not a sin on our part, but a condition into which we are born where our motivations are not aligned with God’s purposes. And we can sympathize with human beings who are born this way, subject to this defect and to any particular form of sinful defect. (Contra Stephen G. Adubato: video.)Zwingli himself put it this way:Original sin is like a defect and a lasting one, as when stammering, blindness, or gout is hereditary in a family. On account of such a thing, no one is thought the worse or the more vicious, for things which come from nature cannot be put down as crimes or guilt.This point of Zwinglianism became prominent as I left seminary. I’d already studied Calvinism, and I saw theologians trying to wrestle with the idea of same-sex attraction, that some Christians possess a homosexual orientation.They struggled to deal with it theologically. They said, isn’t this concupiscence? Isn’t this original sin within them? Isn’t it something for which they are to blame, that they must repent of? And all of a sudden Reformed theologians, who I thought had never really discussed this matter, were completely aligned that 17th-century theology had already determined that same-sex attraction was sin.But if we take the Zwingli option, we have quite a different result. The fact that our nature is already predetermined in various ways, different of us in different ways, does not make us the more evil and wicked and guilty. Rather, it provides a reason to sympathize with our condition, that we have to fight against our nature, that our nature is already determined against the will of God, and that in order to follow Jesus Christ, we must take on the yoke of fighting against that nature.Original sin is like a congenital blindness (“Did this man sin or his parents that he was born blind?”) toward the good and toward the will of God with which we ought to sympathize and understand people’s struggles. (See “The Man Born Blind,” by Grant Hartley for this connection.)As I’ve found, if we appreciate the doctrine of original sin in this way, it gives us reason to treat others with greater mercy and not greater condemnation.Hey, if you enjoy content like this, click the “like” button and subscribe to The Natural Theologian. That will enable me to make more content like this and to get it out to more people. Thank you!2. Righteousness and Salvation Beyond the ChurchNow, Zwingli, as a Protestant reformer, rejected the idea that salvation could be had only through the Catholic Church. Extra ecclesiam nulla salus — “No salvation outside the Church,” the Catholics had proclaimed.Instead, Zwingli thought that by knowledge of the Word of God and the proclamation of the Gospel, salvation could be had wherever that word was heard, even apart from the operation of the Roman Church.But Zwingli also went further. When he spoke about the great heroes of the classical Greek and Roman West, he hoped for their salvation. He wrote that we would see Hercules and Socrates at the pearly gates, that those who had lived in pursuit of the unknown God even before the time of Christ would join us and all the saints hereafter.Zwingli had hope for the salvation of babies, whether baptized or unbaptized. And by implication, he had hope for those who attempted to live righteous lives and forsake wickedness, even beyond the bounds of the proclamation of the gospel.This theological position is often called “inclusivism,” and it’s the opposite direction of where the Calvinist vibe goes. You get the vibe that salvation is for the elect few and that that’s what Calvinism is all about.But it’s possible to take the opposite implication. If God’s grace is sovereign in salvation, then it can be found working above and beyond the ordinary means of grace, the word, the sacraments and prayer. It can be found where people, even knowing God through nature, are seeking after forgiveness of their sins, even if they know not how, if they form the altar to the unknown God, if they seek to abandon the unrighteousness and wickedness around them, as Noah or other ancient patriarchs (who had not a page of Scripture) also did.If we take this approach, whether we follow Zwingli to the inclusivism or not, we can have a much bette

In their latest album, Mumford and Sons take aim at the doctrine of original sin.I will take this darknessOver any light you castYou and all your original sinThe motivation for this denial is heartfelt:Cause there’s no evil in a child’s eyesIn saying this, lead singer and songwriter Marcus Mumford fears he may be engaged in “heresy”:I will take this heresyOver your hypocrisyBut Mumford and Sons are not the only ones moved by a child’s innocence to modify the doctrine of original sin.Ulrich Zwingli, the first Reformed theologian, despised the medieval Catholic doctrine that unbaptized children were damned. (Zwingli became Protestant independently of Luther and died in 1531, two years before Calvin’s conversion!)Now Zwingli acknowledged the doctrine of original sin, that all children were born subject to the disposition and propensity to sin.But he denied that original sin was actually sin. In other words, to call the propensity to sin “sin” was not to speak properly, but to engage in metonymy.metonymy (noun): the substitution of the name of an attribute…for that of the thing meant, for example “suit” for business executive, or “the track” for horse racing. (Oxford Languages)Instead, original sin was a defect of human nature. As a result of the fall, we no longer possess an Adamic nature with no disposition to sin. We are, instead, born into the world with disordered loves. But this is no fault of ours. And being subject to original sin and desires to sin does not of itself give rise to guilt.Zwingli’s doctrine of original sin came to be overshadowed in Reformed theology by the doctrine that even the motions of our nature toward sin give rise to guilt. So the Westminster Confession of Faith:Every sin, both original and actual, being a transgression of the righteous law of God, and contrary thereunto, doth, in its own nature, bring guilt upon the sinner. WCF 6.6But contrary to the later tradition, I believe that Zwingli was correct, and that we are in deep need of recovering Zwingli’s merciful doctrine of original sin.Damned Babies: The Late Medieval MessThe late Medieval Catholic Church taught that baptism was so necessary to salvation that all unbaptized children would be damned.The funny thing is that the Catholic Church did not itself think that babies were sinful.The Catholic view of original sin was that it was not sin, nor even defect.Original sin was nothing but the loss of extra gifts to Adam’s nature.Let’s pause there. To get a sense of the weirdness of this view, take a listen to this contemporary restatement, and reflect on the fact that this is still the position of the Catholic church:LINK: Trent Horn Explains Original SinOriginal sin is nothing but the loss of the superadded gift. It does not include any defect in human nature or newly sinful disposition or desires. It means being returned to a state of pure human nature.But then, unbaptized babies are also damned!?Well, yes, because human nature is naturally in a state where the passions, including concupiscence, are in conflict with reason. Without the “golden bridle” of original righteousness and the superadded gift, humans will devolve into sin.Accordingly, babies by nature are subject to wrath, not because they’ve sinned but because they lack the “extra” of superadded grace.This complex of Catholic doctrine is a mess. And all the Reformers departed from it. They denied that there was, by nature, a conflict in man between the passions and reason. They held, instead, that man was “righteous by design.”Therefore, original sin was not merely the loss of something extra to human nature. It was a corruption of human nature. Zwingli held this Reformed view as firmly as any other.(This is very important, because any advocacy of the Zwinglian view or departure from the current doctrine of concupiscence is immediately accused of and confused with Catholicism.)Now you might expect the Reformers to think children even more worthy of damnation. But Zwingli thought the Reformed and Augustinian doctrine of original sin had the opposite implication.Zwingli argued that, while children were subject to original sin, original sin is not sin, but only a defect in, or disease of, human nature. He summarizes:For what could be said more briefly and plainly than that original sin is not sin but disease, and that the children of Christians are not condemned to eternal punishment on account of that disease? (Declaration Regarding Original Sin, 3)Just like being born blind is no fault of the blind man, being born subject to original sin is no fault of any child.Zwingli spells out the implications of understanding original sin as disease:“I use it as combined with a defect and that a lasting one, as when stammering blindness, or gout is hereditary in a family.” (D, 4.) “On account of such a thing no one is thought the worse or the more vicious. For things which come from nature cannot be put down as crimes or guilt.” (D, 4-5.)If original sin is like a disease, then it cannot make us guilty. It is no crime of ours that we were born in a condition of sin and misery.The difficulty comes in understanding how original sin can give rise to sin without giving any reason to think us “worse or the more vicious.”After all, other Reformed theologians argue that all the motions of the soul, especially desires, that are part and parcel of original sin produce guilt. They come out of the heart, so they produce uncleanness (Mark 7:20-23).But Zwingli is concerned sharply to distinguish original from actual sin. As Oliver Crisp further describes the position:Because of this all subsequent humans (barring Christ) are born with a propensity or disposition to sin, though this disposition is itself not properly a sin so-called, but more of a source of sin (D, 9). Sin is an act; it is for actions of sin that we are culpable, not for possession of the condition of original sin which gives rise to acts of sin (he cites various New Testament passages in support of this claim, especially Rom. 7). … There is a clear bifurcation here between sin as inherited disease or condition, and sin as immoral action—that is, between original and actual sin, respectively.Reformed theologians generally, and the Westminster Confession particularly, distinguish actual and original sin. However, they treat original sin as bearing some of the properties of actual sin, chiefly, inducing guilt in us. Some Reformed theologians went so far as to extend the operation of the will back into the workings of desire, effectively arguing that all desire for sinful objects is actual sin. (I would argue that that denies the distinction between original and actual sin.)But Zwingli is concerned to take seriously the distinction between original and actual sin. Actual sin has the character of a crime which induces guilt. Anything which lacks the character of a crime, like the inner propensity that tempts us to evil, does not of itself induce guilt.Zwingli reasons:“The original contamination of man is a disease, not a sin, because sin implies guilt, and guilt comes from a transgression or trespass on the part of one who designedly perpetrates a deed.” (D, 5.) Later in the same passage he says original sin is “a condition and penalty, the disaster and misery of corrupted human nature, not a crime of guilt on the part of those who are born in the condition of sin and death.”That which precedes and even precipitates sinful action is not itself sin.Not Actually SinZwingli, I argue, is correct. Original sin is not actually sin.In the first place, this follows from the meaning of the word “actual.” Over in analytic philosophy, I find myself having to combat the idea that “actual things” are a subset of things.But this is erroneous. Decoy ducks and actual ducks are not two kinds of ducks. Since a decoy duck is not an actual duck, it is not a duck. Or, it is not actually a duck. It is a “duck” only by an extension of our use of language.In other words, sentence 2 is epexegetical of sentence 1:* A decoy duck is not an actual duck.* A decoy duck is not actually a duck.If a sentence of type 1 is true, a sentence of type 2 is true.In the same way, since original sin is not actual sin, it is not sin. Because it is not actually sin.Sentence 2 below is epexegetical of Sentence 1:* Original sin is not actual sin.* Original sin is not actually sin.Q.E.D.Born This WayIf that feels like wordplay, consider Zwingli’s own primary argument.(By the way, the above is not wordplay. It is wordplay to acknowledge that something is not actual x, but then argue that it really is x.)Zwingli’s primary argument for his position rests on this principle: “For things which come from nature cannot be put down as crimes or guilt.” From that principle, it follows that original sin is not sin, but defect.Now many object to this principle as a humanistic and philosophic rejection of original sin. After all, our contemporaries plead that they were “born this way,” and on that basis, reject Christian beliefs about sin.The trouble is that the principle is obviously correct, even though it is humanistic. What comes from nature does not come from our will.Conservatives, Christian or not, recognize this in the modern voluntaristic and social constructionist view of the self and the body. Masculinity and femininity are not mere social constructions, and the male and female body are certainly not mere social constructions. Nature is not the product of the human will, even if the human will is capable of interfering with and destroying nature.The rejection of the humanistic principle cannot be the solution.What’s a Christian to do, then? The Christian should recognize that original sin “cannot be put down as [crime] or guilt,” since it comes from nature.But the Christian can retain the doctrine of original sin, since he can hold that original sin is not sin, but defect.Our Unnatural NatureAnother objection remains: That original sin does not come from nature but is, instead, contr

Do people’s different beliefs about God mean they worship different gods?Many Christians speak as though they do.Wheaton College fired a professor for claiming that Muslims and Christians worship the same God.In a recent video, YouTuber Redeemed Zoomer said that, because Mormons and orthodox Christians have different conceptions of God – as an ‘Eternal Trinity’ or as a ‘Godhead of many changing divine beings’ – they “believe in different gods” and Mormonism and Christianity “can’t be said to be the same religion.”My freshman year at college, I wrote that Catholics and Protestants worship different gods, in an op-ed for the college newspaper.But the idea that different beliefs imply different gods presupposes a controversial philosophical view: descriptivism about reference.Descriptivism about reference is an object of critique in my Ph.D. dissertation, following many significant challenges to it in the philosophical literature of the last half-century.But the chief objection to descriptivism about reference to God is this:If having heretical beliefs means that one does not refer to God, then those beliefs are not even about God, much less false of Him. But then it is impossible to have heretical beliefs about God.Hm, that’s not the result we wanted!To get straight on what went wrong here, let’s dig in to what descriptivism is, the challenges to it, and why it is a poor way to understand theological disagreement.What Is Descriptivism? According to descriptivism, when you or I attempt to refer to something, we refer via a description in our minds which an object satisfies.So, when I attempt to refer to my wife, I refer successfully if an object in the world matches the description of her in my head: “An attractive woman, with a degree in music, and an occupation as a Christian counselor, etc.”But there are several problems with this theory:* Descriptivism implies that it is a purely conceptual truth that my wife got a degree in music, but my wife could have gotten a degree in business or history.An example of a conceptual truth is “All bachelors are unmarried.” It is true in virtue of the meanings of the terms. “Analytic,” “tautological,” “logical,” and “necessary” are other terms for this kind of truth.BUT it is a contingent, empirical truth that my wife got a degree in music, not a conceptual truth. Therefore, I and others must be able to refer to my wife without the mediation of a description of her.* While I may possess a detailed description of my wife, people often refer to individuals and objects they cannot adequately describe.For example, I can refer to Cicero, even if all I know about him is that he was a famous Roman orator. Given that there were other famous Roman orators, this description is insufficient to distinguish him from others. Yet we successfully refer to historical figures all the time without possessing individuating descriptions of them. (An “individuating description” is one that only one individual matches.)In fact, that is the normal condition to be in at the beginning of a research project: “I can refer to Cicero, but I can’t describe him. Now, let me find out some information about him.”* We often successfully refer to things of which we have false beliefs or have received misinformation.For example: I direct you to “the man in the corner drinking whiskey.” But it turns out that he is drinking vodka, if in a whiskey glass. I still successfully referred to him.It’s like my description comes with a proviso: “Fix it up, if I’ve got the description wrong!”Likewise, if I falsely believe that Aristotle was the teacher of Plato, as an introductory philosophy student might easily do, the inadequacy of my description of Aristotle does not change the fact that my use of “Aristotle” refers to Aristotle, and my use of “Plato” to Plato.“Who are you studying?”“Aristotle, the teacher of Plato — or was it the other way around?”In fact, that is precisely why my statement is false. Aristotle did not teach Plato. If the inadequacy of my description of Aristotle interfered with my ability to refer to him, then my belief that “Aristotle taught Plato” would not even be false, which it is.Descriptivism misdescribes the phenomena of reference and description.Descriptivism about Divine Reference?Let’s apply these lessons over to theology:Consider what we could call descriptivism about divine reference.On this theory, we successfully refer to God only if we possess an accurate description of him. If our description is inaccurate, we refer to a different god ( … or “god,” or something).But let’s consider the three objections to descriptivism in a theological context:* Descriptivism about divine reference implies it is a purely conceptual truth that God is a Trinity, became Incarnate, etc.In other words, if you’ve got the right concept of God, you’ll just know that God is a Trinity.Now, some theologians have defended this, like Anselm, Hegel, Van Til, Frame, and Poythress.But most people think that you can’t know just by attending to the concept of “God” that He is a Trinity. After all, you might have started with the wrong concept of God.At least on the mainstream view, that God is a Trinity is not a conceptual truth; rather, it had to be revealed. Likewise, on the mainstream view, the Incarnation of the Son of God arises from the will of God and so was contingent, rather than necessary and conceptual.Furthermore, these truths about God do not enable us to refer to God, as if you couldn’t refer to God unless you already knew them. Rather, the ability to refer to God enables us to learn truths about God.We can refer to God before we can describe God.* If descriptivism about divine reference is true, then I can only refer to God if I have an individuating description of God.Depending on what you’re after, this is either way too easy or way too challenging.After all, “the Creator of the universe” seems to be sufficient to pick out God only.But then, a bunch of heretics and people from other religions are able to refer to God because they also think he is the Creator of the universe.So we can make it more challenging. We’ll say that you can only refer to God if your description of him is specific enough that only orthodox Christians hold it.But then, the bar seems to be too high. Kids will, presumably, be unable to refer to God, much less pray to him. Moreover, when adults attempt to teach them things about God, the kids will be unable to believe them about God — at least until they learn enough truths that their use of the word “God” starts to refer to Him.Whether descriptivism sets the bar too high or too low, it seems that we are able to refer to God even if our description of him is insufficient.* In order for us to have false beliefs about God, our uses of “God” must already refer to Him.If we want to say that heretics and non-Christians have false theology, their sentences have to at least refer to God.Take the sentence, “God did not become incarnate.” If “God” does not, in that sentence, refer to God, then on what grounds can we say it is false?Perhaps “God” in that sentence refers to something else, god1. But then the truth of “God did not become incarnate” does not turn on whether God became incarnate, but on whether god1 became incarnate.But then, these beliefs are not false. After all, the Mormon god (godLDS) did not become incarnate. (He started as a man and became God — or godLDS.) It may be false of God that he did not become incarnate, but the Mormon belief isn’t about God; it’s about godLDS.If false theological beliefs do not even refer to God, then false belief is impossible. Heck, heresy is impossible.But we can refer to the man in the corner drinking vodka even if we misdescribe him. So it follows that we can refer to God without describing him sufficiently, or even accurately.In fact, my descriptions would not even count as inaccurate unless they were descriptions of God.Even false beliefs about God are about God.Even people with false beliefs about God refer to God.Descriptivism about divine reference misdescribes the phenomena of reference to and description of God.The Alternative: Direct Divine Reference TheoryWhat should we think if we abandon descriptivism about divine reference?In philosophy, the alternative to descriptive reference is direct reference.According to direct reference theory, the meaning of a term is the thing it refers to, without the mediation of a description.Effectively, a term tags something in the world, rather than catching it in the net of a description. For more on tags v. nets, read this:If we adopt a “direct divine reference theory,” then our word “God” refers to God, independently of any particular description we may believe concerning God.It follows that the true things we say of God are not merely conceptual; they must be learned and received through natural and special revelation.We can also refer to God even while our conception of God is rather inadequate. This enables us to learn new things about the God to whom we already refer.Also, children can refer to God and pray to Him, despite limited knowledge about Him.In the same way, people in religious traditions that differ from Orthodox Christianity, or none at all, may refer to God despite their inadequate conceptions about God.Most importantly, the only reason their, and our, beliefs about God can be said to be false of God, is that we all successfully refer to Him. Even our false beliefs about God are only false because they refer to God, of whom they are false.The very possibility of false belief, and even heresy, presupposes that it is possible to refer to God despite the inadequacy of our descriptions or conceptions of God.So let’s drop the talk about people believing in different gods.Instead, let’s discuss what is true and false of the God to whom we all successfully refer.The Natural Theologian is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or

Hello, readers! The last several weeks, I’ve been deep in work on my Ph.D. dissertation. I’m excited to share some of the fruits of that research here. I’ll begin with my reflections on why I’m getting a Ph.D. in philosophy in the first place. Thanks for reading.Hey, I’m Joel Carini, the Natural Theologian.And in this post, I’m going to talk about why I’m getting a PhD in philosophy and not theology.1. Biblical Exegesis Is Not EnoughMy first intellectual love has been theology, the study of Christian doctrine and what the faith teaches. That led me to take an interest in studying at seminary where we would study the sources of Christian theology in the Bible and the history of Christian interpretation of the Bible and the systematization of that into systematic theology. A whole coalition of disciplines that explore the contours of what Christianity teaches. And by attending seminary, you become competent. You can learn the original languages of the Bible. You can learn how to use the Bible in theological debate, what are the main arguments for and against different positions, and how to ground one's own position in those texts.(For background, see my post, “Why You Shouldn’t Go to Seminary.”)But what I realized over the course of my seminary studies was that the resources of biblical exegesis alone are not enough to do Christian theology.I noticed this in each of the main evangelical debates.Take the debate over complementarianism and egalitarianism, the relationship between men and women in the home and the church.Now both of these arguments were presented as if they were purely exegetical arguments. They rested on the meanings of certain Greek words like kephalé, for head, the husband is the head of the wife (Eph 5:23). What does this mean, authority, source, or what? The “helpmeet,” the “companion” in the book of Genesis (Gen 2:18). These Hebrew and Greek words were supposed to be the linchpin of theological arguments.Yet it wasn’t plausible to me that biblical exegesis alone was even the reason people held the positions they held. Did the evangelical feminist really hold their view just because of a dictionary definition of kephalé? Or was something more going on? (And the same applied to the complementarians, by the way.)No, I started to think people get their ideas from outside the Bible. They’re shaped by the Bible, but their reading of the Bible is also shaped by what they already think.And so we’re kind of thrown back on ourselves to actually examine the fundamental assumptions that we hold and the reasons for and against those, in conversation with the Bible, but not with the Bible alone.Specifically, I started to see the way that different theological debates reduced down to philosophical debates.The feminist one remains a simple example. If someone thinks that the reason churches, certain churches, ordain only men and not women is because of the patriarchy, we’re not dealing with a specifically Christian argument. That’s not a knock against it, but it is to say that this is an argument that shows up elsewhere.To actually understand the merits of a key feminist argument like that, you have to go into feminist philosophy, look at the history of that argument. What is the sociological evidence for it? What is the philosophical grounding of it? And what are the contrary claims of the other side? Well, this would enmesh you in philosophy, that universal human discipline, rather than the parochial Christian theology of adherence of the Christian faith.And so, I began to think in that, as in so many other debates, what we really need to do is get down to the philosophical arguments that are at the heart of things.And this just dovetailed with the fact that, as many people criticize evangelicals for, debating from Bible verses actually doesn’t solve our problems. There are contested interpretations. There are different interpretations on completely opposite sides. There are views on completely opposite sides that both claim a basis in the Bible.Now, this isn’t to say that there’s no way to read the Bible aright, but it is to say that the idea that you can do it all from the Bible is a bit shallow and narrow.If you enjoy content like this, hit “like” and subscribe to The Natural Theologian. That will help me make more content like this and get it out to more people. Thanks for your support.2. Attending to RealityNow another reason to go outside the Bible in order to understand Christian teaching is because the message of the Bible is actually about those things themselves. It’s a message to human beings about human beings. It addresses the various aspects of their lives. It addresses the world, the natural world, the human world.And if you don’t understand those things on their own terms, as it were, you're liable to ignore them or misunderstand them or not even to comprehend how the Christian faith speaks to them. If you try to speak about those things just from the Bible and theology, you’re likely to be missing a lot of the relevant information.An obvious one is politics. Whoever claims that their view of politics comes directly from the Bible immediately invites suspicion. Because there are people who can argue the exact contrary position and claim that it’s from the Bible.And more importantly, because politics is a complex and messy subject in the real world. We have to use our eyes and our senses to gather empirical information about how the world works. And this is done in political science, political philosophy, sociology, history, and many other disciplines. The idea that we can do this from the Bible alone, get that sort of magic shortcut to the right answers, is deeply misguided.There are other areas as well. Broadly, we could think about anthropology, the study of human beings. Can human beings be understood through science? Can we understand ourselves through the disciplines of psychology? What are the limits of that scientific understanding? Are there ways that human beings cannot be reduced to their scientific and natural substrate?We see debates about counseling and psychology and their legitimacy for Christians. Can we use this information that’s gathered, not from the Bible, but by secular study and by secular psychotherapy to understand the human mind, to help people? Can we differentiate spiritual problems from psychological problems and properly relate these? Again, you can’t do that if you just say everything's going to come from the Bible, as some do. You’re liable to to mistake psychological problems for spiritual ones. (See “Are Thoughts Sin?” by Anna Carini and myself.)If the Bible is to help human beings live human lives, we actually have to pay attention to human beings, how they work, how their minds work. We can’t just look at the Bible.Now that’s not to say that the Bible can’t correct secular understandings. It’s not to say that the Bible can’t, for instance, emphasize human responsibility in ways that a kind of determinist psychology ignores. We should emphasize human moral responsibility. In fact, when you don't people become helpless, and science can even confirm that. (See discussion of “learned helplessness.”) But you need a healthy discussion and dialogue between between faith and science to even get that right.There are other areas. In the church, when we try to reduce everything to theology, we often ignore power dynamics, ways that people are driven by narcissism or fame, psychological motivations. If we understand the church as another human institution, trying to exemplify something greater, but still subject to those infirmities and patterns, we're going to be on a lot better footing.We can pay attention to how social media is shaping the Christian life, shaping online Christian personalities. We get a better sense of what’s really going on.Example: Homosexual OrientationMaybe more controversially, same-sex attraction is an important topic for the contemporary church. It’s where the church is frequently accused of homophobia, of misunderstanding and lacking sympathy with one particular human experience. And the church can easily do this. We can say, we’ve got our answers straight from the Bible. There's no mention of a homosexual orientation. Our desires are themselves sin. We can make these blanket proclamations.This is an area of theology where I think the church needs to really grapple with reality that we can learn through philosophy and empirical science. We can learn from people’s experience and from scientific study that some people have a sexual orientation that is ordered contrary to how the Bible says we ought to direct our sexual activity. (See my “Sexual Orientation Is Not a Social Construct.”)If that’s the case, that presents a real obstacle to just stating the Christian truth simply.If there’s a fact that some people are same-sex attracted or gay, then we cannot simply assume that every desire is sin. We cannot simply assume that the Christian message of sexual fidelity in male-female marriage is easy for everyone. We must understand that it is more costly for some than others because of the way some people’s nature has been made, even though that's affected by the fall.Empirical reality, things that are known from outside the Bible have to be allowed in if we are to be sympathetic to human nature, to the human beings that are around us as we know that Jesus Christ himself is.3. Openness to Experience and ThoughtWe’ve moved further afield than just philosophy. Why does this explain that I'm getting a philosophy Ph.D. instead of a theology Ph.D.?Well, it's because of this openness to other fields of learning. Now, philosophy itself acts as a kind of bridge between all these fields. It’s been remarked before that philosophy doesn't really have its own subject area. It studies all phenomena. There’s a philosophy of biology. There’s a philosophy of language. There’s a philosophy of man, and so on.Philosophy stands at the boundary of these disciplines

Yes, that’s right — “defence,” with a ‘c.’That’s because my guest on this episode is an Anglican priest and Substacker Father Thomas Plant (Fr Thomas Plant).Father Plant recently responded to Paul Kingsnorth’s lecture “Against Christian Civilization” with his well-titled reply, “Kingsnorth’s Radical Protestantism: In Defence of Christian Civilisation.”Fr. Plant writes:“Do we want civilization,” he asks, “or do we want Christ? What if we can have only the one or the other?” The question is rhetorical, the presumed answer clear. Christ and civilisation are antitheses. To follow one is to reject the other. They are rival masters, and woe on him who tries to serve the two.This dualistic principle governs Kingsnorth’s recent diatribe for First Things, Against Christian Civilisation. It is an ascetic principle of sorts, grounding Kingsnorth’s quietist distaste for politics and technology. But despite his newfound profession of Orthodoxy, it is a principle closer to the Puritans and Levellers than to the Hesychasts and Stilites he admires.Read the whole thing.Given my own take on Kingsnorth’s talk, I had to have Fr. Plant on the podcast. Here is our conversation.For the video version, watch our interview on YouTube. (And be sure to subscribe to The Natural Theologian YouTube channel.)Chapters:00:00 Intro01:57 Kingsnorth's Mistake07:03 The Puritan Error?11:00 Contemporary Radical Protestantism16:50 Kingsnorth's Critique of Jordan Peterson26:42 Good without God?33:01 Pastoral Implications37:00 How to be a Christian in abundance?44:35 Christian culture v. civilization?Fr. Plant’s Article: “Kingsnorth’s Radical Protestantism.”Paul Kingsnorth’s Address and Article: “Against Christian Civilization.”More from Father PlantBook: The Lost Way to the Good: Dionysian Platonism, Shin Buddhism, and the Shared Quest to Reconnect a Divided WorldSubstack: This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit joelcarini.substack.com/subscribe

Recently, Jordan Peterson spoke at ARC, the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship, his organization for international leadership. This article contains the transcript of his talk and my reaction to it, taken my from most recent YouTube video.Hey! I’m Joel Carini, the Natural Theologian.In this post, I'm going to react to Jordan Peterson’s speech at ARC 2025, the text of which is transcribed below.The Alliance for Responsible Citizenship is Jordan Peterson’s sort of global policy and vision network, kind of an antidote to Davos and the elite culture. And he’s been casting his culturally Christian, conservative/classical liberal vision over last year’s and now this year’s conference.This video just came out, so I’m gonna react and see what we can say about the philosophical and theological significance of his talk.Jordan Peterson:What is the defining characteristic of this civilizational moment? I would say that what lies in front of us, perhaps for the first time, is the opportunity to make the foundational principles of our civilization, conscious, explicit and propositional, and in so doing, to pave the way for a genuine and mutually appreciative union of traditional conservatism and classic liberalism.To undertake such a venture, the first question that we must address is the nature of motivation, for life, for being and becoming. And I think we've proceeded far enough in our philosophical, theological, and psychological, biological investigations to provide an answer to that.The default drives that motivate us, or personalities that possess us might be regarded as those that foster a narrow and self absorbed hedonism. And I would say that that's the default state that characterizes human immaturity.That possession by implicit, fragmented whim must be transcended by a more sophisticated, uniting principle in order for the psyche to be integrated and to be sustainable across time in an iterated manner, and for community itself to exist. Hedonistic pleasure, seeking the gratification of immediate desire, the simple avoidance of pain or displeasure is not a principle that can improve when it's implemented, or unite people in productive cooperation and competition, so that a society can be established.The dominance of the personality by local, narrow and self serving whim is not a playable or noble game, and it allies itself necessarily with the force that cynics, like the postmodernists, like the Neo-Marxists, believe is the only viable uniting force, that of power. If you're motivated by nothing but the pursuit of your own subjective desire in the moment, or your desire to avoid the necessary pain that mature conduct involves, you have to turn to power to impose your narrow will on others; because if you're dominated by the immature longing for your immediate self gratification, then it's all about you in the narrowest sense, and the only option you have in terms of your relationship with others is to turn to the force and compulsion that make them involuntary servants of your will.We've seen forever, the dynamic between immature hedonism that fragments and that degenerates as it's played out, and the demand for the power that subjugates others to the will of the moment.Hey, let’s stop there for a second.Refounding Our CivilizationSo the setup is giving an intellectual foundation to our civilization. And it’s really interesting because all the questions about, “Is this Christianity just cultural?” come to the fore as well as just like, “What is Jordan Peterson's project?”He isn't bringing us back to religion kind of for its own sake in a a pietist way, to just get us close to God. It's not even narrowly psychological, for us to sort ourselves out, though that's obviously part of Peterson's program. It's for our civilization. If you think about the foundational questions that have driven Peterson, it was the Cold War. It was ideological conflict and the ability of human beings to do collective evil.And part of that is to say that those two – psychology and politics – are connected. Like tyranny, a tyrannical state is one in which everyone is lying all the time, as Peterson says. And so very much the way that Socrates and Plato spoke in the Republic, the soul of the individual and the soul of a community are connected.And I think that's important for those on the kind of religious side who really want Peterson to profess to be a Christian and to get other people to profess Christianity from the heart, with true piety, kind of à la Billy Graham. That's not what Peterson is about, but I think it's also a corrective that, “Isn't that too narrow a goal?”You could think, as many do, that Peterson is instrumentalizing Christianity to political and social ends. But on the other hand, he's saying Christianity has at least to be something that can give foundation to society. Maybe it's more. Maybe it can bring you into the kingdom to come. But if it has nothing to say to the life here and now, in our political situation, what worth really is that?Now he's really spelling out the poverty of what you could call “metaphysical liberalism.” So John Rawls is supposed to be a theorist really of classical liberalism. Rawls's liberalism was the idea that we're going to choose a society where you don't know what religion you're going to be. You don't know what your social or economic position is going to be. We're behind this veil of ignorance and we want to choose something fair for everyone.And so it's not going to be based on any partisan doctrine. It's going to be metaphysically agnostic as to those things. And it's also going to be generally egalitarian social safety net, because if you don't know if you're going to become a poor person, you're going to want to be cared for. You're not going to want to just be blamed. We allow the kind of inequality that actually benefits everyone and especially the least well off.Now, Rawls, early in his life was a Christian. He left behind that faith to be kind of this ethical figure spelling out political liberalism. But he never intended for [his theory of liberalism] to be metaphysical agnosticism. In response to critiques of his view, he argued that he was just after political liberalism, which is just a principle of pluralism. “Here's how we're all going to operate together, even though we don't agree on every point.” He's like, “If you can get there by thinking about natural law, as a Christian or a Muslim or a Jew. Great. That's not my foundation. If you can get there and you’re postmodernist, if you can just get there by mutual respect for other beings, great.”But as it's played out, the lack of a coherent vision of the good or metaphysics has allowed society to become more about everyone seeking pleasure, with side constraints on your action so that you just don't hurt other people or inhibit their pursuit of pleasure. It's basically become organized hedonism, hedonism with maybe a little bit of Kantianism to respect other people's right to pursue their own hedonism.And as Peterson is saying, that's just not adequate. We need a deeper foundation for society than that. Even the principles of classical liberalism that Rawls was for, those need a metaphysical foundation. We need to truly believe that people are ends in themselves, that humans have dignity. We need at least the mythical mythological version of the doctrine of the Image of God that Peterson is so famous for. So I want to see where he keeps going now.He's going to have an argument against hedonism but let's just think about that setup. That seems like a very legitimate thing to be after and very necessary, especially the idea that it's time to become self-conscious as a civilization about our foundational principles.For a long time, religious societies were very self-conscious about their foundational principles. They just thought of it as doctrine, though. They didn't think, “Well, we need this to be the foundation of civilization.” Maybe the kings and princes were thinking that way.But there's something interesting about a society that has left that behind now saying, “Well, hold on, what do we actually need, simply in a political or pragmatic sense?” There’s a possibility for a civilization to become self-conscious of its own intellectual foundations. I'm excited for that.Friends, my publication, The Natural Theologian, is supported by readers like you. If you want to receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Thank you.Let’s hear what Peterson has to say about hedonism:Why is hedonism wrong? Why is power wrong? Technically, I think it's because both of those motivating forces, or sets of motivating forces, degenerate when they're iterated. You can't go through life like an immature two year old, because you can't sustain your own existence while pursuing immediate gratification in the present, and you can't sustain a society in a productive and abundant manner over the medium to long run if you use power to subordinate the will of others involuntarily to your desires. The reason that the hedonistic proclivity the fractionated, hedonistic proclivity and the drive to power are immoral is because they degenerate when they're implemented and iterated.The skeptics, that's particularly true of the post modernists – this is the definition of post modernism. Literally, the skeptics proclaim that there's no uniting metanarrative other than that of power, and that's wrong. There is a uniting metanarrative, and as I intimated at the beginning of this discussion, I believe we're now in a position where we can explicitly understand it; and that explicit understanding, in principle, could allow us to regain the necessary faith in the self-evident…axioms in which our liberal democracies are nested.The biblical library, that lays out the narrative principles upon which free, Western societies are founded, is an elaborated exploration of the theme of sacrifice.Taken at face value, the dramas o

Dear readers, the following article is taken from the transcript of my latest YouTube video. I hope you enjoy!I've learned many things from Jordan Peterson since he came on the public scene in 2016. I've learned things about psychology, morality, philosophy and even about Scripture and the Christian faith, things that have bolstered my understanding as a Christian philosopher and theologian.So without further ado, ten things I learned from Jordan Peterson.1. The Reality and Importance of PersonalityJordan Peterson is a personality psychologist. Following Carl Jung, he believes in the divisions between different personality traits that can be discovered through empirical study. He’s an advocate, in particular, of the recent Big Five model of personality. In the Big Five, there are five traits along which human beings can vary, openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, assertiveness and neuroticism.Now, I used to be a bit of a skeptic about psychology in general, but personality in particular. Anytime someone tried to put me in a psychological box, I would resist it. I would hear about the Myers Briggs scale and be put into a category, whatever it was, INTJ, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It never made any sense to me. It never felt accurate to me.The interesting thing is, the Big Five is not about putting people in personality types. It's about traits that vary independently.And so since I've learned about this, you start to see it everywhere. Some people are more extroverted, some less so and more introverted. Some people are more assertive than others. Some people more open to intellectual experience and ideas and so on.And I think a lot of us resist this out of a sense that it puts us, of course, in a box or that it limits what we can change, what we can become. But there's also a deep reality to this. Not everything about human personality is malleable, and more importantly, some things in human personality are given.What was even cooler to understand about personality was that so many other aspects of human differences can reduce down to personality differences, differences of ideology, whether that’s in theology or politics.Try to tell me with a straight face that the difference between a Pentecostal and a Presbyterian isn't a difference of personality!The same goes for liberals and conservatives. These are very much personality types. People who are extremely high in the trait of compassion, are strongly inclined to be liberal. It doesn't mean they're automatically more moral or righteous for doing so that compassion can lead them astray. It can lead them to be compassionate when it's time for judgment or boundaries.But it really helps to understand that people don't get their ideas out of nowhere. We can also lower the temperature of ideological disagreements when we realize that we're all mostly just expressing our existing personalities.2. The Psychology of EvilNow this is one I'm still processing, but Jordan Peterson, following other psychologists, identifies the dark triad traits of narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy, as the psychological causes of evil behavior.And I used to think that it was just liberals, in the fundamentalist Christian sense, that believed that there were psychological causes of evil. Isn't evil just caused by sin, just by doing the wrong thing. “BAH — I want to do evil!” Isn't that how evil is explained?But when you think about it, people vary greatly in their capacities and tendencies to do evil. Not everyone is evil in the same degree, and that creates a kind of catch-22, which is that if some people are more violent by nature, aren't they to that extent, off the hook? Isn't there a sense in which, by explaining their behavioral tendencies, we no longer view them in an explicitly moral sense.Now you might just say this is the problem of free will, and to some extent it is, but I think it's a problem we all have to wrestle with.No one does evil without a cause.No one does evil without some kind of explanation or backstory.It's not all Freudian backstories about how we were brought up.Many of them are naturally existing differences in personality traits and tendencies, including the dark triad.3. The Interest of Allegorical, Moral and Psychological Readings of ScriptureNow, throughout my theological education in a Christian seminary, I was taught to be wary of moral and even allegorical interpretations of Scripture.Scripture has a literal sense. It says this is what happened, and that's what it means.If it has a moral application, we risk the idea of moralism, of trying to justify ourselves before God or save ourselves through our own moral action, rather than by accepting the grace of God. All the Old Testament stories, which we might interpret as morality tales, actually foreshadow Jesus Christ and everything that he did for us. So we shouldn't try to be like David fighting our giants, we should accept that Jesus was the David who fought Goliath for us.But now I've seen that this is very narrow, and it gives up an extremely appealing and compelling dimension of the scriptures.Jordan Peterson, contrary to all those Protestant Christian theologians, packed auditoriums by talking about the allegorical and moral and psychological dimensions of Scripture, the things that these could mean and the ways they could apply to our lives even caveat if they weren't true.And now I see more and more the poverty of trying to do with just the story of what Jesus did for us. One recent author calls it “The Abridged Gospel.” (Check out Jordan Raynor’s The Sacredness of Secular Work.)And Jordan Peterson, while we don't actually know if he believes that specific part of the gospel, believes in the further dimensions of the scriptures, both those that precede Christ's coming, the moral teaching, the Old Testament, law and those that come after it, the third use of the law, the application of the Christian scriptures, the Christian message to our life, the life of self, sacrifice and denial that Christ called us to.That I think should transform Christians view of what our preaching and our message and our evangelism ought to look like.If you enjoy content like this, please hit like and subscribe below. That'll help me to make more articles like this and videos like the one this is based on. If you like consuming this in video form, check out my YouTube page.The Natural Theologian is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.4. The Existentialist Argument for the Limits of MaterialismNow I wouldn't be surprised if you had no idea what I was talking about here, but this is actually something from the very earliest lectures that I heard of Jordan Peterson, and from the opening pages of his book, Maps of Meaning.Jordan Peterson, philosophically, is a Heideggerian, and Heidegger was an opponent of anyone who reduced human life and metaphysics down to the material, to pure science. And he did so not on the basis of a kind of Cartesian or spiritual dualism or an argument that mind was more than matter.He did so on the basis of the idea that human beings fundamental orientation to the world, our fundamental way of knowing the world, is not scientific or theoretical. Our fundamental mode of being in the world is practical. It is to see things as ripe for action, to see the value in things, the valence, to see affordances for our action.And Jordan Peterson put it this way:It’s not only matter that exists; what matters also exists.— Jordan Peterson (somewhere)Other Heideggerian philosophers have echoed this, like John Haugeland and Hubert Dreyfus. John Haugeland’s festschrift is called Giving a Damn, because if you give a damn about things, then you're not a materialist. You believe that there is value and disvalue.And so by that alone, Jordan Peterson disproved materialism.5. Wisdom and Morality Don’t Have to Come from the Bible (especially wisdom)Now, as a Christian by background, there's a tendency for Christians to think that all moral truth comes from the Bible. There's no other source for it. You can't get it from just human reflection or philosophy or reading books of ethics by secular philosophers. Now, instead, you've got to go straight to the Bible and find out what God directly commanded us.But this is a very narrow view of morality. As CS Lewis said in the opening pages of Mere Christianity, everyone's making moral claims all the time. You took a bit of my orange. Now, give me a piece of yours. The smallest little moral attitudes we have that we give expression to show that we actually all believe in morality. We can't get rid of it.Now Jordan Peterson doesn't get his morality, ultimately, from the Bible, or even what he does get from the Bible, he confirms, through psychology, science and biology. And this is important because it's very narrow to try to get all your morality from the Bible. We also have the book of nature. We have the world itself and human nature laid out before us. Why can't we use our eyes and observe it and gain good things from it?Otherwise, we try to force Bible verses to give us the details of how we should live every part of our lives. We assume things like I've assumed that our problems in marriage are going to be solved by really understanding Ephesians 5 or some Greek word like kephalé — that's not going to solve our marriage problems.Meanwhile, Jordan Peterson, looking at the sciences and psychology and the personality bell curves for men and women, can give you much better advice and wisdom about life. He can recognize, on the one hand, the complementarity of the sexes, that they really do vary in their distribution of personality traits. At the same time, he can tell you that the best relationship between a man and a woman, as between any two mammals, is one that is controlled by the spirit of play, by a kind of give and take, not by a command and subservience.And that is this gre

[Doorbell buzzes]“Hello! Would you like to change religions? I have a free book written by DJEE-ZUS!”While the Broadway show from which that line comes is not about evangelicals but Latter-Day Saints, it fits.The average evangelical is liable to think that their free afternoons and weekends ought to be spent engaged in similarly abrupt evangelistic conversations.After all, people are dying! If we don’t act quickly, they’ll soon face God’s throne of judgment; and then they’ll go to hell.But our Christian forefathers would have had us behave with more circumspection and preparation. Since the second century, Christian theologians have recognized the reality and even necessity of what Francis Schaeffer called pre-evangelism. The Church Fathers called it praeparatio evangelica, preparation for the gospel.But since the 19th century, American Christianity has been shaped more by tent revivals than patristic treatises. We have cultivated an urgency to share the gospel as soon as possible, to drive the unbeliever toward conversion, to immanentize the personal eschaton.Theological theories have sometimes reinforced this. Cornelius Van Til criticized Francis Schaeffer for holding that there was a work of pre-evangelism prior to the acceptance of a Christian worldview. This was to concede too much to autonomous man and his felt need of proof or persuasion.However, in the absence of Christian pre-evangelists, God gave us a non-Christian one. Theaters fill to hear Jordan Peterson lecture about the Bible. Secular podcast hosts press him on his Christology. And just as the wokeness Peterson opposed was experiencing defeat in last year’s election, the long ebb of the sea of faith began to reverse.Rather than asking whether Peterson is a Christian, we should understand Peterson’s work as a praeparatio evangelica. In doing so, we join a long tradition of Christians who hold that non-Christian philosophers can and do prepare the way of the Lord.This Just In: Justin Martyr Finds Seeds of the Word Among the GreeksJustin Martyr (c. 100 – c. 165 AD) was a Gentile and a pagan who took up the study of philosophy in pursuit of truth and spiritual guidance. He found himself dissatisfied first with his Stoic tutors, then with a Peripatetic philosopher, and then the Pythagoreans. He adopted Platonism as a result of this search.But, encountering a Syrian Christian while walking on the beach, the old man told him of the ancient prophets and “spoke of the testimony of the prophets as being more reliable than the reasoning of philosophers.” Justin was converted. He came to regard Christianity as “the true philosophy.”However, Justin did not therefore conclude that all he had learned before was for nought, that all the rest of philosophy was falsehood. Rather, he concluded that the transcendent God in whom he had believed as a Platonist was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The God who was the very form of goodness was he who had taken on the form of a man.In his First Apology, Justin wrote that the philosophers before Christ had happened upon seeds of the Word, logos spermatikos, which led them along a path whose fruition was Christ himself.Justin concluded that many before Christ who had followed these seeds of the Word, living in accord with God’s Logos, were proto-Christians: “Those who have lived reasonably are Christians, even though they have been thought atheists.”Justin speculated that Plato may have had access to the writings of Moses. And he lauded Socrates as a martyr pre-figuring Christ.Rather than becoming an evangelist, Justin dressed as a philosopher. Like Plato, Aristotle, Epictetus and others before him, Justin founded a school of philosophy. While he believed that Christianity was the true philosophy, he led others toward its truth by instructing them to detect the logos spermatikos in the great philosophers before Christ.Justin was first in a long line of Christian theologians recognizing philosophy and secular wisdom as preparation for the gospel.What the Old Testament was to the Hebrews: Clement of Alexandria on Greek PhilosophyClement of Alexandria (c. 150 – c. 215 AD) was, like Justin before him, a convert to the faith. Born a pagan, he rejected paganism “for its perceived moral corruption.” He traveled across Greece, searching for religious training, eventually studying Christian doctrine at the Catechetical School of Alexandria.In his writings, Clement rejected the Greek mystery religions of his upbringing. But in his Stromata, Clement argued just as fervently for the preparatory value of Greek philosophy. Philosophy was for the Greeks what the Law had been for the Hebrews, argued Clement. It was a propaedeutic, or “schoolmaster to bring the Hellenic mind to Christ” (See Gal. 3:24).Clement described the benefit of philosophy both before and after the advent of Christ:“Before the advent of the Lord, philosophy was necessary to the Greeks for righteousness. And now it becomes conducive to piety; being a kind of preparatory training to those who attain to faith through demonstration. … For God is the cause of all good things; but of some primarily, as of the Old and the New Testament; and of others by consequence, as philosophy. Perchance, too, philosophy was given to the Greeks directly and primarily, till the Lord should call the Greeks. For this was a schoolmaster to bring the Hellenic mind, as the law, the Hebrews, to Christ. Philosophy, therefore, was a preparation, paving the way for him who is perfected in Christ.” (Clement, Stromata, Book 1, Chap. 5)Christian critics of philosophy fear that we will study it uncritically, or hail one figure as having the whole truth. But Clement denied that Christian appreciation of philosophy should be either uncritical or partisan:“The Greek preparatory culture, therefore, with philosophy itself, is shown to have come down from God to men, not with a definite direction but in the way in which showers fall down on the good land, and on the dunghill, and on the houses.…And philosophy — I do not mean the Stoic, or the Platonic, or the Epicurean, or the Aristotelian, but whatever has been well said by each of those sects, which teach righteousness along with a science pervaded by piety — this eclectic whole I call philosophy.” Sophistry is dangerous, not philosophy.” (Stromata, Book 1, Chap. 7)The Christian approach to philosophy should be critical and eclectic.Clement also criticized the folly of Christians denigrating philosophical study for bare faith:“Some, who think themselves naturally gifted, do not wish to touch either philosophy or logic; nay more, they do not wish to learn natural science. They demand bare faith alone, as if they wished, without bestowing any care on the vine, straightway to gather clusters from the first. … So also here, I call him truly learned who brings everything to bear on the truth; so that, from geometry, and music, and grammar, and philosophy itself, culling what is useful, he guards the faith against assault.” (Stromata, Book 1, Chap. 9)The Christian thinker and apologist must prune the vine and till the soil, rather than trying to gather the harvest immediately and without sufficient preparation.Contemporary Christians need to hear Clement’s exhortation for preparation for the gospel.Eusebius: Van Til of the Fourth Century?The phrase praeparatio evangelica, however, is best known as the title of a work by the 4th century theologian Eusebius (c. 260/265 – 339 AD). In Praeparatio Evangelica, Eusebius actually disputed the idea that Greek philosophy was a preparation for the gospel. In fact, he argued that it was Hebrew wisdom and Scripture that was a preparation for Greek philosophy.Now, Justin had, of course, toyed with the same idea, suggesting that Socrates had taken a page from Moses. Yet even Eusebius’ counter-argument was only necessary on account of the Church Fathers’ shared sense that Greek philosophy contained truths whose source could only be the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.In Eusebius, I detect more than a hint of Van Til’s 20th century claim that non-Christian thinkers operate, at best, on “borrowed capital.” But, if the evidence for Socrates’ and Plato’s access to Moses is slim, the evidence that all non-Christian thinkers operate only on borrowed capital — rather than the light of nature or the seeds of the Logos — is even slimmer.The Necessity of Pre-EvangelismOver Van Til’s protests, Francis Schaeffer urged the necessity of pre-evangelism. He argued that the first things the unbeliever needs to comprehend are the truths already displayed in reality itself:The truth that we let in first is not a dogmatic statement of the truth of the Scriptures, but the truth of the external world and the truth of what man himself is. This is what shows him his need. The Scriptures then show him the real nature of his lostness and the answer to it. This, I am convinced, is the true order for our apologetics in the second half of the twentieth century for people living under the line of despair.— Francis Schaeffer, The God Who Is There.While Schaeffer argued for this method from his contemporary intellectual situation, he had the support of Justin and Clement from a very different time. We, in turn, are in yet another cultural and intellectual moment, yet the necessity of pre-evangelism remains.In Schaeffer’s time, a confident logical positivism was ascendant in certain quarters. Yet simultaneously, existentialist philosophers pointed to the meaningless of a reductively material philosophy. At that time, the Christian apologist, perhaps, had an obligation to direct unbelievers from positivism to existentialism.In recent times, New Atheism was ascendant; and yet, following the division of the atheist movement over social justice ideology, Jordan Peterson and the Intellectual Dark Web stepped in to explain the inevitability of religious and ideological thought. On this basis, Peterson urged us to find a deeper ground for our psyche than shif

I did my first Substack Live this afternoon, discussing the Protestant theology of nature and grace. Following on my recent discussions of whether the secular is sacred, I go back before the fall and ask if nature was, even then, sanctified by grace. Was the covenant of works a gift of grace, i.e., supernature? Should Protestants accept Aquinas’ doctrine of the beatific vision?These are all the questions I’ll have to answer toward a Protestant theology of nature and grace. Towards the end of the video, I put forward a hypothesis that I call theological naturalism — just so that no one is happy with it. Enjoy!And if you want to get access to these livestreams in the future, make sure to download the mobile Substack app:Links:https://x.com/NaturalTheologn/status/1879541384933179421https://x.com/NaturalTheologn/status/1879610593675784601 This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit joelcarini.substack.com/subscribe

“Secular.” It’s a word my teenage, Christian brain assumed had to be more or less synonymous with “sexual.”Many people know better than that, but even highly-educated Christians still assume that “the secular” is intertwined with secularism. The category of the secular, they think, is a pillar of an anti-Christian worldview, or, at best, a purportedly neutral pluralism or liberalism that, in fact, crowds out religious faith.But the secular is a category of the Christian worldview. It denotes the dimensions of life that are not specifically religious, but common to human beings in the present age. The distinction between “secular” and “religious” marks a divide, not between Christian and non-Christian people, but within every person.In fact, I warrant that, prior to the rise of secularism, the word “secular” would not even have had negative connotations to Christian ears.Let me explain.Life in the Saeculum — This AgeThe etymology of the word “secular” begins with the Latin word “saeculum,” meaning “generation,” “age,” or literally, “century.” From the adjectival form saecularis came the Old French seculer and, thence, the English “secular.” According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first use of “secular” is:1. denoting attitudes, activities, or other things that have no religious or spiritual basis. [E.g.,] “secular buildings.”Its synonyms include everything from “nonreligious,” “lay,” and “temporal,” to “worldly,” “earthly,” and “profane.” (Profane used to be much more innocuous as well.)The second entry in the OED brings us to our first historical point of contact:2. [Christian Church](of clergy) not subject to or bound by religious rule; not belonging to or living in a monastic or other order.As reflected in this definition, Medieval Christendom distinguished between secular and religious clergy. The religious life was lived in monastic community or otherwise subject to a particular religious order. Those in the religious life vowed to follow Christ’s “counsels of perfection”: Celibacy, poverty, and obedience. These were the religious clergy.Secular clergy, on the other hand, ministered in parishes amongst ordinary people. If, to our ears, “secular clergy” sounds like a contradiction, this simply demonstrates our distance from Medieval Christian understanding. For Medieval Christians, “secular” simply meant participation in common life.Nevertheless, the Medieval distinction between religious and secular life and vocations reveals that Catholic Christianity did suffer from the temptation to escape the secular, to rise above it. The religious life was held to be higher than secular life. While society needed people to perform secular tasks, like government, warfare, and trading, those in the religious life purified themselves of these worldly enterprises. (I wrote about this tension in Catholic Christianity in Christian Realism: A Philosophy of Christian Action.) The Catholic Church even claimed to be above the jurisdiction of secular authorities.Until a certain German friar took them down a few notches.The Protestant Embrace of the Secular Martin Luther, in his “Letter to the German Nobility,” criticized the Catholic Church for purporting to be above the realm of the secular.Luther denied the Church’s claim to be free of the jurisdiction of secular, political authorities. He lambasted the artificial wall the Church had raised between “the spiritual estate” and “the temporal estate,” between religious and secular callings. He argued that all Christians were of the spiritual estate, even as they inhabited a variety of temporal professions:“All Christians are truly of the ‘spiritual estate,’ and there is among them no difference at all but that of office.”— Martin Luther, “An Open Letter to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation”Luther’s word for these ordinary professions and callings was weltlich, literally, “worldly.” In English translation, it is primarily translated “temporal.”The word translated “secular” also appears once in the letter: zeitlichen. (Zeit is time.) In that use, Luther jokes that, if the popes, bishops, priests, and monks are above secular life, then “the tailors, cobblers, masons, carpenters…and all the secular tradesmen, should also be prevented from providing [them] with shoes, clothing, house, meat and drink, and from paying them tribute” (p. 70).In this polemic, Luther accomplished two things at once. First, he acknowledged the ordinariness and secularity of life: Even the pope needs someone to make his shoes.Second: At the same time, he was dignifying secular life, even sanctifying it. Every Christian, simply in virtue of baptism, was of the spiritual estate, whether butcher, baker, or candlestick maker.Now Luther did not take a secularist position. He did not say, “This whole ‘spiritual estate’ thing is balderdash. You’re all secular.” He said that all Christians are of the spiritual estate, in the variety of their secular and religious callings. The spiritual and the secular interpenetrate.This is the actual content of Calvin and Luther’s doctrine of the two kingdoms. The spiritual and secular cut across all human lives. Even pastors need shoes and functioning plumbing. And even cobblers and barbers are priests who may approach God’s throne of grace, without the mediation of the Church. (I learned this lesson from the Davenant Institute and the writers at The Calvinist International.)If I say, then, that “the secular is spiritual,” it must be recognized that is no less secular for all that. (I did write, and mean, those words in “Giving Up on the ‘Jesus Juke.’”)Protestantism does not say, after all, that each Christian is part of a special religious order, holy and separated from secular things. No; Protestantism says that all Christians are of the spiritual estate, whether employed as preachers, politicos, or plumbers. And that preachers are as enmeshed in the secular world as politicos and plumbers.Every Christian life is both spiritual and secular.The Vibe Shift in a Secular Age The history of how “secular” came to have negative connotations to Christian ears is one I’d like to know better. But I surmise that the rise of secularist and naturalist worldviews has a lot to do with it.In response to the French Enlightenment and mid to late 19th-century thought – Darwin, Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche – contemporary Christians were put on the defensive. They took solace in separating from secular life, spiritualizing their vision of Christian calling, and viewing the world as a source of temptation and godlessness.In so doing, we left behind the classical Christian worldview in which the secular, the temporal, and even the worldly had their place.In our time, it is easy for Christians still to remain on the defensive. After all, secularism has proceeded apace. The world has, in certain respects, gotten more hostile toward Christianity.But even when the world, i.e., the contemporary culture, is hostile toward Christianity, the right posture is not a defensive one. Aaron M. Renn, coiner of “the negative world,” said recently that it is time for Christians to seek friendship with those of the world. Our religious majority is gone. A posture of assertive domination is completely counter-productive. We need to find friends and allies outside the fold. In Renn’s words: “How can we make more friends than enemies?”At the same time, “the vibe shift” is leading some to ask whether our culture’s antipathy toward Christian faith is beginning to reverse. I think it, quite obviously, is. (At least in certain corners of the Internet, now breaking out into the real world.)In this new context, it remains exceedingly important for Christians to offer our countrymen a faith free of anxiety, a faith that sees the world as revealing God, that doesn’t ask for unreasonable asceticism or parochial fundamentalist strictures — a world-embracing faith.Several of us have been trying to describe this world-embracing faith. Paul Vanderklay calls it “metagelical.” Nicholas McDonald, in his forthcoming book, The Light in Our Eyes, spells out a confident and beautiful vision of Christian faith free of the hangups of the American evangelical subculture.And I, at The Natural Theologian, aim to offer a vision of the Christian faith that welcomes the influence of the world, created by God, with its secular sources of knowledge.This is not an uncritical acceptance of the world in John’s sense: “Do not love the world or the things in the world” (1 John 2:15).It is an embrace of everything in Paul’s sense: “For everything God has created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving” (1 Tim 4:4).And while we remain in this age, everything includes a whole lot of secular things.And that, it turns out, might not be such a bad thing.The Natural Theologian is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Articulating This Vision in VideoI’ve begun to articulate this vision of the Christian faith through video. Check out my latest YouTube videos:Wesley Huff Is WRONG About Jordan Peterson: ReactionIs Natural Law Compatible with Scripture?We’ve NARROWED the Gospel This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit joelcarini.substack.com/subscribe

All across the internet, and in the academic presses, pundits and philosophers place blame for secularization on Protestantism.Scholars and streamers complain that the Reformation precipitated the disenchantment of the world.Orthodox converts waft their smells and ring their bells before evangelical noses and ears. Catholics look on evangelicals with pity, beholding our strip-mall sanctuaries, as they find shade below their towering, ancient cathedrals.And many Protestants feel the Roman nostalgia. I admit I’m among them.More than just nostalgia, we admire the intellectual tradition, Christian humanism, and ethical guidance of the Catholic Church. But even that has its limits.This morning, Anthony Bradley displayed the enduring appeal of the Catholic and Orthodox traditions to Protestant observers. In his article, “Orthodox, Catholic, and Evangelical Views of Marriage,” Bradley argues that Protestants’ theology of marriage, as symbol and secular creation ordinance, falls short of the Orthodox and Catholic view of marriage as distinctly sacred and spiritual.I think Bradley is wrong about this. But let’s hear him out.Orthodox and Catholic v. Protestant Views of MarriageBradley presents Orthodoxy and Catholicism as offering a high view of marriage as sacred and spiritual, and Protestantism as offering a low view of marriage, as secular and merely instrumental.Orthodox and Catholics view marriage as sacred and even sacramental. They hold that civil marriage, while it ought to mirror Christian marriage, is less than the same thing. This added layer of sacrality reinforces the moral seriousness of the marriage bond, discouraging divorce.The Catholic Church teaches that divorce is a metaphysical impossibility. It forbids divorce and remarriage, providing only for annulment. The practice of annulment depends on understanding that annulled “marriages” were never true marriages. The parties failed some condition of marriage, such as that both parties fully intend exclusive commitment for life, with an openness to children. By implication, many modern civil marriages are not true marriages at all.Both traditions also emphasize the procreative purpose of marriage, without denying the primary significance of marriage as a conjugal union.By contrast, Protestant theologies of marriage treat marriage, not as sacramental, but symbolic. Marriage is a secular institution, common to both believers and unbelievers. Civil marriage is no less marriage than ecclesiastical marriage. Many Protestant traditions permit divorce and remarriage, at least on conditions of adultery, abandonment, and abuse.Some Protestant theologies of marriage, like that in Tim Kellers’ The Meaning of Marriage, neglect the procreative aspect of marriage. (Keller does not mention children, at least prominently, in his treatment of Christian marriage.)Bradley writes that this Protestant understanding “primarily emphasizes marriage as a practical framework for serving God through procreation, intimacy, and social order, treating it as a functional institution rather than a sacred mystery or sacrament.”He argues that “this view reduces marriage to a utilitarian role, overshadowing its deeper spiritual and mystical significance.” He knocks Protestantism for failing to “place marriage within the context of worship or liturgy,” separating it from “the Church’s sacramental life.”Instead, on the dominant Protestant view, marriage is not sacred, but secular. Bradley concludes, this view “lacks the depth and theological richness found in the Orthodox and Catholic understandings.”Marriage Is SecularBut Bradley is wrong; marriage is secular. And it has its sacred significance in virtue of being a secular ordinance.When Martin Luther rejected clerical celibacy, it wasn’t because he wanted to add marriage to the list of holy callings. (The Catholic Church already considered it a sacrament.) He rejected clerical celibacy because he rejected the whole sacred-secular divide.In his letter to the German nobility, Luther railed against the division between sacred and secular callings that Rome had taught:It has been devised that the Pope, bishops, priests, and monks are called the spiritual estate; princes, lords, artificers, and peasants are the temporal estate. This is an artful lie and hypocritical device, but let no one be made afraid by it, and that for this reason: that all Christians are truly of the spiritual estate, and there is no difference among them, save of office alone.- Luther, “Letter to the German Nobility”As all men were of the spiritual estate, Christians who exercised temporal or secular callings were as holy as any pastor or priest.But the ordinances of human life themselves remained secular. It was, therefore, as participants in secular life that Christians could fulfill their universal spiritual calling.Accordingly, Christian and civil marriage do not differ in kind. Marriage is an ordinance of creation, not redemption. It is rightly administered by the civil magistrate as much as by a minister of the church.The secularity of marriage also means that it is affected by the fall. In post-fall conditions, many marriages do not last. The misery of our present estate requires that we make permission for both husbands and wives to sue for divorce on grounds of, at least, adultery and abandonment, as Calvin introduced in Geneva.The divorced should be permitted to remarry, since one does not receive a binding calling to life-long celibacy in virtue of adultery or abandonment by one’s spouse. To say that these permissions amount to the same as Ronald Reagan’s “no-fault divorce” laws is to confuse 20th-century secular liberalism with Protestant Puritanism.Likewise, a complete Christian view of marriage must recognize that marriage is ordered to the bearing and rearing of children. Protestant theologians and pastors have sometimes neglected this to focus only on husband and wife. But Protestant theology is also correct not to overemphasize procreation, which risks making the marital union itself only a means to procreation. (See my natural law defense of contraception if you want to know what I really think, and also, my piece on “Pronatalism After the Fall.”)A “Low” View of Marriage?One of Bradley’s main criticisms is that the Protestant view of marriage is lower than Catholic and Orthodox views. This criticism presupposes the principle that it is always superior to think something sacred, rather than secular.But this is precisely to take a “low view” of the secular, too low because God made the secular and natural realm. The natural realm is as such theonomic; it already displays God’s rule, through governance by his natural law. It does not need the superimposition of grace, of sacrality, to make it into something that gives us contact with the divine.Is the Protestant View of Marriage Too Utilitarian?Another of Bradley’s criticisms is that the Protestant view of marriage is functional, instrumental, and utilitarian.While the three paragraphs in which he describes the Gospel Coalition’s statement on marriage do not seem utilitarian to me — “Marriage is a living picture of the gospel, showcasing Christ’s love for His Church” — Bradley is correct that Protestant theology views marriage as contributing to civil order. The civil institution of marriage is part of the second use of the law, to restrain sin in society.But is that supposed to be a bad thing? Sixty years since no-fault divorce, the sociological results are in: Divorce is terrible for children. Having two married parents is essential for children’s greatest flourishing. Mothers and fathers make distinct and necessary contributions. Secular sociologists and psychologists, political conservatives, and advocates of cultural Christianity can all get behind these results. Marriage should be held in greater honor in our society than it currently is.Christians should affirm the same. And some, like Brad Wilcox and Mark Regnerus, are doing so — at the forefront of sociological research. Christians can add to the sociological the theological. Marriage contributes to our sanctification; it typifies Christ and his church.But we can’t think that we are above the sociological. The church needs to get in the business of giving good advice about secular life, something for which Aaron M. Renn has pled repeatedly. Relative to that end, adopting a sacramental view of marriage is a step in the wrong direction.Secular Principles for Secular MarriagesFor the longest time, I thought that the key to a good marriage lay in a few biblical texts about how marriage symbolizes Christ and his church. If I could just understand and practice “biblical headship and submission,” then marriage would work right.This is just an epistemological variant on the view that marriage is sacred. If marriage is sacred, then theological teaching should hold the key to a good marriage. If marriage is secular, it might not be so.Indeed, I’ve found that the secular advice of psychologists John and Julie Gottman has done more for my marriage than the Greek exegesis of kephalé. Their advice, in books like Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work and The Love Prescription, is based on decades of empirical research, including observation of couples in their “Love Lab.” (Couples book a weekend stay, during which they interact in a suite with hidden cameras and heart-rate monitors.) The Gottmans have found that almost all secular and religious marriage counsel, which reduces to “communicate better,” fails to improve marriages. Their insights, on the contrary, reliably save marriages (and predict divorce with almost mechanical accuracy).If we want to improve our marriages, to prevent divorce, and to symbolize Christ and his church, we would do well to view marriage as secular. We should view our Christian marriages as relationships that work according to the same principles as everyone else’s. We shouldn’t think that being Christian will protect our marriage

A woman was interviewing for a philosophy professorship at a Catholic university. Though she respected the intellectual tradition of the university, she was not herself Catholic. She hoped to find there similar respect for her own thinking, whatever its metaphysical conclusions.The interview began well. Potential future colleagues discussed her research and gave her an opportunity to display her considerable knowledge of epistemology and continental thought.Then a new voice chimed in. A crotchety but not-yet-old Catholic man began to dig into her moral and political views. He settled on the topic of abortion. How could she condone the murder of innocent unborn children? What other wickedness would she countenance?She tried to respond that, while she was not a Catholic herself, she admired the moral tradition of Catholic theologians and philosophers. Nevertheless, respectfully, she disagreed with it. That was not good enough for the crotchety Catholic philosopher.While the interview was otherwise successful, its final phase sapped the woman of energy. It left her desiring to be employed as far from this university as possible.In her place, the university hired a different pro-choice secular philosopher: My dissertation advisor, who fortunately was not subjected to the same treatment.As a Christian philosopher, I struggle to comprehend why a secular analytic philosopher’s failure to be pro-life would be surprising. And anyway, why would we focus on our points of disagreement, rather than our points of agreement - the rigor of philosophical thought, the merits of the candidate’s research, and the mission of the philosophy department?Yet often, we approach people who hold different views than us in exactly the way this professor approached the interviewee. In those moments, we are tempted to think that our ideological differences are so fundamental that there is no common ground between us.But there is common ground, and we’re standing on some of it.There Is No Common Ground“There is no common ground between believer and unbeliever.”That was a dictum of the seminary I attended. Its presuppositionalist philosophy held that Christians and non-Christians do not differ merely in our conclusions. We differ at every level of thinking down to the most fundamental presuppositions of thought - even on the principles of logic and mathematics themselves.“No common ground” was intended as a pious affirmation of our commitment to have a distinctively Christian worldview. Yet in our zeal to be as Christian as possible, we ignored the deeply divisive and partisan effects of the statement.Imagine if a progressive activist said, “There is no common ground between progressives and conservatives!” Would that person strike you as open-minded and willing to hear opposing perspectives? Would you be likely to feel comfortable having a conversation with them about matters moral or political?Personally, I would fear being written off for my beliefs, or being thought evil or irredeemable.But that’s what we Christians do if and when we say: “There is no common ground between believers and unbelievers.” And even if we don’t say those words, we often act like it.I wrote about this a few months ago in “Berating the Godfearers.” My friend “Brent,” who is interested in Christianity, was dismissed and shouted at for not being a six-day creationist by a number of evangelical Christians on a Zoom meeting. What had happened? The evangelical guys found one point of disagreement and went hard at it. But that’s not the path to a productive conversation.As I put it then, the evangelical guys pursued conversion rather than conversation. And ultimately, it was a poor means of persuasion, forget conversion.Common Ground at F3: Fitness, Fellowship, and FaithA couple weeks ago, I hosted a philosophy night with my friends from F3, “Fitness, Fellowship, and Faith.” I was especially excited to talk about common ground with them because F3 itself has been for me a major object lesson.At the end of every workout, someone says, “F3 is not a religious organization. All we ask is that you believe in something higher than yourself. It could be Jesus, Buddha, Allah, or the man next to you.”But then, if the person is a Christian, he continues, “But I am a Christ-follower, so I’m going to close us out in a Christian prayer. Join me or respect the time. Dear God…”There’s something very remarkable about this. Americans think that any public display or mention of religion is an attempt to impose faith on others. And many religious Americans publicly express their faith in a very impositional way.But at F3, I learned a different way of interacting with non-Christians. Our faith or religious commitments are known, but they are not imposed on others, and they are not the source of our commonality. Our commonality is that we just sweated and lifted a concrete block (“the coupon”) together for forty-five minutes. Our commonality is that we want to escape “sad-clown syndrome,” a problem which afflicts many American men. Our commonality is that we believe that there is something higher than ourselves – that living for self-gratification is the wrong goal.This commonality clears enough ground actually to discuss both normal life and deeper things. We have weekly “QSource” discussions in which we touch on themes of faith, virtue, manliness, community, and more. These discussions go deeper and engage more men than any church men’s group you’ve seen. I even instituted approximately monthly “philosophy nights” when we discussed a book over beer.The key is that F3 discussions place Christians and non-Christians on a level playing field; we enter conversation as equal partners in the search for truth and goodness. I have indeed seen people become Christian through this. I’ve seen other people at least soften their stance on religion. And at a bare minimum, we are able to be open and understanding of one another’s perspectives.This is the religion-friendly pluralist ethic on which America was founded. These days, most have more of a more secularist understanding - that religion shouldn’t be brought into the public square. Much better to do it in the manner of that polis within the polis, “F3 Nation.”Finding Common Ground in PhilosophyMy studies in philosophy are another of my attempts to disprove, “There is no common ground between believers and unbelievers.” In the first place, I’m studying philosophy, so none of my arguments can start from Christian premises. We proceed by reason alone, as it were.But in the second place, I sought out a non-Christian dissertation advisor as a test of the thesis that there can be common ground between believers and unbelievers.Now, I first took a course on Plato’s ethics with Dr. B____. I detected that he took a very secular view of Socrates; Socrates was a purely secular guy, whom Plato had corrupted and spiritualized. Whatever seemed to point in a Christian direction could therefore be attributed to Plato, or to later Neo-Platonist interpretations, rather than to Socrates. Socrates was a utilitarian; he didn’t believe in an afterlife; and Platonism was and is consistent with a scientific worldview.Almost the whole semester, my mind kept thinking of paper topics where I disagreed with Dr. B____. But finally, I realized that I would learn the most by writing about the one topic I’d discovered on which he and I agreed.After that was a success, I asked him about advising my dissertation, and we followed the topic to the next point of agreement. Eventually, I realized that Dr. B____ and I agree primarily on one thing: Reality exists. We just disagree about what reality is like (i.e., everything else).But I relish that point of agreement for this reason: I believe that the common ground between all of us, no matter what our different views, beliefs, convictions, faiths, is reality itself. Even the postmodernists who think that reality is nothing but a mental construct - we drive on the same streets, breathe the same air, encounter the same objects in our visual field and so on. No worldview, philosophy, belief, metaphysics, or any of it can obscure the fact that reality itself is the common ground between us.The common ground between different worldviews is reality itself.A Philosopher and an MS-13 Member Walk Into a Bar…The process I went through with my professor can work with anyone. You may disagree with them about ten things, all of great importance, but you agree on one thing. Start there! Revel in that point of agreement.Short of morality and politics, revel in all the other things you can share. Maybe you like the same food, root for the same sports team, or send your kids to the same school. You can always find points of commonality.But aren’t there still limits? Some people are just so evil, we couldn’t have any common ground. Like an MS-13 gang member, right?Well, I recently heard a story about a former member of the gang MS-13. He had become a rat, telling on other members, after reaching a moral line in the sand. Though he had previously murdered twenty people in cold blood, he happened upon several other gang members poised to murder a baby. “What are you doing, guys? It’s a baby!” Inside, he knew that there, he drew the line. It’s not right to murder an innocent baby!Hey, I agree with that! It’s not right to murder an innocent baby. I just extend that courtesy also to grown-ups.There it is. A point of common ground! It could be the starting point for a conversation. Even a philosophical dialogue.If I can find common ground with an MS-13 murderer, then I’m pretty sure you can find common ground with your laptop-class interlocutor whose views differ slightly from yours.My song “Common Ground” was inspired by seeing failures of people to do exactly that: “I heard that you don’t think like me/I bet that means I won’t like you.”I even accidentally described the story at the beginning of this post about the pro-choice professor being taken to task

As a young Christian, I jumped wholeheartedly into a burgeoning theological movement, one which got young people excited about the Bible and Protestant theology, inspired us to devour books and attend church religiously, and provided us with guides and gurus to direct us in a confusing world: The young, restless, and Reformed.After years of reading their blogs and books and watching videos, after a three-year seminary degree and a decade attending Reformed churches, it’s time to take stock. What should we think now of the young, restless, and Reformed movement?Briefly, that while it taught us some good things, it is time to move further in, and further up. Youthful zeal, even with knowledge - and biblical knowledge, at that - must be transcended in order to attain wisdom, which only comes with experience and maturity.What follows are four areas of critique of the young, restless, and Reformed movement - under the headings of theology, church, practice, and wisdom - and some pointers to a way forward.1. Theology RevisitedWhile I studied Reformed theology at seminary and retain a commitment to it, the critiques of it are true.Take for example the critique that we focused on Paul’s letters rather than the Gospels. I always resisted this critique; but following seminary, I really did have to shut the epistles and spend time in the gospels. I had to stop reading the Bible as a theology textbook, partly because I had already maxed out its potential in that direction. What I needed was spiritual and practical direction, not to mention a critique of the very theology-nerd mindset.There were other theological critiques with which I began to resonate. People critiqued Reformed theology for being antinomian, concerned only with whether we are justified or elect, and not with the whole life lived. As I studied the Reformed tradition, I found that this was fundamentally incorrect about the sources - Calvin, Turretin, Baxter, Edwards.But today’s Reformed pastors and churches? They were antinomian. They propagated a message of “Here’s what God’s law requires; but don’t worry, Jesus already did it.” They objected to the relevant passages of Calvin, of Turretin, and especially of Baxter and Edwards. Most importantly, in practice, the theology-nerd obsession with the dictums of explicit theology led to a practical soteriology of “justification by profession of faith alone.” N. T. Wright had offered this critique, and while I hold that the traditional exegesis of Paul on justification is correct, the actual Reformed culture matched Wright’s critique. Our focus on explicit theological commitments implied that it was crying, “Lord, Lord,” - in just the right way - that saved. The best of the Reformed tradition, I continue to believe, is neither narrow nor antinomian. But the popular American Reformed tradition is both.2. The ChurchReturning to the Gospels, I found in Christ’s teaching - mediated through regular conversations with King Laugh - a deep critique of the theology-nerd mindset. Who were the theology nerds, the theo-bros of Christ’s day? The Pharisees.We can believe all the details of Paul’s theology, and of Christ’s. But if we do it in the way of a Pharisee, we’re just, as King Laugh puts it, better Jews. (No offense to my Jewish readers!) What we need is a critique of religious hypocrisy and Pharisaism that applies to Christians.In the Reformed culture, the temptation is to think that Jesus’ teaching about the Pharisees can be subsumed under the heading, “Those Darn Papists.” (Ahem, Catholics.) Once again, as if being on the right side of one theological divide were the key to salvation. Or again, as if properly saying that Jesus did it all and everything we do is worthless were the key - antinomian theology is not the key to salvation.This critique of theology-nerds, however, applies equally to our churches. After all, for over a decade, I have been approaching church attendance as a matter of exemplifying one’s explicit theological commitments by where one attends one hour a week. I have tried to choose my church to exemplify where I’m at theologically. But now I think it’s deeply incorrect to derive spiritual pride from one’s church attendance. I think it’s deeply misguided to think that where one attends one hour a week is the key to whether one is the “best kind of Christian.” I’m done sharing stories about my second conversion - to five-point Calvinism - and my supposed third conversion - to infant baptism. (Sorry, Presbyterians! We baptize babies ’cuz Constantine, not theology.)We can’t think that churches and pastors, or doing church right, or getting the sermon message right will save the day. Action in the world both before and after the gospel is absolutely necessary. 3. Practice: The Fourth Evangelical WaveTrevin Wax recently wrote that we are entering a fourth evangelical wave after the third wave of gospel-centered (see my recent critique), i.e., young, restless, and Reformed. (The first wave was the charismatic movement, the second the seeker-sensitive movement.)The fourth wave is about Christian practice, habits, and virtues. John Mark Comer’s re-popularization of Dallas Willard, Richard Foster, and “the way of Jesus” is the spearhead. Comer is recommending a raft of spiritual disciplines and meditation as shaping our Christian lives more than theological details (to which he is not opposed).You could read my emphases and those of King Laugh as contributing to this fourth wave. However, I want to massage the details. After all, I fear that a focus on spiritual disciplines as “the ticket” can be just a privatized version of the same ritualism into which Reformed practice has fallen. (Instead of attendance at gospel-centered expositional sermons being key, it’s morning devotions.)I’m less interested in disciplines, rituals, liturgy, and habits than Comer and, for that matter, Jamie Smith. What I’m interested in post-YRR are wisdom, growth, and maturity. I think habits and liturgy sometimes are a kind of place-holder for that, both for good and ill. Comer’s new “way of Jesus” seems to have its own rituals, but rightly understood the focus on practice is correct. Russell Moore talked recently about being a “practicing Christian.” I think that would be the thing to emphasize.Implicit TheologyWhile I retain Reformed theology, I am much less concerned about our explicit theology, and much more about our implicit theology exemplified in practice. You can be explicitly reformed, for example, but functionally Pelagian. You can be explicitly justification-only, but functionally prosperity gospel.Implicit theology is revealed in actions and concrete judgments, not explicit theologizing. The gospel-centered movement’s response to celibate, gay Christians revealed their functional theology as a myopic focus on being a white-washed Christian, while suppressing the finer details of our unnatural nature. In a more pointy-headed way, the Federal Vision controversy revealed the implicit theology of NAPARC (Old-school Reformed and Presbyterian) churches as functional antinomianism. And every week, our church practice and sermon structure reveals our belief that listening to theology lectures will save us osmotically and sacerdotally.Theological TriageOnce you reorient around Christian practice, most theological distinctions pale in comparison. Now, I learned the idea of theological triage - ranking doctrines by their significance - from this movement, from Al Mohler, specifically. But we actually have to practice it. For example, if you think that being Baptist is what matters you’re not practicing it. If you think that being Presbyterian is a third conversion (and Federal Vision a fourth!), you are not practicing it. With these things in perspective, the differences between Protestants and Catholics pale, so no intra-Protestant distinctions stand out as much.In that light, the book The Imitation of Christ stands out as a post-theology-nerd manifesto.4. WisdomIn reorienting around Christian practice, we need a new type of knowledge. The knowledge of the theology-nerd does not suffice for healthy Christian practice. Nothing that can be embraced by a 17-year-old and mastered by a 25-year-old can be sufficient teaching for Christ’s church.Instead, we need wisdom.There is no shortcut or brand that will do the job. We don’t need new “practicing Christian” t-shirts or bumper stickers. We need actual virtue, wisdom, and maturity. These are hard won and require inter-generational teaching, decades of experience, and trial and error.Churches who sought to contribute to this, rather than to disseminating seminary knowledge, would also look different. They would teach meat, and not just milk. But given a paucity of such churches, (churches, in order to address a wide audience, usually focus on milk) we must not be afraid to look outside the church for meat.We must resist the guru. If I have a guru, he is, or was, Jordan Peterson. But the rise of Jordan Peterson only revealed the poverty of our evangelical gurus. They had left gaps - the entire realms of wisdom and psychology - which Jordan Peterson swooped in to fill. But ultimately, we don’t just need to “find us a new guru” to fill those gaps - we need to seek wisdom in those areas. (Take Chris Williamson as the non-Christian example of trying to find “modern wisdom” with Peterson as a launching point but not an endpoint.) I have captured this epistemological change as “Christian empiricism”: Knowledge from experience. We must recognize the necessity of knowledge from experience. This is part of moving on from young and restless to older and wiser. For it is also possible to become older, but none the wiser.  Am I Still Young, Restless, and Reformed?Am I still young, restless, and Reformed? In many ways, yes. But I’m no longer quite so young, my restlessness now has a different cause, and I care less about being explicitly Reformed and more about being implicitly Reformed.I don’t o

Scripture is the only source of theology that evangelical Christians all accept. As a result, the methodology of evangelical theology is to argue deductively from premises of a single source: the Bible. Excluded from theology are philosophy, empirical science, and literary imagination. Accordingly, evangelical theology is functionally biblicist.If a theologian introduces a premise that is not biblically-derived but is based in experience, that theologian invites suspicion that his premise is unbiblical. “The earth is 4.5 billion years old” - unbiblical. “Sexual orientation is a real feature of human psychology” - unbiblical. “Christianity is at least socially useful, even if this does not prove its truth” - unbiblical.People who reject these “unbiblical premises” are led to specific theological conclusions: “The earth was created in six 24-hour days.” “A Christian may not describe himself as ‘gay.’” “We should believe in Christianity only because it’s true, independently of its fruits.” With a narrow range of theological sources, our theology itself narrows.But theologians who utilize experience in addition to the Bible have a greater wealth of resources on which to draw in their thinking. What is more, their thinking takes into account human nature itself, resulting in a humane theology, rather than one that feels foreign and unsympathetic to who we are.The eminent Oxford theologian Nigel Biggar is an example of a theologian whose theology draws on human experience in addition to the Bible.In a perfect case study of theology from experience, Biggar questions the Christian pacifist conclusions of Richard Hays by transcending his Bible-only method, and introducing a premise from experience: Human violence is not always motivated by hatred, vengeance, and anger. A theology that takes into account the full breadth of human experience cannot condemn all violence.Biggar’s argument is a perfect case-study in Christianity’s need of the theological source of experience.If you appreciate the integrative writing and research I publish here, consider becoming a subscriber of the Natural Theologian. If you’re already a subscriber, consider upgrading to a paid subscription to support my work.The Bible-Only Case for PacifismA long-time New Testament scholar at Duke Divinity School, Richard Hays made the case for Christian pacifism in his The Moral Vision of the New Testament. Hays argues that, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus lays out the ethic of a new kind of community, radically different from ordinary human communities. This radically new ethic is “one in which ‘anger is overcome through reconciliation … retaliation is renounced … and enemy-love replaces hate’. … In sum, ‘the transcendence of violence through loving the enemy is the most salient feature of this new model polis’” (36).To this Hays adds Jesus' frequent refusal of political violence, desired by the zealots of his time, and his injunction to “turn the other cheek.” Hays also appeals to Jesus’ rebuke of Peter, when he draws a sword in Christ’s defense; Hays “takes [this] to be ‘an explicit refutation’ of the justifiability of the use of violence in defence of a third party” (36-37).The Bible also condemns the motives that inspire violence. The rest of the New Testament “forbids anger, hatred, and retaliation–and the violence that issues from them” (47). Hays concludes, from appeal exclusively to the biblical text, that Christianity supports non-violence.In the following section, Nigel Biggar introduces a premise from outside the Bible that calls Hays’ argument into question.But even Bible-only interpreters have reason to question Hays’ Christian pacifism. Both Christ and the apostle Paul speak about soldiers without condemning their calling; Jesus’ words for soldiers are, “Do not take things from anyone by force, do not falsely accuse anyone, and be content with your wages.” Likewise, Paul in Romans 13 recognizes civil government as appointed by God and having the right to bear the sword against evil. Biggar raises these biblical counter-arguments.Even if Hays’ biblical argument is not airtight, there is something appropriate about the Bible-only perspective being a pacifist one. Bible-only theology is a facet of what what Richard Niebuhr calls the “Christ Against Culture” perspective.This school of Christian thought, which includes everyone from Tertullian (“What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?”) to Tolstoy, argues that the Bible brings a distinctive perspective from those of the world. The world frequently operates on the basis of power, hating one’s enemies, and retaliatory violence. But the New Testament introduces an antithetical principle into history - Christ’s New Commandment of love even for the enemy.If you wanted a distinctively New Testament perspective on violence, one that stood at odds with the powers and principalities of this world, you might very well adopt Christian pacifism. Tertullian and Tolstoy both did. And so did the entire Anabaptist tradition - including Mennonites and the Amish.Hays’ Christian pacifism claims to be the position that is most exclusively and distinctively biblical.Is Violence Always Motivated by Hatred?In In Defence of War, Nigel Biggar introduces a premise from experience that contravenes Hays’ conclusion. While Biggar also makes biblical arguments, it is his empirical argument that raises questions about theological methodology.For instance, one of Hays’ arguments began from the New Testament’s prohibition of hatred, vengeance, and anger. Since these are the motives from which violence flows, violence itself is thereby also forbidden.But, Biggar points out, Hays has just introduced an assumption about the motives for violence: That violence only flows from vindictive motives. If any violence does not flow from hatred, vengeance, or, as Biggar distinguishes, unloving anger, then such violence would not be prohibited. Indeed, if any violence flows from motives that are commanded, like love and justice, such violence may even be obligatory.Biggar devotes the entire following chapter, “Love in War,” to demonstrating that many military actions are divorced from vindictive motivation. He summarizes, “Soldiers in battle are usually motivated by loyalty to their comrades and by fear of shame, rather than by hatred for the enemy” (56).In fact, many soldiers would cross lines to shake hands with their opponents if given the chance, though during battle, they will need to fire at them, often lethally. Ernst Jünger wrote about the First World War:Throughout the war…it was always my endeavour to view my opponent without animus, and to form an opinion of him as a man on the basis of the courage he showed. I would always try and seek him out in combat and kill him, and I expected nothing else from him. But never did I entertain mean thoughts of him. When prisoners fell into my hands, later on, I felt responsible for their safety, and would always do everything in my power for them. (78)Biggar writes about the military preference for cold, dispassionate violence rather than “hot violence.” He quotes Vietnam vet Karl Marlantes:Contrary to the popular conception, when one is in the fury of battle I don’t think one is very often in an irrational frenzy … I was usually in a white heat of total rationality, completely devoid of passion, to get the job done with minimal casualties to my side and stay alive doing it. (79)Biggar surveys other examples and motives, “love for one’s comrades,” something than which Jesus said there was no greater love; love for one’s family; the desire to prove oneself, the desire to be worthy of the heritage of one’s regiment, and so on.He acknowledges, however, that sometimes rage comes over soldiers. This motivation and the violence that flows from it, Biggar condemns. However, even there, “sometimes what inspires [rage] is the death of comrades.” But “what appears to anger combat soldiers most…is not the death of a comrade, but enemy conduct that breaks the rules…treachery, gratuitous sacrilege, wanton cruelty.”Other times, soldiers’ rage has no justification and leads to great wrong; yet soldiers are often conscious of this moral danger. Marlantes wrote, “There is a deep savage joy in destruction … I loved this power. I love it still. And it scares the hell out of me.” Soldiers have a duty to control “the beast that lies within us all” (89).The assumption, therefore, that all violence is motivated by hatred, vengeance, or anger turns out to be false. Biggar summarizes his conclusion:It contradicts the charge that military violence is mainly and necessarily motivated by hatred. … It confirms the thesis that soldiers are usually motivated primarily by love for their comrades. And it supports the claim that they can regard their enemies with respect, solidarity, and even compassion–all which are forms of love.Given this information from human experience, a crucial premise of Hays’ argument is overturned. The Bible does not condemn all violence. The Christian call to love our enemy is not incompatible with, and may sometimes require, killing him.If you’re enjoying this post, consider sharing it with someone else!Other Premises from ExperienceConsider what occurred in the last section: A theologian’s exclusively biblical argument was undermined by a premise from human experience. And even for those of us who have never been pacifists, the Bible’s warnings about anger and Christ’s command to “turn the other cheek” often induce worries about the legitimacy of violence and war, even in self-defense.Biggar’s examination of first-hand accounts from the frontlines reveals, however, that these worries cannot be absolutized. Not all violence is motivated by motives that the Bible proscribes.Biggar introduces yet another premise from outside of the Bible: The doctrine of double effect. According to that ethical doctrine, we can distinguish the intended consequences of an action from side-effects that are foreseen,

Yesterday morning, I listened to Preston Sprinkle’s response to criticisms of his Exiles in Babylon conference. Sprinkle presents, in his books and on YouTube, an evangelical perspective that is arguably theologically orthodox, but sympathetic to Side B, celibate, gay Christians. He is also mildly left-leaning on politics, from an Anabaptist-inflected Christian perspective. Hence, “Exiles in Babylon.”Alisa Childers and Christopher Yuan criticized Sprinkle and his conference in a recent podcast. Alisa Childers is a former contemporary Christian music star, turned Christian discernment YouTuber. Christopher Yuan is the author of Out of a Far Country: A Gay Son's Journey to God. (Though I’m sure he would revise the word “gay” today.)Childers alleges that the conference is platforming a gay-affirming, progressive Christian as well as Christians who “identify as trans” and have pronouns in their bios. She is concerned that the conference presents views that may be incorrect without loudly proclaiming that these are just someone’s opinion, or presenting a debate.Yuan brings a “Side Y” Christian perspective on homosexuality, as someone who “struggles with same-sex attraction” himself. He argues against Side B, those Christians who say that being gay is not a sin, while holding to an otherwise traditional Christian sexual ethic. In fact, he says that Side B is “a different gospel.” (See this explainer on the “four sides” on questions of sexuality.)The Big QuestionI have one question about these discussions: Who here is woke?From a partisan political view, an evangelical might say that clearly Sprinkle is more “woke.” After all, his politics are a bit to the left of the average evangelical - he is willing to use LGBTQ+ language, and even preferred pronouns. He has spoken with people on his channel who are to his left, including a (non-Christian) transgender woman. (Great episode, by the way.)But in the context of conservative evangelicalism, Sprinkle is actually the free speech warrior. He is the closest thing I have seen on evangelical YouTube to what, for example, Konstantin Kisin and Francis Foster do on Triggernometry - interview people on all sides of the aisle in good faith discussions and debates without demonizing one’s opponents. The Exiles in Babylon conference featured several panels of this kind, including on the Israel-Palestine conflict and Christian deconstruction.On the other hand, it is Childers and Yuan who here advocate a kind of “no-platforming.” It is they who want a conference to have speakers with all and only approved views, in order to teach people what they ought to think. It is they who wield rhetoric to demonize their opponents - and especially the opponents who are closest to them ideologically.They also speak far too freely of other Christians preaching “a different gospel.” J. Gresham Machen used the related rhetoric of a different religion in the fundamentalist-modernist controversy. But Machen was speaking of people - theological liberals - who did not believe in the virgin birth, the divinity of Christ, or his or our resurrection, i.e., people who did not believe in Christianity(!), but continued to call themselves “Christians.”Is celibate gay evangelical writer Wesley Hill preaching another gospel? Far from it. Wesley Hill’s story was the first of a gay Christian that I heard. He graduated from Wheaton College a decade before I did and spoke in chapel the year I started. His story in Washed and Waiting is a beautiful presentation of his journey with Christian faith and homosexuality. And, by the way, it preaches the one gospel, of salvation from sin through Jesus Christ, received by repentance and faith.Theologian John Frame coined a phrase for those who continue in the mood of the fundamentalist-modernist controversy even when that is not what is happening: “Machen’s Warrior Children.” It’s when you fight evangelical Christians who are one step toward the lef… —nope, it’s just the middle—from you as if they were Harry Emerson Fosdick, the liberal preacher and author of the sermon, “Will the Fundamentalists Win?” Others have described this as “St. George in Retirement Syndrome”; with the dragon dead or out of the region, what is St. George to do with his fighting spirit?Now, I’m willing to argue about which side in a theological controversy is being more faithful to the gospel. Sometimes it is faithfulness to the gospel that is at stake. For example, I would argue that the Ex-Gay movement of the ’70s to ’00s (Side X) offered what was effectively a prosperity gospel, and that Childers and Yuan’s position, that same-sex attracted Christians should not “identify as ‘gay,’” (Side Y) still has some of the same prosperity elements.But I’m not going to say that people who think those things believe a different gospel. In fact, because we believe the same gospel, I’m going to appeal to the gospel we all believe in to argue that their approach to same-sex attraction is mistaken. (As I did, for instance, here.)Both SidesAs in politics, so in the church, wokeness isn’t about right or left per se. It is about, within a large ideological group, who takes things to the extreme where they demonize their own. To quote Relient K, “We’re cannibals; we watch our brother fall. We eat our own the bones and all.”On the left, wokeness sets in when you demonize fellow liberals for not signalling virtue loudly enough, strongly desire ideological purity, and refuse to listen to those with whom you disagree.Among evangelicals, it occurs when… well, when you demonize fellow evangelicals for not signalling virtue loudly enough, strongly desire ideological purity, and refuse to listen to those with whom you disagree.I concede that there certainly are some evangelicals who adopt uncritically liberal “wokeness,” both socially-liberal views and the mash-up of concerns about race and sexuality viewed in terms of oppressors and oppressed. (Some adopt it critically; to y’all, I say, let’s have the conversation!)But among thinking, conservative evangelicals, there is an opposite danger - whether equal or greater, I cannot judge. That danger is to fall into tribalism, the purity spiral, and not talking to one’s opponents.The fact is, whenever you talk to someone, you can find some common ground. And that humanizes other people. They’re not evil. They may be wrong.But they may also be saying something you need to hear.My New BandIt’s as good a time as any to let you know that I’m starting a band. I’ll be releasing a single soon called, “Common Ground.” It’s a burning pop-punk track mocking the reasons we demonize others.I’ll let you know when the single is released. If you want to hear the song before the release, send me a direct message or email (joelcarini@substack.com) and I’ll send you the private link.The Natural Theologian is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit joelcarini.substack.com/subscribe