Musings of a Casual Observer

How the Scientific Revolution led the West into Despair

2009-07-04T14:05:00.004-05:00

I wrote the following letter after reading the book Assumptions that Affect our Lives by Christian Overman. After proofing my letter, I realized it presents a part of the concern I have about modern science. The letter assumes understanding of a perspective, however, that I need to very, very briefly identify to make the letter more meaningful to my readers.

Francis Schaeffer, Carver T. Yu (Being and Relation: A Theological Critique of Western Dualism and Individualism), James W. Sire (The Universe Next Door: A Basic Worldview Catalog) and Christian Overman all elaborate to one degree or another what Schaeffer calls the “line of despair.” Essentially, the change in worldview from some form of theistic worldview to one that provides no meaning, purpose or context for mankind leads to nihilism in various forms and to varying degrees. All these authors, except for Yu who is cited below, do not consider the Scientific Revolution as playing a part in that descent into despair in the Western world.

I suspect many of my readers are unaware of such a descent because it isn’t evident in the general population – or so one would think. I encourage reading the works of Schaeffer and the others listed above before deciding that your impression of the state of affairs in our Western culture is correct. Until then, assume for the moment that their assessment is true and consider what I wrote to Christian Overman below.

Mr. Overman: I’m enjoying your book Assumptions that Affect our Lives. I’ve been pursuing this same topic from a different perspective, in particular, the affect of science on Western civilization and Western Christianity. I’ve done a lot of reading over the last few years on the history of science and I’ve found that Greek philosophy and certain occult arts are at the very foundation without question. In other words, modern science was founded in and upon much of the same worldview that you elaborate in your book. Several books I’ve read have shown how the affect science has had on the Western worldview line up very much with those effects you express concern about.

In particular, in The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science, Edwin Arthur Burtt states the following which I present here very, very briefly. “Till the time of Galileo it had always been taken for granted that man and nature were both integral parts of a larger whole, in which man’s place was the more fundamental.” Later in the same paragraph, he states, “Man begins to appear for the first time in the history of thought as an irrelevant spectator and insignificant effect of the great mathematical system which is the substance of reality.” He goes on to explain the metaphysical implications of the work of Descartes and Newton, as well as that of Galileo, which come out of the scientific revolution and have led to the modern problems you elaborate.

Another interesting book is Carver T. Yu’s Being and Relation: A Theological Critique of Western Dualism and Individualism . He writes from a Chinese, professedly-Christian, perspective and puts forth that Western science is at the root of the problems in Western civilization, which he elaborates much the same as did Francis Schaeffer in his works – the same problems as Schaeffer elaborated, though Schaeffer expressed esteem for science. He then contrasts the Western view of reality with the Hebrew view, briefly, random particles under the capricious laws of physics (western science) vs. God working through history (Hebrew). He cites Eliade in the following statement regarding this impact on Western Christianity: “From this it would appear that, even for a genuine Christian, the world is no longer felt as the work of God .” We might contest that, but perhaps there is more of this thinking in us than we’d like to admit. In any case, I think he has a point that even applies to Western Christianity, and certainly Western civilization as a whole, that science has affected our view of reality vs. the Hebrew view.

James A. Connor, in Kepler’s Witch: An Astronomer’s Discovery of Cosmic Order Amid Religious War, Political Intrigue, and the Heresy Trial of His Mother , talks about the impact of Kepler’s and Galileo’s work leaving man and the universe without meaning. He says, “Later generations seemed to think that the geocentric model promoted the dignity of humanity’s place in the universe, as the apple of God’s eye, while the Copernican system turned this around and set the earth spinning meaninglessly through a meaningless universe .” One problem with the former view, however, was that it was not purely Biblical but heavily influenced by Aristotle’s and Greek philosophy’s view of meaning and purpose. However pagan it may have been, I think we’d have to agree that view is probably closer to a Biblical view than is meaninglessness.

An additional comment on this view of the meaninglessness of matter and the universe comes from a strange reference: Julius E. Heuscher, M.D., F.A.P.A., A Psychiatric Study of Fairy Tales, Their Origin, Meaning and Usefulness . He says, “The rapid development of the physical sciences was favored by either denying reality to, or splitting off, ‘meaningfulness.’ Only when we fully recognize that natural science is the product of a limiting hypothesis ( ‘How does the world appear, if we assume that it has no meaning’ ), can we begin to integrate its fruits in a newly significant conception of the world.” This conception would probably have to be judged anti-Biblical.

There is more which I am trying to elaborate in a kind of draft form on my blog casualmusings.blogspot.com. This doesn’t begin to describe what I am finding as far as the inclusion of occult arts in the development of, as well as the motivation for science.

I have read the book by Pearcey and Thaxton, The Soul of Science , but I think it fails to look critically at the pagan and occult influences on sciences but rather accepts them uncritically as somehow neutral. I fail to see how neo-Platonism and Pythagoreanism and even Aristotle, all pagans with no foundation in anything approaching a Hebrew worldview, could possibly be acceptable to Christians, similarly as you’ve stated in your book regarding the influence of Greece on the modern West. Pearcey and Thaxton try to make the point that the worldview of Christianity was uniquely responsible for the scientific revolution. Rather we find that Christians were immersed in all manner of paganism. I also don’t think we should consider any atheistic influence of the Ionians as any better.

The bottom line: I think the decline you speak of didn’t start 50 or even 200 years ago. I think the decline started in the 2nd century when Christians began adopting aspects of Greek thought through philosophy, propelled by Augustine’s reconciling Plato (Neo-Platonism) with Christianity, furthered by Aquinas’ acceptance of Aristotle, continued by Copernicus’, Kepler’s and Galileo’s resurgence of Neo-Platonism and Pythagoreanism, and especially capped off by Newton’s occult involvement (alchemy and a little black magic) in his development of his theories. In fact, a professor of Eastern philosophy at a local university – not a believer himself – said that all the members of the Royal Society were involved in the occult, most notably Rosicrucianism and alchemy. For Newton, see Michael White’s biography Isaac Newton: The Last Sorcerer . Of course, these are just the highpoints. Most men in the development of science were professing Christians, yet all were more influenced by worldviews antagonistic to a truly Christian worldview. In other words, I think modern Christianity has missed the negative influence of science. I recognize in that statement that science is a very, very general term.

One last quote by Newbigin, repeated by Hiebert in The Flaw of the Excluded Middle : “…Western Christian missions have been one of the greatest secularizing forces in history.” Should not this indicate to us, if true, that even modern Christianity has been negatively affected by something that has secularized our Christianity to a large degree? Could not this culprit be, in part, science?

Anyhow, any thoughts you have on this would be welcome as I work through this.

Rob Walsman

Opposition to Evolution is Making a Difference

2009-06-29T10:44:00.005-05:00

One evening, while driving home from officiating a basketball game, I was listening to the radio program of physicist Dr. Michio Kaku. He made a comment that intrigued me, something to the effect that modern medicine wouldn't be what it is today without Darwin's Theory of Evolution. I sent him an e-mail to find out why that might be so, but all I got was a reply apologizing that he cannot respond to as many e-mails as he gets everyday - please feel free to call into the program. Well, I haven't done that yet, but I did come across a chapter of the book Evolutionary Medicine edited by W. R. Trevathan, J. J. McKenna and E. O. Smith (New York, Oxford University Press, 2nd edition). The chapter was written by R. M. Nesse and is titled "The Importance of Evolution for Medicine."

Briefly, Nesse states that, while the Theory of Evolution has made major significant contributions to medicine, there is still much work to do. In quoting Erasmus Darwin, Charles Darwin's grandfather, regarding his vision of a single theory to unify all of medicine, Nesse makes clear that he believes Evolution to be that unifying theory. He then says the following (pp. 420-1):

Of course, there was no real theory to justify Erasmus Darwin’s vision until his grandson Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace discovered natural selection. In the century and a half since the publication of The Origin of Species (1859), one would think that these ideas would have been applied to medicine in every possible way, but it now appears that we are still just getting started. Why it has taken so long is a good question for historians; the one available history of Darwinian medicine is not yet available in English (Zampieri, 2006).
While we wait for historians to address the issue, some reasons for the delay seem straightforward. One is the slow acceptance of Darwinism in general. Opposition from religious quarters is part of the picture. Some doctors are creationists, and a remarkable number of physicians think intelligent design is a viable alternative to evolution. They are too few to constitute a major obstacle in themselves, but together with community sentiment, they make deans and other leaders wary of public commitments to evolution that may arouse controversy. [emphasis mine]

In other words, the voices of opponents to Evolution have not lost the battle. There are voices out there which see this opposition as an irrational hindrance to the advance of medicine just the same as the Catholic church's opposition to Galileo, and they would lay the blame of lost lives at the feet of Darwin's opponents, but this case is made more subtly at this time mostly because there is no evidence to make so strong a case. They save such vociferous attacks for embryonic stem cell research.

It surprised me to see such an admission. I have heard of cases of researchers being ostracized for opposing Darwinism or even suggesting it may not be true, but thankfully these seem to be isolated cases, at least one would hope so. Then again, Ben Stein's film "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" tries to make the contrary case. Wherever the full truth may lie, it seems supporters of Intelligent Design and Creationism are having some effect.

The Double Standard of Opposing Embryonic Stem Cell Research

2009-03-29T11:24:00.004-05:00

But [embryonic stem cell] research is controversial because days-old embryos must be destroyed to obtain the cells. They typically are culled from fertility-clinic leftovers otherwise destined to be thrown away. – Indianapolis Star, “Obama to reverse limits on stem cell research funds,” March 7, 2009, p. A6

Christians and other pro-life advocates have opposed stem cell research on the grounds that embryos have to be destroyed in order to cull the stem cells, as this article makes clear. What I hadn't realized is where these stem cells come from – fertility clinics. If we are honest with ourselves, we should see that we are applying a double standard: either we should accept embryonic stem cell research or we should oppose the forms of fertility treatment that produce these embryos.

Some fertility treatments entail fertilizing ova, yielding embryos outside the would-be mother’s body. Some of these embryos are then implanted in the mother’s womb, some are frozen and some are discarded. What is the difference between destroying these embryos to cull stem cells and destroying them just because they aren't needed anymore? Ethically, it would seem that destroying leftover embryos for a purpose – to harvest stem cells – is better than destroying them because they are no longer needed or wanted.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not arguing for culling stem cells from embryos. What I’m arguing is that destroying embryos for any reason is wrong in God’s eyes. In other words, Christians should oppose this kind of fertility treatment as well as harvesting stem cells from embryos. But that doesn't seem to be the case. Christians don’t seem to want to go that far. Why? Because infertility is painful, and how can we refuse this option to Christian couples who are unable to conceive otherwise?

We get to the argument of my previous post: compromise in these painful situations is quite compelling. In this case, however, the reasoning for taking advantage of this fertility treatment is not a question of responsibility as it would be in the case of a man unable to provide for his family by refusing life-restoring stem cell therapy. This is simply a case of wanting what we want at any cost, even if it means the destruction of one’s own embryos to get it. That sounds pretty crass.

Yes, the pain Hanna felt (1 Samuel 1) is with couples today. It seems callous of me or anyone else to suggest they forego this fertility treatment in order to experience having children like most people do. But isn’t it just as callous to do so at the expense of perhaps a dozen would be children that we bring into being for the express purpose of having only one of them actually be born without regard for the rest of them. We want what we want when we want it and will do whatever is necessary to achieve our wants regardless of the cost to these children.

The question comes down to this: are these embryos life or not? If they are, we should reject stem cell harvesting and fertility treatments that destroy embryos regardless of what that means we will have to do without. If they are not life, then Christians and pro-lifers should not oppose embryonic stem cell research. To do so would be to live by a double standard.

There are even more basic questions here: Are we willing to live within God’s righteous limitations regardless of what that costs us? What are those limits? Does He offer alternative provisions for these problems which we are not willing to seek and wait for, let alone recognize because they are too hard to come by or not what we want? More on these questions later...

The Ethical Dilemma of Fetal Stem Cell Therapy - Compelled to Compromise

2009-03-27T09:41:00.004-05:00

“Mice with spinal cord injuries regained much of their ability to walk normally after getting injections of stem cells taken from the brains of human fetuses … The work strengthens recent evidence that various kinds of stem cells – including some from human embryos and others from fetuses – have the capacity to nurse injured nerve cells back to health and in some cases even become replacement neurons themselves. … [The stem cells] are the progeny of human cells retrieved from the brains of 16- and 18-week aborted fetuses.” – The Indianapolis Star, September 20, 2005, p. A3.

This article said that several companies were hoping to test this therapy in humans since it has been so successful in lab mice. What happens if the stem cells from aborted fetuses or even embryos are proven to restore function to humans with various kinds of nerve damage, whether from diseases such as Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s, or spinal cord injuries? Should Christians be willing to receive this therapy? Most Christians I know oppose this research.

Let me pose the following scenario: a Christian man has an injury which paralyzes him. He is no longer able to provide for his family as a result. Let’s say this therapy has been proven effective in humans and has been approved by the FDA. Should this man receive stem cells harvested from an aborted fetus? Refusing this treatment is no longer a hypothetical situation for this man and his family. Even his friends are likely to encourage him to receive the treatment. Suddenly, it is no longer so easy for us to refuse him access to this treatment purely on ethical grounds, nor for him to refuse it. In fact, it seems rather irresponsible to refuse this treatment. Principles can easily fall by the wayside when the stakes are so high.

I was quite surprised, when I posed this scenario to some dear Christian friends, to hear them say they saw no problem with such treatment. They posed the following counter-scenario, one which actually happened in our city not long before our conversation. Some kids egged a man’s truck as he drove by. Angered, he went back to confront them. One of the kids pulled out a gun, shot and killed him. His organs were harvested for use by people on various organ donor lists. His organs saved or greatly improved the quality of life of a number of individuals. My friends said there is absolutely no difference between the scenario I posed and this one, except that abortion is legal and murder is not. If anything, the latter scenario should be less acceptable to us than the former.

These friends are definitely pro-life. They do not in any way support abortion. Yet, they raise a good point, and their reasoning has enabled them to not even think twice about accepting stem cell therapy, should the need arise. What is the ethical difference? The fetus is not aborted for the purpose of harvesting stem cells any more than the man was murdered for the purpose of harvesting organs. As much as we hate murder and abortion, why should that stop us from taking advantage of these therapies?

Let me put another twist on it: if this therapy using fetal stem cells works, will it make the battle to reverse Roe v. Wade all the more difficult? Will it possibly weaken the will of those who oppose abortions – even Christians – making us more willing to look the other way? Most likely it will. If nothing else, this thinking should make us willing to do the irresponsible thing – be willing to refuse to be restored to wholeness by the death of a fetus.

I think you can imagine that if this therapy proves out, it will only take a generation or two before Christians concede that this therapy is acceptable. In fact, I think that all it will take is one member of our church to be in a position to benefit from this therapy and most all of the church will lay aside any qualms. To do otherwise would seem to be extremely callous. For this family to do without this therapy also might entail the whole local Body of Christ coming together to help the family go without, which is something almost unheard of in churches, at least for the long haul. But even if we could help provide for the family, asking that man, or especially a child, to forego a normal life still seems heartless. There is almost no way the church will be able to hold to its principles in the face of such a choice.

This begs the following question: what else has there been to which the church has objected on such ethical grounds or grounds of faith which we now consider acceptable without blushing or questioning or even being aware that there was ever any concern at all? I won’t go into it here, but there have been many objections of Christians through history – rightly or wrongly – which have been forgotten. Qualms have been allayed, and we have gone the way of the world without even being aware there ever was a concern at all. This king of reasoning and success has been far too compelling for Christianity to hold out against it.

Let me close with a portion of a script from an episode of Star Trek Voyager called “Phage” which originally aired February 6, 1995, prior to the stem cell debate coming to a head. A member of an alien race has harvested the lungs of one of Voyager’s crew members to replace his own. The crew member is on artificial life support, when Voyager finally captures the alien and the person to whom he gave the harvested lungs. It is interesting to note that the writers of this episode seem to indicate that there must be limits on therapies, that one must be willing to die rather than to cross certain ethical bounds. It’s rather refreshing to see someone in popular culture suggest such ethical limits.

JANEWAY: You’re on the Starship Voyager. I’m Captain Kathryn Janeway of the United Federation of Planets.
DERETH: I am Dereth … of the Vidiian Sodality.
JANEWAY: You attacked one of our crew members and you lured us into this asteroid. Why?
DERETH: We are gathering replacement organs and suitable biomatter. It is the only way we have to fight the phage.
JANEWAY: A virus? Some kind of disease?
MOTURA: Yes. It attacked our people over two millennia ago. It consumes our bodies, destroys our genetic codes and cellular structures.
JANEWAY: So you harvest the bodies of other beings to replace your own tissues as they’re consumed by this … phage?
MOTURA: Our immunotechnology cannot keep up. The phage adapts. It resists all attempts to destroy it. Our society has been ravaged. Thousands die each day. There is no other way for us to survive.
JANEWAY: I have a great … sympathy for what your race has endured. But I cannot allow you to keep the organs you removed from one of our crew members. We need them back immediately.
DERETH: I’m afraid that isn’t possible. I have already biochemically altered the air-breathing organs and grafted them into Motura’s body. They are a part of him now.
MOTURA: He is my honatta. His task is to find the organs I need for survival. We … we try to extract them from the dead …
DERETH: But sometimes, when the need is immediate, more aggressive actions are required.
JANEWAY: So now I am left with the same choice you made – whether to commit murder to save a life, or to allow my own crewman to die while you breathe air through his lungs.
MOTURA: It must be impossible for you to understand how any civilized people could come to … this. Before the phage began, we were known as educators and explorers – a people whose greatest achievements were artistic. I, myself, am a sculptor of note on my world. All I can say is that when your entire existence is at stake …
DERETH: You don’t have to explain yourself , Motura.
MOTURA: If the consequence of this act is a death sentence, so be it. At least it will put an end to my suffering.
JANEWAY: I can’t begin to understand what your people have gone through. They may have found a way to ignore the moral implications of what you’re doing, but I have no such luxury. I don’t have the freedom to kill you to save another. My culture finds that to be a reprehensible and entirely unacceptable act. If we were closer to home, I would lock you up and turn you over to my authorities for trial, but I don’t even have that ability here, and I am not prepared to carry you forever in our brig. So I see no other alternative … but to let you go.

My reply to Immo

2008-11-28T11:05:00.013-05:00

My reply to Immo’s comments on Is there such a thing as “secular medicine”? – Part 3 became so long that I decided to make it a less formal post than my others. So here’s my reply to Immo.

Immo: Thanks for your thoughtful comments. I hope you'll read more of my posts, in particular Chronic Disease: Two Worldviews posted in March, 2006 and the comments posted there. This issue is very complicated, and I interacted briefly with one thoughtful brother there which I won’t repeat here.

I want to first comment on the Christian contribution to sanitation. Can you give me a reference to the observation of Jewish midwives contributing to improved sanitation. I have excerpts from a book written in 1860 by J.P. (Ignaz P.) Semmelweis who studied childbed fever, finally determining statistically that hand washing made the difference – that’s really abbreviating all he went through to get to his conclusion. In the portion of this book that I have and all the googling I've done on it so far, there is no mention of any Jewish influence – nor any Christian influence for that matter. (I’m still looking for a complete copy to verify this.) He did note that midwives washed their hands, but their faith wasn’t noted, whether Jewish, Christian, atheist, etc., or that their faith had any clear bearing on their practice. I'm reading a book right now that makes the assertion that Christian theology hindered the development of the current germ theory and sanitation measures because of theology.

In Matthew 15:1-3, Jesus defended the practice of the disciples of not washing their hands when they “ate bread.” The practice was simply a tradition of the leaders of Israel and not law. If hand washing was important, why did Jesus not urge His disciples to do so, not for tradition’s sake but for health’s sake? That doesn’t mean they never washed their hands before eating, but it would indicate that it wasn’t considered important to Jesus. Add that if hand washing was so very important for health, why was it not mentioned in the OT law? Yet, the value seems to have been proven today. Has something changed, and if so, what?

All the required washing was ceremonial ablution only some of which might be considered health related. For example, a woman has certain cleansing to perform after menstruation. The focus seems to be solely ceremonial, as with the emission of semen by a man. Washing was to take place after each emission. We don’t recognize any health-related value to these today. But after relieving oneself, far from the camp and burying it, there is no mention of any washing at all required, ceremonial or otherwise. These washings seem to be strictly ceremonial.

Here's one recurring problem: without a doubt, people who professed to be Christians or Jews have made significant contributions to science. In reality, until the last 200 years or so, that was almost everyone in the West – at least nominally. Yet, I'm coming up empty on any substantive or material contribution of Judaism or Christianity to these scientific theories. They didn’t draw something out of their theology or religion to form their theories. All these Christians and Jews got the content of the ideas and theories from pagan and occult practices, worldviews and thinking. For example, the Pythagorean belief that number was reality, even more so than the world we can directly observe, led to the current mathematical modeling of the world in physics and other sciences. The Pythagoreans worshipped number and were a secretive, sacrificial cult. The motivation for Copernicus and Kepler to place the sun at the center of the solar system came from neo-Platonism which had a kind of sun cult, the sun becoming associated with Jesus for Christian neo-Platonists.

What I’d love to find are examples of purely-Christian thought, rather than pagan thinking with a possible Christian veneer, that led to modern scientific discoveries. Even two Christians who wrote the Soul of Science with the thesis that only Christianity could have fostered modern science because of its view of reality failed to provide even one example of it. They did state that they believed Kepler was driven by his Christian worldview to resolve a discrepancy in his understanding of the orbit of Mars with the data, but they provide no support or argument for it. They simply made the assertion.

So, if you can point me toward documentation of at least this one instance of a Jewish contribution, I'd appreciate it. Even then, however, will we be able to come up with it from the Scriptures or was it merely the tradition of men? I don’t think the Scriptures recommend the practice of washing hands when caring for a woman in childbirth or any kind of medical care. The Scriptures don’t forbid it nor do they recommend it – they are silent on the matter. So, even if it were a practice of Jewish midwives, it would be hard to show it came from the Lord.

The two toughest issues for me are Luke the physician and the lack of godly alternatives we seem to have. Luke, the “beloved iatros” (Colossians 4:14) – iatros is the Greek word for physician and also for healer – makes one wonder as you asked, what kind of physician and did he practice it after meeting Jesus? Or might it be “Luke the beloved healer” with the gift of healing. But one early-Christian writer refers to Luke as practicing medicine as a profession. That would seem to eliminate the “gift” of healing. I think he would have refused payment for God’s free gift. One thing is for certain, however, that it was not like today’s medicine and was probably Greek “secular” medicine – Hippocratic medicine. It was most likely not medicine associated directly with pagan cults, I would think. The Bible, however, is amazingly silent on the issue of “secular” medicine. That silence could be taken as tacit approval or a complete lack of need for it. Of course, the silence does not extend to pharmakeia – that, at least in some form, being completely condemned. But, in any case, Luke muddies the issue for me.

As for oil, I take it as simply applying oil. But I cannot see how to take it as a medicinal application, and we can’t see today how it could be of any real aid in the vast majority of cases. To say that it was understood to be medicinal raises a problem: the Scriptures (in James 5) would be promoting something as being of medicinal value which in reality is of no medicinal value at all in most cases. Thus, the Scriptures would not be reliable in this matter. Thus, I do not think the intent is medicinal. So it would have to be seen as being more symbolic – of the Holy Spirit? – or simply soothing to a person suffering. I really don’t know which way to go with that, yet. I just have trouble seeing it as the Scriptures supporting the medicine of the day, which today is believed to be largely false. See the comments attached to Chronic Disease: Two Worldviews for further comments on this.

The second problem I mentioned is still outstanding: if there is a problem with modern medicine in whole or just in part, what do we do with medical issues that modern medicine can easily handle when the Biblical recommendations fail? Let me put it this way. If a person you knew were paralyzed, and there was a fetal stem cell therapy which could restore the use of his legs and put him back to work earning a living for his family, would you recommend he stay paralyzed awaiting the Lord’s healing, or should he avail himself of the stem cells from an aborted fetus? It may seem like a different issue, but it’s not all that different. Perhaps another example would help, very current in Africa. If modern medicine fails, and Christians know a witch doctor who has success with that issue, is it okay for them to go to the witch doctor? This is a real issue for our brothers and sisters in Africa. Is healing the ultimate goal regardless of the modality or cost? The reality is that I know of no Christian, except for those we consider kooks, which refuse medical care on the basis of conscience. Those who do refuse, seem to have extreme views, people die, and they face charges when a minor under their care dies or suffers needlessly without the shunned treatment. I can understand their point of view, but they and I am at a loss to explain why strict adherence to the Scriptures fails to provide the hope of healing the Scriptures seem to raise for us. Recourse to pagan means seems the only option.

Let me ask: what would happen if there were a fetal stem cell therapy – a distinct possibility today – which could restore a paralyzed child’s use of his legs, in part or wholly, and the child’s parents refused the treatment because of the source of the stem cells – an aborted fetus? Would those parents then be charged with neglect? Actually, I doubt that even Christian parents would refuse the therapy, no matter where the stem cells came from. It’s so easy to reason, in this case, that the fetus has already been killed, they hadn’t killed it or ordered it killed, so why not benefit? Isn’t it just the same as harvesting organs from an adult murder victim. The issue is very complex, just from the standpoint of ethics, let alone any potential compromise with the teaching of Scripture because of pagan origins entering the equation.

James 5, Mark 16, the existence of the gift of healing and other passages, even in the OT, seem to raise the expectation of the Lord healing rather than relying on contemporary medicine – contemporary in whatever day. If that healing fails, do the Scriptures allow for or even encourage the use of whatever means to obtain healing? If not, where do we draw the line? Is that line drawn based on the severity of the ailment or the nature of the cure? That’s not an easy question to answer, if you think about it. If you say the severity of the ailment, then any cure will do if the ailment is serious enough or painful enough. If you say the nature of the cure, then a person should be willing to die, continue to suffer pain or remain paralyzed if no acceptable cure is available. All this is assuming, of course, that Biblical healing hasn’t “worked.” As one brother put it to me, “It just doesn’t work.” Some say it sometimes works, but modern medicine seems the most reliable and safest route. The better question, then, is why? The easy answer is that God doesn’t work that way anymore, but I don’t think the Scriptures support this. If it is His desire to work that way today, the answer to why He isn’t could be very disconcerting.

An interesting comment in regard to looking first to God for healing was made by some English Christians in the 16 th and 17 th centuries. They believed it impious to look to God in any matter until all natural means had been exhausted. In other words, God was a last resort. At first, this bothered me until I read a comment by one Christian who, when called to minister to people dying of some deadly disease like the plague, refused to go believing it a greater abomination to do so when all that was needed was to improve the sanitation in that part of town, and the people wouldn’t get sick in the first place. While he seems a bit cold hearted, the reasoning isn’t without merit. If a person is wasteful with his money and asks God to fix his woeful financial situation, we would rightly tell him to stop praying and start a budget.

On guilt by association: first, the pagan gods are no gods, they are demons (Psalm 106:37, 1 Corinthians 10:20). If they were just sacrificing to blocks of stone and nothing more, there would be no concern at all, but demons are involved in their lives. There is also the issue of “doctrines [teachings] of devils” which people adhere to (1 Timothy 4:1). Second, I agree that the mere similarity of things is of little consequence. What is of concern, however, is learning “doctrines of demons” from pagans and incorporating those ideas into our thinking and beliefs. That is syncretism, and that is my concern.

Enough thoughts for this post. Thanks for taking time to read and comment.
Rob

Is there such a thing as "secular medicine"? - Part 3

2008-08-23T15:26:00.012-05:00

[Continued from part 2]

Pharmacy

Finally, I want to add one more indication of what might be considered the pagan/religious and certainly occult foundation of Western medicine. Before I elaborate evidence for this, I want to present what Anderson and Jacobson say regarding medication. Keep in mind that Jacobson is an osteopath, and neither man completely discourages the use of any form of medicine despite the potential harm to “our spirituality.” While they recognize the topical use of something that might be construed as medication, such as the lump or cake of figs – hardly a medication in the modern sense – applied to the boil of Hezekiah,[1] they say the following:

Nowhere in Scripture do we find Hebrews or Christians taking herbs or drugs orally.[2]

The oral use of herbs during biblical days was largely confined to pagan cultures whose religious belief systems were directly related to their practice of medicine. … Biblically, the only things on record as being taken by mouth are food and drink. (Please note: The King James Version uses the word ‘herbs’ to refer to plant foods, particularly vegetables. …)[3]

While there is little biblical basis for putting anything other than food and drink in your mouth, we have attempted to leave room for the value and appropriateness of these potential remedies.[4]

So, it seems that anything recommended by the Scriptures that might be considered medication, such as a little wine for Timothy’s stomach and other ailments,[5] is normal nourishment. One might say Paul is recommending a slight change of diet. I myself benefited from this advice. I was on a two-week business trip in Washington, D.C. I figure there was something in the water there that threw off my digestion, and I was feeling a little puny all the first week. As I sat in the restaurant trying to decide whether I was really wanting food, I thought of Paul’s recommendation to Timothy. At first, I dismissed it because I didn’t drink wine at the time, but I was wanting some relief, so I gave it a try. After a few sips of white wine, I discretely belched a couple of times, and I instantly felt completely well. I had no other digestive problems on that trip. Is this medication? I would say not – it’s food and drink – a change of diet. Furthermore, it may well have been the Lord’s prompting me with His solution to my problem especially since I thought of the Scripture passage.

There is no indication in the Bible of any recommendation or support for the use of oral or internal medication. One might rightly say that a lack of support does not constitute a condemnation. The use of oral medications, however, is mentioned in the Bible. There is an association in history – and in the Bible – between religion, magic and medications of various kinds that cannot be taken lightly. Nutton states the following regarding the origin of at least some of the knowledge of medicines:

According to Homer, Machaon and his brother Podalirius come from a medical family and their knowledge of drugs descends, via their father Asclepius, from Chiron the Centaur.[6]

Jayne states the following:

Accounts of cures by following directions received through dreams and visions are more common and are often more circumstantial. An extant fragment from the shrine at Lebena records cures due to the application of remedies indicated by the god in visions. The remedies prescribed varied widely from mild and innocent purgatives, roots, herbs, diets, fasts, baths, and rubbings with ointments, to gymnastics and general regimen. These various measures were usually applied with some sympathetic magic, or were accompanied by the use of magic formulas and incantations. … During the third century B.C. Hierophilos remarked that remedies were the gifts of the gods, and, when rightly used, were ‘the hands of the gods’ … Purifications and fasting before incubation, followed by prescriptions received by visions or dreams, appear as the ordinary procedure in the cults of many deities, heroes and heroines; exemplified especially in those of Hades, Dionysos, and Amphiaraos, as well as that of Asklepios …[7]

We see these medicinal remedies being revealed, if you will, via dreams in the pagan cults of the gods and clearly accompanied by magic. Mary Hamilton states the following:

The gods in whose temples incubation was practised were chthonian deities, heroes who had gone down into the earth and were invested with her powers. Two of the chief faculties of the earth were the power of sending dreams, and the gift of healing. … The healing powers of the earth were expressed in the production of herbs that gave life or death, and were transmitted to the chthonian gods who had entered into her.[8]

The difficulty here is whether the medicinal virtues of certain herbs was stumbled upon by ancient peoples, was perhaps the result of their research, or was revealed to them by the gods, we don’t know for sure. In our secularized view of the world we live in, we’d prefer to think of these occurrences in more rational terms, not as having any spiritual meaning whatsoever. What we do know, however, is that patients and priests alike received prescriptions in dreams during incubation rites in the temples of these healing gods. We also know that there is a distinct absence of the mention of the use of these remedies in the Bible and a clear condemnation both of the gods and of all practices associated with them. Lastly, it is clear that the idea of the earth producing medicinal remedies comes from a pagan/occult worldview and not from the Hebrews. But the Scriptures provide even clearer evidence of at least a concern with medicinal remedies.

Pharmakeia

We get our word pharmacy from the Greek word pharmakeia, which appears in the New Testament three times. The Liddell-Scott Greek Lexicon defines it simply as the use of drugs, potions, spells, poisons or witchcraft. Strong’s (5331) defines it simply as “medication (‘pharmacy’), i.e. (by extens.) magic (lit. or fig.).” Thayer’s Lexicon “the use or the administering of drugs,” poisoning and “sorcery, magical arts, often found in connection with idolatry and fostered by it … the deceptions and seductions of idolatry.” Given what I’ve cited from other authors above, this definition should not be surprising. The development and use of drugs is seen to be exclusively pagan and not at all secular.

Pharmakeia appears three times in the New Testament: Galatians 5:20 (witchcraft, a work of the flesh), Revelation 9:21 (sorceries, that people refused to repent of), and Revelation 18:23 (sorceries, which will deceive all nations).

A related word is pharmakeus. Liddell-Scott defines it as a poisoner, sorcerer, druggist or apothecary. Strong’s (5332) gives “(a drug, i.e. spell-giving potion); a druggist (‘pharmacist’) or poisoner, i.e. (by extens.) a magician.” Thayer’s gives us “one who prepares or uses magical remedies,” a sorcerer. It appears only once in the New Testament: Revelation 21:8 (sorcerers, will be sent to the lake of fire).

Finally, pharmakos: Liddell-Scott defines it as a poisoner, sorcerer or magician. Strong’s (5333) gives refers to 5332. Thayer’s gives “pertaining to magic arts.” It appears only in Revelation 22:15 (sorcerers, those left outside the New Jerusalem).

From all I’ve presented above and far more evidence in all my reading, there can be no question that the origin of pharmaceuticals – even the idea of such a treatment – comes from pagan occult practices “revealed” by their gods and intertwined with magic. Keep in mind that while these idols are nothing at all, there are demons acting behind them.[9] There is a spiritual reality the Bible recognizes without question. All these practices were clearly forbidden by the Lord: participating in the cults of pagan gods in any form whatsoever, and participating in any form of magic.

No Form of Medicine is Christian

If there was any doubt – or ignorance – of the pagan origins of modern medicine, the evidence of the previous posts should make it clear. Returning to the first two statements on the back of Anderson and Jacobson’s book, we see something that should concern us at least to some degree:

Every system of medicine is founded on a religious system of thought.

No system of medicine can claim Christianity as its birthright. …[10]

Consider the historical case of Christianity and the humoral medicine of Hippocrates that prevailed from around 500 B.C. through the mid-1800s.[11] Briefly, it stated that there are four humors in the body: blood, phlegm, black bile and yellow bile or gall. These needed to be kept in an appropriate balance. Disease was caused by an imbalance. In order to restore the balance doctors used bloodletting and leeches if there was an excess of blood or purgatives for an excess of bile, etc. Drugs were also used to correct the balance.[12]

In addition to this, astrology was a part of diagnosis, prognosis and prescriptions, as well as in the collection of herbs, some ingredients in drugs and the preparation of remedies. Care was also taken as to the best times, astrologically, to administer various treatments, including surgery. Astrology permeated medicine. It was also believed that each person had a particular balance of the humors which determined his temperament,[13] and the influence of the stars and planets at birth – or some insisted it was conception – would determine a person’s health and tendencies toward certain illnesses. Lawrence Principe likens this belief to modern genetics – the two ideas being very similar though genetics is much more accepted today than astrological influences.[14] After stating that the origin of the humoral theory of medicine comes from an “Ayurvedic/Hindu-based philosophy of medicine,” they say:

Despite the fact that [humoralism’s] presuppositions were totally incompatible with Christian faith, the Church embraced it throughout a majority of its tenure.[15]

Astrology was just as incompatible, yet Christians practiced this medicine from late in the classical period until modern Western medicine took over in the mid-nineteenth century. The stance of the early Church on this will be addressed later. There is one element that was resurrected among Christians by Tim LaHaye in the 1960s in his book Spirit-Controlled Temperament.[16] He states that there are four basic temperaments – and twelve blends of those four – in all people which determine to a large extent how we approach life. Those temperaments are related to the four humors: sanguine (blood), phlegmatic (phlegm), melancholic (black bile) and choleric (yellow bile).[17] This philosophy that is “totally incompatible with Christian faith,” according to Anderson and Jacobson, was resurrected in part by a Christian counselor.

So, there is historical precedent for Christians practicing a form of medicine that is “totally incompatible” with their faith, at least per Anderson and Jacobson. This issue will be the topic of further consideration in later posts. Even without a determination, the issue raises many other questions.

From the above evidence, all systems of medicine are founded upon pagan religion which are antithetical to our Heavenly Father, at least the religions.[18] The question then remains as to whether this makes any difference whatsoever at all. Does the fact that a system of thought and practice is founded in the occult render it forever dangerous? Can it be redeemed? Does secularizing it neuter it of its power and render it safely useful to Christians and pleasing to our Father? Does simply extracting that part which is scientifically verifiable from the religious make it safe? Or might there be residual ill effects no matter what we do? If so, what is our alternative since there exists no truly Christian medicine? Remember what Anderson and Jacobson said of alternatives to Western medicine, that they “may be the biggest threat to our spirituality in the twenty-first century.”[19] Might it be true that even secular Western medicine is such a threat? I think as we proceed to investigate this in future posts we will see that perhaps most of secular Western medicine is just as great a threat as any of the worst forms of medicine critiqued by Anderson and Jacobson. The question of a truly Christian alternative is just as worthy of our attention. Anderson and Jacobson call for such an alternative, yet they consider it beyond the scope of their book to begin to suggest what that might be beyond certain hints.

Let me end with this thought from Anderson and Jacobson, if you are still tempted to believe that secular medicine – and even science – is somehow truly secular and hence safe from any spiritual influence.

… medicine does not exist without a belief system. When humoralism was finally rejected, it was replaced by the religion of science.[20]

And that religion of science may not be entirely divorced from its occult influences.

Rob

[1] 2 Kings 20:7.

[2] Anderson & Jacobson, p. 225.

[3] Ibid., p. 226-7.

[4] Ibid., p. 233.

[5] 1 Timothy 5:23.

[6] Nutton, p. 38.

[7] Jayne, pp. 231-2.

[8] Hamilton, pp. 2-3.

[9] Deuteronomy 32:17, Psalm 106:37, 1 Corinthians 10:20-21. See also the New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology (NIDNTT), Volume 1, p. 452.

[10] Anderson & Jacobson, back cover.

[11] Ibid., p. 18.

[12] Temkin, p. 12.

[13] Thorndike, Lynn, A History of Magic and Experimental Science, 8 Vols. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1934, 4th ed. 1966), Vol. 1, pp. 632-3, 673-4, Vol. 2, pp. 56, 151, 670-1, 855-6, 893-4.

[14] Principe, Lawrence, The History of Science: Antiquity to 1700, Parts 1-3, (Chantilly, VA: Johns-Hopkins University, Teaching Company, 2002) (lectures series), Lecture 22, "Medieval Latin Alchemy and Astrology."

[15] Anderson & Jacobson, p. 18.

[16] LaHaye, Tim, Spirit-Controlled Temperament (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House, 1966). There are several revised editions since.

[17] Anderson & Jacobson, p. 120. Pachter, Henry M., Magic into Science: The Story of Paracelsus ( New York: Henry Schuman, Inc., 1951), p. 38.

[18] Romans 8:7-8, James 4:4.

[19] Anderson & Jacobson, p. 10.

[20]Ibid., p. 133 – emphasis added.

Is there such a thing as "secular medicine"? - Part 2

2008-08-23T09:51:00.012-05:00

[Continued from part 1]
Early Religion and Medicine Inseparable
Nutton further notes the religious ties of classical secular medicine:

The relationship between religious and secular healing, and between their practitioners, is far too complex to fit a neat opposition between religion and medicine …[1]

In other words, the boundary between the two, if one existed, is nearly impossible to delineate. Nutton then makes the following comment, no doubt reflected in the Hippocratic Oath, joining this tactic of Satan with so-called secular medicine:

… Asclepius came to symbolise not just the power of the gods to heal and save but also the art of medicine itself as contrasted with other healing alternatives. Asclepius possessed the skills, talents and attributes of the good human doctor. For a doctor to reject Asclepius and his healings might also be for him to reject the very things for which medicine was thought to stand. In this way religious and secular healing reinforced rather than opposed each other.[2]

What we see in these comments is that so-called secular or Hippocratic medicine remained very tied up with the cult of Asclepius most notably, as well as other pagan religious beliefs, in part due to the belief that Hippocrates (c.460-c.370 BC) was a descendent of Asclepius,[3] but also because of the long history of medicine as an integral part of pagan religion. Jayne tells us that the serpent symbolized Asclepius himself,[4] so it can readily be seen, then, why the rod of Asclepius with the single serpent is a symbol of his power to heal and the apparent character of his healing work, and why it has carried over to this day. The rod of Asclepius represents in a single symbol the essence of the Hippocratic Oath, the essence of medicine which is so very important to our modern concept of medicine – one might call it the soul of Western medicine – which is firmly rooted in the cult of Asclepius.
Furthermore, some ancient sources claim that Hippocrates borrowed his cures from the testimonies inscribed on the walls of the temple of Asclepius at Cos, which were quite amazing to any reader. One example is the testimony of a man who went to a temple of Asclepius with one eye and left with two, the god having applied an ointment of some sort to his eye socket while he slept in the temple – a part of a broader ritual called incubation.[5] Hippocrates looked for patterns of working, just as the Greek philosophers looked for laws of Nature – procedures that could be repeated outside the healing temples.[6] He is considered the first major practitioner of secularized medicine, yet, seeing the above, how secular was it in reality?
Galen (129-c.200 or 216 AD), who influenced Western medicine for about 1600 years or more, is reported to have been called into the study of medicine by Asclepius when he appeared in a dream to Galen’s father Nicon.[7] Later, as Galen – “an avowed ‘worshipper of Asclepius’” – pursued medicine, Asclepius appeared to him on occasion in dreams, and Galen reportedly corrected his notes according to the counsel of Asclepius in his dreams.[8]
This is all well and good, but we tend to think of Greek and Roman mythology as quaint stories or fables, and we forget that this was the polytheistic religion of the Greeks and Romans. The works of mythology were their equivalent of our Old Testament, at least to some degree – these works are the history of their gods and their beliefs. As Paul said, even though we know these gods are nothing, there are demons who work behind the scenes.[9] As I said earlier, the “god of this world” is seeking to keep people away from Jesus, the only true Savior and mediator between God and men. We dare not take lightly these associations with pagan gods, which is in reality occult.
The Eye of Horus
One last symbol I want to address is the Rx symbol found on pharmacies and on prescription pads. It is often referred to as the eye of Horus or at least derived from it.[10] Horus was an Egyptian healing god. Walter Jayne says the following, which may have influenced the thinking of early practitioners:

All the people wore about the neck amulets, charms, and talismans of stone or knots of cloth on which magic words of power had been inscribed, or over which priests had recited magic texts, the ‘eye of Horus,’ ‘the intact eye’ (uzait), which gave health and soundness of sight, being the most popular protection against illness.[11]

Günther Eichhorn adds the following explanation as to how this symbol may have carried over to the present day:

The Eye of Horus was believed to have healing and protective power, and it was used as a protective amulet, and as a medical measuring device, using the mathematical proportions of the eye[12] to determine the proportions of ingredients in medical preparations. … The Egyptians did write prescriptions. Those prescriptions were first magical verses, and then the real prescription. The Eye of Horus was an important part of the magical part of the prescription. With time the magical part became smaller, and the real prescription more important. Eventually, all that was left of the magical verse was the Eye of Horus. It remained in prescriptions to this day as the R at the beginning of each prescription …[13]

Medicine, the gods and magic
Add to all this these words of Eusebius (c.263-c.339 AD) which refer to another Egyptian god of healing, one of the most ancient of Egyptian gods, Apis:

The healing art is said to have been invented by Apis the Egyptian . . . and afterwards improved by Aesculapius.[14]

In other words, Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea of Palaestina and referred to as the “Father of Church History,” is saying that one of the most ancient men of Egypt and one of early Greece, both deified after their deaths to become healing gods of their peoples and both thoroughly pagan, were what one might call the fathers of the healing arts of the West. Add to this that Jayne, in his book The Healing Gods of Ancient Civilizations, says all the healing arts were completely entwined with their gods and some form of magic or similar occult practice. Only of ancient Babylon and Assyria does he say there might have been some form of what we might call secular medicine which was considered less effective than the healing provided in their temples, and those physicians were “held in comparatively small esteem” compared to the priests.[15] This comment regarding medicine in ancient Egypt typifies this belief in the ancient world:

Remedies without magic were valueless or failed of their full effect ... Healing had developed with magic, it was inseparably connected with it, and all evidence indicates that it was never emancipated from it.[16]

As I began reading Jayne’s work, I thought to myself that surely some medical care was performed apart from the gods and magic, such as setting broken bones. As it turns out, there were incantations for even this type of medical care. Jayne provides no evidence of any accompanying manipulation of the bones such as setting the bones as practiced today.
Recently, I saw a program on the History Channel regarding what archeologists now believe about the work force of ancient Egypt that built the pyramids. They were not slaves but more of a union-style workforce that was well cared for. The program made a special point of the quality of medical care received by showing the leg bone of a worker’s mummified remains. The leg had evidently been broken, and a purported expert indicated surprise at the high level of medical care for the period in the handling of this leg injury. The medical treatment for a broken bone in ancient Egypt was an incantation. Could this be an indication that this practice was perhaps efficacious?[17] If not, their knowledge of dealing with this injury surprised the researchers.
[Continued in part 3]

[1] Nutton, p. 103.
[2] Ibid., p. 114 – emphasis added.
[3] Ibid., p. 56 – Nutton cites a passage in Plato’s Protagoras as the authority of this claim.
[4] Jayne, Walter Addison, M.D., The Healing Gods of Ancient Civilizations, (New Hyde Park, NY: University Books, Inc., 1962, originally published 1925), p. 242.
[5] Ibid., p. 230.
[6] Temkin, p. 54, is somewhat suspicious of this claim, yet admits it is an open question. Nutton claims this is “demonstrably false” (Nutton, p. 61), yet I had trouble following her references to support this claim. In fact, in the very next sentence, she states that Galen believed Hippocrates recorded “at least part of the collection … to preserve the oral doctrines of the family of Asclepiads that were in danger of disappearing because they were handed down only by word of mouth.” In any case, I find it hard to believe that Hippocrates was able to ignore completely his pagan background and start from scratch. She clearly has somewhat of a secularized bias as a general tone of her work.
[7] Nutton, p. 217.
[8] Ibid., p. 279.
[9] 1 Corinthians 10:20-21.
[10] Jayne, p. vi, see also http://www.themystica.com/mystica/articles/e/eye_of_horus.html.
[11] Ibid., pp. 40-41.
[12] For these mathematical properties, see Wikipedia – Eye of Horus.
[13] Eichhorn, Günther, “Ancient Egyptian Symbols” from http://gei.aerobaticsweb.org/egypt_symbols.html noted on July 26, 2008 – emphasis added.
[14] Eusebius of Caesarea, Preparatio Evangelica (Preparation for the Gospel), Tr. E. H. Gifford (1093), Book X, VI, 26. See this link for the text. Note that “Aesculapius” is the Roman form of the Greek Asclepius.
[15] Jayne, p. 104.
[16] Ibid., p. 45.
[17] I can’t find a reference for this particular program. If any of my readers saw it and can help me with this, I would appreciate it.

Is there such a thing as "secular medicine"? - Part 1

2008-08-21T14:31:00.022-05:00

I just read a book entitled The Biblical Guide to Alternative Medicine by Dr. Neil T. Anderson and Dr. Michael Jacobson.[1] It attempts to give some form of guidance to Christians for determining which forms of medicine are acceptable to Christians, and which ones Christians should avoid. The authors put it this way:

The invasion of … unbiblical medical philosophies and practices into the Church may be the biggest threat to our spirituality in the twenty-first century. We routinely come across Christians who have subjected themselves to pseudomedical practices that leave them in spiritual bondage.[2]

While they don’t elaborate in this book as to kind of spiritual bondage they are referring to, it is clearly a warning. The problem is that the whole book is lacking even one form of medicine that isn’t unbiblical in some way and, hence, according to what they say above, a potential threat to Christian spirituality. They state clearly that no existing form of medicine fits the criteria of evaluation they provide – even mainstream, Western medicine is one of these unbiblical invaders. At the same time, they provide a confusing message that allows for some Christians to participate in all forms of medicine they evaluate in this book, even those they consider spiritually dangerous.

The comment “any harbor in a storm” very much applies here. When suffering is great enough, relief is desperately welcomed no matter the source of the relief or the cost. This is not much different from African and Asian Christians going to witchdoctors for cures simply because they work when Western medicine fails, and relief is all that matters. What is of greater concern, however, is that many Christians aren’t even aware of the spiritual bondage Anderson and Jacobson are talking about, but for this series of posts, I want to address only the spiritual roots of Western medical practice rather than the consequences.

On the back cover, the authors – or publishers – make four statements which I will list here:

Every system of medicine is founded on a religious system of thought.

No system of medicine can claim Christianity as its birthright. For any given illness every person must discern which approach is best for them in light of biblical revelation and individual needs.

Despite the popular notion that the word “holistic” is a New Age concept, biblical medicine is definitely wholistic – and should be thought of and discerned as such.

Western medicine is not infallible and must be evaluated using the same criteria as other forms of medicine.[3]

The first two statements will likely come as a surprise to most of us. We can’t see the pagan religious foundations of Western medicine because it has become very secularized, and we have assumed it to be reasonably Christian. The pagan symbols are so ubiquitous that we hardly notice them anymore, certainly not as pagan.

The Caduceus and Rod of Asclepius

If you doubt this, consider the caduceus – the staff having wings and two snakes wrapped around it in a double-helix that appears in pharmacies, on ambulances, in hospitals and on pins worn by medical practitioners – the caduceus is found basically all over the medical profession.

I have heard some Christians say it is the bronze serpent made by Moses to heal the Israelites when they were bitten by a venomous snake. All the Israelites had to do was look at the bronze (“fiery” in the KJV) serpent and they would live.[4] Centuries later, Hezekiah had to destroy the serpent because the people were making sacrifices to it,[5] no doubt to try to regain some of its original healing power – perhaps beyond the healing of snake bites. Comforting as it might be for Jews and Christians to believe the caduceus is a memorial of Moses’ serpent, it is a false comfort.

Every source I’ve found thus far says the caduceus is from classical mythology. It is the rod, wand or staff of Hermes or Mercury, depending on whether you’re talking Greek or Roman mythology, respectively. The symbol with the single snake is the rod of Asclepius,[6] the Greek and Roman god of healing. The rod of Asclepius is generally used by professional associations whereas the wand of Hermes is used more often commercially. This isn’t hard and fast – I guess it’s a matter of taste.[7]

The reason for the rod of Asclepius being a symbol of medicine will become clear later. The wand of Hermes/Mercury is not so clear. The association seems to come from alchemy which later became chemistry and chemical pharmacy. Hermes was traditionally considered a master of alchemy whose purported works were passed down in the Hermetic Corpus, but this is speculatio"n on my part at this time. Details will have to await another post. However, Keith Blayney agrees with this assessment and adds the following:

The link between the caduceus of Hermes (Mercury) and medicine seems to have arisen by the seventh century A.D., when Hermes had come to be linked with alchemy. Alchemists were referred to as the sons of Hermes, as Hermetists or Hermeticists and as "practitioners of the hermetic arts". There are clear occult associations with the caduceus.[8]

The Hippocratic Oath

Consider also the Hippocratic Oath sworn by new doctors, at least in its older, probably original form. I won’t cite it all here, except to quote the first part:

I swear by Apollo, Asclepius, Hygieia, and Panacea, and I take to witness all the gods, all the goddesses, to keep according to my ability and my judgment, the following Oath. …

Apollo was also a healing god of the Greeks, father of Asclepius. Hygieia and Panacea were the daughters of Asclepius. Notice the similarity of Hygieia to the word hygiene. Hygieia was the “goddess of health, cleanliness and sanitation.”[9] Panacea was the goddess of cures. Hygieia and Panacea had brothers, too, gods of diagnostics and surgery among them.[10] Medicine was a family affair, it seems. So it makes sense that the gods referenced by name would be these four, these being the most prominent healing gods of Greece and Rome throughout the classical period – at least from all my reading on the history of medicine.

Asclepius

Asclepius is a notable case. His cult and his few temples – sites of miraculous healing – presented great challenges to Christianity. Vivian Nutton makes the following observation regarding the prevalence of Asclepius in classical Greece and Rome:

Associations of worshippers of Asclepius are known from across the Greek world from the fourth or third century BC until the third century AD. No other divinity in Classical Greece made so swift or so effective a transition from a mainly local to a pan-Hellenic deity.[11]

We might be tempted to think of this as simply a human or sociological phenomenon, but we, as Christians, must keep in mind that the world is a battle field where the “god of this world [Satan] hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.”[12] Owsei Temkin illustrates one way this took place:

The healing god Asclepius, whose miracles were part of his official cult, became the main rival of the Christ.[13]

Mary Hamilton elaborates on this:

It is probable that Christianity in supplanting paganism found the work comparatively easy so far as the Olympian gods were concerned. Their aloofness from the practical affairs of man tended to alienate their worshippers, and it was a simple matter to cast off allegiance. A harder task awaited the new religion when it sought to dispossess the chthonian deities whose general beneficence and gifts of healing had bound them closely to the people. Worshippers were attracted and their devotion intensified by tangible benefits conferred and help given in times of stress. The faith thus practically engendered and rewarded proved a stubborn barrier to the onward march of Christianity. Paganism made its last stand in the temples of Serapis and Asklepios, and their powers of resistance were due to the cures performed under their auspices in the name of the god.[14]

Relief from suffering is one of the most powerful inducements to allegiance. One powerful technique in interrogating prisoners of war is to induce suffering and privation and then offer them relief contingent on their cooperation. So it seems this is one powerful tool of Satan as mentioned earlier – “any harbor in a storm.” So it was in the early centuries of the Church – pagans, and even suffering Christians, ran to where the power was found for healing. What makes this situation worse is the close relationship of religion and medicine – even if that religion is today’s secular humanism or scientific atheism.

[Continued in part 2]

[1] Anderson, Dr. Neil T. and Dr. Michael Jacobson, The Biblical Guide to Alternative Medicine ( Ventura, CA: Regal Books, 2003).

[2] Ibid., p. 10 – emphasis added.

[3] Ibid., back cover. In all these points, italics are those of the authors/publisher.

[4] Numbers 21:9-10.

[5] 2 Kings 18:4.

[6] There are many variants of spelling that I’ve found: Æsculapius and Asklepios among them. The different spellings depend upon whether the writers are citing Roman or Greek sources or those so inclined, such as writers in different regions.

[7] Wikipedia - Caduceus.

[8] Blayney, Keith, "The Caduceus vs the Staff of Asclepius (Asklepian)," first published September 2002, revised October 2005.

[9] Wikipedia - Hygieia.

[10] Wikipedia – Panacea.

[11] Nutton, Vivian, Ancient Medicine ( London: Routledge, 2004), p. 106.

[12] 2 Corinthians 4:4.

[13] Temkin, Owsei, Hippocrates in a World of Pagans and Christians (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), p. 75.

[14] Hamilton, Mary, Incubation; or, The Cure of Disease in Pagan Temples and Christian Churches (St. Andrews: W.C. Henderson & Sons, University Press, 1906), p. 109 – emphasis added.

The Subtle Influence of Secular Ideas – Part 3 – The Erosion of Biblical Authority

2008-02-01T16:24:00.004-05:00

In my efforts to explain the effects of modern science on Christians today, I need first to lay a historical background. Toward the end of this post, I will elaborate one way in which this thinking has affected Christians today: the elevation of the authority of science over that of the Scriptures.

The starting point of my discussion is quite appropriately also the launching pad of the scientific revolution – physics and astronomy. What could be more harmless than that? If physics and astronomy can be found to have committed a grave travesty against the Western mind and heart, how much more other aspects of modern science?

Before Copernicus (1473-1543), almost anyone who was at all aware of astronomy believed the earth was at the absolute center of the universe. A few Greek philosophers had proposed otherwise, but their ideas didn’t catch on. Aristotle (384-322 BC) was the most authoritative of them, at least for the period that most concerns us – from the late Middle Ages through much of the Renaissance. Copernicus, however, proposed a system that placed the sun at the center, for reasons I briefly touched on in another post.[1] Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) and Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) picked up on his ideas and were quite successful with them to the point that they haven’t been seriously questioned since then. Their work was vital to initiating the Scientific Revolution.

That’s just the Reader’s Digest version of the story that hides a much greater revolution that was taking place due to and throughout all the scientific upheaval. Two systems of thought – two primary worldviews – were doing battle: the worldview of Aristotle and the combined worldviews of Plato, in neo-Platonism, and the Pythagoreans. Let’s look more closely at the two combatants in this battle for primacy in the minds of Western man – Aristotle in this post and neo-Platonism and Pythagoreanism in the next.

For all intents and purposes, the works of Aristotle had been lost to the Western world, and most of his works have never been recovered. Still, significant portions of his works were preserved by the Arabs, most translated from Greek into Arabic. During the invasion of the Muslims from North Africa through Spain, Aristotle and the works of many other philosophers were introduced to Western Europe.[2] As we saw in my last post:

…when Greek science which accompanied the works of Aristotle came into the Christian West at the end of the Middle Ages, the Occident saw with wonder and shock what tremendous accomplishments the human mind was able to bring about ‘without the light of divine revelation’.[3]

Augustine’s (354-430) reconciliation of neo-Platonism with Christianity ruled in the West for many centuries, until

Aristotelianism had won out in the long preceding period of human thought because it seemed to make intelligible and rational the world of common-sense experience.[4]

Add to the lure of making rational sense of the world the belief that Aristotle’s thinking seemed to align with Christianity, despite strong reservations by some in the Church, and you have a potent mixture of ideas taking hold. Casper and Noer state the following in this regard.

Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) interpreted the writings of the Greek philosophers, particularly Aristotle. His sympathetic views brought the works of Aristotle to the attention of educated men, and gradually Aristotle came to occupy a place in Christian teaching next to that of Saint Augustine and the Bible.[5]

In fact, Aristotle and other Greek philosophers find their place carved in stone in some cathedrals of Europe from the period.[6] This merger – or syncretism – of Aristotelian thought and Christian theology was known as the medieval synthesis or Thomistic synthesis.[7] It provided Christians a kind of comfort in making some sense of the seemingly chaotic world in which they lived – after all, that’s what our worldview does for us. Add in the amazing wonders of the mind, as we see in Burtt’s comment above, apparently in agreement and support of Christianity, and you have an alluring elixir. Butterfield, however, states that this synthesis is rather lopsided:

In this whole picture of the universe there is more of Aristotle than of Christianity.[8]

Nebelsick adds emphasis to this dominance of Aristotelian thought over Christianity.

… the Thomistic synthesis … forced theological thought into Aristotelian categories with such felicity and thoroughness that it was soon to replace the then dominant Neoplatonically-influenced Augustinianism as the basis of theology and of philosophy and science as well. So strong did the Aristotelian influence become that in spite of formal bans against certain of the Aristotelian claims, the last as late as 1277 (three years after Thomas’ [Aquinas] death), Aristotelianism was to be the dominant force in the shaping of the late mediaeval and early Renaissance mind until the sixteenth century.[9]

In short, Christianity was seduced into a significant change in thinking or change of worldview. Instead of bringing elements of Aristotle into Christianity, quite the reverse took place – Christians took elements of Christianity into Aristotelian thought. They no longer viewed the world as Christians had for centuries but allowed Aristotle to dictate their worldview.

How could Christians have bought into Aristotle’s thought to such a degree as this, even to give it authority equivalent to that of the Bible, as Casper and Noer state? Part of the answer is that Aristotle’s thinking was based significantly upon purpose – “nature does nothing in vain”[10] – and the search for why things are – teleology – and behave as they do in terms of purpose.[11] This seemed to fit nicely with a Christian view of Creation, and Aristotle’s thinking was accepted wholesale and merged together with theology so tightly as to make the two indistinguishable.[12] Thus, to undermine Aristotle was to undermine Christian theology. The success of the new heliocentric or sun-centered view of the universe and several astronomical observations by Galileo that directly contradicted Aristotle spelled the beginning of the end for Aristotle’s authority and, because Christian theology was so invested in Aristotelianism, the Church’s authority was directly assaulted, as well.

But consider also that Aristotle was a pagan – a polytheist. His thinking, though it seemed to line up with Christian thinking, was in no way Christian or Jewish in origin or in reality. It was the product of a pagan and intertwined in his pagan worldview. When Christians finally bought into it after some centuries of resistance,[13] they bit into seemingly good fruit with a barb in it. His science seemed to support Christianity and lend it a powerful rational basis. When Aristotle fell, the Christianity’s authority suffered significantly with it. Christians had been led along a line of thinking that was a trap set for them. When Galileo opposed the Catholic church, he was more opposing Aristotle than true Biblical theology, but, as I’ve already said, the two had become so intertwined that it seemed he opposed Biblical authority and certainly church authority.[14] The egg on Aristotle’s face was all over the face of the Church, and, in my opinion, the Church has never recovered from it. In fact, Christians are loathe to be seen contradicting science very much at all.[15]

There is another little bit of fallout from all this. Galileo was adamant that the “Scriptures tell us how to go to Heaven, not how the heavens go.”[16] As a result, he believed, as did Augustine (354-430 AD), a fellow neo-Platonist,[17] that Scripture must be interpreted in light of current scientific knowledge. Burtt gives this explanation of it, in part from Galileo himself:

It was this religious basis of his philosophy that made Galileo bold to declare that doubtful passages of scripture should be interpreted in the light of scientific discovery rather than the reverse. … ‘I conceive that, concerning natural effects, that which either sensible experience sets before our eyes, or necessary demonstrations do prove unto us, ought not, upon any account, to be called into question, much less condemned upon the testimony of texts of scripture …’[18]

So, Galileo saw the authority of his science as trumping the authority of the Scriptures – at least man’s interpretation of Scripture. I think, if pressed on the issue, Galileo would have said Scripture was the authority, but that science was needed to properly interpret the Scriptures. Yet, the problem is that science has gone through numerous revolutionary changes over the ages. How can we be sure that today’s science will properly interpret the Scriptures for us any better than the old, now-discarded science did then? That’s a problem I want to come back to later. Even given his stand on the Scriptures, I think Galileo could easily come down on the side of Evolution if he agreed with the science behind it.

This thinking, however, creates a problem: how are men to determine truth? Revelation has been subjugated to science, since science is believed to be more reliable due to being based on seemingly objective verification, whereas revelation is not testable and its interpretation seems subject to the whims of men’s moods and politics. Francis Schaeffer expresses well the quandary that even he found himself in with this regard while trying to assert the absolute authority of the Scriptures.

There is a tendency among many today to consider that the scientific truth will always be more true. This we must reject. We must take ample time, and sometimes this will mean a long time, to consider whether the apparent clash between science and revelation means that the theory set forth by science is wrong or whether we must reconsider what we thought the Bible says.[19]

What are we to do when science makes a very compelling argument contrary to what we think the Scriptures say, if we are to hold both the authority of the Scriptures and science at the same time? As he states above, our tendency is to go with science to resolve the conflict, just as Galileo did – and science often makes compelling arguments. At the same time, there is the problem of an incorrect interpretation of the Scriptures which got the Church in trouble in the first place.[20]

Schaeffer is forced to teeter on this point, as are we. The Catholic church challenged Galileo and ended up with egg on its corporate face, and Christians ever since have been loathe to question science mainly due to its amazing successes and wonders. The Theory of Evolution is an exception because it has produced no practical success as did Galileo’s astronomy and physics – it is more philosophical than practical.

How can this tension be resolved, since we see so clearly how easy it is to err in this regard either way? While Schaeffer states that he believes theology and science will eventually agree at the point of truth, if given the right time and environment, his greatest concern expressed in his booklet, No Final Conflict, is summarized nicely in this statement.

There is the danger of evangelicalism becoming less than evangelical, of its not really holding to the Bible as being without error in all that it affirms.[21]

We’d love to think that we can hold both, yet there are already many places where we’ve conceded a Biblical perspective in favor of a scientific one and the two are not at all in agreement, which I will elaborate in future posts.

What is the foundation of this concern? Is it not found, at least in part, in the erosion of Biblical authority in the Galileo Affair when Galileo’s thinking took over for Aristotle? Yet, is there really a problem? Could it be that what Schaeffer believed would take place – agreement between corrected theology and proper science – has already taken place through the work of Galileo?

Consider that the Church got into trouble by allowing Aristotle, in essence, to interpret Scripture for them and significantly influence theology. The thinking of a polytheistic, though Christian-sounding pagan took authority over the Scriptures for the Church. Surely, Galileo set the record straight. In my next post, however, I’ll show how Galileo did exactly the same thing that Thomas Aquinas did – he brought different pagan thinking into the Church to interpret Scripture once again with disastrous results. In future posts, I’ll attempt to address my other questions above, as well, in particular how are we to get a proper interpretation of the Scriptures, especially when they seem to conflict with science, and there are a number of such conflicts of which we are ignorant today that cripple our Christian lives.

Until later,
Rob

[1] See Origin of Ideas – Is There a Problem?

[2] Johns, Jeremy, “Christianity and Islam” in John McManners (ed.), The Oxford Illustrated History of Christianity (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990).

[3] Nebelsick, Harold P., Circles of God: Theology and Science from the Greeks to Copernicus (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1985), p. 82 – italics mine.

[4] Burtt, Edwin Arthur, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science (Garden City, NJ: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1924, 1932, 1954), p. 70.

[5] Casper, Barry M. and Richard J. Noer, Revolutions in Physics (New York, W.W. Norton & Company, 1972), p. 69 – italics mine.

[6] Principe, Lawrence, The History of Science: Antiquity to 1700, Parts 1-3, (Chantilly, VA: Johns-Hopkins University, Teaching Company, 2002) (video lectures series), lecture 18. Principe shows one example at Chartres in France. See also Seznec, Jean, tr. by Barbara F. Sessions, The Survival of the Pagan Gods: The Mythological Tradition and Its Place in Renaissance Humanism and Art (New York: Pantheon Books, 1953), translated from French La Survivance des dieux antique. He goes even further in showing the presence even of pagan deities portrayed in the same Cathedrals, a topic I’ll take up again later.

[7] Nebelsick, p. 81.

[8] Butterfield, Herbert, The Origins of Modern Science 1300-1800 (New York: The Free Press, 1957, 5^th ed. 1966), p. 35.

[9] Nebelsick, p. 149 – italics mine.

[10] Frede, Michael and Gisela Stricker (eds.), Rationality in Greek Thought (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), p. 266.

[11] Burtt, p. 91.

[12] Nebelsick, p. xvi.

[13] Casper & Noer, p. 69.

[14] Much more could be said on this, but I’m wanting to keep this postings rather concise and tight for now.

[15] I acknowledge the Evolution debate, but I want to purposely leave that aside for now. There are many ways in which Christians have already given up ground to modern science. The Evolution debate is one of the last battles yet to be decided. The problem, as I will show later, is that Christians are trying to fight this battle and many others according to the worlds ways rather than the Lord’s ways. More to come…

[16] Principe, lecture 29.

[17] Principe, lecture 13.

[18] Burtt, p. 82. The quote is from Galileo’s Letter to the Grand Duchess, 1615 – italics mine.

[19] Schaeffer, Francis A., No Final Conflict (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1975), p. 24 - italics mine.

[20] By the way, if Protestants are clucking at the ignorance of the Catholics, Protestants were just as taken in by Aristotle as Catholics.

[21] Schaeffer, p. 48.

The Subtle Influence of Secular Ideas - Part 2 - A Tree is Known by Its Fruit

2008-01-14T10:25:00.001-05:00

Jesus said that a tree is known by its fruit.[1] A good tree bears good fruit and a corrupt tree corrupt fruit. Even so, discerning whether the fruit is good or corrupt can be a challenge. If a witch doctor heals a man of a disease modern medicine can’t help with, is that good or corrupt fruit?[2] Some would say healing is good fruit, and this is a viable alternative to medicine, but we can’t look solely at the apparent benefit gained and ignore other spiritual implications. We have to look at the fruit the way our Heavenly Father looks at the fruit. The apparently-good fruit may have a hook buried in it like a fishing lure. In the case of the witch doctor, it should suffice to recognize the involvement of ungodly spiritual powers of whatever sort and decide without further evidence that the fruit is corrupt and that there is definitely a hook someplace in it, even though it may not be readily discernible.

With modern science and technology, our daily lives have been benefited immensely, and the fruit appears good. Yet, I want to look at what effect these same scientific advances have had on us as Westerners and as Christians – look at more of the fruit than just that which seems beneficial. I’ll look later at the foundation of modern science to see if it is sound or not. Like a witch doctor, if the tree is found to be corrupt from God’s point of view, then we will have corrupt fruit no matter how lovely it looks – no matter what the apparent benefits may be. A perfect example, of course, is Eve and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The fruit looked fine, but it was deadly. As it turns out, both some of the fruit and the tree of science are seriously flawed in multiple ways, and Christians have historically been unaware or intentionally ignored the danger signs.

I want to begin with the following comment by Herbert Butterfield regarding the general effect of the Scientific Revolution on the West.

… [The Scientific Revolution] changed the character of men’s habitual mental operations even in the conduct of the non-material sciences, while transforming the whole diagram of the physical universe and the very texture of human life itself, it looms so large as the real origin both of the modern world and of the modern mentality …[3]

Basically, the Scientific Revolution was not simply the addition of a couple of new ideas or innovations – mere novelties to make life safer, a little easier or more interesting – rather, it not only overturned the way mankind approached scientific knowledge, the Scientific Revolution overturned the foundation of the way Western man viewed reality. Our worldview was fundamentally transformed – for better or worse. Carver T. Yu, however, offers this Asian critique of the fruit born of the Scientific Revolution in the West.

Liang Chi Chao [1873-1929], a politician and philosopher, … became greatly alarmed by the cultural state of affairs he found [in Europe]. As he saw it, the former dream of the omnipotence of science has collapsed in the West. Western science did provide the driving force for material growth, yet the mechanistic world-view implicit in it had rendered moral responsibility meaningless, thus withdrawing moral restraint ... The sense of human freedom was also greatly eroded by the mechanistic, deterministic world-view. The meaning of personal existence was thus becoming more and more ambiguous. … ‘For the last hundred years, Science has brought material abundance more than all the past three thousand years could bring. But man has not become happier. Instead, he is swamped with spiritual predicaments. He is like a traveller lost in the desert; seeing a big shadow from afar, he struggles to go forward, thinking that the shadow may be his guide. After staggering for some distance, the shadow suddenly disappears, and he is overwhelmed with despair.’[4]

Yu and Chao, like many Christian authors of the last 30 years, identify the loss of a moral compass and meaning of life evident in the West. None of the Christian authors I’ve read, however, have linked it to the Scientific Revolution like these Chinese thinkers and some Western historians and philosophers of science. In fact, the authors of The Soul of Science, Nancy R. Pearcey and Charles B. Thaxton, professing Christians, embrace science as one of the wonders produced uniquely by Christianity and, in their opinion, only a truly Christian worldview could have produced science and all the marvels ensuing from it.[5]

What is interesting in their book is that they fail to show any substantive contribution of a Biblical worldview to the development of science, other than the participation of professing Christians.[6] They do, however, provide extensive evidence for substantive contributions from Greek philosophy, pagan worldviews and occult arts, all of which are antithetical to Biblical teaching. They show this without any critical concern or justification for accepting these origins, nor is there any analysis as to whether there might have been a deleterious effect on Christianity and the West. These pagan ideas were synthesized by Christians and briefly merged with Christian theology until science liberated itself from Christianity and theology not long after Galileo’s confrontation with the Church.

Briefly, in defense of Pearcey and Thaxton, Christians for centuries have uncritically accepted a plethora of ideas from all kinds of pagan sources. Harold P. Nebelsick reports the initial hesitation of Christians in the twelfth century which was quite short lived.

From the middle of the twelfth century onward, the writings of Aristotle began to flow into France from Spain. These were accompanied by the commentaries of Alexander of Aphrodisias (fl. 193-217) and Simplicius, as well as mystical pseudo-Platonic and Arab works on alchemy. So shocked was the West at the importation of this new knowledge, that in 1209 a provincial council in Paris decreed that neither Aristotle’s writings on natural philosophy nor his commentaries should be read either in public or in private. The University of Paris passed the prohibition in 1215. The thought of Aristotle, however, soon overcame the opposition. Within forty years of the prohibition, it had so moved into the culture that, as Dreyer tells us, Aristotle was not only accepted but in 1254 orders were issued prescribing the number of hours which should be devoted to explaining his treatises.[7]

Günter Howe (1908-1968) reports the awe with which Western intellectuals received Aristotle and other Greek philosophers.

…when Greek science which accompanied the works of Aristotle came into the Christian West at the end of the Middle Ages, the Occident saw with wonder and shock what tremendous accomplishments the human mind was able to bring about ‘without the light of divine revelation’.[8]

Christians were thoroughly impressed, awed and envious of such knowledge. It reminds me very much of Israel demanding a king of Samuel so that they could be like the pagan nations around them. They rejected God as their King and preferred the world’s way.[9] They complained that Samuel’s sons were corrupt, but it’s interesting that despite the less than ideal situation at the time, it was in God’s eyes better than setting a king over Israel. In the same way, the situation in the thirteenth century was surely far from ideal, yet Christians were willing to delve into whatever the world had to offer, even at some sacrifice of revelation. Butterfield takes this thought a step further.

The process was not stopped by any reluctance on the part of Catholic Europe to learn from the infidel Arabians or the Byzantine schismatics or even the pagan Greeks. Nor is it known that there was any opportunity which the middle ages missed – any great store of science that they turned their backs upon because it was tainted with paganism or infidelity.[10]

One example Nebelsick offers is that of Johannes de Sacrobosco (c.1195 – c. 1256), a noted English intellectual and astronomer of his day.

Sacrobosco, in contrast to his Christian predecessors, gave no hint of any interference of biblical cosmology with ‘scientific’ cosmology. Nor did he seem aware of the fact that classical understanding of the universe was built upon theological presuppositions which were quite antithetical to the teachings of the Christian faith.[11]

Christians for centuries have uncritically accepted all manner of thinking contrary to a truly Christian worldview – at least it’s been uncritical from the standpoint of identifying the pagan and occult source as potentially damaging to faith. Somehow, there has been the thinking that science specifically, and reason more generally, is quite safe despite warnings from the Lord in various passages of the Old and New Testament, but those will have to wait for another post.

This thinking has carried over for centuries and even into the Scientific Revolution. This awe and respect for science, which manifests in so many ways, is with us even today, and Pearcey and Thaxton are understandably under its spell like the vast majority of Western Christians.

Regarding the moral decline in the West, Christians generally attribute their concerns to post-modernism, relativism and the like without any explanation or analysis as to where these ideologies may have come from. One reason we fail to connect it to science is that, while science divorced itself from Christianity, Western Christianity has embraced science wholeheartedly, with the exception of the Theory of Evolution. Much needs to be said on this, but for now I want to state that I believe that Western Christianity has come to identify with and even base much of theology on science and even interprets much of Scripture in light of science. This is especially true with the advance of post-modernism. Christians find deterministic science to be a kind of safe haven in the storm of post-modernism, yet I believe it to be anything but safe and Christian because of its origin and demonstrable consequences.

What I want to point out for the moment, however, is that some outside of Western Christianity are historically seeing science as a major cause of a significant shift in worldview that is at the root of what concerns Christians today, and Christians are missing it. Science, however, isn’t the whole root. Greek philosophy, the Greco-Roman worldview more generally, and various occult arts pursued in the name of science are right there, too. I’d like to call Christians to at least look critically at what we believe to be a good tree bearing seemingly good fruit. It seems to be barbed.

In my next post, I want to present evidence linking advances in science with this decline in Western culture through some specific examples. I think it will become clear that science isn’t a neutral element that can be used for good or evil. Rather, it is an insidious poison carrying the West far away from a truly Christian worldview and the Western Church with it. The fruit should make evident the type of tree bearing it. Later on, we will see that we really shouldn’t be surprised that this fruit is coming forth.

Rob

[1] Matthew 12:33

[2] Most Western readers might think this a fictitious case, but there are testimonies of many instances in much, if not all, of the non-Western world today.

[3] Butterfield, Herbert, The Origins of Modern Science 1300-1800 (New York: The Free Press, 1957, 5^th ed. 1966), p. 7.

[4] Yu, Carver T., Being and Relation: A Theological Critique of Western Dualism and Individualism (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1987), pp. xiii-xiv – italics mine.

[5] Pearcey, Nancy R. & Charles B. Thaxton, The Soul of Science: Christian Faith and Natural Philosophy (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1994), p. 17 ff.

[6] They also state that Kepler was driven by his Christian worldview to resolve an eight-minute discrepancy in the orbit of Mars, but this is highly debatable and the only attempt to show a Christian contribution in content to science.

[7] Nebelsick, Harold P., Circles of God: Theology and Science from the Greeks to Copernicus (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1985), p. 120 – italics mine.

[8] Nebelsick, p. 82 – italics mine.

[9] 1 Samuel 8:1-7

[10] Butterfield, p. 89 – italics mine.

[11] Nebelsick, p. 125.

The Subtle Influence of Secular Ideas - Part 1 - Worldview

2008-01-02T15:04:00.001-05:00

An interesting quality of mathematics is that all mathematical systems start with a few key assumptions which cannot be proven but which make good sense and are considered to be self-evident – without need of proof. These are called postulates and axioms. Entire branches of mathematics are built upon these basic assumptions, and different assumptions create very different results. The Euclidean geometry, that almost everyone studies in high school, is a prime example. Other examples are various non-Euclidean geometries which start from different assumptions, such as the idea that parallel lines intersect at infinity, much as railroad tracks appear to intersect at the horizon, even though they are parallel. Not all mathematical systems start with assumptions that are considered viable in reality – they are used just to explore what might develop from this new basis.

What is less clear, perhaps, is that humans operate this way in everyday life. We operate on the basis of assumptions which help us make decisions, and interpret and make some sense of the world we live in. These assumptions seem to us axiomatic – without need of proof. My discussions with people have shown up many assumptions which are not necessarily true.

A humorous, relatively benign example is that of a linguist who goes to a remote tribe in hopes of learning their language and reducing it to written form. He starts by pointing to various objects in hopes of learning what that tribe calls those items. To his amazement, everything he points to gets the same word in response: a tree, the dirt, a hut, etc., are all called the same thing in this language. Suddenly, it dawns on him that his linguistic helper has not been giving him the word for the objects he was pointing to. The word given is the word for finger. The tribesman interpreted his actions in a completely different way than he did.

The system of assumptions I’m referring to in what follows goes beyond communication. These assumptions are often referred to today as worldview. In the grand social scheme of things, our worldview determines our politics, our economics, whether we go to war or not, whether we make treaties with certain nations or not, and a whole host of other life altering issues. Personally, our worldview determines the type of lifestyle we lead whether simple or lavish, perhaps immoral or puritanical; the kind of church we attend, whether charismatic or liturgical; the ethics we live by whether honest or conniving; and a whole host of other choices.

A person’s real worldview can be discovered by the way he lives his life. For example, I play racquetball with a liberal who wants to give handouts to all the poor. I beat him regularly. Once I asked him if he wanted me to spot him some points to which he replied angrily that he didn’t want charity – he wanted to earn the victory for himself, even if he loses. A victory that way would mean more to him. Well, perhaps my friend is really rather conservative in his worldview – at least to some extent. There are conservatives who oppose aid programs, yet they will take advantage of every one of them they can. Perhaps they are really somewhat more liberal than they’d like to admit.

A very important point I want to make, however, is that our true worldview is hard for us to detect. The assumptions by which we live and which rule our interpretations and decisions in life seem to make so much sense – they seem to us so clearly without need of proof – that we are rarely aware they are there, and we almost never question their validity, as long as our system is sufficiently coherent – serving us well. It’s usually life crises that cause such a questioning, such as 9/11. Crises can also cause us to question our faith and fall away from the Lord. The result of questioning isn’t always a more correct answer, but an answer that seems to better fit the way we perceive reality.

I believe the Bible calls Christians to be aware of and to question their assumptions to see whether they are valid. As Luke wrote about the Berean Jews, “These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so.”[1] They were ready to have their basic assumptions changed, yet they did so thoughtfully. Jesus’ disciples had a hard time dealing with His crucifixion because they had an assumption that all the Messianic prophecies would be fulfilled at the same time. They had completely missed the need for Jesus’ sacrifice for sins, even though it was written in the Scriptures, which Jesus elaborated to them after his resurrection.[2] The religious rulers at that time had a whole system of religion that, as it turned out, was opposed to the heart of God.[3]

We’d like to think that we now, unlike the Jews of Jesus’ day, are way past any such misconceptions, yet I think we will see that this might not be the case. I want to lay out negative changes in worldview that have taken place over time, which, I believe, have been powerfully affected by what we now call science, Greek philosophy and even certain occult arts – even the Western Church has been affected.

It is first very important to study our history to seek out where major changes in our worldview took place. Without this study, we aren’t even aware that something changed. Just as the proverbial frog in the pot heating up underneath him isn’t aware of any change until it’s too late, so we aren’t aware of any changes in thinking that have taken place over the past two millennia without looking critically at the history of Western thought, and in particular Christian thinking. Even then, if we are aware of a change, we fail to consider whether it was good or not.

Equally important, however, is the need to look at what provoked the change. As Christians, we must be keenly aware that we have an adversary who earnestly desires and relentlessly works to undo the work of God and to destroy us if at all possible and in any way possible.[4] The Scriptures make it clear that there is a world system over which Satan apparently has some form of rule[5] which he uses to his ends. Here is one of my assumptions in this study: any and every influence which finds its origins in this world system is at least suspect of bringing about Satan’s ends and opposing God’s purposes, and deception is one of his primary weapons.[6]

Some may argue that Christians can never be deceived based on Matthew 24:24, yet there are far too many warnings about false doctrine, teachings of devils, false prophets, sin entangling us, and the Devil seeking to destroy us for us.[7] These warnings are given because there is the real possibility of being deceived and falling away in a whole variety of ways. Jesus’ words to the seven churches in Revelation 2 and 3 show that some went astray from Him. The histories of Israel and the Church are rife with examples.

One way for Satan to accomplish his purposes is through subtle changes to our worldview. It can be influenced by Satan to his ends and contrary to the Lord’s plan, if we aren’t watchful. I believe it has already taken place and the effects remain with us today.

Thus, I assert that every generation must look critically at the current state of affairs, not just from a standpoint of sin as we classically understand it, but also from the standpoint of where we may have gone astray in our thinking away from our Lord. Is what is currently being espoused by Evangelicals – and perhaps other Christians – as a Christian worldview truly a Christian worldview, and where might it have gone awry if not? As I put it to one friend not long ago in discussing this, I believe that, at best, the definitions of a Christian worldview I have heard are inadequately Christian and subtly compromised with worldly and even occult thinking for many centuries.

This brings me to another one of my assumptions: there is a truly Christian worldview that can be perceived and held, yet it is not automatic or obvious. I do not mean by this that all Christians in all cultures should look, think and behave exactly the same. There is allowance for cultural differences. Yet, I exclude so-called “cultural traditions” that are founded in pagan practices. I do believe there is, however, a common Kingdom worldview that should permeate all of Christianity. It is not necessarily found in historic Israel, modern Judaism or the historic Church. It is found in the Scriptures.

Yet, we have a problem. Our worldview interferes with our ability to see what, to people of other worldviews, is so clearly evident. For example, Westerners generally find the genealogies of the Bible quite boring and purposeless. Our oriental brethren, however, find each genealogy extremely important and vital. One of the reasons is that they prove beyond doubt that Jesus and Adam were real people. For us in the West, this hardly proves a thing. Suffice it to say that our differing worldviews make a big difference in what we get out of different parts of the Bible. Basically, there are significant portions of the Scriptures that we miss entirely or misinterpret because we don’t see the world in the same way as the writers of the Bible and the early readers. We’re missing the cultural context, language and basic assumptions, as we’ll see later. If that’s not enough, what about our so-called blind spots we talk about from time to time, issues we aren’t aware of? Don’t we also have misconceptions about God’s character that we discover sometimes years after holding a false view of Him?

What’s the solution? Just as it was necessary for the Holy Spirit to bring us to understand the truth about Jesus’ atonement for our sins and the necessity of – and even ability for – our faith in that atonement for reconciliation to our Heavenly Father, so it is necessary for the Holy Spirit to continue to lead us into all truth hence forth.[8] We’d like to think that all is set right at conversion as far as knowing truth – getting it all put right. Yet, I don’t think any of us would be so bold as to say such a thing, though it sometimes seems we believe it to be so.

While a truly Christian worldview is available and possible, it isn’t automatic. It comes through searching and seeking in the Scriptures, questioning assumptions and going to the Lord for help in discerning what is true and what is false. The Deceiver is always at work to thwart this effort, and the Holy Spirit is always at work to promote it. Our role is to resist the Devil’s efforts and cooperate with the Holy Spirit,[9] which isn’t always clear in itself.

While this discussion has postponed for yet another post my explanation of where I see we have gone astray, I believe it to be an essential foundation to that presentation. What I will be laying out illustrates very clearly how scientific thinking, at the very least, has drastically altered our view of reality, the universe, our place in the world, and even the work of God in the world. As a result, it has also drastically altered the very essence of how we view God and ourselves, and live out our Christian lives, not as aliens in this world[10] but as citizens far too comfortable with worldly ways, thinking and living. I think the words of various contemporary writers will illustrate this nicely.

Rob

[1] Acts 17:11

[2] Luke 24:27

[3] Matthew 15:1-9, 23:1-32, Mark 7:1-13

[4] 1 Peter 5:8

[5] Daniel 10:13, Matthew 9:34, John 12:31, 14:30, 16:11, Ephesians 2:2

[6] Matthew 24:4-5,11,24, Mark 13:5-6, Romans 16:18, Ephesians 4:14, 5:6, 2 Thessalonians 2:3, Revelation 20:3,8, and in both the Old and New Testaments there is mention of false prophets, deceivers and seducers.

[7] False or sound doctrine – Ephesians 4:14, Colossians 2:8, 1 Timothy 1:5-11, 2 Timothy 4:3. Teachings of devils – 1 Timothy 4:1. False prophets – Matthew 7:15, 24:10,23, Mark 13:22, 2 Peter 2:1, 1 John 4:1, not to mention Old Testament mention of lying prophets and spirits. Entanglements of sin – Hebrews 12:1. The Devil as a roaring lion – 1 Peter 5:8.

[8] John 16:13

[9] James 4:7

[10] 1 Peter 2:11

Asking the Right Question

2007-12-05T21:05:00.001-05:00

I’ve only begun to express some concerns about where the “soul of science” has taken Western Christianity over the last 2000 years, but one essential question is simply, “So what? What difference does it make today practically speaking?” This is the question Jeff Mikels posed to me back in January of this year, and it’s truly a very important question. If the answer is “not much,” then my thoughts are worth about the same – not much. They are nothing more than casual musings – an intellectual exercise and perhaps “foolish and unlearned questions.”[1] But I don’t believe that to be the case.

I’ve struggled with answering Jeff’s question, not because I don’t have a lot to say on the topic, but because I’ve struggled with how to say it without writing an entire volume to back it up. The problem is that I can make a statement, but by itself it can be easily dismissed. If I say, “Science is a problem,” not many people will consider it seriously. I’d love to make a statement as simple as that one such that no one can reasonably argue with it, but I have to resign myself to the fact that it just won’t happen.

There is much discussion that needs to go into each statement of concern that I have, in some cases, simply to explain what the concern is. I’ve had discussions with people where I’ve posed a thought and we go back and forth for many exchanges before the concern is even understood, let alone viewed as possibly valid.

One issue that stands against us is how fully we already embrace the very things I am calling into question. It is a problem of worldview – “assumptions that affect our lives”[2] I have much to say on this topic alone, and there are many examples throughout history of people overlooking something in one age that is discovered or at least accepted as true in another age simply because of the influence of these foundational assumptions. We can easily miss fundamental truths because our worldview doesn’t allow for them.

I am challenging some of Western civilization’s most sacred cows that have been hallowed for centuries, if not nearly the entire two millennia of Christian history, yet I believe they have been borrowed from pagans and have no foundation in the Bible, nor Hebrew history, nor the first-century Church. In fact, they are antithetical to Christian faith and interfere seriously with the Church’s life with the Lord Jesus.

Probably the biggest area of impact in the life of the Western Church is that we have adopted, as Christian, a compromised worldview – set of assumptions – that come to us directly from pagan, occult religion and philosophy, and we have set aside some very important principles of life and godliness in exchange for a life dependent upon the “rudiments of this world, and not after Christ”.[3]

There is much I need to say in support of that statement, but if we accept that assertion for the moment only for the sake of argument, the question still remains, “So what?”

I have a problem, however, with that question in this context. Asking it in this way seems to work on the assumption that if we can’t identify any problems, then it is perfectly acceptable to have been so influenced – somehow that we can carry fire in our bosom and not get burned, to borrow from Proverbs 6:27.

There is another way, however, to look at this issue: if Paul warned against it, not to mention such warnings in the Old Testament, then there is truly a danger and a destructive impact to the Church just as there was to Israel. So, if my assertion of compromise is true, then there absolutely must be a negative impact even if we cannot immediately identify it. The question is not, “Show me the problem if you’re so concerned about it, and I’ll believe you.” The question ought to be, “There is definitely a problem that needs remedy. How has it affected us so that we might repent?” This, I think, is the problem I have not so much with Jeff’s question as I do with what seems to lie behind it – “Prove to me that we’ve been negatively impacted, and then I’ll repent. Without that proof, I refuse to believe there is a problem.”

Let me use an analogy. It’s like an alcoholic saying, “So, I’m an alcoholic. Show me who’s been hurt by it and then, maybe, I’ll consider doing something about it.” He can’t see what it’s doing to those around him. For him, his alcoholic lifestyle is normal, and even his family has adapted to it. As a result, there appears to be no need for change. What he, and even his family, can’t see is what life would be like if he were not an alcoholic.

Likewise, we Western Christians are so inured to the Western worldview and have so adapted to it – even honor it as superior to all others ever in the history of mankind – that we can’t see what dysfunction it has wrought in the Church. If we could ever get a glimpse of what life with our Lord could be like if we weren’t Western Christians but Kingdom Christians, we might rue the many years wasted in ignorant bliss of the woeful state we’ve been in.

In fact, we do have such a glimpse available to us – it’s in the Gospels and the book of Acts – the more-historical books of the Bible. That’s what life can be like in the Church. Some might contend that it could never be like that because we live in a fallen world – yet it was like that once in the early Church or else the Bible isn’t reliable – not perfect but far different from today’s Western Christianity.

Fundamentally, then, the more important question for all of us – quite apart from the issues I’m raising regarding science and medicine – is do we really believe what the Bible says or is it more of a guideline for us to follow – perhaps even and an unattainable ideal or pipedream? If we view the Bible as authoritative and, even more importantly, Jesus as Lord, then the question isn’t at all, “What’s the big deal?” but “Where has there been such compromise and how do we get right with our Heavenly Father in these things?” That’s no easy question to answer, but it’s one we must wrestle with.

Before I move on, I want to address one comment made to me in this regard. After some discussions about these issues, one friend said to me, “Well, I’m not too worried about this. When He beams me up, He’ll clean me up.” In other words, it’s akin to the thought that we can never “be holy; for [He is] holy”[4] so why get upset about it? I can understand my friend’s resorting to this statement. The issues I’ve raised can be potentially quite upsetting, and it can be far easier to let them be rather than engaging in a wrestling match to uncover problems when life seems just fine as it is. I can empathize with my friend on that point.

Yet, we cannot and must not turn our backs on the pursuit of holiness before our Heavenly Father, if for no other reason than to honor Him and show Him our love.[5] Additionally, we want to be a pure and spotless Bride[6] and to properly show Jesus to the world. Further, what blessings might we be passing up simply because we prefer our current comfort, just like the alcoholic who thinks his life is just fine as it is. Just maybe there is a better life in Christ to be lived if we dare to pursue it. I believe it’s there for the taking, yet it won’t be taken easily or without sacrifice. The alcoholic must sacrifice his dysfunctional way of living in order to gain a far better one. So must we be willing to lay aside that which seems normal for that which is His highest for us, if we want to attain it.

Basically, I’m questioning the approach which sees no need for concern if no ill effects can be shown – “I don’t care if something wrong was done if I’m ignorant of any negative consequences.” The approach we should take is this: if something was done contrary to the counsel of Scripture, the questions should be, “Has it been remedied?” and “If not, what are the negative consequences we may be oblivious to?”

That said, let me proceed in the next few posts to attempt to elaborate more specific areas where I believe the impact can be seen.

Blessings,
Rob

[1] 2 Timothy 2:23

[2] The title of a very intriguing book by Christian Overman, Assumptions that Affect Our Lives (Simi Valley, CA: Micah 6:8, 1998).

[3] Colossians 2:8,20

[4] 1 Peter 1:15-16 and Leviticus 11:44-45

[5] John 14:15

[6] Ephesians 5:26-27

"So, Rob, just what is the bottom line?"

2007-07-01T18:22:00.001-05:00

“…there is nothing more contagious than fallacies when they have once succeeded in awakening admiration.”[1]

In an on-going discussion with him, Jeff Mikels put two good questions to me. These questions are not unlike the questions of a number of people who’ve heard some of my thoughts on these matters.

“I would like for you to summarize in just one paragraph what you are trying to say or what you are struggling with.”
“What aspects of modern Christianity have been syncretized, how has the gospel been affected, and what difference does it make?”

I think the best answer to the first question is the paragraph he quoted from me just after asking the question. I’ll provide it here:

“My concern is syncretism[2] – merging Biblical thinking with pagan worldviews and the teachings of demons,[3] and where has that led and is that leading the modern church astray? How has that influenced our preaching of the gospel? How has it rendered us powerless in ministry both in the church and to the lost? We like to think of science as neutral, yet I think it a subtle avenue of access we’ve given to the enemy – one of many and probably the most subtle.”

For myself, I think the proposition that the church has syncretized sound doctrine with the world’s wisdom is clear from my reading, though much of what I’ve read was not known to me two years ago, nor are most of my brothers and sisters aware of it. Actually, I’ve found that few, even when made aware of it, seem to consider it much of a concern, which leads them, like Jeff, to the second question. In a future post, I want to address the concern with syncretism in general before going on too far. Briefly, though, if it’s occurred and hasn’t been previously dealt with, there is a deleterious affect which may have yet to be discerned. The difficulty of that discernment is what I want to address in this post.

Jeff’s second question is more difficult to answer. I don’t have an authoritative answer or any hard-fast conclusions at this time, but I have some suspicions. I’ve discussed them with some people who, like Jeff, want to know the bottom line without hearing the reason for those suspicions. So, I’ve jumped to the bottom line, but when they hear it, they reject the possible conclusions outright as baseless or ridiculous. I can understand that. Without hearing the reasons for the conclusions, they can sound pretty far out there. So, it’s a kind of catch-22 situation.

To make matters worse, the foundation for the possible conclusions is very complex, entailing ancient Greek philosophy, the history of mathematics, science and medicine, and much of Church history, let alone an understanding of the various systems of occult thought and practice that have had their influence. That’s a real plateful for me and my would-be readers.

So, in order to try to give the suspicions earlier on in the conversation without losing my audience before I’ve even gotten started, let me elaborate why I think we can be completely unaware of syncretism – serious error in our thinking – and why it might be hard to detect. Then I will present the practical ways it may be affecting us with some explanation of each. After that, perhaps, some of you will follow with me through the history of how it took place to see if perhaps there’s some basis to it. Actually, the history is very much needed in order to see where the error came in, what it is, and what part of it has carried over to today.

The quote at the opening of this post gives a hint at this. It’s from the thinking of Francis Bacon, not in regards to Christian syncretism but rather what he perceived as the intellectual blindness of his contemporaries and predecessors. I leave it with you in anticipation of my next post in which I will elaborate how easy it is for us to be blissfully unaware of error.

Rob

[1] Rossi, Paolo, translated by Sacha Rabinovitch, Francis Bacon: From Magic to Science (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1968). Originally published as Francesco Bacone: Dalla Magia alla Scienza (Editori Laterza, Bari 1957), p. 56.

[2] Syncretism – “Reconciliation or fusion of differing systems of belief, as in philosophy or religion, especially when success is partial or the result is heterogeneous.” Definition from Houghton Mifflin Online Dictionary. Examples of syncretism of concern to Christians would be the Israelites’ mixing of the worship of the Lord God with the worship of the gods of the peoples around them, and the Catholic church putting Christian veneers over pagan and animistic practices such as the veneration of saints, saints days and various other holidays. I will address other, much more subtle cases.

[3] 1 Timothy 4:1

How concerned should we be about our credibility?

2006-11-24T14:05:00.001-05:00

On November 20, 2006, USA Today had an op-ed piece entitled “When religion loses its credibility” by Oliver “Buzz” Thomas that started with the following text:

“Galileo was persecuted for revealing what we now know to be the truth regarding Earth’s place in our solar system. Today, the issue is homosexuality, and the persecution is not of one man but of millions. Will Christian leaders once again be on the wrong side of history?”

Of course, those of you who have read my posting on “The Galileo Affair” can imagine that this quote caught my attention initially for that reason. The ignorance of the facts that permeates popular culture regarding “The Galileo Affair” was not only reflected in this editorial, but it was also used to attempt to bludgeon Christians into reasoned submission on the issue of homosexuality.

The author purports to be a Christian ministers. He starts out stating that the Church lost credibility with the scientific community when it took a stand against Galileo’s heliocentric model of the Solar System.

Let me address this first: the Church’s loss of credibility was a fabrication of positivists and others who took up Galileo’s cause in order to promote their agenda to elevate science and reason over revelation, and to relegate religion to the irrelevant corners of superstition in society for the woefully ignorant and misled. The real problem with this is that Western Christianity gracefully conceded defeat to the apparent overwhelming intellectual prowess of science.

To make matters worse, Christians since then have struggled to make faith somehow intellectually sound to the scientific mind, accepting science as authoritative.[1] A catch phrase we see often in apologetics and the more intellectual circles of the Church is “reasons to believe” that are attempts to show that faith is actually quite rational.

Why are we wasting our time? Paul said,

“For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God.”[2]

And later he said,

“But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.”[3]

In a conversation with a Christian acquaintance, he stated that everything regarding wisdom and foolishness in the first two chapters of 1 Corinthians is in reference to issues of salvation and not anything else. The first verse cited above would seem to refer to that indeed – that is if we take “the preaching of the cross” to refer only to Christ’s crucifixion and not issues of life, morality and our view of God and the universe. I think that’s a limited view of “the preaching of the cross,” but I’ll concede it here only for the sake of argument.

Then what about the second verse? Spiritual things are spiritually discerned. This would seem to broaden the scope of that which would seem to be foolish to those who walk after the ways of this world.

So, basically, I find a major flaw in the foundation of our thinking if we are trying to make the gospel and “the things of Spirit of God” palatable to the ungodly heart of mankind through reason. In trying to do this, we strip the gospel of its power and reduce it from an issue of faith to an issue of intellect. We are not saved by intellectual acquiescence. We are saved by faith and faith alone, at least as far as anything on our part.[4]

What happens if science really does “prove” that homosexuality is genetic and not simply behavioral? Thomas states the following:

“Religion’s only real commodity, after all, is its moral authority. Lose that, and we lose our credibility. Lose credibility, and we might as well close up shop.”

Do you see a flaw in this argument? We have nothing but moral authority that is based upon being “right” in the eyes of the world. If the world judges us foolish or wrong, we lose credibility, and credibility in the eyes of the world is essential. Loss of credibility means the end of Christ’s mission on earth.

According to Paul, we should already have lost credibility with the world – except among those who are saved or are being saved.[5] Clearly, if our loss of credibility is due to sin on our part, that’s a very different story. But if we hold out the truth as revealed by the Holy Spirit and the Scriptures, walking in the Light as He is in the Light,[6] and the world thinks us fools, then we should not be surprised,[7] nor should we be apologetic about it either.

I want to insert something very important here before I go on. Abuse of a homosexual, verbal or otherwise, is completely unacceptable for Christians. We must show them the love of Christ. The problem is that many of them insist that to do so requires that we also accept their lifestyle. This we cannot do. It is interesting that Jesus rarely had to confront an individual about his or her sin, except the Pharisees, and that quite harshly so, because they perverted God’s law and led many astray after them. Yet, not one of those people Jesus didn’t confront believed that his or her sin was acceptable in God’s sight. In coming to the love of God in Jesus, each of them recognized their sins as the Father saw them and repented of them all. This we must do as Jesus did, extending the love of Christ without compromising His standard of righteousness for ourselves first and then for all others.

That said, as to Galileo and the position of the earth in the universe, neither the geocentric nor the heliocentric view is based upon the revelation of God – see Origin of ideas - is there a problem?. In fact, the issue has little if any relevance for Christians at all, except as that view contributes to blinding men – Christians and non-Christians alike – from the our Father in Heaven, which has been the case. Will it be the same with the issue of homosexuality?

So, what happens if homosexuality turns out to be genetic and not simply behavioral, at least according to science? Will, as Thomas pleads for, the church change its stand and accept homosexuality as a morally valid alternative? Thomas tells us, correctly, that we did so regarding heliocentrism. Will the issue of homosexuality turn out to be the next great shame of the Church?

Thomas tries to give an argument from Scriptures that is a repeat of what many have said about being kind and not judging, etc., which I’ll not comment on here, except to say that his commentary is incomplete and flawed.

But he does raise a good question for us. Will we bow to science once again, in fear of losing our “moral authority” and “credibility”? Will we close up shop when we lose those because we can’t stand the shame of being wrong or looking like fools? Will we justify our compromise as being “for the sake of the Gospel,” as the Church has done so many times over the last 2000 years? The question may come down to this: will we stand by God’s revelation to us, regardless of the loss of credibility, or will we choose science’s determination and return to reinterpret the Scriptures to fit science as we have in so many other cases? This is being done regarding Creationism. Science is causing a bending of our will.

The problem that really confronts us foundationally is whether we will bow to science or bow to God. Francis Schaeffer believed that science and theology, if “adequately pursued” will not ultimately be in conflict.[8] Notice the caveat: “if both studies can be adequately pursued.” He doesn’t provide a definition of what he means, but I think it fair to say he is talking about both science and theology being pursued with intellectual honesty and no ulterior agenda. In actuality, isn’t God’s agenda the only one that counts? Can there be any other agenda which man can hold up to see if God’s telling the truth? (Isn’t this the attitude of rational approaches to faith?) Any other agenda than God’s, any other point of view than God’s must have an agenda contrary to His.

Schaeffer rightly raises the possibility that our understanding of theology, the Scriptures, is not correct. If we are going to take a hard stand in front of the world on some issue, we should make sure we have it right, or we will rightly be shown to be, not fools for Christ, but simply foolish. But I disagree with Schaeffer that science can be, or at least will be, “adequately pursued.”

So, we have a dilemma. We’d love to have a happy ending where science and theology agree at some point, and we can stand in front of the entire world with a completely rational argument that no one in his right mind can refute. In so doing, we do not appear to be fools, but they do, if they persist in their ignorance. But that’s not the way it’s going to happen. Science has a foundation that is pagan. It has an agenda that is at best atheistic if not pagan, as well. Rationality tries to set up a standard outside of God to see if He measures up to it, but the rules of rationality are rigged against Him. These things, I believe, will become apparent in future postings.

So, what do we do when science disagrees clearly with the revelation of the Scriptures? That’s our dilemma. We’d love for it not to happen, but it will. I believe that strongly. I also believe that it has, and the Church has compromised. How many times more will we compromise?

For now, let me ask this: are we willing to appear foolish to those who are lost? Can we, like Paul, say, “And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power: That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.”[9] Are we ourselves looking to man’s wisdom, or are we looking to His Spirit to reveal to us the things of the Spirit?

“Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. Which things also we speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.”[10]

Until later,
Rob

[1] It actually started far earlier, but more on that in a later post.

[2] 1 Corinthians 1:18

[3] 1 Corinthians 2:14

[4] Ephesians 2:8, Hebrews 11:6

[5] 2 Corinthians 2:14-16

[6] 1 John 1:7

[7] John 15:18-22

[8] Schaeffer, Francis A., No Final Conflict (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1975), p. 45.

[9] 1 Corinthians 2:4-5

[10] 1 Corinthians 2:12-14

"The Galileo Affair"

2006-09-03T22:46:00.001-05:00

Galileo (1564-1642) is most noted for his challenge to the Church’s position on geocentrism (a Earth-centered universe) with heliocentrism (a sun-centered Solar System). An ugly battle took place where Galileo was eventually placed under house arrest. In the long run, however, the Church lost prestige and was relegated to addressing only religious matters henceforth.

This is the generally-accepted view of Galileo’s role in history as understood by the man on the street. As it turns out, few, if any, historians of science still believe this to be an accurate accounting of the facts.

Probably the most important challenge to this thinking is the fact that Copernicus (1473-1543) had already proposed heliocentrism without any such trouble from the Church. Kepler (1571-1630) continued his work, again without any trouble from the Church. (It should be noted here that Kepler was a Lutheran and not a Catholic in contrast to Galileo.) So, challenging the position of the Earth in the universe was not a new idea. That couldn’t have been what provoked the Catholic church – at least not that alone.

Also, although Aristotle’s ideas were highly regarded by intellectuals of the day, many people still disputed them. So, Galileo’s challenge to Aristotelian ideas is nothing new either.

Interestingly, we hear little about Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) who was burned at the stake by the church and is often portrayed as a martyr for science because of his belief in heliocentrism.[1] In reality, Bruno was a Neo-Platonist and “was a magus[2] who traveled across Europe preaching a pagan gospel rooted in mystical hermetic[3] texts.”[4] He is probably not as popularly known as Galileo because his views had relatively little impact on Western thought. He was more of a proponent of certain existing ideas rather than a pioneer of new ideas.

By way of background, there were few scientists[5] of that day, if any, who were not professing Christians of some sort, though often they held to other pagan and occult ideas at the same time. In fact, all higher education in Europe was associated with Christianity in some way, whether the Catholic church or the Lutheran church. So, there was no separation between Christianity and science as there is today.

So, what provoked the Catholic church to react so strongly? Lawrence Principe gives a good overview of what he calls “The Galileo affair” that I’ll recap here.[6]

The first conflict between Galileo and the Catholic church came in 1613. Instead of Galileo presenting the ideas of Copernicus as an alternative view worthy of serious consideration, he had been teaching it as absolute truth. The Catholic church, probably intellectuals in general, objected to this. By 1616, the church agreed to allow him to teach heliocentrism, but forbid him to teach it as truth, and Galileo reluctantly agreed.

From 1631 to 1633, Galileo was tried of “vehement suspicion of heresy” and sentenced to house arrest. Why?

Intellectuals of the day, both Catholic and Protestant, started with the Scriptures (and other ideas, as I’ve begun to show) and worked their way toward science. Regarding the Earth moving through space, which Aristotle said was impossible, intellectuals cited the following:

Joshua 10:12-13 – “¹²Then spake Joshua to the LORD in the day when the LORD delivered up the Amorites before the children of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel, Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon. ¹³And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies. Is not this written in the book of Jasher? So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day.”

Psalm 93:1 – “The LORD reigneth, he is clothed with majesty; the LORD is clothed with strength, wherewith he hath girded himself: the world also is stablished, that it cannot be moved.”

Psalm 104:5 – “Who laid the foundations of the earth, that it should not be removed for ever.”

Ecclesiastes 1:5 – “The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose.” They believed this implied that the Earth stood still.

But Galileo held to Augustine’s belief that any interpretation of the scriptures must accord with current scientific belief. Galileo, therefore, undertook to reinterpret those passages, and any other scriptures needing it, according to his new ideas. Again, he probably did so without qualification but rather as truth. In so doing, Principe says, Galileo laid out boundaries for theologians saying, “Y’all back off – get out of my sandbox.” Galileo said, “Scriptures tell us how to go to Heaven, not how the heavens go.”[7]

Lastly, Galileo was known for provoking his friends in arguments, sometimes staunchly defending views he didn’t subscribe to. Apparently, he just liked a good fight, much to the irritation of his friends. Pope Urban VIII (1568-1644) was a friend of his, the one who finally tried and sentenced him, for this very reason.

In Galileo’s work Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems (1632), he compared the Ptolemaic (geocentric) system to the Copernican (heliocentric) system. The Pope said he could publish his views as long as he did not challenge either God’s omnipotence and he included the Pope’s viewpoint. The latter he did in an very inappropriate way.

Such works in that day were presented as dialogues between sometimes fictional characters. This form of presentation is called dialectic. In this way ideas could be posited and the author would argue against them and defend his ideas in writing, much as was done in person between scholastics.

In his work, Galileo chose a character who was obviously a fool to clearly represent the Pope and present his ideas. In so doing, Galileo not only provoked a good friend of his, but he also challenged the church’s highest authority. Given also the great conflict due to the Reformation, Galileo shouldn’t have been surprised to find out he’d crossed the line.

Principe acknowledges that there are many other complexities and other details surrounding “The Galileo Affair,” but these facts mitigate the popular belief that Galileo was a victim of Christian obstinacy, entrenched in arcane ideas it had no business holding to. The Catholic church did not, in fact, demonize science, but Galileo’s ideas – even beyond his science – had a significant impact on the scientific revolution.

Kepler, Galileo and Newton were significant figures in changing the approach to nature from Aristotelian to more Pythagorean. Aristotle was more interested in qualities and purpose (teleology). Kepler, Galileo and Newton ignored qualities and purpose. They did not care about the purpose achieved by objects falling, for example. They cared only about mathematically describing how they fall. Newton identified gravity without any description of it, except the mathematical description of the sun’s gravitational effects on the planets. Any concept of purpose was considered irrelevant.

What was the result of this change of thinking? Walter T. Stace makes the following comment:

European man before Galileo – whether ancient pagan or more recent Christian – thought of the world as controlled by plan and purpose. After Galileo European man thinks of it as utterly purposeless. … If the scheme of things is purposeless and meaningless, then the life of man is purposeless and meaningless too.[8] [Boldface mine]

Stace, Carver T. Yu (in Being and Relation) and Francis Schaeffer (in Escape from Reason) go on to describe the downward path toward despair, individualism and postmodernism today - not solely attributed to Galileo, of course. But I’ll pick up that discussion in more detail later.

Basically, the popular view of “The Galileo Affair” is sorely lacking in details and gives an inaccurate view of the history of science and the Church. It also probably masks the more important issues of what his new views significantly contributed to in Western culture in general – a contribution that should be of concern to Christians.

More later,
Rob

[1] Hunt, Lynn, Thomas R. Martin, Barbara H. Rosenwein, R. Po-chia Hsia, Bonnie G. Smith, The Making of the West: Peoples and Cultures (Boston/New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2^nd edition, 2005), p 612. These authors reluctantly admit there may have been more to his execution.

[2] Remember that a magus is a magician or wizard who practiced natural magic. The plural, by the way, is magi.

[3] The hermetic texts are old books on the topic of alchemy. The writings of Hermes Trismegistus are the most famous of the hermetic literature.

[4] Pearcey, Nancy R. & Charles B. Thaxton, The Soul of Science: Christian Faith and Natural Philosophy (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1994), p. 43. His article in Wikipedia calls him an occultist.

[5] Remember, the term science was not used then as it is today. Those we think of as scientists of that period called themselves natural philosophers and had a different approach to their work. More on that in later postings.

[6] This information comes from Principe, Lawrence, The History of Science: Antiquity to 1700, Parts 1-3, (Chantilly, VA: Johns-Hopkins University, Teaching Company, 2002) (lectures series), lecture 29.

[7] As Schaeffer put it, in Escape from Reason, in regard to the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, artists and philosophers after him, nature was made autonomous from grace – from God and theology. I’ll discuss the consequences of this in a future posting.

[8] Stace, Walter T., “Man Against Darkness” in The Essayist by Sheridan Baker (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1972), pp. 67-68.

Origin of ideas - is there a problem?

2006-09-02T12:31:00.001-05:00

Let me propose a hypothetical situation. A professing Christian, who is a scientist, is enamored with Buddhism and immerses himself in studying it. He takes an important idea from Buddhism and develops a scientific theory based on it. Only his peers who are Buddhist scientists see any value in it because there’s no other support for the idea. Fifty years from now, another professing Christian is determined to make the theory work using information from a Hindu temple finds real empirical evidence to support the theory. Later, other scientists build a whole new system of scientific thought based on the proposed theory from Buddhism and Hinduism, and that theory begins to shape our view of reality.

Is there any problem with this? As it turns out, it actually happened in history at least once, although the idea and empirical evidence didn’t come from Buddhism or Hinduism.

Have you ever wondered where we got our current view of the Solar System? Most people would say that it came from observations, logical inferences to form hypotheses, and testing of those hypotheses until we arrived at the truth that the planets orbit around the sun. That’s not how it happened. The primary motivation was a concept from Neo-Platonic mysticism.

Neo-Platonism is the result of Plotinus’ (c. 205-270 AD) update of Plato’s (c. 427- c.347 BC) philosophy with a very mystical bent. Among other things, Neo-Platonism holds that all objects in the universe have a soul, even the rocks in your yard.[1] Neo-Platonists practiced magic with the aid of “beneficent” spirits.[2]

Most of us know that at one time people believed the Earth was at the center of the universe with the planets, the Sun and the stars orbiting the Earth. This is known as the geocentric model.

Copernicus (1473-1543) came along and proposed that the Sun was at the center of the Solar System with the planets orbiting the Sun – the heliocentric model. The idea wasn’t popular at first but eventually took hold. [More on Galileo later.]

Where did these two models of the Solar System come from? The geocentric model came from Greek philosophy.[3] The Pythagorean “cult”[4] was apparently the first to propose the idea. They proposed that the planets were attached to great spheres because spheres fit their concept of perfection in Nature. They believed these spheres made music[5] (this idea seems to have made it into the hymn “This is My Father’s World”). Plato added his strong support to this, as well.[6] Aristotle (384-322 BC) nailed it home for more than a millennium. Ptolemy (c. 90- c. 168 AD) brushed up the model to make it more accurate, but it was a very complex model.[7]

Copernicus started changing all that. But what gave him the idea? Here’s what Pearcey and Thaxton say:

But where did Copernicus’s inspiration come from? Not from any new empirical data, the records show, but from his commitment to neo-Platonism.

Copernicus came under the influence of neo-Platonism while studying in Italy. Kearney describes the encounter as ‘the equivalent of a religious conversion.’ … Neo-Platonism thus became linked to a kind of sun mysticism. Whereas Aristotle taught that the earth was the center of the universe, some neo-Platonist writers argued that the sun must be the center of the universe, as only that position was compatible with its dignity as a divine symbol.

Pearcey & Thaxton quote the following from Copernicus:

In the middle of all sits the Sun enthroned. In this most beautiful temple could we place this luminary in any better position from which he can illuminate the whole at once? He is rightly called the Lamp, the Mind, the Ruler of the Universe. ... So the sun sits upon a royal throne ruling his children the planets which circle round him.[8]

Pearcey and Thaxton go on to say that Copernicus’ geocentric model gave no one any good reason to accept it. It didn’t significantly simplify the Ptolemaic model. Due to the limitations of astronomical measurements, there was no empirical evidence for his ideas.[9] There was no reason to consider it seriously, except that it fit the Neo-Platonists philosophy, so they promoted it.[10]

Tycho Brahe (1546-1601) was an astrologer and alchemist who collected a large amount of astronomical observations for prognostications, to foretell the future. Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) worked with him for a while and later used his data to lend support for Copernicus’ system by introducing elliptical orbits and detecting star parallaxes.[11] The rest is history.

Now, consider this: neither the geocentric nor the heliocentric models came from a Biblical worldview. Both came from pagan philosophers and mystics. The Roman church felt there was Biblical support for the geocentric model due to two verses of scripture, [12] but the model itself was a far cry from having solid Biblical support.

You may be asking yourself, “If it bears out in the evidence, it must be true, so what’s the problem with where it came from?”

This begs the following questions:

Have there been any problems as a consequence of this scientific development? If not, is there still a problem? If so, what are they and are they important enough to raise concern?

Can rational thought take an occult idea and cleanse it of any taint so that Christians may use the results without any concern?

Does scientific evidence necessarily lead to truth?

You can probably see where I’m going with this and you may not see any practical value to the questions or the answers may seem obvious to you. All I ask is that you continue to read what I lay out before you decide.

Stay tuned!
Rob

[1] Pearcey, Nancy R. & Charles B. Thaxton, The Soul of Science: Christian Faith and Natural Philosophy (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1994), p. 63.

[2] http://education.yahoo.com/reference/dictionary/entry/theurgy

[3] For a good overview that’s easy to read, see Barry M. Casper & Richard J. Noer, Revolutions in Physics (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1972), chapters 2-4.

[4] Pythagoras lived from 582-507 BC and started a very mystical cult called the Pythagoreans that practiced sacrifice and saw all kinds of mystical qualities in Nature and number.

[5] Casper & Noer, p. 30.

[6] Pearcey & Thaxton, p. 48.

[7] For a nice presentation, see Principe, Lawrence, The History of Science: Antiquity to 1700, Parts 1-3, (Chantilly, VA: Johns-Hopkins University, Teaching Company, 2002) (lectures series), lecture 9. Casper & Noer have a more mathematical presentation in Chapter 4.

[8] Pearcey & Thaxton, pp. 63-64.

[9] The evidence uncovered for it later was the parallax of the stars.

[10] Pearcey & Thaxton, p. 65.

[11] Principe, lecture 28.

[12] The two verses are Joshua 10:12-13 where Joshua tells the sun to stand still in the sky, thus implying that it moved around the Earth, and Psalm 19:4-6 which says the sun runs a course through the heavens apparently around the Earth.

What provoked my thinking

2006-08-24T09:13:00.000-05:00

First, let me ask all who comment to use the "comment" link at the bottom of each posting. That way, others can benefit from your comments and our discussion. Thanks!

Before I go any further, I thought I'd share what started me down this path. In high school and since, I've had a keen interest and aptitude for math and physics. For practical reasons, however, I decided to pursue a BS in Computer Science from Purdue, which I completed in 1979. Anything technical has been of great interest to me.

In 2001, I'd come across a book about optics, but I quickly saw that I couldn't understand the advanced mathematics, despite my advance calculus and differential equations at Purdue. So, I decided to enroll in math courses at the local university. I took courses from that time through this past semester. People were amazed that I found high-level math courses so interesting. I even commented to some friends that I marveled at the beauty of mathematics almost as a form of worship of God.

In 2004, however, I'd become very bored with a job that paid well but gave me very little challenge and didn't come close to filling my days with fruitful labor. I decided to see a career counselor because I really saw nothing that interested me. He said that I fit the profile of a research physicist more than anyone he'd even counseled in 25 years. So, I decided to quit my job to have more time to pursue courses. My wife and I also wanted to put ourselves in a position to trust the Lord a little more, i.e. not have every angle covered so carefully that there was little left to trust God for. I have done a little consulting to help cover the bills and the Lord has provided nicely.

I plowed into courses and decided to help a professor with his research. I needed some books at the library and stumbled across a video series by a professor of physics. It looked interesting and gave a little taste of history with each presentation.

One statement he made struck me hard. He was talking about one physicist - which one escapes me right now - who cast horoscopes to make ends meet while he did his research. What's more, he said almost all "scientists" of the Renaissance period did the same.

Why were "scientists" messing with astrology? This concerned me deeply, and I wanted to see what this was about. At the same time, the Galatians 5:20 witchcraft/pharmekeia issue bothered me, too. I decided it was time to do some research on my own.

What I didn't realize was that I had only found a thread, but as I started to pull on it everything began to unravel. Astrology was just a small though very important part of the picture, and it wasn't just to make a little money on the side. Other practices once considered occult to some degree or another were also very much a part of the picture.

Then, another major element struck me hard: ancient Greek philosophy had also played a major role in the development of science. The Church - Thomas Aquinas most notably - welcomed their worldview with open arms. But Greek philosophy had a major role in the Church as early as the second century.

1 Corinthians 1:17-2:16 says much about the wisdom of the world which is foolishness to God. And Colossians 2:8 "Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ." What had the church done?

Now, before you write me off as coming up with a bunch of crazy facts from some fringe lunatics, let me say that none of the facts I've presented above are in dispute. Even Pearcey and Thaxton, professing Christians, in their book The Soul of Science, which is very pro-science, do not dispute these facts. In fact, they boldly proclaim them and accept them as part of the rich heritage of our forefathers to science. Consider this quote from their book, p. 126:

Toward the end of the medieval period, Western culture uncovered the great well of wisdom from the classical age. Christians struggled valiantly to adapt and assimilate the new-found philosophies to a Biblical view of the world. [bold mine]

The classical age is ancient Greece and the Roman Empire. Pearcey and Thaxton uncritically accept the wisdom of ancient Greece and it's incorporation into the Church, the same wisdom Paul warned us of. I find this unsettling and my reading has been oriented to first verifying the facts and then trying, prayerfully, to determine what legacy this syncretism has given the modern Western Church. The more I read and the more I wrestle with it, the more concerned I become.

Over the next few weeks and maybe months, I'll try to present the facts with references, but I'll only be scratching the surface. Keep in mind that, until a little over a year ago, I was going full tilt into the study of advanced math and physics. I'm not coming from a background that denigrated science flatly, nor have I read any material where it has been the author's intent to do so.

I have wondered if my growing criticism of the late Medieval and Renaissance Church is rather hypocritical. I'm criticizing them for delving into pagan sources, and I'm doing the same. What makes my research any better than theirs?

First, they did it to come to a knowledge of "truth" about nature and reality in general. I'm doing it to see if there is sufficient evidence for my concerns.

Second, if I were to state flatly that we should shun science and turn back to God and a Biblical worldview, you wouldn't give me the time of day. Even presenting the facts, few will likely give it a fair hearing as it is. Additionally, I can't jump to that conclusion myself and feel that I'm acting on a sound basis. I have to see if the prompting I feel in my spirit has any foundation in fact, and to do that requires lots of reading.

You may not agree with my conclusions, but I appeal to you to at least consider the facts. If you want to read only one book on the subject, I suggest Pearcey and Thaxton's The Soul of Science. If you do read it, however, throughout the book, ask yourself one question, "Are these sources of knowledge that Jesus and Paul would encourage us to go to?"

I hope you'll read what I share and consider everything prayerfully. I draw opinions from a wide variety of sources and I try to consider contrary arguments. I welcome thoughtful and respectful contrary arguments to help sharpen me and make me think from angles I would never consider on my own.

Beware, however! The Bible is the final authority for me and I will hold you to that standard as I hope you will me. I will also challenge you if your opinion is based on many assumptions that I consider unfounded, but I will certainly try to do so respectfully.

I am seeking His full glory in the Church today. Will you join me?
Rob

A Brief History of Science

2006-08-20T21:25:00.001-05:00

I discussed in my last posting that the foundation of ancient Greek philosophy is the crux of the problem in the West today – in terms of our way of thinking. The root is sin, but we haven’t a hope of dealing properly with sin if our thinking is amiss.[1] Most of the Western Church sees the problems in the world outside the walls of the Church as being due to secular man's rejection of the obvious truth that the Church holds out for them. Yet, the Church herself does not see the falsehood she is holding onto nor the effects of it on her relationship with her Husband, Christ.

I want to show - or at least suggest - that the "discoveries" of science have shaped our thinking about reality and, thus, has affected our relationship to our Lord. First, a brief history.

When I started getting into this research, I thought science was science whether today or 1000 years ago. The term science only meant “knowledge about a subject” until the mid to late 19th century.[2] Until that time, the kind of pursuit we now call science was called natural philosophy. Why? Because it dealt with the nature of reality – what is the nature of this universe we live in? There is a technical side to science today, most definitely, but especially theoretical science is an attempt to form a view of reality. You might say it is worldview formation.

Something else I didn't know was many other aspects of what we call science today were once called magic, as well – most notably natural magic and alchemy. Wizards – another word for wise men and wise women – were, like today, people who had much knowledge (science) and could put it to use. Another term is magus, the plural of which is magi as in the wise men who came to visit Jesus soon after His birth. The word translated “wise men” in the Gospel account[3] is the Greek word magos (sing.) which is translated sorcerer in some other places. Strong's defines it as an oritental scientist or magician. See also Acts 13:6,8 where the translation of sorcerer seems to be more clear. I'll use the term magus and magi hence forth for all these people as a group.[4]

These magi weren't necessarily overt occultists as we’d think of them today. I'm not saying they weren’t, but the line between yesterday’s wizards and today’s scientists isn’t so clear. Philosophers of science for the last century or so have been having a hard time distinguishing science from non-science.[5]

Nancy Pearcey and Charles Thaxton are professing Christians who wrote The Soul of Science, a book which discusses modern science from a Christian perspective. In this book, they discuss positivism and the new view of the history of science.[6] Briefly, positivism is a view that man has moved from ignorance to enlightenment over history and that the advances of natural philosophy and, now, science have led man to this greater enlightenment. It also casts off all religion and superstition as having no place in bringing man to this enlightenment. Religion is all well and good in its place, but its place is not in science or enlightenment into Nature.

The new thinking – in the last 40 years or so – in the philosophy of science is that this is not true. So-called superstition – viz. astrology, alchemy, magic and religion – has had a very formative role in getting to where we are today. I took a philosophy of science course last spring where this new view was discussed. On the one hand, it accords more respect to that which the positivists used to shun. Lawrence Principe, a professor of chemistry and the history of science said that we tend to make characters of the past fit modern images we have of scientists, taking the features which fit modern ideas and jettisoning the rest. In so doing, we miss out on the true character of the figures we study and fail to truly appreciate their contributions.[7] In closing his last lecture of the series, he says:

We encountered Babylonians, Greeks and Arabs and Latins. We encountered pagans, Muslims and Christians; Platonists and Aristotelians; Franciscans, Dominicans and Jesuits; Mechanists and Vitalists; Astrologers and Alchemists; mathematicians and magicians. All of them put their stamp upon the developing notions and content of what we call science. And many of those marks are still there today, if only we can learn to recognize them by a doctrine of historical signatures.

One last comment about magi – for now. In A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, Mark Twain portrays a 19^th-century man who suddenly finds himself in Medieval England. Because of his knowledge of scientific advancements in the intervening centuries, he is able to wow the people and they think him a magician, rivaling even Merlin.

Perhaps you’ve heard it said that “one man’s magic is another man’s science.” This statement is meant to pooh-pooh any belief in magic where some results are really effected. Aside from charlatans whose magic was/is a con game, this statement is more true than I ever realized before.

In summary, science is philosophical in nature and is a worldview-forming enterprise because it forms our view of reality. Modern science was greatly influenced by practices that were once considered occult to some degree or another. This muddies the waters for us because that boundary line has been blurred to a great extent. Perhaps it’s better to say that it’s been moved to another place.

I was surprised that Pearcey and Thaxton accept these facts uncritically, as have many other Christians to date. I can understand why because I once did myself.

To be continued…
Rob

[1] Romans 12:2

[2] Principe, Lawrence, History of Science: Antiquity to 1700, video lecture series, (Chantilly, VA: Teaching Company, 2002), lecture 1. In 1834, William Whewell (pronounced Hu-ell) coined the term scientist with tongue in cheek. Aldus Huxley said in 1894 that, “The word scientist is about as pleasing as the word electrocution.”

[3] Matthew 2:1,7,16

[4] I’ll grant that some wise men and wise women were more learned than others, not so much scholastically as truly serious about uncovering useful knowledge.

[5] McMullin, Ernan, The Inference that Makes Science (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 1995), p. 3. “…the attempt to define ‘the inference that makes science’ is not intended to furnish a criterion of demarcation between science and non-science. The issue of demarcation has been actively debated ever since [Karl] Popper made it central to his philosophy of science.”

[6] Pearcey, Nancy R. & Charles B. Thaxton, The Soul of Science: Christian Faith and Natural Philosophy (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1994), pp. 47-49.

[7] Principe, lecture 1.

The Crux of the Problem

2006-08-18T10:41:00.001-05:00

W. T. Stace wrote an essay entitled Man Against Darkness. He makes clear his position from the outset by saying, “For my part I believe in no religion at all.” Yet he goes on to make a very significant observation that seem to have escaped most of the Western church. In recent history, there has been a change in the way Western man views the world, in particular due to scientific advances.

With the disappearance of God from the sky all this has changed. Since the world is not ruled by a spiritual being, but rather by blind forces, there cannot be any ideals, moral or otherwise, in the universe outside us. Our ideals, therefore, must proceed only from our own minds; they are our own inventions. Thus the world which surrounds us is nothing but an immense spiritual emptiness. It is a dead universe. We do not live in a universe which is on the side of our values. It is completely indifferent to them.[1]

He goes on to quote Bertrand Russell’s essay A Free Man’s Worship.

Such in outline, but even more purposeless, more void of meaning, is the world which Science presents for our belief. Amid such a world, if anywhere; our ideals henceforward must find a home. ... Blind to good and evil, reckless of destruction, omnipotent matter rolls on its relentless way; for man, condemned today to lose his dearest, tomorrow himself to pass through the gate of darkness, it remains only to cherish, ere yet the blow falls, the lofty thoughts that ennoble his little day; ... to worship at the shrine his own hands have built; ... to sustain alone, a weary but unyielding Atlas, the world that his own ideals have fashioned despite the trampling march of unconscious power.[2]

Stace goes on as follows:

Mr. Russell notes that it is science which has produced this situation. There is no doubt that this is correct. But the way in which it has come about is not generally understood. There is a popular belief that some particular scientific discoveries or theories, such as the Darwinian theory of evolution, or the views of geologists about the age of the earth, or a series of such discoveries, have done the damage. It would be foolish to deny that these discoveries have had a great effect in undermining religious dogmas. But this account does not at all go to the root of the matter. Religion can probably outlive any scientific discoveries which could be made. It can accommodate itself to them.[3]

This we have seen over the centuries. But his point here is quite remarkable. Modern Christians seem to view individual discoveries of science as the main threat – the Theory of Evolution most notably. Yet, Stace believes rightly so that individual discoveries are not the issue – they are only the fruit. He continues:

The root cause of the decay of faith has not been any particular discovery of science, but rather the general spirit of science and certain basic assumptions upon which modern science, from the seventeenth century onwards, has proceeded.[4]

He goes on to say that Galileo and Newton – and he could have gone back to Kepler and maybe even Copernicus – rejected Aristotle’s philosophical notion of “final cause” or purpose. Aristotle believed that everything we observe has some purpose that, in order to properly understand a thing, must be apprehended. Galileo and Newton clearly abandoned this idea in favor of simple, mathematical analysis of a phenomenon. For example, Newton found it sufficient to describe gravitational attraction mathematically. Even though Newton was a man of faith – of some sort – the purpose of gravity was irrelevant to him. In fact, I suspect that the reason for abandoning the notion of purpose was that man cannot know it with a certainty through reason, and God, for some reason, has chosen not to reveal it to us.

But I would take the root of the problem to go back much further. Stace seems to hold to the idea that Aristotle’s “final cause” is something that should have been retained, and that would have sustained man’s faith up to the present.

I disagree. The root of the problem is found in Christians having anything to do with Aristotle and Plato in the first place. The foundational assumptions of modern science that have created this problem go back to them, and yet their ideas alone are not to blame – but that is for another post.

Francis Schaeffer addresses this in Escape from Reason by starting with Thomas Aquinas who essentially welcomed Aristotle into the church and nearly single-handedly made his teaching revered to the level of that of Paul and Augustine of Hippo. In discussing a change in the view of nature that Aquinas put forward, mostly based on Aristotle, Schaeffer writes:

While there were good results from giving nature a better place, it also opened the way for much that was destructive. In Aquinas’s view the will of man was fallen, but the intellect was not. From this incomplete view of the biblical Fall flowed subsequent difficulties. Out of this as time passed, man’s intellect was seen as autonomous. ... From the basis of this autonomous principle, philosophy also became increasingly free, and was separated from revelation. ... Aquinas had opened the way to an autonomous humanism, an autonomous philosophy; and once the movement gained momentum, there was soon a flood.[5]

Schaeffer goes on to trace a downward train of thought in philosophy and art among Christian thinkers of the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance (there were few others). This train passed through Galileo and Newton to Russell’s comment cited above, even to the present day.

Carver T. Yu, in his book Being and Relation: A Theological Critique of Western Dualism and Individualism, first expresses the problem Stace addresses, though much more broadly across the arts where it manifests itself most clearly. He then goes into a rather complex analysis of the development of the Western worldview, identifying the crux of the problem as a warped understanding of reality that “had its birth-place in ancient Greece.”[6] He goes on to show that the current Western worldview is a direct consequence of the Greek philosophical foundation upon which it was built. His thinking starts in ancient Greece before his argument merges with Schaeffer’s around the time of Descartes. Yu continues on from there essentially down the same track as Schaeffer to the present.

Yu makes a rather interesting, though, I believe, incomplete comparison between the Western worldview and the Biblical Hebrew worldview, which is also that of the New Testament Church.[7] The difference is due to a very different understanding of reality. The crux of the matter, then, is that our modern worldview is based on the false foundation of ancient Greek philosophy, resulting in a distorted view of reality.

One might ask how there could be any different view of reality than we have? Without any other view to compare to, it’s hard to imagine any other view having any relevance, and this is where the Western Christianity has fallen short. We have bought into a view of reality based on pagan philosophy that even affects dramatically our view of God and ourselves in relation to Him. This, in large part, is what has led to our view of chronic disease discussed in my previous posting. But that’s far from the whole story.

Christians may beg to differ with the above, but that is a matter for my next posting.

Rob

[1] Stace, W. T., “Man Against Darkness” in Sheridan Baker’s The Essayist (New York: Thomas Y. Cromwell Company, 1972), p. 65.

[2] Stace, p. 65.

[3] Stace, p. 66.

[4] Stace, p. 66.

[5] Schaeffer, Francis A., Escape from Reason in Trilogy (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1990), p. 211-212. Escape from Reason was originally published in 1968.

[6] Yu, Carver T., Being and Relation: A Theological Critique of Western Dualism and Individualism (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1987), p. 51.

[7] Yu, chapter 6.

Chronic Disease: Two Worldviews

2006-03-13T16:42:00.000-05:00

In reading this, please keep in mind that these thoughts are preliminary and not decided on my part. I'm raising questions that I think need answers, and I only suggest some possibilities. In future postings I will explore more the historical and Scriptural evidence on both sides - and other sides - of this issues in hopes of coming to some conviction, whatever that might be.

The belief of most of the modern church is that chronic disease, whether cancer or asthma or arthritis or acid reflux, is just a part of living in a fallen world. Medical science and other voices tell us the causes are genetic, poor nutrition, chemical impurities in our food and water, etc. Furthermore, God has given us the abilities to take advantage of plants and chemicals He's placed in this world to get some measure of relief, if not cure, these diseases. In most cases, there is no cure - that's why they're called chronic - and perpetual medication is the only relief and modern medicine is pretty good at managing many chronic diseases. Even more, God has a perfect purpose in chronic disease to refine His people. Some have even likened suffering under a disease with suffering for Christ, as one who is persecuted.

There's a catch in this. None of it is in the Bible. Every mention of suffering I've looked at is in the context of persecution and there is no mention or context of illness. There is also a pesky little word in Galatians 5:19-21 that is translated as witchcraft. The word in Greek is pharmakeia, the same Greek word from which we get our word pharmacy. The Greek word, per Strong's 5331, means "medication ('pharmacy'), i.e. (by extens.) magic (lit. or fig.)." Every place in the KJV Bible it is translated as either witchcraft or sorcery. It comes from Strong's 5332, pharmakeus "from pharmacon, (a drug, i.e. a spell-giving potion); a druggist ('pharmacist') or poisoner, i.e. (be extens.) a magician." (Italics from Strong's) This word is always translated as sorcerer in the KJV.

I've seen some commentators respond to this saying that clearly what is being talked about is hallucinogenic drugs used by witches. Actually, the definitions would seem to indicate some sort of poisons given to others unawares - I would assume - not many people would volunteer to take poison, knowing it is poison. But I'm not sure this fits with the definitions properly.

I've been looking into the history of medicine and haven't come up with much, except that chemical medications don't seem to have been used until Paracelsus (16th century) introduced the idea from his application of alchemy to physiology - creating the concept of biochemistry. He was considered by much of the church as a conjurer and a necromancer at the time, thus perhaps prompting the KJV translators to render the word as witchcraft or sorcery. Early medications, however, seem to be what we could call strictly natural - teas, infusions, etc. A reading of Hippocrates indicates this.

Furthermore, I have yet to come across the word medicine or medication in the New Testament, and only twice in the Old Testament. Hippocrates, however, uses the word, too, yet in the sense I mentioned early - teas, infusions, etc.

Let me propose another worldview. Chronic illness may be a sign of a problem that God wants to remedy and not a necessary part of living in this fallen world. In the scriptures, chronic illness was often (not always) the result of sin. Epidemics (plagues) had a spiritual root cause. In no case did Jesus turn away a person saying that He had a better plan for them that entailed their leprosy or handicap or whatever the disease was. There was a blind man who was blind from birth to glorify the Lord through Jesus' healing of him (John 9:3), but he was healed without asking Jesus for it. On the other hand, Jesus said, "Go and sin no more" to someone He'd just healed (not all). I don't want to go on too long now, but I believe that healing is God's way, not disease.

If you want more information about this, go to the website of Pleasant Valley Church. They have a much better presentation. I would also be willing to interact with anyone on this and post discussions.

Now consider that medication and medical science in general, when it comes to the treatment of chronic disease, may be hindering the purposes of God. It allows us to live with spiritual root causes of disease and the consequences, when God has a solution to the root cause and the consequences. It may be man telling God he won't accept God's solution, that he'll work one out on his own, just like he wants to do with salvation.

If this is true, and I'm still working through it, then there's one big problem: most of the Western church today has almost no power at all to appropriate God's solution. I contend that, in part, we have chosen modern science over God and believed a distorted view of the scriptures. Until the church deals with these problems, medical science is all we have. But consider that "they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God." (Galatians 5:21) Those who practice pharmakeia shall not inherit the kingdom of God.

I haven't concluded what I believe about this, but it really needs serious, prayerful thought by every believer. What does this mean? Have we bought into a pagan, if not occultic, worldview?

Blessings to all,
Rob

"The Excluded Middle"

2006-02-20T17:15:00.000-05:00

Between the scientific/rationalistic West and the 2/3 world, there is a great gulf. Anyone who has lived in a developing country has probably encountered it to some degree. I lived in such a developing Arab country for 8 years. Aside from their customs that were polite to them and offensive to me, and my customs that were polite to me and offensive to them, there was another culture gap: they were powerfully influenced by folk Islam.

Folk Islam is the practice of going to the tombs of long-departed Muslim saints and praying or making sacrifices in hopes of healing, getting a job or some other assistance. It also entails the curses against one's enemies, the evil eye that might despoil one of a prized possession and other - what we'd call - superstitions. Along with this are regional "saints" that are witnessed at times roaming around.

Science dismisses this as superstition and having no basis in reality. Anything that might have a real effect has a "rational" explanation. As a result, even Christian missionaries are rather quick to dismiss all of this as utter nonsense, though it's usually put more politely to the locals.

This is what Paul Hiebert, a Christian anthropologists, calls the "Excluded Middle," a middle world of spirits, demons and angels that 2/3 of the world's population claims to experience on a near daily basis. It is excluded from Christian missions because it is excluded from the Western scientific worldview.

Is there any reality to this? An acquaintance recounted to me that, when he was young, his aunt was paralyzed from the waist down and doctors couldn't help her. She went to a woman with special healing powers for help. They brought a sheep, slit its throat and the woman dove on the spurting blood and began to drink it. At that moment, he saw his aunt leap to her feet and begin dancing. She retained her healing for the rest of her life, but to do so she had to return every year on the anniversary of her healing to sacrifice a chicken. If she failed to do this, she would once again be paralyzed. What might the rational explanation be for this?

Apparently, this is not an uncommon occurrence, according to friends of our who live in Africa. There is not mechanical efficacy to this any more than there is to modern medicine, but there is enough that even many Christians living in these countries return to these pagan practices when Western science and technology fail them. My son, who spent some time in Africa said that witchcraft devastates local Christians through their involvement.

Some American friends of ours lived in a remote village. On several occasions, after they put their toddler to bed, he would wake up crying, claiming that a dog had been in his room. They later found out that the “saint” that supposedly roamed that region sometimes manifested himself as a dog. Perhaps that’s just a coincidence of the imaginations of an infant and those of the locals. Perhaps there is a spiritual reality that Westerners are blind to.

As Hiebert said, citing Leslie Newbigin, this poses a problem for modern missions in that "Western Christian missions have been one of the greatest secularizing forces in history." The problem is that we are not setting them free from their superstitions, but we escort them into our worldview where, in practice, God may as well be an "absentee landlord." This is the deistic worldview which Western Christianity is dangerously close to, if not deeply immersed in.

There is yet another problem that is even more subtle. In denying the "Excluded Middle," Western Christianity has given the okay, starting in the Middle Ages, to delve around in the occult in search of methods of manipulating our environment and gaining mastery over it. Since we have considered the occult to have no power or validity - it's not rational - we picked out of it whatever we pleased and continue to do so.

I claim that this has been a dangerous error that has led Western Christianity into a mindset of which Paul has this to say: "Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away." (2 Timothy 3:5) I believe Western science has been a major contributor to this, and it has neutered the Western Church and made Western missions a great secularizing force of history.

Rob

A Variety of Musings

2006-02-08T21:50:00.000-05:00

If you find science interesting, particularly the philosophy of science, perhaps you will find this interesting. I've always found it interesting that, in light of all that we don't know about the universe we live in, we seem to feel justified in believing we can figure out universal laws by simple reason. That seems rather a stretch to me, even if our theories and laws do make predictions that bear out. In other words, I'm not much of a scientific realist, but very interested in science.

I've been studying the history of science and the influence of Greek philosophy on our current theories. That's taken me into influences from alchemy and the occult - though I have no interest in the occult other than how it has influenced science. Interesting books I've read recently on this are Isaac Newton: The Last Sorcerer by Michael White and Magic into Science: The Story of Paracelsus by Henry M. Pachter. Another, though rather hard to read and long is Religion and the Decline of Magic by Keith Thomas. I'll cite other references of interest in later posts. Suffice it to say that that which was once considered occult is no longer and has become accepted as science. Could it be that science is more occult than we realize? Then what influence has this had upon Christianity through history and where does that leave us today? There is much to say on that.

What does the Bible have to say about all this? It might seem somewhat disconnected from the above, but I find today that Christians of all stripes omit huge portion of the Canon of the Scriptures through reason. What seems to be the biggest motivator? "I'm okay and if there's a discrepancy between my experience and what the Bible seems to say my experience should be, then there's something wrong with my interpretation of the Bible." In other words, my experience takes precedence over the scriptures. My experience speaks into the scriptures and not the scriptures into my experience.

How does this all tie together? Perhaps you see it. Perhaps you don't. I think it'll become clear in future posts. If not, feel free to write to me anytime. I love respectful challenges to my thinking.

Later,
Rob