Query:

I think the real resistance to natural law ideas today is grounded in the deeper resistance to belief in God.  Would you agree?  So how can one ever convince the skeptic of the natural law without first convincing him that God exists?  If he is sophisticated enough, he'll point to all the objections you make in your work to non-theistic conceptions of natural law, and say that neither God nor natural law is real.  We have to buy the whole package or nothing at all, don't we?

And, from a pedagogical point of view, how is a teacher to persuade religious skeptics of the existence of the natural law without “coming clean” that you do have to buy the whole package?

Reply:

Yes, I've given a lot of thought to this problem.  A lot a thinkers try to motivate the discussion of natural law without mentioning God.  If they find it helpful, why not?  But I think they must have a certain kind of skeptic in mind rather than skeptics in general, and I can't help noticing that conversations which begin by avoiding the mention of God don’t usually go on that way.

My own approach is to start where the skeptic is already -- wherever that may be.  I don't hide the fact that I think an adequate account of natural law requires belief in God, and when I'm teaching, I don't hide the fact that the mainstream of the tradition has taken that view too.  But unless there is special reason to do so, I don't open the conversation with a skeptic by saying "Premise one.  There is a God."  God will make His own appearance in the conversation.

There isn’t any way to know ahead of time how such conversations will work out.  Some atheists come to believe in natural law, then think "But then there must be a God!"  Good.

Other skeptics come to believe in God, then think "I must have been wrong to think there is no natural law!"  Good.

Still others are tempted to believe in natural law, then think "But that can't be right, because then there would have to be a God!"  Okay, then we talk about God.

There are even some who come to believe in natural law, but insist that they can make natural law theory work without God.  This in turn induces errors in their conception of natural law itself.  In that sort of conversation, the most helpful place to begin is usually to demonstrate the errors.  Eventually God comes into that conversation too, but I try not to jump the gun.

Query:

When I was an atheist, I used to do things like place a Coke can on a table and say, “God, I'm a mere mortal. I want to believe but I'm skeptical.  Just move the Coke can six inches and I'll be your faithful disciple from this moment forward.”  Why didn't God ever move the can?  There must be a reason, but I can't fathom it.  Why do you think he makes us ‘work’ for our faith?  The confirmation of faith is always indirect and explainable in other ways.

Reply:

I think part of the answer lies in the fact that the personal reality of God is different than impersonal realities like the atomic mass of hydrogen or the ratio of the diameter to the circumference of a circle.  I can know those kinds of facts, so to speak, from the outside.  But I can only know a person, so to speak, from the inside -- something like the way I know myself.  We shouldn’t overstate the distinction, because outside knowledge has a place in personal relationships.  I came to know about my future wife while we were courting, and it was necessary to do so.  But there was a difference between knowing about her and actually knowing her.  In order to get over the gap from one level of knowledge to the other, I had to trust that what I believed about her was really true.  It wasn't like having her stand next to a yardstick or putting her on a scale.  Now you may say that since I had gone beyond evidence that can't be explained in another way, I knew less than before.  Actually, I knew more.  Knowing about her was the precondition for believing in her, but believing in her was the precondition for coming into contact with her reality in an entirely different way.

I think it is like that with all truly personal relationships.  Some impersonal knowledge is necessary in all of them, but it isn't enough.  One who seeks only impersonal knowledge can afford to say, "I know in order to believe."  But at some point, anyone who seeks personal understanding must say with St. Anselm, "I believe in order to know."  At this point, the new mode of knowledge begins.

In this life we groan in longing, because faith gives us only a foretaste of this different mode of knowledge.  But it is a powerful foretaste.  One of the apostles makes a remarkable observation about it in Hebrews 11:1.  The passage is usually mistranslated so that it seems to say faith is the confidence of the things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.  But in Greek, the two key words don’t mean “confidence” and “conviction” at all.  What the apostle is actually is that in faith we glimpse the actual substance of the things hoped for, and have the proof of things not seen.  In heaven this glimpse rises to the level of vision, but it is evidential even now.

What I am suggesting is that the premise of the question is mistaken:  I think the final evidence for God is profoundly direct, and not at all explainable in other ways.

Query

After reading the Bible, it seems that God has “receded” from us -- Martin Buber’s term -- relative to his level of interaction with people in the Old Testament.  There must be a reason why He doesn’t just “come out of the closet,” appear to us in a cloud of light, speak to us, etc.  But why?

Reply:

I can see why Buber thinks that God has receded.  We don’t receive completely new revelation any more; that sort of prophet is no longer sent.   Interestingly, rather than conceding these facts with embarrassment, the Church insists on them; they’re an article of faith.  But it views them differently than Buber.  Rather than having receded, God is closer than ever, but His mode of self-disclosure to the community of faith has changed.  The Old Testament mode of revelation was never more than an incomplete and preliminary arrangement.  The disclosure was limited to verbal messages through the prophets, and not many people were prophets.  All this changed with the Incarnation, and it changed again at Pentecost -- events Buber does not reckon with, since he doesn’t believe in them.

The reason the Incarnation made such a difference was that in Christ, instead of just speaking through intermediaries, God took our form and came among us.  In an exchange recorded in the gospel of John, Philip says to Jesus, “Lord, show us the Father, and we shall be satisfied.”  I think that’s Buber’s demand too.  Jesus replied, “Have I been with you so long, and yet you do not know me, Philip?  He who has seen me has seen the Father; how can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?”

The reason the event at Pentecost made such a difference is that the Holy Spirit came to take up intimate residence with Christ’s believers, to dwell with them inwardly.  The prophets had a far-off hint that this would happen in the Messianic age.  God says through the prophet Joel, “And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit on all flesh.”

This outpouring is not necessarily dramatic, with wheels and eyes and clouds of light and all that sort of thing.  Moreover it doesn’t provide any utterly new revelation about God; instead it leads His followers into deeper understanding of His self-disclosure in Christ.  But the outpouring is better than the visions of the prophets, first because it is for the whole community of faith, second because it plants the seeds of the love that it commands.  I think this is part of the point of Christ’s remark to Thomas, “Have you believed because you have seen me?  Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.”

“There is no humility in refraining from asking the questions; the humility consists in believing that there may be an answer.”  --  Charles Williams, "John Milton"

On Monday we considered the strange fact that the people in the pews need to be evangelized even before other people do.  On Tuesday and Wednesday we considered two kinds of obstacle:  Those which lie in the listeners, and those which lie in the proclaimers.

But the final obstacle to evangelizing Christians lies in the condition of Christendom itself.  We are divided.  Christ’s Body is torn.

But wait.  We have been discussing evangelization, not ecumenism -- the cause of the Gospel, not the cause of Christian unity.  Isn’t the end of the discussion a bad moment to change the subject?

I am not changing it.  The two causes are joined.  To suppose we can spread the word of God without unity in that word is arrogant folly.

You don’t have to take it from me.  Christ’s last plea to His Father at His Last Supper with the disciples was “that they may become perfectly one,” and the reason He gave was “so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”  The moral is plain.  If we are not one in proclaiming Christ, the world will not recognize Him.  If we are not one in proclaiming the Gospel, the world will find the Gospel very hard to hear.

What part of this message have we been blocking out?  What sin or resentment or cherished conceit do we clutch so tightly that we cannot open our hands to God’s grace?  In order to hear the whole Gospel, what must we let go?