Month: August 2005

In his article on the Atonement Gerhard Forde makes some of the more common charges against Anselm’s theory of the Atonement (or at least certain “Anselmian”type theories). Whether Forde intends his criticisms to apply to Anselm himself or just some of the cruder later versions of his theory isn’t entirely clear. I’ve defended Anselm on this before, but I think one of the persistent confusions surrounding his views have to do with the notion that God’s “honor” has been offended by sin and must be “satisfied” in order for him to forgive our sins. This can lead us to think of God as some petty tyrant who demands his pound of flesh before he can be gracious.

However, in Anselm’s scheme “honor” should not be thought of as a mere subjective “feeling” of being offended on God’s part. Anselm certainly didn’t have such a crude anthropomorphic view of God. Nor, I would suggest, does it refer to a set of rules that are somehow “external” to God which require satisfaction before sins can be forgiven. I think it’s more helpful to think of God’s honor and his justice in relation to his purposes for his creation (as Anselm does).

Anselm says:

Nothing can be added to or taken from the honor of God. For this honor which belongs to him is in no way subject to injury or change. But as the individual creature preserves, naturally or by reason, the condition belonging, and, as it were, allotted to him, he is said to obey and honor God; and to this, rational nature, which possesses intelligence, is especially bound. And when the being chooses what he ought, he honors God; not by bestowing anything upon him, but because he brings himself freely under God’s will and disposal, and maintains his own condition in the universe, and the beauty of the universe itself, as far as in him lies. But when he does not choose what he ought, he dishonors God, as far as the being himself is concerned, because he does not submit himself freely to God’s disposal. And he disturbs the order and beauty of the universe, as relates to himself, although he cannot injure nor tarnish the power and majesty of God. (Cur Deus Homo, Bk. I, Ch. XV)

God’s problem with sin is that it threatens to derail his intentions for his creation, which is loving communion between God and his creatures. God’s “honor” – which is also his grace – will not allow his purposes to be defeated by sin and refuses to leave us mired in our sin:

Do you not perceive, from what we have said above, that it is necessary for some men to attain to felicity? For, if it is unfitting for God to elevate man with any stain upon him, to that for which he made him free from all stain, lest it should seem that God had repented of his good intent, or was unable to accomplish his designs; far more is it impossible, on account of the same unfitness, that no man should be exalted to that state for which he was made. Therefore, a satisfaction such as we have above proved necessary for sin, must be found apart from the Christian faith, which no reason can show; or else we must accept the Christian doctrine. For what is clearly made out by absolute reasoning ought by no means to be questioned, even though the method of it be not understood. (Bk. I, Ch. XXV)

How does he do this? By sending the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity into the world to assume human flesh. Through the course of his life of faithful obedience to the Father, the Son does what we might call a “repair job” on human nature. It’s important to note that Anselm doesn’t think that it is merely Christ’s death on the cross which satisfies God, as though God needed some kind of human sacrifice. Rather it’s Christ’s entire life that “satisfies” God by getting the human project back on track. His death is the inevitable result of his life of obedience, because a perfect life lived in a world of sin cannot be tolerated (Forde’s “the order by which we run things here.”). Christ’s living a life of perfect faithful obedience, even unto death on a cross, is what atones for the sins of humanity and is vindicated by God in the Resurrection. The beauty of this perfect life offered up blots out the stain of sin which threatened to disrupt God’s creation.

As George Lindbeck puts it:

The two main ways of understanding this vicarious sacrifice of Christ as victim are, to retrace familiar paths, Anselm’s satisfaction theory, and, on the other hand, a punitive or penal substitution view. This substitutionary understanding was in part an offshoot of Anselm’s work, despite his strong opposition to it. Anselm emphatically insisted that it would be contrary to God’s justice for the innocent Jesus to bear the punishment that sinners deserve. Rather, the Son’s loving obedience in becoming man (and inevitably being murdered in a world as wicked as ours) infinitely outweighs or compensates for the damage, grave though this be, that our sinfulness has inflicted on God’s good creation. God cannot punish those who flee to Christ for mercy, because that would spoil the Christ-wrought beauty now irradiating the universe and making it a far, far better place than it would ever have been without Christ’s coming and inevitable death. (Lindbeck, “Atonement & the Hermeneutics of Intratextual Social Embodiment” in The Nature of Confession: Evangelicals & Postliberals in Conversation, Lindbeck, Okholm, and Phillips, eds., p. 233)

And, we should add, by the power of the Holy Spirit we come to participate in that life, through worship, prayer, the sacraments, and the new obedience. This is Luther’s “happy exchange” whereby we participate in Christ’s righteousness, and he assumes our sin. God is “satisfied” because his purpose for creation has been restored once and for all (though only to be fully revealed at the end of the age).

I think this account is true to the spirit of Anselm’s account (though perhaps departing from the letter in some places), and also offers a reply to Forde’s important question why it was necessary for the Son to come and die. If God’s purpose is to get the human project back on track, it may be that the only way to do that is for there to be an actual human life that we can participate in which has been restored to the intentions God has for humanity.

Also, it may offer a more satisfying approach to sanctification. Forde has often been criticized for being weak on sanctification, since he so strongly emphasizes God’s free and unconditional pardon of sins. But perhaps the notion of participation offers a way of understanding how we come to live a new life without qualifying God’s grace as the source of that new life.

Good article from Roberto Rivera on the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings (via Thunderstruck).

While relatively few Americans can bring themselves to say that the deliberate targeting of non-combatants during World War II, regardless of the physics involved, was immoral, our commitment to jus in bello has grown to make the avoidance of “collateral damage” official policy. At least until another hard, less asymmetrical, case comes along. Then it’s likely that the same utilitarian calculus used to justify Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Tokyo, Kobe, Nagoya, and Osaka don’t seem to require any justification) will be difficult to resist.

This is neither critical nor cynical. It’s a reminder of what Scripture and Sacred Tradition teaches: while we may reside and even thrive in the Earthly City, our citizenship is elsewhere. The two cities aren’t identical, and their requirements won’t always coincide. As Augustine famously put it, “Two cities, then, have been created by two loves: that is, the earthly by love of self extending even to contempt of God, and the heavenly by love of God extending to contempt of self.” For citizens of the City of God, suffering injustice rather than risk committing one is part of “contempt of self.” The other city can’t begin to imagine such a trade-off. Not because it’s contemptuous of God—although it is—but out of simple self-preservation. (If this sounds a bit theoretical, recall that just the other day, a congressman suggested bombing Mecca in response to a terrorist attack. If this idea made sense to you, welcome to the City of Man.) Love of self and its emphasis on self-preservation is why utilitarianism is the City of Man’s default position, in war as in peace.

So, while we are not exempt from the “obligations necessary for national defense,” those obligations aren’t open-ended. The “evaluation” of whether the criteria of the Just War doctrine have been met may belong “to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good,” but that doesn’t mean that they’re always right or that, once they’ve spoken, we must shut up. If that happens, then something a lot more important than workers will be absent from our society: its conscience.

It’s not always recognized how radical the implications of just war theory can be. You have to allow for the possibility that it may not be possible to win without acting unjustly. I think this is part of the reason that just war theory is never really going to sit well in a secular state; for a secular government survival is always the overriding concern. Not so for a Christian. Which is why it’s distressing to see Christians try to justify the indiscriminate slaughter of innocent men, women, and children in order to save our skins. How much of a testimony is that to our faith in the One who has conquered death?

The Churchwide Assembly just voted overwhelmingly to approve a recommendation to enter into “interim eucharistic sharing” with the UMC, which is short of the “full communion” we enjoy with other churches (go here for more info).

The difference is explained thusly elsewhere:

With an interim commitment, congregations and judicatories of both churches will be encouraged to study theological documents, participate jointly in Holy Communion and explore new opportunities for shared ministry. Eventually, the two churches may achieve a relationship of full communion, which would allow for clergy of one church body to serve in congregations of the other church and would create opportunities for joint ministry.

Doing my part to further understanding between Lutherans and Methodists, I recently picked up a copy of John Wesley’s A Plain Man’s Guide to Holiness (a.k.a. A Plain Account of Christian Perfection).

One of Gerhard Forde’s distinctive contributions was his thinking on the work of Christ. His essay by that name appears in Braaten and Jenson’s Christian Dogmatics. He also discusses it in several essays in the collection A More Radical Gospel. His essay “Caught in the Act: Reflections on the Work of Christ” can be found here.

Forde says that the problem with the traditional theories of the atonement (Anselmian satisfaction, Abelardian moral exemplar, and Christus Victor) is that they direct our attention away from the murder of Jesus by making his death an element in a system or theory that purports to show why it was “necessary.” For instance, Jesus’ death was necessary to “satisfy” God’s justice or wrath or honor, or it was necessary to provide us with an example of perfect love, or to defeat the demonic powers that hold us in thrall. But, he says, these explanations always prompt the question why it was necessary for God’s Son to suffer and die to attain these goals. Why couldn’t God just up and forgive sins? Or why couldn’t God simply put the demons out of commission?

Furthermore, all these theories tend to exculpate us from responsibility for Jesus’ death. Satisfaction theories make it look like the problem is on God’s side and that he needs to be changed or have something done to or for him before he can forgive us. In the Christus Victor scheme human responsibility threatens to drop out of the picture altogether since it’s the demonic powers that God needs to defeat. Or in the Abelardian theory Jesus’ death is an edifying example:

How can God possibly be “justified” in sending his Son into this world to be cruelly murdered at our hands just to provide an example of what everybody already knew anyway? If the cross does not actually accomplish anything new, is not the price too great? Is not a God who would do such a thing fully as thoughtless and cruel as the God of vicarious satisfaction? Those who push the “subjective” view rarely entertain such questions. No doubt because of the terror and cruelty of the actual event as well as our implication in it, it has been quietly forgotten. Since it is “necessary” or at least understandable on moral or like grounds, we are (more or less) exonerated. We can sit back and admire the event that took place on Golgotha! It was so impressive!

[…]

In sum, each of the major types of atonement theory tends to obscure the truth of the murder of Jesus in the very attempt to convey its “meaning” and “significance” to us. As a matter of fact and not just coincidentally, the theories seem to defeat their own purpose: they tend to alienate rather than to reconcile. In attempting to explain the “necessity” for the death of Jesus by taking it up in the schemes suggested, God’s “reputation” is endangered, not enhanced. Why should a God who is by nature merciful demand satisfaction? Is a God who consigns his Son to an excruciating death just to provide an example of what everyone already knew really a “loving Father”? If God is God, could not the defeat of demonic powers have been accomplished without the painful death? In other words, “was this trip really necessary?”

So we come back to our original question: Why the murder of the innocent one? What does that accomplish for us—or for God? What is “the word” of Christ? What does he actually do for us that God could not have done with greater ease and economy in some other way? The crucial and persistent question emerging from discussion of the various views seems always to be that of the necessity for the concrete and actual work of Christ among us. It is, of course, ultimately the question of the necessity for Christology at all. Cannot God just up and forgive and/or cast out demons? Or to use another current form of the question: Is there not grace aplenty in the Old Testament? Or in nature? Or in other religions even? Why Jesus? Why the New Testament?

Forde suggests that, rather than trying to show how the Cross was “necessary” according to the dictates of a particular theory, we need to take a closer look at the events themselves to see if an understanding of what God was up to suggests itself. We should start “from below” by asking what did Jesus, concretely, do from our point of view before we ask what the events mean from God’s point of view.

For instance, many atonement theories ask why God couldn’t simply up and forgive sins. But, Forde points out, this is precisely what Jesus did!

Why could not God just up and forgive? Let us start there. If we look at the narrative about Jesus, the actual events themselves, the “brute facts” as they have come down to us, the answer is quite simple. He did! Jesus came preaching repentance and forgiveness, declaring the bounty and mercy of his “Father.” The problem, however, is that we could not buy that. And so we killed him. And just so we are caught in the act. Every mouth is stopped once and for all. All the pious talk about our yearning and desire for reconciliation and forgiveness, etc., all our complaint against God is simply shut up. He came to forgive and we killed him for it; we would not have it. It is as simple as that.

From this point of view it seems that Jesus was not killed because of God’s wrath but because of our wrath! The offer of unconditional forgiveness and grace is a threat to us. Why? Because, says Forde, it upsets the order by which we have learned to run things in this world. Our life is run according to certain rules, what you might call a law of karma, you get what’s coming to you. You play by the rules and you succeed, but if not you’re a loser, a bad apple. By offering unconditional mercy Jesus threatens the foundation of that order.

But why did we kill him? It was, I expect we must say, a matter of “self-defense.” Jesus came not just to teach about the mercy and forgiveness of God but actually to do it, to have mercy and to forgive unconditionally. It is an act, not an idea. That is his “work.” That is the New Testament. He came to do “what he sees the Father doing” (John 5:19). Now we are, no doubt, quite open, generally, to the idea of mercy and forgiveness in God and his “heaven,” but actually doing it here for God is quite another matter—especially if it is the absolutely free and unconditional having mercy and forgiving of the sovereign God who ups and has mercy on whom he will have mercy! How can one actually do that here? How can this world survive, how can we survive if mercy and forgiveness are just given unconditionally? The idea is nice, but what shall we do with one who actually eats with traitors, whores, outcasts, and riff-raff of every sort and just blows away our protests by saying, “They that are whole need not a physician. but they that are sick”? Actually doing it, giving it unconditionally just seems to us terribly reckless and dangerous. It shatters the “order” by which we must run things here.

This shows why it is we who are the obstacle to reconciliation, not God. Our way of doing things is threatened by Christ coming and having mercy on sinnners in his rather reckless fashion. Forde doesn’t make the connection, but this reminds me of Simone Weil’s meditations on gravity and grace. For Weil, “gravity” names the forces that operate in this fallen world – everything that exists operates by a kind of compulsion to expand and dominate other things. “Grace” on the other hand, is the power of self-restraint, of allowing other beings to be themselves, respecting their freedom. According to Weil, the cross is where the forces of gravity come together to crush an agent of grace.

Diogenes Allen explains Weil’s view of the Cross:

With this conception of gravity and grace, we can now present Weil’s conception of the Cross. Creation is an act of love because it involves God’s voluntary renunciation as the only existent. The Cross is the great act of Jesus’ renunciation of himself. He is the victim of the forces of gravity-the forces of self-expansion, the forces of self- aggrandizement which moved the empire of the Romans and moved the various aspirations of the Jewish people. These forces, of gravity, which make a complex pattern of interlocking, conflicting systems, catch him up within their workings and crush him. He does not know why he must feel the presence of his Father leave him as he is crushed by them. Although feeling forsaken, he remains obedient to the order of grace. He lays his life down humbly instead of following the route of selfassertion.

That his death was understood by his disciples to have been humbly accepted by him is indicated by the verse, “No one takes it [my life] from me. I lay it down of my own accord” (Jn. 10: 18). It was caused by the actions of gravity, but in the grip of gravity’s vise, he yields himself up voluntarily. He accepts his vulnerability to the forces of gravity and to this event in particular which is brought on by their action, because he believes they are under the power, wisdom, and love of his Father. He therefore dies as a member of the order of grace, not as a slave to gravity. The love of the Creator- the love which restrained itself for the sake of the world’s existence-is answered from the Cross by the Son. The Son restrains his own will by yielding it to the forces of a created universe that operates by gravity. In that crushing vise, he yields himself in faith that all this came from the Father for our sakes.

Weil’s “gravity,” it seems to me, is very similar to Forde’s “the ‘order’ by which we must run things here.” For someone to come into that order offering grace is to surrender any levers he might have for manipulating or controlling others. This, according to Forde, gives us a clue as to why God couldn’t have had mercy on us any other way:

If what we have been saying about the murder of Jesus by us is at all the case, then God’s “problem” comes more immediately into view. God’s “problem” is not that he can’t be merciful until he has been satisfied but rather that he won’t be satisfied until he succeeds in actually having mercy on whom he will have mercy. God, that is, won’t be satisfied until he succeeds in actually giving the concrete, unconditional forgiving he intends. As we can see from Jesus, God’s problem is how actually to have mercy on a world which will not have it. The question for God is whether he can really succeed in getting through to a people which likes the idea of forgiveness but doesn’t want an actual forgiver, a world which turns everything God purposes to do into a theory with which to protect itself from him. God’s problem is just how actually to have mercy, how to get through to us.

[…]

if this is the problem, God can do nothing about it in the abstract. Here is at least the beginning of the answer, it would seem, to why God could not do it in any other way. He cannot have mercy on us in the abstract. As abstraction he is always a terror to us, hidden, wrathful. The idea that he has mercy on whom he will have mercy is, as idea, the most frightening thing of all. We may twist and turn to change the idea, but all we will come up with then is that he has mercy on those who fulfill the necessary requirements. We just go out of the frying pan into the fire. The problem is simply that as abstraction God is absent from us and we are inexorably “under wrath.” Even God can do nothing about that—except to come to us. If the problem is absence, the only solution is presence. The only solution to the terror of the idea of one who has mercy on whom he will have mercy is actually to come and have mercy. The act must actually be done. The only solution to the problem of the absolute, we might say, is actual absolution!

For Jesus to come as the agent who does God’s mercy (rather than just to teach about it) makes him vulnerable to the sinful human beings who rebel at such a thing. This suggest why God allows Jesus to be killed by us:

Why does God abandon Jesus to be murdered by us? The answer, it would seem, must lie in that very unconditional love and mercy he intends to carry out in act. God, I would think we can assume, knows full well that he is a problem for us. He knows that unconditional love and mercy is “the end” of us, our conditional world. He knows that to have mercy on whom he will have mercy can only appear as frightening, as wrath, to such a world. He knows we would have to die to all we are before we could accept it. But he also knows that that is our only hope, our only salvation. So he refuses to be wrath for us. He refuses to be the wrath that is resident in all our conditionalism. He can indeed be that, and is that apart from the work of Christ. But he refuses ultimately to be that. Thus, precisely so as not to be the wrathful God we seem bent on having, he dies for us, “gets out of the way” for us. Unconditional love has no levers in a conditional world. He is obedient unto death, the last barrier, the last condition we cannot avoid, “that the scriptures might be fulfilled”—that God will have mercy on whom he will have mercy. As “God of wrath” he submits to death for us; he knows he must die for us. That is the only way he can be for us absolutely, unconditionally. But then, of course, there must be resurrection to defeat that death, lest our conditionalism have the last word.

Or we can put it another way. Jesus came to forgive sin unconditionally for God. Our sin, our unbelief, consists precisely in the fact that we cannot and will not tolerate such forgiveness. So we move to kill him. There is nothing for him to do then but to die “for our sins,” “on our behalf,” “give his life a ransom for many.” For him to stop and ask us to “shape up” would be to deny the forgiveness he came to give, to put conditions on the unconditional. Thus he must “bear our sins in his body”—not theoretically in some fashion, but actually. He is beaten, spit upon, mocked, wasted. That is, perhaps we can say, the only way for him to “catch us in the act.” The resurrection is, therefore, the vindication of Jesus’ life and proclamation of forgiveness, God’s insistence that unconditional forgiveness be actually given “in Jesus’ name.” To accept such forgiveness is to die to the old and be made new in him. His death is, therefore, our death. As Paul put it, Christ “has died for all; therefore, all have died” (2 Cor 5:14). One should not mistake this for a “subjective” view of the atonement. We are speaking of the death of the old, not a mere alteration of the continuously existing subject. Christ’s work is to realize the will of God to have mercy unconditionally, and thus to make new beings and bring in the new age. The “New Testament” is that since Jesus has been raised, this will is now to be proclaimed to all, actually done, delivered, given, to the end that faith be created, new beings created. Christ has died “once for all,” all people, all time. To be sure, it is a dangerous message in this age. Either we kill it by our endless qualifications and conditionalisms (and thus crucify Christ again) or it kills us and makes us new in faith and hope and love. But having died once to sin, he dies no more! The deed is done!

For Forde, then, the “why” of the Cross is rooted firmly in God’s determination to have mercy on us, to forgive our sins, and to re-create us anew. As he says, Christ “actualizes” God’s will to come to us and to concretely have mercy unconditionally. This work is carried on by the Church where it offers pardon and healing to sinners by Christ’s authority in its proclamation of the Gospel and administration of the Sacraments. This understanding of the atonement is consistent with Forde’s conviction that the Gospel is a radical message, one that is scandalous to a world build on “conditionalism.”

Prolific Lutheran theologian Gerhard O. Forde has died. Forde’s signature theme was to call for a return to the “radical gospel” of the Reformation, especially as found in Luther – that is, the Gospel proclaimed as an unconditional promise of pardon for sinners. Prof. Forde taught for many years at Luther Seminary in St. Paul.

I only recently discovered Forde’s work, but can heartily recommend his Where God Meets Man, which is a kind of primer on theology from a Lutheran perspective, as well as the collection A More Radical Gospel: Essays on Eschatology, Authority, Atonement, and Ecumenism.

Several of Forde’s essays are available online at the archives of Word & World.

Christianity Today has launched a new weblog written by bioethicist Nigel M. de S. Cameron that will focus on “issues of life: creating it, ending it, enhancing it, and treating it properly.”

To say that religion and science can’t come into conflict should not, in my view, be taken to mean that there are “two truths” or that science deals with the world of “facts” while religion deals with “values” or “meaning.” Both purport to give us information about the world; that is, both make truth claims. The difference, I think, is that science limits its scope to the investigation of natural phenomena using a certain method and set of assumptions which, by definition exclude God and the supernatural.

Science investigates reality insofar as it is measurable, quantifiable, and subject to prediction (and ultimately control). Necessarily, then, it excludes from its purview anything not measurable, quantifiable, and subject to prediction. And surely that includes things like God, the soul, angels, demons, and any other supernatural entities that may or may not exist. Science, qua science, simply tells us nothing about whether these things exist, unless they have effects in the phenomenal world that are subject to its methods of investigation.

The problem arises, it seems to me, when this methodological limitation is taken to outline the limits of reality itself. Then you get scientism, which says that only that which science investigates is really real and that science, at least ideally, gives us an exhaustive account of reality. The method has become an epistemology and a metaphysics. On its own terms, though, science seems to be compatible with a variety of metaphysical outlooks. One can be a theist, a materialist, or a Berkeleyean idealist and still accept all the established findings of science. As Huston Smith, I think, once said, taking science to be an exhaustive account of reality is like mistaking an increasingly detailed map of Illinois for a map of the entire United States.

Which is not to say that there might not be interesting “border disputes” where it isn’t clear what the best method of investigation is. It has, for instance, long been supposed that there is something transcendent about the human mind, that it isn’t entirely enmeshed in the nexus of cause and effect that science studies. However, science has made some fairly impressive inroads into the study of the mind, though hardly to the same degree as in its study of the physical world. I doubt there is anyone who would argue that we are even close to offering an exhaustive scientific account of the mind. Notably, John Paul II, while accepting evolution in broad outline, still thought that direct divine intervention was necessary to account for the existence of the human soul. And atheist philosopher Thomas Nagel has recently argued that rationality itself cannot be accounted for in purely naturalistic terms (in a way that harks back to C.S. Lewis’ “argument from reason.”). It seems the jury is still out on that one.

But God, at least as Christianity and other monotheistic faiths conceive of God, belongs to a different order of being altogether. He is not a phenomena among other phenomena that can be investigated with the methods of science. Or, to put it in the language of ontology, he is not a being among beings, but being-itself. The web of phenomena that science studies owes its existence to him. This suggests that, if we’re to know God at all, it will be by a very different means than the methods of science.

Salon has an interview with philosopher Michael Ruse, an agnostic with a keen interest in the evolutionism-creationism debate. While thinking the creationism (and Intelligent Design) is bunk, Ruse nevertheless thinks that “evolutionism” (the materialistic worldview, as distinct from evolution or scientific theories about evolution) has become a kind of psuedo-religion in its own right.

Ruse is drawing a crucial distinction between evolutionary science, narrowly considered — which need not have any religious or spiritual consequences — and evolutionism, the secular, atheistic religion he says often accompanies and enfolds Darwinism. Leading evolutionists like Dawkins, Ruse believes, have failed to draw clear distinctions between the two, and have led many to believe that Darwinian science is fatally allied to an arrogant atheism and a hostile caricature of religious belief. In essence, Ruse believes that fundamentalist evolutionists like Dawkins and W.D. Hamilton hold similar beliefs to fundamentalist creationists — both sides would agree that Darwinism is a “dark theology” that removes ultimate meaning and purpose from the universe and augurs the death of God.

You might say that, in this new book, Ruse is calling for a Reformation within the church of evolutionism. He himself honors the truth claims of science and is “a hell of a lot closer” to atheism than to religious belief. But he thinks evolutionists must purge themselves of reflexive anti-religious fervor, and acknowledge at least the potential validity of the classic Augustinian position that science and theology can never directly contradict one another, since science can only consider nature and God, by definition, is outside nature. Without this consciousness, Ruse suggests, evolutionism is in fact a secular religion, a church without Christ.

I like this bit:

Creationists will describe evolution as a “dark theology,” a view of life as a meaningless process driven by death and extinction. To what extent do evolutionists themselves agree with that?

There are those who think just that. It’s not just Dawkins. The idea that life is driven basically by chance and necessity is a fairly popular refrain. Not all of them come across that way. Someone like Edward O. Wilson, who has no more theological belief than Dawkins, nevertheless sets out to present a very optimistic, humanist position. It’s like Christians: You know, Calvinists present one hell of a dark picture. On the other hand, you have a few drinks with Martin Luther and you go home pissed as a newt and with a lot of funny, dirty stories.

Interesting analysis from Michael Lind:

Can the Democratic Party regain the kind of majority enjoyed by the New Deal Democrats between the 1930s and the 1960s? Not an occasional bare majority, but the kind of solid, enduring majority that permits the passage of major legislation?

The answer is yes–but only if the Democratic Party ceases to be defined by social liberalism. As a social liberal party with economic liberal and economic conservative wings, the Democrats are doomed to perpetual minority status. As an economic liberal party with social conservative and social liberal wings, the Democrats might have a chance–but only if the social conservative Democrats outnumber the social liberal Democrats in the Democratic Party itself.

This is the conclusion Lind comes to after crunching the numbers on where the American electorate is. Basically, he says, the American people are center-right on social & cultural issues and center-left on economic issues.

Read the rest here.

Interesting piece from the Miami Herald (via Hit & Run):

Today marks the 60th anniversary of the atomic destruction of the Japanese city of Hiroshima during World War II.

Americans reflect on this event in sharply differing ways. Some Americans recall the event with shame and express their hope that nuclear weapons never be used again. Others firmly believe that the use of atomic bombs saved American lives by ending the war prior to a bloody American invasion of Japan.

More challenging to consider is whether it was an unjustifiable act in a fully justified war.

Those who believe that the bomb’s use was justified often label their opponents ”pacifists,” ”1960s radicals,” ”bleeding-heart liberals” or ”revisionists.” These epithets merely delay the day when Americans will consider the import of having used nuclear weapons.

Our failure to grapple fully with the ethical questions stemming from our use of mass violence against civilians has meant that we unwittingly endorse an act that some would consider state terror.

We rightly expect Germany and Japan to confront painful episodes from their participation in World War II. Now it’s our turn.

Conservatives today are the natural candidates to take the lead in confronting our most painful episode from the war, because they were once among the most vocal critics of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Consider the following: On Aug. 8, 1945, two days after the bombing, former Republican President Herbert Hoover wrote to a friend that “the use of the atomic bomb, with its indiscriminate killing of women and children, revolts my soul.”

Days later, David Lawrence, the conservative owner and editor of U.S. News (now U.S. News & World Report), argued that Japan’s surrender had been inevitable without the atomic bomb. He added that justifications of ”military necessity” will “never erase from our minds the simple truth that we, of all civilized nations . . . did not hesitate to employ the most destructive weapon of all times indiscriminately against men, women and children.”

Just weeks after Japan’s surrender, an article published in the conservative magazine Human Events contended that America’s atomic destruction of Hiroshima might be morally ”more shameful” and ”more degrading” than Japan’s ”indefensible and infamous act of aggression” at Pearl Harbor.

Such scathing criticism on the part of leading American conservatives continued well after 1945. A 1947 editorial in the Chicago Tribune, at the time a leading conservative voice, claimed that President Truman and his advisors were guilty of ”crimes against humanity” for “the utterly unnecessary killing of uncounted Japanese.”

In 1948, Henry Luce, the conservative owner of Time, Life and Fortune, stated that ‘if, instead of our doctrine of `unconditional surrender,’ we had all along made our conditions clear, I have little doubt that the war with Japan would have ended soon without the bomb explosion which so jarred the Christian conscience.”

A steady drumbeat of conservative criticism continued throughout the 1950s. A 1958 editorial in William F. Buckley Jr.’s National Review took former President Truman to task for his then-current explanation of why he had decided to drop an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima. The editors asked the question that ‘ought to haunt Harry Truman: `Was it really necessary?’ ”

Could a demonstration of the bomb and an ultimatum have ended the war? The editors challenged Truman to provide a satisfactory answer. Six weeks later the magazine published an article harshly critical of Truman’s atomic bomb decision.

Two years later, David Lawrence informed his magazine’s readers that it was ”not too late to confess our guilt and to ask God and all the world to forgive our error” of having used atomic weapons against civilians. As a 1959 National Review article matter-of-factly stated: “The indefensibility of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima is becoming a part of the national conservative creed.”

But times change. In recent decades most American conservatives have become uncritical of America’s use of atomic weapons and dismissive of anyone who holds a contrary view.

Conservative publications now routinely defend Truman’s atomic bomb decision. Critics of his decision, to quote from a representative National Review editorial from 1987, are “wrong, and profoundly offensive to all Americans and Japanese who died in that war, and to those Americans who still possess the ability to think.”

Sixty years after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, we have an opportunity to grapple anew with the questions surrounding that event. American conservatives should renew their earlier, deeply held ethical criticism of the Hiroshima bombing instead of promoting the inaccurate but politically convenient view that criticism of the atomic bombing can come only from the Left. Their response will not only tell us much about contemporary American conservatism; it will also determine whether we finally can have an honest debate about Hiroshima’s destruction.

Relatedly, Brandon at Siris had an interesting post on Catholic philosopher G.E.M. Anscombe, who protested Oxford’s granting of an honorary degree to President Truman on the grounds that the bombings constituted mass murder. Anscombe, who criticized pacifism and engaged in Operation Rescue-style sit-ins at abortion clinics, was certainly no bleeding-heart liberal, but a strict adherent to just war theory.