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Protestant Bent Exposed

I enjoyed reading the responses to Pope John Paul II's encyclical letter Fides et Ratio [July/August]. I found myself irritated, however, by the editorial commentary and photography that drew an absurd and degrading link between the pope's defense of the interrelationship between faith and reason and the pop-philosophy of The X-Files. The layout of the photography—the pictures of the pope, Scully, and Mulder fall neatly in a row—suggests some sort of ridiculous equivalence between his Holiness and the fictional figures from FOX TV. Your fantasy episode of The X-Files disrespectfully imagines the pope as a guest star on the silly sci-fi show, and reinforces the Reformation-old sterotype of Catholicism as a superstitious religion whose chief tenets rival modern-day delusions about the existence of aliens and unidentified flying objects. Your irreverent treatment of the papacy betrays the Protestant bent of your supposedly ecumenical magazine. I agree with Alvin Plantinga that the papal encyclical should inspire all Christians—Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox—to regard one another as brothers and sisters in Christ, with a shared understanding of the complementarity of faith and reason. How can we realize this noble goal if the editor of BOOKS & CULTURE stoops to "pope jokes" in his commentary?

Eileen M. Hunt
New Haven, Conn.

Gardening in Paradise

In his theological reflection "Inheriting Paradise" [July/August], Vigen Guroian states, "Adam and Eve were placed in a garden where they walked together with God and did not need to labor. But when they sinned and were expelled, gardening began." Although poetically evocative, Guroian's statement suggests that gardening was one of the outcomes of our first parents' sin. The Genesis narrative, however, provides a different perspective on human involvement with the soil. "The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it" (2:15, RSV). "Because you have … eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, 'You shall not eat of it,' cursed is the ground be cause of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth to you" (3:17).

According to the Creation story, then, there was gardening both before and after the Fall. First, in enjoyable cooperation with the natural world; later, in a constant struggle with nature in rebellion—an experience with which every gardener is painfully familiar. Furthermore, Isaiah depicts the New Earth as a place where God's redeemed will engage again in pleasurable gardening: "They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit" (Isaiah 65:21).

Humberto M. Rasi
Silver Spring, Md.

Bauergate Revisited

I enjoy your journal very much and have greatly appreciated your attempt to engage intelligently and Christianly with books and current culture. Nevertheless, when I read Susan Wise Bauer's piece on Alanis Morissette ["Corporate-sponsored Spontaneity," May/June] I thought, for the first time, that you had struck a bad note. I meant to write and say so; I composed the letter in my mind, in fact, but I did not sit down and get it written.

Opening the latest issue, then, I was glad to see in "Letters" [July/August] that another reader had written ("Bauer Unfair to Morissette," by Tom Beaudoin). I was surprised at editor John Wilson's rather testy reply. I do not want to wade into the debate over conclusions about Morissette, but I do second Beaudoin's assessment that the piece was a failure of your general thoughtfulness. I wish I had written to say so earlier.

I am a middle-aged woman who does not listen to Morissette but whose children do. (They also read BOOKS & CULTURE.) I began the piece eagerly, wishing to be informed and helped in understanding Morissette the phenomenon. But it was, curiously, strangely empty of credibility. I felt trapped inside a clever and far too coy description of Bauer herself watching Morissette be, as we are told (or was Bauer told as a starting premise?), marketed. Our experiences—my reading the piece, her watching Alanis—grew eerily parallel. Midway, Bauer was feeling cranky, and so was I, with her patronizing observations, her pet peeves, her moaning about her weariness. (We've all had to get up to work in the morning. Get over it.) The article seemed, essentially, lazy; reaction posturing as analysis.

I do hope, as Beaudoin said, you will try again—for the sake of people like me who don't know the popular youth culture directly, and for the sake of my kids, who do. And I hope too that I can offer this critique without the editor putting me in my place for it.

Dora Dueck
Winnipeg, Man., Canada

Young-Earth Creationism

In his review of Three Views on Creation and Evolution ["In Brief," July/ August], Matt Donnelly misunderstood the point of our chapter arguing in favor of the so-called young Earth view. Donnelly complains that we present "no positive scientific and biblical evidence for recent creationism," mount only "a rhetorical attack on theistic evolution," and indulge in theological "special pleading." We suggest that he read our chapter again—this time, however, paying attention to what we actually wrote.

Evidence is a wonderful thing, and we might have used our entire chapter explaining the diverse and powerful lines of evidence for our view strictly from biology. But evidence and explanation count for nothing when the main issue between us and theistic evolutionists turns on what will count as evidence or explanation. A detective who finds clues suggesting murder will be utterly stymied in his investigation if everyone else has already been persuaded that, come what may, the evidence must be interpreted as indicating a natural cause of death.

We face a similar difficulty in our ongoing debate with Howard Van Till, the representative theistic evolutionist in Three Views, and with theistic evolutionists generally. For nearly all theistic evolutionists, "science" is defined as methodological naturalism. This conception of scientific explanation—according to which a scientist may appeal only to natural laws and chance processes to explain his data—excludes by definition the very lines of evidence most relevant to our case for intelligent design and creation (including recent creation). Thus, discontinuities between major groups of organisms, for instance, simply cannot point to the discrete action of a creator or designer—because to infer such action would violate the canon of methodololgical naturalism. Whatever the evidence, a scientist can infer only natural causes.

This is a philosophical claim. It requires a critical philosophical reply, which we provide at some length in our chapter. We regret that Donnelly found our analysis unpersuasive, but there can be no question that the issues of "What causes may science infer?" and "What counts as a proper explanation?" are central to the origins debate. We are convinced that biblical Christianity requires what we call an "open philosophy of science," recognizing that God is free to act in history in whatever mode he chooses, and allowing us as fallible reasoners to infer his mode of action as the evidence indicates. Put more simply, God could have acted solely through natural laws and chance (as Van Till thinks), or he could have have acted both in that mode and directly (as we think). If we define science not as methodological naturalism but simply as a search for truth, no holds barred, then the only reasonable philosophy of science available must be open to the possibility of God's discrete and detectable action in history.

Young-Earth creationism faces many obstacles, several of which we outlined in our chapter. Some obstacles are of its own making (e.g., slovenly scholarly practices, self-isolation, lack of peer re view), and we expect that these will be overcome as the position matures. Other obstacles, however, arise from the wretchedly bad philosophy of science adopted by theistic evolutionists, and generally accepted as authoritative in Christian colleges and seminaries. We tried to be as candid in Three Views about the shortcomings of such philosophy of science as we were about the present shortcomings of young-Earth creationism. We are persuaded that once methodological naturalism is swept into the dustbin where it belongs, the origins debate—and the evidence—will look remarkably different.

Paul A. Nelson
The Discovery Institute
Seattle, Wash.

A Lutheran Historiography?

I much appreciated Douglas Sweeney's candid and revealing thoughts about Christian historiography in "Taking a Shot at Redemption" [May/June]. While Sweeney praises the work of the Calvin College "school" of historians, I was puzzled by one of his critiques. On one hand he applauds the Calvin school's resistance to triumphalism, favorably quoting Wells and Marsden. Yet, almost in the same breath, he chides them for abandoning Scripture and the special revelatory feature it provides. Perhaps the Calvin school can't have it both ways, but neither can Sweeney.

It would be interesting to see him sketch out in more detail what a Lutheran historiography might look like. I wonder if the Lutheran theology of two kingdoms and the radical Gospel-Law dichotomy do not pose too many obstacles to a serious engagement with the culture from a distinctive Christian viewpoint.

Ralph Van Dixhorn
Princeton, Minn.

Counterfactuals

In "The Subjunctive That Killed Hugh Finn" [March/April], J. Bottum laments, perhaps rightly, that "philosophers have abdicated their professional obligation" to clarify logical confusions in the euthanasia debate. He finds subjunctive wish arguments ("He wouldn't want to live like that") particularly in need of analysis. It is therefore ironic that Bottum's chief point about conditionals conflates two rather different kinds of conditional, fostering confusion of the very sort he laments. So I am eager to do my philosophical duty to correct Bottum's error.

Bottum says that, according to logicians, "all propositions with the form 'If an antecedent condition, then a consequent result' turn out to be true when the antecedent is false, regardless of what is asserted by the consequent." Logicians do indeed say this about material conditionals. These are the conditionals defined to be false only when the antecedent is true and the consequent is false. We usually express material conditionals by "if … then" sentences in the indicative mood, such as Bottum's ex ample "If the moon is made of green cheese, then pigs can fly." Though there seems to be no logical or causal connection between the antecedent and consequent in this case, the conditional is true simply be cause the moon is not in fact made of green cheese.

However, the crucial conditionals in the euthanasia debate are not expressed in the indicative mood, but in the subjunctive. The sentence "If Finn understood his condition, then he would ask to die" expresses not a material conditional but what is usually called a counterfactual. (Neither the term "counterfactual" nor the term "subjunctive conditional" is entirely apt. Some of these conditionals have true antecedents and so are not strictly contrary to fact. And counterfactuals can be expressed without overt use of the subjunctive mood—"No Hitler, no A-bomb," to borrow an example from David Lewis.) Whether a counterfactual is true depends not only on whether the antecedent and consequent are true, but also on what is true in certain hypothetical situations. So unlike material conditionals, counterfactuals are not always true when their antecedents are false. We may be inclined to affirm the material conditional

If Oswald didn't kill Kennedy, then someone else did

but to deny the counterfactual

If Oswald hadn't killed Kennedy, then someone else would have.

For this reason, logicians are careful to distinguish between these two kinds of conditionals, and they use different symbols to represent the "if … then" in the two cases.

Bottum recognizes the intuitive strength of the claim that not all conditionals with false antecedents are true. Nonetheless, he denies the claim, and thus mistakes the counterfactual ex pressed by "If Finn understood his condition, then he would ask to die" for a material conditional. To make matters worse, Bottum goes on to say that ending Finn's life "severely deepens the logical problem, for killing the man means doing the one thing that renders the antecedent forever false" and hence unknowable. Ending Finn's life may deepen an epistemological problem, but the logical structure of the argument will be no different after Finn's death than it was beforehand.

It's not all bad news, though. Bottum correctly senses a logical weakness in subjunctive with arguments as they are sometimes presented. The argument

If Finn fully understood his undignified condition and could express his desires, then he would ask us to end his life—and since if those in our care ask to die we should grant their requests, we should remove Finn's feeding tube

seems to overlook the fact that Finn has not asked us to end his life, even though he would so ask in certain conditions which do not obtain. The argument has the form:

If X were the case, then Y would be the case.
If Y is the case, then we should do Z.
Therefore, we should do Z.

And that's obviously a non sequitur. Perhaps the Finn argument could be repaired with additional premises, but its proponents carry the burden of explicitly defending these premises.

The logic is further complicated by the antecedent of the Finn proposition. As Bottum hints, it might be judged contradictory, supposing as it does that Finn somehow knows "he is in a condition in which he doesn't know his condition." Some philosophers allege that all counterfactuals with contradictory antecedents are vacuously true. I disagree, but if these philosophers are right, the Finn proposition is tautologous after all.

David Vander Laan
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, Ind.

Copyright © 1999 by the author or Christianity Today International/Books & Culture Magazine. Click here for reprint information on Books & Culture.
September/October 1999, Vol. 5, No. 5, Pages 4-7.

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