Gunning for God (26 page)

According to the New Testament, then, it took nothing less than the incarnation and the death of the Son of God on the cross in order for God to effect reconciliation between man and God. The message is this:

In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
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Does anyone fully understand this? No — and that should not surprise us. If the cleverest of scientists do not fully understand things like energy, light and gravity, how could anyone ever hope to fathom this most profound of all events in the history of the universe — the crucifixion of God incarnate? There is inevitably a deep mystery surrounding the cross. Yet the rich biblical terminology — ransom, justification, reconciliation, etc.
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— gives us sufficient insight to grasp the adequacy of the salvation that Jesus came to bring. It is very deep — but so is the problem with which it deals. It is also unique. Christ does not compete with any other religion, philosophy, or way of life here; for the simple reason that no one else has ever done what he has done, nor can or does offer us what he offers — forgiveness and peace with God, that depend not on our merit but on our trust in the grace and gift of God.

Contemporary New Atheist mockery will no more diminish what Christ did on the cross than did the mockery of those who were involved in his trial and crucifixion twenty centuries ago. Such mockery is nothing new. The historian Luke records: “Herod with his soldiers treated him with contempt and mocked him… the rulers scoffed at him, saying, ‘He saved others; let him save himself, if he is the Christ of God, his Chosen One!’ The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine and saying, ‘If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!’”
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Even one of the two brigands
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crucified with Jesus “railed at him, saying, ‘Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us!’” But saving himself is precisely what Jesus could not do, if he was the saviour he claimed to be. C. S. Lewis writes: “‘He saved others, himself he cannot save’ is a
definition
of the Kingdom. All salvation, everywhere and at all times, in great things or in little, is vicarious.”
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The other brigand did not join in the jeering that was all around him. He had been thinking, inasmuch as a man in such excruciating agony could think. He sensed there was something going on around him that was a travesty of justice. He felt so strongly about it that, overcoming his pain, he rebuked his fellow criminal on the other cross for his mockery. “‘Do you not fear God?” he said, “You got the same sentence as he did, but in our case we deserved it; we are paying for what we did. But this man has done nothing wrong.’”
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Greek scholar Professor David Gooding takes up the story and explains how it gives profound insight into the nature of forgiveness:

The first malefactor was suffering the consequence of his misdeeds in the form of temporal punishment inflicted by the government. For all his pain there was with him apparently no fear of God, no confession of guilt before God, no expression of repentance, no request even for divine forgiveness. He was prepared to believe that Jesus was the Messiah if he would do a miracle and release him from the temporal punishment that was the consequence of his crimes. When Jesus made no attempt to do that, he cursed him and his religion as a cheat. But to save people simply from the temporal consequences of their sins, without first bringing them to repentance and reconciliation with God, would be no true salvation at all. It would but encourage people to repeat their sins under the impression that any ugly or inconvenient consequences could and would be miraculously removed by a fairy godmother. No paradise could be built on such an irresponsible attitude to sin.

It was different with the second malefactor. Reflection on the fact that Christ was innocent and yet was suffering along with the guilty convinced his conscience that there must be in the world to come a judgement in which the injustices of this world are put right. That in turn awoke in his heart a healthy fear of God, which led him to repentance and a frank acknowledgement of his sinfulness. Even the temporal punishment inflicted by the state, he owned, was well deserved and he made no request for a miracle to be done to let him off the consequences of his sins (see 23:40—41). Again reflection on the fact that Christ was suffering innocently led him to believe that he was indeed Messiah the King; and that if he was Messiah, and there was a God who cared about justice, then all he had heard about the resurrection must be true: Messiah would be raised from the dead and “come in his kingdom”.

Perhaps it was hearing Christ’s prayer to his Father to forgive the soldiers who crucified him; perhaps it was an instinct born of the Holy Spirit; but whatever it was that caused it, there arose in his heart the faith to realise that while there was no question of his being released from the temporal consequences of his crimes, there was every possibility of his being delivered from the wrath of God and from the eternal penalty of sin. With that there also came a deep change within his heart. He no longer wanted to be a rebel; he wanted nothing more than to be allowed to become a subject of the King in his eternal kingdom, if the King would have him. “Jesus,” he said, “remember me when you come in your kingdom” (23:42).

The King’s reply granted not only immediate forgiveness but also spelled out for the dying malefactor, and for all who repent and believe, what forgiveness involves: immediate and complete acceptance with God; the assurance that upon death he would be received directly into the presence of the King, without any interval he would be “with Christ”; and admission to paradise where there shall be no more pain, crying, sin or curse (22:43). “Today,” said Christ, “you shall be with me in paradise.” A rebel had been converted: is not that the true work of a king?”
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CHAPTER 7

ARE MIRACLES PURE FANTASY?
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“A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience as can be imagined.”

David Hume

“Generations of Humeans have… been misled into offering analyses of causation and of natural law that have been far too weak because they had no basis for accepting the existence of either cause and effect or natural laws… Hume’s scepticism about cause and effect and his agnosticism about the external world are of course jettisoned the moment he leaves his study.”

Anthony Flew

The vehement reaction of the New Atheists against miracles springs from the fact that they are convinced that miracles “violate the principle of science”.
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In his debate with Jay Richards at Stanford, Christopher Hitchens asked Richards if he believed that Jesus was resurrected from the dead. When Richards replied in the affirmative, Hitchens then asked if he believed that Jesus Christ was born of a virgin. Richards again said that he did. “I rest my case,” Hitchens responded. “This is an honest guy, who has just made it very clear [that] science has nothing to do with his worldview.”
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To this I would in turn respond that Hitchens has just made it clear that understanding what science can and cannot do is not one of his strengths.

The same is true of Richard Dawkins. My debate with him in Oxford was on the question “Has Science Buried God?” The debate was staged in the Oxford Museum of Natural History, a place certainly famous for a previous debate there in 1860 between Thomas Henry Huxley and Bishop Samuel Wilberforce, on Charles Darwin’s
Origin of Species
. That debate is now commemorated with the
Darwin Plinth
, placed at the main entrance to the museum in 2010. On the way in to the debate through that entrance I had a sudden recollection that the building had an interesting history connected with Christianity; but I could not quite focus, with the pre-debate pressure. I mentioned it tentatively to Dawkins in the debate; he said no, there was no connection. But he was wrong. In fact, the building was the project of Sir Henry Acland, Regius Professor of Medicine in the University, whose aim was to bring all aspects of science together around a central display area. In an 1858 lecture Acland explained that the reason for the building’s construction was to give people the opportunity to learn of the natural world, and obtain the “knowledge of the great material design of which the Supreme Master-Worker has made us a constituent part”. Not only that, but a considerable proportion of the money given towards the museum’s construction budget came out of profits made by the Oxford University Press from its success in printing Bibles!

As I reflected on this afterwards I realized that there was a wonderful irony here. (I wish I had thought of it at the time, but such is the brilliance of hindsight!) Dawkins was supposed to be presenting the case that science has buried God — in a building constructed specifically to show that science showed the glory of God; and in his opening statement he identified me as an Oxford mathematician who believed in miracles! I should have thought that this might reasonably be taken as evidence that science has
not
buried God.

Dawkins was mocking me for believing what he considers to be ridiculous, but his mockery is hollow. Mockery is not an argument. It is an attitude, and it does no credit to the person who employs it in this connection. If there is a God who created the universe, then surely there is no difficulty in believing that he could do special things. Of course, whether he has actually done so on a specific occasion is a different matter. Francis Collins, who does believe in the miracles of Jesus, remarks wisely:

It is crucial that a healthy scepticism be applied when interpreting potentially miraculous events, lest the integrity and rationality of the religious perspective be brought into question. The only thing that will kill the possibility of miracles more quickly than a committed materialism is the claiming of miracle status for everyday events for which natural explanations are readily at hand.
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For that reason I shall concentrate on the miracles recorded in the New Testament.

There is an important distinction to be made between miracles and supernatural events. Miracles (genuine miracles, that is) are supernatural events; but not all supernatural events are miracles in the strict sense. For instance, the origin of the universe and its laws, though a supernatural event, should probably not be subsumed under the rubric of miracle. Strictly speaking, miracles concern events that are exceptions to recognized laws. As such they clearly
presuppose
the existence of the normal course of things. It follows, then, that it does not really make sense to think of the creation of the normal course of things as a miracle.

We note here that Richard Dawkins confesses he does not know what caused the origin of the universe; but he believes (yes, his faith is shining out once more) that one day there will be a naturalistic explanation of it. As he said in our Oxford debate, he does not need to resort to magic to explain the universe. However, in the press conference after the debate, he responded to a question from Melanie Phillips, a journalist and author, by saying that he believed the universe could have just appeared from nothing. “Magic,” she said. Presently she reported that Dawkins had told her afterwards that an explanation for the universe in terms of LGM (little green men) made more sense than postulating a Creator. Anything but God, it would seem.

The Christian gospel is based squarely on a miracle. It was the miracle of the resurrection of Christ that started it going, and that same miracle is its central message. Indeed, the basic qualification of a Christian apostle was to be an eyewitness of the resurrection.
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C. S. Lewis expresses the situation precisely: “The first fact in the history of Christendom is a number of people who say they have seen the Resurrection. If they had died without making anyone else believe this ‘gospel’, no Gospels would ever have been written.”
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According to the early Christians, then, without the resurrection there simply is no Christian message. Paul writes: “If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.”
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DAVID HUME AND MIRACLES

It is here that the Christian gospel conflicts with the widely held notion that science has rendered miracles impossible. Christopher Hitchens pointed this out to me in our debate in Alabama, citing the Scottish Enlightenment philosopher David Hume as having said the last word on this.

Hitchens was referring of course to a famous essay Hume wrote, in which he said: