Dear Professor Theophilus:

I can relate to the student who asked whether reasoning is good or bad, because I too am in a philosophy course emphasizing the authority of reason. You affirmed reasoning, but pointed out that even reasoning depends on faith — faith that reasoning works. When I mentioned this to my professor, he responded that faith in reason is different from religious faith, because faith in reason is testable and religious beliefs aren't. How would you respond?

Reply:

Your professor is confusing the question of whether beliefs are testable by reason (many are) with the question of whether the reasoning power itself is testable by reason (it isn't; such a test would be circular, and thus worthless). As to whether religious beliefs can be tested by reason, he makes a second error when he states categorically that they can't be. Many can be, and the Christian faith actually demands such testing.

For example, Paul, confronted with various wild claims of prophecy, instructs the Thessalonians not to despise prophecy, but not to be gullible either: "Test everything. Hold on to the good." (1 Thessalonians 5:21) Similarly, the New Testament authors do not expect the empty tomb and the Resurrection appearances to be believed just because they say so; they cite witnesses, and emphasize that many of the witnesses are still alive (implying that they can be questioned). In the same spirit, the book of Acts praises the Bereans for the cautious spirit in which they tested Paul's claims by comparing them with Hebrew scriptures. (Acts 17:10-12.) It is sometimes argued that this is not true "testing" because the standard — Scripture — is itself accepted without test. But it isn't. Everything in Scripture which can be independently confirmed proves true; it is reasonable, then, to believe that the things which cannot be independently confirmed are true too.

I suspect that your professor is unfamiliar with the extensive Christian literature on the rational grounds for faith. The term for this literature is "apologetics," from the Greek word "apologion," meaning "defense." There are a lot of good books of Christian apologetics, and I think you would get great benefit from looking into them.

Probably your professor wouldn't be interested in reading a book of apologetics, but there is something else you can do with him. Go to the library and get the latest issue of Faith and Philosophy — it's the official journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers. Show it to him and ask (but with a smile) "Are you trying to tell me that these aren't reasoned arguments?" You see, philosophy of religion just happens to be where the action is in philosophy these days, and the best work is being done by Christians.

Grace and peace,
PROFESSOR THEOPHILUS

MADE ME WONDER

Dear Professor Theophilus:

Something one of my professors said made me wonder why Jesus' coming and death were necessary. By faith, Abraham believed God and was counted righteous (Romans 4:3), yet in those days, Jesus hadn't come.

Reply:

God's promise of salvation is very ancient. We are justified by faith in what God has done for our redemption; the Old Testament saints were justified by faith in what God would do for their redemption. If the Redeemer had never come, their faith would have been groundless.

Grace and peace,
PROFESSOR THEOPHILUS

WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL? (OR WHY ARE THESE DEALS BIGGER?)

Dear Professor Theophilus:

It seems that sexual sins (like premarital sex, adultery, and pornography), along with murder (like abortion, suicide, and assisted suicide), are most strongly condemned. Why is it that of all the sins that mankind can think up to commit, these two in particular bear such a stigma? Why aren't lying or stealing or cheating equally bad? I know that sin is sin, and no matter how big or small some particular sins might seem to us mere humans, they all separate us from God. So what's the big deal about sexual sins and murder? I thought maybe there might be some sort of connection between the two that you might explain.

Reply:

Good questions! I won't comment on whether murder and the misuse of the sexual powers are the most sinful of all, and I don't want to lessen the gravity of other sins, but these two are certainly grave, and the reasons deserve explanation. Let's start with murder.

Murder is heinous primarily because of what it destroys. This isn't like stealing. You see, money is only money, but man is the image of God. To murder a man is to desecrate God's image, and thereby to insult God Himself. Another reason murder is so terrible is that it is irreparable. You can give back money, but you can't give back a life. Finally, murder hurts so many people. Not without reason are weapons of violence called "widow-makers." They might with equal justice be called "orphan makers," "debt makers," and "makers of despair."

Sexual immorality too is an insult to the image of God. Genesis 1:27 says "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them." Do you get the picture? It is not only man and woman individually, but man and woman together which make the image of God; the love of the spouses images the love of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It follows that to deface the relation between man and woman is to deface God's image in humanity. Related to this is another great "mystery" of the faith: Paul says in Ephesians 6 that the relation of husband and wife represents to us the relation of Christ and the Church, His bride. Sexual immorality defaces that image, too.

Another reason why sexual immorality is so gravely wrong is that, like murder, it hurts so many people. The rightly ordered love of husband and wife is the seed of the family, but wrongly-ordered sexual passion ruins families, twists families, and prevents families from forming. And let's not forget that in the end, sexual immorality actually generates murder. Why do we have such an epidemic of abortions? Because people want to have sex yet reject the divine gift of children.

Speaking for myself, I hadn't originally planned to spend so much time in my columns addressing sexual matters. What changed my mind was my reader mail. The letters dramatized that the sexual disorder of our time is wreaking havoc among Christians too — much more than I thought. People are in misery. Perhaps in another day and age it would be more important to talk about different sins, but this is the age that I live in.

Grace and peace,
PROFESSOR THEOPHILUS

PICKY

Dear Professor Theophilus:

Hi. I just wanted to ask how Job could be perfectly just if he was human. Are we to assume he was only a fictitious character used to help us understand suffering? I sort of assumed he was a real human being, and as humans are flawed, I assume he would have been too. If I try to take a stab at it, I may say that Job is just like any sincere Jew or Christian who tries to live out his faith properly but still has sin in his life. If I'm right (and I'm not saying that I am, it's just a guess), then the book of Job is not a story about how bad things happened to this perfectly just man, but a story of how bad things happen to "basically good, yet not sinless," people. Here I go being picky.

Reply:

Job lives an upright life. As I read it, the story gets its point not from the fact that he has never committed any sin at all, but from the fact that he hasn't committed any hidden, unconfessed sin which would explain why such terrible things are happening to him now.

Though Job believes God will judge his complaint properly if only He hears it, he isn't completely confident that God is listening. In the end, he learns better and repents, humbly admitting that he hadn't known what he was talking about.

Grace and peace,
PROFESSOR THEOPHILUS

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