J.D. Vance and the Philosophy of Religion Part Two

KEVIN HARRIS: Welcome back to Reasonable Faith with Dr. William Lane Craig. It’s Kevin Harris. We are going to continue looking at an essay by J. D. Vance.^[1] He writes,

Basil Mitchell’s response received less attention in class, but his words remain among the most powerful I’ve ever read. I have thought about them constantly since. He begins with a parable about a wartime soldier in occupied territory who meets a “Stranger.” The soldier is so taken with the Stranger that he believes he is the leader of the resistance.

Let me try to synopsize the parable. Of course, give your synopsis as well.

DR. CRAIG: If I just might interrupt, I didn't catch this before but I guess this is the meaning of the title of Vance's article, “How I Joined the Resistance.” He allies himself with The Stranger here whom he believes to be the leader of the resistance. This is in a sense a parable for Vance, as well.

KEVIN HARRIS: Isn’t it interesting? You just never know what's going to reach someone. Mitchell's view was scarcely discussed but he's still thinking about it to this day.

DR. CRAIG: Incredible.

KEVIN HARRIS: The soldier meets a stranger and becomes convinced The Stranger is on his side in the war. In fact, The Stranger claims he's the leader of the resistance. Even though The Stranger sometimes acts mysteriously or clandestinely, the soldier thinks he has good reason to trust The Stranger. But the soldier admits that The Stranger's actions sometimes seem to count against his trustworthiness. Nevertheless, the soldier has committed himself to The Stranger. Regarding this, Vance wrote,

At the time, I tried my best to dismiss Mitchell’s response. Flew had described the faith I’d discarded perfectly. But Mitchell articulated a faith that I had never encountered personally. Doubt was unacceptable. I had thought that the proper response to a trial of faith was to suppress it and pretend it never happened. But here was Mitchell, conceding that the brokenness of the world and our individual tribulations did, in fact, count against the existence of God. But not definitively. I would eventually conclude that Mitchell had won the philosophical debate years before I realized how much his humility in the face of doubt affected my own faith.

Bill, I'd love to hear your thoughts on all this.

DR. CRAIG: Mitchell was a fairly conservative Christian philosopher. He was ahead of the curve – ahead of the revolution or renaissance of Christian philosophy that began in the late 1960s with Alvin Plantinga, William Alston and others. Mitchell was one that was farther out at sea ahead of his time. In his response to Flew’s challenge he wants to admit that things like evil and suffering in the world do, in fact, count against theistic truth claims but that, in the end, they don't count definitively against it. They don't refute it. For Vance, this was really liberating because he, like so many Christian young people, had been taught just to sweep your doubts under the rug and not to try to address them or deal with them. That only causes them to fester and to grow until they finally erupt in apostasy and the abandonment of faith. Now, the unfortunate thing about Mitchell's response, I think, Mitchell never challenged Flew's fundamental assumption; namely, his principle of falsification. That really in the end proved to be the Achilles’ Heel of Flew's position. It was realized that this falsification principle of meaning was just worthless. There is no reason whatsoever to think that in order to be meaningful a statement has to be in principle empirically falsifiable. Abundant counter-examples could be given. So, although Mitchell's response was helpful, it was far from decisive. It would have been far better if Mitchell had simply challenged and rejected Flew's falsification principle of meaning, and then the whole challenge would have simply collapsed.

KEVIN HARRIS: That was the head part. Now for the heart part. Vance went on to a Yale law school and later encountered a meditation on Genesis from St Augustine. He quotes Augustine (this is what Augustine said),

In matters that are obscure and far beyond our vision, even in such as we may find treated in Holy Scripture, different Interpretations are sometimes possible without prejudice to the faith we have received. In such a case, we should not rush in headlong and so firmly take our stand on one side that, if further progress in the search of truth justly undermines this position, we too fall with it. That would be to battle not for the teaching of Holy Scripture but for our own, wishing its teaching to conform to ours, whereas we ought to wish ours to conform to that of Sacred Scripture.

That's only a portion of Augustine's meditation but it showed Vance how arrogant we can be about our personal interpretations of, for example, Genesis that can not only misrepresent the faith to unbelievers but can shipwreck our own faith if new information undermines our interpretation.

DR. CRAIG: Once again I find it amazing that this non-Christian student in law school should be reading St. Augustine's commentary on the book of Genesis. It's just extraordinary. This is really what saved him from the Young Earth Creationism that he had equated with Christianity before. I have seen this in the Young Earth subculture today where Young Earth Creationism is equated with Christianity, and evolutionary theory is equated with atheism. So if you give up Young Earth Creationism you have to become an atheist. Well, this is positively ridiculous, and St Augustine's example shows it. Here's a man who lived – what? – 1,500 years before Darwin, and he's explicating an interpretation of Genesis that envisions long ages and development of life forms not under the pressure of modern science but simply as an alternative reading of Genesis as opposed to a wooden literal reading. I think St. Augustine was right about that. But the more important point is the one that Augustine makes and Vance wants to make; namely, we shouldn't be too quick to equate our own opinions and interpretations with the teaching of Scripture. It may very well be that our interpretation is wrong and needs to be revised.

KEVIN HARRIS: Heaven forbid, but that does happen! [laughter] Before we wrap up, we might mention Vance's encounter with Peter Thiel which led to Vance's reading of French philosopher René Girard, both led to Vance's reconsideration of his faith. In particular Girard's scapegoat theory – that is, every human civilization has a scapegoat, some of whom are divine in some way. But Girard rejects the copycat-savior contention of many New Atheists.

To Girard, the Christian story contains a crucial difference—a difference that reveals something “hidden since the foundation of the world.” In the Christian telling, the ultimate scapegoat has not wronged the civilization; the civilization has wronged him. The victim of the madness of crowds is, as Christ was, infinitely powerful—able to prevent his own murder—and perfectly innocent—undeserving of the rage and violence of the crowd. In Christ, we see our efforts to shift blame and our own inadequacies onto a victim for what they are: a moral failing, projected violently upon someone else. Christ is the scapegoat who reveals our imperfections, and forces us to look at our own flaws rather than blame our society’s chosen victims.

That's from J. D. Vance. What are your thoughts, Bill?

DR. CRAIG: Well, again, I just am so impressed that here he's reading French philosophy and interacting in a thoughtful and intelligent way with it. I personally haven't found René Girard’s scapegoat analogy for Jesus to be very helpful. I do think that Christ is symbolized by the Yom Kippur Old Testament festival – the Day of Atonement – where two goats were taken by the Levitical priests. One was slain and its blood offered on the altar. The other was driven out into the wilderness bearing away the sins of the people which had been symbolically laid on the goat by the laying on of hands by the priest. The goat driven into the wilderness was called the scapegoat who took our sins away. So some people will see Christ in that sense, but that's a rather different image than the one René Girard portrays where the scapegoat is someone who is vilified and so forth by society. If you find it helpful, great. I didn't find it particularly meaningful myself but I'm delighted that it was key in Vance’s coming to faith.

KEVIN HARRIS: As we conclude, I'd like to encourage interested listeners to read this essay from J. D. Vance that we've been discussing. It's called “How I Joined the Resistance.” Now we know why he titled it that. It not only chronicles Vance's slow incremental journey to Christ but his political philosophy as well. He laments how we've moved to a society bloated with consumption and pleasure, as he puts it, and spurns duty and virtue, and that politicians tend to exploit this extreme consumption. But at any rate, you're concluding thoughts, Bill?

DR. CRAIG: In conclusion, I am simply delighted to finally encounter a politician who is more than just slogans and superficial platitudes but is a really thoughtful person who has studied philosophy and theology and wrestled with the deep issues. It’s really a pleasure to read his material.

KEVIN HARRIS: Thank you very much for listening, and thank you for your support. Your prayers and your financial gifts are so appreciated. Go to ReasonableFaith.org. We’ll see you next time on Reasonable Faith with Dr. William Lane Craig.^[2]