Does Life Have Meaning?
Dr. Craig Hefner joins Becoming Outlaws to discuss this topic in light of his latest book, 'Kierkegaard and the Changelessness of God: A Defense of Classical Immutability.'
Craig A. Hefner (PhD, Wheaton College Graduate School) is the Head of School at Covenant School in Huntington, WV. His work has appeared in publications such as the International Journal of Systematic Theology and the Oxford Handbook of the Bible in America. becomingoutlaws.com
00:00:00
Gathered among the outlaws, he said.
00:00:03
Come follow me. People from all walks of life
00:00:06
since have been becoming outlaws.
00:00:12
Welcome to another episode of Becoming Outlaws, which engages
00:00:16
celebrities, scholars, diverse voices in candid conversations
00:00:22
about following Jesus, defying societal norms, and exploring
00:00:26
profound and sometimes not so profound questions of faith.
00:00:30
Let me ask you this. Have you ever had a day or a
00:00:35
moment where you stop and thought, you know, what's this
00:00:38
all about? What's my life about?
00:00:41
Or why? Does it matter?
00:00:43
Why does anything matter? I have those thoughts.
00:00:47
Matter of fact, I think I had them all just this morning.
00:00:50
If you have, you're pondering philosophical questions.
00:00:55
Philosophical questions can lead to theological questions.
00:00:59
Is there a God? If so, does that give meaning
00:01:03
and purpose to my life? If there isn't a God, do, is
00:01:07
there purpose at all? Well, that's sort of what we're
00:01:11
exploring today, sort of. In the early to mid 1800s, there
00:01:15
was a renowned philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard, and he had a
00:01:19
mission in his view. In his day, the church had
00:01:24
become weak, flabby, inconsequential, and that being
00:01:30
a Christian at that time had become more of a cultural
00:01:33
heritage than an actual spiritual reality.
00:01:38
Sound familiar? Things haven't changed much.
00:01:42
He saw himself as a missionary, but not to some foreign tribe
00:01:47
heathens out you know, across the globe.
00:01:49
No, He saw himself as a missionary to the Christians, to
00:01:54
the Christian Church who've lost their way.
00:01:57
Well, on today's episode, we're going to discuss Kierkegaard's
00:02:01
view on the changelessness of God, and we need help doing
00:02:07
that. So we have Craig A Hefner PhD
00:02:10
from Wheaton College Graduate School.
00:02:12
He's a head of school at Covenant in Huntington, WV.
00:02:17
His work has appeared in publications such as The
00:02:19
International Journey of Systematic Theology in The
00:02:22
Oxford Handbook of the Bible in America and Others, And he just
00:02:26
released Kierkegaard in The Changelessness of God, a modern
00:02:31
defense of classical immutability.
00:02:35
That was a mouthful, but he's going to help us define it.
00:02:40
Welcome. He asked me to call him Craig.
00:02:44
I'll try, but welcome, Craig. Thank you Cat for having me on
00:02:48
your show. Yeah, I'm looking forward to
00:02:51
this one. This one's going to be.
00:02:53
I like to be intellectually stimulated, you know, But I do
00:02:56
have my limits. We're going to see if I can, if
00:02:57
I can, keep up with this one. I hope I can.
00:03:01
I hope I can provide what you're looking for in here.
00:03:04
So sorry. So for the philosopher, people
00:03:09
who know their philosophy and the philosophers of the world,
00:03:13
that's a a common name to have heard.
00:03:15
For others, it may be a new one. What makes this guy stand out
00:03:20
amongst kind of the crowd of philosophers?
00:03:24
Yeah, that's a good question. Anybody who's read him will know
00:03:28
that he stands out right away because he writes very
00:03:31
differently from your your average run-of-the-mill
00:03:34
philosopher, as it were. And so he he's going to mostly
00:03:38
stand out because as you said in your intro, right, he's he's,
00:03:41
he's sometimes called the father of existentialism.
00:03:45
Because he's one of the first to really be asking those kinds of
00:03:48
questions that you asked what does anything matter?
00:03:50
What's the point of life? Does my life have any meaning?
00:03:55
If if there's a God, does that change, you know anything about
00:03:58
my life and meaning. And so he, he asked existential
00:04:01
questions a lot that that makes him stand out.
00:04:05
And so if you if you read a lot of philosophers, a lot of them
00:04:09
are in the business of defining things of.
00:04:12
Thinking about abstract ideas, providing definitions and
00:04:16
arguments and and things like that, which I find very
00:04:18
fascinating and important as well.
00:04:20
But what you find in cure regard is somebody who's asking
00:04:22
questions like what should I do? I need one thing to sink my life
00:04:27
into and what should it be and does it matter and how should I
00:04:29
think about my life over time. And so a very existential
00:04:35
oriented thinker, And let's define existential.
00:04:39
Yeah. Boy, I wish that I could do that
00:04:43
because he's considered the father of existentialism.
00:04:46
Yes, he is oftentimes called that.
00:04:48
And you know what is misleading about that for Christians?
00:04:52
And and is is in a lot of ways that the later existential is
00:04:57
thinkers thinking about like Jean Paul, Sartre and Heidegger
00:05:03
and even Nietzsche maybe and people like this are.
00:05:07
Generally very secular, atheistic type existentialist,
00:05:10
right. So it's goes that way very
00:05:12
quickly. So sometimes it's misleading
00:05:14
because we end up lumping Kierkegaard in with all of those
00:05:17
thinkers who who really are asking similar questions to him
00:05:21
but are very much from a non Christian, really nonreligious
00:05:25
at all point of view. So he's different because he's
00:05:28
an existentialist Christian. But to define existentialism, I
00:05:33
I I think one of the the best definitions of it is just that
00:05:35
it's. It's a philosophical tradition
00:05:38
that's concerned about the individual and your and
00:05:41
existence and those kinds of questions.
00:05:44
And so the word itself has this idea, you know, existential has
00:05:48
this idea of exiting. And so it's almost like you're
00:05:51
exiting yourself and reflecting back on yourself and that.
00:05:56
And so existentialism is kind of is, is really is self as a
00:06:00
selfreflective kind of mode of philosophy.
00:06:02
So it asked questions about Who am I?
00:06:05
What's the point of life? Ask questions about freedom and
00:06:09
about finitude. And what do we do with the fact
00:06:11
that nothing lasts forever? And so kind of that
00:06:15
selfreflective mode of thinking? Is is is characteristic of
00:06:20
existentialism, and your book focuses on one of his topics, so
00:06:27
he's considered a Christian philosopher.
00:06:29
Right. Which makes him different,
00:06:33
right? So in philosophy, you mentioned
00:06:35
a lot of them come from an atheist view.
00:06:37
Do the does their philosophical thought typically take these
00:06:40
guys to an atheist place or are they starting in kind of there's
00:06:48
no meaning beyond the material, there isn't a spiritual
00:06:51
intelligence, and then they kind of try to think their way to
00:06:53
back that up. How does that work typically
00:06:58
with these guys? Yeah, it's.
00:07:00
I think it's going to vary in a lot of ways, but.
00:07:04
At a really like broad stroke level, I think it would be more
00:07:07
like materialism is the standard point of view.
00:07:11
And So what we're going to do it's it's almost more it we're
00:07:14
talking about your secular existentialist kind of post
00:07:18
Kirkegaard. They are.
00:07:20
They are thinking through the implications of what it would
00:07:24
mean to live in a universe with no meaning and no God.
00:07:29
And I talked to different like scientist on here, biologist or
00:07:35
whatever, and it seems like the science world starts with a
00:07:40
conclusion, like they're going to eliminate spirituality and
00:07:43
then see what they can figure out.
00:07:45
So even if it leads to a spiritual answer, they don't go
00:07:48
there and they just keep trying to come up with a natural
00:07:51
answer. So that's what I'm wondering if
00:07:53
the vibe of philosophy, even with Christians, has a little
00:07:56
bit of negative tone, because it's always seems a lot of
00:07:58
atheists. Just do these guys ever or any
00:08:02
of the historical philosophers, do they come to at least to a
00:08:05
deist position where this does lead to because of moral issues,
00:08:11
ethical standards there must have been or just the origins of
00:08:15
the universe or whatever? Do they come to the point where
00:08:17
there must be something beyond the material spiritual, but it's
00:08:21
just not knowable? And if it's a God of some sort,
00:08:24
it's not personal. Yeah, yeah, Orgy.
00:08:27
If you're going zoom back out to just philosophy in general and
00:08:30
not just existentialists, I think that would definitely be
00:08:33
the case right? You would find a lot of
00:08:36
philosophers pre Christian and post Christian who are not at
00:08:40
all you know reading the Bible and thinking about the Bible in
00:08:43
philosophical ways, but just doing philosophy in general they
00:08:46
they will often times come to a conclusion that like.
00:08:49
Well, there can't just be, you know, there can't there?
00:08:54
Like why is anything here as opposed to nothing at all?
00:08:56
Right. That's a great philosophical
00:08:58
question. And that those kinds of
00:08:59
questions have led people to say, well, it makes a lot of
00:09:02
sense that I don't know who he is or what is involved, but
00:09:07
there must be something like a being beyond this universe just
00:09:12
to explain how things got here in the 1st place.
00:09:15
So philosophers will often times get there.
00:09:17
Right. And they might not go all the
00:09:18
way into full blown Christianity at that point.
00:09:21
Kierkegaard does, right, So he doesn't stop there.
00:09:24
But certainly a lot of philosophers would at least get
00:09:28
to a deist position. What made Kierkegaard different
00:09:32
And that we know about him, and that led him not only to a
00:09:39
belief in something like a deist would, but a personal God.
00:09:43
And then not only a personal God, but considers himself a
00:09:46
Christian. Which means he then goes a whole
00:09:49
step further in that faith in Christ the Son of God brings him
00:09:53
salvation, and him as a person, as a Sinner.
00:09:56
That goes so far beyond a lot of philosophers.
00:09:59
What? What drives him to that area?
00:10:02
I mean, I think he would just say that it was faith that drove
00:10:05
him to that area. I don't.
00:10:06
So I don't know that there's as much for him a philosophical
00:10:09
argument that got him there. He is more thinking out the
00:10:12
implications of Christian faith. No, I think he's beginning with
00:10:17
the assumption in a lot of ways that the Christian faith is
00:10:20
true. Now, let me think about the
00:10:21
world around me in light of that.
00:10:24
That's how I see him thinking about things anyways.
00:10:26
I mean, he, in doing that, you make a kind of argument for it,
00:10:30
right? Because you end up showing how I
00:10:33
think as he does, like the way we live life.
00:10:37
Would would be bent towards despair if there weren't a God
00:10:41
and if that God didn't offer forgiveness and and so it gets
00:10:44
to the point where you really need Christianity as the answer.
00:10:48
So he kind of makes this his philosophy system leaves this
00:10:51
hole that Christianity perfectly fills.
00:10:54
I guess he's the way to put it, but I think he just begins with
00:10:59
a lot of those assumptions and he, you know, he just believes
00:11:04
that God. Became man and that we need to
00:11:08
think through what the meaning of existence is in light of
00:11:11
that. This would be part of a history
00:11:15
question with philosophy guys as well.
00:11:18
But am I looking into Kierkegaard for this talk?
00:11:23
I saw where his dad felt guilty over denouncing God or what he
00:11:28
believes is a heretical statement when he was younger.
00:11:30
So he always felt he was cursed and had this weird idea that all
00:11:34
of his children would die at the age or before Christ did at 33
00:11:39
years old. So his children grew up thinking
00:11:42
their longevity at a Max was 33. So in my view, that's like, if
00:11:48
you have a disease or something where you know your terminal or
00:11:53
you have a life limit, you think more spiritually.
00:11:56
You think more philosophy, you think more, why am I here?
00:11:59
What's my purpose? What is beyond this?
00:12:01
You figure it out because you're not like, well, I have to like
00:12:04
90. I'll figure that out when I'm
00:12:06
89. That's right.
00:12:07
You're figuring it out young and then if you're a thinker that
00:12:11
factors in. So my question is, I can see
00:12:16
where he would be thinking way more like past his life and
00:12:19
spiritual things maybe then your tickle person.
00:12:22
But in the days of Socrates or even Nietzsche or whatever, was
00:12:27
the life expectancy? Did that play a difference?
00:12:31
Because I'm doing it for my modern thing where we can all
00:12:34
live about 8590 years or whatever.
00:12:36
Right, but if you're in a culture, we only live to 35
00:12:39
anyway, do they all think that way?
00:12:41
That's a good. That's an interesting question.
00:12:43
I don't know that I could speak to that with any confidence.
00:12:45
I mean, it would be obviously true that life expectancy was
00:12:51
lower in Cure Guards, in Cure Guards Day, much, much even
00:12:55
aside from the fact that he and his family thought they were
00:12:57
cursed and all doomed to die young in addition, right.
00:13:01
So life expectancy was already quite low.
00:13:04
I mean when you read some of the other key philosophers in Cure
00:13:06
Guards time, it would be often times that they would just.
00:13:09
Be living about and then they would have some they would drink
00:13:14
water and get sick and be gone and so they just they lived with
00:13:17
that right that that that there were diseases and illnesses
00:13:19
floating around they could hardly do anything about.
00:13:21
And in fact your guard himself dies rather rather young.
00:13:25
He's 1813 to 1855 so I don't know I can do the Matt 40
00:13:29
something he and he just gets sick suddenly and we don't
00:13:35
really know from what and. He passes out on the street and
00:13:38
then they take him to a hospital and a few days later he dies and
00:13:41
that's just they lived with that as a more normal thing than we
00:13:44
are used to. So certainly that raises the the
00:13:47
question I I think you know I could kind of spin back to your
00:13:51
your earlier question is like in in combine these two right.
00:13:54
So in thinking about the fact that he did, you're you're
00:13:57
exactly right. And that's that played a heavy
00:13:58
role in his mind that he thought Kier guard actually believed his
00:14:02
father was cursed. And believe that he was doomed
00:14:05
to die. And the specific thing was his
00:14:09
father thought that his children would all die before him.
00:14:13
And so he was. And and he had.
00:14:16
There were 77 kids, and indeed they did.
00:14:19
Five of them had died. And it was only Kirkeyard and
00:14:22
his brother left. And so you can start to imagine
00:14:25
if you are that, if you are Kirkeyard Soren, the son you're
00:14:29
thinking. It might be true.
00:14:32
There's only two of us left now. And when his father died, he
00:14:36
actually like, praised. He kind of, like gave thanks to
00:14:38
God for releasing him from the curt.
00:14:40
I mean, he in a lot of ways acted like he believed it was a
00:14:43
very real thing. And he wrote like it was real,
00:14:46
right? He just like it, about 26 years
00:14:48
old. He just writing like a madman.
00:14:50
Yeah cuz he thought his time was you know running out and so
00:14:54
absolutely. And that does.
00:14:55
I think you're right. That does maybe hurry up your.
00:14:59
Spiritual journey. You have to think through the
00:15:01
questions of what your life is about and what's going to matter
00:15:04
after you die, like right now, because your life's wrapping up.
00:15:08
And so he thought about things like he explored a lot of
00:15:14
different ways of living. So what Kirgaard is somewhat
00:15:16
famous for is something called the stages on life's way.
00:15:20
You may have encountered some of that in your research on Kier
00:15:22
regard, but and it and it's like a path of life that people tend
00:15:26
to take. And he thinks it leads them
00:15:28
toward eventually Christian faith.
00:15:32
But people get stuck along the way at various stages.
00:15:35
Now it it's like he hurried through them all because he was
00:15:38
thinking about his imminent death so much.
00:15:42
But he thinks people start in something like an aesthetic
00:15:44
stage, where basically the categories are pleasure and
00:15:49
enjoyment, and trying as best you can to not be bored and to
00:15:53
make life fun and interesting. It's like a heat in this kind of
00:15:56
lifestyle. And he thinks that's which is
00:15:58
typically the that's the current American lifestyle.
00:16:01
Absolutely, the American one. He would probably view the
00:16:05
American lifestyle as essentially just extending the
00:16:07
aesthetic stage for as long as possible.
00:16:11
Trying not to. Trying to make sure you have as
00:16:14
much fun as you can. Trying to make sure that you
00:16:16
have as much pleasure as you can in this life and just push off
00:16:19
thinking about anything like death really forever if if you
00:16:24
can. So that's the aesthetic stage,
00:16:26
right? And he thinks eventually when
00:16:27
you are an aesthetic, if you're living to make life about
00:16:31
pleasure and fun. You realize that it doesn't work
00:16:34
eventually because eventually you get bored no matter what.
00:16:37
No matter how hard you try to make things interesting and fun,
00:16:42
eventually it runs out of steam, right?
00:16:44
They have. It has a diminishing return over
00:16:46
time, so you can live this maximum leap, just pleasure
00:16:49
seeking life, But it gets boring and you know, you realize it's
00:16:53
just another whatever and it's not that fun anymore.
00:16:56
And so you kind of run out of steam.
00:16:58
So then you move, then you level up to the ethical stage where
00:17:01
you say, OK, well, I I'm going to live my life now in terms of
00:17:05
right and wrong and like moral obligation and duty.
00:17:09
So I'm going to get married. I'm going to invest in some,
00:17:12
like I'm going to commit back to my community and I'm going to be
00:17:16
a good citizen and I'm going to follow through on duty.
00:17:19
And that that provides some meaning to your life.
00:17:22
And some people reach that stage, right?
00:17:23
They start to take their duties more seriously and they care
00:17:26
about the community and they give back.
00:17:28
But Kirgaard thinks that even that stage runs out of steam
00:17:31
eventually, and it's this is where it gets to be really
00:17:33
openly Christian. Because he says, well, the
00:17:36
problem is, is that you you can't live up to your own
00:17:39
standard. And so you set this perfect,
00:17:43
ideal ethical thing that you're going to become and you can't.
00:17:46
But you have no concept of forgiveness because your whole
00:17:48
life is based on moral duty, and your failings and shortcomings
00:17:53
of that moral duty are a crisis for you.
00:17:56
And so you need the religious stage, as he calls it, where
00:18:00
faith enters the scene and you experience forgiveness and you
00:18:04
kind of move beyond just living out of moral duty but out of
00:18:08
things like faith, grace, forgiveness and so forth.
00:18:11
So he that's a really short version of it.
00:18:13
But everywhere in his writings, you see him working through
00:18:15
these stages of maturity, and it's kind of a spiritual journey
00:18:20
to get to what he would call Christian faith at the end,
00:18:25
Yeah. And in his view, if you don't
00:18:27
make it to Stage 3, you haven't reached your fulfillment as a
00:18:30
human. That's right.
00:18:32
And he would say that you're in despair whether you know it or
00:18:34
not. So at some level of the
00:18:37
aesthetic person who is just seeking pleasure, they look like
00:18:41
they're having a lot of fun. But underneath all that fun is
00:18:44
actually a very deep seated despair that they are maybe not
00:18:47
even conscious of, but if you had.
00:18:51
If they started to reflect more, they would realize that all
00:18:54
their actions are fundamentally rooted in a despairing
00:18:57
lifestyle. Yeah, And he's absolutely right,
00:19:00
right. I mean, we're all looking for
00:19:01
something. There's a hole that needs to be
00:19:03
filled. We fill it with pleasure.
00:19:05
We find out that doesn't work. Or even celebrities, well, then
00:19:08
they, if it's not just for PR purposes, if it's real, then
00:19:11
they're like, well, I need to give back.
00:19:12
That'll make me fill that hole. They give back.
00:19:14
They get involved and involve them.
00:19:16
And then that becomes routine, and some of them never get out
00:19:21
of that and they overdose or they kill themselves at some
00:19:24
point when they don't make Stage 3.
00:19:28
It ends badly. But a lot of us never reach that
00:19:31
level to realize we've done everything to know there's Stage
00:19:36
3. Or you'll see these turnaround
00:19:38
where these those kinds of people are like, man, I found
00:19:41
Christ and everything else was kind of meaningless.
00:19:45
Yeah, what was I doing up to this point?
00:19:46
Right? Yeah.
00:19:47
Yeah, and Kirkar probably put it more optimistically, like, well,
00:19:50
you were, you were journeying through these stages.
00:19:53
Not that you should like stay in the aesthetic stage for as long
00:19:57
as possible, but in some ways we're all born into the
00:19:59
aesthetic stage, I think is how Kirkar views it.
00:20:02
We just naturally start that way, and by God's grace we work
00:20:05
our way up. Hopefully.
00:20:07
And really, scripture doesn't have a three-step stage like
00:20:11
that. But it says we're predestined to
00:20:13
be conformed into the image of Christ like we're all as humans
00:20:17
predestined end up in that relationship with Christ however
00:20:21
path that takes. So that lines that lines up
00:20:24
pretty well. That it does line up well
00:20:25
because it basically means, OK, you're actually made that way,
00:20:28
like you're made for communion with Christ.
00:20:30
So anything that's not that, if you, if you zoom in on it
00:20:34
enough, you're going to find something misfiring.
00:20:36
There's some kind of misrelation, there's some kind
00:20:38
of problem. There's some kind of pathology
00:20:40
underneath that that's not really being fully human.
00:20:45
And and so we think that, but what's so?
00:20:47
Fun about Kierkegaard is that he seems to take that beyond just
00:20:51
like the the rhetoric and the language of saying that and he's
00:20:54
like no really. If you examine human existence
00:20:58
and the way people live their lives in really really specific
00:21:01
detail, you will see that indeed it it tends toward despair
00:21:07
unless they have Christian faith and so he just he makes a strong
00:21:12
case that Christian faith is the only way to live a non
00:21:16
despairing. Human life in one of his areas,
00:21:21
which your book focuses on, you call it changelessness of God.
00:21:26
And I'm going to guess you went away from the word defined
00:21:30
immutability, because changelessness of God is easier
00:21:33
on the brain. Like a theological term, but
00:21:36
it's the doctrine of immunability.
00:21:39
That's right. And and what is that?
00:21:41
So it is, Yeah, they're the same thing, right?
00:21:43
Changelessness, immutability. It's just.
00:21:47
Referring to the same thing, which is it's it's pretty simply
00:21:50
speaking. It's the doctrine that God does
00:21:51
not change at all. You could say it in more detail
00:21:56
by saying he doesn't change in any way.
00:21:57
That would include, say, his knowledge, his will, his
00:22:00
essence, his relationship to time, space, and and in any
00:22:04
category that you can identify. Traditionally Christian
00:22:08
theologians of thought, God can't change with respect to
00:22:11
those things. And so it gets.
00:22:15
Complicated to explain how that could be, but in some in some
00:22:19
mysterious way, God can't. God can't change in any way.
00:22:23
That's the doctrine of divine immutability.
00:22:25
So the the initial comeback to that would be, what about all
00:22:31
over the New Testament where God repented or relented or he seems
00:22:36
to have changed his mind or man barters with them?
00:22:40
How about don't destroy that city if I can find these many
00:22:43
righteous people guys like, yeah, OK, and.
00:22:46
Then and it goes on and then God he he was met or said he
00:22:53
reflected and thought I shouldn't even made mankind.
00:22:56
There's such a screw up. Yeah, that sounds like God's
00:22:59
changing. It does.
00:23:01
It does, Yeah. Those are the.
00:23:02
Those are the. Those are the texts and and
00:23:05
just, you know, you can think of a whole number of examples of
00:23:07
that of things like that that would suggest that it, it seems
00:23:10
like God changes. So the traditional answer to
00:23:12
that has been that it's not. And cure guard affirms this,
00:23:15
right? It's not God that's changing,
00:23:17
but us that is changing in relation to God.
00:23:21
And so you could say, you know, when he says like, well, if
00:23:23
five, if five men repent from that city, I won't destroy it.
00:23:27
And then it's like, oh, then he changes his mind and he decides
00:23:29
not to. Well, really, what's going on?
00:23:31
I think. We experienced that as from our
00:23:35
perspective, God 10 minutes ago was going to destroy the city.
00:23:39
God now is not going to, but at a higher level we could say God
00:23:43
was always the God who did not want to destroy that city, you
00:23:47
know, And it's they change in relation to God and therefore
00:23:51
they got to experience God differently.
00:23:54
It's not that God changed his mind or that God changed the way
00:23:58
he was going to be towards them. And I know that that's very.
00:24:02
Hard to wrap our heads around, but obviously God isn't like us
00:24:06
at all, so it's not going to be easy to understand.
00:24:09
But he He is able to He He is. He can't change at all.
00:24:15
And in and in some mysterious way, it's just us changing in
00:24:19
relation to. I feel like I don't know if this
00:24:21
is a good example. It makes it sound like God's
00:24:23
playing games. I think maybe he draws
00:24:26
knowledge. He teaches us a lesson, knowing
00:24:29
what he's going to do ahead of time, like a parent would, where
00:24:32
with it. Like with the debating with God
00:24:34
of how many people can be saved out of Sodom and Gomorrah or
00:24:37
whatever. It looks like the numbers keep
00:24:38
going down because man looks merciful in that situation where
00:24:43
God was merciful to begin with, but he showed the punishment due
00:24:47
and just so the human would understand.
00:24:51
But it pulls the for a human, it shows the justness of the
00:24:56
punishment, and it pulls out of them the mercy and empathy for
00:25:00
their fellow man. That's right, when God allows
00:25:03
them to go through that process where God was already there from
00:25:06
the beginning. Yeah, that's exactly right.
00:25:08
So it looks like it's a barter situation.
00:25:11
It does. So what?
00:25:12
What? Kirgaard add that this is great
00:25:14
because that's precisely the kind of debate that has gone on
00:25:16
for with Christians is to say, look, there's texts like James
00:25:19
117 that seemed to suggest God doesn't change at all.
00:25:23
And then there's texts like repentance narratives and he
00:25:25
wants, he decides maybe I shouldn't have created a man in
00:25:27
the 1st place. And these texts seem to imply
00:25:29
change. What do we do right?
00:25:31
And it's. And then that's where theology
00:25:33
comes in. And we try to think through
00:25:34
those questions. But Kierkegaard has a way of
00:25:37
changing, reframing that debate. Because what he does is, he
00:25:42
says, in in a more existential mode that, like, you don't want
00:25:48
God to change because if he does, then everything is
00:25:52
changing in your life. And so that has a way of
00:25:55
pulling. Pulling our minds to a different
00:25:59
set of reasons for why we might want to say that God doesn't
00:26:02
change the the when, when, when I when you know we're just
00:26:07
talking about those repentance texts.
00:26:09
It gets so abstract so quickly that you end up sometimes
00:26:12
talking as if God is very far away from us and He's so unlike
00:26:17
us because he doesn't change at all and it gets really
00:26:20
philosophical really quickly and.
00:26:23
I'm OK with that. I I I think those arguments are
00:26:26
basically right. But nonetheless, the effect of
00:26:29
the doctrine ends up being God not changing is really hard to
00:26:32
understand, and it reminds us of how God doesn't like us at all
00:26:35
and it makes him seem very different and very far away.
00:26:39
And what Kier Guard does is he flips that around and says no,
00:26:42
no, because for existential reasons it's so wonderful that
00:26:46
there is a that there is something in the world universe
00:26:51
that doesn't change. Yes, there's at least one thing,
00:26:54
because everything else is afflicted by change, and there's
00:26:57
one thing that isn't. And that's where I'm going to.
00:26:59
That's where I'm going to ground my identity.
00:27:01
And that makes the doctrine of God's changelessness or
00:27:04
immutability a lot more warm and applicable and pastoral.
00:27:11
I try to argue also biblical in my book because I think the
00:27:14
Bible tends to speak of God's changelessness in this more
00:27:17
positive way than than we're used to.
00:27:21
You know what I was just thinking?
00:27:22
What's really interesting is the New Testament Speaking of Jesus
00:27:27
is that Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever.
00:27:30
Yet we know Jesus changed. He was an infant then.
00:27:35
He's 12 years old in a temple, and he's learning and growing in
00:27:38
wisdom and he became a man and his life progressed and changed.
00:27:45
But yet Scripture says he never changed, of course, referring
00:27:49
then to God, never changing. That's right.
00:27:53
Yes. I think we would want to say,
00:27:55
you know, Jesus doesn't change in terms of his divine nature,
00:28:00
but his human nature is able to grow, develop, learn and all
00:28:04
those. Yeah, his whole body changed in
00:28:06
Scripture. He became his whole body, became
00:28:08
a resurrected, glorified body. That's completely changed.
00:28:12
That's right. Yeah, but the the deity of
00:28:14
Christ is clearly stated in that sentence, because it's.
00:28:18
Does not change. It does not change.
00:28:20
It has never changed. Which is at some level a very
00:28:24
hard to understand thing to say. Yeah.
00:28:26
And that would be since you said that that falls into actually
00:28:31
we're getting into the part that I don't and I I have a surface
00:28:34
level understanding of Kierkegaard's.
00:28:36
So, but it goes into the places I didn't like about, and I can
00:28:41
tell you why. But Kierkegaard's a view of
00:28:45
Christianity actually is when he gets into calling things the
00:28:48
absurd, and I think that would fall under it.
00:28:50
Or the leap of faith. Yes.
00:28:53
So define those in terms of Kirkegaard.
00:28:55
Yeah, that's a, yeah, really interesting part of Kirkegaard.
00:29:00
So he would, he would in this maybe you would, you'd want to
00:29:03
push back on this and I'd actually understand why.
00:29:05
Like he'll talk about the Incarnation as being a paradox,
00:29:09
and that doctrines of faith being a you know, you have to,
00:29:13
at some point leap. Into faith.
00:29:17
And so he almost is implying there that there's not a
00:29:22
rational case for that leap. You just have to leap, and then
00:29:24
it makes sense after you've leaped.
00:29:26
So that makes him sound sort of like a irrational.
00:29:30
And the technical term is videoism, where you just say
00:29:34
just have faith and don't ask any kind of philosophical
00:29:36
questions. And there there's a whole lot of
00:29:40
debate about whether Kierkegaard really meant those things in
00:29:43
that way or. What he meant by some of those
00:29:45
comments, So I'll I'll kind of give both sides.
00:29:49
I mean, maybe he's just saying the incarnation is absurd and a
00:29:53
paradox that that I would have problems with that too.
00:29:58
On the other hand, he might be saying something like the
00:30:02
Incarnation cannot be really grasped and understood by human
00:30:06
reason, and in that way it is not.
00:30:11
A technical paradox in the sense that it's in the sense that it's
00:30:15
irrational, it's just beyond human comprehension.
00:30:19
Do you think it's using terms like absurd for almost like PR
00:30:25
marketing purposes as opposed to saying a mystery?
00:30:31
Yeah, perhaps. Yeah, that it's more.
00:30:35
Punchy language and it's more. It's definitely characteristic
00:30:40
of him in general. To overstate things a little
00:30:43
bit, it's also more modern language, right?
00:30:46
So you would definitely find like traditional, like the
00:30:49
church fathers and the reformers and the theologians of the past
00:30:53
would use the word mystery. Kierkegaard is in the 19th
00:30:57
century. He's much later than that, and
00:30:59
so he favors words like paradox and absurd and.
00:31:05
I think he means roughly the same thing, but but I can
00:31:09
understand the push back to that language.
00:31:12
Yeah. So in regards to his version, in
00:31:18
explaining a leap of faith, for instance, was Abraham's nearly
00:31:23
sacrifice of Isaac. Can you put in a nutshell how he
00:31:27
describes that as an example? As in terms of a leap of faith.
00:31:32
In terms of a leap of faith, or or why, yeah, why is he talking
00:31:36
about it? What was his point?
00:31:38
So his point is, among many things in that book, it it
00:31:45
might, it would be something like the the ethical stage that
00:31:48
we talked about, where you're living in terms of moral duty
00:31:50
and right and wrong. He thinks that Abraham and Isaac
00:31:55
in some ways throws a wrench into that system because on a
00:31:59
ethical understanding of the world, what Abraham is about to
00:32:03
do. Makes no sense.
00:32:06
He's going to murder his son because God commanded him to do
00:32:09
so. And so Kirgaard wants to point
00:32:12
out that the only way for Abraham to carry out that action
00:32:18
is to have a leap of faith, where he no longer is deciding
00:32:24
everything in terms of the ethical, but actually
00:32:27
understanding everything in terms of faith.
00:32:29
And so only from the perspective of faith can what Abraham?
00:32:33
Is about to do with Isaac make any sense And I I mean I think
00:32:36
that's not entirely wrong right you it if if somebody were to go
00:32:41
murder their own child you would say that is wrong right.
00:32:45
And then, but Abraham is is this case of somebody from the
00:32:49
perspective of faith. It's understood differently,
00:32:52
right? There's there's something
00:32:54
special going on in this case, and so it requires faith to make
00:32:57
sense of Abraham. And I think that's that's what
00:33:01
he has in mind. So you can only really you can't
00:33:03
make sense of Abraham from a natural non Christian, non faith
00:33:08
perspective. So here's my soapbox on that and
00:33:14
the since my son had to listen to me go off on in our
00:33:17
conversations who's a philosophy major us telling him he's saying
00:33:21
well you know faith can be absurd.
00:33:22
Even Kierkegaard uses and he talks about that example and
00:33:25
that you'd go kill your own son and God can disobey his own
00:33:29
rules. And I'm listening to all this
00:33:32
and it's okay if we disobey God's rules because he allows us
00:33:35
to. I'm thinking it just run me the
00:33:38
wrong way and since he had to hear my defense, you're going to
00:33:42
have to hear it. So I know you're not your guard.
00:33:44
Maybe your guard's going to roll over.
00:33:46
But my thoughts, it initially came every one of them was this
00:33:50
is that there's no place in Christianity for a leap of
00:33:53
faith. Leap of faiths are for false
00:33:55
religions and cults and everything where you just give
00:33:58
up your own mind, reason and faculties and believe something
00:34:01
that is absurd. And I talk to those people all
00:34:05
the time who've done that and have come to reason.
00:34:08
Scripture says come, let us reason together.
00:34:11
Those are God's words. He never has asked for a leap of
00:34:14
faith. As a matter of fact, how I see
00:34:16
faith that I can find in Scripture is we're given a
00:34:19
portion of faith like we're given a little, just enough to
00:34:24
see what looks like absurd to everybody else.
00:34:27
But we are able to see somehow the spiritual reality that
00:34:31
doesn't take a leap. We're given that faith.
00:34:35
Then a second faith I see is if needed in whatever crisis,
00:34:39
there's a gift of faith out there somewhere, still not a
00:34:42
leap. And then as a believer there are
00:34:44
steps of faith. But even then, Hebrews defines
00:34:49
faith as believing in things you don't based on evidence.
00:34:54
Like faith is a substance of things hoped for, evidence of
00:34:57
things not seen. Well, there's evidence.
00:34:58
So what is the evidence? It's not a leap.
00:35:00
There's some kind of evidence. Yeah.
00:35:03
Hebrews itself talks about that Abraham story and says Abraham,
00:35:08
you know, believed, he reasoned. It actually says he reasoned he
00:35:17
didn't leave, he thought about it and he's thinking through all
00:35:19
of those things like, this seems like murder, this is against
00:35:22
Jewish law, this is whatever. But then if he's reasoning,
00:35:26
Jewish law also says that you can't murder you.
00:35:32
God never changes. So immutability comes in.
00:35:34
I think my thing is you can't teach immutability and then say
00:35:40
there's a leap of faith because the immutability is that God
00:35:42
never changes. He doesn't change his law, he
00:35:45
doesn't go against his law and or he'd be changing.
00:35:52
So the evidence is he reasoned that God could raise the dead.
00:35:59
That's what Hebrew says. Abraham reasoned.
00:36:02
God isn't calling me to murder him.
00:36:05
He must be able to have this guy live on.
00:36:08
That's the evidence that we can't see.
00:36:11
That's a step of faith. It's not a leap of faith, and
00:36:15
it's only faith. It's only faith in the
00:36:17
immutability of God. So based on the reason, evidence
00:36:21
of God's character, I will go through with this.
00:36:27
Otherwise, he's a radical, giving in to a sacrificial cult
00:36:31
demand by an unknown spirit that could be anybody.
00:36:34
That's right. So he does it and turns out he
00:36:38
doesn't have to do it. And Angel tells him then you
00:36:41
Fast forward to the New Testament where the same thing
00:36:45
and you already know this. But this is my soapbox.
00:36:48
Right before that story a blood covenant was made where God
00:36:54
actually made a covenant. And in those guys minds in that
00:36:57
day is that person keeps his promises or he must be killed
00:37:01
and die like my life is that up? So God has to not exist if he
00:37:06
breaks his own law. And his command that he promised
00:37:10
was I'm going to make you a father of many nations, You know
00:37:15
through your seed all the world will be blessed.
00:37:18
So that was part of his reasoning.
00:37:20
God made a covenant with me. He's immutable.
00:37:22
It cannot go back. This will not end in my son's
00:37:25
death, even though I don't get it and it didn't.
00:37:28
Then you Fast forward to the New Testament.
00:37:31
God actually sacrifices his son for the good of all mankind.
00:37:37
I think is the old covenant and the new covenant, right?
00:37:41
Is that since that covenant partner in the Old Testament?
00:37:44
Abraham said yes, and I was willing to do it.
00:37:47
Now. God's bound by covenant law to
00:37:50
sacrifice his own son, but he didn't send an Angel to stop it.
00:37:55
Jesus says, don't you know I could have angels come and stop
00:37:58
this, but this time that's not happening.
00:38:00
It's the same story. And when that sacrifice
00:38:06
happened, we're given a portion of faith to believe that.
00:38:13
And in my mind, as smart as Kirigar is, and I appreciate a
00:38:18
lot of his thoughts on faith and Christianity, I think he really
00:38:23
missed it there. I think he's immutability and a
00:38:26
leap of faith are not compatible.
00:38:30
And that story is out of context.
00:38:32
And what I don't like, which is my soapbox, is even people like
00:38:35
my son or philosophy experts that if that's the part of the
00:38:40
story you learn Christianity sounds like a leap of irrational
00:38:45
faith. And I just told him on the phone
00:38:47
last night, I'm the least person to ever want to spend my life
00:38:52
with something I don't think is true or I'm just guessing.
00:38:56
I don't like religion. I don't like false teachers.
00:38:59
I don't like people telling me what to do or what to believe.
00:39:04
But I've at some point in my life been given that measure of
00:39:07
faith to see something. Oh yeah, this is the end.
00:39:12
That scripture also says that once you see it and receive it,
00:39:18
that your your spirit is given confirmation by God's spirit
00:39:24
that this is true. You don't live in a perpetual
00:39:29
state of I hope this is true and I'm living on a leap.
00:39:33
Yes, it's foolishness to outside people, but the people who've
00:39:37
experienced it, you have a knowing of 100% certainty, not
00:39:43
of all the doctrines and all what scripture says to
00:39:45
understand it. Those are debatable.
00:39:48
But that the essence of Christianity is true is is not a
00:39:53
question. And if it is a question in
00:39:55
somebody's mind, they need to then examine themselves to make
00:39:59
sure that their election and calling is sure.
00:40:02
That's right. Well that's that's all well
00:40:04
said. I think that it's so debated
00:40:08
what your guard means by some of those terms.
00:40:10
But I think that you might find him as more of an ally than
00:40:14
maybe he it seems or how it's presented sometimes because some
00:40:19
of that he's going to say the same thing basically, right.
00:40:23
But but but there's a tension there because you you know you
00:40:27
did, you did say you know for instance it's foolishness to the
00:40:31
outside. And so and I think that's what
00:40:34
Keir Gard is trying to capture is that in some ways if you, if
00:40:37
you want to think about it from a secular perspective, there is
00:40:42
elements of faith that you can't just reason your way to it all
00:40:48
the way. Yes, but.
00:40:49
But once you're there, and this is where I think you're right
00:40:52
and I think your guard basically agrees, once you are there, it's
00:40:56
not a perpetual leap. It's not a continual, is there,
00:41:00
you know, no reason for this And irrational nonsense all the way
00:41:03
down that might be called like crazy sort of internal stuff.
00:41:07
None of it makes any sense. But we don't care.
00:41:10
That doesn't make sense. I think he thinks that once you
00:41:13
do go there, you then make sense of everything in hindsight.
00:41:17
So that. And that's what Abraham does,
00:41:18
right? Because Abraham's trusting
00:41:21
Hebrews tells us in God's promise that if he needs to
00:41:24
raise Isaac from the dead, he will.
00:41:26
OK, that is not something available to just human reason.
00:41:32
I mean, yeah, the. Christian faith is God because
00:41:35
God is the God of the resurrection.
00:41:37
And so you do know that it's true and that Abraham is
00:41:41
ultimately placing his his promise and trust in something
00:41:44
true and real but from a from the outside as you say that
00:41:49
looks like foolishness and and so I I mean Keir Gard is saying
00:41:55
some really like he's he's he's on the very edge there.
00:41:59
He's saying some you know controversial things on purpose.
00:42:02
But going all the way back to the very beginning of this, you
00:42:04
know you you pointed out he's he's in the context of
00:42:08
Christendom, the Lutheran state church is everything and and he
00:42:12
is worried that the people of his generation are just
00:42:16
Christians by default. And so it's the opposite of our
00:42:20
moment, right because we're you're we're in a moment where
00:42:22
you want to point out like Christian faith is not
00:42:24
irrational. Christian faith is not
00:42:25
ridiculous. It there, there isn't this leap.
00:42:29
It's not into nonsense. But in his day he thinks it's
00:42:33
Chris and them. So everybody's Christian in
00:42:36
Denmark, everybody's Lutheran specifically and so he's trying
00:42:40
to prod his generation that he's among and say are you have you
00:42:46
really like you need to take a leap.
00:42:48
It's it's intentionally kind of radical language to say you need
00:42:51
to get beyond just the cultural moment you're in and take a jump
00:42:55
and make make sense of the world around you within totally new
00:42:59
categories and and stop doing it just according to the ethical
00:43:04
Denmark way of living life. But let's start to live
00:43:06
Christianly. So that's what he's trying to
00:43:08
do. So you know, we can at least
00:43:10
appreciate that and then recognize where the language
00:43:14
gets distorted and misused if it's meant to say that Christian
00:43:18
faith internally is irrational, I don't think he thinks that.
00:43:22
I think he thinks that it is irrational from perhaps the
00:43:29
outside. Yeah, what he's talking about on
00:43:33
a larger cultural scale, which goes on today all over the
00:43:37
place, I see as what we call like PK kids syndrome is whether
00:43:42
you're a preacher's kid or meaning doesn't have to be a
00:43:46
preacher's kid. But if you're a second
00:43:48
generation from someone who found true faith, doesn't mean
00:43:51
you have faith. So you're raised in this
00:43:53
environment, You're raised up the to do's, you memorize Bible
00:43:56
verses, you know how to go to. How to behave in church and you
00:44:00
know others. And then by the time you're 18,
00:44:02
or what 19, you take your first philosophy class and you're
00:44:05
introduced to whatever and your atheist professor tells you that
00:44:08
you're a bunch of dumb dumbs because you're just believing
00:44:10
what somebody else ingrained in you.
00:44:13
Then you lose your faith and you never had it in the 1st place.
00:44:15
That's right. That's pretty much what he's
00:44:17
talking about culturally. And we still have.
00:44:22
It is. You live in a Christian country.
00:44:24
You're Christian you. You're in a Christian community
00:44:27
or a church, and you're Christian, as opposed to
00:44:29
Christianity, is a personal experience in a reconnection
00:44:35
with God. That doesn't happen on a
00:44:36
corporate level. The corporate level are a bunch
00:44:39
of those individuals that come together at times to celebrate
00:44:43
their personal relationship exactly right.
00:44:46
So if you could textualize Kirkyard there, the the language
00:44:49
of leap, of faith and paradox and absurd and all that, if you
00:44:53
realize that what he's trying to do is awaken the Christians of
00:44:57
his own generation and say that, that actually makes more sense,
00:45:02
right? If you've got this complacent,
00:45:04
nonreflective Christian who's just adopted it culturally, you
00:45:07
get why you might want to go to that person and say, Abraham's
00:45:10
about to sacrifice his son. Are you sure that makes any
00:45:13
sense at all? And it takes faith to say, well,
00:45:17
of course it does because God is the God of the resurrection.
00:45:20
And if he had to bring Isaac back from the dead, he would.
00:45:23
He's he's immutable. He's faithful to his promises.
00:45:26
That is what you want them to conclude.
00:45:29
But if they're in just sort of cultural Christianity they they
00:45:34
need that like antagonizing from Kierkegaard to kind of question
00:45:40
like Are you sure you have made this Are you sure faith is real
00:45:43
for you Are you sure you're thinking about it or have you
00:45:45
just, you know so it's antagonistic language and and I
00:45:50
think it had a kind of missionary goal in mind and we
00:45:53
wouldn't want to press it as far as perhaps your concern is where
00:45:58
it becomes irrational nonsense cult like I don't think he would
00:46:01
be on board with that at all. Yeah, that's good.
00:46:06
Before we wrap up here, you're of.
00:46:09
Academic. You're a very reasonable human
00:46:11
being. What leaves has led you at a
00:46:15
point in your life to believe what some would say as well?
00:46:22
A Christian? An unreasonable, possibly absurd
00:46:25
belief system as opposed to those academics, philosophy
00:46:31
experts that would go in a different direction.
00:46:35
Oh man, that's such a good question.
00:46:37
I don't know that I can do it any justice.
00:46:41
I mean I think that because I, I, I it's if you're talking
00:46:47
about me personally you know I am a bit I am more than just
00:46:49
cure regard and so there's there's more than just cure
00:46:53
guardian reasons that I have for for faith.
00:46:56
I think there's a whole host of rational arguments for the
00:46:59
existence of God. I think the question why is
00:47:03
there anything as opposed to nothing at all is a really
00:47:06
haunting one. If if you're thinking about it
00:47:09
from an atheistic perspective, it's just how is there anything?
00:47:13
And they're just it it. There's a lot of philosophical
00:47:17
arguments for their there must be a necessary being, there must
00:47:20
be something that's the cause of all things behind all of this.
00:47:24
Those are very strong arguments for their being a God and and
00:47:31
and then Kierkegaard has always taken me a bit further to say
00:47:33
that not only are there good philosophical arguments, but at
00:47:37
the end of the day there's kind of two options.
00:47:38
Which is a very despairing kind of existentialism where if you
00:47:43
think about existence from a secular, atheistic perspective,
00:47:47
there's really nothing but hopelessness and despair at the
00:47:50
end of that. Because death is the end of the
00:47:52
story and so nothing you really do matters and that it's that or
00:47:59
faith where everything now is full of meaning and purpose and
00:48:05
it feels like to me that aligns with our experience and the way
00:48:10
the world actually works. And so, you know, those are,
00:48:14
those are not the only arguments out there.
00:48:18
But if you read Kierkegaard and existentialist kind of things, I
00:48:21
think it makes a kind of argument for one, you know, I
00:48:26
think we all crave meaning. We all think that we're not just
00:48:29
born to live absurd nonsense lives that have no purpose.
00:48:33
And at the end of the day, that's kind of a sign that God
00:48:37
made us. You know, as I love the
00:48:39
beginning of the confessions where where Augusten says, you
00:48:42
know, our our hearts are restless until they find rest in
00:48:45
in you. And that is that's the that's
00:48:49
that experience is what I see everywhere.
00:48:52
There's restless hearts trying to find God, and until they do,
00:48:56
they are and an existential despair and questioning and
00:48:59
anxiety. And when they do, they find rest
00:49:02
and there's an argument in there for their being God and they're
00:49:07
being the gospel at the end of the day.
00:49:09
That makes sense of all of it. So that's a bit rambling, but
00:49:12
that's that's where my is that these days.
00:49:15
Yeah, I think one evidence that you're in stage 3 of
00:49:19
Kierkegaard's Stages of Human, whatever, on their path, the
00:49:23
contentment is that. You have Craig as your name on
00:49:28
the screen. Instead of trying to find
00:49:31
meeting by adding all of your accolades, there's an essence
00:49:34
there that you're content with where you're at as a human and
00:49:38
I, and that only comes and what Kirkegaard would say.
00:49:40
Stage 3. I think I appreciate that.
00:49:43
Yeah. I appreciate you.
00:49:44
Thank you so much. Well, thank you Kev for having
00:49:45
me on the show. Glad to get a chance to talk
00:49:47
with you about Kiergaard. Outlaws, he said.
00:49:51
Come follow me. People from all walks alive
00:49:55
since have been becoming outlaws.