“Expelled” and Intelligent Design: Thanks for the Help!

We weren’t able to go to “Expelled”’s preview last night, but if I do get to see it soon (we usually watch movies at home, since some people’s behaviour in theatres nowadays prompts me to unChristian thoughts) I’ll likely record a few thoughts here.

I read or viewed pretty much everything posted in comments after my previous post. Thanks so much, friends, for those references! The ones I found personally most illuminating were these:

Review of “Expelled”: The detailed article by Prof. Jeffrey Schloss of Westmont College

Discussion of Intelligent Design: The generally excellent “map” of Prof. Loren Haarsma of Calvin College

Dialogue about both subjects: The exchange between Peter Chattaway, a Canadian film reviewer, and Kevin Miller, co-screenwriter of “Expelled,” which is extraordinarily impressive for both its intellectual quality and courtesy.

Some of the other links posted are to sites more to one extreme or the other, such as the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) on the one side and Answers in Genesis on the other–with neither of which I resonate, although I’m glad to read them. But there’s lots of good stuff between those two posted here (and, of course, elsewhere), and I’ve been grateful to read that especially.

Thanks again for your help, friends!

“Expelled” and Intelligent Design: Help, Please

I’ve been given comp tix to see “Expelled” in a couple of days, just before it opens here in Canada. How can I not? Several of the Big Credits guys (one of the producers, one of the screenwriters, and the postproduction supervisor) are Regent College graduates whom I have taught and whom I both like and respect.

For a discussion that is supposed to be confined to facts and rationality, there sure has been an awful lot of confusion, accusation, and fabrication surrounding this movie and the Intelligent Design movement it represents. That’s hardly surprising, I suppose, since the theory of evolution has been linked with all kinds of other concerns in western culture not long after the first edition of The Origin of Species was published in 1859, from social engineering to sexual mores, from eugenics to freedom of speech, from religious orthodoxy to, well, scientific orthodoxy.

So I’m going to ask you for help. What’s the best stuff you’ve read, online or otherwise, on “Expelled: The Movie” or on the Intelligent Design movement it represents? Don’t upload whole bibliographies, please! But give us one or two (or three) of the most helpful links or references. And these can be critical items, too: I want to read the finest writing I can find on the subject.

I’ve Gotta Be Me

Here are some people I admire: the apostle Paul, Thomas Aquinas, Francis Xavier, John Calvin, J. S. Bach, Jonathan Edwards, John and Charles Wesley, Abraham Kuyper, Mary Slessor, Winston Churchill, C. S. Lewis, Billy Graham, Mother Teresa, Wayne Gretzky, and Wynton Marsalis. It’s always pleasant to stand back and gaze upon their awesome excellence of talent, or spirit, or goodness, or whatever.

Here are some people, however, I envy: Martin Marty, Mark Noll, Nicholas Wolterstorff, David Martin, Miroslav Volf, Lauren Winner.

The difference in the two lists?

Well, there are two differences. First, the people in the second list are all contemporaries who do something similar to what I do for a living, namely, academic work in the humanities. (That’s why you may not recognize all, or even any, of the names. Philosophers, historians, sociologists, and theologians are rarely household words!) The second point is that they all have enjoyed much greater success at some aspect or another of our common profession.

Ouch. It hurts to admit it, but it hurts more to live under it. How can I possibly publish as much as Marty? Or read as much as Noll? Or think as deeply as Wolterstorff? Or think as widely as Martin? And so on, and so on.

“Zeitgeist the Movie”: The New “Chariots of the Gods”

One of the greatest thrills of my boyhood was happening to turn on the TV one day to find that a major corporation was about to present a special program. It was so special, in fact, that the sponsor (Shell Canada—you don’t get bigger than that) would do all the advertising itself and would restrict its own commercials to a minimum.

What show deserved such extraordinary treatment? The documentary version of Erich von Däniken’s bestseller, Chariots of the Gods.

So while the rest of my family was busy in their quotidian duties someplace else in the house, I watched the drama of the ages unfold. The earth had been visited by aliens numerous times since prehistory, and von Däniken’s team had photographed the evidence from cave wall portraits in France to gigantic landscape markings in Peru. As a science fiction fan, I was enthralled. This wasn’t just fantasy, this was history! This was archaeology! This was Truth!

Alas, it turned out that there were other, more plausible and less exciting explanations for most or all of the data presented on that show, some of which was later exposed as misrepresented in the first place. “Chariots of the Gods” soon faded from serious attention.

Now we have the internet movie “Zeitgeist,” and for this generation it could be just as thrilling, and just as dubious, as “Chariots of the Gods”—or, for that matter, as The Da Vinci Code, whose argument it closely parallels in some chief respects.

The Shack 4: Some Celebrations

Having defended the genre of The Shack, and having offered some theological demurrals, let’s conclude with some delight in the good things Brother Young brings us in this book.

First, The Shack brings us pictures of the triune God that seem to me to convey a great deal of Biblical truth. Like any picture, they are partial. But they convey God’s love, God’s goodness, God’s patience, God’s forgiveness, God’s seriousness, God’s pragmatism, God’s industry, God’s understanding, God’s humour, and God’s creativity, among other divine virtues. The Shack also helps us see those qualities come out in the three members of the Trinity.

Now, that’s a lot to convey (!), and to do so in good proportion and combination is a remarkable achievement and a significant gift.

(Some critics fret that Brother Young has broken the commandment against graven images—which would be true if he had, in fact, produced a graven image and if he had done so as an ancient Israelite giving in to the lure of idolatry. Since he didn’t, and he didn’t, then we can put the stones down and let him be on his way. The Bible itself gives us verbal descriptions of God—from the visions of a number of Old Testament prophets to the Revelation given to John. Brother Young is simply following their lead.)

The Shack 3: Theological Concerns (Part 2)

Let’s pick up where we left off, so . . .

Fourth, The Shack skims briefly over the surface of theology of religions, raising the question particularly of whether God reveals himself to and saves people of other religions. I am glad for Brother Young’s concern to expand our horizons. I am strongly inclined myself to a theological conviction that God’s salvation is extended beyond the range of those who have heard the Gospel, understood it, and accepted it as true. I have blogged about that here.

The Shack, however, deals with this complex issue much too briefly, and unclearly, and thus again distracts more than it edifies. It’s particularly not clear as to just how we are supposed to understand the basis of salvation, the nature of God’s revelation in or through other religions, what it means for people to respond properly to God, what role the religions actually play in all this, and the like.

Furthermore, we encounter again another variety of anti-institutionalism. In The Shack, Jesus says he has no interest in making people Christians. But this claim seems odd, given what Jesus said in The Great Commission about making disciples of his, which is about as basic a definition of “Christian” as there is. This question needs either more treatment or less. Good advice for any writer: either set out adequately what you think, or just don’t raise the question at all.

The Shack 2: Some Theological Concerns (Part 1)

The Shack dives into the deep end of the religious pool, swimming around in the Biggest Questions: the divine nature, the Trinity, the incarnation, the atonement, providence, the problem of evil, eschatology, revelation, and more. That’s rather a lot to discuss in a novel of less than 250 pages. It’s a lot to discuss in Barth’s Church Dogmatics!

So perhaps it is in order to suggest that a few subjects could have been left out of consideration, rather than briefly discussed in such a way that might distract or even put off a reader otherwise inclined to enjoy and profit from The Shack. And that’s the nature of my criticisms: These ideas I see to be not crucial to the good work done by The Shack, and I hope that in a subsequent edition Brother Young will either rework or omit these problematic spots.

Today I’ll set out three of these concerns, and follow up with a few more in my next post.

The Shack 1: In Defense of Ideological Fiction

Regent College recently sponsored an evening with the author of the phenomenal bestseller The Shack. William Paul Young talked about the genesis of the book, and Regent invited three people to respond to the book: Prof. Jonathan Wilson of Carey Theological Centre; Ms. Maudine Fee; and your servant. Some have asked for my comments to be made more widely available, particularly as The Shack has come in for some extreme criticism. I’ll offer my comments, then, in four posts.

* * * * * * *

“If you want to preach,” the eminent novelist Margaret Atwood growls, “write a sermon.” Atwood speaks for many, many others as she rules out of court the project of writing fiction in order to convince one’s readers of one’s ideas on this or that subject. Art is not propaganda. Art exists for its own sake, and to press art into the service of proselytizing is to prostitute it.

If writing a novel to make certain theological and spiritual points is illegitimate, then we don’t have to discuss The Shack. William P. Young has written such a novel; he shouldn’t have; don’t buy it or read it; the end.

My response to The Shack instead is in three parts. In this first part, I want to defend what he has done by defending what I will call ideologically intentional fiction, or “ideological fiction” for short. In the second part, I want to register several theological concerns, most of which are not crucial to the novel’s own purposes, although they are important in themselves, and one of which is key. And in the third, I want to celebrate what William P. Young has done as a genuine service to the church and to many who are currently disaffected from the Christian faith. Thus: a defense, a demurral, and a delighting.