The New Quaker eLetter

ISSN 1523-4924—Vol. 2, No. 1

"ANTICIPATION"

As we go quietly into this new century with the inertia of our culture's repose, we need to do so nevertheless with a strong vigilance. If millennial madness should not overcome us, then neither should complacency. Admittedly, at the turn of this new and special year, planes did not fall from the skies, the end did not happen, and people emerged from shelters with sighs of relief, lowered guns, and stores of unused groceries. But Jesus has called us to be watchful after another fashion:

'"Be dressed ready for service and keep your lamps burning, like men waiting for their master to return from a wedding banquet, so that when he comes and knocks they can immediately open the door for him."' [Luke 12:35-36]

At the conclusion of the parable, he cautions: '"You also must be ready, because the son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him."' [Luke 12:40]

There are comparable and parallel statements of this parable in Matthew 25:1-13, in Mark 13:33-37, and also in Matthew 24:43-51. Each ends in reference to judgment. After Jesus had delivered the parable, however, Peter asked him: '"Lord, are you telling this parable to us, or to everyone?"' [Luke 12:41] At first, Jesus appears to give him a rhetorical answer: '"Who then is the faithful and wise manager, whom the master puts in charge of his servants to give them their food allowance at the proper time? It would be good for that servant whom the master finds doing so when he returns"' [Luke 12:42-43]. Finally Jesus answers Peter's question in this elliptical way:

'"From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked."' [Luke 12:48]

Among the several motifs in Christ's parables, the servant/master relationship is used to convey some of his strongest messages. The servant is dependent upon the master for food, shelter, and economic needs. In return, the master expects obedience and service. Should the servant expect a reward from his master for his obedience or service? In Luke 17:7-10, Jesus answers that question in the following parable about duty:

'"Suppose one of you had a servant plowing or looking after the sheep. Would he say to the servant when he comes in from the field, 'Come along now and sit down to eat'? Would he not rather say, 'Prepare my supper, get yourself ready and wait on me while I eat and drink; after that you may eat and drink'? Would he thank the servant because he did what he was told to do? So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, 'We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.'"' [Luke 17:7-10]

In this servant/master parable, Jesus teaches that we can never put God in our debt. The orthodox Jews of the period believed that one's deeds before God could be written into a kind of balance-sheet form of accountancy, and that there was a minimum of obligations: If you do at least the bare minimum, you are still in the black on the balance sheet. We know that God's gift of eternal fellowship cannot be purchased, so the number of our deeds will never serve that purpose. Jesus also teaches us here that mere duty is insufficient. As our Master, God demands our very best from us. The master's satisfaction at his servant's duty—that is the whole of the reward. But those to whom much responsibility is given much will likewise be demanded.

At a later point in his relationship with his disciples, Jesus warmly took them aside to say that he would no longer look upon them as servants. A servant '"does not know his master's business,"' he said. '"Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you"' [John 15:15]. Jesus had not told his friends everything, though, for he left so that the Holy Spirit could come to teach us and to guide us "into all truth" [John 16:13; see John 16:7]. In promising the Holy Spirit, Jesus also put us all on notice that there will be added responsibilities, for those to whom much is given, much will likewise be demanded.

As Quaker Christians, as Friends, we ought to know our responsibilities. Since we do not know the time of Christ's return, we must be ever vigilant. There are no set hours for the Christian life.

—Merle Harton, Jr., The New Quaker

All biblical references are NIV unless otherwise noted.

BOOK for the month:

Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science and Theology.  By William A. Dembski. InterVarsity Press, 1999. ISBN 0-8308-1581-3.

A woman in China receives a letter in the mail. After opening it, she simply stares, bewildered and unknowing, at the combination of characters on the page. She asks her friend, an American, to look at it. When the American looks at the page, she recoils in horror. "This is a letter from abroad!" she cries. "It says that your son is dead!"

What to one person was a mere concatenation of letters on a page was to another a message of great personal importance. Only one person was able to see the characters on the page as signs, as indicators of information, pointing to something beyond themselves. The first person saw only writing on a page. It is not merely the conveyance of information here that ought to capture our attention, but also the second woman's presumption and conviction that the letter was from another intelligent being.

Intelligence, information, signs—these are all elements of the complex issue surrounding design as a concept in common sense, in science, and in theology. Common sense has never had a problem with these things at all. Theologians have been inclined to accept some form of the design argument, arguing from features of the natural world to their author. Even Paul used a form of it, telling us in Romans that God is known to anyone who would simply look to the natural world:

For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. [Romans 1:20]

Where design has been problematic is in efforts to keep it within an explanatory science. Historically that failed and along with it went a world view that could accommodate an interested creator, leaving us instead with a naturalistic science that wants to explain the world's events using some genuinely meager tools—natural laws, chance, and particulate stuff. If we tend to yawn at this kind of positivism as it has appeared in the math-driven sciences, we are otherwise horrified when evolutionary biologists, for example, try stuffing our more personal perceptions into Darwinism. Other sciences (especially forensic science, paleontology, history), which look backward and not forward, seem genuinely unable to function properly with just these assumptions.

In biology, where the Darwinian methodological battle is still being fought, there is a move now to reintroduce design as a bona fide scientific explanation. Dembski, a leader in this renewal movement, has argued for "intelligent design" as a robust program within scientific research and continues that argument in a more accessible presentation in this book.

Dembski's book is an important document. It looks thoughtfully at the assumptions of modern scientific method and argues vigorously for the uselessness of naturalism, whether as a methodological or a metaphysical presupposition. The result is that supervenience—the claim that a reduction to natural causes exists in principle—becomes an empty promissory note, a wind egg, a Cracker-Jacks badge, a dribble cup.... Under scrutiny, Darwinism, too, becomes a genuinely failed research program, not a well-supported scientific theory, severely lacking in explanatory power.

Deeply appreciative of the 18th-century philosopher of common sense, Thomas Reid, Dembski accepts that design—like intelligence—is empirically detectable in nature. Commonsensically, we do this all of the time: whenever we attribute an event to human agency, anytime we admire instances of human wisdom. For Dembski, this is after all how intelligent design is connected with the logic of signs and why detecting design in the universe can turn out to follow a well-defined methodology within a scientific theory of information.

This is not "scientific creationism," which is actually at a distance from Dembski's intelligent design. Intelligent design is the systematic study of intelligent causes and the effects they leave behind. Naturalism, which pervades our academic discourse, leaves no room for a designing intelligence that does not conform to natural laws. On the contrary, argues Dembski, design can be effectively used in the explanatory sciences. For Dembski, the design theorist is actually a reverse engineer: Given that some objects are designed, the theory asks how they were produced, or could have been produced.

Dembski, a Christian, brings this all together into a lively, palpable, contemporary debate on scientific methodology, metaphysics, and the poverty of a naturalistic world view. He weaves these themes together into a well-written, popularly presented platform for intellectual reform. It is refreshing to read this tightly reasoned work by a Christian philosopher writing in the analytical tradition.

Alas! One would really like it to be the last word. Dembski wants us to accept, first, that design is a perfectly acceptable contrivance within the explanatory sciences; second, that design is also a splendid bridge between these sciences and our best theological sentiments. As we see him commence his program, though, we immediately catch him taking the "design" of common sense, which both scientist and theologian can understand, and turning it into a technical term within a scientific method, leaving no one with any assurance that the theologian can also use the term intelligibly. Here is a rule of bridge-building: If two bridge builders each start at opposite ends of a chasm and plan to connect the two structures, each should make sure to have an appointment with the other to meet somewhere in the middle.

This is an ambitious book, a brilliant book, packed with awesome insights. Christians who are not afraid of rigorous debate need to read it. - MCH

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Copyright © 2000 by Merle Harton, Jr.