The Value of Human Life (part 3)

[For sections 1-5 in this essay, read the previous two posts in December 2011.]

6.      Does the body have value when nobody’s home?

From the foregoing considerations, the answer obviously is yes. The bodies of those who have died should be treated with respect and even a kind of reverence because at the shout of Christ (John 5:25-29) they shall be raised either to incorruptible glory or to inconceivable horror.

We see the importance of the body in God’s condemnation of the pagan nation Moab “Because he burned the bones of the king of Edom to lime” (Amos 2:1). This is not a blanket condemnation of cremation. Enemy soldiers disinterred the king’s bones and burned them to lime, which could then be used for plaster. Their offense was desecrating the body of the dead king.

Greek and Roman philosophy tended to disregard the body as the prison house of the soul, and cremation was common, especially among the Roman nobility. In this context, the church insisted on the burial of the dead as a testimony to the importance of the body and its future resurrection. However, the Bible does not forbid cremation, and the disintegration of the body by fire or by natural decomposition is no hindrance to the resurrection. The body is like a seed which must die in order to grow into a mature plant (1 Corinthians 15:35-43). If cremation is viewed as a means of disposing of an unwanted corpse, it may be an act of desecration (except perhaps during a plague or when large numbers of decomposing bodies threaten public health). Normally, however, people treat the cremated remains of their relatives with loving care. In such cases there is no Scriptural objection to cremation.

If a dead body is to be treated with respect, certainly the body of a comatose patient should receive considerate care. In my view, that care should continue as long as life endures, but the life of the body need not be maintained indefinitely when the brain functions necessary for consciousness have ceased and cannot be restored.   

When Does Human Life Have Value to God (2)

(For part 1 of this essay, go to the blog below this one. I have a couple of odds and ends to add to the subject--perhaps this next week.)

3.      When do human beings bear the image of God?

Our two previous questions naturally focused on the origin of our individual souls and our personhood. I think it is helpful to view the image of God from a Christ-centered perspective because Christ is the original image of God (2 Corinthians 4:4; Colossians 1:15). Human beings are images of God only in a secondary sense (1 Corinthians 11:7). More frequently, human beings are said to be in the image of God or according to the image of God. So, perhaps it is best to call us God’s image bearers rather than God’s images. At any rate, we bear the image of God as we are “conformed to the image of His Son” (Romans 8:29). We are images of the Image. When is that true of us?

A.     God’s children will bear God’s image fully and finally at the resurrection.

In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul wraps up his lengthy discussion of Christ’s resurrection and ours by saying,

The first man is from the earth, earthy; the second man is from heaven. ⁴⁸ As is the earthy, so also are those who are earthy; and as is the heavenly, so also are those who are heavenly. ⁴⁹ And just as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly (vv. 47-49).

Similarly, the apostle John says,

Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be. We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is (1 John 3:2).

This full and final imaging is what God was aiming at when He created Adam and Eve.

B.     Adam and Eve bore God’s image partially, yet truly at creation.

Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” ²⁷ God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them (Genesis 1:26-27).

When God made our first parents, He pronounced them, along with the rest of creation very good (v. 31). They were very good, but not finished because they did not bear the image of God as completely as redeemed men and women will.

C.      Human beings now bear God’s image brokenly and progressively.

After the flood, God said to Noah, “Whoever sheds man's blood, by man his blood shall be shed, for in the image of God He made man” (Genesis 9:6). This would make no sense if the image of God had been completely lost at the fall.

The likeness to God, which was damaged at the fall, is being progressively renewed in those who have become God’s children through faith in Jesus Christ.

Do not lie to one another, since you laid aside the old self with its evil practices, ¹⁰ and have put on the new self who is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the One who created him (Colossians 3:9-10).

But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit (2 Corinthians 3:18).

So all human beings bear God’s image in some measure; the image is being renewed (perhaps think of polishing a silver or brass metal mirror) by the work of the Holy Spirit in God’s born-again children.

4.      What aspects of our humanity does the image of God encompass?

If we had confined our meditation on the image of God to creation and to our progressive renewal by the Spirit, we might have concluded that our likeness to God only included the spiritual aspect of our humanity. After all, the invisible God does not have a body. Starting with Christ and the resurrection, however, leads us to a different conclusion. Not only our souls, but also our bodies will conformed to the image of Christ.

For our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ; ²¹ who will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory, by the exertion of the power that He has even to subject all things to Himself (Philippians 3:20-21).

On the one hand, Scripture teaches that the Son of God took on flesh and blood so that He could die for people who have bodies (Hebrews 2:14-16). On the other hand, it is equally true that God made human beings with the kind of bodies we have because the Son of God was going to take on that kind of body. The bodies God gave us are the right sort of thing to be transformed and glorified. These bodies, not some other kind, are fit to reflect the image of God, who is Jesus Christ.

You may still ask, “Well, what is the image of God?” The answer is…. I don’t know. But being image bearers enables us to know and love God, to know and love people, to create new things, to rule over the animal kingdom and ultimately to reflect the glory of God.

Being in the image of God does not mean that we do all of those things all the time or even that we do them very well. It means that we have the capacity to develop those characteristics, but their development is always imperfect and defective in this life. I have written that we have the capacity to develop these characteristics, but it would be truer to say that God is developing them. We are His workmanship.

From the womb to the tomb, God is at work fashioning His people into unique image bearers. The infant who dies before it breathes will gleam in glory with a different hue than the aged martyr or the forty-five year old retarded believer who stumbles and falls beneath the wheels of a truck. Yet all will shine. Since His children are God’s work, it is God’s prerogative to say when the earthly part of His fashioning is complete.

From this perspective, an elect Down’s syndrome infant and a believing, end-stage Alzheimer’s patient are moving toward conformity to Christ; a strong, attractive, intelligent hater of God is not.

5.      When does human life have value to God?

God values the lives of His children, from conception to the grave and beyond into glory because He is looking forward to completing glorious images of His eternal Image. If we ask when the individual human being has a soul, and only grant value when that is the case, we are left without adequate moral guidance. At the beginning and at the end of life there are situations when we are not sure. If instead we look at God’s goal for human life and recognize that God is working toward that end, then every stage of life has value to God.

God also values the lives of those who reject Him because by their creation in His image they still reflect something of His power, wisdom and love. Therefore, they also must be objects of our compassion and care, just as they are for God (Matthew 5:43-48).

When the lost are raised for the final judgment, their bodies will, no doubt reflect what their souls have become. The God whom they have rejected will strip away all remaining vestiges of His image from their bodies and souls. Only then, will they be utterly cast off and thrown into the garbage pit of the universe, “where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched” (Luke 9:48).

When Does Human Life Have Value to God?

I have been teaching an adult Sunday School class on ethics, so I have been reading and reflecting on the question: When does human life have value to God? I think I have something fresh to add, but bowing to FaceBook pressure, I’ll split the essay into 2 or 3 parts. I hope you can stand the suspense.

There are, of course, some passages of Scripture that bear directly on the subject. We see God’s care for the unborn child in Job 10:8-13 and Psalm 139:13-16. Exodus 21 prescribes penalties for men who are fighting and incidentally strike a pregnant woman “so that her children come out” (v. 22). Whether this phrase describes a premature birth or a miscarriage, in either case there is a penalty. Not all instances of killing (fatal accidents, for example) received the death penalty in the Old Testament. Even the death of a slave a few days after a harsh beating was not punished because the slave was the master’s property (vv. 20-21), but the generally humane treatment required for slaves shows that God cared for them (vv. 26-27). Neither slaves nor the unborn child was regarded as sub-human.

However, abortion and end-of-life decisions are sometimes unhelpfully discussed in terms of two unanswerable questions: (1) When do we have souls? (2) When are we persons? Fortunately, there is a third question that sounds similar, but is actually quite different: When do human beings bear the image of God. This question has a clear scriptural answer, and it enables us to understand our true worth in God’s eyes.

1.      When do we have souls? There are three principle ways in which God may give us souls.

A.      Some suggest that God creates each soul directly since He is the Father of spirits (Hebrews 12:9) who gives us our spirits (Ecclesiastes 12:7). In this case, we still have the unanswered question of when God inserts our souls into our bodies. Also, the direct creation of souls leaves us wondering why our temperaments often resemble our parents so much.

B.      However, God is often does things by using intermediate agents or processes. (For example, He feeds the animals, but the carnivores still have to hunt Psalm 104:21, 27). So perhaps our souls are passed on from our parents, as Hebrews 7:9-10 may suggest. If that is the case, it seems possible that we inherit our souls at the time of conception. However, many fertilized eggs are expelled without ever being implanted in the uterus. If these all have souls and if they all go to heaven, they may constitute the majority of saved people. This is certainly possible, but it seems exceedingly strange.

C.      A third suggestion is that our souls may emerge from the physical development of our brains. At death, the soul could continue to exist apart from the body where it arose. Job says to God, “Your hands fashioned and made me,” and then he notes that he is clay or dust (Job 10:8-13; 33:4-6). Job does not say, “You made my body,” but “You made me,” apparently including the soul along with the body. If this is true, we still do not know when the developing baby has a soul.

The most we can say for certain (regardless of how God gives us souls) is that by the sixth month of pregnancy, the baby has a soul because by that time John the Baptist was filled with the Holy Spirit (Luke 1:15, 41-44). We have even less revelation on when the soul leaves the body. Is the soul still present during the end stages of senile dementia or when an automobile accident leaves a twenty-year-old in a persistent vegetative state?

2.      When are we persons? This question may be answered in three ways, but none of them seems particularly helpful.

A.      We are persons when we have souls, but Scripture does not clearly indicate when we have souls.

B.      Perhaps we are persons when we have developed certain mental, emotional and volitional capacities. On this reckoning, the family dog has more claim to being a person than a newborn human being does.

C.      Perhaps we are persons when we have a unique, human genetic identity (in other words, at conception). If we accept this answer, then clearly we are valuable to God from that moment onward. However, to call a fertilized egg a person stretches the normal understanding of person almost beyond recognition. Another problem with this view is that genes were unknown in biblical days. Therefore, it is unlikely that the church needed to wait for modern genetics in order to comprehend our value to God. (It is helpful, however, in a modern context to insist that the developing fetus is not a blob of a woman’s tissue. He or she is a genetically unique individual.)

I have discussed souls and personhood mainly in order to show that Scripture does not give us enough information on these subjects to help us answer the question: When does human life have value to God? In my next post in a day or two, I’ll weigh in on a more fruitful approach: When do human beings bear the image of God? So stay tuned for the next exciting installment. J

I Like to Think of God As...

“I like to think of God as….” I cringe whenever I hear those words. Who cares how you like to think about God? The real question is whether your understanding of Him is true.

Unless your conception of God is determined by what God says about Himself, you have about as much chance of being right as frog would of understanding a man. In Scripture, God mocks fools who imagine that their religious observances will hide their wickedness: “You thought that I was just like you” He says (Psalm 50:21).

God’s forgiveness also goes beyond human comprehension. He urges us to turn from our sins, promises His pardon, and then adds, “‘For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,’ declares the Lord” (Isaiah 55:8).

When God called Moses to lead His people out of Egypt, He first identified Himself as “the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” (Exodus 3:6). Next Moses asked His name, and “God said to Moses, ‘I am who I am’; and He said, ‘Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, “I am has sent me to you”’” (Exodus 3:14).

“I AM” signifies that God is eternal and unchangeable. He is who He is, not what we imagine Him to be. And what He is, is more strange and complex than our distorted ideas of Him.

The gods that people have made up for themselves are generally simple. There are gods of love and gods of war; gods of fertility and gods who protect travelers. Each god knows his job, and he sticks to it. There is a god who is defined by absolute unity and sovereignty; another god includes in his being all that is; a third loves America and approves of its crusade for democracy.

The God who has revealed Himself in the Bible is none of these. His complexity is overwhelming. He is high above us, yet all of Him is present in every place. He is as ferocious as a lion and as gentle as a lamb. He sends rebels into eternal torment, but sacrifices Himself to save sinners. He is both one and three (though His oneness and His three-ness refer to different aspects of who He is). Though He is complex, yet He is also simple because He cannot be divided into parts. He is beyond our comprehension, but since He has made us in His image, we can know Him. He is beyond the power of language to describe, but His descriptions of Himself are true, and they may be understood by ordinary people.

I began this essay with the way you think about God. Far more important is the way God thinks about Himself and how He has revealed Himself to us. Almost equally important is what God thinks about you and me.

Again the answer is rather complex. On the one hand, we are hated and abhorred because of our sins (Psalm 5:5-6). On the other, “The Lord takes pleasure in His people; He will beautify the afflicted ones with salvation” (Psalm 149:4).

Though we are ugly in ourselves, we become beautiful when God saves us. Though we are hateful in our sin, God takes pleasure in us when He makes us beautiful. Our beauty, however, is not truly ours, for it is the beauty of Christ who covers our ugliness with the glorious robes of His righteousness. This comes about only through personal faith in Christ (Philippians 3:9).

Do you know this God? Does He know you? “The firm foundation of God stands, having this seal, ‘The Lord knows those who are His’” (2 Timothy 2:19).

(Published in the Allentown Morning Call, November 12, 2011)

The Place of Creeds

These paragraphs are part of my contribution to a FaceBook conversation on the importance of the great Trinitarian creeds of the early church.

How we think about the ancient creeds and other doctrinal formulations makes a great difference in how we value them. The creeds are not human improvements on Scripture as though God didn't know what He was doing when He inspired the Bible. God gave us Scripture as a progressive and historical revelation precisely because our salvation is rooted in history, not in abstract ideas. Neither should we think of the creeds as additional revelations from God supplementing the Bible.

I think the best way to view them is to say that the Holy Spirit has been at work in the Church as a whole to enable the Church to understand Scripture and to defend the truths of Scripture from error. This is one way in which the church is "the pillar and support of the truth" (1 Timothy 3:15). Spirit-guided meditation on Scripture by a host of godly teachers throughout the centuries has gradually increased our understanding of this precious treasure, the word of God. After all, the Spirit gives some the gift of teaching (Ephesians 4:11), and we learn not just from current teachers, but from those in the past as well.

I regard the Trinitarian formulations of Nicaea and Chalcedon as Spirit-guided gifts to the Church enabling the Church to stay true to the most important teachings in Scripture--the teachings about Christ and the gospel. The creeds are not infallible, as Scripture is, but neither can we safely make light of them. History shows us that whenever churches neglect or muddle the doctrine of the Trinity, they soon lose Christ.

I see a tendency among modern evangelicals to become impatient with clear thinking on these issues. Doctrine is no substitute for a warm, vital relationship with Christ, but a warm, vital relationship with Christ usually only lasts a generation or so after the loss of clear doctrinal teaching.

Nicene Creed (AD 381)

Creed of Chalcedon (451)

How to Become a Christian

From a FaceBook correspondent: “If someone walked up to you and asked, ‘What must I do to become a Christian?’ how would you answer that?”

The shortest biblical answer to a similar question came in response to the Philippian jailer who asked, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” Paul and Silas replied, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved” (Acts 16:30-31). Notice, however, that the question and response imply a large amount of shared information. The jailer knew that he needed salvation, that salvation was possible and that he was not yet saved. He already knew who Jesus was and that Christians claimed He was the Lord over all creation. He also understood what Paul meant by believing in the Lord Jesus. This information was available to him because Paul and Silas had been preaching in the city for many days.

In 21^st century America, we can no longer assume that the people we meet understand any of this. Therefore, I would begin by trying to find out where the inquirer was in his spiritual journey. If he were a Hindu, he might have no concept of creation or final judgment or the uniqueness of Christ’s incarnation. I might need to start with Genesis 1 and move on to the Ten Commandments and the Old Testament sacrificial system before he had the mental furniture on which to place the deity of Christ, His sacrificial death for our sins and the uniqueness of His resurrection. This kind of preparation may be more or less extensive lasting from several visits to as little as a few minutes.

If an inquirer has a rudimentary grasp of the big ideas, I would probably draw the familiar bridge diagram on any scrap of paper available, using verses from one book (Romans) to avoid constant and confusing flipping throughout the whole Bible.

I often then follow up with a diagram illustrating the exchange that takes place—Christ takes our sin and gives us His righteousness. I would probably use Philippians 3:7-9 with this diagram. I describe faith by saying that as sinners, we have our backs turned to God and we are going our own way in life. Faith is turning to Christ from our sin and trusting in His death and resurrection for our salvation.

I might suggest a sample prayer: “Lord, I know that I have sinned, and that I deserve to be punished for my sins. Thank you for sending Jesus to die for sinners. Thank you for raising Him from the dead as proof of His victory over sin and the devil. I now receive Him as my Savior and I want to follow Him as my Lord and Master. Thank you for the precious gift of your Son. In Jesus name, Amen.”

However, I don’t think it is always necessary or even advisable to have the inquirer pray the sinner’s prayer a line at a time. I remember one lady who thought she was a Christian before she came to our church. In the course of a membership class, she came to me privately and asked how to be sure she was a Christian. I went through the gospel as outlined above, and then I left her in my office to do her own business with God. After 15 or 20 minutes, she came out glowing with fresh assurance in Christ.

I know that God uses the simple formulas for evangelism that have been developed in the past one hundred years. I also know that many people “pray the prayer” and are not saved. Furthermore, God is not confined to our methods of evangelism.

Two young ladies in recent years have come to Christ by listening to sermons in church. One of them said, “I prayed for several months for Christ to come in. It took a long time, but finally He did.” The change in her life is amazing. The other young lady left a difficult home situation to live relatives. They required the her to attend church. At first, her countenance was the perfect picture of resentment and despair. After several months—she is not sure how or when—Christ came into her, gave her faith and transformed her whole outlook on life. She is now a joy to look at.

My father suffered for years with doubts about his salvation. I remember him saying, “I’ve received Christ many times, but I don’t know if he has received me.” At his request and based on a rather humble and shaky confession of faith, I baptized him. Many years later, I learned that his baptism had settled his doubts. Baptism was God’s seal on his faith, the reassurance he needed that God had accepted him.

The bottom line is that we may try to mass-produce converts, but God deals with people one by one. To the humble inquirer after salvation my basic counsel is, “Cast yourself on the mercy of God in Christ. Call out to Him to save you. Cling to Christ and don’t let go because He will never disappoint you.”

For the Scripture says, “Whoever believes in Him will not be disappointed.” For “Whoever will call on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Romans 10:11, 13).

Jesus said, “All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out” (John 6:37).

Psychology and Faith

I spoke last week to a woman who was greatly distressed because her church was making a slight change in a common liturgical formula. When the celebrant says, “The Lord be with you,” the people respond, “And also with you.” Her church is planning to change the response to, “And with your spirit.”

“What gives them the right to do that?” she demanded. In her eyes, the pastor was arbitrarily altering what God had ordained. I tried to explain that the exchange was not in the Bible and that both versions were acceptable to God, but I’m not sure she understood. She was stuck in an early, immature stage of faith, like children who will not allow their parents to skip a page or alter a line in their favorite Dr. Seuss book.

Or consider the teen who is afraid to go to a certain college because the teaching there might be unsettling to her faith. In such a case, one might appropriately ask, “Which is more important, the doctrines you believe or the truth?” However, that may be the wrong question. Perhaps what seems most important in her crazy, unsettled world is the security of anchoring her heart in an unchanging, unchallenged system of belief.

These sorts of encounters lead to a broader question: What does psychological development have to do with faith? Various attempts have been made to link the two. A friend has asked me to comment on the theological soundness of James Fowler’s work on stages of faith development and Scott Peck’s stages of spiritual development. Hence, this blog post. For a chart summarizing their views click on the link—Fowler/Peck chart.

I am not an expert in developmental psychology, but I find it relatively easy to think of people whose spiritual development bears a resemblance to the stages described by Fowler and Peck. For example, I have seen people questioning their faith in their early twenties (as they suggest) and either abandoning it, or coming to a deeper, more personal experience of Christ.

At the level of observation and description, the work of psychologists like Fowler and Peck can be very helpful. We do see people progressing through or sometimes stuck in various stages of spiritual development. However, I see several major limitations to the whole project.

The first is that the end-point of spiritual development is defined without respect to ultimate truth. A person may be a spiritually mature Buddhist, Muslim, Mormon or Baptist. This is unacceptable for those who hold to a biblical worldview. For us the pattern for maturity (both individually and corporately) is conformity to the character of Christ (Ephesians 4:13-16).

A second limitation of psychological descriptions of faith or conversion is that they inevitably end up in what the late British Christian neurophysicist Donald M. MacKay liked to call the “nothing buttery” syndrome. Love, morality, appreciation of beauty and all our joys and sorrows are “nothing but” a physiological response within our brains to certain external stimuli. Conversion is “nothing but” a radical change of attitude and viewpoint resulting from certain psychological stresses.[1]

In a similar vein, a fascinating sermon by C. S. Lewis discusses how the higher, richer aspects of human life are transposed into the lower, poorer realms of physiology and descriptive psychology.[2]

If the richer system is to be represented in the poorer at all, this can only be by giving each element in the poorer system more than one meaning. . . . If you are to translate from a language which has a large vocabulary into a language that has a small vocabulary, then you must be allowed to use several words in more than one sense. . . . If you are making a piano version of a piece originally scored for an orchestra, then the same piano notes which represent flutes in one passage must also represent violins in another.[3]

So a psychologist might describe the conversion of Malcom X to Islam using the same terms as he would use to describe conversion from political apathy to fervent activism in the Tea Party. Again, the same language might describe conversion from atheism to Christ. Psychological tools and language are not rich enough to describe the work of the Holy Spirit in spiritual terms. That is a limitation, not a fault, in the psychological method. It only becomes a fault if the psychologist assumes that his description is complete delineation of what is happening in the lives of his subjects.

Let us now return to our original question, about Spirit and Nature, God and Man. Our problem was that in what claims to be our spiritual life all the elements of our natural life recur: and, what is worse, it looks at first glance as if no other elements were present. We now see that if the spiritual is richer than the natural (as no one who believes in its existence would deny) then this is exactly what we should expect. And the sceptic’s conclusion that the so-called spiritual is really derived from the natural, that it is a mirage or projection or imaginary extension of the natural, is also exactly what we should expect; for, as we have seen, this is the mistake which an observer who knew only the lower medium would be bound to make in every case of Transposition. The brutal man never can by analysis find anything but lust in love; the Flatlander never can find anything but flat shapes in a picture; physiology can never find anything in thought except twichings of grey matter. It is no good browbeating the critic who approaches a Transposition from below. On the evidence available to him his conclusion is the only one possible.

        Everything is different when you approach the Transposition from above, as we all do in the case of emotion and sensation or of the three-dimensional world and pictures, and as the spiritual man does in the case we are considering.[4]

A third limitation relates to ways in which Christians might use psychological descriptions of how faith matures. I see positive contributions and a need for caution.

Contributions. Observing the normal progression of faith can help pastors and parents in several ways. First, it may keep us from expecting more maturity than is realistic for most children and for most early teens. Immature faith can still be genuine faith. Second, when we observe someone who is stuck at an immature level of faith, we may be better equipped gently to guide that person toward greater maturity. Third, we need to realize that some people do not have the mental or emotional capacity to progress as far or as fast as others. They may truly love and trust the Lord, but never move on to the kind of confidence that will enable them to respond calmly and kindly to people who challenge their faith. They may always resort a flight or fight reaction that is born out of fear and insecurity.

Cautions. The greatest danger for parents and pastors is probably the temptation to think we can protect our children from apostasy by using psychological insights and methods. Psychological techniques cannot transform group conformity that is common among our teens to confident, independent faith in their twenties. No one grows from the family of Adam into the family of God. Each one must be born into it. Neither can psychological methods of altering behavior produce the fruit of the Spirit. Fowler and Peck may help us see what is going on in the lives of those under our care, but as always the true “weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses” (2 Corinthinas 10:4).

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[1] For a helpful response to this kind of reductionism, see Donald M. MacKay, “Man As a Mechanism,” in Christianity in a Mechanistic Universe, edited by Donald M. MacKay (Chicago: Inter-Varsity Press, 1965).

[2] C. S. Lewis, “Transposition,” in Srewtape Proposes a Toast and Other Pieces (Collins: London, 1965).

[3] Ibid., 80-81.

[4] Ibid., 85.