Book Review - The Evidential Power of Beauty: Science and Theology Meet by Thomas Dubay

My mother gave me Dubay’s book since she knows that science and theology, and their constant intersection, are things I, as a physician and a Puritan, constantly engage both theoretically and practically. As such I was eager to read this book and found it most enjoyable, generally well written, although sometimes I think his assertions and conclusions unknowingly beg the question of Christian faith, and typically theologically sound. I must say upfront that whenever Dubay would delve into the realm of that which is specifically Roman Catholic in doctrine – particularly discussions of Mary, the Saints (vs. the saints), his treatment of sanctity vs. sanctification, his description of the nature of the church, and his adherence to the Pelagian error – I found it disturbing to my Reformed sensibilities. Having said that, I would plainly recommend this book to an informed and doctrinally sound Protestant Christian who has a discerning theological filter, but would be less likely to recommend it to a more spiritually immature or naïve Christian. If one is Catholic, they are used to these things and probably embrace them.

Let me briefly begin with faults because I want to concentrate on the book’s many strengths:
1. Again, from my Reformed perspective, the plainly Roman Catholic doctrines I previously mentioned and a few others.
2. The treatment of Science and theology as separate, independent, self-evident co-equals. Theology is derived from the inerrant scripture and is the benchmark of all truth since it is the breathed Word of God and therefore must be above science which is derived from broken groaning nature and flawed human reason, both corrupted by Adam’s rebellion.
3. A generally uncritical acceptance of evolutionism, and even a criticism of creationism, without a serious discussion. There are many resources to counter this: Nancy Pearcey’s Total Truth does this well when presenting the importance of Christian world view, Michael Behe, William Dembski, the Discovery Institute, etc.
4. The insistence that current biological forms are “perfect in their kind,” which is antithetical to a belief in any kind of evolutionary logic.
5. His drift toward universalism, the idea that we are all “children of God.” Only those in Christ are God’s children, the others are our neighbors, not our brothers and sisters. This is further evidence of the Pelagian error.
6. His beef with rock and roll and his blind affection for classical music. He criticizes rock as essentially brutish, and much if it may be, but consider Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody, consider Rush, Fates Warning, Dream Theater, Yes, among many others. Conversely, there are many “classical” music pieces that are grossly secular in their themes – sex, drinking – that it cannot be established as pure. The issue is skill, content and context, not musical style.

The strengths, in brief summary, because they are many and profound:
1. The single most important strength of this book is the exaltation of the beauty, splendor and glory of God manifest most graciously in Jesus Christ and Him crucified. This book has greatly encouraged and exhorted me to love Jesus more, and more as beautiful. Dubay’s emphasis on Jesus can be summed in this quote he has from Hans Urs von Balthasar, his primary resource: “It is not sacred scripture which is God’s original language and self-expression, but rather Jesus Christ. As one and Unique, and yet as one who is to be understood only in the context of the whole created cosmos, Jesus is the Word, the Image, the Expression and the Exegesis of God.” That is beautiful.
2. The overwhelming emphasis on love. “There is a great need to reunite what God has joined together…intellectual competence and burning love – which is to say that the beautiful must be a prime part of the biblical and theological enterprises.”
3. Numerous beautiful, well explained examples of the design inferred from nature, 5 chapters specifically devoted to micro-, macro-, and midi-marvels, the anthropic principle and artistry in nature.
4. The exhortations to holiness, derived from God’s holiness, reflecting Christ’s holiness, and observing glory as “holiness manifest” in the sublimity of creation. If one were to argue about the errors in the system as a result of sin, he has a chapter on Ugliness, specifically dealing with that.
5. An emphasis on Trinitarian theology in the expression of God’s character in creation.
6. The idolatry inherent in modern science as expressed in scientism. “We must have something to focus on, to glorify, to worship. We either pursue the real God or a created surrogate.”

“People who love reality, love truth…being men and women of integrity, they treasure beauty because it is the mark of truth.”

Overall, this was a wonderful book that moved me to love my Savior more.

WWJD?

From World magazine: “Diana Smith, a self-described moderate and committed Presbyterian…"The whole gay thing?" she says. "Jesus never mentioned homosexuals at all."”

What about nuclear weapons? Jesus didn’t mention anything about them? OK, we could get that covered under all the war stuff in general, which means that Jesus would be totally cool with nukes because He told Peter to go buy a sword, right? And Jesus even said He didn’t come to bring peace, but a sword. Why not a nuclear sword? Diana?

Let’s get away from something so cataclysmic. Identity theft. Jesus didn’t mention identity theft at all, so that should be cool. He also didn’t mention heroin. And he did turn water into wine, so a little feel good is good, right?

This is preposterous. Jesus never mentioned homosexuals? Did he have to? Doesn’t the Old Testament history and law give us adequate condemnation of homosexuality? Doesn’t Paul clearly condemn homosexuality? What about rape? Well, maybe that could be included under the broader category of sexual immorality, but if that’s the case, then wouldn’t homosexuality be included there, too? If not, then according to this logic rape should be at worst neutral as far as Jesus is concerned.

Jesus doesn’t have to mention homosexuality just like he doesn’t have to mention rape because He is the fulfillment of the law and will not remove one iota of it. If homosexuality will not be tolerated by God among the people of Israel, Jesus won’t tolerate that either, because He is God and the law is a reflection of His character.

Marriage – and for that matter sex – is a Mysterious and profound metaphor for the relationship between God and his people. Jesus is the bridegroom and we, the true church, are his bride. When you distort the earthly image of God’s relationships you distort the image of God. Can you think of more pervasive and heretical sin? This is the opposite flow of the Garden’s distortion. Adam and Eve rebelled against God and distorted that vertical relationship which IMMEDIATELY resulted in a distortion of their horizontal relationship. It was the first consequence of sin. So when we deliberately distort our horizontal relationships, especially, particularly, our sexual relationships, we create distortions of our relationship to God as well.

This is not about hating homosexuals. This is about loving Jesus and His bride, the church. It is about being jealous for the unsurpassable beauty and glory and righteousness and holiness of the Lion of Judah, the Lamb that was slain, who is waiting to come back and claim His beloved.

Savior: Celebrating the Mystery of God Become Man

Do I need another Christmas album? I have Frank and Ella and Tony, Sarah McLachlan, The Mormons and Hillsong, and about 2 dozen Christian artists I've downloaded off of iTunes, so, no, I really don't. But, as we listen to the "Christmas muzak" being played in stores and on the radio we all hear the paucity of Christ in what is being sung. Even Christians singing hymns will often change words to remove some of the more important lyrics. It was after 3 tries that Johnny Mathis finally gave the lyric in "What Child is This" that I was looking for - "Nails, spear shall pierce Him through; the cross be borne for me, for you." And that's a really important concept. Yes, Jesus is the "Reason for the Season," but the real core of the reason He made this season is so He could become incarnate in order to someday be our atoning sacrifice and bear our sins on the cross. The "Savior" album captures that reason in all its before, during and after redemptive wonder.

Although several of the songs don't have that musically "Christmas" feel to them, whether that is arrangement of instruments or the song itself I'm not sufficiently articulate in the language of music to describe, but I think the use of choral voices may have helped. The instruments, also, are those of typical contemporary music and not the strings and horns that more traditional Christmas music might have. However, there are several particular standouts that highlight this exceptionally well crafted and deliberately scripted album.

The first song, "Christ the Lord is Born Today" will be one of my favorite Christmas hymns, in fact, just one of my favorite hymns, for the foreseeable future. The promises of Genesis are wrapped into the birth narrative as well as the anticipated realization of the redemptive promises that began their fulfillment at the Savior's incarnation. Musically it is lively, energetic and festive and smacks of what I think of when I think of when I think of Christmas music.

"Emmanuel, Emmanuel," the third song is similar in its energy as well as its broad scope of redemptive history. It begins in the poverty of the virgin's lap, describes our brokenness that Christ came into and the recounts the promised redemption and its consequences as paid for by the cross. As I'm shuffling through the songs now, the second song, "Hope Has Come" also has the joyous warmth of a soul satisfied in the Savior and desirous of adoring Him.

The last song, "Sleep, Jesus, Sleep" has that very simple elegant sound of a meditative traditional hymn. It is also a favorite because of the magnificent vocals of Shannon Harris that turn what is almost a lullaby into a profoundly worshipful recounting of Christ's supreme authority, the anticipation of His full redemptive work and the truly personal and intimate way we should experience and celebrate it. The fact that it was written by my friend Rich Dalmas makes it that much more cherished.

I've used the word group "anticipate" twice in this review and I think that is an appropriate singular description of the effect of this work; it develops in me a deeper appreciation of Christ and His work and a hungrier anticipation for His return. I can think of no better result of celebrating the first advent than a jealousy for the second.

The Snozberries Taste like Snozberries

A practical application of Hebrews 1.3

As I awoke last Saturday morning cruising onto the rising sun at about 520 miles per hour (well it was morning, obviously, at my current longitude, although my body clock was somewhere on the other side of the international dateline at about 11:00 later that night – yes, I’m a time traveler!), I became acutely aware of the sustaining grace of our orderly, law-making, law-abiding, creator God. The basic physical principles that have existed since about 10-43 seconds after God said, “Now,” were keeping my Boeing 767 in the air above the Pacific Ocean. Bernoulli’s principle (and/or Newton’s Third Law) works, every day, thousands, if not tens of thousands of times to keep millions of God’s image-bearers airborne as they bustle about across the surface of the planet that God, in His total sovereignty, sustains in existence.

Physics works. Planes fly, internal combustion engines run, electrons flow across filaments or slap against glass to make light or images on a screen. Atoms clack together in the air and make sound; a fork made of a particular metal of a specific length and thickness will consistently produce the same, calculable tone. Oxygen gets picked up by hemoglobin in your red blood cells as they slide through your lungs and is deposited in your eye to fuel the intra-cellular machines that will eventually (like, in milliseconds) allow a burst of electrical charge down a neuron into your brain so you can read these words. Biology and chemistry and mathematics work. When you eat a piece of chocolate, it tastes like chocolate because right then, at that point in spacetime God actively and consciously sustains the order of that time-space continuum in its progress by the word of His power such that we have a reliable, predictable world. The oranges taste like oranges and if there were snozberries, they would taste like snozberries because the King of the universe made and keeps them that way.

Did you ever think about the effects of Adam’s rebellion on the physical properties of metals? I admit I’m a little outside the realm of the Genesis text here, but I suspect that prior to his rebellion, had Adam learned metallurgy and blacksmithing, there would be no structural fatigue. There would be no rust. O-rings and valves and rivets would not fail. Things would not break – not bridge spans, not light bulb filaments, not my mom’s hip.

Did you ever think that before Adam’s rebellion nothing would have spoiled? I don’t think we would have found an instance of rotten, over-ripe fruit on the ground under a tree somewhere in the garden. If Adam hadn’t rebelled, I don’t think we would have ever seen moldy cheese. We certainly wouldn’t have seen spina bifida or its rostral evil sister, anencephaly. If Adam hadn’t rebelled against the loving, sustaining, creator God that walked with him in the cool of the day, such that God was reviled by Adam’s presence and was required to separate Himself from this now spoiled world, my friends’ daughter would have lived longer than just that one day. In fact, she would never have died.

Right now, the sovereign, omnipotent, omniscient God who sustains the universe by the power of his word knows both the exact location and specific trajectory of every atom and subatomic particle in your body or hurtling through the universe. He knows this with no uncertainty. He knows about that little divot in the yard where you are going to roll your ankle and the avocado pit that is going to deflect a paring knife into the palm of your hand. He knows about the turbine that is going to shred itself inside its housing, sending fragments of hot metal into the fuel tank of a plane that will then plummet to the ground, or sea, with everyone onboard just as He knew about the plates of earth’s crust that slipped over and sent a wall of water to kill a hundred thousand people in Indonesia. He was not ignorant or impotent. He was separated because of sin, but He was in complete control.

Because of sin there is venous thromboembolic disease, multi-drug resistant Acinetobacter and the cancer that began in my grandfather’s lungs and then spread through his body. Because of sin God has ordained errors into the system (even as He continues to sustain it, otherwise it would just explode), so that we suffer consequences of sin. Because of God’s sovereign control over His orderly universe, fibrinolytics and anticoagulants and meropenem or imipenem and surgery and radiation – and vaccines – typically fix those consequences of sin, but not always. That is His deliberate plan. God has ordained suffering because of sin so that His Son, Jesus, could suffer on a cross to put sin and suffering to death. That is the death of death in the death of Christ. As Piper says, God has chosen to reveal the greatness of the glory of His grace through suffering.

But! But despite Adam’s rebellion, but because of Jesus’ obedience to the cross, the day is rapidly approaching when all this error will be corrected, wiped away, and a new, perfect and perfectly sustained creation will unfold. In the new Jerusalem, there will no be no NH&NE Medical Center. There will be no need for civil engineers (sorry, Brock, but we’ll both be out of a job) or building inspectors. There will be no decay in the load bearing members in the eternal city that has God as its designer and builder. There will be no rust and no spoilage and always, forever, with perfect clarity and unblemished luxury, the snozberries will taste like snozberries.

When God becomes an idol

“My God is…” is one of the expressions I hear Christians say that often makes me nervous. That is because what often follows is a statement about who God is or how God behaves that may or may not be biblically sound, or even biblical. When we substitute “My God” for God, I believe we risk making God into an idol.

We can never fully and completely know God because we are finite creatures. Even in the new heavens and earth, when our relationship with the Triune God will be perfect, we will not know God completely. We will spend eternity searching Him out, just as the Holy Spirit does now. However, we can fully and completely know what God has revealed about Himself to us through Scripture, and therefore can have a true and correct understanding of what we can know about God.

In John 17.3 knowledge of God is essential to, no, actually, the definition of, eternal life. Clearly this must be a correct knowledge, for we are to worship God in spirit and in truth and he has spent a lot of time in His revealed word to us telling us about who He is and what He does. Muslims worship “God,” even the God of Abraham, and they revere and love Jesus, but we should deny them as a true religion because they do not worship a correct understanding of God and they completely redefine Jesus. We can fall prey to they same heresy, only in subtler ways, when we decide that “My God” is better than God.

We constantly use metaphors for God. He constantly uses metaphors for Himself. They are an essential way of trying to understand someone who is transcendent and, therefore, completely other - but we must consider all of God’s metaphors for Himself when we seek to define Him. If my metaphors or examples of God become my definitions of God, or I am deliberately excluding or prioritizing some of God’s metaphors for Himself such that I ignore or distort the full clear revelation of God in scripture, then I have created a lesser, and inherently false, god.

God’s attributes are not only a characteristic of some part of God or a temporally variable expression of emotion or reaction. They are descriptions of God Himself and therefore describe all of God. We discuss Him in parts because we are finite creatures and are severely limited in our capacity, but God is infinite in presence and knowledge and IS all of Himself, always.

“We must remember that God’s whole being includes all of his attributes: he is entirely loving, entirely merciful, entirely just, and so forth. Every attribute of God that we find in Scripture is true of all of God’s being, and we can therefore say that every attribute of God also qualifies every other attribute.” Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology. pp 178-79 (emphasis in the original).

God is a “completely unified integrated whole” (Grudem) who is infinitely, perfectly existent in all of His attributes all of the time. Although it is absolutely true that we see, or are able to recognize, some of His attributes more than others, this is a function of His deliberately revealing or concealing parts of Himself to or from us, or our inability to see all of His attributes at once.

This is not to say that we have to worship all of God all the time. That would be impossible. We can spend hours, days, weeks even, contemplating and studying a particular attribute of God. A new believer can worship God truthfully in their limited knowledge of God. I am not considering either of those circumstances, that is, unintentional ignorance, and purposeful meditation and study. I am talking about deliberate ignorance and purposeful neglect.

The doctrine of God’s unity – that He is not divided into parts but is a completely integrated whole – is at the core of the difference between either/or vs. both/and kinds of thinking (thank you, Scot, for continuing to emphasize that). The former, a reductionist approach, is at times useful for us as finite beings. Though it is frequently flawed and its limits must be recognized from the outset, there are times when it is absolutely correct – either God cannot sin or He is not holy. There are other instances when it is completely false, such as either God is just or He is merciful. More frequently, I would argue, He is both/and, that is God is both emotional and responsive to human action in time and space and fixed and unchanging in His secret will and plans for all eternity.

This both/and reasoning that describes the fullness of who God is has its ultimate expression, as is usually the case, at the cross of Our Savior. There God demonstrated that He is, completely, both just and merciful, both loving and wrathful. Jesus took the wrath that I deserve so that I can receive the love that He deserves. He experienced the just punishment from a righteous judge that I deserve so that I could experience the grace and mercy of His heavenly Father that He deserves. God demonstrated all of Himself there. But it is God’s wrath in particular that I find many Christians neglecting or misrepresenting, or outright denying.

The God of the Bible is an unchanging God. He is love and wrath and judgment and mercy and peace and jealousy and light, and more, and He is all those attributes simultaneously and always. He will never cease being a God of wrath; it is an essential element of who He IS, not just what He does. His wrath will be justly poured out on Satan, his angels and unrepentant sinners who are Satan’s children, for all eternity. It will not end. I do not revel in God being a God of wrath, I fear it and dread it - although not nearly enough - but I am thankful for it. It should be our further motivation for evangelism and a further instigation of love for our Savior since He took the wrath that was meant for us. It should also give us confidence that God really does always and forever with absolute perfection and infinite intensity, hate sin. I and all my Christian brother’s and sisters will never experience God’s wrath, but there is a world full of people who will.

There is no attribute that can be singled out as more important (except maybe that God is holy if we were to include in that definition that His holiness is the perfect sum of all of His attributes). We may highlight God’s expression of one attribute for the purposes of teaching, study, meditation or prayer, or because of a particular emphasis of a biblical text, but to place one attribute above another in importance, perfection, completeness or essentialness to the wholeness of God would be wrong. The intentional or unintentional disregard for all of who God is, I would suggest, is the heart of idolatry and a root of all sin going back to the very first.

If I am only willing to consider one or a few attributes of God, or I refuse to consider or purposefully neglect one of God’s attributes, I have created a new definition of God and have made a false god. If I, as a man, like to define God as a warrior who fights for and protects His people, I am not wrong. But if that definition distorts or obliterates the many other attributes of God, such as His mercy and steadfast love, then I have made God into an idol of my creation. If I was a woman and liked to define Jesus as a bridegroom who woos and wins my heart, but have feasted only on that aspect of God, then I have made Jesus my substitute for a boyfriend or husband and have made an idol out of Him. Jesus does win our hearts (though we could have a long talk about the correct interpretation of The Song of Songs here), but He is the same Jesus that will also come back with eyes of fire, the same Jesus whose robe will be soaked with the blood of His enemies. When I worship and delight in God in only some of who he is and what He has done, but have no concern for the rest, I have redefined God to suit my purposes or preferences. I have created “My god.” Intellectually, spiritually, practically, it’s no different than carving a stick.

A Psalm

In the morning
I rise to greet You and present
myself to You;
In the evening
I lay down with You
recalling Your great love
I take each step in between
my rising and sleeping conscious
of Your hand over me;
I take each breath between
my sleeping and my waking
secure in Your sovereignty.

Should the powers of hell come against me
Or the schemes of men overwhelm me,
If my breath should fail me
or my heart give way in my chest, this I know:

You are the Most High God
and all creation obeys Your decrees.

In secret You work the raging of demons
and the schemes of men
to accomplish Your just end.
You ordain sin, even my own sin,
yet You are still holy
And I can trust
that He who killed His own Son for my sake
will not abandon me
nor leave me to my enemies.

For this one thing I know:
How precious is the greatness of the
glory of Your grace;
And awe is the groaning in my mouth
And the tears of my face are called love.

Eating Your Way to Sanctification

I’ve been reading about this thing called Manna Planet that my brother asked me to look into. It is basically a nutritional supplement program that claims to be able to fix your health, relationship, financial and spiritual problems. Is your Spidey-sense tingling? I certainly hope so. As, you might be imagining, I can’t honestly endorse this. Actually I have to reject it. Read their website and follow some of their links if you have nothing to do. If you have something to do, let me 'splain…No there is too much, let me sum up.

First off, there are all the elements of a pyramid scheme type of operation, like Amway or various other companies. (Get 10 people to by from you and you will be getting the product for free and then they get people to buy from them….) all under the guise of “blessing.” (They use lots of "quotation marks" on their site, as if they are quoting "somebody important.") My family got into this a long time ago with water filters. If it doesn't become your life's work, you loose money, which means someone else makes money. Your money. Yeah, bless me, baby.

There is also a lot of vague “Christianese.” No, that’s not true, it’s not at all Christian, it’s vague spiritualism. There is no mention of Christ, sin, salvation, etc., but the problems of sin, i.e. sickness, death, etc., are all described as resulting from nutritional deficiencies. Yeah, OK, sure. This is what I call Magical Humanism. As long as you get rid of all the “toxins” of this evil modern world, eliminate all the “synthetic” byproducts we pump into your body, and get back in touch with Mother Nature, you will be happy, healthy, wealthy and wise. Sure. Cool. It’s a form of paganism. You become your own god and need to be worshipped at the altar of Health. All right, they didn't say "Mother Nature" but it is the same premise you can find on dozens of other websites or in any naturopathic health food store. Hey, my wife and I frequent health food stores and we're both pretty "Green" when it comes to a lot of things we put in and on our bodies, but It's not my religion any more. I'm a Christian. Eventually my body will be absolutely perfect, forever.

One of the "ministries" that endorses Manna Planet is a pseudopsychiatric health and wealth, “healing ministry” that attributes your problems to your inner woundedness. Yes, you see, the problem is that you have been wounded. "I'm wounded?" you ask. Yes, you are wounded. By whom they don't say, but I don't think that is as important as the fact that if you are wounded, then you are not to blame for your problems. Even better, somebody else wounded you, so you get to blame them, or perhaps more generally just Them, but certainly not you.

My question, if we are going to talk about wounds is, what about Jesus Christ on the cross? What about His wounds? Who do we get to blame for that? I’ve got to stop soon. I’m trying to be angry and not sin, but I tend to have a limited duration for that.

OK, medically. I found some limited research on “glycobiology,” which is the underlying biochemical substrate that this nutrition supplement is supposed to be composed of, and its real applications to human beings. One study I read showed a benefit of glyconutrients on immune cells isolated from patients with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) when compared to normal hosts. The research showed benefit to a particular subgroup of CFS patients who were deficient in certain glycoprotein cell markers. However, CFS is an extremely heterogeneous group. Only 13% of CFS patients in the study had the cell marker deficiency. Also, the study only looked at the cells in culture in the lab and recognized that we have no idea if there would be any actual effect on the humans or if ingestion creates the same changes as a culture bath. Most of the other glycobiology stuff I’m looking at is waaayyyy technical biochemistry and is either very narrowly applied to a specific disease pathophysiology or not even close to being extrapolated into a real functional application in humans. In fact, a lot of it is still in animal or bacteria models. It’s expensive to test on humans.

I emailed the company that makes the stuff and asked for their research so that I can recommend this product to my patients. We’ll see what they fork up.

I admit a serious bias against a lot of these guys because they always paint me, that is, a regular western-trained allopathic physician, as some sort of modern Frankenstein who is distorting the naturopathic holistic nirvana that we had before the industrial age. Except we never had that nirvana, well, OK, we did, it was called Eden and the thing that screwed it up wasn’t synthetic toxins. You know the story, so I’ll quiet the tirade.

My advice: Pray, read the Bible (I recommend the ESV), go to church, cultivate loving relationships based on the Gospel that are filled with grace and accountability. Eat healthy foods, organic and free range foods, fresh fruits and vegetables, stay away from lots of fast food and junk food and soft drinks, exercise regularly, get enough sleep, drink clean, filtered water and wear magnets and crystals. OK, skip the magnets, but true magic always involves crystals.

Oh, and get your shots. People talk smack about immunizations and all these bogus associations with immunizations and autism, but I’ve got one word for all of them…smallpox. Make that two words…smallpox and plague…no, wait, three words…smallpox, plague and polio. Name anybody you know in a developed country who has had one of those diseases from normal social contacts in the last decade and I’ll give you cash money. No kidding.