Jul, 25
2018
Apologetics

Understanding the Value of the Maker Thesis

Melissa Cain Travis is an assistant professor of apologetics at Houston Baptist University and a PhD candidate at Faulkner University. She is the author of Science and the Mind of the Maker: What the Conversation between Faith and Science Reveals about God (Harvest House, 2018). Hank Hanegraaff recently dialogued with Melissa on the Hank Unplugged podcast — concerning “Women in Apologetics.” The following is adapted from the discussion on the “Maker Thesis.”

Hank Hanegraaff: I want to talk a little bit about your new book, Science and the Mind of the Maker, subtitled What the Conversation between Faith and Science Reveals about God. In that book, you have a moniker called the “Maker Thesis.” What does that explain?

Melissa Cain Travis: I write about the Maker Thesis in the article, which just came out in the Christian Research Journal, entitled, “A Grand Cosmic Resonance: How the Structure and Comprehensibility of the Universe Reveal a Mindful Maker.” The idea behind the Maker Thesis is that the enormous success of the scientific enterprise that we have watched unlock many of nature’s secrets strongly implies the existence of a Maker. Not only does it strongly imply the existence of a Maker but it implies one who desires to share some of His mind with His creatures. We would say that because we are made in His image. This is the reason we are able to share in His mind. From what we observe, it looks very much as if one of the main goals of this development of the natural world was the existence of rational beings who can investigate its deep structure. As we investigate the deep structure, we thereby understand something of the mind that seems to be behind it all.

Turns out that there are features of the universe in general, and features of planet Earth in particular, that make man’s home incredibly hospitable to the scientific enterprise.

To go along with that, we have the kind of minds that are suited to carry out that kind of investigation. This coincides very well with the Christian doctrine of the imago Dei — the idea that mankind is not just a creation but he is the crown of creation, made in the image of God. As such, we are endowed with these cognitive faculties that allow us to have not just moral awareness but also higher rationality.

I think using resonance as I do in the Journal article is perfect for describing this crazy situation we find ourselves in.

There was a fourth century Alexandrian bishop named Athanasius, Saint Athanasius, and he is one of my absolute favorite Christian saints. I have loved reading his works. He used the analogy that always comes to my mind when I am thinking about the cosmic resonance behind the Maker Thesis. He said,

Like a musician who has tuned his lyre, and by the artistic blending of low and high and medium tones produces a single melody, so the Wisdom of God, holding the universe like a lyre, adapting things heavenly to things earthly, and earthly things to heavenly, harmonizes them all, and leading them by His will, makes one world and one world order in beauty and harmony (Contra Gentiles 31.4).

I just love that. I think it is so appropriate to the thesis of my book. When we observe the world and we observe our own nature, we see this incredible resonance that leads us to understand that there is a Maker whose mind we are able to tap into just a little bit when we carry out the natural sciences.

Hank: I love that you quoted Athanasius. It reminds me of the power of one. If you think about Athanasius in the forth century. It was “Athanasius contra mundum” — Athanasius against the world. He was willing to stand against Arianism, and his arguments ended up winning the day. I also love the fact that he overtly said what many have said throughout the centuries, that God became man so that man might become God. Now, he did not mean that man can become as God by nature. We are gods by grace. We participate, as Peter said, in the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4), but he opened a door, which points out just how special we are. We are so special that God has invited us into fellowship within the Trinity. I mean it is incredible to think that the one who spoke and the universe leaped into existence wants that kind of relationship with us, a relationship that brings us into the fellowship with the Triune God.

Melissa: Yes, absolutely! Many of the church fathers talked about this very same thing. They talked about how nature is like this grand book and because we are made in the image of God, we can read that book. We can discern some of His wisdom and power in the things that He has made.

Hank: We think about the Bible, rightly so, I have spent a lifetime memorizing the Bible. But, there also — as you just pointed out, Melissa — is the book of nature, and we can see God’s imprimatur, we can see His fingerprints on the universe that He has created.

Melissa: Yes! These arguments actually go pretty far back. They even predate the existence of Christianity. We see roots of these ideas in ancient Greek philosophy, most particularly Plato. And then by first century BC to first century AD Judaism, we see these ideas about a Creator having resonance with the mind of man absorbed into or, I guess a better word would be, inspiring the writings of Judaism such that the extrinsic platonic forms that in Greek philosophy just kind of exist out there somewhere are now placed in the mind of a creator God, as the pattern that God used to create the universe.

Then our early church fathers come along, and we see the appearance of this wonderful metaphor about the book of nature — the idea that the creation is this communication vehicle by which God reveals Himself to mankind. They saw creation as a natural revelation that can be used in tandem with the special revelation that we find in Scripture. They saw these two in complete harmony and actually synergy because they thought by observing the world we better understand Scripture, and by reading Scripture we better understand what we are seeing in the world.

Then, of course, we see these ideas communicated in both the Old and New Testaments. Psalm 19 is famous one where we read, “The heavens declare the glory of God” (NIV) and they send a message to all the earth. Then in Romans 1:20, Saint Paul tells us that God’s power and wisdom are so clearly seen in what has been made that mankind is without excuse when it comes to knowing and worshiping the Creator of all things.

In the book, Science and the Mind of the Maker, what I have tried to do is weave together this glorious intellectual history with the most up-to-date findings of science and the most up-to-date progress in philosophy, and show how these very ancient arguments have not been debunked by the rise of modern science. They have in fact been truly vindicated by modern science.

To listen to the full Hank Unplugged episode, click here.

Read the article “A Grand Cosmic Resonance: How the Structure and Comprehensibility of the Universe Reveal a Mindful Maker” in volume 40, number 1 of the Christian Research Journal.

To subscribe to the Christian Research Journal, click here.

Check out other Christian Research Journal articles from Melissa Cain Travis:

“What the Size of the Cosmos Doesn’t Say about Mankind”

“Motherhood and the Life of the Mind”

To request a copy of Science and the Mind of the Maker: What the Conversation between Faith and Science Reveals about God by Melissa Cain Travis, click here.

 

July 25th, 2018 by Christian Research Institute | Type: Standard
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Jul, 10
2018
Apologetics

Songs of Extravagant Grace and Radical Discipleship for Union with Christ

Rankin Wilbourne grew up in Louisiana and was educated at the University of Mississippi and Princeton Theological Seminary. He is now the senior pastor of Pacific Crossroads Church in Los Angeles. Rankin believes that “union with Christ may be the most important doctrine you’ve never heard of.” In fact, he says that “nothing is more basic or more central to the Christian life than union with Christ.” If the latter is true, then the former must be addressed.

On a recent edition of Hank Unplugged, Hank and Rankin discuss the Gold Medallion–winning book Union with Christ. We truly believe that this conversation could change your life, and we pray that it leads you closer to union with Christ. Here is a snippet of their discussion on the two songs of Extravagant Grace and Radical Discipleship.

Hank Hanegraaff: Something very interesting in your conversation on Union with Christ is this metaphor of songs. We have these songs that are playing in our minds. One of the songs is one of radical discipleship and the other of extravagant grace. But, these are half-truths. Explain how these two work together? If it is radical discipleship, on the one hand, you get burnt out just thinking about it, but if it is extravagant grace, you can get into the corridor of cheap grace; yet, union with Christ gives you the power to be a radical disciple or a radical disciple-maker or a reproducing disciple-maker.

If you think about the problem that you have in church, and you probably understand this better than most, the church is bleeding out. There was a book that came out called The Great Evangelical Recession: 6 Factors That Will Crash the American Church…and How to Prepare by John S. Dickerson, and as I looked at this in macro terms, there is a bleeding out of the church in general. The millennial generation is walking away from the church by the time they go to college, and most of them, quite frankly, do not come back. You have this bleeding out of the church, and the church’s task is to make disciples, but when you think about making disciples, where does the energy come from for doing that very thing, unless you have union with the Vine?

Rankin Wilbourne: Exactly! Hank, you put your finger on why I got so interested in this idea, this biblical theme, twenty years ago. If you just stop and ask the big question: What is wrong? What do God’s people need to hear most today? Not just God’s people but what is the message that our culture most needs to hear today?

As a young seminarian, I started to see there were two different songs. One is what I call the song of extravagant grace. People really need to understand that the gospel is a gospel of grace. It is not about moralism. It is not about earning and working our way to God. It is not the good people are in and the bad people are out. It is the humble are in. The church really needs a message of grace. Brennan Manning and Henry Nouwen are wonderful expositors of this. Yes, that is true.

On the other hand, there are other writers just as pious and devout, who were putting the diagnosis in a different light. Dallas Willard and Dietrich Bonhoeffer were really saying very similar things — what is ailing the church today is not that we do not understand grace; rather, it is we do not understand discipleship.

My little mind was trying to put those voices together. We know biblically both voices are important. We know biblically that neither should cancel the other out.

Yet, experientially we tend to hear one song or the other. We tend to hear one song louder than the other. Even with many churches — this is just a generalization — it is either an extravagant grace church or a radical discipleship church. It is hard to find both voices. It is hard to find.

I got interested in the question: Why is that? How can I hold both of these truths together without compromising either? I want to be very careful here, Hank. I do not think there is anything original in my book. I am just excavating an old forgotten treasure. This old forgotten treasure is that the gospel is union with Christ. The Good News is that we are united to Jesus. One of the old theologians put it: from Jesus flows a double grace, a double grace of the biblical words justification and sanctification. We are declared right with God, and we can pursue holiness as we have been declared holy. These are distinct, and yet like light and heat from the sun, they are inseparable.

When I read that, I thought, “That’s it!” The gospel is union with Christ. It is what allows us to hold these songs together. Union with Christ allows us to sing of a grace that asks nothing of us to love us — amazing grace — but at the same time, demands everything from us — “Love so amazing, so divine, it demands my soul, my life, my all.” Union with Christ holds those songs together.

Listen to the full interview here.

To request your copy of Rankin Wilbourne’s Union with Christ, click here.

July 10th, 2018 by Christian Research Institute | Type: Standard
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