Certainty and Uncertainty in Religious Experience: Koukl and Chopra
Faith Under Fire
Years ago 2004-2005 there was an interesting television series called Faith Under Fire hosted by Lee Strobel broadcast on PAX-TV. As one could expect from the title, the program pitted two people of faith against each other to debate their beliefs and of course do so as quickly as possible between commercial breaks.
Lee Strobel, author of the Case for Christ series and a former-atheist convert to Christianity, moderated the discussions. The series was short lived after only two seasons, but had a range of personalities including Albert Mohler, Ergun Caner, Hugh Hewitt, John Shelby Spong, Greg Koukl, Deepak Chopra, Craig Haizen, Marianne Williamson, William Lane Craig, Gary Habermas. Even Robert Millet and Greg Johnson appeared on the program.
The Future of Faith
On one of the last episodes of season 2, Greg Koukl and Deepak Chopra were guests and the show was titled “The Future of Faith” (4/30/2005).
Koukl hosts Stand to Reason, a Christian radio program, where he seeks to explain Christian belief from a rational perspective. He has degrees in Christian Philosophy and Apologetics from Talbot School of Theology, Biola University and Simon Greenleaf University. Along with Francis Beckwith he coauthored “Relativism: Feet Firmly Planted in Mid-Air.” (Baker Books, 1998).
Chopra began his career as a a doctor of internal medicine and endocrinology. He taught at Boston University and Tufts University, before becoming Chief of Staff at the New England Memorial Hospital and at the Boston Regional Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts. After becoming interested in Ayurvedic medicine he began to write books on healing and the mind-body connection.
Certainty vs. Uncertainty
It’s true that Koukl and Chopra from very different faith traditions, but they also come from radically different perspectives regarding the role of certainty and uncertainty. For Koukl certainty is everything and uncertainty leads to doubt, disarray and should be avoided, we should have an “active trust” and “confidence in our beliefs.” The most important thing is to get it right. For Chopra, certainty can be limiting and in some cases dangerous, while on the other hand uncertainty is to be embraced, we should be willing to “embrace the unknown.” Where do you fall?
To me, Faith itself is a battle with uncertainty. The moment we take our faith for granted, we fall into complacency and dogmatism. When we find our faith over and over again, life is renewed. Uncertainty is something that believers should not equate with agnosticism, but something that is at the center of all ecumenical dialogue. The reason we continue to discuss our faith with other believers is because we know that God has left many of our decisions to be decided on the basis of faith resting on uncertainty. Our willingness to say, “I don’t know” is why I return to the discussion of faith time and again. I admire those whom are totally certain in their faith, but when they seek to try and convert me, the sharing of belief often ends and the discussion turns to dogma, i.e. whose dogma is better. Hence I love the fact that I don’t know with total certainty if the beliefs I hold today are the same I will hold in the future because it leads to more fruitful interactions with my fellow man. I feel I can follow the second great commandment better in a state of uncertainty, and the first commandment can be fulfilled by constant questioning, in a state of uncertainty, the nature of the divine as revealed to different peoples in different times.
I’m currently looking for a balance between certainty and uncertainty–navigating the waters. I also see the dangers in both.
I think that such navigation is forcing me to develop a more nuanced faith.
Great topic aquinas, here are my thoughts:
Certainty, as I think was demonstrated by Wittgenstein, is a tremendously complex and difficult game we play with ourselves. I like his quote here from On Certainty 435-437:
“One is often bewitched by a word. For example, by the word “know”.
Is God bound by our knowledge? Are a lot of our statements incapable of falsehood? For that is what we want to say.”
I think that Koukl’s entire project demonstrates the absolute allure of of certainty, the psychological power of it that Wittgenstein point to. The power of confidence, it drives so much good and bad in the world. Koukl wants to demonstrate and establish a certainty of the historical veracity of the historicity of Jesus and his brand of Christianity through the conventional method, i.e. “scholarly” analysis of documents and testimony. By using the conventional arguments and methods that can be used with the believer and non-believer alike, there is an almost intoxicating confidence that arises. You start to feel like this stuff is certain, that nobody has a good argument against it, and because it is so important your confidence grows and grows.
Chopra’s religion seems a-historical he seems concerned about the spiritual evidence in life as exhibited by the spiritual realities of our feelings, our mental attitudes, our relationships. He is indifferent about accounts of historical events because there are so many and many of the great religious events are so surrounded in fervency and obscured by antiquity, it makes sense to doubt them all with some healthy level of uncertainty.
I think Koukl has a lot to learn from Chopra, certainty is ultimately blinding and is an attempt to bind how God has unfolded the world in all of its complexity and contradiction. Chopra’s eastern thought does a lot to open the mind to perspectives that cannot be seen through a certain position.
The converse, the lesson Chopra might be able to learn, is that uncertainty may provide some degree of comfort, but can can prevent powerful stands on issues and on history.
I think that Christianity is necessarily balanced between the positions. History is absolutely paramount, the events of the passion matter and they matter if they are true or if they are not. But likewise, God has not seen fit to provide us real “certainty” about the truth of these events. He has left it uncertain as a historical event.
The Christianity I learned expresses that stronger witness comes by the power of the spirit (which can be felt and tapped into in ways that Chopra describes) the spiritual realities that exhibit themselves when we consider and practice love and charity, the great commandments of Jesus. And through the spiritual reality rather than the historical evidence we can find the truth in the history. The convincing evidence for the disciples on the road to Emmaus seems to be more the burning in their hearts rather than the expounding of the scriptures. It seems that the scriptures only point to the powerful evidence of God rather than being the evidence itself.
Now this is not to say that “all religions are true” or even that one believe is not superior to another, but I think that certainty of history rather than certainty of His current presences and spiritual reality does not seem to be God’s method.
All of this said, I think there are things we can be certain of, and things that are as clear as the daylight from the night. e.g. that Love is good and hate is bad, that we will find God in love. The spiritual evidence for this is really overpowering. In comparison, given the method God has chosen to evidence the historical events of the life of Jesus, the scholarly evidence for the passion pales. I think my LDS understanding of Christianity helps me come to grips with both Chopra’s and Koukl’s passions and perspectives on certainty while helping me avoid the pitfalls of either.
Dyson, good to hear from you again. Thank you for sharing your perspective. I like how you brought in the two great commandments.
Jared, thanks for your thoughts. I found Koukl’s approach entirely distracting. It seemed to me he really wasn’t listening to anything Chopra was saying, rather his project was to try to call Chopra on some kind of relativism, and argue against a leap of faith against reason. But I didn’t really see Chopra as arguing that human beings need to be irrational, nor did I really understand Chopra to be advocating for a kind of relativism. So, it seemed to me that Koukl was debating something other than Chopra.
In fact, Chopra said that when we practice “the essential nature of the universal message which is love and compassion and understanding” and when we do this, Chopra says, “morality, so-called morality becomes a by-product, not a means to divinity, but a by-product of our essential connection with a deeper intelligence.” Now, to me that sounds very close to a kind of salvation by grace. That once we enter into a relationship with God, morality, or good works, will naturally follow as a byproduct of our relationship, but not as a means to salvation.
I think Koukl would have been more effective if he would have simply conceded that yes, many wars and horrors have been done in the name of religion. Koukl didn’t have any kind of answer for how we can get out of religious war and violence, although he said he also is for love and compassion. He didn’t offer any perspective on how we can avoid religious conflict, rather it almost seemed to me to implicitly suggest that religious warfare is inevitable and we need to be certain we are on the right side. In fact, given Koukl’s combative nature during the program, I think Chopra’s point is well taken. I think the show somewhat speaks for itself on that issue.
One of the things I thought was rather interesting from a Latter-day Saint perspective is that Koukl seemed to think that Chopra advocated an idea of God as a “cosmic floating battery cell” Koukl argued that God is a “person” but yet in the next segment he says “I don’t think God is a man” and he refers to God as a “He” merely as a grammatical convention. Koukl didn’t explain to Chopra that the term “person” in classical Christianity doesn’t mean “person” in the conventional sense but rather comes from the Greek hypostasis that Christian theologians seem to understand as a center of consciousness. Chopra feels that God is absolute and so does classical Christianity. So, I felt like Chopra and Koukl are probably closer on this point than Koukl makes it out to be.
Even though I come from a Western tradition, I found Chopra’s worldview quite fascinating and I thought Koukl’s approach wasn’t well suited to someone who didn’t come from a Judeo-Christian background. Chopra asked “What about people who are not Christians are they damned to go to hell forever?” Koukl said the answer is easy and that there are consequences for getting the truth wrong, but he doesn’t clearly say that yes, everyone will be damned if they aren’t Christian. When Chopra said “There is omniscience, there is omnipotence, there is omnipotence, but I cannot conceptualize that in somebody who is a person who has been squeezed into the volume of a body that comes from a particular ethnic background” Koukl’s response is to say well you can’t conceptualize it but you could be wrong and I could be right. There was no sympathy for the fact that it is very difficult for those outside the Christian tradition to conceptualize the Incarnation. Even from within the Christian tradition, it isn’t easy to understand or explain. After all, Koukl presumably believes that Jesus is God incarnate but then told Chopra that he doesn’t believe God is not a man. I think there should be some sympathy for those that honestly say that it’s difficult to conceptualize.