Category: Announcements

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New Book: God and Evil

By Jim Spiegel

When it comes to philosophy of religion, there are few topics as challenging, and interesting, as the problem of evil.  At least as far back as the ancient thinker Epicurus, philosophers have been wrestling with the question, If God exists, then why is there evil?  How can so much sin and suffering in the world be consistent with an all-powerful, perfectly good God?  Much ink has been spilled on this issue, both critiquing religious belief because of this problem and offering reasons why God might permit evil.

At no time in history has there been so much published on the topic as there has been in the last few decades.  Innovative formulations of the problem and equally innovative means of rebutting the objection continue to emerge, advancing the discussion in illuminating ways.  The newly 3784published God and Evil: The Case for God in a World Filled with Pain (InterVarsity, 2013) is a welcome addition to the conversation.  Edited by Chad Meister and James K. Dew, Jr., the book features contributions from over twenty scholars, dealing with a wide variety of issues.

The first part of the book features three chapters (by Greg Ganssle, Yena Lee, James Dew and Bruce Little) that distinguish different formulations of the problem of evil.  This is followed by a section offering several defenses and theodicies, including the “free process” defense (Garry DeWeese), the Augustinian approach (Doug Geivett), the Leibnizian “best possible world” theodicy, (Jill Graper Hernandez), and the Irenaean “soul-making” theodicy (by yours truly).

The next section features chapters on a variety of issues, including original sin and primeval sin (Paul Copan), the hiddenness of God (Chad Meister), evil and prayer (Charles Taliaferro), evil and the resurrection of Jesus (Gary Habermas), evil in non-Christian religions (Win Corduan), evil and the new atheism (David Beck), and evil as evidence for Christianity (Greg Ganssle).

The fourth section addresses issues of special current interest, including evil and religious diversity (William Lane Craig), evil and the problem of Hell (Kyle Blanchette and Jerry Walls), evil and intelligent design (William Dembski), and evil and evolution (Karl Giberson and Francis Collins).  The book concludes with an appendix featuring the transcript of a well-known debate on the problem of evil between William Lane Craig and Michael Tooley.

Naturally, I was delighted to be a part of this project, and I’m eager to dig into the book with the Philosophy of Religion class I am teaching this semester.  It is especially gratifying to see all of the Taylor University connections represented in the volume, including my illustrious colleague Win Corduan, our former student Jill Graper Hernandez (now a professor at University of Texas at San Antonio), and Doug Geivett, whom I replaced at Taylor when he left for Talbott School of Theology two decades ago.

If you are looking for a book that will introduce you to current perspectives on evil and provide a rich set of resources for responding to the problem, God and Evil would be ideal.  All of us who contributed were careful to write our chapters in an engaging style that is informative but does not bog down in technical detail.  So the book will be of interest to both the lay reader as well as the seasoned scholar.

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Taylor University Ethics Bowl Team Finishes #2 in the Nation!

By Jim Spiegel

Last Thursday the Taylor University Ethics Bowl team, which I coach, finished in second place at the national Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl Competition in San Antonio, Texas.  This is our best finish ever and our second consecutive year to make it to the “elite eight.”

Our road to the final was not easy, as we had to defeat last year’s champion, Whitworth University, in the semi-final match.  In the championship match we faced DePauw University, a team with whom we are very familiar, having faced them many times before in our Central States Regional competitions.  Like Taylor, DePauw is a liberal arts college from Indiana.  It was an exciting match, as the Wyndham Hotel ballroom was packed, and the cases debated were highly controversial—illegal immigration and active euthanasia.  Both teams did brilliant work articulating

Semi-final match against Whitworth University
Semi-final match against Whitworth University

and defending their views, and the judges were divided as to who the winner should be.  In the end, DePauw prevailed by the narrowest of margins: 154-153.  Congratulations to the DePauw University team!

The issues debated during the course of the day’s competition concerned such topics as pre-natal genetic testing, protest tactics used by animal rights groups, art museums’ use of stolen art, and a novel technological approach to combating global warming.  Each year the fifteen national tournament cases are posted in mid-January, so teams have about six weeks to prepare.  However, the questions posed are not known until match time, so teams must know their cases thoroughly and be prepared to address the many ethical dimensions of each case.

Other schools that competed included Colgate University, Villanova University, Loyola University Chicago, University of Oklahoma, Georgetown University, Utah State University, Maryland University, University of North Florida, the U.S. Naval Academy and twenty others.

Our team included Tom Weingartner (Senior), Sarah Sawicki (Senior), Suzanne Neefus (Junior), Nathaniel Cullen (Sophomore), Mark Taylor (Sophomore), Jess Biermann (Sophomore), Kasey Leander (Freshman), and Veronica Toth (Freshman).  And my assistant coach is Cathy Kerton-Johnson.  Ours is a relatively young team, so Cathy and I are looking forward to having another strong squad next year.  Of course, the outcome of these competitions is not as important as the qualities that Ethics Bowl develops in the students, including ethical reasoning abilities, public communication skills, and a deeper moral seriousness.  So like athletics, Ethics Bowl is a means to the end of character formation, rather than an end in itself.  But the competition really is a great motivator and a lot of fun!

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Recent Work on the Virtue of Open-mindedness

By Jim Spiegel

One of my current research projects concerns the virtue of open-mindedness, and recently two of my articles on the subject were published in scholarly journals.  One of these, which appears in the March issue of Theory and Research in Education, discusses several accounts of open-mindedness and defends William Hare’s account against some prominent alternatives, including those of Peter Gardner and Jonathan Adler.  In the essay I also compare and contrast open-mindedness with the related virtue of intellectual humility.

My other article, published in the April issue of Sophia, discusses what I call the paradox of open-mindedness and religious devotion.  To be religiously devout is presumably to be firmly committed to believing in and following God, and this includes behaving virtuously in all respects.  But such commitment seems to rule out openness to changing one’s mind about certain beliefs and values that are entailed in that religious devotion.  Now assuming (as nearly all virtue ethicists and epistemologists do) that open-mindedness is a virtue, this creates a paradox, where it appears to be virtuous to display an intellectual vice, namely closed-mindedness.  In my essay I explore a variety of potential ways of resolving this paradox.  The route that I think succeeds appeals to the possibility of personal knowledge of God via direct experience.

My work on open-mindedness is ongoing, and my long-term goal is to do a book on the subject.  More immediately, I am working on a paper entitled “Open-mindedness and Christian Flourishing” which I am slated to present at a Society for Christian Psychology conference this fall dealing with the theme “Towards a Christian Positive Psychology.”  I’ll say more about this conference in a later post.

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Amy’s New Book: Letting Go of Perfect

By Jim Spiegel

There are certain thrills in life that one never forgets—like your wedding day, the birth of your children, and when your favorite team wins the World Series.  Though, of course, for Chicago Cubs fans like me you never get to experience the latter thrill.  Oh well.  Still, two out of three ain’t bad.  Anyway, for me this week has brought a thrill that compares to all of those:  My wife’s first book was released.  Woo hoo!

It’s entitled Letting Go of Perfect, and its about the common struggle women face as they deal with the tension between cultural expectations on the one hand and the ideal of being truly authentic on the other.  Even after several close readings (in the process of editing it), I still love reading it.  Every page is full of both humor and theological insight, which as a writer myself would really make me struggle with envy if I wasn’t married to the author.  Well, okay, I do struggle with envy anyway.  But I’m working through that.

Anyway, check out the book.  And if you’d like to have Amy Spiegel speak at your church, school, women’s group, retreat or some other event, just let her know.

Finally, in conjunction with the book, Amy has started another blog, called Ah, Crabapples, which is about seeing God’s hand at work in everyday things.  But don’t worry, she’ll continue to post here at Wisdom and Folly as well.  What a multi-tasker.  She might have let go of perfect, but she seems pretty close to me!

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The Virtue of Wisdom

By Jim Spiegel

An exciting new book has recently been released.  It is entitled Being Good: Christian Virtues for Everyday Life (Eerdmans), edited by Michael Austin and Douglas Geivett.  The book features chapters on eleven different virtues—faith, open-mindedness, wisdom, zeal, hope, contentment, courage, love, compassion, forgiveness, and humility.  I was pleased to be among the contributors, which include many superb Christian philosophers.  Each chapter aims to explain the essence of the virtue discussed with a view to benefiting readers in a practical way.  My chapter is on the virtue of wisdom, and below is an overview of what I discuss.

Generally speaking, wisdom is a kind of practical moral insight.  So it appears to be both a moral virtue and an intellectual virtue.  For the wise person has knowledge of what is the best conduct in particular situations, and this knowledge is manifested in good conduct.  So you might say that wisdom is a sort of “governing” virtue that is necessary, to some degree, for the development of all other virtues. This is why wisdom is especially important and perhaps why we find such a strong biblical emphasis on it.

How does one become wise?  Is it just a matter of study and cognitive reflection?  While we usually think in terms of beliefs determining behavior, Scripture suggests that the causal dynamic runs the other direction as well.  The Old Testament wisdom literature tells us that God makes wise the simple and grants understanding to those who humble themselves (see Psalm 19:7, Psalm 25:9, Prov. 1:4, and Prov. 11:2).  And some New Testament passages underscore the critical role of behavior when it comes to belief formation (e.g., Rom. 1:18-32, Eph. 4:18-19).

Alvin Plantinga has provided some insights regarding how vice undermines wisdom.  He notes that cognitive faculties are like any other aspect of human beings, in so far as they were designed for a purpose (to form true beliefs) and that they function properly only under certain conditions.  Like any physical organ, such as lungs or eyes, cognitive processes can malfunction because of corrupting influences.  And moral vice, such pride, resentment, or the habitual indulgence in perverse behavior, is a major cause of cognitive malfunction.  In other words, sin compromises a person’s capacity to form true beliefs, particularly regarding moral and spiritual matters.

Psychological studies have shown that, when faced with a conflict between their personal beliefs and behavior, people will often reconcile this conflict by changing the way they think about their behavior.  Rather than alter their conduct, they will take the less demanding route and search for some way to rationalize it.  This response is almost always unconscious, which of course makes for a morally insidious dynamic in contexts involving vicious behavior.  These moral-psychological insights appear to confirm the Apostle Paul’s remarks in Romans 1:18-32 where he describes how wicked behavior leads to futile thinking.

So immorality undermines the quest for wisdom.  But on the positive side, virtuous living leads to wisdom.  By living rightly we diminish the corrupting impact of sin on the mind.  Consequently, our cognitive processes can function properly, and we are more likely to form true beliefs about moral and spiritual issues.  So those who faithfully obey God will grow wiser, just as Scripture tells us.

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Coming Soon: Letting Go of Perfect

By Jim Spiegel

The release date for Amy’s debut book, Letting Go of Perfect, has been moved up to May 1.  Originally it was slated for a July release, but the editing process has moved quickly, hence the change.

I’m very excited about the book and can’t wait to hear readers’ responses.  Amy’s editor at B&H raves about her work, and deservedly so.  As readers of this blog know, Amy has a knack for couching theological and cultural insights in conversational prose that is full of zesty wit.

I had the pleasure to help edit the book, and it was a joy, at least when I wasn’t struggling with envy.  I do wish I had my wife’s talent.  Oh well.  If you can’t beat ’em . . . be married to ’em.  That’s what I always say.

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Announcing…Amy’s Upcoming Book

By Amy Spiegel

Being a stay-at-home mom for more than a decade, you can develop some fairly strong and unexpected addictions. Some I have conquered, like my Pringles addiction, through self-denial and the painful realization that no amount of time on the treadmill can overcome the fat content of an entire can of potato chips eaten in one sitting. Some I have replaced, like my Diet Coke addiction, which I have swapped for Sparkling Flavored Water. Some, however, I have resigned myself to, like my shameful addiction to postal deliveries. It is shameful mostly because on average, nothing very interesting is ever delivered to our mailbox. If I’m lucky it’s a Kohl’s discount card or an encouraging note from a friend. An Amazon delivery is heaven on earth. But usually it is a combination of bills and junk.

But not today, sister! Today I received the first installment of my book advance from B&H/Lifeway Publishing. That’s right, Amy’s writing a book. Actually Amy has been writing a book for a while now but now someone is going to pay me for it. Not only pay me for it, but publish it and try to convince other people to read it! I have been a bit bashful about sharing the news but as you are taking time to read our blog, I hope I can assume some interest in Spiegel projects outside of Wisdom and Folly.

The working title for the book is Exiled to the Promised Land, a title I had before I really understood what it meant. The basic idea is this. We are often presented with certain stereotypes of women. One is the picture-perfect superwoman who does it all. This is the woman who makes us all feel inferior and small. We might think we are doing okay until we compare ourselves and our accomplishments to Miss I-Woke-Up-At-Five-A.M.-And-Memorized-The-Entire-Book-Of-John-And-Then-Did-A-Full-Pilates-Workout-And-Then-Made-Homemade-Whole-Wheat-Cinnamon-Rolls-For-The-Fam. Comparing yourself to this woman is like discovering a piece of food in your teeth after you get home and realizing that no one told you. We want to admire her but instead we just use her excellence to beat ourselves over the head. The other stereotype is the soccer mom who drives her kids to school in her pajamas while throwing frozen waffles (which are probably still cold in the middle) at them, manages to accomplish nothing all day, and then, still wearing pajamas, picks up the kids. She is frazzled but authentic. She is the comfort food we feed on after staring at stereotype number one for too long.

Over the years I have struggled to live like Miss Perfection but believe like Miss Authentic. That is to say, I’ve been driven to achieve, though often failing, in an attempt to prove something to myself but have desired to see my worth outside of those achievements. In His infinite mercy, God has shared a truth with me over the last couple of years, and this became the seed of my book. That truth is that I am His and my worth is to be found in His work not in mine. Pretty basic Gospel stuff for a girl raised in the church, but sometimes I so long to prove my passion and my dedication that I forget for Whom I have all this passion and dedication. But if I can remember that in my relationships, in my decision-making, and in my parenting, in fact, in everything I do, that my identity is found in Christ and Christ alone, then I can find the freedom to do His work in my own unique way. If I forget this, the promised land becomes a place of burden and sorrow, a place of exile. But if I cling to this truth, any place can be a place of freedom, anyplace a place of promise.

I am writing the book this summer and it is set for publication next summer. I look forward to sharing it with you all. This blog was a major step in this journey and I thank God for the many ways you have supported and encouraged me. Through this project I hope to do the same for you.

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Wisdom & Folly Hits 100,000!

By Jim Spiegel

Amy and I are celebrating the fact that this week Wisdom and Folly passed the 100,000 visits mark.  Woo hoo!  To celebrate we want to award our 100,000th visitor with a special prize:  Two tickets to the 2012 Super Bowl.  So if you were that lucky person, all you need to do is send us proof that you were our 100,000th visitor, and we’ll reserve those tickets for you.  Awesome!  What?  You’re “not into” football?  Too bad.  If you don’t like it, then sell them and use the money to buy a Harley Davidson Fat Boy or something, you peevish ingrate.  Good grief.  You just can’t please some people…

We launched this blog way back in July 2008, when George Bush was still president, The Dark Knight was a box office smash, and Vampire Weekend’s first album was magically uniting preppy socialites and indy-rock wallflowers.  Ah, those were the days.  Amazing how time flies.

Now how to commemorate this achievement?  I mean, dang, 100,000 people—that could almost fill the University of Michigan “Big House” football stadium.  Oh yeah, I almost forgot…you’re “not into” football.  Jerk.

Anyway, how to commemorate this event…  Okay, I’ve got it.  I’ll interview my co-blogger (and awesome wife), Amy Spiegel.  She says she’s “busy” but I think I can pull her away to answer a few questions.  Here goes:

Jim: So, Amy, pretty cool that W&F has had 100,000 visits, eh?

Amy: Yeah, I guess so.

Jim: I mean, that shows that people are actually reading our stuff, right?

Amy: Some of them, I suppose.  But a lot of those people probably just read the first paragraph and then move on with their real life. That’s what I do with other people’s blogs. But you won’t tell anyone, right?

Jim: Of course not.

Amy: Great.  Are we done now?

Jim: What?  Don’t you want to talk more about the blog?

Amy: I dunno.  Maybe we could talk about it when I am not trying to make dinner?

Jim: Okay, fine.  But bear with me here.  Don’t you think we should be happy that people read our blog?

Amy: Yes, good, I’m happy.

Jim: So…what was a high point for you in our blogging life?

Amy: Blogging life? Is that really a phrase, “blogging life”?

Jim: Why is that so weird?  Blogging is part of our life, isn’t it?

Amy: Yes, but we haven’t become those people who “live” online, have we?

Jim: Well, I don’t mean it to sound like that.

Amy: Then just say what you mean, honey.

Jim: Um, what was your favorite post we did?

Amy: One of yours.  I like all of your posts.

Jim: But you don’t even read all of my posts.

Amy: Well, not all of them.  But I like all the ones I do read.

Jim: Which one did you like best?

Amy: I don’t know, probably any of the ones where you discuss Jane Austen or Alfred Hitchcock.

Jim: Uh huh.  But—

Amy: Look, I need to get back to making dinner.  Could you go to the grocery store and get some butter?

Jim: Sure.

Amy: I love you, honey-bunny.

Jim: I love you too, honey-bunny.

Awesome.

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Hunter and Plantinga to Visit Taylor University

By Jim Spiegel

In the span of one week, two noteworthy scholars will be visiting Taylor University.  James Davison Hunter will speak for the National Student Leadership Conference, hosted by Taylor this weekend.  He will arrive tomorrow and will meet with several faculty to discuss his recent book, To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World (Oxford Press).  This book has been fascinating to read, and I’m looking forward to discussing it with Hunter.  Also, I’m excited that students attending the NSLC will get a heavy dose of him.

And next week Alvin Plantinga will come to Taylor to give four different talks as part of our annual Staley Lecture Series.  Plantinga is perhaps the greatest philosopher of religion of our time and has deeply impacted several other sub-disciplines in philosophy as well.  He is the author of the highly acclaimed and influential Warrant trilogy (Oxford Press).  But if you’d like to pick up a manageable selection of his works, you should check out The Analytic Theist (Eerdmans).  Here is the schedule for Plantinga’s talks:

  • Tuesday, March 1st at 3:00 p.m. (MMVA 002) — “Warranted Christian Belief and Modern Biblical Scholarship”
  • Tuesday, March 1st at 7:00 p.m. (Recital Hall) — “Religion and Science: Where the Conflict Really Lies”
  • Wednesday, March 2nd at 10:00 a.m. (Rediger Auditorium) — “Truth and Worldviews”
  • Wednesday, March 2nd at 3:00 p.m. (Rediger Auditorium) — “Religion and Science: Divine Action in the Material World”
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Unreasonable Doubt—Answering Some Critics

By Jim Spiegel

An article of mine, entitled “Unreasonable Doubt,” appeared in last month’s issue of Christianity Today.  It is now available on-line here.  In the article I discuss the major themes of my book, The Making of an Atheist, which aims to explain and apply the biblical account of atheism.

With the publication of the CT article, a few more folks have written me to say that I commit the ad hominem fallacy or that my book is offensive or that my argument is circular because I assume that the Bible is divinely inspired.  (Perhaps the next issue of CT will run some readers’ letters that make such protests.)  These were the main complaints among my atheist critics when the book was first published last year.  Because I’ve grown weary of rebutting these objections one by one in emails, I’ve decided it would be a good idea to address them in a blog post.  So here you go.

As regards the ad hominem fallacy accusation, my book may contain its share of mistakes, but this is surely not one of them.  The ad hominem fallacy is committed when one insists upon the rejection of a position because of some fact (or alleged fact) about the person who holds that view.  I do not argue that we should reject atheism because of any facts about atheists.  In fact, in my book I review many of the objective evidences for theism.  Rather, my thesis concerns the moral-psychological roots of atheism.  So, to use an analogy:  It would be ad hominem to say that we should reject Capitalism because Adam Smith was a bad guy.  But it would be perfectly appropriate to argue that Smith came to affirm his view because of X, Y, and Z.  The argument in my book is like the latter, not the former.

As for the supposed offensiveness of my book, well, that depends on what one means by “offensive.”  If this is intended to mean that I am insensitive, cruel, or have attacked others without justification, the charge is unfounded, even ridiculous.  I simply offer a moral-psychological account of the roots of atheism, and I do so as fairly and sensitively as I can manage.  In fact, my account parallels what Feuerbach and Freud proposed in suggesting that belief in God is a sort of psychological projection.  (I argue that atheists, as it were, “project” the absence of God, due to a combination of moral and psychological factors.)  While deeply mistaken, I would never say—nor have I ever known a fellow theist to claim—that the Feuerbach/Freud account is offensive (in the sense defined above).

Now if my critics’ claim is that my account is offensive in the sense that it is likely to be met with anger or resentment on the part of some people, then I plead guilty.  Of course it bothers atheists to be told that their worldview is irrational and that, furthermore, it is a consequence of willful rejection of God rather than an objective assessment of evidence.  So why defend the thesis at all?  Why write a book that will incite atheists?  Well, because it is an important and biblical truth that has many significant practical implications with regard to ministry, apologetics, and personal spiritual formation.  My account of atheism is really just an unpacking and filling out of what Scripture says in Romans 1:18-32, Ephesians 4:17-18, and John 3:19-21, among other passages.

So, then, in building my account of atheism on the Bible am I guilty of arguing in a circle?  No, because I am not appealing to Scripture to build an argument against the truth of atheism (or in favor of theism).  I would never cite any biblical passage as an argument for God, as this would indeed be blatantly circular.  But, assuming that God exists and that the Bible is divinely inspired, it seems appropriate to consider what, if anything, Scripture says about the causes of atheism. This is all I do in my book.  Offensive to some it may be, but it’s an important truth that needs to be heard.